for 14 April 1999. Updated every WEEKDAY.

"... another bad band will be
forced (in an environment
where every song stands or
falls on its individual
merits) to put more effort
into each song.... And how
can you argue with that?"

Are you suggesting this bad
band will somehow be able to
kick it up a notch because
suddenly there's a new means
of online music distribution?
That the opportunities
presented by MP3 will of
necessity turn their
secondhand riffs and banal
lyrics into something
compelling? Bands are bad
because they're lazy or they
lack talent, not as a direct
response to the available
means of distribution. MP3 is
not going to change that.

<paul.champion@craftsouth.org.au>

Instead of bad I probably
should have said lazy. There
are bands capable of good
material but who get lazy
because they know a few
decent songs will carry their
album. All I'm suggesting is
that MP3 distribution, with
its current emphasis on
singles, has the possibility
of making that less
profitable to do. For bands
that are just plain bad, you
are right - a file format is
not going to help them.

Best,

Huck

"Characteristics of MP3 in
general and aspects of its
distribution in particular
will shape, or at least
favor, specific types of
content."

This sentence makes me think
you must be a media
ecologist, an NYU graduate, a
Marshall McLuhan or Neil
Postman fan, or possibly all
of the above. Please tell me
I'm right on at least one
score, because it would
simply be too painful to
admit others could also have
the medium-over-message,
form-over-content, and
especially the
conditions-of-attendance
insights without having
shelled out six figures for a
graduate degree. If not, does
Suck grant tenure?

<read@schuchardt.com>

No on the first two counts.
I've read a little McLuhan
and a little more Postman -
just enough to add my share
of cultural carbon dioxide to
the media ecology, I'd say.

Best,

Huck

Filler

When installed on a woman's
phone, Booty Caller
automatically screens all
calls from men who live in
California and NYC. Now
that's design genius.

Amy E. Brown
<abrown@openmarket.com>

You have a beef about men
from California and NYC?
What's wrong with them?

I always thought I was the
problem. For very good
reasons, of course. But
still ... thanks for giving me
another scapegoat.

Polly

Subject: Things that should
be over - the word booty

Robert Wright, ETC
<Wrightr@MAILHOST.FTSCPAC.NAVY.MIL>

Dude. I'm so not into that
word! I'm totally fucking
down with your take, man!

So over,

Polly

Subject: Martha Stewart of
California

Polly,

With your insider knowledge
of California culture, you
would make a great guide to
making it feel a little more
like home. Lord knows I want
to sit out back of my
New England colonial,
trying out the pressed-
flower techniques, but it
doesn't seem too practical.

Ideas:

Care tips and polish
recommendations for your
favorite stars on Hollywood
and Vine.

Extraction of natural dyes
from the air around you.
(Turns out smog makes a nice
khaki!)

And, oh my, the Christmas
swags you could make for the
mantle!

Sucking,

Bryan Richard
<bryan.richard@usa.net>

You are quite obviously from
LA, and anyone who's anyone
knows LA and San Francisco
would require completely
different Martha Stewarts.
One would make tasteful
wedding favors out of
shredded tires collected from
the side of the Santa Monica
freeway. The other would
craft stunningly unoriginal
cafe art from Odwalla bottle
tops.

Yes, I realize there are lots
of other cities in
California, but I can't
remember any of them right
now.

Stunningly unoriginal and not
from California,

Polly

Subject: Booty time, booty
time, hey, hey hey

Polly:

Filler is excellent, as
usual. It always gives me a
laugh. I'm not up much on
current events (local news
programs have alienated me
and NPR is so NPR) but I'm
there on California, being
one of the few natives I know
anymore (excluding
relatives). Hey, are the
transplants eating the
natives? That 24-Hour Fitness
billboard was really talking
about the other 49 states in
reference to aliens. Have you
seen the Chevy billboard
response? There's one on
580-East in Oakland, just
past the maze.

Francine Hudson
<fahudson@yahoo.com>

You California natives are so
weird with your cute little
references to highways and
interchanges and whatnot.
It's as if the highways are
more important historical
landmarks than the
goddamn ... museums (or
whatever should be more
important) that people who
aren't as uncultured as I am
go to when they want
more ... history or whatever it
is you get at museums and
shit.

You Californians are so
shallow and lame. It makes me
hungry.

Dreaming of your kidney with
some nice faahhhhva beans,

Polly Lecter

I wonder if you might have
missed some important points
in your MP3 manifesto: issues
of quality and standards, for
example. While I'm all for
the fall of the record
giants, I'm also for
listening to good music
(i.e., well-written,
well-recorded music). The
problem with mass MP3
distribution is that even
more people with no talent
will be circulating their
dreck, if only because they
know how to use a computer.
Thus bands like Poop Project
(or whatever crap you
mentioned) become popular
when they don't deserve to
be.

