Jim Dye

You might try fixing the headers using the MP3 software Foobar2000. http://www.foobar2000.org/ It's a great program (if you use Windows) B)

I had to follow it via webcast at macminute.com from work. Unfortunately we don't have sound cards in the crappy PCs we use at work I kind of expected a special 20th anniversary Macintosh. Maybe later in the year.

Cool! B)

It's true! When I was working as a record store manager in the early 90's, Ted invited a bunch of radio and retail people to his ranch. He had just come out with a new record and was trying to get some support at the ground level. We were brought into the Nugent compound on private busses. He had set up supervised areas where one could shoot skeet, try shooting a 9mm handgun, use a bow and arrow, go canoeing, go on a hayrides, etc... To top it all off, there was a giant feast with just about every kind of meat you'd ever care to eat and a live acoustic performance of some new and old songs including 'Fred Bear'. I couldn't turn down the opportunity even though I had virtually no interest in Ted's music or his lifestyle. I didn't know what to expect, but I just had to go. I ended up having a really nice time. And now I can say that the first and only time I ever shot a gun was at Ted Nugent's house!

The first time I ever fired a real gun was at Ted Nugent's house.

Nope. I was pulling for Denver only because the road for the Titans would have been easier going through KC instead of Foxboro. Outstanding performance by Manning. I love McNair, but Peyton should have won the MVP outright. Especially since he beat the Titans twice in the regular season and Steve missed a couple games. There was some east coast sports talk idiot on the radio complaining that McNair got all the press and was entirely undeserving of MVP honors because he's so soft and hurt all the time. Damned if you do and damned if you don't. I guess having the best record in the league over the last 5 years means nothing without that ring. What a crazy fun weekend of football!

Solid, mistake-free game by Carolina. No penalties the entire game for the Panthers! That's impressive. Dallas was out of sync the whole game.

YES!!! Fantastic game! Who would have thought that Eddie George would step up that big!?!!

GB. Favre. Green. Lambeau. Lombardi. What else is there to say? Green bay is the only home winner this weekend. B)

Going with Denver on this one. PP attack! Portis and Plummer. Manning fails again to win a playoff game. Shared MVP my butt!

Dallas. Parcells has them believing. Carolina has overachieved all year. Fox is a great coach, but the Dallas D can stop Davis.

Gotta give some love to my Titans, Paul! What Jim said. Mac 9 is comin' to play.

Spectacular photo, Chris! What camera did you use?

Still indeed. And in other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

Doug Robinson is a great guy. He's a regular over at Jazz Corner. It'd be nice if he decided to spend some time here.

