And now, the announcement.

OK, as many (most?) of you will have noticed, I've been using Coin-Operated Boy by The Dresden Dolls as my theme song for these sets for a long time. But it has recently come to my attention that while the whole Prop. 8 thing was going on in California (and a disgusting, hateful law it is), Amanda Palmer (the female half of The Dresden Dolls, Evelyn Evelyn, and one of the partners in the 8in8 project) staged a protest of the proposition at one of her solo shows. This I approve of. What I can't approve of (and, in fact, was disgusted by) was the form of that protest.

It seems that she, aided Margaret Cho, felt the best way to protest for marriage equality was stage a rape and forced marriage of "Katy Perry". I put this in quotes because it was a Katy-Perry lookalike that she (Amanda) introduced and had start to sing that obnoxious track, "I Kissed a Girl". Various women started coming out on stage, dressed in various stereotypical outfits seen as 'lesbian' to be toyed with and rebuffed by "Katy". Then out comes Margaret Cho wearing a strap-on and a big grin, and she forces "Katy" to fondle the strap on while Amanda has now come out on the other side of "Katy", who is by now getting really freaked out and trying to get away. Amanda forces "Katy" into a kiss while Margaret starts to move the dildo under "Katy's" skirt. At this point a sheet is raised in front of them by some of the show's cast members while Amanda, Margaret & "Katy" go through what appears to be an enthusiastic rape scene, but is in reality a costume change resulting in the sheet in front of them being dropped to reveal Margaret now in Clerical garb, Amanda in a punk wedding dress and "Katy" tied up with duct tape across her mouth trying to hop away and being restrained by Amanda while a sign reading "Fuck Prop. 8" being raised behind them.

I only found out about this just this month, a sign that the forecast singularity is not yet here because this happened 3 years ago. I have tried to find some, any, indication that either Amanda &/or Margaret have said or done anything to indicate they have some remorse for using rape imagery to promote marriage equality. But I haven't been able to find any. They have both declined to respond to anything negative that has been said to or about them on this topic. This has led me to the feeling that Amanda & Margaret somehow feel that rape is okay, if it happens to someone you don't like or believes in something you disagree with.

I struggled with this for several days before coming to a decision. Which leads to this announcement. Until such a time as Amanda Palmer and Margaret Cho make some sort of repudiation of their use of rape as a tool of revenge, I will no longer do anything to promote them or generate income for them. That means, as a DJ, I will no longer play anything I know either of them were involved with, and as a consumer, I will not buy anything they have produced or go see them at a show. I will leave it to you what your actions will be, but I will recommend you do the same.

You will notice I have not provided any links to these things. If you wish to learn more, go to Google.com and enter the search terms "Amanda Palmer Katy Perry Rape" and check out the various links. I watched a video of it once and that was enough for me. I don't want to see it again.

And on that somber note, I will sign off for today. There will be no Chai Me Up post for the May 23 show because the record button didn't get pushed for the entire show (oops), but we'll be back with the Geared-Up Jazz show on the 26th.

Why no Geared-Up Jazz today

I have a really good reason why there's no recording of the Geared-Up Jazz party today - I couldn't be there. You see, I got a call from my father a few hours before I was due to start DJing and found out that my 77-year-old mother had had her first accident as a driver. Seems someone decided that they needed to make a left turn right in front of her (despite not having the right-of-way) and redecorated the left-front corner of her car for her.

Mom's all right and out of the hospital with nothing more that sore muscles, and a couple of bruises & scrapes. But she wasn't released by the hospital until too late for me to make it home to DJ.

By the way folks, if you (for some stupid reason) decide to go head into head with a Prius with something smaller than a tank, expect to lose. Mom's car only took damage to her bumper and left fender. The other car's grill was missing and the bumper was in the engine compartment. And Mom's airbags didn't even have to deploy. I'm putting Priuses on a safety par with Volvos.

Whew!

Guess what, folks? The flood's over. I know it doesn't seem possible, but the backlog has been cleared and from here on (hopefully) you will be getting things much closer to when they happened. I, in either my DJ Piper Steampunk or elEmme Enzo avatar, will be recording and posting my Second Life steampunk sets for you and getting them up for you as quickly as I can. As this can take some not-inconsequential processing, it still probably won't be showing up the next day, but I'll try to make it less than a week. ;-)

But, wait. I can hear you asking why, if all the recordings in this flood that just ended were recorded over a month ago, I can say we're caught up. Well, I just went through a significant move that took me off the DJ decks for well over a month and I just started DJing again this past week, so there weren't any sets for me to record for you. But that does mean I'll be posting a new set in just a day or so - once I recover from all this catch-up work.

See you soon.

Aaaaargh!

Sometime last night, my brand new domain host for where I had this batch of podcast files got shut down - NOT because of anything I did. The host's site can't be accessed.

So, after some scrambling, I have a new hosting service and I'm busily scrambling to get all the recently posted files re-uploaded. I've got the Blues-Infused files uploading as I type this and the Aelven Aetherics files have been successfully replaced. I apologize to anyone who was unable to access them in the meantime.

