Feb 14 2005
Mud Songs Radio
I just got this email from my brother, Phillip:
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I finally figured out how to webcast through my wireless router. Compared to this guide, it was extremely easy (I simply called the D-Link 1-800 number and they talked me through it). So for the next 5 or 6 hours (until say, 11:00pm EST), I’ll be webcasting random tracks from albums I’ve ripped to MP3s. I’d like to see how many listeners my system can handle before crapping out on me… So would you mind posting the link to my Mud Songs Webcast tonight so I can test this thing out? (I might turn on the mic throughout the evening to check my levels.)
Done. The Mud Songs Webcast stats page (to see how many people are listening).
Update (2 hours later) from Phillip: I lost 2 listeners when the Bauhaus played. So they’ve been removed. Nothing but stuff like David Francey, Danny Schmidt, Jolie Holland and some reggae for the rest of the night.
Another update from Phillip: Damn, I only got a maximum of 5 listeners. I lost all of them (except for my girlfriend and my brother) when the Bauhaus played, which is too bad, because it got a lot better after that. I played and discussed Jolie Holland’s “Wandering Angus,” which got rave reviews.
Final update (the next morning) from Phillip: That worked out much better than I thought it would. For technical reasons I won’t get into, I think jetAudio’s jetCast might be better than WinAmp for webcasting. Seeing how only 5 people tuned in, I’ll continue to webcast all day today, and probably the rest of the week, playing random tracks from my library, testing my levels every now and then, whatever. Last night before I went to bed, I played an episode of Northern Exposure on my PC, and the whole thing got webcasted, which probably isn’t legal — but with no one listening, I think I’m safe. Anyway, if you tune in, who knows what you’ll hear.
94 Responses to “Mud Songs Radio”. Leave a Reply.
Thanks, Jody!
If anyone has any buffering problems, could you let me know here in the comments? (I’m guessing the system will crap out around 6 listeners, and right now there are 3.)
decent music.
we can hear your voice!!
yes, it sounds just fine!
I was looking at the jetAudio webcasting software (jetCast) — it looks a lot better than WinAmp’s. I can record through jetAudio, it’s easier to set up the audio inputs and the levels, etc. The WinAmp/ShoutCast set up does the job, but once you throw more than one audio source into the mix, it gets much more complicated than it should. Any jetAudio experts out there?
Wow, 4 listeners!
I’m #5, and it’s working smoothly for me.
nice radioshow. i’m Patrick, i’m a wwr-listener
I lost 2 listeners — probably for the Bauhause that played for too long. I don’t know what that’s there, anyway. I don’t mind Bauhaus, when I’m in the mood for them, but they don’t fit in with the rest of what’s in my MP3 library. So the Bauhaus has been removed.
no, i just had to leave to watch a movie with the woman…. stupid holiday.
Excellent playlist. Otis Redding and roots reggae go well together.
Just heard David Francey, or Morrison & the Cheiftains “Working Poor” for the first time ever. Man, you should keep this up. All you have to do now is schedule some rants.
I can’t listen at work, and it makes me sad.
All day (while I’m awake) and every day this week, Mud Songs Radio will be on the air.
I’ll probably get on the mic today just prior to, during, or after Jim’s rant. I need to fix my levels.
I had 3 listeners for a few hours there, but then I had to use the washroom and 3 reggae songs got played in a row, and I lost all but one listener. So the reggae has been removed — for now.
Eventually you’ll lose your entire audience cause you won’t have anything left to play!
I know. I need a much larger collection if I want to play all day. I’m only doing this for this week anyway. Right now nothing is going out because I’m installing some programs.
Townes Van Zandt is playing now — and I’ll be playing ‘em for the next hour, until Jimbob’s rant.
I have trouble hearing you, you’re too bass or something. Can you turn up the treble on your mic or something? Talk with a womanly voice!
your voice sound is fine. btw you have Daniel Lanois do you have his “Rockets”? could you play songs from it or Van Morrison & Chieftains
hi, i have 2 cd’s of Lanois, Acadie and Beauty of…and some live recordings from the radio. i didn’t know this song, you’re playing just now. btw i’m listening with iTunes on a mac
Lanois’s album ‘Rockets’ should be available through this link: http://stores.musictoday.com/s.....038;sfid=2
i found it on daniellanois.com his own site
Well, we did pretty good tonight. I maxed at 5 listeners again and had an average listen of 1 hour and 25mins. And at times it was quite interactive. Nice, although I’m going to run out of music pretty soon. I said I’d do this every day for the rest of the week, but I might have to cut that short. (Jody — sorry that I forgot Caitlyn was listening. A few incidental colourful words slipped out. I’ll make sure not to do that again.)
