Other Bizarre Musicians Further Up the Ladder of Fame and Success Than Me:
All it takes is talent, imagination and skill. That's all!
Lederhosen Lucil: Absolutely weird ska-punk singer based in Montreal who has put out her first CD. Includes the ultimate break-up song, "You Suck," a hilariously knowledgeable singing of technical specs on "Automatic Weapons of the World," and an anthem for bored office-workers called "Natural Light." She's a real social tonic, but not actually TEUtonic. She even plays one Yamaha keyboard that's 20 years old, for that ultra-cheesy sound, making her much, much weirder than I am...She offers free MP3's from some of her songs.
Here's a picture of her I took in amazing 3-D! Just cross your eyes and merge the images.
Accordion.Guy, alias Joey deVilla. Hey, I'm all Accordion Positive. Says he plays Nine Inch Nails on the accordion on the streets of Toronto. Also runs a blog (Web-Log) that is massive, impenetrable, and gives migraines. Guaranteed to confuse, just remember to come up for air once in a while...
Thomas and the Evil Computer: Alias Jan Rudy of Toronto. The premise is that a cosmic ray landed on the CPU chip of a computer, making it very intelligent and very evil, and it is trying to take over the world with music. But its own lyrics are dry and full of techie words, so it steals lyrics from the diary of its six-year-old owner. Grunge sound, childhood dilemmas.
"Music" Made Easy -- GrooveBlender 2:
Ever wanted to make some music but didn't know where to start? GrooveBlender 2 is the mixer equivalent of a toy piano, and I present some samples on my main page, not because they are particularly good, but because they were particularly easy to make.
The Shockwave site offers lots of games and amusing animation. GrooveBlender has a modular aspect, where repetitive beats and loops appear as small building blocks on your screen. String some together to create a rhythmic line. It offers three styles: Hip Hop, Funk and Electronica. You can ask it to make a more complex song from your choices of building blocks ("blending"), and record the output as Windows Media files.
Sadly, they used to offer GrooveBlender as stand-alone shareware, but now its use is limited to the on-line Shockwave website. But you can still save the files and output to Windows Media Player.
Karaoke:
Gawd, I love karaoke. If you want to organize an evening of fun among your friends, get karaoke software for your computer such as Van Basco's free karaoke shareware. The site gives you not only the shareware but a search-engine to find the songs you want to play on it.
Probably the best karaoke shows in Toronto are run by Jason Rolland (a good animated page).
Also amazing are the shows of Pete Rockwell, a tall zany dude who likes to diss his singers in a good-natured way. Talent is optional, in fact if you're too talented, you are violating the true spirit of karaoke...
The Synth Composer at Work:
I find this truly amazing. What does the PlayStation and the former 80's band THE POLICE have in common? Stewart Copeland, who was the composer and drummer for THE POLICE, now composes soundtracks for movies and video games. The PlayStation website offers a seven-minute video of Copeland, in 3 parts, showing how he works on the music editor and the sheer fun of putting music together. You have to register for membership in the PlayStation Underground to actually view the video (they aren't going to spam you, however.)
Launch.com, and my own Internet radio station:
I like Launch.Com, the free service that lets you construct your own Internet radio station tailored to your preferred genres. You can set a rating for your favourite artists, albums, even right down to each individual song, and get a random music playlist based on your preferences! You can not call up a preferred song on the spot, though; that would violate broadcast laws. However you can get a large library of music videos on demand. They had some slight legal wrangles in the middle of 2001 (what with all this Napster hype), and personal stations were taken off the air for a while, but now they seem to be back.
My own station features new wave and electropop from the glorious 1980s, plus some other filler I haven't filtered out yet. It's working very well; most songs that pop up in the mix are my hand-picked 80's songs. It was recognized as DJ Station of the Week for July 7, 2000. Play the music at your choice of connection speeds. Caution: I did not actually rate the video list as much as the music list, so you will get a random selection of all their music videos.
The 80's:
For sites about the glorious 1980's (I can't help myself from calling it that), check out
Musical Artists (official sites unless noted):
Gary Numan (pop-synthesizer pioneer, robotic, inhuman, deliciously dark. Click on the Navigator Bar on the top or bottom of this page for my special Gary Numan section)
Björk (famous freak from Iceland)
Music Stations broadcasting on the Internet:
CyberRadio (also tons of genre stations) Dead Link, where is it now?
Edge102 (best station in Toronto, Canada, I say)
WinGlobe 2.0: This PC shareware projects a world globe on your screen which you spin around. Point to a city, get time, weather, info AND up to one radio and TV station from that location which you can play live!
With current computers, a Web-browser with media plug-ins that accept "streaming" broadcasts as opposed to downloading audio files, and an Internet service, live radio from all over the world is fantastically automatic. Take advantage of it! Things work especially well if you have a broadband Internet service; you can get FM-quality stereo sound from all over the world, assuming the source station is that quality. I've similarly found some of the world's TV channels. The Internet is probably going to be the death of shortwave radio and cable TV too! No more shortwave? How are the extraterrestrials going to find us, then? :-)
My Site on Pitman Shorthand:
DRAWING:
I started learning drawing in June 2003 with a drawing course from THE LEARNING ANNEX called "So You Think You Can't Draw?" Of course, the Learning Annex also offers a lot of New Age claptrap courses, even "Become Psychic With Your Pets" that I can't personally endorse!
She backs this up with some before-and-after drawings from people who do her four-day course.
You can see drawings of mine on my Yahoo Photos space, as well as other stuff I care to display. What you see in the albums is only the "thumbnails". Click on one to get a larger view,, and you can download the even larger full picture if you really want.
