I came across two sites that together probably make the ultimate in REM RoIOs (aka Bootlegs). REM like Radiohead and a few other artists seem happy to have their live performances bootlegged – and you can see and hear that by the quality of some of the bootlegs. Anway I came across … We Talk – Torrents … as a great source of audio and video combined with … REM Cover Studios … for great artwork for your bootleg cds.

Link: http://www.murmurs.com/talk/forumdisplay.php?f=162%20
http://www.remcoverstudio.com/

A Book about The Beatles’ Revolver album has been published freely to the net under the Creative Commons license. I’ve only scanned through the book so far – but looks well researched. The idea of writing a book about an individual album is far from new, Continuum Publishing have been publishing books under the 33 1/3 series for some time and have been commented by quality music blogs like LargeHeartedBoy.

But to release this one to the net freely is a brave move; if only because if the author Ray Newman has got anything wrong then he may face the wraith of Apple Inc, who doesn’t seem to be too gentle with those who raise its ire.

But given the importance of the The Beatles’ Revolver album I’d recommend checking it out.

The book site http://www.revolverbook.co.uk/

I’ve been trying to catch up with some of my non techie reading of late.  which means I’ve finally got around to read Margrave of the Marshes.  This started out as John Peel’s autobiography but sadly died before he got anyway near completing it, so John’s second wife of 30+ years famously known as Pig and their four children took on the challenge of completing it.

The result is a fabulous read full fascinating and entertaining anecdotes.  Although there is a definite cut between where John got to and where Sheila and the children picked up the book manages to convey a lot about John as a person rather than necessarily every little detail. Fortunately it appears that John long kept a personal diary in which he wrote some of his very personal feelings which appears to have helped provide balance in describing things from John’s perspective.

The book is only very roughly chronological.  John’s writing would pick up on themes and jump around in time describing related things before eventually returning to chronological events.  One of my favourite anecdotes, which maybe influenced by the fact that my wife is currently pregnant with our first child was when Sheila wrote about when the children went off to University.  Many parents I’m sure send their children at university ‘care packages’ that probably contained things they feel their children need or should have.  John naturally did the same thing, except the care packages contained CDs which would be labelled as what he thought the child would like, should like and should play just to annoy everyone else.

If you want a book that more describes John’s background and how he came to become the national (possibly even international institution), then you’re better off reading Mick Wall’s John Peel.  But if you want to get some insight into the man’s life and passions – then this is the book for you.

The Mercury Music Prize nominees have been announced – details can be found here http://www.nationwidemercurys.com/ – personally I’m pleased to see Richard Hawley, Scritti Politti, The Editors and Thom Yorke among the nominations. Although this year the range of musical genres that the nominees cover seems a lot narrower than usual.

Paying For Fan Site Membership

There appears to be a rather evil pattern developing of making people pay membership fees to artist’s fan site (Elton John and Sting are two examples of this). Although paying for fan clubs is nothing new, in the past the membership cost has been a nominal amount which has been to largely to cover the cost of sending magazines etc. However in this day and age of the web where these sort of costs are relatively small, and most organisations/artists have the cost of web presence anyway, asking $60 (~£45) is outragious. So what do the memberships bring, largely the chance to buy concert tickets before the general public, or should I say those of us with slightly less deeply lined pockets. These very same artists alse seem to have the most expensive ticket prices, this certainly holds true for Elton John. I think that those who subscribe to the artists news groups getting advance ticket access to be a good thing, as it means the genuine fans get best seats, not an unreasonable gesture for fan loyalty (as per Peter Gabriel).

rant over.