My Personal Punk Documentary Trilogy, Part 2 - D.O.A.: A Rite of Passage (1980): Arguably the greatest punk documentary ever, this film is a poignant commentary on hopelessness, disillusionment, and class control within our society. It uses the Sex Pistols U.S. tour as a loose storyline with commentary and other live performances interspersed, such as "Kiss Me Deadly" by a young Billy Idol & Generation X and "Rip Off" and "Borstal Breakout" by Sham 69. The rare interview with Sid & Nancy is not to be missed, though the images of swastikas is disturbing.

My Personal Punk Documentary Trilogy, Part 1 - The Punk Rock Movie (1978): Super 8 quality is tough to watch, but stick with it! Highlights, besides the excellent closing set by The Sex Pistols, are "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!" by Poly Styrene & X-Ray Spex, "White Riot" by The Clash, "Kleenex" by Billy Idol & Generation X, and "Chinese Rock" by Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers.

Digital Archive Streamer updated again

Three new updates to DAS:

1. HonkingDuck is now available for online streaming.
2. You can choose to stream tunes online in random order (or not).
3. When the filter is blank, you see a list of Artists and Tunes. This can help you decide what you want to filter on.

Thanks to Jerone Gagliano in Ithaca for his suggestions!

More Common Music resources

The Common Music e-mail list is a good place for information.

Heinrich Taube gave an Introduction to Algorithmic Composition with Free Software Workshop at ICMC'07 International Computer Music Conference of the International Computer Music Association. The workshop materials are available.

Another book on Common Music is available online, Algorithmic composition: a gentle introduction to music composition using common LISP and common music, by Mary Simoni. Simoni gives acknowledgement to the LISP book Common Lisp: A Gentle Introduction to Symbolic Computation, by David S. Touretzky, also available online.

And, of course, Notes from the MetaLevel is still out there.

Anaïs Mitchell - Why we build the wall

Why we build the wall, from Anaïs Mitchell's original folk-opera, Hadestown, based on the myth of Hades and Eurydice. The show is currently on a national tour of Vermont (plus one show in MA) from Nov29 - Dec09, 2007.

Digital Archive Streamer update

I've added a few new archive collections to the Digital Archive Streamer website and also made some changes to improve the user interface and the stability of the website. I think I even fixed the caching problem that caused IE to stop showing Ajax updates. The list of archive collections now includes the following:

• 2265 tunes from the Berea College Southern Appalachian Archives at the Digital Library of Appalachia.


• 4326 tunes from the Ferrum College Blue Ridge Institute Archives at the Digital Library of Appalachia.


• 701 tunes from a collection of 78 rpm records available at HonkingDuck.


• 184 tunes from Alan Jabbour's Henry Reed Collection at The American Folklife Center. This collection is part of the American Memory project at the U.S. Library of Congress.


• 814 tunes from the California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties collection at The American Folklife Center. These recordings were collected during The WPA California Folk Music Project [1938-40]. This collection is part of the American Memory project at the U.S. Library of Congress.


• 222 tunes from the Omaha Indian Music collection at The American Folklife Center. It features traditional Omaha music from the 1890s and 1980s. This collection is part of the American Memory project at the U.S. Library of Congress.

Enjoy! -Ross

Digital Archive Streamer

After the last two postings of selections from the HonkingDuck archive of 78 rpm recordings, I realized that there's a better way to provide access. There are several excellent digital archive collections on-line now, and they continue to grow. I regularly explore and use them, but I got tired of having to click on each individual tune to play it. I wanted the option to stream a group of these tunes all at once, so I built a website that I've recently put online. Here's a brief description:

Digital Archive Streamer (http://waxandwane.org/das/) is an alternative streaming front-end to digital archives of field and 78 rpm recordings. The original archive sites have searching front-ends, but a user has to click on each tune individually to play it. Using the DAS site a user can create a custom playlist of tunes and stream the entire list. Uses AJAX to display selections as the user types a Perl regular expression for filtering. The user then chooses between XSPF, M3U, PLS, or RAM playlist formats for streaming.

I'll continue to add more archive collections as I find them!