The U.S. has laws and the laws enforce and prohibit certain activities and protect certain rights. It gets tricky, even if you are a lawyer because some instances and cases have not been settled in court or defined explicitly in an Act or law.

For instance, did you know that each recording device sold requires the company to pay a royalty fee to the Copyright Office four times a year per item? Yes. The Audio Home Recording Act mandates royalties and does “other stuff.” The issue here though is infringement, meaning you are violating copyright by copying digital audio in certain cases. XM got in trouble for “distributing” music with XM+MP3 devices. The problem was that they did not have a license to produce permanent copies of mp3s from XM songs.

Along the same lines is the VCR: Are they illegal then? No. No recording device is really illegal unless you are a company selling it without the right license. As a consumer of the product, you can’t get arrested for owning a cassette recorder. The key issue to remember is that fair use entitles you to limited rights to handle copyrighted material. You can’t do just anything even if the purpose is private and non-commercial. Depending on the nature of the item and your intentions, your mileage will vary. Fair use is not strongly defined and stretching it may get you in trouble. That’s why Creative Commons was set up to enhance rights and clearly allow specific activities.

What you can legally do is postpone your listening experience if you TiVo your primetime TV show, or record it on your VCR, or make a cassette of your favorite local radio show for later viewing. What you aren’t supposed to do is keep an archive of the material as part of a permanent library. If you intend to keep a permanent recording of it, you are technically breaking the law. Copyfutures has an excellent explanation of the legalities of copyrighted recording:

It might be OK to record the Internet broadcast of a favorite opera, so you can listen to it next week. But once the fat lady sings, you’re legally obliged to press the delete button. How can the music industry possibly enforce this law? The difference between recording Internet radio and recording and sharing MP3’s is that the former is done in the privacy of your own home, and no one needs to know what or how much music you’re recording.

If this is new to you, all the sudden ripping streaming online radio is not the legal alternative to P2P software. Easier? Yes. Safer? Probably. But it still isn’t legitimate in the eyes of the government (there is still legal haze as to how long you can legally acquire a temporary version). If you are looking to get free music without getting caught, this is your best option. If you wanting to legitimize your collection, just pick up the CDs or look for mp3s stores without DRM.

In comes Grandpaboy and Paul Westerberg doing the old one-two. Unless you’ve heard of Westerberg or know of the Replacements, you may be oblivious to the underrated CDs known as Mono and Stereo. It was my first ever purchase from the Paul catalog. It’s been one of my favorite discs and certainly one of the best multi-disc sets to ever grace the world. Think of this as an updated Basement Tapes without the overdubs that hinder its rawness.

There is plenty of praise of the album, and I’m here confirming the unheard goodness. Talk about cohesion. Mono is a rocker borrowing all that is good from the Stones. Nevermind the demo sound. Some call it lo-fi, but I call it phenomenal. The guitar work is very “mono,” or tonic, or drone-like singularity (not in a Middle-Eastern way). In any way, it comes off as brilliance while retaining mostly elementary guitar work, with smokin’ bluesy rhythms that keep everything in line.

Stereo is just as good. This one’s a lay-back-and-chill recording that fits any occasion. Feeling lowdown and ready to rue the day–this is your album. Is everything going just right–Stereo is at your service to consolidate everything. I find that this one is touched with melancholy, but it can look at itself without falling into clinical depression. Deep songs that capture a healthy dose of sorrow in which you feel the intensity. What makes this different from an “emo” album is honest reflection, and bittersweet lyrics that bring unspoken hope and joy.

I know it’s kinda low, but to me it’s high time.

This line is from Mono and it only gets better. I’ll save the lines of masterpiece for your listening experience or you can comment with your favorites by posting them below.

Like all of the Westerberg catalog, this stands out and there is something to be had by anyone who engulfs its presence. This one is a forgotten treasure and not a bad album to introduce yourself to. It warrants repeated listens. It has that golden irresistibility.

Chances are that you have a voicemail. A landline or a cellphone usually comes standard with the option for a personal greeting. Below are some original and humorous recordings of voice messages for your mobile or immobile phone. There are plenty of other funny ideas, but we’ve seen them or heard them before. For instance, the “Hello” and pause effect- the prank is more amusing for the listener because you don’t get to hear them throughout their confusion until after the beep. A rarer one was a philosophical answering machine that I found rather witty:

If a telephone rings in an empty room and no one is there to answer it, was there really a phone call? Help me investigate this phenomenon by leaving your name and number after the tone.

Other jokes and witty lines can be recorded for your callers that may bewilder a silence after the tone, or you might get to hear laughs that started before the beep, or you might throw someone off into the old routine of “What?…Hello?…Are you–Is this?…Am I leaving a message?” But you want fresh ideas. You can borrow mine to entertain your callers. Let me know their reactions.

Here are a few originals that I have made:

operators-are-busy.mp3
This one sounds like you are a corporation that has several operators who are busy with a large volume of calls. Includes elevator muzak and sound effects.