Hopefully this should be settled sometime today and we can continue flooding you with steampunk-y musical goodness. And maybe I can get to bed before 6 a.m. tonight. It was not a good night, folks.

Wow, it's been a long time

OK, here's what's been going on and what I'm going to do to fix it.

First, the long gap was the result of a number of factors, not the least of which is my long-running battle with depression, which is currently NOT being helped by medication because we ran out of insurance quite a while ago. This has also led to our being forced to move from the S.F. Bay Area to Bakersfield (currently in the packing stage). Added to that was some problems I've gone through regarding the domains I own having some hosting problems and needing to finesse the free hosting sites, etc.

However, I have a new hosting site for one of my domains and having finally gotten my act together enough to edit all the recorded sessions (including ID3 tags) I now have them all uploaded to a website and can share them with you.

But (you knew that had to be in there, didn't you?), there are a lot of them and it will take a while for me to get them up. I'm also going to put them up in show groupings - so all the Aelven Aetherics sets will be put up, then all the Blues-Infused sets will be put up, then...

So, keep watching this space. A flood is coming your way.

Here's what's going on

Firstly, I'd like to apologize for my radio silence. There are two basic reasons for this. The first is that the machine I use to DJ with, and (usually) to post to this blog with, was accidentally converted to a high-tech brick by a stupid-user trick. *hangs head in shame* And this happened the morning after a set was recorded but not posted.

The second reason was that, after the system was completely rebuilt, we have been spending large amounts of time clearing up unnecessary duplications in the music library and DJing and building sets, etc. This has all left no time for updating the blog. But this is finally changing. We've gotten through the worst of it and, two DJ household that this is, we're getting things back the way it needs to be for continued functioning.

In the meantime, I've still been recording the sets I've played since our week of forced absence from spinning music. So this means that there will be a burst of podcasts coming to you soon, not only from my Aelven Aetherics gigs (Elven/Celtic/edgy steampunk), but also from my Chai Me Up (Mediterranean flavored steampunk) and Blues-Infused Steam (Blues & Ragtime mixed into steampunk) sets.

So don't despair. I'm coming back with more music for you soon. And maybe something of a redesign on the site to try to help make things easier to find.

Note: I will be back-dating the posts to their actual dates, so don't be surprised if this posts stays on top for a while.

2011, Week 13: This week's set and some blog news

OK, let's go with the news first. I'm sure you've noticed the sporadic nature of the "On This Day in Steampunk History" posts I've been making. This is because I was trying to do it all on the fly with no lead time. So here's what I'm going to do instead: I'm going to work ahead. I know, I know, it's a crazy idea and it probably won't work, but I've got to try it. Specifically, I'm going to comb through the various "on this day..." sites & lists that I can find and garner ideas for upcoming days and plan ahead about which events I will be picking & choosing from. Then, once I have a month's events plotted out, I'll start writing the various events up and setting them up to post at the beginning of each day. When I've got one month done, I'll start working on the next month. Hopefully I'll be able to stay ahead this way.

Now that that's out of the way, let's see about listing tonights playlist and setting things up for you to be able to get the various songs for yourself (as much as I can, anyway):

1. Coin-Operated Boy by The Dresden Dolls
2. Where Shadows Fall by Jill Tracy
3. Calm and Passion by Olga Scotland
4. Lange Must Du Leiden by Lux Interna
5. Backgammon by The Absinthe Drinkers
6. Without You by Dark Princess
7. Timothy by Mr. B The Gentleman Rhymer
8. Ritmo Hidrogeno by Escape The Clouds
9. Somebody To Love by Auscultate
10. Hymn to the Sun by Aesma Daeva
11. My Immortal by Gregorian
12. Untitled 13 (Featuring Hybryds) by The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud
13. The Whole World & You by Tally Hall
14. 60 Revolutions by Gogol Bordello
15. A Hymn to the Morning Star by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum
16. Super Trouper by Max Raabe & Palast Orchester
17. Bethena by Professor Armchair
18. Love Will Find A Way by De/Vision
19. My Best Friend's Magic Girlfriend by Butch Walker
20. I Believe by The Real Tuesday Weld
21. Girl Lunar Explorer by Rasputina
22. Office Of Hard Cash by The Guardian's Office
23. Fat Bottom Girls by Hayseed Dixie
24. Jack's Parade by Katzenjammer Kabarett
25. The Fianna by Cruachan
26. Bra by Dismemberment Plan
27. Eternal Wait by Ensiferum
28. Tor by The Pirates Charles

And that does for this episode. Join us again next week, maybe even join us in Second Life at The Drunken Drow, but until then, here's this week's show.

I finally figured it out!

OK, so I've been doing this podcast blog now for 9 months or so and I FINALLY figured out why no one's been able to comment easily on the posts (who knows how few requests I've missed that way :-/ ). And in the process of figuring that out, I realized I should have been putting tags on each post so people could do some limited searching. So today I went through and corrected both problems for every post I've made on this blog. Hopefully I'll start seeing the effects soon.

Now to write more Steampunk history entries.