I saw Roger McGuinn, best known as a founder of The Byrds, although that seems so inadequate a way of describing his talent and influence on modern music. (Even though my wife didn’t know who he was…) I have been wanting to see him for a while now. He played the same venue a year or so ago, but I couldn’t get clear to go.

I took a chance and hoped the show didn’t sell out. It said there were still seats available on Thursday on the website and it’s a big hall. So I just went and planned to pick up a single seat at the box office.

When I got there, I almost immediately ran into most of the group The Dustmen. Brian, Harry and Russ are my friends from many a celtic show and former Kilbrannan fans. When I said I had to go get a ticket, they told me they had an extra one and I offered to buy it. I paid the full price, gladly. I would have at the box office anyway and I loked at it as helping a friend out, not getting a deal. Well, in a way, I got a deal anyhow. The seats were fifth row, center. Great seats and I got to sit with people I knew as well…

The opening act was Maria Sebastian, who I had met but never heard play live. I knew from reputation and her online samples that she was good. But her show lived up to her reputation. She played a too-short acoustic set, but was just captivating. Her presence on stage was comfortable. She clearly was at ease performing in front of the large crowd. Rather than try to play folky music to try to fit with McGuinn, she simply played some of her music. Not that it wasn’t folk or acoustic music, but it was her own style.

She told a short anecdote about playing a gig in a shopping center and some woman saying she should open for her husband. She took the card and didn’t think much of it until she got home and Googled the name on the card: Roger McGuinn! So, my wife is in good company. And Maria got an opening gig for a big name when he came to Buffalo again.

I, on the other hand didn’t need to be told who he was! I’ve been a Byrds fan since the late sixties, almost from the time I started buying records. But I’ve kept up since, as well. Back To Rio was a favorite of mine after finding it in a used CD bin at a local record shop. I’ve been listening to Jim’s (Roger McGuinn’s given name is James) online postings, which have evolved into the Folkden recordings, since the days when it was a hand-crafted HTML page. (Of course, now it’s a WordPress Blog, complete with RSS feed for the audio files and I get them with my feed reader, FeedDemon.) Jim has been an early adopter to using the internet to promote, share and educate via the internet. He’s a Mac user, but I won’t hold that against him

I knew the show was billed as part of the Great Performers Series at Buff State and would probably be mostly acoustic. So I didn’t really expect to hear a lot of Bryds songs. I thought we’d mostly hear his newer work and the traditional folk music he’s been devoting his Folkden to. (Besides being a performer, he’s been – at least to me- a preservationist for folk music. He’s not afraid to reinterpret a song, but he always seems to know the history of it and pass that on. People like him and Pete Seeger are preserving folk music the old way, by playing it and passing it on to new audiences.)

But my low expectations were pleasantly shattered, when he strolled out onto the stage playing his trademark Rickenbacker 12-string hollow-body electric. He played a little bit of everything, plenty of Bryds material, plenty of folk and plenty of his own solo work. I recognized probably 90% of it by the opening notes of each song, yet there were a few stumpers in there as well. I was surprised to find out he had written the Turtles song “You Showed Me.”

Each song had a story to tell. We heard about his working for Bobby Darin in the Brill Building, about taking Beatles riffs and putting folk songs to them, about touring with Bob Dylan, etc. He played his seven-string acoustic guitar – the Martin HD-7 custom made for him to include the double G-string like a 12-string guitar, while letting him play the rest of the strings like a standard guitar. He also played several songs on his 5-string banjo.

He had the audience clapping along to “Old Blue,” singing along to several other songs and finished the night with a four-song encore. He finished up with the ever appropriate “May The Road Rise To Meet You.”

Seen in audience: Andy Babiuk, author of Beatles Gear, a book on the guitars of the Beatles. He’s worked at House of Guitars for over 20 years, and is staff consultant for The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Wonder if there’s a Bryds Gear book in the works?

Here’s what one blog, Linux Journal had to say:

In a move that recalls the Vogons’ decision to destroy Earth to clear the way for a highway bypass through space (a thankfully fictional premise of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), the judges comprising the Copyright Royalty Board have decided to destroy the Internet radio industry so the Recording Industry won’t be inconvenienced by something it doesn’t know, like or understand.

Read more about this and how you can take action against it:

Save Our Internet Radio
Save The Streams

At this point the only possibility is to persuade our government to change this action. Contact your Senator and Representatives and tell them you don’t want internet radio to be priced out of existence.

How this affects podcasts isn’t clear, but you can bet they will either try to apply this to it, or come up with something just as bad soon.

I had a great time, of course. I’ve always liked Toronto ever since our days in high school when my class went there for a class trip. We liked it so much, we went twice, two different years. We went to Crystal Beach one other year, and I don’t remember the fourth, so Canada in general was pretty popular.

