I am the ghost of groovymother.com. Woooooo!

This is an old page from Rod Begbie's blog.

It only exists in an attempt to prevent linkrot. No new content will be added to this site, and links and images are liable to be broken. Check out begbie.com to find where I'm posting stuff these days.

Filed under 'mp3'

March 26, 2010

Free Again: Teenage Fanclub

Horrifying realisation this morning — I didn’t have this song in my MP3 library.

I owned it on 7” vinyl, bought from Avalanche Records on West Nicholson St in Edinburgh circa 1995. It’s a cover of an Alex Chilton song (pre-Big Star) and is pure janglepop loveliness.

Buy it. If it doesn’t fill you with teh happies, I’ll give you back a buck next time I see you.

December 30, 2008

Best of Bootie 2008 CD

Awesomesauce! The new Best of Bootie mashup CD is ready for download.

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September 29, 2008

Improv Everywhere: MP3 Experiment San Francisco

Load a mysterious MP3 onto your iPod. Show up at Dolores Park at an appointed time. Simultaneously with hundreds of strangers, hit play. Follow the instructions. (See the report on 2007 for an example of the madness that my ensue!)

February 3, 2008

M. Ward + Zooey Deschanel collaboration is near :: Four new songs from KCRW!

I loved Zooey Deschanel’s singing in Elf, and the tracks here sound lovely.

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January 11, 2008

Easy Acid

Large collection of loungecore covers. Hugo Montenegro’s version of “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)” is my favourite so far.

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January 1, 2008

Best of Bootie 2007 CD

Hooray! A new Best of Bootie CD for the new year!

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December 22, 2007

The Jingler

Adds in-time sleigh-bells (and Santa) to any MP3 uploaded.

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November 1, 2007

30 Rock: Werewolf Bar Mitzvah

MP3 of the full version of Tracy Jordan’s novelty single. “I nearly dropped the Torah when my hands turned into paws!”

October 13, 2007

A Social Network for Two

Ze Frank lives! A lovely little modern-day love song.

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October 8, 2007

Convenience Wins, Hubris Loses and Content vs. Context, a Presentation for Some Music Industry Friends

Presentation by Ian Rogers (ex-IUMA and Nullsoft) to music industry folks. “Want a track on-demand? Oh have we got a deal for you! If you’re on Windows XP or Vista, and you’re in North America, just download this 20MB application, go through these seven install screens, reboot your computer, go through these five setup screens, these six credit card screens, give us $160 dollars and POW! Now you can hear that song you wanted to hear…if you’re still with us.”

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September 30, 2007

Radiohead: In Rainbows

The new Radiohead album is released on the 10th, and will initially be available in only two forms: 1) Pay £40 for a deluxe box-set of two CDs and two LPs, or 2) Pay whatever you like for an MP3 download. I’ve chucked in £4, though will probably end up downloading it off of OiNK when the official servers are predictably swamped next week.

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September 25, 2007

Amazon.com MP3 Downloads

Amazon’s un-DRMed 256kbps MP3 store launches. It’s got the full EMI and indie catalogues that iTunes has DRM-free, plus the Universal catalogue.

There’s an optional downloader for Windows and Mac that allows you to queue up entire albums and import them into iTunes automagically, but you can also download individual tracks without any software.

My only problem with it? The first track I tried buying — “Sweet Caroline” by Neil Diamond — turned out to be a live recording without being marked as such. So now? I get to test Amazon’s refund policy!

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January 13, 2007

Best of Bootie 2006 CD

Some stonking mashups on this album. The Bon Jovi vs. George Michael “Careless or Dead” is a particular favourite in this household.

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December 10, 2006

DVD Audio Ripper

Handy utility for ripping (stereo) music DVDs as MP3s.

