New Feature: geoMP3 of the Week
Let’s try this for a while: since I’m doing this anyway by geotagging my iTunes library, every Friday I’ll post for download an mp* file (mp3, mp4, etc.) of some song that happens to have some implicit geospatial reference and, presumably, is somehow colored by its geospatial…ness. Accompanying this file will be a kml that will take you to that location, if you’re so inclined. Some parameters:
- I don’t really want to pay for WordPress space, so I’ll be taking each one down ~2 weeks after they’re posted.
- I will resist the urge to make every week a Tom Waits week. (First week doesn’t count).
- I may or may not add a little gloss to each entry about the song’s geography.
- I will tend to stick to bootlegs, torrented live shows, rarities, etc. (First week doesn’t count).
Good? So let’s get on with it. The first week is a double, featuring two versions of Tom Waits’ classic “Johnsburg, Illinois.” This isn’t Waits’ best song ever (”Make it Rain” from Real Gone is, of course), but it’s a remarkably well-built, fundamental romance, referencing and aggrandizing (by proxy, no doubt) the town in which his wife, Kathleen Brennan, grew up. According to Waits (according to Pieter Hartmans’s TomWaitsLibrary.com at least) in a 1983 interview, Brennan was raised “up by the Ching-a-Lings” on a farm that was situated, you guessed it, “outside McHenry” near the Wisconsin border. I would be interested in hearing from anybody who has any insight as to where the Ching-a-Lings tended to be, presuming they were in Johnsburg/McHenry at all.
Johnsburg, Illinois (from Swordfishtrombones in 1983)
Johnsburg, Illinois (from Big Time in 1988)
May 19th, 2007 at 1:12 am
That’s a cool idea. I tried something similar as a flickr musical “memory map” two years back (remember before all the cool google tools? I stalled out. It looks like the tools are in place to do it right now.
May 19th, 2007 at 2:43 am
Exactly the idea. Same thing. Cool. And I have some Ramblin’ Jack on my list, too. But there’s also a pretty “high potentiality,” as Snoopy Miller said, for the “commoner” (me) to bitch out of this. I can barely cobble together the time to write regular posts here.
May 21st, 2007 at 12:20 pm
Great idea - for hosting, it may be worth checking out Dreamhost. For approx $8/month you get ‘nearly unlimited’ data storage & bandwidth, and easy install/setup (and actual ssh access) for WordPress et al.
Then you could have a KML (and GeoRSS!) link to all past geo-songs.
May 22nd, 2007 at 1:50 am
Andrew, you’ve convinced me. I have a whole lot of songs in the queue, geoRSS is fun already and will only get better (perhaps with the help of certain wordpress plugins), and Dreamhost has a really good deal going right now. Thanks, Mr. Turner.