ASBBQ Vol1 Disc2 Playlist

Little Country Giants - "Something to Be Proud Of"

Paul Warner - "Way Back Home"

Seventh Season - "Same Old Road"

Jason Harwell - "How Can You Hear"

Of Montreal - "Penelope"

The Woggles - Get Down With It

Rantings of Eva - "Still Holding On"

Y-O-U - "Good Intentions" and "Shadows on the Page"

j e t t y - "Instigator"

Nillah - "Fire Sanctuary"

The Hiss - "Back on the Radio"

Thanks to Hilary at Podcrawl for the shout out.

wtfBBQ 22Jul05 Punk!

Finally back from 2 weeks off (or 3, if you quibble), and not so much refreshed and reinvigorated as pissed and petulant.

I take a cue from Colskee and try to quit smoking. It doesn't go so well.
Music: The Loose Skrews, "Only Gonna Die" (MySpace)

Thanks to all of you who pestered me about jumping on the iTunes short bus, I am now in the iTunes Directory. Are you freaking happy now???

The Big Red Chick joins me to analyze passive-aggressive communication trends in the blogosphere.
Music: The Decrepits, "Everybody Sucks" (MySpace)

Don't forget to hook up with wtfBBQ on MySpace to stay up to date on shows by the bands I play. Next disc of ASBBQ coming ASAP. OMG! LOL! Eleventy-one! That subscription, in case you forgot, is http://www.wtfbarbecue.com/asbbq.xml

Next week: Atlanta Roller Girls.
Music: The Loose Skrews, "Gonna Get Drunk"

Download Episode (22:50 / 96kbps / 15.8MB)

ASBBQ Playlist

This info is already in your aggregator for those who have subscribed to the ASBBQ feed, but if you wanted to drop by and click on some links, I thought I'd put up a playlist.

All Songs BBQ'd Vol. 1 Disc 1
Arlington Priest - Mexico (Live)
Seventh Season - Longest Way
NorthSouth - Overwhelmed
Trances Arc - Champagne
Paul Warner - Crash Collide
Nillah - Church
The Unadored - Chandra
Telegram - My Baby
The Close - Hey Fever

Kick back, relax, and enjoy some Atlanta music. I'm pushing Disc 2 back till next week, after Tuesday's return to regular programming.

wtfBBQ - Announcement

Quick audio post here for the subscribers who don't check the blog too frequently.

The new feed is online! If you're interested in the music-focused monthly "All Songs BBQ'd," featuring songs played as bumpers and soundbeds on the regular show, subscribe to http://www.wtfbarbecue.com/asbbq.xml

New button on the left, even. Neat, huh? You may notice there's no entry for the show here, nor is it in the radio.blog player over there, and you don't know where to click and download the All Songs BBQ'd. Well, tough shit! This is a subscription-only show, for my convenience, AND just to annoy you non-podcatcher users. (It's not that hard to find the .mp3 file's URL, but if you're going to be a pain about this, so am I.) And remember, this is a MONTHLY show, so no need to set your aggregator to ping me every 15 g-damn minutes (though if you use sucky iTunes, you can't set that individually).

Listen to the quick announcement and preview.

iTunes 4.9: Flop.

Okay, the initial razzle dazzle has worn off; color me unimpressed. In fact, color me annoyed. As an Apple aficionado, I've become well accustomed to my love-hate relationship with Apple. They hook me with one feature only to screw me with another.

With iTunes 4.9, the hook is show notes on the iPod. I've gotten comments from people asking about a specific song at a specific point in the show that I didn't identify in a timely fashion. With the latest software, you can hit your select button 3 times and voila! the show notes appear on your screen as you listen. That way you can know instantly that the soundbed after the presidential rant is in fact Rantings of Eva. Instant information. Hawt.

A close second in the cool features list is the automatic conversion of all podcasts to bookmarkable-MP3. Bookmarkable files are a watershed for us longer, ramblier podcasters.