So I decided to go up for the Podcamp. I had no idea what it would be like, never having been to one before. I’ve really been doing kind of a solitary thing with this podcast business. I don’t know many other people who are podcasters. In fact, people who even understand – really understand, not just know it has something to do with an iPod – (it doesn’t, really) – are still the minority. I usually tell someone I have a podcast and I get a “that’s nice” and a blank stare.

That didn’t happen at Podcamp! Everyone there totally got it. Even those who didn’t have a podcast of their own. There were basically three kinds of people at the podcamp: those who had a podcast, those who wanted to have a podcast and those who had some other connection to podcasting, usually having a service to provide to podcasters.

That last group sounds very commercial, but it wasn’t. The people who were there to promote services of interest to podcasters were really just as into it as the podcasters themselves. I think podcasting is still such a new thing that it’s still a small community.

Community. That had to be the theme of the podcamp. It came up over and over and it’s really true. As I said above, most people grow blank stares when I mention it, but here, to quote one fellow podcaster I met there, Sean McGaughey, I’d found my tribe.

The conferences were about as diverse as you could want. The thing about the podcamp model is, if you want a session on any given subject, just sign up and hold it. If you don’t have the expertise yourself, either recruit someone or hold a panel discussion.
The organizers scheduled the rooms for the sessions, but didn’t dictate what was discussed at all.

The other rule of the podcamp was called the “rule of two feet.” If you didn’t feel you wanted to listen anymore, you were free to get up and walk out. With three sessions going at a time, it was easy to sample one and go catch part of another. If a topic ended up being over your head, or too basic, for that matter, you could change to another room, or just go out and socialize.

Socializing was a big part of the experience too. From the Friday night pre-event meet-up at a close-by bar, to the Saturday night bash at another nearby restaurant, it was a very social experience. Even during the sessions and at lunch, there were always a number of people in the concourse chatting, or even interviewing each other for podcasts.

Anyway, I’ve classified this post under “Podcast Reviews” a category I put in quite a while ago but haven’t used much. So let’s talk about some of the people I met and their podcasts. Don’t be mad if I forget anyone. there were just so many I can’t comment on everyone, but I’ll hit some highlights.

Andrew Stanley-Jones from geek.farm.life

Andrew was another of those I met right off the bat at the Friday night get-together. He’s a pretty friendly, normal guy doing a podcast you’d never expect – a podcast about his farm. Andrew and his wife moved to rural Indiana from California when they discovered that for the price of an average home in California, they could buy a whole farm in the midwest. Andrew’s job let him relocate – he’s an engineer in the electronics industry – and their hobby became running a small farm. The podcast is all about their experiences and advice on that subject. Oddly, enough, it’s interesting and unusual enough to not get boring.

Andrew had a lot of fun interviewing people at the Podcamp. He might have even played one with me!

Mike Dodd and Steve Saylor from This Week In Geek

These two guys took Podcamp by storm. They were everywhere having a great time and contributing not just their expertise, but their enthusiasm.

They’re students in the Broadcast Studies program at Niagara College in the Welland ONT area. They made a last-minute decision to head off to the podcamp and scraped together enough money to pay for the hotel and hopped in the car.

Also new to podcasts, they have taken their radio show on the college low-power radio station to the far-reaches of the internet. Their energy and ability to play off each other keeps it going at warp speed and always cool and interesting.

While in podcamp, they invited a bunch of people up to their hotel room for a podcast recording session. It was a blast with about six people at it’s peak just discussing the day’s activity. Oh, did I say it was 3am before we quit? The results made it into an episode of their podcast.

Sassy Sonya Buyting of Sassy Science

Although I didn’t know it at the time, Sonya is a successful TV journalist. She did a Sassy Science series for the Canadian version of Discovery Channel – EXN.ca. She’s now working on a show called Collector Showdown on Treasure HD in Canada and the US. I kind of sensed she was a professional. She gave me a great audio promo for her podcast and I had to check it out when I got home.

She said she had just started the podcast and there is only one episode, but it’s great. Very professional and cool.

Sean McGaughey of For The Sake of the Song and Librivox Community Podcast

Sean is just a fun guy to hang out with. He’s a folk singer, comedian, podcaster, author and just plain good folks. I spent a whole podcast on him, so if you want to hear more, go there!

Julien Smith of In Over You Head Hip-Hop Podcast and Listen To Your Kids

Julien was one of the organizers of Podcamp Toronto, but he stayed kind of low key through the weekend. Yes, he was involved with several of the sessions and he was at the Friday night social, but a very modest guy. I spoke with him and got a short audio interview for my podcast, but I still didn’t know much about him.