Hey Phillip - I tuned in this evening, and there still seems to be five people. Woo-hoo! I’ll leave it on while I make supper and do the dishes.
Anyone stay tuned for the Star Trek episode I played during the last hour?
Phillip - that was me hanging around last night. It was kind of cool to listen to the Star Trek episode while I was puttering around, but I think your computer turned off before the episode ended. Eh. The got off the planet and back onto the ship, which is all that matters.
Rebecca — I got your email this morning, meant to get back to you. Also read your blog entry — glad the music added something good to your day.
Spock and McCoy got off the planet and they all laughed like a bunch of school girls afterwards on the bridge — and not a thought for the two guys who got killed on the planet.
Chances are good I’ll play a DVD every night before I go to bed.
Right now I’m adding more jazz and blues to my MP3 library. (I was running out of music.)
hi, it’s Patrick again. tuned in couple of minutes ago. in reaction to your idea about sharing music i agree. if i can help you extend your playlist for your radiostation it’s fine with me and if you get me some songs that’s ok too. send me a message about the preferred way of doing that.
Hi Patrick, that was you? Yeah, I was doing some techincal stuff, not much to listen at the moment. And I’ll get back to you about trading music.
hey Philip, may i give you some advice? don’t skip songs to often after their intro or halfway. setup playlists if you haven’t already, so you don’t have change songs manually. for the rest fine music, although i’m not much of a country fan
Country music? What country music? There’s Garth Brook’s “country” music (the worst), and then there’s Emmylou Harris and Lyle country music, which is more folk/country - a different league than modern country - a better, more original league, I think.
Sounds great Phillip! We simulcast you for awhile this afternoon. Great music…tried to make sure the link was posted enough so people could come listen directly. I’d love to catch you unawares on mic. Have fun man - if you keep this up, these are the good old days. :-)
Patrick — I’ve been weeding out a lot of songs today, so that’s what was going on when you heard me skipping over songs. I haven’t set up any playlists so far except to hit RANDOM. I have no idea how to even begin programming playlists.
Things will be a bit of a mess while I’m figuring out how to do this stuff. I still have quite a few CDs left to rip, and a lot of songs to weed out. And I’ll be doing most of that live.
Yesterday and the day before I had an average of 2-3 listeners thoughout the day, never less than 1, and maxing at 5. Today I maxed at 3, and for most of the day nobody was listening. So I wasn’t too worried about my listeners — though I do appreciate your feedback.
Right now I’d be happy if I could prevent songs from repeating so often. Every time I add a new artist to the playlist, the whole thing resets and everything that played “randomly” before ends up getting played again. (I’ve heard Stan Roger’s “Make and Break Harbour” 3 times today.)
I also normalize all my MP3s so they have basically the same level, but today some songs got encoded at a low level for some reason — which screws thing up a little more… I’m half-excpecting all this to come crashing to a halt some time this weekend due to technical difficulties.
As for the country music, legally, I’m not allowed to play most of what I’ve been playing. Most of the country and folk music, however, I am allowed to play. (See this site for more info on that).
I appreciate your comments.
Caitlyn and I are sleeping in my study tonight, where this computer is. Your playlist was perfect for helping her fall asleep: relaxing with a bit of grove. Nice.
Jesus, two messages came in while I was replying to Patrick.
Yesterday I made an effort of precisely setting my levels. Then today WinAmp reset everything — and for some reason some Townes Van Zandt songs are coming in really loud. What the hell…? Everything was working perfect yesterday! (End of gripe.)
Right, Jody — I don’t play any crappy country music. I doubt I’ll be playing any Emmylou Harris, though, because her recent work is more pop than anything else (though I still like it). And I’ll continue to play Townes Van Zandt no matter what anyone says — I’d say he’s the most countryish artist you’ll hear, but he’s bigger than Johnny Cash in my book, so Townes ain’t going nowhere. I’m more inclined to play folkish kind of music, anything with acoustic instruments, and after that reggae (most of which has been removed for the time being). Then blues and jazz, and at the bottom of my list, anything that’s remotely pop-sounding… Screw it, I’m putting the reggae back in!
