It's Windy There...

(Scan courtesy of James948 from the Blur forum)

Normally I'm against graffiti but this is different. Was this ugly or offensive? No. To fans or casual listeners, it was meaningful. And to everyone else, it was really inoffensive. Read this and check out the video by the crew who did the restoration a couple of months ago (see post below) and decide for yourself.

Keep up the fight!

It Could Be You!

If anyone has stuff for the book, I'm caught up enough that it'd be a good time to send it. Live tapes, ticket stub scans, etc. Feel free to email or PM me if you'd like to help out and as always, thanks in advance!

I'm also working on trying to get a proper publisher for the book...it'll be coming out either way, so stay tuned for updates!

It's Windy There...

...and the View's So Nice.

Charming little video below featuring (and shared by) some intrepid fellow members of the Blur forums. Worth the view...well done, guys, and better luck next time!

Archiving!

I had mentioned a while ago in an old post that, along with collecting audio and working on my books, I also intended to archive Blur's live audio, for preservation purposes as well as ease of use. After not having done much in the last several months, I spent some time today transferring more CDR audio to my hard drive and converting it to lossless flac format. As of right now, I'm about halfway through the 1995 audio, so by the end of the weekend, 1989-1995 should be completed. The crazy thing is, when I look at my boxes of Blur live CDs, I'm not even close to being halfway done, which gives you an idea of how much more they toured, especially in 1997, 1999, and 2003! Still, not only has it been fun revisiting all the stuff, but once completed, this will make it easier for me to access audio, go back and get info from shows, relisten to it, and also share some more with you, my fellow fans!

2010 Resolution: Preservation

One of my goals in 2010 is to finally get a huge external hard drive and put all 220+ live Blur shows of mine (which are all on CDR) into .flac format and loaded onto an external drive. I want to do this for reasons: to have backups in case anything should happen to my CDRs, 2) to preserve the audio long-term, as CDRs won't last forever. I feel it's vitally important to have a central repository for Blur's live history and want to work very hard to make this a reality.

Thoughts?

What generosity!

A fellow Blur fan who saw my post below on preservation has offered to send me a couple of hard drives *free of charge* in order to doubly back up every Blur show I have. I'm speechless at his generosity...thanks, mate!!

The Preservation Project

After thinking it over for a long while, I've decided that when I have the extra money, I'm going to invest in an external hard drive (1TB or so). Not only to back up the personal data my wife and I have, but my goal is to put all 225 (and counting) Blur shows on it to preserve them digitally as flac files. Right now everything is on CDR and arranged chronologically, but it will be great to have them backed up and preserved for years to come in a digital format.

I take it very seriously to preserve their live history, as I consider them to be one of the best bands of the last 20 years and akin to the Beatles in cultural impact and importance (except for in the USA, although they do have a dedicated and hardcore cult following here).