Bush To Sign Fuel Efficiency Bill: BFD

Bush is finally going to sign a bill that requires automakers to achieve higher fuel efficiency standards as well as to increase use (and thereby production) of corn ethanol.

You have to read through almost half of this article before you get to this part:

The centerpiece of the bill remained the requirement for automakers to increase their industrywide vehicle fuel efficiency by 40 percent to an industry average of 35 mpg by 2020, compared with today's 25 mpg when including passenger cars, SUVs and small trucks.

My 1994 Mazda still gets somewhere near 29 mpg even with a shit ton of wear and tear. 13 years later and we can't do better? And we have to wait until 2020?

While on my recent trip to SF, I forgot to take reading material with me to the airport, so I picked up a copy of Fast Company in the airport shop because the cover featured Tim Westergren of Pandora, who I met earlier this year. I loved the magazine, I ended up subscribing, and have been nothing short of impressed. Especially when I got my first copy in the mail and read this article about Jonathan Goodwin and his company that transforms cars into efficient vehicles beyond anything most people imagine...like a 100 mpg Lincoln Continental. Do yourself a favor and read the article. Then ask why we aren't demanding more from our government, from automakers, and from ourselves.

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Internet Radio Gets a Reprieve

From Pitchfork:

According to Wired magazine's blog and confirmed by various sources, SoundExchange executive director Jon Simson promised Congress that his organization-- which collects the payments on these sound recording copyrights-- will not enforce the rate increase as long as a new deal is in the works between SoundExchange and the webcasters involved in the Copyright Royalty Board hearing. Additionally, the per-channel minimums which would've potentially crushed multi-channel sites like Pandora and Live365 are off the table, and the per-station minimum will be capped at $50,000 per year.

This is great news for anyone who streams music to survive their workday.

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Tuesday Newsy Bits: Pandora, Sessions Fest, X-Fest Blogs

A couple months ago, I wrote about attending a talk hosted by Tim Westergren of Pandora.com and a couple follow up posts urging you to call your Congressperson and sign a petition. Pandora is an amazing site, and support for the site, and internet radio in general, has resulted in bills in both the House and Senate to reverse the new royalty structures that would all but eliminate all internet radio. (BTW, that is ALL streaming music online) I also recommended that local musicians submit their music to the site. Adam Gimbel was at that talk as well, submitted music from Rookie Card, and now Pandora has five Rookie Card songs added to it's library with full "music genome" analysis and recommended similar artists for each song. It is a great opportunity for unsigned bands to gain exposure to a nationwide audience with targeted music selections. Go to Pandora.com for more info, and send those CDs in to Tim.
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I don't know why I got the exclusive from "CDW" (that's CatDirtWife to you), but some news about the summer concerts for this year! Unfortunately, there will not be a Golden Hill Block Party this year (probably because I drank all the beer last year), but Sessions Fest is happening.

It is scheduled for September 15 at Golden Hill Park.
Acts confirmed so far:

Vinyl Radio
Fifty On Their Heels
MC Flow
and The Muslims and The Atoms are both maybes.

I would expect a few more acts will be added...Mika Miko maybe? The New Motherfuckers? CDW does it right so it doesn't really matter. Just plan on being there.

Basically here's your September Calendar:
September 15- Sessions Fest
September 23+24- Street Scene
September 28- SD:DialedIn Birthday (Ken Club?)
September 29+30- Adams Avenue Street Fair

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I love these. I'm not even making fun or joking. Music is for everyone and everyone likes what they like and more people should write about it and be excited about great things happening in San Diego.

More X-Fest Reviews:

Maria loves Jared Leto.
Jeanette 84 had a great time.

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Internet Radio Equality

A few weeks ago, I posted a letter from Tim Westergren of Pandora urging people to sign a petition urging Congress to repeal the new outrageous roylaty paying scale that was recently passed that would place an unreasonable cost burden on websites and basically wipe out all internet radio as we know it.

Well, we did well, but we have to act again.

Hi, Tim again,

First, I wanted to thank you again for the support last week. It was absolutely overwhelming. More than 200,000 Pandora listeners contacted their congressional representatives! The entire fax infrastructure on Capitol Hill ground to a halt. We had to deliver faxes manually - literally boxes full of them were delivered to every office in the Capitol building.