And chapters? A close third. I myself don't know that I'll ever avail myself of chapters, as it's sometimes hard for even me to distinguish one ramble from the next. But in the case of something like The Sounds in my Head, well, as Daniel said, if he's playing something you don't like -- skippity skip. Very handy.

But the major, massive, critical flaw is the way the iPod defaults to listing all your podcasts by artists; unlike your Genre or Playlist menus in the regular music library, there is no option for "All." Thus, each day, if you want to know who's released a new podcast while you slept, you have to select each and every fucking single subscription individually and see if you've already heard all the episodes in there.

iPodderX already gave me the ability to convert all my incoming podcasts to bookmarkable AAC format on the fly. It also allowed me to specify custom playlists for new shows to be uploaded to. I had mine sending some to "Podcasts - News," some to "Podcasts - Music" and some to "Podcasts - Variety." Each of those playlists was sorted in iTunes (and thus on my iPod) by date: oldest first, so I made sure to plow through them in order.

And since all of these files were in my Library, I could also create a smart playlist of any file with the Genre=Podcast (set in iPodderX if it wasn't so already), Date Added = within 2 weeks, and My Rating = 0 stars (thanks to a tip I picked up via Podcrawl -- once you listen to a cast, rate it, and it drops off the New Podcast list at next sync). All of this various sort-by-date action made it very easy for me to tell when I had something new to listen to. In this ridiculous separate Source for all podcasts in iTunes, it's fucking impossible. What retards. YOU SEE, PEOPLE? You see what a good idea it is to have major corporations to barge in and say they know what they're doing? Adam Curry, if you didn't see this massive design flaw coming, you're just as dumb as you fucking look. You should have been screaming at the top of your lungs. But you're too busy getting stoned. Dumbass.

I'm pretty sure I'll be going back to iPodderX within days. I miss the flexibility and control. For those of you who really, really want show notes on your iPod, then iTunes is the thing for you. But for now, to me, that ain't worth it.

Cover art

You know, damnit, one of the things I wanted to do with last week's episode was include some pictures, and I just never got around to it. I thought about just including pictures of events as extra enclosures in the RSS feed (and with the new Feedburner tools, that may happen in the future). However, a simpler way to sneak some pictures onto your machine would just be to use them in cover art. You already know you're listening to wtfBBQ, no need for the self-aggrandizing cover art, no?

So if you feel like the last episode is a keeper and you want to add some album art to it, here's a look at things to come:


ALSO - IMPORTANT NEWS
I have started using Feedburner, as I just mentioned, to generate RSS feeds automatically from this blog -- saves me precious minutes each week. Furthermore, Feedburner will soon be implementing the Apple-specific RSS tags that will enhance the podcast should you choose to subscribe via iTunes -- specifically, the ability to read show notes ON your iPod while you listen (wondering "WTF is this band?"). So BE SURE TO UPDATE your subscription to the new URL. http://feeds.feedburner.com/wtfbarbecue If you're lazy, don't worry just yet. I will copy the new RSS file and upload it to the old URL each week. But that may not last forever.

A few of you have asked about the iTunes podcast directory. I will eventually get listed in it, but I'm in no hurry -- I'd rather let the hype settle down a bit. I like you guys, you were smart enough to find this show and subscribe all by yourself. Who needs those mouth-breathing technophobes who have to be spoon-fed with a simplified iTunes interface! So PLEASE don't submit the show to Apple on my behalf. I'll get around to it. In the meantime, you can still subscribe through iTunes by pasting the new Feedburner feed into the "Subscribe to Podcast" window under the Advanced menu, and I strongly suggest you to do so. The new iTunes automatically converts my simple MP3 file into a BOOKMARKABLE file, which kicks ass. That way, if you are easily distracted and can't make it through a whole episode due to my breakneck topic changes, if you stop listening and come back to it later, you pick up right where you left off. Brilliant!