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Acecast #011 Feb 2006 (MP3, 112Kbps, 26.9MB, 33m:39s).

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Valentine, bloody Valentine’s Day.

© Rebels of the Flesh

A special Valentine’s podcast; if you are looking for romance this might not be the place … as it contains a classic Mississippi John Hurt murder ballad, the sinister V/VM version of A Lady in Red (V/VM aka James Kirby gave Chris de Burgh a copy of this). There is a possible connection between a lady dressed in red and murder ballads with lyrics like When they heard Louis was dead/All the people they dressed in red (spelling kept as it is),

White folks, accostomed to black being the colour worn both for funerals and for post-funereal mourning, sometimes think that references in blues songs to dressing in red signify a party atmosphere or happiness over a person’s death. Not so. In Africa, and among African-Americans in earlier times, drssing in red has been a funerary custom. As such, it is reminiscent of burial with red ochre pigment, which was used among neolithic poeople (the “red paint people”) the world around. The religious idea behind this custom is that as a baby is born from the mother’s womb through blood, so will rebirth occur (after interrment in Mother Earth) through blood.

Another old blues song with a similar lyric is “Ella Speed” as recorded by Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter) circa the mid 1930s.

There is some dirty rock from old punks Rancid and new girls on the (Courtney Love?) block Rebels of the Flesh.

I play an SMS of love from Saalschutz. Hello Saferide (hello Annika, second time on Acecast) takes us through a bit of bile on her Valentine’s Day.

Normally I only play MP3s. On this show there are two exceptions: the Rebels of the Flesh track is played courtesy of the band and their manager. A bit of an exclusive I think, but no free MP3 is available. I make up for the lack of MP3 with that nice picture of the girls. I am happy to be a small cog in (Kim Foley’s?) underground build-up of the band as long as I get sent promo-material like this.

The second non-MP3 track is so old it’s an MP2. The band A Western Front released the album Full Blown Dave for free in 1994. One of the members, David Beach, writes that this was the first album released for free on the Internet. He might be right. The Problem is the standout track from this album, from a band that once warmed up for the Sex Pistols (re-union tour I suspect).

I finish the show with proof that makeovers do work. Thomas Walter has done a tremendous job lifting the Lisa DeBenedictis track Tiger into something otherworldly.

External credits.

The Samarah track was found via Alex Young’s Milieu (a blog tracking netlabels, mostly electronic) and V/VM is via Radio Plus (listing free legal MP3s of tracks from the late John Peel’s shows).

Production notes.

Kit: MXL V67 condenser microphone, Behringer UB802 mixer, Hercules DJ Console sound card. Applications: Audacity, iTunes, MP3Gain, MP3tag.

Copyrights.

All tracks played are free and legal downloads and were available at the time of production of the podcast. All tracks are copyright the artists and their record labels/music publishers.

Extended tracklisting for Acecast #011, 11 February 2006.

• SMS D’Amour (High on Heels mix) (mp3) (lado.de) — Saalschutz featuring Stina Galaxina
• Pale Honey (mp3) — Samarah
• Queen of Pleasure (by agreement of the artist) — Rebels of the Flesh (myspace)
• Dope Sick Girl (mp3) (downloadpunk.com) — Rancid
• Louis Collins (mp3) (archive.org) — Mississippi John Hurt
• Lady in Red (mp3) (brainwashed.com) — V/VM
• The Problem (mp2!) (archive.org) — A Western Front
• Valentine’s Day (mp3) — Hello Saferide
• Below (Acappella Mix) (mp3) — Thomas Walter remixing Lisa DeBenedictis
• Karosta - Orthodox Christmas Mass (mp3) (used as ambience, from soundtransit.nl) - Derek Holzer

Brief playlist for Acecast #011.

Previous Acecast podcasts.

Initial post: Sun, 12 Feb 2005.

