Listen to Within City Limits Podcasts If you like to listen to podcasts and would like information about podcasts to listen to, check out the following information about a podcast called Within City Limits, created by Guillermo Delgado. Guillermo Delgado hosts and produces a podcast promoting and discussing music in Austin Tx. It’s very new and very up and coming.  The podcast is called Within City Limits, and can be found on Spotify and other popular platforms. Every episode features local Austin musicians for an interview and a general music discussion. Its aim is to strengthen the musical community and keep live music alive however we can this year! It is certainly one of the best podcasts on Spotify and one of the best podcasts to listen to! Here are a couple of examples; Episode 10 was with Emay Holmes. He is a veteran with a great voice who found success in the Navy culture after writing his original guitar ballad “Deployment Song.” He now lives in Austin, performing when he ...

 My Life Online; The Culture Underground We have a couple definitions of the word ‘underground.’ The first is; “A group or movement organized secretly to work against an existing regime.” "I got involved with the French underground" The next one is; A group or movement seeking to explore alternative forms of lifestyle or artistic expression. (Definitions from Oxford Languages) The next one is a bit more detailed; “A genre in music and other forms of media intended for an elite audience, that is often characterized by its high levels of originality and experimentation, and does not conform to typical standards, trends, or hypes as set by the popular mainstream media. The mainstream media has a tendency to steal new ideas from the underground.” by Essix April 16, 2005 ( https://www.urbandictionary.com ) Obviously, referring to The Culture Underground, the last definition is the most applicable and also we’re not talking about ‘a group or movement organized se...

The Independent Musician Serves No Master Some time ago, I ran an internet radio station and I interviewed various musical artists for the show. One, in particular, had a very interesting story of how she went from label to independent musician. She, at one time, had a contract with Capitol Records and she said that one upon a time, they had a division for just about every musical genre; Pop, Jazz, Motown, Rock and so on. Well, they changed management and all of these divisions were shut down. Why was this? Well this was the beginning of record companies deciding that it would be much easier to offer just one or two acts and build up the hype artificially, rather than try to give people too much of a freedom of choice over what they wanted to hear. Like the Pied Piper, they would call the tune and decide what people should listen to. Freedom of choice came down to deciding between the cute black kitten with the white stripes and the cute white kitten with the black stripes. But a socie...

What Is Essential? We hear a lot, these days, about what our future is going to be like and we’ve already been told what’s essential. Obviously what is essential is a bare-bones kind of survival and we accept this on account of the media’s unrelenting effort to keep us in fear. Without debating whether or not this pandemic is real or staged or going in to ideas of what might be behind it all, I just want to point out how easily we came to accept that basic survival is essential and are now positioned to do whatever is demanded of us in the future.  We have been on this same downward spiral for some time, only now it has been greatly accelerated. Think about it, we have been given one single definition of essential that we are expected to go along with. What sort of frame of mind does this put us in? What’s the next thing we will be willing to do without? Let’s talk about quality of existence. What is essential about existence, just hanging on in quiet desperation...

Social Distancing And 1984 Some have pointed out how ‘social distancing’ is a divide and conquer tactic and I have made mention to how odd the names given to these things are. AIDS, for example; just whom does it aid? Now I know it’s an acronym for Acquired Immunity Deficiency Syndrome, but who acquired it? Here we have ‘social distancing,’ not  ‘physical distancing.’ Why? Physical only has one more syllable in it.  But what is wanted is more than physical distancing. The pictures of the Italians with their wine glasses on the ends of large poles, clinking their glasses together in a toast from their balconies show that they understand. Of course they lived through Stalin. It’s wanted that people should be less friendly and less able to communicate. They should fear the other person; they have a disease they are trying to give you. You are in competition with them for toilet paper.   Anyone who hasn’t read the book 1984 should do so, while they’re in lockdow...

Returning To 'Normal' We are starting to see more talk about returning to ‘normal.’ I would like to point out the definition of ‘normal,’ which is; “conforming to a standard, usual, typical or expected,” which means that, if we were in a ‘normal’ condition before, a pandemic could not have crept up on us, therefore we were never in a state of ‘normal’ to begin with. Well, these things happen, you might say. It’s bats or rats, as in the case of the bubonic plague.  Well, here is an interesting article; https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/8/9/01-0536_article   It talks about how the bubonic plague was used as a biological weapon during the siege of Caffa by catapulting corpses that were infected with the plague at the enemy. I doubt this was the first time it used in this way. My opinion is that it probably goes on back to the ancient Egyptians who were likely among the first to stockpile this virus.  This article also mentions this practice of stockpiling viruse...

Do What You Want To Do ‘The lunatic is in the hall. 
 The lunatics are in my hall. 
 The paper holds their folded faces to the floor  
And every day the paper boy brings more.” Words from Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’, the song ‘Brain Damage.’  And it does seem the media is holding our folded faces to the floor. It’s a field day, for the media being able to peddle so much fear and death and they have our rapt attention, in fact there’s no escape, not even on social media.  They are the Piper, calling the tune and we follow like the mice to the river.  “The lunatic is in my head. 
 The lunatic is in my head 
 You raise the blade, you make the change 
 You re-arrange me 'til I'm sane. 
 You lock the door 
And throw away the key  
There's someone in my head but it's not me.”  Well, you know what I say; “Do what you want to do, And go where you’re going to. Think for yourself ‘Cause I won’t be there with you.” ...

AI Generated Music You hear a lot about music being created by Artificial Intelligence these days. I recently read an article about how they were going to have an AI finish Beethoven’s Tenth Symphony. For those who don’t know, he published nine symphonies and there are apparently notes for a tenth. You have to wonder if people are really serious. I mean it’s not like we don’t have enough artificial intelligence as it is. I suppose artificially generated pop music is the music business’ big dream. They can finally eliminate the middleman, the artist who is just always getting between them and their product. Let’s face it; the artist is just such a liability to the music business what with all the neurosis, drugs and demanding to be paid all the time. They’ve gone from signing new bands to creating acts, so they may as well go the next step and eliminate the artist. But let’s take a closer look here. What’s the difference between artificial intelligence and ...

The Ivory Tower Syndrome I once attended a lecture by the late, great Ray Bradbury, who knew he was addressing an audience of young writers. What he had to say was essentially that, if you wanted to be a writer, you just read and read and eventually it would start to come back out. I somehow understood what he meant at that time, which was this; many people have the idea that if you want to write music, for example, you would go and shut yourself off in some ‘ivory tower,’ hoping that you could come up with a bolt out of the blue.  By shutting yourself up in an ivory tower and not listening to other music you would be able to create something absolutely new and would not be in danger of copying someone else’s work either directly or by accident. Now shutting themselves in an ivory tower is not what the great composers of the past did. Even Beethoven had his influences and they are quite obviously traceable and evident throughout the different periods of his co...

Life As Art You often hear the phrase ‘life imitating art,’ although it could just as easily be ‘art imitating life.’ If you Google the definition of ‘art,’ you get; “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.” You get the idea, concepts of creation and of aesthetics; creating something of beauty. But why would art exist at all? It seems to presuppose a better aesthetic to be had, a more ideal scene than what we might be involved in. It might point the way out of what we have generally been brought to accept as ‘reality.’ This is supposing a particular purpose to art that is beyond escapism and temporal entertainment and what a concept this is! But what might art be pointing a way to? What could be better than the best of all possible worlds we find ourselves in now? Surely others have made attempts at how ...