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Our first LP release, HURLY BURLY AND THE VOLCANIC FALLOUT - GIANT ROBOT JETPACK \\ THE NEW CLEAR LAWN CHAIRS - VOTED MOST CHILL IN HIGHSCHOOL is out! It's shipping now. This record means so much to me. It's a split. Double A-Side, two covers. The Chairs' side was recorded in 2014 or 2015 (it's hard to say, Jon says "I'm 19 years old" and "Now I'm 20 years old" in the same song, the lyrics to which were written they day he recorded it.) It is a snapshot of the metro atlanta music scene of that era, an ode to the majesty and shame of Swayze's Venue in Kennesaw, GA.

It was also one of the first releases Analog Revolution put out as a DIY label, way back when. We released it on cassette and CD. Now it is once again available on cassette, and for the first time on LP. Now, In the time since, Jon of the New Clear Lawn Chairs has gone on to join Michael Cera Palin, which is admittedly a very different jam from Voted Most Chill in Highschool, but you may know him better as their bassist.

The other A-Side is Hurly Burly and the Volcanic Fallout's Giant Robot Jetpack. It features coverart by Will Dover. It was the first album recorded at the Ellijay Makerspace, shortly before we officially opened to the public. It features the co-founder of Analog Revolution, Ryan Stoyer, on bass, and the current AR person at AR, Violet, on vocals and guitar. You may also know Violet from her work in Doctor Deathray. You may not know that Hurly Burly and the Volcanic Fallout played the Analog Revolution kick-off party. ~10 years ago, before we opened our record store, to coincide with the release of the first issue of our Magazine, Hurly Burly and the Volcanic Fallout played a secret set under a bridge in an abandoned go-kart park in an undisclosed location.

Both of these bands have been with us since the beginning (or before!) and I am so thrilled to be able to bring them both to a wider audience via this Beautiful Volcanic/Nuclear splatter LP (produced by Physical Music Productions in Nashville)

You can get the record now on Bandcamp.

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You might not know this, but I write and produce a comedy podcast about the worlds least skillful bigfoot hunter, and the things he finds and kills instead of bigfoot.

It's called Expedition Sasquatch. It releases irregularly, and you can listen to it right now for free.

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The latest project from the guy behind @shortformblog did this excellent writeup about what we're doing with New Ellijay Television, and why we're doing it.

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It's Bandcamp Friday. My friend Violet just released this single, recorded at Analog Revolution studio inside the Ellijay Makerspace. It's a banger that whips and slaps and also fucks.

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We're making television.

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By Connor Dylan, from our upcoming release Songs of The Workers (to fan the flames of discontent.)

lyrics

Our retirement plan is revolution. There will be no 401k's or roth IRAS in 2048 you will not be able to cash in your bitcoin, dogecoin, etherium, or NFTs at your local JP Morgan Chase Comcast NBC Universal Dodge Crysler Jeep Branch. Our Retirement plan is revolution You will not be boarding a rocket with Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, or Bill Gates bound for Mars, the International Space-station or the nearest Goldilocks planet. Our only path to safety and healthy is expropriating all of their wealth and our retirement plan is revolution. You will not be able to sell your now submerged sea side villas to aquaman, neptune, or the real estate speculators from the lost city of atlantis, Our only real estate speculation is to smash this bourgeoisie state without hesitation, and our retirement plan is revolution. You will not get your money back on treasury bonds, t-bills, corporate sub prime bonds, mortgage backed securities, social security, or IOUs from your college room mate that you've been holding on to for your 25th year reunion You better increase your rate of interest in justice and a habitable planet. Our retirement plan is revolution. CBS, CNN, and the Wall Street Journal will not be at liberty to discuss the grim meathook realities that you could see out your own window if you ever decided to open your fucking blinds. The revolution and it's causes will never be televised, our path to safety and health is to expropriate all of their wealth and our real estate speculation is to smash the imperial state without hesitation. So you better increase your rate of interest in justice and a habitable planet. Our retirement plan is revolution.

credits

released December 31, 2021 Music and Lyrics by Connor Dylan (with limited contributions from Andrew Roach) CC-BY-SA (get it on bandcamp)

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What is New Ellijay Television? Find out if you dare.

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We can and must find and kill bigfoot

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The Small Things Manifesto

This manifesto hits hard. It's on the value of small things, issues of scale, and just so much more. It comes from the person who actually inspired some of my art and work.

The small things Manifesto – ~ajroach42.com – I'm Andrew. I write about the past and future of tech, music, media, culture, art, and activism. This is my blog.