It's a touchy issue, and I
don't want to ramble on and
bore you. I'm in a band,
we're trying to get some
attention, I don't own a
computer, I don't want one,
and I certainly don't want to
be beholden to one to hear
music. Call me a luddite,
but I actually like kicking
back on the sofa with the
stereo on rather than getting
square-eyed in front of a
video screen. The current
label/record company
situation is unfair and
unfortunate for artists, but I
think MP3 has its own
intrinsic unfairness to
people who work hard at
making music, not being
computer geeks.

Brian McGuire
<bkmg@hotmail.com>

PS As a fan of Suck.com, I
was also confused by the
stroking you gave MP3. It
kind of freaked me out,
actually. Choose your messiah
wisely.

I'm not sure what you mean by
the "stroking [I] gave MP3."
I can assure you, there were
no improper relations between
me and that file format. As
for the other stuff, I figure
you either didn't read the
first part of the two-part
MP3 extravaganza, or you're
doing a lot of drugs.

Best,

Huck

You discuss the prospect of
global email distribution of music
with the MP4 file format.
Since that file format
includes its own
player/executable, that
prospect takes on more
meaning in the wake of
Melissa. I can't wait to try it
- unless, of course,
distributing executables by
email goes out of fashion for
some reason.

Also, about Weird Al's
original efforts: I'm not a
big fan, though I like some
of his stuff. But the song I
consider his best, "One More
Minute," is an original - and
one I've become somewhat
associated with by performing
it myself.

You can hear an MP3 of my
band performing another song
at http://thor.prohosting.com/
~jimburr/SongSubv/Math/
machords/machords.html.

<jimburr@hotbot.com>

Sure, MP4's embedded player
is problematic, but do you
think that means they won't
come up with an alternative?
And in any case, a little
virus can't be any worse than
most of the songs being
distributed, right?

Best,

Huck

I really enjoyed reading your
two-part essay on MP3s,
especially since I
"discovered" MP3.com about a
week ago and have been
gleefully downloading clips
from bands with names like
Tears for Beers. One thing I
noticed very quickly was
that, like everything, 95
percent of the songs on
MP3.com are crap. Given that
the average song is a
10-plus minute download o'er
my 28.8 Kbps modem, there's a
moderate investment in taking
a gamble on a new band.
Nevertheless, I, lacking your
cynicism, see MP3 and its
successors as a way of
opening up quite a few good
bands to the world. Yes,
there is some good music out
there, if you can find it.
The current music industry,
remember, has shoved a lot of
awful, awful music down our
collective throats. In my MP3
world, I'll never have to
listen to Limp Bizkit.

I suppose what the whole
Internet music scene is
missing is a means of telling
people about good bands. To
me, that's the real joy of
radio. If I find a station
that caters to my taste, I
can expect to be introduced
to a lot of good stuff that I
normally wouldn't have heard.
I'd like that from MP3.

In the future you describe,
popular music is ruled by
commercialism and media. But
how is that really different
from what is prevalent now?
Many musicians have to
compromise their sound or
image for popularity. Or, in
the case of groups like the
Spice Girls, they are nothing
but commercialism. Give me a
guy with a guitar, a mike,
and an MP3 encoder any day.

<phopkins@geocities.com>

I've gotten some recent
feedback from sites out there
that are trying to fulfill
that filtering function -
breakingartists.com, for
example.

Regarding the commercialism of the
future not being any
different from today - that
was my point. Before MP3 was
a factor, the Web was
supposed to democratize print
media, allowing anyone to
become a magazine publisher.
Four or five years later,
there are very few
noncorporate Web publications
that have managed to attract
a substantial amount of
attention; I imagine it will
be the same with MP3. There
will definitely be a
Drudge-like band out there,
but there might not be two.

Best,

Huck

The Shit

Left for Dead in Malaysia, Neil Hamburger, Drag City, 1999 The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, Mark Dery, Grove/Atlantic, 1999 Crazy from the Heat, David Lee Roth, Hyperion, 1998 Keep It Like a Secret, Built to Spill, WEA/Warner Brothers, 1999 Abbott's Pizza Company, near the corner of Abbott-Kinney and California, Venice Beach, Los Angeles (delivery hours limited) Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Pink Floyd, CD remaster, EMI 1994 Motorhead, CD remasters, all Det Som Engang Var, Burzum, Misanthropy, 1998 Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park, Nashville, Tennessee A History of the Modern Fact, Mary Poovey, University of Chicago Press, 1998 V., Thomas Pynchon, HarperCollins Publishers, 1999 The Coffee Mill, Emeq Refaim, Jerusalem, Israel The Salesman and Bernadette, Vic Chesnutt, Capricorn Records, 1998 Good Morning Spider, Sparklehorse, Cema/Capitol, 1999 Third Floor, Anderson Building, Los Angeles County Museum of Art