Podcast – Content Blues

Unnamed Journal, Caligula and Punk Rock: Big ‘Ol July Update

8 Jul 2021Andrew

Summer is an odd time. I should be filling the blog with posts, but somehow, other projects take precedence. To be fair, I’ve definitely fallen from my 10-post-a-month threshold I was hitting in the fall and winter. That means something, but I’m not sure what.

The point is, I’m behind on posting stuff. It happens. So lets get on with it.

This has been up for a little bit. It’s one of our more rambling episodes, per the effects of the Rule of 30 in Podcasting. Punk as a style and an aesthetic has become vast over the last 40 years, but it doesn’t ever really escape the superposition in started in. So there’s lots to talk about, and all of it relates.

But that’s the secondary bit of news. This is the big bit of news:

Available for $2.99 on ebook, $3.99 in Paperpack. The ebook looks really good, as I used Scrivener to create it, and previewed it before uploading it to Amazon. This closes the chapter on a project I’ve been playing around with for years. Now I can move on, to polishing up Death Riding and The Sword, before moving on to other works in embryo.

Finally, this is also available on Amazon:

Been on Gumroad for a while, but I’ve got the ebook up on Amazon and am finalizing the paperback edition as well. All in all, it’s been a pretty big month.

Content Blues, The Podcast – Episode 3: Poems, Prose and Princes

13 Jun 2021Andrew

As promised, a new episode of friendly rambling. I plan what I talk about with these, some notes I want to make, and then I just let the ramble happen. It gives me ideas and let’s me talk out loud about where my thoughts are. This one covers new readings and old movies.

Available on Anchor, Breaker, Google Podcasts, Pocket Casts, RadioPublic, and Spotify.

The Rule of 30 in Podcasting

11 Jun 2021Andrew

I’ve got a Content Blues Podcast about halfway recorded, and then there’s a Shallow & Pedantic planned to be recorded this weekend. Of the two, the CBP is easier, because I can add to that whenever I want. The work is getting enough recorded to fill out about 30 minutes or so of material. Any more than that is probably too much to listen to one person talking. Also, I find myself running out of things to say at about that time.

Shallow & Pedantic has the opposite dynamic. The last two I’ve had to edit things out so as to not get past an Hour and a half. Which has been about standard since we added the third man to the podcast. Prior to that, episodes were about an hour. So it seems that each person adds 30 minutes of talking. That doesn’t exactly match all podcasts I’ve listened to, but I have noticed that the more people you add, the longer it goes on. That must be why carrying a conversation at parties feels like such a chore.

Doing a podcast can feel like playing in a jazz quartet: you’ve got to keep some kind of a rythm, you’ve got to trade the flow properly, and you never know when you’re going to begin what it’s going to sound like. Some podcasts are free jazz or avant-garde, everyone just shouts, and the strongest voice will be heard. We’re not going for that vibe. It’s a serious podcast about unimportant things. A lot of them are unserious podcasts about important things. Which is better, I guess than unserious about unimportant. But I can’t imagine doing it that way. Why talk about the maelstrom of pop culture, most of which is derivative and unoriginal, unless you’re trying to form some kind of understanding of the world and why we respond to it in this way.

Art is the relationship between man and nature. If it’s bad, something’s going on to make it bad. You can call this “structural” if you want to, but that’s a word clunky and overused by communists. I prefer to call it “the thing unspoken”. Why are sitcoms the way they are? Something unspoken in their conception, production, and marketing, known to those inside the biz but not to the audience. That’s the kind of things that interests me.

Anyway, podcasts imminent. Watch this space.

Content Blues, The Podcast – Episode 2: Zarathustra’s Funko Pops

29 May 2021Andrew

This has become a more easily replicable format than Thumbs Down/Thumbs Up, as I don’t have to pretend that I’m doing anything but observing what I’ve encountered. Half an hour is about right for a program such as this, where I’m really just talking directly into the microphone. Shallow & Pedantic has three regulars now, so it clocks in about 90 minutes. This math checks out.

This episodes topics:

Why Blade Runner 2049 is the Best Sequel Ever
Miles Davis’ Get Up With It and the concept of Fusion Jazz
Zero HP Lovecraft’s The God Shaped Hole
Why Funko Pops are Of the Devil.

You can listen to it on:

Content Blues: The Podcast – Episode 1

18 May 2021Andrew

A long-conceived wish, finally brought to fruition by WordPress partnering with Anchor. I’m using this an an augmentation to the blog, a place to comment briefly on the aesthetics of what crosses my path. I did have some Absinthe while I was recording the first half of this. It created something of a vibe.