If I were to restrict myself to non-RIAA artists, the stuff I’m legally allowed to play (though I’m not entirely sure how that works in Canada), the playlist would be much smaller — and almost entirely folk music.
Anyway, that’s them there thoughts. Then Jim said:
“Sounds great Phillip! We simulcast you for awhile this afternoon.”
You did? I wonder what I was doing at the time? Probably weeding out songs. For awhile there I was watching Pulp Fiction and webcasting that. If I know you’re gonna pick me up, I’ll make sure to play non-RIAA stuff (which I have in a subdirectory). Once I have most of the technical difficulties out of the way, I’d like to schedule some kind of weekly show. It’s funny, my first two days of being “on the air” were the best so far. I was getting behind the mic and talking out of my ass all day long, and some of it was good. I was surprised how at ease I was. Anyway…
“I’d love to catch you unawares on mic.”
That’s usually when you’re the best too — by which mean when you’re not “on.”
Right now I’m having fun with it (it’s a hell of a distraction from my thesis), more fun than podcasting or anything else I’ve posted. Though I’ve yet to really prepare anything before getting behind the mic. Once I start taking it seriously, that’s probably will I’ll feel like quitting.
So tonight it was Wallace and Gromit? Lovely! :)
I didn’t know what that was, so I turned if off and went to bed.
I lost the connection around 9:30pm (my time) and wasn’t able to get it back.
Last night I read The Runaway Bunny as my sign-off, and then disconnected — but realized about minute later that, due to the 3-4min delay from the ShoutCast server, my disconnection would have cut off the stream 3-4 early. Next time I’ll broadcast 3-4 of dead air before I press “disconnect.” (If that makes any sense.)
Anyway, I did that, realized my mistake, and then came back on to talk about how I screwed up. By then I figured only Jody was listening, so I put in my Wallace and Gromit DVD, set my PC to turn off in 30mins, and that was that.
If you hear a DVD playing, though, it’s means I’m in bed and won’t be getting behind the mic again.
Ah. I kind of figured that out, but it’s a useful thing to know.
Yes. It’s good to know.
MUD SONGS RADIO has its own webpage now. Took me all morning to design that stupid thing. This html crap always takes about 4 times longer than I actually have time for.
I’ll let Jody write a post to introduce the page. I have so much work to catch up on now… later.
Just when I was trying to get away from Jim Bob’s ranting! Just kidding, Whole Wheat Radio is great. Good luck!
If I get 4 listeners tonight, I’ll do a live beer review. Then I’ll come back an hour later once I’ve completely downed the pint, and we’ll see how that goes…. That’s if I get 4 listeners (which is a big IF).
Good evening, Phillip. Beer, beer, beer!
Hey Reno — I’m having a soup and sandwich first. I’m not drinking a pint on an empty stomach. If I can maintain 4 listners, I’ll do the beer review… in about 20-30mins.
hi Philip, i see you have a lot songs of Lanois that i didn’t know. but i like to make a request for Billy Holiday, or Cash or Van Morrison: irish heartbeat
Soup, sandwich, beer, then maybe a Dylan tune on your guitar? :)
Shoot, I forgot to add Cash to the request directory. Oh well, we’ll see how it goes. I gotta eat…
Whoops. 6 listeners makes the stream sound yucky. I’ll try again later, Phil. Keep it up!
Down to 3 listeners now (not including me where I’m listening in the living room while eating my soup). My might do the beer review anyway.
Jolie Holland’s “Wandering Angus” — words by WB Yeats.
cheers Philip, do you know the beer from Limburg, my province in Holland, or from neighbouring Belgium?
I’m not actually much of a beer drinker, but I’ll check for my beer from Holland next time I’m at the store.
Boy, that review stunk, didn’t it? I’ll tell you, it’s much easy to record a review like that as a podcast — because it’s not live and I can prepare exactly what I’m going to do and say.
You know, that’s what makes live radio fun. Plenty of unplanned goofyness, with a nice dose of thinking on the fly. (Isn’t that why we love listening to Jim and Esther? ;) ) Nice selection of tunes in your library. Sounds like you’re ready for prime time, Phillip.
Heehehehee. Let’s see, if I now drop this MP3 file just recorded using JetAudio into Whole Wheat Radio’s FTP site… (Giggle.)
