Factories of insanity playing on your vanityas they distort your sense of self
Telling you what you need and how to succeed as they steal all of your wealth
Probing your mind, trying to find how to scheme on you best
From programmed schools with Devilish rules putting you to the test

It’s doing it again.

In fact it played two Last Poets tracks this morning. What kind of a day is going to be, oh Zune?

RADAR, SONAR, LASER BEAMS
JETS, TANKS, SUBMARINES,
MEGATHONS, H-BOMBS, NAPALM, GAS….
All this shit will kill you fast
All products of the Mean Machine

Don’t get me wrong. Revolutionary music is always win. In fact, it may be the only music truly worth anything, because beyond just entertainment it is an attempt to make a strong message. This is no doubt why in high school I was listening to Franti and Paris while others were listening to Color Me Badd and Boyz II Men. (Well, I listened to those too, a little.)

But it has this way of jarring your morning.

Every time I sync my Zune — every time — it pushes another copy of The Last Poets - “Mean Machine” onto the device. It’s like my Zune is trying to warn me about the Man, which considering its origin, is pretty ironic.

I have 33 copies of the song on there right now as a result. This means that “Mean Machine” comes up inordinately often in shuffle mode. Sure, Zune software has pushed other dupes, but this one is really egregious.

This ordeal is only punctuated by the fact that the very first sounds in the the track are the words “Driving me NUTS!” And, fittingly, the title of the album this track appeared on was This Is Madness.

Maybe my Zune is trying to be a mean machine. Again, irony abounds.

Stealing your time, smooth and slick
with the latest trick to get rich quick
from nonsense at your mind’s expense
as your mind digs the scene
from the Mean Machine
designed to drive your brain insane

Tay Zonday is K-Os meets Busdriver meets Mark Leyner.

All of which are good things, btw.

While the new Zune software leaves a thing or two to be desired over the previous one (album info updating, ahem), it does make it a lot easier to explore and subscribe to podcasts. Not only does it provide a searchable showcase of popular pods, it makes it a cut-and-paste operation to add a new one, and from then on, the Zune software will automatically download and sync new episodes.

I suppose this is something iTunes has been doing all along, but I’m happy to have it. Interestingly enough, the Zune actually uses the term “podcast”, a Kleenex moment for a word directly derived from the leading competitor.

Ever since I first bought an Emprex MP1003 (blogged here), I’ve gone through and assessed a couple of players. (Doesn’t help that I’ve lost one or two.) Here’s a rundown.

• Emprex MP1003
• Pros: Small, cheap
• Cons: Boxy, no track display
• Buy: $20 at Fry’s Outpost

The Emprex was my first model. On sale for $15, it performs the SD MP3 task very simply and cheaply. The only major downside to this unit is the display. Aside from some fixed indicators, the display shows a 3-digit track number and 4-digit time elapsed. Navigation is very difficult when you can’t tell where you are; you have to keep stopping to hear what song you’re on, and hope you remember what order your tracks are in.

• PQI Joytone U801
• Pros: Hand-hold shape, tactile-identifiable buttons
• Cons: Modest display, strange misadvertisement.
• Buy: $23 at Supermediastore

Unlike the other units in this list, the Joytone has a lozenge-type shape, which is more satisfying to hold in the hand than the other more boxy units. The button arrangement is easy to remember and once you remember it, it’s easy to tell whether you’re hitting volume down or track advance. The display on the Joytone is better than the Emprex, as it has a 12-character matrix display which can show track name. However, the display scrolls very slowly, and track number and time elapsed are mixed into the scroll line. Navigation is theoretically improved by this, but not really; with the slow speed of the scroll, you can’t usually tell what track it is right away.

One really strange thing about the Joytone is PQI’s apparent change of heart as to what exactly it is: either a $30 SD MP3 player with 1GB SD card included, or just a $30 1GB MP3 player. The packaging clearly shows a spot where the SD card is displayed, however, new releases of the unit have the SD card already inserted, and a sticker saying “WARRANTY VOID IF REMOVED” over it — not very well, either, since the SD card isn’t quite flush with the side of the unit.

Now, mine worked fine with swapping in and out various cards, and the instructions I had even explained what cards to use and when to swap them. Apparently PQI has decided this is not what they want the Joytone to do anymore. I think this is dumb; if you’re going to create an SD MP3 player, don’t suddenly decide to cripple it with bad policy.

• RCA M2001A
• Pros: 1GB internal memory, great display
• Cons: Boxy, non-textile buttons, poor button response
• Buy: $43 at Zerenox

The RCA M2001 series, apparently the grandchild of the aged Lyra line, blows the other SD MP3s away by coming with 1GB already inside (preloaded with a dozen or so sample songs). The display is a low-power, high-res OLED matrix display that shows track number, time elapsed and remaining, and plenty of track name text all at once. The SD slot doesn’t have a satisfying, secure click-and-spring like the other two (and most SD card slots) have, but the fit is snug enough to secure the card. Just be sure you have some fingernail available if you plan to do lots of card-swapping.

“It’s All In Your Head FM“, the live sound collage performance by Negativland and based on their Over The Edge radio show (and which R and I saw in Seattle in March) is available on CD.

The show, “It’s All In Your Head FM”, is a two-hour-long stereophonic look at monotheism in all its fundamental forms worldwide, and the all-important role played by the human brain in believing them. Dr. Oslo Norway is the founder of an all-new radio network, and his provocatively-reasoned position of God-less objectivity can actually start arguments. Is monotheism now doing more harm than good? Christianity and Islam are this year’s featured religions as Negativland asks you to contemplate some rather complex ideas about our brains’ beliefs in “documentary collage” form.

I was going to post a pump for eMusic, but I found a good start from Atrios at Eschaton:

Unlike most (all?) legal download services, emusic has no DRM whatsover. You download the .mp3 and it’s yours to do with what you want. It runs on a monthly subscription service - starting at $9.99 for 40 songs/month…. They don’t have most of the latest and greatest from the major labels, but they have some interesting back catalogs and a lot of great indie stuff.

Link

Another thing that I find great about eMusic is that they will help you find related music to whatever you’re looking at, with help coming from user playlists and download trends.

It is a little annoying not finding most popular (i.e. you’ve heard of it) artists, or the most popular of their albums, but that may not be important to you if, like me, you miss services like the old mp3.com that introduced you to new, good, music from bands you wouldn’t have heard of otherwise. And $0.25 a song certainly beats iTunes’ $0.99.

Since the eMusic files are straight MP3 (and this may have something to do with their limited catalog), they work on any MP3 player, not just an iPod, and furthermore, they can also be downloaded with any Web browser on any platform. (There is a snazzy and fairly useful download tool for Windows, but it’s entirely optional.)

eMusic

This little device costs under $30 and plays MP3s from an SD or MMC card. While $300 iPods corner the MP3 player market, lock your music inside, keep you in an upgrade path, and encourage you to use proprietary formats, a little device like this keeps your cost down and lets you be as flexible as you want with the quality and size of your storage. I picked this up for $28 at Fry’s, though it tends to go on sale for $15; it was tucked away in a lonely, neglected, sparse forgotten far corner of the store. In the same trip I picked up a 1GB SD for $45 (only the second cheapest).

With handheld game software coming on SmartMedia-sized cartridges, and a device like this, it shouldn’t be at all difficult to imagine a future where albums are delivered on 128MB SD cards for use in a player like this.