Catching The Waves

No Doubting Thomas

Regular readers will know that it's my long-term ambition to make CTW redundant, superfluous and generally as irrelevant as BP's PR department. To that end, I sometimes add similar websites to my "General Netlabel Sites" category, an honour so highly regarded in the Creative Commons music world that it reacts as though a new star had ascended to the heavens. (Yeah, right.) And lo, it came to pass that yours truly looked upon the works of one Thomas Rauskamp and was well pleased.

Thomas is the editor of Germany's Beat magazine (it's similar to the UK's Computer Music Magazine), the only Hauptstraße periodical I know of that devotes time and space (reviews, interviews and roundtables) to the Creative Commons netlabel scene. Germany's position, Cologne's in particular, as Netlabel Zentraal makes me wonder, in a chicken-meets-egg analogy, if Beat spurred on the CC music movement there or vice versa. It's rare for a commercial publication to take the free music scene so seriously, but Beat does so because it realises that it's fun, refreshing and reflects the changes that the internet has wrought upon popular culture.

Thomas's enthusiasm for the scene is so great that he has forsaken all notions of propriety and started blogging reviews of CC albums, an idea which, as we all know, is monumentally stupid. More to the point, he reviews frequently and with great insight, and invariably explains various aspects of the netlabel scene while doing so. As such, I urge you to turn your traitorous backs on CTW and slake your thirst for good, legally free music by visiting Thomas' Posterous as soon as you can. If you do, you'll wonder why you ever turned to heroin and crack to obliterate the yawning mental chasms that opened while you waited...and waited...for the next CTW post. No, don't thank me, meine leiblinge, thank Thomas: he's the one doing all the heavy lifting.

What's that? You don't believe that there are much better free music sites than this one? Are you telling me that you are...

*digs deep into my vault of puns*

...doubting Thomas? (Sorry, sorry. That was a particularly egregious joke, a low blow in the fight for Creative Commons credibility. I won't do it again.) If you visit his website, you'll find lots of lovely netlabels to explore, and you'll have found a great new resource for squeezing enjoyment out of this magical online world we call Duhweb, or Dasveb, as my German friends refer to it. Look, trust me. I should know all about these things, having been reviewing free music for a few years. After all, I've been at it for so long, I'm preposterous.

*rimshot*

Suck it, bitches.

Thomas' Posterous

My life is not my own

I'll make this not-quite-brief. It has been touching to receive so many kind-hearted and encouraging comments from music fans and stalwarts of the CC netaudio world, so much so that I have decided to continue Catching The Waves, although in a reduced capacity due to my irritatingly fragile health and my exasperatingly robust laziness. If none of you object, I shall post reviews and articles rather less frequently than before, and I will continue to recommend other legitimate free music sites in the devout hope that CTW will finally, once and for all, become superfluous to your music needs.

Thank you to each and every one of you for making the effort to post a comment, tweet a tweet, or write an email. Such interaction, to use a rather dull word to describe such a happy experience, came as an unexpected and welcome surprise. Please feel free to drop in at anytime and let me know what you think (good or bad) of the blog, or if you simply want to complain about the level of the euro, the weather or my grammar. I will endeavour to respond either in the comments section itself or via a new post.

(By the way, this being the internet, I am duty bound to point out that my choice of illustration does not reflect any political leanings but was merely an opportunity for a giggle. I remind you of the web's informal motto: "The Internet - Promoting Ignorance Since 1985".)

Before I go, I feel I must respond to a couple of the comments:

Embe, thank you for your suggestion about writing for the lovely and cuddly Phlow. During the last couple of years, I have had a number of undeserved but very flattering requests to write for other websites, all of which are much better than crumby old CTW. To my regret, I have had to turn them down because I am an unreliable individual and I would hate to damage the reputation of any of the (now numerous) estimable CC music sites, including Mo's marvellous website, by missing deadlines or not being able to write anything comprehensible.

Additionally, though I have been shocked by some of the extraordinarily nice things that my cuddlesome readers have said about CTW (though note with disappointment the paucity of offers of sex or money or money for sex), quite the most outré sentiment in the comments section came from David McMahon. Mr McMahon is obviously a devotee of Jane Austen, for his message was in the finest tradition of that peerless stylist:

I jizzed in my pants when I checked my email and I saw a new email from my subscription to CTW.

Well said, David, well said. World, you can keep the Booker. Don't bother with the Pulitzer. Stuff the Nobel. Catching The Waves will make you jizz your pants.

Revival or revolver

Photo: lakewentworth

It might have come to your attention that health and time issues have delivered a steel toe-cap to CTW's love-plumbing. The only thing to do is to turn around and hope that the same toe-cap will add momentum to this dead blog by administering a swift kick to the nethers.

So... to gauge whether the enormous, brian-bursting* effort to maintain CTW is worth it, I am asking you, my insane fans, if you want me to carry on getting my fingernails dirty. To do so, please do one or all of the following:

1. Leave a comment at CTW
2. Tweet the tag #ctw
3. Send me a private email declaring your undying love

If enough of you wasters respond, I might - might - plant CTW's flagpole in the internet's soft, pliant earth. Yeah, baby.

If not, thank you so much for everything and have a great life, you wonderful people. Take care.

*This typo is so good that I'm keeping it.

Eurotunnel! Thou Shouldst Be Living At This Hour

Last month, 1.2 million Norwegians sat down and watched Bergensbanen, a documentary showing ...wait for it...seven and a half hours of the beautiful snow-laden, mountainous train journey from Bergen, on the west coast of Norway, to Oslo, spiritual hometown of Earth's leggy blondes.

The NRK, the state-owned broadcasting company, has released the entire documentary under a 3.0 CC licence, meaning anyone can download, copy, remix and transmit the result, as long as they  provide full attribution. (Please refer to the site for relevant details.)

Ambient artists across the world are now flipping out. But the video is not just for cuddly, tea-drinking, sandal-wearing ocarina players. Meat-eaters are allowed to slice and dice Bergensbanen. Please do so.

What, not interested? Are you trying to tell me that nearly eight hours of a train journey might be less interesting than navel fluff? Shame on you. Here's a snippet of the journey through Finse, which doubled as the ice planet Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. Look, if George Lucas decided that the place was exciting, that's good enough for me.

*thinks about the prequel Star Wars trilogy*

It's still worth watching. Three cheers for imaginative Scandinavian state-run broadcasting systems and national rail networks!

*thinks about last sentence*

I need to get out more.

Found via Wired. I'm so cheap.