The result has been swift and dramatic: more than a million people have already joined the cause! There is now a bill just being introduced called the "Internet Radio Equality Act" to fix the problem and save Internet radio -and Pandora- from obliteration.

I'd like to ask you to do one more thing which is to call and ask your Congressperson, Susan A. Davis, to co-sponsor the Internet Radio Equality Act:

Susan A. Davis's phone number: (202)225-2040

This fight for our life is not over, but there has been a marked shift in momentum. Thanks to your efforts, this vital channel for musical diversity has a hope of finally being treated fairly and being allowed to grow and nurture a newly empowered class of independent musicians.

Your opinion matters to your representatives - so please take just a minute to call.

For anyone "shy", know that the person answering your call is likely an intern half your age who sits with a clipboard and tallies the topic of the calls he/she receives on behalf of Susan Davis. Let her know this is something we care about.

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Newsy Bits for Wednesday

I'll recap the Casbah show later but for now, just a few things:

First, InSound has a FREE digital compilation CD available for download here. The compilation has music by Page France, The Twilight Sad, The Sea and Cake, Bright Eyes, Au Revoir Simone, and 10 others. If you make a purchase while you're there, don't forget to use coupon code 'SpringGoodness' for 10% off your purchase.
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Second, in 4th grade, some girls in my class formed the Rosey Haters Club. Looks like I get to see a v2.0 in my lifetime: some people didn't like what I had to say about Derek and Josh Mosh in my posting about the show at the Whistle Stop on Friday. If you have a lot of time on your hands and would like to join the playground, click here. Neener-neener.
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I watched American Idol last night in it's entirety. I know it sucks, I know it's stupid, so I shouldn't let it piss me off, but for any person who ever searches the web looking for Tim McGraw's "When The Stars Go Blue", may your computer send you an electric shock. The last contestent sang it, and Martina McBride called it "Tim McGraw's song". Ef you. It ain't a Tim McGraw song and it ain't a Corrs or Bono song either. The song "When the Stars Go Blue" is, was, and will always be a Ryan Adams song. (It was on his album Gold). Screw Tim McGraw.
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Local Legend Tony Hawk & "local" girl Jewel has gone from living in her VW to a race car driver:

Fast Cars & Superstars - The Gillette Young Guns
Celebrity Race, featuring 12 celebrity drivers (including Jewel, Tony Hawk,
Serena Williams and William Shatner), will debut on Thursday, June 7 at 8 p.m.
ET. Each episode will feature the celebrities training with a Gillette Young
Guns driver for a race against each other in the series finale in July.

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Last, the time has come to take action to save Internet Radio. Here, a letter from Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora. Or, if you're too lazy to read it, just sign the petition here.


Hi, it's Tim from Pandora,

I'm writing today to ask for your help. The survival of Pandora and all of Internet radio is in jeopardy because of a recent decision by the Copyright Royalty Board in Washington, DC to almost triple the licensing fees for Internet radio sites like Pandora. The new royalty rates are irrationally high, more than four times what satellite radio pays, and broadcast radio doesn't pay these at all. Left unchanged, these new royalties will kill every Internet radio site, including Pandora.

In response to these new and unfair fees, we have formed the SaveNetRadio Coalition, a group that includes listeners, artists, labels and webcasters. I hope that you will consider joining us.

Please sign our petition urging your Congressional representative to act to save Internet radio: http://capwiz.com/saveinternetradio/issues/alert/?alertid=9631541

Please feel free to forward this link/email to your friends - the more petitioners we can get, the better.

Understand that we are fully supportive of paying royalties to the artists whose music we play, and have done so since our inception. As a former touring musician myself, I'm no stranger to the challenges facing working musicians. The issue we have with the recent ruling is that it puts the cost of streaming far out of the range of ANY webcaster's business potential.

I hope you'll take just a few minutes to sign our petition - it WILL make a difference. As a young industry, we do not have the lobbying power of the RIAA. You, our listeners, are by far our biggest and most influential allies.

As always, and now more than ever, thank you for your support.
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OK<>

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Recap: Wednesday Night- Pandora, Cash Kings, Blasphemous Guitars

I'm really sorry that I'm lagging on my Wednesday recap, but part of it was that I learned so much at the discussion with Tim Westergren of Pandora and The Music Genome Project that I didn't want to trivialize his presentation.