In the interview, he mentioned his new podcast, Listen To Your Kids. I didn’t really get it until I got home and went to the website to see what it was about. I put it in one of my podcatchers to check often because I thought it was so – well revolutionary.

Let’s see if I can describe it before I rave more. It’s not like any podcast you’ve ever heard. It’s strictly audio commentary by people who call in on a phone and say what they want to get off their chest. The page says “Stop. Think for a second. What do you wish you could say to your parents.” The concept is that kids can call in anonymously and say anything that is bothering them about their life and anyone, can hear it. It’s not very active yet, but as it gets better-known and more calls start coming in, I think it’s going to be big. Listen to some of the calls and tell me it’s not.

But even without that, Julien’s other work is pretty impressive. His podcast is one of the oldest in Canada and is carried on Sirius and Podshow. It’s won a few awards and Julien was one of the first bloggers to be granted media (journalist) access to Cirque du Soliel. Wow!

Julien was totally cool and humble and one of us. It just gives you inspiration that if you keep at it and do innovative things with this medium, you will be recognized eventually.

Of course, there were many other interesting people that I met there. I could go on for quite a while, but this is already too long. I had an amazing time and would love to do it again. Though, maybe it was one of those one-of experiences that because it happened at just such as formative time in podcasting, it will be a hard act to follow. We’ll see…

I just can’t get enough.

I’m always listening to podcasts. Mostly music. Actually, Leo’s are the only tech ones I can stomach. I’m usually 10-20 hours of listening behind. But I listen at work when things get slow and there is nothing else to do in the middle of the night. Nothing like the Dorktones at 3AM!

Several podcasts have come to my attention that are run by Hams. The first was Dits and Bits, by NV0U. It started out with Morse code lessons and has morphed into general discussion about Ham Radio. The code lessons were nothing special and could have been continued with practice sessions for quite a bit longer, but it seems like they just lost interest. It’s too bad, because, as long as you didn’t expect large numbers of subscribers, it was an excellent idea and should have found a niche. Big numbers are not necessary for a odcast, especially if it provides a service.

Another one is Soldersmoke’s Media. This podcast is put out by Mike, KL7R, in Juneau, Alaska, and Bill, M0HBR, in London, England who meet up on Echolink and record their QSO for the podcast. One is in England and the other in Alaska. They discuss a wide range of things from QRP kits to Mars rovers and anything in between. Every topic is fairly technical, but not so much that it will go over anyone’s head. It’s interesting up to a point, especially if you are not a Ham, but after a while, it’s just another QSO and you have the urge to spin the dial and find another one, except that it’s not on your radio, its a podcast. On top of that, it’s not even real radio, it’s Echolink. It might tie into a VHF radio at one end – they don’t really tell you, but there is an IDer and tail – but the bulk of the work is done on the internet. It might as well be a Skype call.

Another one is not overtly about Ham Radio, but you have to assume the host is a ham. It’s Radio QRM. This is what the inaugural post says: “Any man-made interference to a radio signal is known as QRM. This is Radio QRM. Noise traditional radio can’t ignore.” He’s either a Ham or knows a lot about it. There is no more references to Ham Radio, just a lot of podsafe music. The same old podsafe music you’ve already heard on the Rock And Roll Geek Show or Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code. Sorry, there just isn’t enough music on the Podsafe Network for us to all play the same stuff. If he wants to make a successful podcast, he’s going to have to find a niche and specialize in it, or else find other sources of podsafe music.

And of course, there is my podcast, the Buffalo Live! Music Podcast. It has nothing to do with Ham Radio at all and I don’t mention it. Perhaps the only thing to do with Ham Radio in my podcast is that Ham Radio holds so little interest to me right now that I have time and energy to put into a podcast!

So far, no one has found a real good formula to take Ham Radio to a podcast and introduce it to the world. I have hope that it might happen. Someone could do it with some imagination. Actually, it would be a perfect application for the old Westlink Radio. It would solve all their distribution problems and let anyone listen or get it and rebroadcast it on their local repeater. In a way, what the Westlink people were trying to do was a predecessor to podcasts. All they were lacking was RSS feeds.

Actually, I just fond out that they are offering the AR Newsline as a RSS feed subscription. The AR Newsline is the successor to the Westlink effort.

I still think someone with credibility and connections to the Ham Radio community could pull this idea together and create a podcast about Amatuer Radio aimed at the general public. No, not the ARRL, although they could easliy do it and will, as a “me too” effort, if someone else makes a go of it. No someone like Worldradio, or Wayne Green or Joe Fairclough and the 22 Crew could do a Ham Radio podcast and make it work. Let’s see if it happens. And remember I predidcted it here.