No worries, Phillip, was just being funny. I’m sure you might want to edit your own stuff yourself. I do love your taste of music…thumbs up! Thanks for the live entertainment this evening, I’ll catch ya later…
Actually, I was enjoying all the Daniel Lanois. He’s not someone I listen to on a regular basis, so it was good to get some exposure to M. Lanois’ work.
thank you for the music. going to bed soon 1:30 am overhere
TOM WAITS will be playing on Mud Songs Radio all day today — that is, until I tune into Whole Wheat Radio around 3pm EST. Who woulda thunk someone as big as Tom Waits has 4-5 CDs that are non-RIAA? Nice. I encoded the CDs as soon as I found out they were non-RIAA, and now I’m playing all the songs in random order, something like 4 hours of music — he doesn’t need the exposure, but I’m in the mood, so what the hell…
Tom Waits! Thumbs up. Happy to see you and your music library being broadcasted today. Cool. Thanks!
One of my favourite Tom Waits lyrics:
“Come down off the cross — we can use the wood!”
from Come On Up to the House (which just played).
Listener feedback: Mockin’bird was really dragging for a minute. (To us, it sounded like an old 45 record played at 33 rpm.) It sounds fine now (considering that Tom Waits often sounds a bit slow). 3 listeners (per ShoutCast) at the time. Weird. Same thing happened yesterday with 6 listeners. Maybe it was just a bottleneck of bits ‘tween the great white north and here. Maybe you were doing something bandwidth-intensive on your server. We’ll keep you posted with any other issues, if you desire. Otherwise, I’m happy to have Mud Songs Radio on my stereo equipment this morning!
Funny how that happens. I would think the stream would just cut out instead of slowing down. Weird. Anyway, yeah, I was FTPing some stuff to this site. Same thing last night. Thanks for the feedback.
TOM WAITS live in Paris, May 30, 2000 — an 80-minute concert performance on Mud Songs Radio right now.
Aw, man! I missed a Waits-athon! Right now, it’s the Rheostatics. Have you read any of Dave Bidini’s books?
The Tom Waits concert crapped out about half way though the show. I thought it was because I had 7 listeners (the most I’ve had so far), but afterwards I did some checking and there was nothing wrong with the stream. For some reason, the encoding of the CD got messed up — but even when I played the disc and the MP3 back up files, the same weird playback anomoly occured. I’ll fix it and do the whole concert again maybe over the weekend or just next Friday. Maybe Friday will be ‘bootleg concert night’ on Mud Songs…
“Goodnight, Uncle Phillip”, she replied to you. THen she said to me, “That was nice hearing Uncle Phillip”.
Nice. Thanks. She’s asleep.
More than 2 reggae songs in an hour seem to kill my listenership. (No comment.)
Anyone hear me reading to my niece tonight? Man, I was in the zone.
You did a very good job reading the story. However, I’m not going to be able to watch “Wit” without a big box of tissues.
And thanks for the Tom Waits concert - it’s a pleasant way to end the day :)
hi Philip, enjoying your music. will you play the Tom Waits concert again? i would like to know when. there seems to be a time difference of 5 hours beween my place and yours (mine 5 hours later)
Philip, in response to your mention about replaying the Tom Waits concert, for me it would be best if you could do it between 12 and 15 pm your time
BOB MARLEY and the Wailers, live at the Santa Barbara Country Bowl, November 25th, 1979 — a 90min concert — is playing on the webcast now. [Update, 90mins later: And now it's over.]
I’ve considered removing the roots reggae from my playlist because I know the majority of listeners can’t get into it… then I realized I don’t care about the majority of listeners. I’m not removing the reggae.
More on this later.
The webcast will be playing all night at a much higher bitrate and a higher frequency than it has so far. So the sound will be much better, but I don’t think my PC can handle it — so I’m expecting a lot of buffering.
If anyone tunes in over night, I’d be curious to know how well it worked, if there was buffering, if the stream slowed down, whatever.
This webcast is very much in the experimental phase right now.
Philip, could it be that it’s a cd (Tom Waits) with copy-protection causing the problems with encoding. tomorrow afternoon is fine with me.
It’s a bootleg CD-R. No copy-protection. Anyway, I’ll play it tomorrow around 12pm my time and we’ll see what happens.
The Tom Waits concert is playing again — hopefully this time without any glitches. If it works out okay, I might play it again later this week at a higher bit-rate… Please let me know if there are any problems with the stream.
Jesus Gonna Be Here
Strange Weather
Get Behind the Mule
Chocolate Jesus
Hold On
Tango Till They’re Sore
Fall of Troy
House Where Nobody Lives
Invitation to the Blues
Innocent When You Dream
Cold Cold Ground
I’ll Shoot the Moon
Pony
Lucky Day
Jockey Full of Bourbon
Time.
