Say it with Dylan

www.dylanmessaging.com
File under: Messaging; Bob Dylan

If you've got a little message to give to someone, why text, email or (for God's sake) verbalise it when you can get Bob Dylan to say it with cards? In the 1967 documentary 'Don't Look Back', the 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' section features a young Bob Dylan holding up cards with handwritten sections of the song lyrics (while a sage-like Allen Ginsberg chills in the background). It was pretty groundbreaking stuff and now, 40 years later, timed to coincide with the new release of Dylan's greatest hits, an official website offers you the chance to have Bobby send a virtual message on those same cards.Using a touch of digital magic, the writing on the cards Dylan holds up in the subterranean clip can be replaced with your very own messages and then sent to a friend as a little video. All you have to do is enter your message (on up to 10 cards), provide your friend's email address and away it goes. Your friend will receive an email with a link to the actual video.The only catch is that, because it's a marketing tool, details of the CD release are included in the video.

Bootlegs gone live

http://theultimatebootlegexperience.blogspot.com/
File under: MP3; Bootlegs

The secret, sly and oft celebrated art of bootlegging has likely been part of the music scene since recording’s inception, but only really hit the mainline in the late 60s and early 70s. It's all terribly sneaky, but bootlegging has become as much a part of the music industry as a boring groupie with red hot friends – that is, artists and producers don't really dig it but they put up with it for the greater good.
The popularity and proliferation of bootlegging jacked up in the 80s, thanks to the advent of the humble cassette tape, but affordable digital technology and the www have facilitated a massive explosion in the number, quality and availability of these unauthorised recordings.
With content spanning the last 40 years of popular music, TheUltimateBootlegExperience (TUBE) is one of my favourite bootleg blogs. The blogger collects, details and regularly posts links to album, concert, radio and session recordings found all over the www. Here you'll find bootlegs of varying quality (some are soundboard jacks, others are clandestine, amateur audience recordings) from artists as varied as Radiohead, the Ramones, 10CC, Marilyn Manson, Johnny Cash, the Spice Girls, Cannibal Corpse, Bono, and Aretha Franklin.
Although the qualities not crash hot, special mention has to be given to the earliest known bootleg recording of AC/DC, recorded by an anonymous audience member at a Sydney gig in March 1974 (Dave Evans on vocals, belting out some rad early rock and roll classics).
Oh, and it's all free.

Clandestine music mafia?

http://overdubtampering.blogspot.com/
File under: Music; Guerrilla art; (Hoaxes?)

Okay, this could be some kind of hoax designed to get the knickers of the online music world in a twist, or it could be just about the coolest thing ever to bubble up through the peer-to-peer/pirating. Chatter concerning the Overdub Tampering Committee, an alleged coterie of tech savvy music insurgents, was all over the boards earlier this year when the group suddenly released a manifesto concerning illegally circulated music. If the manifesto is to be believed, the OTC have, for some time, been monitoring and modifying illegal album leaks on the 'Net (read as 'pretty much any significant release distributed without license via torrent/public peer-to-peer networks'). Their claim is that, on the day of an album leak, the group convenes, downloading the said album in its entirety before quickly and subtly overdubbing selected tracks with their own musical layers (piano backing, extra guitars, beats etc). They then re-release the modified file, with no advertising, signature or warning, back to the network. The theoretical result is that unwitting music pirates (yes, maybe even you!) would then be running the chance of downloading (and re-circulating) albums and tracks that are subtly different to those intended for release by the original artists.

For legal reasons, OTC is keeping their individual/several identities a secret and is refusing to release any specific examples of their handiwork. Naturally, this has fuelled speculation that manifesto and the existence of the group are bollocks, but there is no denying that they have caused some stir in the music community. And the possibility remains that some tracks in playlists around the world bear the subtle stamp of the mysterious OTC.