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October 3, 2006

Listening Post: Winamp Adds Remote Access, Dashboard Widgets

New version of WinAmp (Remember them? It’s like an iPod, except you can’t carry it around with you. Ask your parents) includes “remote listening” — Stream music from your home PC to wherevers. Since Apple kept disabling hacks that did this with iTunes, I’m curious how AOL think they’re going to be able to keep this “legit”

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July 31, 2006

The Broadband - God Save the Internet

” Writing songs about corporate malfeasance so you don’t have to!”. Free net-neutrality MP3 from Jill Sobule, Kay Hanley and Michelle Lewis.

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July 23, 2006

Puffy AmiYumi cover Green Day's "Basket Case" (MP3)

I’m curious to test out RedSwoosh’s P2Pness, so link-followers: Have a shot at downloading seven stonking megabytes of J-Pop oddness! Windows users should be directed to download the RedSwoosh client, while Mac & Linux users should be redirected to the CoralCDN service. Let’s see how little bandwidth I can use distributing some QUALITY CHOONS!

July 20, 2006

Yahoo! Music Blog » Buy A Customized Jessica Simpson MP3 At Yahoo! Music

“Our position is simple: DRM doesn?t add any value for the artist, label (who are selling DRM-free music every day ? the Compact Disc), or consumer, the only people it adds value to are the technology companies who are interested in locking consumers to a particular technology platform.” Hells yeah!

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July 6, 2006

Music For Kids Who Can't Read Good: The Evolution of "Crazy"

An MP3 of the obscure instrumental that “Crazy” is based on. It’s originally from the soundtrack to a spaghetti western!

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April 7, 2006

BBC Radio 4 -The Now Show

Auntie releases a Radio 4 comedy show for MP3 download & podcast. Hurrah! If they do this with the next series of Just a Minute and I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue, I’m going to be a happy camper indeed.

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January 30, 2006

MP3Gain

App to apply ReplayGain volume normalization to MP3s by tweaking the audio data, so the normalized files can be played back on any player (such as yer iPod), not just those that understand the tagging format.

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December 29, 2005

Free Music

Kristin Hersh has released a new EP as free creativecommons-licensed FLAC files.

December 25, 2005

BBC - Doctor Who - Episode Guide - The Christmas Invasion

The Beeb’s made a commentary track for the new Doctor Who christmas episode available as an MP3 download. What a great idea!

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December 6, 2005

iTunes Signature Maker

This brilliant little applet analyses your iTunes library and based on your listening behaviour, patches together a short “signature” of your music taste. I’ll upload mine in a moment.

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December 1, 2005

Dean Gray Tuesday

On December 13th, the now-banned Dean Gray “American Edit” album will be up for download from a bunch of locations — including groovymother.com. Spread the word.

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November 30, 2005

MP3tunes Locker

Michael Robertson’s new site seems to be targeting itself as an “off-site backup” and synchronisation service for your music files, and therefore completely covered by fair-use. RIAA, start your lawyers.

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November 26, 2005

the Radio Knives

My brother-in-law-in-law’s band. Really rather stonking garage-rawk.

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November 25, 2005

Songbird Media Player

New cross-platform iTunes-a-like being built by some former Nullsoft guys. Interesting to see someone other than the Mozilla foundation building apps in XUL.

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November 23, 2005

Indieish: Remixing Pop Culture - CC:365

Podcast promising a new CC-licensed indie MP3 tune every day of 2006. I’m really looking forward to this.

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November 22, 2005

Dean Gray presents American Edit

Mash-up album based on Green Day’s “American Idot”.

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October 26, 2005

Slim Devices : Squeezebox

The new Squeezebox is gorgeous. Throw in excellent format support (MP3, OGG, WMA, AAC and FLAC) and an open-source server, and it’s a geek’s dream.

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About This Site

This is an archive of groovmother.com, the old blog run by Rod Begbie — A Scottish geek who lives in San Francisco, CA.

I'm the co-founder of Sōsh, your handy-dandy guide for things to do in San Francisco this weekend.