Philip, thanks for the effort. maybe it’s coding (the bitrate or the encoding method) i did record it but it is mono and 22hz
you said something about a listener in Amsterdam, but that could be me too because my stream-recording program says: “started recording…Europe/Amsterdam… but i don’t live there. maybe some internetserver coming inbetween. i was double connected to your stream during the recording, with itunes and radiorecorder
patrick, if i ever figure out how to play this file without it going wiggy on me, i’ll play it back at a high bit rate and a high frequency so you can record a good version of it… weird shit going on with that file though. can’t explain it.
Hi Phillip! It’s me, Annette Sparky Makinitupasigo, tuning in from Seattle. I wish I’d heard your Tom Waits show… some other time. I’m enjoying what your playing now. Well, I enjoy your requests on WWR, so that’s no surprise, eh?
Just reboot, we’ll be fine.
Northern Exposure was filmed in Roslyn, WA… about 90 miles east of Seattle.
Check this out. Anyone know what’s going on (with my Firefox)?
It looks like a partial download of the page. Perhaps cached from an earlier interrrupted session. Try clearning your Firefox cache.
Wonderful webcast, Phillip and Jenny! I’ll be back!
Oh, I like Jolie! gonna run off though… see ya later…
Just as I was about to go to bed tonight, I noticed I had 6 listeners, the most I’ve had at one time so far. So I got behind the mic and started selecting the songs myself. Which worked out alright for the first 3-4 songs, and then I lost them. In one 10 minute stretch, I went from 6 to 2 listeners (and one of those was my brother). I got in a mood and began playing nothing but moody songs — and boom, everyone left… I’m learning.
The biggest problem I forsee is running out of music to play. So far I’ve been playing random tracks from my own collection, but that’s only 1200 songs or so, and I haven’t bothered to program playlists yet, and I everytime I add music to the library, the whole thing resets and tracks that played 10 minutes ago are often played “randomly” again… I don’t how long that will hold anyone’s attention, though I’m guess about a week or two.
hi Philip, tuned in to silence, thought something with my system, but heard your explanation. i’m willing to provide you with some music for your radio (like van morrison, dylan, pink floyd, fleetwood mac, leonard cohen etc. just mail me
Thanks for the music offer, Patrick. However, if I do expand my music library, I’d rather expand it with artists on independent labels. Although I like Pink Floyd, Dylan, etc., they are all on big labels, huge corporate machines that don’t like people like me playing their music without paying a royalty. And I’ll never be able to pay royalties. Musicians on independent labels, on the other hand, are usually more than happy to have people like me play their music on my webcast. I use this site to more or less determine what’s independent and what’s not. I’d play nothing but independent music if I could — but I just don’t have enough in the library at the moment. Right now I’m getting away with playing some non-independent music, but that’s only because there aren’t many people listening.
I’d be more than happy, though, to play any indpendent (or non-RIAA) music anyone wanted to send my way.
Philip did you check garageband.com or creativecommons.org? they’ve got independent music that you can play
We’d love to hear you and your guitar. Maybe a Dylan tune? Yeah!
Hi from England
I’ve been listening to your ‘New Stuff’ stream. Good stuff. Some New Stuff that I’ve been listening to is by Des de Moor. and his CD Water of Europe (or War of Yurp as George Bush would say.)
There are some MP3s on his site - I particularly recommend “Grandmother was a Hero”. What do people think of it?
Dave
The webcast will be down tonight for repairs. I’m updating a bunch of stuff, adding all kinds of music to the library, and I’m extremely busy with my goddam religious studies thesis — and I don’t know how to do two things at once, and I’ve been in a shitty mood for the past few days because of money troubles, I don’t have enough time to review all the music I’m adding to the library, etc. And I realize a lot of the new music that was playing today (which I was not monitoring) wasn’t so great. Sue me.
If I have time, I’ll fix up everything tonight and tomorrow will be a great and fanastic new day on MUD RADIO.
If Whole Wheat Radio isn’t playing crappy pop songs every 20 minutes, I might just simulcate their stream for the rest of the night. Otherwise, I gotta take the night off, folks. I really do.
Take care. I’ll see you tomorrow…
Phillip
Upate: I tuned into WWR and heard Groovelily. Which means no simulcast tonight. G’night everybody!
I’m also turning off the comments to this post. Comments about the webcast will continue here.