Everyone does play “I.G.Y.” It’s become the “Freebird” of pro audio—visit a linecheck at a major concert venue or a speaker demo at AES or InfoComm, and those familiar strains will turn up sooner or later. It’s a well-recorded song, to be sure, which is why it’s always used to illustrate a system’s “tight low end” or “crystal-clear mids” or, to be honest, any other detail they want to point out.

However, the sheer pervasiveness of “I.G.Y.” within the pro audio community as the track that you use to tune or show off your PA is remarkable. The distant second place song is, of all things, “Pulp Culture” from Thomas Dolby’s obscure (but admittedly awesome) 1989 funk album, Aliens Ate My Buick.

Here's Donald Fagen's I.G.Y. so you can test your audio system.

Now that that's out of the way, let's talk about Check the O.R., a CanCon hit from 1992...

Organized Rhyme is now most famous for including Tom Green, but back in '92 I knew them best as the band the Dream Warriors were supporting. The video for Check the O.R. was shot at Jane and Finch and features a Dream Warriors cameo. At the time it was released, I was actually working at a Food City, but not the one you'll see below.

Nobody outside of Tom Green's family can name a second Organized Rhyme song. Go ahead and try. It's impossible.

Check the O.R., however, was a fun rap song and I still know most of the lyrics by heart. Who doesn't drop a "I lay more chicks than Mother Goose" boast or a "I talk smooth like Lando Calrissian" claim now and then?

Check the O.R. even got remade recently, sort of... here's the Check the O.R. Redux.

Go off like a Canon, you're a copier... that's some gold right there.

Sue Johanson told it like it was, without fanfare. It was an open and frank talk about sex and it was both educational and interesting. I didn't just listen to her radio show on Q, I also caught her Cable 10 show, which we all called Sex With Sue. A little Googling tells me that wasn't the name, but that's definitely what we called it.

Sex With Sue is where we all learned that Sue Johanson looked like this:

And of course, who could forget her appearance on Degrassi Junior High as Dr. Sally? Not I, that's for sure.

Can't. Find. Clip. :-(

At some point, Sue Johanson broke through in the USA, which meant we had to share her. That's when stuff like this started to happen.

Ok, confession time... who out there learned some sex stuff from Sex With Sue?

I'm very jealous. I've wanted to do something like this for quite some time, but I'm not Alan Cross. Luckily for us, Alan Cross is Alan Cross, and he's got a very cool thing brewing here.

I'm listening right now. So far, so good! I could see an on-line station like this getting a good chunk of my work day. At least when I'm not listening to Humble and Fred.

It's amazing how little of the radio I listen to each day is actually on the radio. I listen to CBC Radio One news in the shower, and this and that in the car, but at my work desk it's all web based now.

So far, I have two wishes for Squish:

1. I wish the sound quality was better - it's not bad, but I share Neil Young's concerns
2. I wish I could see the name and artist for the current song playing Scratch that - it's at the top of the page

Good job, Alan. Thanks Doug, for pointing me in the right direction.

Neil Young had some very interesting things to say on the stage of D: Dive into Media the other day.

"Young is calling for a new digital ecosystem of high quality music files and he believes that Jobs would have gotten there had he lived long enough. On the distribution side, Young isn't particularly concerned with the effects of piracy on artists, he's more concerned that the files that are being shared are of such low quality:"

It doesn't affect me because I look at the internet as the new radio. I look at the radio as gone. [...] Piracy is the new radio. That's how music gets around. [...] That's the radio. If you really want to hear it, let's make it available, let them hear it, let them hear the 95 percent of it.

I think he's right on point. Piracy is the new radio. There's no point fighting it, you may as well embrace it.

What do you think?

My son has had his account for five years now, and it's full of history. I'll share YouTube clips with them, pictures, messages. It's a great digital archive of his early years, and he can keep that address forever.

Things haven't gone as smoothly for my daughter. At some point, Google prompted her to enter her birth date. She was born in 2004, and disclosed that to Google. Immediately, Google locked her out of her account. Apparently, you can't have a Gmail account unless you're at least 13 years old.

What irks me is that the account was suspended immediately. There was no opportunity to back-up emails. It was an instant "you're too young - sorry" and all was lost.

Michelle has a new Gmail account, and I've instructed her and James to never disclose their age to Google. They love having their own email account and using Google Chat and it's easy for me to monitor everything to ensure they're using it appropriately.

Google themselves seem to promote the idea of Gmail as a means of capturing a child's history, but in reality, they'll terminate such an account without warning.

Mamas, don't let your babies disclose their birth year to Google.

Week Two's Results:

Death From Above - 19, Rock 70 - 25
Death From Above - 15, Rock 70 - 25
Death From Above - 7, Rock 70 - 25

The less said about this one, the better.

From the National Post:

The power struggle over what transit to build in Toronto continues at City Hall, with Mayor Rob Ford telling reporters, at his weekly weigh-in: “It’s all about subways.” An excerpt of the scrum follows.