Welcome. Due to a large volume of calls, all of our operators are busy. Please hold for the next available operator. (Music)
Our operators are still busy. Please stay on the line while your call is being transferred to the Voice recording database. (connection)
For your safety, this message will be recorded.

phonomercial.mp3
Infomercial that sells your messages in a rushed and enthusiastic manner. Borrowed the “complicated payment” from Mitch Hedburg.

Are you ready to talk to the answering machine? Now you can with MY voice message. It listens, records, and even has a beep! Unlike other voicemails, every word is heard. This is a huge value, all for just 2 easy payments and one complicated payment. If you leave a message within the next 10 seconds, I will return your call free of charge. This offer is not available in stores, so leave a message now.

you-are-calling-now-jane-barbe-mash.mp3
Self-evident Jane Barbe (not a real recording, her real voice mashup) makes sure that you know…

You are calling now. Please make a note of it. You may stay on the line.

calling-number-and-deposit-jane-bar.mp3
Captain Obvious Mashup Vol. 2, with greedy ending.

Please dial the number you are calling. You are calling the number you have dialed. I’m sorry, you have 40 cents. Please deposit more money.

intense-instructions-jane-barbe-mas.mp3
This is not a simple phone call.

Please hang up, and check the number, and dial again, and your card number, and check the number again, and ask information operator for assistance for fifteen minutes, and deposit 40 cents.

Unrecorded Messages:

I’m sorry, the number you have dialed is in working order. If you were expecting an error, please hang up and try another number.

This is an audio test. Please listen carefully. Raise your hand when you hear the tone and state which ear it comes from.

Elsewhere

I’ve been fond of Jane Barbe’s voice since it is familiar to anyone who has experienced a telephone problem. The mashups came from actual recordings.

Two other parodies of telephone messages have been made from the telephone company by Ghtrout.

You Must Dial (Binary confusion, 1 + 0 + 1)

I’m Sorry, We’re Sorry (They are all very sorry). Reminds me of Brion Gysin (Try track 3, 4, and 5).

And lastly a terribly funny telemarketing prank:

Thanks Tom Mabe!

Last.fm serves up free mp3s, and I’ve said so before on other pages. When it first came out there was no search feature and you only knew if you landed on their page or crafted a special heavy google search with advanced operators. Ashlee Simpson’s album was up for a week a long time ago. Since then, they have a free download section featuring popular tracks of the week with subsections for popular tags. The downside is you can’t search tags other than ones listed, and there is no telling which bands offer downloads. Of the current listing, there’s only a small handful that I recognize and smaller of what I’m interested in. I can’t sort free R&B tracks because the tag doesn’t exist. I can’t sort by a decade tag like “90s” or unpopular “Ragtime.” Nor can I get my fix of bebop or freejazz without going to every artist hoping their page shows the FREE button.

I am personally grateful for group efforts for the good of all… or individual hard or tedious work like this fantasmo user-generated list of bands and albums split up into genres. This fixes some functions lacking in the limited weekly display provided by last.fm. Thanks to meyde and I’m here passing on the effort to you all.

Before I get criticized for using the word hallucination, I’d like to point out that illusion and hallucination are different, but they share a bit in common. The first (illusion) meaning you perceive something the wrong way, and the latter meaning you have a vision of something without any sightly cause to promote it (a green ghost from a blank white wall). I’ll also point out that a hallucination will probably have some visual stimulus that may influence what exactly you hallucinate. Even when eyes are closed they still perceive darkness. If outside on a sunny day with your eyes shut, you can still see light reflecting on your eyelids, making a lesser darkness than eyes closed in the dark. It is my opinion that illusions are subtle differences that come from undecipherable stimuli, and more imaginative illusions are deemed hallucinations in the presence of more subtle things or atmosphere.

Foreword: None of these require 3D glasses (the Red/Blue shades for Anaglyph images)

Begin the Tripping

Autostereograms are the common single picture optical illusions where you start close up and cross-eyed and move back and start to see depth. A name often associated with this is “Magic Eye” although they don’t own this technique. Wikipedia has a nifty animated autostereogram that you need to try. The canvas moves as well as the 3-D image. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I was able to capture the illusion in under 10 seconds. If you are having trouble, give the still picture a try. If you are struggling, take a break so you don’t hurt your eyes or get a headache.

The next eye-bender was common in older times with the use of a stereoscope, but is possible with the naked eye. It’s 3D-inverted Stereoscopic vision that takes two separate images that are positioned horizontally. It helps to have some guiding points and to position yourself a little further than normal viewing distance (over 12 inches from the screen). Focus your gaze on a finger about halfway between your line of sight and the image. Slowly shift your finger forward and backwards to align your viewing angle. Some instructions and examples can be found here, but the lesson might be a bit confusing and hard to master. Expect to waste over 10 minutes at the least trying to figure this out. The images don’t pop right at you but they create a single image from the two, and the outer images are a peripheral blur. A nice vivid stereo pair of Lake Palanskoye might be a good combo to start with… (Short directions below picture as well)

Use your finger to look at just below the white dots until the 4 dots start merging into three. Once the center dot becomes sharper try to focus on the surrounding center picture. Very slowly, try to remove your finger. Sometimes you will lose concentration and have to retry, but try to recall your position of your finger and eye distance. This stereoscopy pair is definitely noticeable once you have it with the pinkish brown heights that really pop.