Not sure if this should go in the Non-Political section, but since B3-er posted an RIAA story here...here goes. The current ATF director is leaving his job to become the head of the RIAA's anti-piracy division. http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0352/soti.php The Sound of the Industry by Douglas Wolk No Trust Congress and movie star dance the anti-download bolero December 24 - 30, 2003 You can say this much for Canadians: They know that the Recording Industry Association of America's power stops at the border. The Copyright Board of Canada ruled on December 12 that making personal copies of music files—no matter where they came from—is legal, although manufacturers of MP3 players will be required to charge a tariff of up to $25 a 'Pod to compensate songwriters and performers. In the meantime, the Canadian music publishing organization SOCAN is agitating for Canadian ISPs to pay them a flat annual royalty, on the grounds that, well, everybody downloads music anyway. Down south in the States, everybody's still downloading music anyway (as illustrated on the cynical but very funny anti-CDs-for-Christmas site whatacrappypresent.com). But our legislative bodies are a lot cozier with the entertainment industry—Bradley Buckles is leaving his job as director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms at the beginning of January to run the RIAA's anti-piracy division. The RIAA's pocket is becoming a cozy bipartisan hangout. Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) recently proposed the Artists' Rights and Theft Prevention Act, which would make it a felony to put not-yet-released recordings (or films that haven't yet been released on video) on a publicly accessible computer network, with prison terms of up to three years attached. (It would also authorize up to three years in the slammer for using a camcorder in a movie theater.) And—here's the kicker—it would presume that the movie or recording in question was copied at least 10 times, simply because it was on a network, whether or not anybody actually downloaded it. Feinstein and Cornyn announced the bill at a November 13 press conference at which they were joined by RIAA chairman Mitch Bainwol, MPAA president Jack Valenti, and Bo Derek, who's evidently bummed about all those file traders who kept Malibu's Most Wanted from being a box office blockbuster. Coincidentally, according to opensecrets.org, entertainment was the fourth-largest industrial supporter of Feinstein's 2000 campaign. The ART Act, as it's known ("ARTP" sounds too much like spitting), was formally introduced November 22, the same day as Orrin Hatch's (R-Utah) Feinstein-and-Cornyn-co-sponsored Enhancing Federal Obscenity Reporting and Copyright Enforcement Act of 2003. Hatch's pitch for the "EnFORCE Act" is that it will let the music industry "provide consumers with . . . innovative products and services," and incidentally will "protect our children from perverts and pedophiles on the Internet." The key bit of EnFORCE is a seemingly innocuous passage: "Section 115©(3)(B) of title 17, United States Code, is amended in the first sentence by striking 'under this paragraph' and inserting 'under this section.' " What this translates to in reality is that, under current law, music copyright owners (including record companies) are exempt from antitrust laws in setting royalty rates for "phonorecords" (i.e., CDs). EnFORCE expands that exemption in dramatic but vague ways. Essentially, it's meant to protect the RIAA from antitrust lawsuits like the one the Webcaster Alliance recently filed, alleging that anti-competitive behavior by the big labels was meant to drive small webcasters out of business. (The protecting-the-children stuff seems to be in the bill basically to guarantee that a vote against it is a vote for pedophilia.) Meanwhile, independent musicians have lost a high-profile Internet resource. Until December 2, a quarter-million unknown artists had songs on MP3.com, free for the plucking. Vivendi Universal bought the site back in mid 2001 and made extensive use of its technology, but had no use for 1.6 million nonhit songs; it recently sold MP3.com to CNET, which shut it down and dumped all of its content. The front page is currently filled by a placeholder announcing that there'll be some kind of music thing there eventually, and that the CNET-owned download.com will have an artist-services site opening next year. The loss is more symbolic than real. MP3.com wasn't all that important anymore: Storage and bandwidth costs have dropped so far in the last few years that it now makes more sense for most Web-savvy musicians to set up their own sites than to go through a big, cluttered clearinghouse. But MP3.com's huge, egalitarian giveaway—its sense of 250,000 artists sharing their voices freely—now seems like a relic of an earlier Internet, before songs cost a buck apiece and were all controlled by paranoid corporations. Everybody's still downloading music anyway, but now Americans have yet another reason to think longingly of the Great White North.

My grandparents used to have a place on Higgins years ago. Beautiful place. I'm heading north to Cleveland, Ohio tonight or tomorrow morning depending on the weather, and then on to Lansing the day after Christmas.

Did anyone just see the interview with Joe Namath during the second quarter of the Pats - Jets game? I was watching and wondering if something had happened to him? He was talking real s l o w. It appeared like he was recovering from a stroke. Then, right in the middle of praising Chad Pennington, he said to Suzy Kolber "I want to kiss you right now"! He was drunk! Smashed! High as a kite!

The Flaming Thumbtacks picked up Neil O'Donnell as an insurance policy for McNair this week. They shouldn't have a big problem with the Texans, but you never know in this league. If they win, they clinch a wild card spot. Then Steve could take the week off and anyone could QB for the Tampa game.

Hey Jeff and John, One of you needs to come up with a cover for the Organissimo Christmas EP 2003! Then We I distribute the 3 tracks that Jim posted LINK as a bonus disc with your BF test!

Thanks guys! There is enough material here to call this the Organissimo Christmas EP 2003! All you need is a cover. Perhaps couw or AfricaBrass will do the cover art and post it here. We could burn it and send it out with the next Blindfold test. Loving the rendition of 'O Christmas Tree'. It smokes!

In a music appreciation class I took in college years ago, I completed an assignment by presenting the class with this juxtaposition:

Cleveland Williams.