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The second episode of the Official Jupiter's Ghost podcast is up now.

The reviews have started coming in!

People are saying "Snerk!" and that it's "Even better than then first one!"

I also released a little in universe bit that didn't make it in to the episode: https://intergalactic.computer/social/podcast/personal-log-james-andrews/

If you want to participate, Do! You can just sign up for an account.

Originally, this episode was going to be squarely focused on the Generation Ship. We have some content prepped for that, and I know several of our regular contributors had Generation Ship content planned.

But we got swerved.

One of our contributors delivered a tightly sewn up, and unreasonably hilarious plot development that derailed most of what we had planned, and let us strike off in a different and better direction.

I couldn't pass it up. We centered it. We schemed on how to respond. We built something new. Collaborative ideation.

The next episode will move away from the Mouse storyline for a bit.

We won't leave it behind entirely. If you've ever dealt with a rodent problem, you know that you can't just Resolve it.

But we put a nice little bow on it for today, and this has put a fun little spin on what we were planning originally, which we'll address in the next episode.

That's the beauty of collaborative storytelling! None of us would have told today's story in a vacuum.

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New Ellijay Television.

Tumblr doesn't allow embeds of Peertube videos, but does allow embeds of Youtube videos.

This has the unfortunate consequence of supporting the social dominance of Youtube over Peertube. I hate that.

I run a peertube instance called New Ellijay Television. It's a local first streaming and VOD platform for the north GA mountains, featuring original content and archival materials.

I want to *share* that original content and archival material here on tumblr, but if I try to share it, tumblr will only allow me to post links. This is a sorry state of being. So here is a link to a video we've released recently:

It's the pilot for a cartoon version of a podcast. Here's another:

That's a newly Public Domain Laurel and Hardy flick from 1927. If you've never seen it, it is SPECTACULAR, in every sense of the word.

Maybe one day, Tumblr will let me share peertube videos directly. Until then, this will have to do.

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It’s public domain day in the US. In celebration, I’ll spend the next few weeks post about things that have recently entered the public domain, and about Public Domain Remix projects. To kick things off, here’s a newly scored copy of the once-lost Laruel and Hardy picture “The Battle of the Century” presented by New Ellijay Television.

We scored this using recordings from Archive.org’s great 78 project, specifically recordings dated pre 1923, as those are currently in the public domain in the US. No new music entered the public domain this year, but we’ll get yearly music drops starting next year for a while.

Thanks to the UCLA film and television archive for the original restoration work circa 2015.

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Welcome to the new year! I’m glad you made the transfer without incident.

It is my Duty and Privilege to announce the public launch of a project I’ve been working on for the better part of a decade, This is Jupiter’s Ghost! It is a podcast set in the creative commons CC-BY-SA licensed universe of the Solar Federation. It’s a community initative, written and record by a small but growing group of contributors, which you are formally invited to join!

What is Jupiter’s Ghost?

Many things! Jupiter’s Ghost is a podcast (and possibly soon to be a cartoon from New Ellijay Television) set in the universe of the Solar Federation It’s a big universe against which lots of science fiction stories can be told, and it is my hope that Jupiter’s Ghost is the first of many.

Why is Jupiter’s Ghost?

The simple answer is that I’ve always wanted to tell hopeful stories about the future, and the crew of the Jupiter’s Ghost gets to exist in a world that, while still imperfect, is much better than our own. It gives me a chance to tell stories about how the world might be, if we work together, and how Freedom is a Constant Struggle, not something we reach, but something that we continue to reach for.

Basically, it gives me a chance to tell stories in a way that aligns with my values.

Please give it a listen, subscribe, review us on iTunes and Stitcher and Spotify and, eventually, when Google decides we’re worth indexing, Google Podcasts.

Share it with your friends, consider participating in the universe. Help us turn this in to something special.

That’s the meat of the post, but if you want to stick around I’m going to talk about what we’ve done, and why we’ve done it, and what we’re going to do next.

Like I said at the top, I started working on this thing nearly a decade ago. It before we closed Analog Revolution’s first physical location, before we moved across the country, before we moved back, and moved back, and moved back again. The current iteration of the thing entered the planning phases on the fediverse circa 2016, and then So Much life happened.

Thankfully, I have some great collaborators, and we’ve got it going. So let’s talk about what and why.

Why CC-BY-SA?

Jupiter’s Ghost is creative commons licensed, which means that anyone is free to share it, adapt it, remix it, or contribute to it. It’s specifically CC-BY-SA licensed, which means that if anyone does remix it, adapt it, etc. they are required to release their adaptation under the same terms. They don’t need my permission, approval, or support. They can, you can, just do it.

