Wall of Mouths

Mp3.com never illegally distributed copyright music…at least not in a black and white sense. Their software simply scanned your CD-Rom to detect if you owned a certain CD. If you did, then you could download mp3s of that CD. In theory, the user was just downloading stuff they’d already paid for. I think it’s kind of a grey area, because the Home Recording Act passed in 1977 (and another one in the 80’s I think) allows people to make duplications of things they already own (like putting your CD on cassette). Now, some of this may conflict with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act passed last year, but I still think the government was a little hasty to lobby such a large fine.

My first T?-shirt was purchased for about $12 US at their show in Toronto. It’s blue with Gemil on the front and ‘Therapy?’ on the back. In addition to that, I have one of the old Teethgrinder shirts which was given to me, another blue one with ‘Brixtonbelfastdublin’ written on the front and Gemil, Irony and ? on the back, and a long sleeved black shirt with the Troublegum album cover on the front, ‘Therapy?’ written up the sleeve, and each member’s face on the back. It doesn’t fit well, but it’s still a good looking shirt.

I really don’t think the name of a band has much bearing on their lyrics. Take for example:

* Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet - Good name, good lyrics.
* Who Is The Girl in the Red Dress and Why Does She Keep Calling Me Andrew? - Pretty damn creative name, pretty lame lyrics.
* Foo Fighters - Not the best of names, but some good lyrics.
* Smoking Popes - Great name, but weak lyrics. They’re quirky and semi-creative, but not too deep.
* Fury In The Slaughterhouse - A borderline. Sometimes I think it’s a hokey death-metal sounding name, other times I think it’s good. Same with the lyrics for the most part. However, they are Germans writing English lyrics, which I can imagine might be difficult.
* Smashing Pumpkins - When you think about it, a pretty crappy name. Great lyrics though.
* Our Lady Peace - Hate the name (hate the music too), but I suppose the lyrics are deep. They’re not too crafty at naming albums either: ‘Happiness is not a fish you can catch’ for example.

So many bands pick names from seemingly arbitrary sources. Some might just take the name of a movie (Sleeper), some random object (Shoenen Knife) or a person (Mookie Blaylock). Oddly enough, Matthew Good has said that he hates the fact that the Matthew Good Band is named after him. The band just had to print up a record label quickly and once they became popular, it was just too hard to change.

I’ve heard bands with great lyrics and poor music. I’ve heard bands with great music and really lame lyrics. There’s no rule that says you need to pick a band that has both, because sometimes that can be a rare thing. And finally, lyrics, music and names are so subjective that they really can’t have that much impact on one another.

You can tell he sucks, because Mike Watt was a horrible bass player, and the Minutemen were just a terrible band. Why you’d bother to pick that as your username (unless that’s your real name) is beyond me.

It would be really sweet if you got your name from Degrassi Jr. High, that great Canadian melodrama from the 80’s. It’s too bad you European folks don’t get it, because you’re really missing out on some hilarious TV.

Title: Diamond Dave show

Can anyone re-post the URL for Diamond Dave’s webcast radio show? Thanks!

Well, as you’ve all heard by now, Napster won the temporary appeal against the injunction, so it’ll be up until the case, which hasn’t had a date set yet. Personally, I don’t think the courts have much of a case against Napster. Like I said above, if Napster can prove they act as a service provider, then the laws are already written in their favor.

Probably 99% of the stuff I download from Napster is stuff that I’d never buy in a million years anyways. And the other 1% of the stuff I download is live, unreleased songs that really aren’t available for sale anyways.

I actually bought new CDs the other day, and oddly enough, they were ones that I’d previously downloaded from Napster. Napster actually brought bands that I might not have listened to before to my attention. It’s true that the majority of stuff on Napster is copyrighted work that directly affects the artist’s royalties. The way I see it, Napster is doing anything illegal really, and therefore shouldn’t be shut down. The Digital Millenium Copyright Act in the USA states that ISPs can’t be held accountable for the actions of their users. If you consider Napster to be an ISP rather than a den of theives, then Napster isn’t really doing anything wrong at all. I mean, you can’t force AOL to shut down just because a few of it’s users use it to send out child pornography.

It’s not going to ruin my life if Napster shuts down, nor is it going to enrich it that much more if it stays up.

Right as I’m about to get cable internet access too…fucking shit. I haven’t bought a CD in a year, I don’t intend on buying them now.

