Welcome to the Ozcat Radio DJ Blogs. This is mostly a catchall communications resource for our DJs: a place for thoughts, playlists, rants and raves, links to sites & sounds, you know… the usual DJ stuff.
Come on in. Browse around. Interact. All of our DJs have pages. Some do update more than others. You know DJs though… uncork them and they can really go on. Here’s a place for them to do it. 🙂
The 2023 Edition of the Eurovision Song Contest just wrapped up, and it was a doozy! It was the perfect embodiment of Pluto in Aquarius: the establishment status quo voting one way, and the people having a very different opinion. Finland’s entry, from Finnish rapper/singer Käärijä was the clear popular favorite. The juries from the countries’s musical establishment preferred the slick Europop of previous winner Loreen, from Sweden. Here’s Käärijä‘s performance. Don’t share it or link it. The European Broadcasting Union is very protective of their rights, because they’re selling a DVD of the performances. I’m just sharing this with the Ozcat DJs because it’s the biggest music story of the week.
Author and former War Cameraman Jon Steele
I recently sat down (on opposite ends of a 9,300 mile Skype connection) for a long conversation with author and former conflict cameraman Jon Steele. The long-form, music and chat FM radio journey ran on All Over the Road on August 19th. The podcasts are below.
I caught up with Jon at his home in Lausanne, Switzerland a couple of times over the past few weeks, old friends chatting, and then I just uncorked him and let him go. What ensued is a fascinating ramble through some of the hotspots of the world, setting the scene for his current project, the mystical noir Angelus Trilogy.
The interview will run again at 6pm, September 12, on All Over the Road. It’s the radio equivalent of the long read—three hours of talk and music—so grab what you need and settle in for an adventure.
Radio, TV and writing, the fall of the USSR, Rwanda, Bosnia, Iraq lunacy, Jerusalem
“War Junkie: One Man’s Obsession with the Worst Places on Earth“
“The Baker Boys: Inside the Surge“
“The Angelus Triology“
In a Q&A for the release, Jon was asked what to expect from the Angelus Trilogy:
“Angels, demons, false prophets and rock and roll; a private eye without a memory of a life, a high class hooker on the run, a mysterious brain injured young man who lives in the belfry of Lausanne Cathedral in Switzerland and calls the hour through the night, a fat grey cat who talks, a Swiss cop in a cashmere coat; drugs, drink, merciless killers, lost souls, quantum mechanics, creation mythology, religion, evolution, an ancient prophecy buried in the Dead Sea Scrolls; beforetimes and nowtimes, Planck time, nuclear Armageddon in real time … all coming together as the Voyager One spacecraft (launched from Earth in 1977) crosses a previously unknown region of the heliosphere and breaks into interstellar space, with a gold disc onboard bearing an SOS to the creator of the universe that paradise is headed for a mass extinction event.”
Jon Steele Interview, Part 1: Radio, TV and War (46 minutes)
Jon Steele Interview, Part 2: War Junkie and PTSD (1 hour)
Jon Steele Interview, Part 3: Baker Boys to Angelus (1 hour 3 minutes)
MP3s are V4 Variable (~160kbps)
My criteria for fair use is what it should be: even if I assumed that you were just itching to grab this show, then strip out, label and tag the songs so you could steal them (because that’s apparently what the RIAA believes), there’s not a complete song in the lot without voiceover and/or missing verses.
I doubt these artists would be offended and you probably won’t care about the edits. They’re unobtrusive.
If you want to hear the show with the songs intact, catch the rebroadcast Saturday September 12th, 2015, at 6:00pm PDT. In Vallejo, you can listen to it on 89.5 FM. Elsewhere, it’s streamable on TuneIn:
Song credits:
Rolling Stones “Sympathy for the Devil”
Steely Dan “FM”
The Beatles “Paperback Writer” and “Back in the USSR”
Bob Dylan “Masters of War”
Neil Young “Living with War”
CSNY “Find the Cost of Freedom”
Jimi Hendrix “Angel”
The Band “The Weight”
Bruce Springsteen “Devils and Dust”
Dire Straits “Ride Across the River”
pg.lost “Crystalline”
Ascension of the Watchers “Like Falling Snow”
Locomotora “Older than Dreams”
Jon Stewart’s Brilliant Closing Speech
from 2010’s Rally for Sanity and/or Fear
Produced by Jeremy McCaleb.
Music: David Gilmour and The Orb’s “Metallic Spheres”
(Lots of tiny timing and volume envelope tweaks,
but mostly the music just fit. Uncannily so.)
As more and more info leaks out about the lack of personal privacy and security online due to government infringements, there are also more and more discussion about ways to grab what security you can for yourself and those with whom you associate.
There are several existing technologies that are being used for this, and there will continue to be more of them. Most of Europe has lost trust in US tech companies’ ability (or willingness) to protect their information, so more major players will be entering development in this area.