This was an intentional decision, and one carefully made to align with my values, but it has been a point of confusion for some folks so far, so let me unpack it.

I have written in the past about my appreciate of DIY Media and Fan Fiction, and the need for more creative works from normal people. I won’t rehash those things here, but the gist is that most of our modern collective folklore, the stories we tell one another and use to relate to the universe, are owned by Disney and a small handful of other companies and they use this position of power and control to harm us.

On this, Public Domain Day 2023, I invite you to consider the cautionary tale of Star Trek New Voyages. New Voyages should be a shining beacon of DIY Media. For those who are unfamiliar, it’s a fan series that imagines and recreates the rest of the Five Year Mission of the original Enterprise. It was a wildly ambitious project that dramatically improves in overall quality as it progresses, and it was made possible by the labor, skill, and creativity of a huge community of people.

and in 2016, Paramount decided it was illegal.

This is their prerogative as the owners of the “Intellectual Property” that is Star Trek under modern copyright law, but it stung. It stung even more when I discovered recently that there were Three finished episodes in post production and Crew on set Filming another episode when they ruling was handed down. Those episodes will never be released, they are lost, they are empty space in history. We are terrible stewards of history and Copyright makes it worse.

Now, I can imagine many of those reading this rolling their eyes at the idea that something of value was lost here. “Don’t want your project to be shut down? Don’t use someone else’s IP!” I can imagine you saying, and if our Copyright system was at all sensible, I could understand that argument, but it isn’t. Our copyright terms are too long, and they’re stifling and restrictive.

So, here’s Jupiter’s Ghost. Here’s The Solar Federation. Here’s a big open universe with Spaceships and Aliens and history and a future, in to which any number of stories can be positioned. You can use it however you want, as long as you credit us, and give back to the commons.

Now yes, it’s wildly optimistic to think that anything like Star Trek New Voyages would ever exist for our little old podcast, but it’s legal, it’s allowed, it’s possible, and it’s encouraged. That’s a better model for how copyright might exist and it’s a way we can live our values while producing media that reflects what we believe.

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GIANT ROBOT JETPACK

You might remember, or you might not have ever know, that I spent a few years of my life trying to run a record store and record label in Kennesaw, GA. That record label, Analog Revolution is now proudly releasing cassettes, and will soon be releasing CDs and LPs.

Above you can hear Giant Robot Jetpack, the latest album from Hurly Burly and the Volcanic Fallout. It’s available now, and I am absolutely over the moon about it. This was recorded in the studio we run at the Ellijay Makerspace. The tapes are dubbed by hand using a stereo Recordex Cassette Duplicator, also at the Makerspace, and we’re working on a line of t-shirts that we’ll silk screen (also at the makerspace!)

This album is fantastic. It’s full of rampant, manic, high energy tracks that make you feel like you’re a kid again. This is not a coincidence, many of these songs were written when the performers were kids. The band is comprised of some of my dearest friends and closest co-conspiritors. The bands last show was ~10 years ago for the launch of the Analog Revolution zine (yep, it’s 10 years this year. What? How is that possible. Shit. Everything happens so much.)

Give it a listen. Buy it. Print out the album art and hang it on your wall. Reclaim the promise, energy, and fun that the world held when you were hyped up on sugar and watching cartoons in 2003 (substitute 2003 for whatever year is appropriate for you, of course.)

This is the second cassette release from Analog Revolution in the last three weeks, and there are many more coming. The venerable Doctor Deathray is running the show now, and she is not to be underestimated.

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Be the Eddison Carter you want to see in the world.

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DIY MEDIA

I wrote this in 2015 and updated it slightly in 2017. These ideas are central to all the work that I do.

Comcast (through merger with GE/NBC/Universal), Viacom, Disney (who now controls most of Newscorp/Fox’s media), CBS, and Time Warner currently control 90% of American media. This media oligopoly is more dangerous than we often give it credit for. These five companies exert incredible power over our modern political landscape. (They are responsible for things like the DMCA, and the TPP, EME, and today’s Net Neutrality decision, in addition to our ever increasing copyright terms.)

They collectively control so much of our political and economic landscape that it’s difficult to effectively understand, or begin to trace, the breadth of their influence. And that’s without stopping to consider how much the media we consume can shape our views. It’s hard to believe that the near constant coverage of President Trump in the months before the election didn’t influence his performance in the election.

