Yes he is a legend, yes he worked with the greatest in showbusiness, and yes he had his biggest days when I wasn’t even born yet. Even so Don Rickles is somehow timeless. Somehow he had a few month ago a slight comeback in the mainstream media with his new book. A HBO special followed, a very bad one to be honest. The greatest moments were the rare cuts showing Rickles live on stage, the rest of this “movie” spread very random moments and interviews in an almost after-life kinda way.
But Youtube is there to keep legends alive. It’s really hard to find out there material showing him “in action”, since any scripted shows he did didn’t run very long and there are just a bunch of Carson, Letterman, Leno or Kimmel interviews out there. And youtube is hiding some other germs. Don Rickles stared a Sitcom with Richard Lewis called Daddy’s Dearest. Even the show as canceld, the outtakes are absolutley hilarious. It’s worth watching every second of it and makes you want more of this genious entertainer.

Someone split it into segments, 10min each:

Rickles Outtakes Part2
Rickles Outtakes Part3
Rickles Outtakes Part4
Rickles Outtakes Part5
Rickles Outtakes Part6
Rickles Outtakes Part7

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Long time no posting, so here are some things which go through my head in the moment:
I’m currently playing around with some different WebTv sites. Especially NBC’s HULU.com gets really annoying if you don’t hang around in the US right now. You can use the site like there is nothing wrong with it, but as soon as you start a video, it shows up some out-of-territory message. Sure, it would be no problem to spoof a us ip, but it’s way to much work, since downloading a show from one of the torrent websites is way faster, without any ad breaks and perfect quality. I’m kinda used to watch some late night talk show before going to bed (in the morning, heh), but it gets impossible over here. Cable doesn’t carry any US channels besides CNN. On the other hand it wouldn’t probably make sense to translate these shows, since they are quite close related to current events. So why not letting them free. It’s somewhat crazy, that people are forced to go illegal, even if they don’t want to.
Since I mentioned ad breaks: Joost’s ad breaks are the most annoying thing ever! They are having a tool, which is the dream of all the people who once raved about interactive television. And all they do is using the same annoying coke commercial over and over, like on good old television. There is also no way to skip it, so I’m just tuning the volume down and do something else till it’s done. Joost is genius, but their creative power seems to be just blown up by the technology.
They would have the chance to battle broadband providers who try pushing their set top boxes in households, if they would be fast enough to come up with a world wide television distribution. If they would put their technology in a set top box, stop limiting the content, and get the technology merged with the torrent protocol, they would have the ultimate tv killer application. And I’d buy one today, just to get my late night shows going

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I came across this excellent documentary about copyright. It has a with a good mixture of opinions, not biased to one side or another like many others. From the president of the MPAA to the guys who run piratbay, it gives the idea of copyright more substance. That’s something what shakes the entertainment industry

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You might have come across breitbart as a news source more than just once. Just a quick tip to the interview with the founder Andrew Breitbart. Somehow interesting… he was working for Matt Drudge and Arianna Huffington and now breitbart’ing around. Looks like there is not that much infos around him out, even his wikipedia entry is quite dry. Read his
Interview Washinton Times with the Washington Times.

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So it’s time again to look at the industry and find out what happened in the last days.

Let’s start with the boring stuff first. EMI is still not sold! Somehow I begin to understand why there are that few blogs and news sites covering the music industry. The problem is, that there is in fact not much going on. If you would go back half a year from today, you would find almost the same stories all over the blogs. Dropping CD sales, Warner trying to buy EMI (ok, today it’s not only Warner but some others as well) and of cause the old jump and run games between allofmp3.com and the music industry.

Also the allofmp3.com story gets more and more amusing. Since credit card companies stopped working with allofmp3.com individuals began selling vouchers for the site on ebay. And the good old IFPI is on the hunt again and got the UK police to raid one of the sellers. If you see all the file sharing going on, how PirateBay and other sites are able to operate legally in their countries, this all has some kind of humorous tragedy. People, who are still willing to pay money for music, getting raided, while others are free to operate under the law of their state.

Another thing, worth thinking about is, that allofmp3 did drive it’s popularity actively through some solid PR work. But in the end, their popularity is coming back to them and hurting their business model through becoming a poster boy for the bad music stealing Russian communists.

My standpoint is this: The entertainment industry NEEDS sites like allofmp3 or piratebay. It is the only way forcing it to realize that their current systems are more than outdated. Ideas, like putting area codes on DVDs to protect them of getting viewed in some territories, are more than yesterday and have nothing to do with todays global business approach. It’s the same with digital music and it’s territorial release dates or the expectation to implement US law in foreign territories. This conflict of globalism and the expectation of having the rest of the world behave like the neighbor next door does lead to not only technology and cultural but also real war.

Sad but true…

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Finally! At the American Academy of Arts and Sciences this February Doug Zongker found a way to explain and demonstrate to all of us the crucial steps to bring the music industry back in the game. It is such a simple, such a genious solution we never really though of. But with having such a clear strategy and scientific evidence how this revolution will take place… well, we are all save now! Hurray for the music biz!

Side note: To understand the concept you might have to have to take part in major record label’s meetings first…

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This interview really is somewhat going deeper about the kind of news comedy Steward does and how the ironic perspective can reveal more of the truth than some serious presentation. The full interview is located here. He is really on the spot about the media role play and talking point politics. Definitely worth watching it, especially if you are interested in this kind of politainment and finding the truth behind all the political marketing smoke.

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The New York Times had a quite good interview with the one and only…Rupert Murdoch, king of all media, entertainment and the rest of the world. Quite worth the reading.

Edit: Looks like the article got put in the NY Times login-only area now. In case you don’t have one, this naughty little site might help you…

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I came across this clip, taken from a UK Tv series called “Screen Burn”. It starts with the progress film editing made during the last years, but around 1m30s it shows an example on how to twitch and tweak the exact same Tv scene in totally different interpretations. Even so it is nothing really revolutionary, but it is definitely a great excample for visual spinmastering. Or how to spice up some boring crap with non existing sensations and drama.

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Paul Resnikoff at Digital Music News had a good posting, wrapping up some digital music news conferences during the last weeks.

Let’s start the quote machine:

“The whole competing with free thing is tricky, it works well in the water business but it’s hard everywhere else” Jason Flom, Capitol Music Group

“We are essentially a technophobic business” Andy Karp, Atlantic Records Group

(There is a) “systematic devaluation of music” Nick Gatfield, Island Records Group UK

Well said, and you might suspect these guys finally realized how deep they are in touble and finally found a way to come up with something like a plan, but you might get dissapointed. It is still like hanging up the “Mission Accomplished” sign over the door, but in the end no bold decisions were made, no groundbreaking deals were cleverly arranged. Nothing of that besides just some self-dependent humor. And the show goes on…

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