This post is basically a cork-board to pin useful stuff we find on this subject. We limit ourselves by thinking of ourselves as only a radio station or internet radio station. We’re a community communications resource, and should always keep our eye on ways to continue that should things go sideways.
If you find relevant or interesting stuff, drop it in a comment. We can pull the best of it into this post as links.
A short-range pirate radio transmitter made from a $55 Raspberry Pi.
Watch John Oliver completely eviscerate the FCC’s new rules regarding Net Neutrality.
Th FCC wants comments at FCC.gov/comment. Good luck getting through. Keep trying. We shut down the FCC website the first day after this ran on Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight!” but 45,000 comments managed to get through between its crashing. Let’s keep it up.
Here’s my rant for the FCC. Feel free to use any of it in your own:
Dear FCC Arbiters of network “equality”:
If the results of the Telecomm Act of 1996 are any indication—and there’s no reason to think they aren’t—your new “monopoly-allowed” net neutrality rules are guaranteed to destroy innovation on the internet, which rarely comes from the companies that already own the market. Look what it did to radio. Opponents of the Act said at the time that the same few companies would end up owning every single major market station, and that it would be the death of independent, local radio. And look: who owns multiple stations with every major format in every major market? And where are all the locally-based, independent stations today? 100-watt LPFMs? Really?
Market leaders have no need to innovate. They already own the market. It simply reduces their profits, like adequate customer support. If you want new platforms and architectures to continue to grow, you can’t hand over network control to those whose main interest is in protecting the ageing technologies they currently own, and will continue to push off on us unless innovation comes from their competition. This is how the US ends up in 17th place internet-wise.
As for fairness, promises that the companies seeking to turn the internet into a tier-based cable TV clone will “play fair” with bandwidth are worthless, based on their history. The proposed fast-lane/slow-lane proposal will end up being normal-lane/no-lane, especially where protest or anti-Comcast (for instance) groups put up websites. No Lane for YOU. It will stifle dissent, protest, and freedom of speech. There is really no such thing as free speech when legitimate complaints can be throttled into oblivion by the very organizations against whom the complaints are made. A paid, tiered internet guarantees that those with more money get HD video and 7.1 sound, while those without get to cup their hands and shout.
As a lifelong professional in radio and internet, I cannot protest these new rules strongly enough. Internet is a fundamental requirement in today’s society. You can’t even apply for a job these days without connectivity. (A cell phone is no alternative; it’s useless for many internet services, like filling out large application forms online.) And once telephone calls started being routed via VoIP, the internet became virtually indistinguishable from traditional hard-wired communications. After all, what’s the difference now? Different kind of wire? One uses RJ-11 and the other uses RJ-45 connectors? Internet bandwidth is a modern basic, like water, electricity and gas. It should be classified and regulated as a utility: a common carrier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8zmkzshUvE
I’ll use the Billboard headline verbatim, to make a point: in these days when you hear nearly every day or so about some “legend” dying, you have to take notice at the passing of someone who truly deserves the word. With a seven-decade career including fifty-two studio albums, twenty-three compilation albums, ten live albums, and five singles, Pete Seeger actually fits the bill. There is not a folk singer, protest singer or activist (or human, for that matter) alive who does not owe a debt to Pete Seeger, and yet even in as diverse and blue-collar a town as Vallejo, you’ll find a surprising number of people who have never heard of him, though they might know his songs.
I’ll let his music talk, along with mainstream accolades from an assortment of sources. Here are a few eulogies with good video links:
Pete Seeger, Legendary Folk Singer, Dies at 94 | Billboard
Pete Seeger, who used his voice as a musician, folk song curator, environmentalist and humanitarian to demand justice for less-privileged, died Jan. 27 at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.
He touched lives by singing for unions, children and presidents, performing mining camps, folk festivals and Carnegie Hall. He turned a Bible verse and an African chant into hit records, traveled with Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly and championed Bob Dylan, adapted a gospel song to sing for union workers and wound-up creating an anthem for the civil rights movement in “We Shall Overcome.” Later in life he made the clean-up of the Hudson River a reality, toured with Arlo Guthrie and saw musicians such Bruce Springsteen, Ani DiFranco and Sweet Honey in the Rock embrace his work and ethos.
Pete Seeger: 10 great songs – Telegraph.
Pete Seeger, who was born in New York on May 3, 1919, had an upbringing steeped in music. His father, Charles, taught music at the University of California, Berkeley and his mother, Constance de Clyver Edson Seeger, was a concert violinist. His half-sister, Peggy, would become an eminent folk musician alongside Ewan McColl, and his half-brother Mike Seeger also became a folk singer.
Seeger, who has died at the age of 94, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and a National Medal of Arts, and, in 1996, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. When Seeger’s 90th birthday was celebrated, Bruce Springsteen hailed him as “a living archive of America’s music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along.”
8 songs to remember Pete Seeger by – The Week.