Ultimately, what it really boils down to is Pandora.com is a really cool site and the recent ruling to TRIPLE music licensing costs for online streaming music services retroactively to 2006 is basically gonna wipe out all currently legal online music as we know it. It supposedly protects record labels who are scrambling to stay afloat but as listeners and online users, it is up to us to tell our congressional representatives that this is not ok.


Here's my start to a synopsis:

"Tim talked about the history of the company and the evolution of their idea and how it coincided with the “bubble burst” of 2000. The Music Genome Project is a grand plan to break down songs to their base forms, extracting all the parts and rating those parts for prominence. There are 400 such traits that are rated. Various combinations of handfuls of those traits make up what they call Musical Attributes. Pandora is the internet radio that then uses the Music Genome information to find music for you that you like. You tell it to play a song or an artist and it will extract other music that it thinks you would like, guided by your thumbs up or down rating.


What I didn’t know about the Music Genome Project was that Pandora actually employs 50 musicians who go through intense training to listen to songs and break every song down with this comprehensive analysis of 400 traits. It is truly fascinating. The database currently has over 600k songs and more than half of those are independent, unsigned bands. Any band can submit their music. I happened to have a Vinyl Radio CD on hand so I slipped it to Tim at the end of the presentation."


I am leaving out so much, but it's all leaking outta my brain so that's all you get.

After the talk (and after some ghetto Church's Fried Chicken), Andrea and I headed to the Sports Club to see the Cash Kings and Blasphemous Guitars.


There isn't much to say about the Cash Kings except that if you love Johnny Cash and want to see a band play covers as Johnny would play and sing them, go see the Cash Kings. They don't take any creative liberties, they play it straight. The singer looked familiar and later I learned that he's the bassist for Hot Rod Lincoln, a band that has been on the local scene forever.


In high school my friends and I used to go see them play by the Mission Beach rollercoaster and swing dance to their music. As far as the Cash Kings go, I liked them but man, was I zonked. Apparently everyone in San Diego was as well because there were very few people there. And by very few I mean for a while the only other people there were the band members from Blasphemous Guitars. During the set more people showed up and some were even dancing, but still, the crowd was so thin, as Adam said, it was "sad but funny." It was pretty late so Andrea and I decided to call it a night.

The following may or may not (not) be an account of the rest of our night. It may or may not actually be written by Adam Gimbel. As Paul Harvey would say, "and now, the rest of the story."

Andrea & I were going to leave early but we had second thoughts and started walking back to SDSC. Out of nowhere, a proverbial ton of people showed up and we had to wait in line for 10 minutes just to get back in (thanks again for the last minute guestlistin’, Adam). I know I’m always saying that there’s a black cloud over that club but, for one glorious moment, a light shone down like a ray from heaven as the Blasphemous Guitars took the stage. I don’t know how they drew that many people in such a short time on a Wednesday night but I’ve never seen any club that packed EVER. I’ve seen the Blasphemers a few times but they really outdid themselves last night. They were so taken aback by the size and enthusiasm of the crowd that they started to take requests and played songs they’d never rehearsed like they’d been doing them for years. “I Melt For You” was FEROCIOUS and “Crazy Train” threatened to resurrect the ghost of Randy Rhodes himself (plus the bit of Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” was a nice touch). The only way I could get a decent shot of the band was to crowdsurf up and take one from onstage (it looks like Adam took it of himself but I swear it was me).



The place was so crazy that the cops showed up to shut down the show before they could even get to their pre-planned Hurt/Personal Jesus/Rusty Cage “Johnny Cash” medley. Truly awesome. And we were gonna LEAVE! There is NO way I’m going to miss the debut of their mashup club M*A*S*H*UP UNIT 619 next Saturday night at SDSC. I just hope I can get in.

Yeah, dude. I'm such a crowdsurfer.

And that, my friends, pretty much covers Wednesday night.

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Last Minute To Do: Pandora founder speaking tonight

Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, part of the Music Genome Project, is speaking tonight in North Park at 7pm. The discussion is free and open to anybody interested in Pandora, Internet Radio, the Music Genome Project, current trends in digital music, etc.

Hey Dave (vMix), you should come!

It is taking place tonight at 7pm

Arts & Entertainment Center, Peacock Alley
3026 University Ave
San Diego, CA

Thanks to Ryan for the tip and I'll post all about it tomorrow.

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