From the underground to the Underground, from the pirates patois to piccadilly palare, the bright lights of Londonium  shine on for the last of the London shows.

“Nothing is certain in London but expense.” (69Mb, 92Mb)

• London Radio montage inc Radio London and Pirate Radio 1994/95
• Blur – London Loves (GHP ‘Londinium Loves’ bootleg mix)
• Sid James – Look at Life – The Market
• Television Personalities – Oxford St., W1
• Philip Lynott – Solo In Soho
• Members – Solitary Confinement
• Soft Cell – Bedsitter
• The Kinks – Muswell Hillbilly
• Frank Tovey – Bridge Street Shuffle
• The The – Heartland
• The Real Tuesday Weld – Last Words
• Polly Perkins of Paddington Green by SpokenVerse (originally Harry Clifton)
• Leslie Hutchinson (Hutch) – A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square
• Flanagan & Allen – Where The Arches Used To Be
• Sid James – Bermondsey
• The Mint Juleps – Docklands
• London Conversation with Andy Hackett
• Morrissey – Piccadilly Palare
• Catatonia – Londinium
• Specials – Bright Lights (Peel session)
• London – Amen Andrews (part)
• Pulp – Bar Italia

Have a break? from Greenpeace UK on Vimeo.

namely YouTube…and completely fails in amazing own goal, so blogger writes blog about it embedding the video. It’s a bit gory so might not be great if you’re eating your tea (or a KitKat) but really, I never understood why Nestle puts oil into it’s chocolate anyway, making it more like chocolate-flavoured margarine (ugh) otherwise euphemistically known as ‘milk chocolate’ (hence the big battles with Europe to ‘protect’ a pretty foul confection from those ‘interfering Eurocrats’ when I’d rather have nice proper real Belgian choccy anyday).

And what does this mean? Nestle SA owns the copyright on anyone eating a chocolate bar on YouTube? There’s an evil megacorp spot just waiting to be filled when EMI dies, Nestle do you want to fill that hole (just like your chocolate doesnt?)

Anyway this is beside the point; despite trying to ‘spike’ the news with a fairly poor ‘well we did anyway a while back but have no proof’ PR flop like trying to ban this video, destroying Indonesian (or any) rainforest for a chocolate bar is not on – you can complain/find out more at Greenpeace’s excellent – and far more infringing, Killer indeed – site.

Oh and Nestle – keep on like this…hopefully you’ll go the way of EMI and take your foul chocolate with you…

Cartelmike brightened up a grey and depressing Friday by posting this rather strange yet wonderful ray of Russian sunshine. I would listen to this on a loop. Continously. With extra loopy bits.

As remixed by Akira the Don and featuring Jay-Z, Dizzee Rascal, Bill Hicks and Haulden Caulfeild from Akira The Don’s mixtape, ATD20.

The embedding wars continue…and it seems to me that the industry as it scrabbles for money is just shooting itself in the horse when the foot has bolted (did I get that right? ) – it is as Damien from OK GO writes:

we’ve got this ridiculous situation where the machinery of the old system is frantically trying to contort and reshape and rewire itself to run without actually selling music. It’s like a car trying to figure out how to run without gas, or a fish trying to learn to breath air.

Damien was describing their bands battle over license/country and embed (as in when you copy the code and put videos into your own webpage/profile/blog) restricted videos, realising that this is counter-productive and annoys fans.

Apparently this is all to do with advertising – the Ad revenue isn’t shared for embedded ads (although annoyingly YouTube STILL shows the ads an embedded videos – what IS with that?) as advertisings don’t like the idea of embedded videos possibly ‘hurting’ their brand by being embedded on any old site (say, a porn site or site of a rival or critical party…yes advertisers get with the 21st century, and the fact of mass comment and lack of control, but as we know like with music marketers they don’t have a clue(train) as yet)…

So when you have bands criticising their paymasters (in this case our old friends EMI) or like with Amanda Palmer criticising Warners for pulling her videos (and then created the wonderful song above ‘Please Drop Me’ to the tune of Moon River – asking fans to upload it to YouTube as a response to Warners), then you know something is very wrong in the state of DigiMark.

And I think this is counterproductive – as Damien and Amanda realise such freedom over their videos help build their career – to clamp down on embedding or sharing or streaming or posting low-quality MP3s is actually to stop the massive free-promotional tool that is the internet. It’s far worse when someone doesn’t actually give a shit and want to listen/post/play/embed your videos and music, believe me. To have their attention is a luxury – don’t waste it, or turn it off by silly restrictions – to lose that possibly a lifetime of attention for the sake of a few cents is really to cut your face off to spite your nose (again? did I do that right?) (thanks to chronicpaint for the link)