• SMS D’Amour (High On Heels remix) — Saalschutz featuring Stina Galaxina
• Pale Honey — Samarah
• Queen of Pleasure — Rebels of the Flesh
• Dope Sick Girl — Rancid
• Louis Collins — Mississippi John Hurt
• Lady in Red — V/VM
• The Problem — A Western Front
• Valentine’s Day — Hello Saferide
• Below (Acappella Mix) — Thomas Walter/Lisa de Benedictis

Full details and MP3 download Acecast #011.

Initial post, Sun 12 Feb 2006.

I’ve been podcasting proper for almost a year now, so I thought I would have a peek proper at the download statistics. It’s an encouraging look — over 81 000 MP3 Acecast podcasts have been downloaded since I started with proper music podcasts in March 2005 (testing started in late 2004). The total number of downloads is a bit higher (85 000?), since the first combined Marvin Suicide/Acecast show is hosted at the Internet Archive and I have no numbers for this one (note to self: use http redirect the next time around). With ten shows this gives a rough average of 8000 downloads pr show.

There wasn’t much new content in early December and the Christmas show was released on 28 December so that might explain the dip in December and January. A new podcast is ready later today, so hopefully the rot can be reversed.

I am quite pleased by the numbers — they prove a couple of things. One is that an iTunes listing is not that important — produce decent content and your site will be “discovered” (the bulk of content being the music; I am working on my presentation and production skills and would like to think they have improved over the year). Another is that you have to be patient — it takes a while to build an audience. If you are not prepared to stay some distance — don’t start blogging or podcasting. Blogging might be easy; podcasting is not (see “podfading”).

I am fully aware that 80 000 accesses does not equal 80 000 listeners or listens. Some downloads will have been aborted, some will have downloaded a show and never listened to it. But even with a tenth of the numbers I would have been pleased for such a narrowcasted show.

Have a look at that pie chart for downloads so far for February. I have said so before — give your listeners a chance to download your latest show directly from a prominent place on your site. A good percentage of your audience will come over the web (acecastlatest.mp3 is not referenced in any RSS feeds).

The reason for this exercise is threefold —

• it gives me an incentive to go into a second year of podcasts
• I would like to have an idea what impact iTunes have if I ever get a listing (please do not submit my feed)
• it might give me some leverage when asking artists to do intros for Acecast (no naming and shaming here — but a handful of artists never delivered on their promise)

Thanks to Stillman and Penny Broadhurst though. Penny has just started her “Instant Classic” podcasts — one to watch (or rather listen to).

Red Ferret is a monster resource for free legal MP3s — it claims to indirectly link to one million tracks. Some of the resources have been mentioned here, but there are plenty of sites that are new to me, like GigaTracks.

Hippocamp is a netlabel based in Manchester (UK) that releases all its music as free under a Creative Commons licence,

how do i send you music? email single track demos to the above email or send multiple tracks on cd only, data or audio, with your name and email/phone number on the disc itself if possible.

we receive a lot of demos. we do listen to all of them but cannot respond to each and every submission. if we like the demo and feel we can do something with it we will contact you. if you don’t hear from us it probably means we felt your demo was not right for us.

how is the music released? if we like the music we release it in standard mp3 format with no drm all the music is subject to a creative commons licence which means that although it is released for free and you are free to copy it the artist still retains certain rights.

I have not downloaded any tracks from this site yet, but with 156 release numbers already used (not all of them actual releases), there is bound to be something of interest.

V/VM Test Records will release a free MP3 every day for the rest of 2006.

Ten years of mouldy old dough has left me in this position where i can no longer move. Trapped by debt accumulated over that time as a result of running a no win label. There has never been a plan afoot at V/Vm it’s all been about instincts from day one. V/Vm 365 will be the last project i undertake. As it’s time to move on once this recycled audio slab is finally completed.

The idea is basically to create and upload free audio for one whole year and leave a massive big mess behind, warts and all for you to digest as you see fit.

There are also some Belgian new beat mixes available for download and a Caretaker microsite.

V/VM is a unit for measure, as well as an alias for James Kirby. A V/VM track will be featured on the next Acecast.