JamesSpratt.org

I Got Fatboy Slim Tickets

Posted on the November 2nd, 2006 under Audio by jamesspratt

Going down to Brighton for the weekend, which fits in nicely with the fact that I just got tickets for the New Year’s Day gig down there, can’t wait.

Was down there for one a few year’s back that went off, this one will be absolutely gibbering seeing as though it’s the depth of winter at that point. Frozen disco dancing, can’t wait.

One Taste, The Bedford, Balham

Posted on the October 2nd, 2006 under Audio, Le Weekend, London by jamesspratt

Went to One Taste last night, a 1st Sunday of every month entertainment extravaganza. Was overly impressed with all 6 ‘artistes’ but these 3 stood out in particular for me:

Blueswerver, the guy’s got a voice like Chet Baker, and he’s surrounded by masterful keyboard action and electronica. I will be downloading some.

Sam Beer, really gentle, funny bloke with an acoustic guitar and harmonica who opens his voice up and you sit there fairly stunned at the power coming out.

Foy Vance, again very funny chap who’s amazingly strong voice you just don’t see coming, then he does this live sampling bit where he might record slapping the side of his guitar, then that’s looped back and he might record another 5 sounds which are all layered on top, bloody clever stuff.

One Taste are having an all-dayer festival on Sunday the 15th.

Graceland Out Of Russia

Posted on the May 9th, 2006 under Audio, Geek by jamesspratt

Julia was cleaning out her old CDs t’other day and came across the empty case for Paul Simon’s Graceland. Excellent album that it is, I started trying to track down the tracks via both Ares, Kazaa and Limewire. P2P networks aren’t what they were. They’re littered with crap, which I understand is dropped in by the big music companies, and more often than not now, I don’t find what I’m looking for. On this occassion I found about half of them but that’s it. So I started rifling through some bulletin boards and came up with Allofmp3.com. They’re based in Russia where they obviously have different copyright laws but more importantly, different prices. You can choose which bit rate to download and which format. I’m still using mp3 as until the format wars recess, I don’t want to go chasing different formats. So you pay for how many Mbs you download.

e.g. Track 8 on Graceland is ‘Homeless’. It’s 3 minutes 48 seconds long. At 192Kbps in mp3, you pay $0.11.

The bottom line is that you pay about $1 - $2 per ALBUM! Or just the pennies per track. This is sensible pricing that will make me buy music online. I felt the need to share this with you.