For the same principle, but in motion picture, try this. Try it fullscreen and scoot back a bit more than you did before.

Besides the crosseyed 3D view, there is its opposite, the parallel view which fixates beyond the image instead of crossing over. At least for me, it is a ton easier once you learn the cross-eyed method. It’s similar to autostereograms in that you start close up, but you are trying to look past the actual depth. It then becomes like the inverted stereoscopy as you join the middle image of the three as shown here. It works better without glasses if possible.

Once you’ve mastered the Three-dimensional house in the previous link, try to do so with the normal stereoscopic video. It probably won’t work full screen unless you resort to look cross-eye (hence the wrong eyes see frames the other eyes should be seeing).

Here’s a somewhat lo-fi and strange performance that should be easy enough.

This a bit more active with fast moving cars, but some of the special effects make it harder to stay focused.

This last video is probably the best of the parallel stereogram I could find.

KEXP delivers for all a wonderful podcast for the Song of the Day with links to all the previous days in case you missed the download. These are normal mp3s that can be automatically setup for itunes or viewed in Firefox for manual saving. A few days ago I found this and was pleasantly relieved to find a few things for my taste- a track from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, a great rocking instrumental from Pelican, and some other great ones that I unfortunately already had most of (but you may not) from when I was internetting on O.C.D. download binges.

There are no ads or weird podcasty hazards other than plugging in the xml file linked above and downloading. Obviously it requires a connection to download and some space to download it, but you’re bound to have it if you can view this page. Setting up through iTunes is just as easy as viewing the render in Firefox… just find “Advanced” in the menu, then “Subscribe to Podcast” and paste the link in there.

Edit: I don’t believe I spelled “music” wrong in the title (Nusic). I’ll leave it there for completeness and to document my mistake. Firefox spell check doesn’t work in single input lines apparently.

Podbop has rolled out with a new way of bringing music to you. They have a list of artists on tour with mostly full length samples of what they sound like. You can also see who is coming into your town and grab a free track or two before you decide to go to the show. Whether you are looking for local stuff or nationally known artists, you can find your way with other sources I’ve found, some good for the local Tucson music scene and others that are great for all the states.

Artnoc Repus offers an album length of demos for downloading via open source audio. Staying Here Forever draws from an arsenal of softer compositions as well as rompin’ selections that are pulled off well despite the lack of a complete backing band.

Heres a play by play with your songcaster, liquid parallax:
Track 1. “San Diego” is a great song that opens this demo release with style. Playable in any city really. The song’s passion grows to mighty proportions, almost as powerful as Hurricane, though more introspective and abstract than the socially expressive Dylan song. Being a fan of unrefined singers, I’ve learned to tolerate unorthodox singing and even poor singing and concentrate on the essence and intention. The vocals on all tracks are from no pop singer. But if you can hang with nasally Bob Dylan and scratchy Tom Waits like me, you can probably handle the acceptable melodies of Artnoc Repus. The singer hits some peaks of soulful glory that screams real emotion, comparable in a loose sense to the lift in Brandi Carlile’s “The Story” (like the one starting 0:50, and even greater after 2:50). The flamenco edge to the solo is a complimentary embellishment that you anticipate after multiple listens. Although there are a few slight moments where it seems like the lead guitarists is about to lose it completely, he seems to pick himself back out of the blazing whirlwind before the notes fall apart. Elsewhere the guitar adds a flare of Dire Straights.

Track 2. First thought: This guy can play some steady syncopated fingerpicking while singing. Since I know the artist well and happened to be sitting in during these sessions I know this is not the case. It seriously took me a minute to realize one guy was playing and the other is calmly singing, not a one man band. Talk about a bad memory! “Sunrise” is an aptly named title for this one. It is soothing and barren and all the sudden it becomes so twinkling. Simple, yet I can grasp the imagery of the barely complicated echoes layered over the guitar that stems from the lineage of Mississippi John Hurt. For no apparent reason, the twinkly additions remind me of something that could’ve come off of Miracle Legion’s Drenched, which I oddly enough reviewed last month.

Track 3. The melody sounds familiar to me, but I can’t name a song it comes from. Upon later reflection it resembles “4th Time Around” by Bob Dylan which stems from the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood.” Each song has unique aspects, but there is a strange tie that unites them with the most recent one (by Artnoc) being furthest removed in the trilogy veering into a semi-metaphorical driving song.

Track 4. Keep Reading the Rest…