I almost always wait for payment as well. Bascially, what happened is this:

He won a Perversonality promo from me, and sent me a check made out in English pounds to cover it. I went to the bank to cash it, and was told that there would be a $20 fee to cash it, which pretty much meant it wasn’t worth cashing. I told him this, and he offered to send cash instead. Since he proved himself trustworthy by sending the check right away, I sent the promo, along with a few other items he wanted. He got them right away, and told me the cash was in the mail. As you can guess, it never arrived. I gave it at least a month, and nothing. I told him it hadn’t come, and I’d give it 2 more weeks, and that if it didn’t arrive by then, I asked him to simply box the stuff up and mail it back. Of course, I never got the stuff back. I gave him at least another month, and then I started emailing him about it. To this date, I haven’t received a reply.

It peeves me, because I trusted him and helped him out in finding quite a few T? items. In addition to this, I had him get one of those Crossing Borders CDs from Ronald, since I didn’t have access to English pounds. Of course, that CD never arrived either. I know I’ve done business with 1 or 2 people from this board with no problems at all. When I was selling discs via my site, I often times sent out packages before payment arrived. I’m a little pissed off at this, since I lost a good $50-60 worth of stuff, and there’s a lot of frustration involved. I don’t like to single out people or rat on them, but when one of our own is pulling shit like this, I thought it might be important to warn everyone else.

Title: Bad Bidder Alert!!!!

I usually don’t do anything like this, but it appears that one of our own is attemtping to rob me a few items. Piers, (Perversonality on this board, and on his website) won an eBay auction way back in February, and to this date I have never received payment. He managed to make off with about 4 of my T? discs and a vinyl I believe. Obviously, I’m an idiot for trusting him, but I thought that the other folks on this board should be aware that one of us isn’t exactly 100% honest.

How the fuck did you make your own amp?

The original poster made no mention of his playing ability, thus I am not going to simply tell him to ‘buy anything as long as it’s not broken.’ I’m not going to recommend that a first-time buyer purchase an inferior product, because the headaches caused by inferior quality will ruin the pleasure he’d get from it. A guitar is an investment. People who play tend to play every day. You don’t need to be a Rhodes Scholar to realize that if you’re going to use a certain piece of equipment every day you might as well buy a quality piece of equipment.

My first guitar was (and still is) a piece of junk Epiphone acoustic. The craftsmanshift is pretty poor, there’s a few nicks and dings in the wood and the bridge is starting to come loose. It served its purpose and I can still write nice music on it, but every time I go to the guitar store, I can’t help but pick up a nice Seagull or Takamine acoustic in order to appreciate the difference in quality.

A good guitar doesn’t make the player any better unless the player has a solid foundation to start with. And no matter what you think, neither I nor any of the original posters were trying to say anything to the contrary. Stop trying to pass off your opinion as being the only right one, especially when the people on this board directly answered a direct question.

Naboth, I think the general consensus of posters on this topic would agree with you. I know I certainly would. There’s certainly no reason to limit yourself to inferior equipment for the sake of creativity, since they it really has no bearing on it.

Sigh…Another ‘brilliant’ rejoinder from you. I could easily throw the Ego Maniac label right back at you, since you’re the one who is convinced that he’s going to bring on the new music revolution with his world’s greatest band, which doesn’t even exist.

Once again on the topic of making any guitar sound good—I can also drive any car. I personally like to drive Fords though. If I suggest to a friend who is looking for a car that he should buy a Ford, does that make me a hypocrite? Am I weak person or something because I enjoy driving Fords? I could easily afford a Yugo, and it would certainly get me to and from work, however, I would much rather do it in an AC Ace or a new Diablo VT. I’ll most likely never own either, but I don’t feel incomplete because I don’t own either.

I hate to break it to you, but people have brand preferences, and personal preferences. Even Therapy? have gone on record stating what brands of guitars they enjoy, what pedals they like to play, and what stacks they like to play them through. Are you going to call them hypocrites, or ‘weak’ like you have to call me? It seems to me that maybe you’re the one who is unsure of his ability, since you spend so much time criticizing other’s preferences and trying your damndest to set yourself apart from everyone else when there is no reason to. The guy that started this thread didn’t ask anything about creativity, he asked for a suggestion on what guitars sound nice, look nice, play nice and are good deals.

And on a side note, I don’t really know that many people playing Fender/Marshall setups. None of my friends play Fenders, and none of them play through Marshall amps either. I’ve seen about a trillion people playing Les Pauls into Mesa Boogie heads however. Do I hurl insults at them for doing so? Of course not, because there’s an obvious reason they do so—it sounds good.