Reporter: Mr. Mayor, some people at 11 o’clock are discussing the legal standard of scrapping Transit City and they are saying you may have overstepped your boundaries. What do you say?

Mayor: I didn’t overstep my boundaries, I did what the taxpayers want. They want subways, that’s it. They don’t want streetcars. I was out in Scarborough over the weekend, people came up to me and said, they want subways. That’s it.

Reporter: Is there any wiggle room for you on this issue?

Mayor: It’s the taxpayers. The taxpayers want…I was elected on subways, they want subways, I was out on Saturday, people want subways. That’s it.

Reporter: Do you think you’ll win this vote? It doesn’t seem like you have the votes.

Mayor: It’s all subways. It’s all about subways.

Reporter: What are you going to do though if council votes against that?

Mayor: All about subways. So, it’s the taxpayers that elected me to get the subways in and that’s what we’re going to do.

Reporter: So, you think that gives you authority to, if council votes against that.

Mayor: It’s like winning an election. So if they voted me in, that means [stutters a bit] I don’t win an election? It doesn’t make sense.

That makes sense. I'm so proud of our mayor when he argues so eloquently. Really, you can't argue with his logic, which clearly proves he had the authority to cancel Transit City.

By the way, on Rob Ford's first day in office, I wrote that he did not have the authority to cancel Transit City. He's one vote out of 45. That's it.

But you can't deny his love of subways. Rob Ford loves subways.

Update:

All About Subways (Don't Make Sense) rap remix!

Why should we be concerned about Bill C-11? Just ask Michael Geist.

Citing a document that appears to be a set of proposed amendments to the legislation from a music-industry representative, Geist makes the case that the same lobbying groups that backed SOPA are laying the groundwork for SOPA-like rules in Bill C-11.

“While SOPA may be dead (for now) in the U.S.,” Geist writes, “Lobby groups are likely to intensify their efforts to export SOPA-like rules to other countries. With Bill C-11 back on the legislative agenda at the end of the month, Canada will be a prime target for SOPA style rules.”

In particular, Geist says the idea of blocking sites from the Internet — or at least the Internet in Canada — is on the list of proposals. The note, dated March 1, 2011, suggests that the bill should “permit a court to make an order blocking a pirate site such as The Pirate Bay to protect the Canadian marketplace from foreign pirate sites.”

Besides that, the proposals would incentivize Internet service providers to terminate users who infringe copyrights more than once. Geist points out that there’s no mention of due process or what sort of proof would be required. Also under consideration is an “enabler” provision, which would target sites that aren’t necessarily pirate havens, but are primarily used for piracy.

If you like the idea of the internet as a police state, then don't complain to your MP. If you embrace the internet as the last truly free market, send a letter to Ottawa to stop Bill C-11.

Seriously. Do it now. Click that link and send a letter in less than 2 minutes.

I believe it is in the best interest of Canadian consumers and creators alike to amend Bill C-11 to clearly link the act of circumvention to infringement, remove the all-encompassing ban on circumvention tools and to establish a new TPM labelling provision.

Sincerely,

Mike

If you've ever watched Mad Men, you know that falling man is from the title sequence. Here it is:

Some are suggesting the new Mad Men poster is too reminiscent of The Falling Man from 9/11. The Falling Man is a photograph taken by Associated Press photographer Richard Drew of a man falling from the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

This is much ado about nothing. The Mad Men promo is pure Mad Men, and pretty cool. I don't believe it's trying to mimic 9/11 imagery. What do you think?

I can't wait until March 25.

On McNulty's blog, he wrote an entry on why he stopped using his Blackberry.

Then the internet was on the phones. I realised that surfing the internet on my Blackberry was slow and pathetic. I grew tired of it pretty quick and I didn’t even bother. It was weak and sad. I saw a friend with an iPhone viewing YouTube videos and surfing the internet and my Blackberry seemed like that old Nokia flip phone that I gave to the boys to smash in the street. As time went on and I learned about apps and other benefits of the iPhone, I began to hate my Blackberry.

Like McNulty, I loved my Blackberry four years ago, but in 2011 it seemed more than a step behind. iPhone and Android phone users were doing all this cool stuff like watching YouTube videos, and using cool apps and surfing the web without delay or issue. Those smart phones seemed a great deal smarter than my Blackberry.

Three months ago, I switched to a Samsung Galaxy S II. I missed BBM for about six hours, then moved on to enjoy a phone that never needed its battery removed to reboot it, accessed the web like a speedy tablet, and had great mission-critical apps like Skype that truly made it a smart phone. I understand iPhone users feel the same way.

I'll leave the last word to McNulty.

I will make one final comparison. If you liked a local restaurant and served great food and the service was great, you would keep going back to that restaurant. However, if the food became a little dull, the service was weak you make question returning. And then a new place opened up that was a little further but the food was better, they gave you more for your money and the service was fantastic. Where would you eat? Keep going to the place that gave sub-par food and service or the new place that wanted your business and made great food?

I've left Blackberry behind and don't miss it in the least. Are there any other former Blackberry users out there with a story to tell? Any regrets?