We are constantly bombarded with entertainment and news media from these five companies, to the point that it is nigh inescapable. Even if the companies that feed us our news and entertainment were benign (and, don’t kid yourself, they aren’t), it would be nearly impossible to keep their biases out of our media. Simply put, we cannot afford to have such a vital part of our society controled by so few.

If we’re ever going to actually effect social change, we’re going to need to provide home grown, community alternatives to the media produced by the entrenched power structures represented by these mega-corporations. We need to hit them at their bottom line, which means creating (and consuming) compelling community TV, Film, Games, Prose, Music, and other art.

Many are already working towards these goals, and we should support them. Others are considering embarking on path towards DIY media. We must encourage and support them. As consumers, we must actively support the creators who choose to work independently.

See, it’s like this: When we buy stuff from major corporations, we transfer money (and therefore power) out of our local communities, and in to the pockets of CEOs and shareholders. When we make stuff, or buy stuff from our communties, that wealth (and power) stays within our communities.

Until recently, there were economic and logistic obstacles that prevented comunties from providing the same kind of Community alternatives for most kinds of media. Thankfully, this is no longer true.

Kids in their bedrooms can record and produce an album that sounds “professional” with a few hundred dollars worth of gear, or record an album that sounds “good enough” with a smartphone or a laptop and some free software. Countless news stories of the last few years broke on Twitter, or Facebook thanks to a citizen journalist and their smartphone. There have been many TV show style series released on the web, from amatuers and professionals alike.

People are making their own media, and that’s awesome.

For the first time in the history of mass broadcasting, anyone can reach an audience of millions. (Sure, at the moment, we largely rely on corporate behemoths like Google and Facebook to do it, but the DIY Tech movement is well underway with decentralized services like Mastodon going strong, and new platforms being developed every day.)

The products of modern hobbyists can rival and surpass the output of media conglomerates both in terms of quality and consumption in nearly every field. In fact, with the exception of a couple of NPR or BBC endeavours, most successful modern podcasts/audio dramas are community-centered productions.

Make Something!

At this point, I feel like the act of creating media outside of the control of a multi-million dollar corporation is a radical act in and of itself.

Media controls our perception of reality. Current media companies are monopolistically huge, and thanks to modern copyright law they exert undue control over the figures of our modern folklore

Studies have shown time and again that when people experience fiction about people, they identify and empathize with those people.

We experience the world through our media. We use it to contextualize and understand our environment. When the most popular TV shows and Movies are about renegade cops and violent vigilantes that take the law in to their own hands, we internalize and normalize that.

We have to control our own media.

The bit I mentioned about copyright before is why the Creative Commons foundation is so important. Copyright reform might be a defining battle of our age, but we can skip it by embracing CC.

I currently view independent media production and distribution as among the most significant and necessary acts of protest available to regular folks.

This was the message Punk was supposed to teach us, before it got co-opted by shitty white supremacists, and people so afraid of teenage girls that they burned down the whole institution.

We gotta make our own stuff, even if it’s garbage. But beyond that, we gotta support one another when we make stuff. A lot of Punk (and a lot of late 60s/early 70s Jazz) was recorded on potatoes, basically. It was of “low quality” compared to the output from the major labels of the era.

But it was also radical and revolutionary, and some of it unquestionably changed the face of modern music.

So, what I’m saying here, is don’t worry if your stuff is “good.”

Make it. Get it in the world. Share it.

Support One Another!

So, what can you do? You can make things. You can consume things. You can seek out independent media, and support it (by paying the creators, and spreading the word.) You can get off Facebook, and join something community run.

Right now, the DIY media community is just beginning to stretch it’s legs. We have found what appears to be a viable funding model through services like Kickstarter and Patreon, though these are not without fault. We are building the communication channels needed to enable solid Content Discovery (though this is still the largest problem facing the community today.)

So, consumers of media, I encourage you to intentionally seek out experiences that weren’t designed by one of the major players, and support community creators financially when possible.

Hop on Bandcamp and listen to music that was recorded in someone’s bedroom. Seek out independently produced films on Youtube. Go watch something out of the Public Domain. Listen to a podcast. Enjoy some fanfiction. Play some Indie computer games (no really), or read some independently published novels. Actively and intentionaly spend even a small portion of your media budget on something that wasn’t produced by one of the big 5.

And Creators: Keep making weird, wonderful stuff. Every piece of media created outside the sphere of influence of the big 5 is an act of protest. Keep fighting the good fight.

The effects, while slow to start, will snowball. If we work together, and support one another, we can break the hold this oligopoly has on our media. We can take our culture back.