listen to the NBTMusicRadio
iTunes/ TuneIn (for Blackberry/android apps) : NBTMusicRadio
We live in a schizophrenic world baby!
So Anyway
you may have noticed, that during the past, oh, month or so, the podcasts, the reviews, the little things that make the NBT engine tick over so delightfully, have been, well kinda silent.
There is a reason for that, I have been concentrating all of the NBT creative focus on the NBTMusicRadio , its been an Adorably disturbing and frantic ride
Internet radio is bloody hard work. First of all, if you are international, like we are, then those pesky time zones come into play, what is one countries party time is another’s time of quiet reflection. So how do you keep the rhythm going for all the world? Mmm
Then there is the tightrope balance of making sure that the difficult, the weird, the strange cool nestles comfortably with the pop, the craft, the vibrancy of the mainstream. In other words keep up the NBT rule number one.. EVERYONE good gets represented.
Finally there is the huge Time and Expense involved. To keep a 24 hour stream going and to make sure that there is a fair mix of established artists and the new, the brave, the independent, means that NBTMusicRadio needs a HUGE amount of listeners every hour of the day to simply stay on air.
Other stations, sadly MOST stations, solve this problem, by making sure they appeal to everyone by staying as bland and inoffensive as possible, playing only tunes that they know everyone already owns, or blasts from a past decade and then only the SAFEST most insipid choices they can find.
True background music.
And it works..
but as the cannibal said to his aunt at Christmas, ''I would rather chew off my right arm without seasoning than do that''
NBT is all about getting the listener curious again, to making the listener, well LISTEN, rather than have something there as a kinda wallpaper for the soul.
So yeah. We need your support, we need you good folks, you musicians, you artists, you creators of the abstract, the beautiful, the intense, the goofy and the bubblegum, we need you to tune and stay tuned in.
or we simply fade away.. and that is NOT an option.

So Anway
some 40 or so years ago, right here in Germany, a bunch of bands and musicians started the good fight against what was incredibly popular at the time, a dull sing a long type of music that was the kinda opposite of thought. or dreaming. or creativity. They wanted to make stuff that disturbed and provoked in equal measures.. they hoped i guess to be able to make people awake again..
All these independent souls.. were not a movemnet, tho in the international press they all got lumped together under the crappy title of Krautrock.
and they (bands like Can, faust, Cluster, Kraftwerk, Neu..and so many others) influenced thousands of bands all over the world..
and yet
40 or so years later.. you can not find their albums in the main music shops.. you cant see or hear them OR the bands they influenced on the radio.. and the music they fought against.. is STILL the most popular music..
Question:So do we give up..??
Answer: nah just gotta fight harder i guess
So Anyway,
I decide, as a dedicated follower of what is new in the indie music world, to investigate the Act the Villagers (a kind of Brit version of America's Bright Eyes and Germany's Get Well Soon).
Well i have two options basically, download a few trax with a P2P prog and if i like them go out and buy the album.. BUT boys and girls thats Illegal you know, as Faith said when she was in Buffy's Body, ''You cant Do that. cause its WRONG!''
Other option is to go to the bands website and/or youtube and check out the vids.
So what do i find there: a big blank or blank with writing that says the bands Label (Domino) videos are NOT allowed for viewing in my country. (apparently not allowed in the Villagers own country EITHER!!)
so what crapola is this.
Don't the various people involved know that a video is an ADVERT for their product/artist. it is it's main function to make you the potential customer like the song enough to become an actual customer.
Fuck its not really rocket science.
so there are two scenarios:
1) YouTube wants too much money from Domino, doesnt get it, so doesnt allow the vids in certian countries..
if thats the case then what a bunch of greedy fuckers, since they are owned by much much much bigger internet companies and have advertising all over their site.. mmm seems if this is the case, then its greedy for the sake of greedy.. not good for the independent at all.
2) (and sadly more likely) Domino or it's partners or it's publishers or it's distributors havent got enough money FROM YouTube and so wont allow the song to be played in certian(read MOST) countries.
if THAT'S the case then the music industry is way more idiotic than I thought.
Previous Thoughts
While here in Cyber space the choices and adventures are endless outside in the REAL universe, the music channels on TV and radio get more conservative and cynical each passing day. The Stores that sell MOST of us the tunes out here in the non electronic non dream cosmos, cut down on their stock and variety and as on the mainstream media, they only promote or sell music that is either owned or distributed by a few companies staffed by reactionary young men who are always trying to copy the LAST big thing, not look for the next one.
Last Sunday afternoon I watched the NME music channel. Now the magazine ‘’the NME’’ has been going since the 60s I think and has turned generations of people around the world (not just in the UK) into new sounds and new thoughts.
It wrote about bands you, the teenager, wanting MORE out of life, could not see on TV or hear on the radio. It wrote about the OTHER the ALTERNATIVE. So when I saw there was a WHOLE channel available to me here in still chilly Germany, I gasped and cheered and settled down with a glass of coke and a packet of chips and waited to be educated about songs and crazy cool new performers.
What I got instead was (in the two hours I watched) about 60% old stuff from bands from the 1990s, Blur, Oasis, the Manics or even worse Guns and Roses. (dont get me wrong, with the exception of GnR I LOVE those bands, just.. hey give the new kids a chance ) And then the other 40 percent repeated tracks from those bastions of the (not) different, like Muse and the Killers. Fuck even the Spice Girls made an appearance. So the NME failed in the one thing, that before it had always managed to do.. teach me something NEW.
I switched to other programs , other platforms. I saw Bon Jovi, I saw Michael Jackson, I saw plenty of pretty puppets singing songs from Bon Jovi and Michael Jackson, I even saw two bizarre idiots with big hair sing their massive ‘’hit’’ with has been Vanilla Ice. And the oldies kept on coming.
This is a world that has new music by Johanna Newsom, Caribou, Tungg, Jamie Lidell, Efterklang, Dum Dum Girls, Plan B, CocoRosie, Wild Beasts oh I could go on for PAGES.
The only one of the above mentioned that is getting any sort of airplay is Plan B. who has been described by incredibly lazy journalists as being either the British answer to Eminem or the Male Amy Winehouse.. sighs ..all these foolish people scrabbling to assure you that its ok you can listen to him cause its alright he’s not REALLY new.
(He IS pretty cool btw)
SO I guess. For now ignore the ‘’real world’ and ignore those places in the musical part of cyberspace that are tainted by the ‘’real World’’ and would like to sell you their masters' back catalog of AC/DC in new packaging. And be like the writers and artists and performers on these pages.
GO BE CURIOUS.
Now!