Pete Seeger didn’t like singing by himself. It wasn’t just that he contributed his tenor (and banjo picking) to two seminal folk groups — the Almanac Singers (with Woody Guthrie) and The Weavers — or later frequently collaborated with Woody’s son Arlo Guthrie. Audience participation was a hallmark of Seeger’s seven decades performing in front of crowds large and small.
The American folk music legend died Monday at age 94 of natural causes. His wife of 70 years, Toshi, died last year.
Pete Seeger Dies: Remembering the Folk Singer’s Best Songs: Video | TIME.com
Throughout Seeger’s career, which spanned seven decades, he released more than 40 albums (including two in 2013). But Seeger wasn’t just prolific: He used his music to support a litany of political causes and movements, becoming known as a thoughtful and thought-provoking writer and performer of left-wing political anthems. Whether as a solo performer or as part of the groups The Weavers and The Almanac Singers, Seeger’s songs influenced several social movements of the 20th century, with many of his most famous songs centering on themes of war, labor rights and civil rights.
Despite battling censorship and charges of communism in McCarthy-era America, Seeger was able to push political folk songs into the mainstream.
For the astrologically inclined, here’s a pretty eye-opening chart: The New Moon on New Year’s Day, 2014. After a bit of trial and error to see what location would be directly under this at the time of the new moon, it turns out to be (TADA!) The Vatican.
How absolutely fitting. A Grand Cross in all the Cardinal signs (!) pinned by a New Moon at Noon on the New Year over the Vatican. (How many pins is that, anyway?)
This astrological configuration is a continuation of the same Saturn-Uranus opposition sequence, whose epic battle between transformation and the status quo hinged around Pluto, and still does, even after Saturn has moved on. Uranus and Pluto are still pushing along the same dynamic energy that gave us the Economic collapse of 2008, Deepwater Horizon, Fukushima, which has been opposed by an ossified Status Quo so firmly entrenched it fought tooth and nail in its apparent quest to fail to learn every possible lesson from those disasters. But Saturn has left the building, and you might notice the entrenched status quo has started taking a beating.
I’ve no idea how this plays out, but the chart was too fascinating not to pass along. It looks like this will be an interesting year.
To be clear, the Vatican is only one of many locations under that meridian. I used it because it seemed the most potent. To be a true cross, the Ascendant and Midheaven would be square. That location under the meridian is somewhere in the Congo.
This is a radical chart: a Grand Cross built around one opposition between Uranus in Aries (where its entry on March 11, 2011 coincided with the Fukushima disaster !) opposed by Mars, and another between Sun/New Moon/Mercury/Pluto in Capricorn’s house of status opposed by Jupiter’s fortune and expansion in Cancer’s house of the Home. In other words, ALL of the power players are involved in the Square, while the stilling or calming ones are only obliquely connected.
As the core of this is centered around the transformative urges of Uranus vs the security of Saturn, it’s easy not to mention that both of those two planets entered their opposition on a degree already occupied by Pluto at the square. It is still marking the moving center of this complex of aspects. Pluto is generational. It stays in sign for 20 years, so it acts slowly, but constantly, on a whole generation or time frame.
It’s tiny, and very far away but has influence far beyond what you’d expect, because it marks the limit of our planetary knowledge of the solar system. It has symbolic heft. That this Grand Cross is anchored by Pluto, which has been an active participant of the entire aspect series, is tremendously significant in astrological terms.
Also significant are the signs and planetary rulerships. The stellium at the top of the chart is in Capricorn, ruled by Saturn; so even though Saturn has left the Grand Square, it’s still represented. In fact, given Capricorn’s status and corporate inclinations, the effect when Pluto moved from expansive Sagittarius into Capricorn is illustrated in events by the date of its entry: late November 2008, as Uranus retrograded and sucked all the life out of the hope and change movement that had just elected Obama.
The weight of that power-based stellium is opposed to beneficent Jupiter in Cancer (ruled by the Moon which is in opposition in Capricorn, where it’s not very comfortable: too structured.) Look at the dominance of the Inequality Dynamic presently at play around us and you see a reflection of this power vs. home dynamic.
Uranus wants nothing to do with this. It’s really had it with Saturn obstructing change it knows is vital, and it’s at the active waxing square of this Grand Cross and is opposed by Mars, which is at the full position (opposite) in Mars’ own cycle with Uranus. Uranus is in Aries (ruled by Mars, which is opposition, also uncomfortable in balanced Libra, and would rather be on the other side in its home.)
Uranus is still in Aries, where it wreaked havoc in Fukushima in 2011, as Mars moved into Aries with Uranus. In other words, Mars is now full in the Mars-Uranus cycle that was new as Fukushima melted down.
This is one of those planetary crystallizations you walk past whistling nonchalantly. The most dangerous points are probably at the quarters, when the Moon throws ts power to Uranus and Mars. When its full, Jupiter will probably hold sway for a while.
You can see my earlier detailed explanations of this set of aspects from 2010 compiled in the article Planets in Motion.