It’s quite a long recording, as I talk about a great many things:

Caligulia Update
Death Riding Update
The 2016 film Nocturnal Animals
My burgeoning Criterion Collection
90’s Nostalgia, Music, and Mix-Tapes
Nietzsche and the Post-Moderns
The Satyricon
Phillip K. Dick and Simulacra
My issues with William S. Burroughs, Nova Express and Cities of the Red Night
Using the above to write “Ale-Man Blues”, which appeared in Issue 25 of Unnamed Journal.

Looking to do this weekly to bi-weekly.

Shallow & Pedantic 13: Let us Now Abuse Kevin Smith

14 May 2021Andrew

Not really. I think I had that in mind when I conceived the episode, but when it came time to do the recording, we were far more even-handed. Kevin Smith has moved beyond his View Askew films from the 90’s, and although he’s done other things the universal critical consensus is that he’s never really grown as a filmmaker. So our conversation gets into the Why of that. We have some pretty interesting conclusions.

I’m adding a bunch of links this time, from a variety of our distribution channels. First Spotify:

Then iHeartRadio:

WordPress doesn’t seem to want to embed the Deezer link, and the Spreaker link is always glitchy, But here’s the feed as it appears on PodcastAddict:

Also there’s Podchaser. Regardless of what channel you prefer, make sure you Like and Subscribe. That’s the kind of data that creators need, not only because it gives us an idea of what content is really connecting with our audience, but because a little positive affirmation goes a long way in keeping us going. With that in mind, have you considered dropping a few coin on Unnamed Journal? We’re available on Gumroad, Amazon, and you get access to all content if you subscribe to our Patreon!

Shallow & Pedantic 12: BEHOLD

16 Apr 2021Andrew

This has actually been up for a week, but we were finalizing the new issue of Unnamed Journal, so I forgot to post it. Also I’ve been lazy about posting this month, for reasons best left unexplored.

In related news, I’m going to be experimenting with Anchor, the podcasting platform/service that’s partnered with WordPress. Due to Covid, we’ve been recording the podcasts remotely, via CleanFeed. That’s worked well enough, but there’s been some audio glitching. There’s also the possibility of recording video as well as audio, which may add a new element.

In any case, this episode quickly caroms off it’s initical topic, vampire comedy, to embrace a host of related topics, up to and including reminiscences about the Goth Scene from back in the day. I shaved about 10 minutes off of what we recorded, as I’ve decided going past 90 minutes is excessive. In the past I’ve limited my edits to taking out dead space and brain farts; going forward I’ll be making aesthetic judgements as well.

Enjoy.

Shallow & Pedantic 10 – Go Team Phrasing!

12 Mar 2021Andrew

We’ve gotten to the point where we just kind of suggest podcast topics during the previous podcast (these don’t make it onto the platform; no one wants to listen to that), and we roll with it. I don’t recall this topic being on the List of Topics we did a few months ago, but we did it anyway, as we’re fans of both The Venture Brothers and Archer. The conversation veered around what the Joke is on both shows, the overarching theme, and how they reflect the generational aesthetics of their creators (Gen-Xers all, and largely aimed at a Gen-X audience).

At this point, it seems like 90 minutes is the new normal. Adding the third person seems to result in an extra 30 minutes of content.

Shallow & Pedantic 9: Anime 101

29 Jan 20211 Feb 2021Andrew

The podcast feed player appears to be working again, but I’ll keep an eye on it and embed the YouTube Link if I need to. These episodes keep getting longer, but I enjoy making them more and more. Believe you me, I deleted an extended tangent off of it. Anime is something of a niche topic, but less niche for the younger generation. I am relatively unfamiliar with the genre, so it comes across as more of an interview.

Update: The podcast feed player derped out again. Here’s the Spotify:

Shallow & Pedantic 8 – Comic Books and Other Shenanigans

24 Dec 2020Andrew

There’s probably a thousand podcasts meeting that description, but whatever. This one is ours. And we run through a host of topics, some silly, some deeply silly. And we go on for the length of a Bible on them.

I’m using the YouTube embed because WordPress is being every more exponentially garbage at embedding what Spreaker gives me. WordPress’ Podcast Player block refuses to embed my RSS url, and for some reason known only to God the episode permalink, a hack which worked just fine last month, will not embed now. The lengths to which WordPress is willing to go to hobble embeds for paying customers feels like emotional abuse. I’m not going to pay another $300 for your Business Plan so I can have plugins just so things that aren’t YouTube embed normally, WordPress. You can go pound sand.

Merry Christmas.

Category: Podcast