Author: J T. Ramsay

FAVORITE BAND OF THE MOMENT: CUT COPY

It took me a lit­tle while to warm up to Aus­trali­a’s Cut Copy, a band I first saw at the Rhap­sody Rocks par­ty at SXSW. Now I’ve fall­en in love with their lat­est album, In Ghost Colours. It’s got the glitchy bril­liance that I loved about Beta Band, with some of the splashy synths that made me swoon for Depeche Mode as a kid. Dan Whit­ford’s vocals cer­tain­ly war­rant that com­par­i­son, espe­cial­ly on their first sin­gle, “Lights and Music.”

Watch them per­form “Lights and Music” in this video from Pitch­fork TV.

Posted on by J T. Ramsay

MUXTAPE: IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME

If you click on the mix­tape link in the top nav­i­ga­tion, you’ll find a puz­zling mes­sage from Mux­tape. It reads as fol­lows: “Mux­tape will be unavail­able for a brief peri­od while we sort out a prob­lem with the RIAA.” It was a con­cern I had the moment Mux­tape went viral in late March. Any­one who was pay­ing atten­tion when the site launched could’ve seen this com­ing, despite Mux­tape’s efforts to tie the site to Ama­zon and defend it from would-be stream rip­pers. Appar­ent­ly it was­n’t enough. It’s hard to believe that they’ll be back any­time soon.

I’m actu­al­ly a lit­tle sur­prised that there has­n’t been more out­cry over this. I’ve only seen this post from Val­ley­wag in my feed read­er so far. This is the stuff of an epic Hip­ster Runoff post! Will there be a har­row­ing exo­dus from Mux­tape to 8tracks? I already have!

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I STILL NEED YOUR LINKS!

I edit­ed my blogroll again this morn­ing. I’m treat­ing it as a more flu­id space until I can cat­e­go­rize these links on the links page prop­er. I’m try­ing to keep it live­ly so it’s just not a col­lec­tion of totemic links that you see on pret­ty much every blog in the known uni­verse. That prac­tice to me is a rel­ic of the days when one might try to ingra­ti­ate one­self to an edi­tor by read­ing their stuff reli­gious­ly. We’ve all done it, but it’s just silly.

There’s anoth­er rea­son I’m so adamant about this now. It’s the way of the Inter­net. Peo­ple used to treat their blogrolls like a new­stand to show off how var­ied their opin­ions were, or worse, to show­case well-con­nect­ed friends on the Inter­net. That too is sil­ly. If the blog is one of the basic units of social media, then it should be a social expe­ri­ence where every­thing is flu­id. Don’t just link to a blog out of oblig­a­tion! Tell us why you did it and why your read­ers should too.

This just isn’t about nudg­ing your online friends with memes; it should­n’t be cut­ting and past­ing a press release; it should be about hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one and shar­ing it with every­one. It makes for a much rich­er expe­ri­ence and will like­ly fill in those writer­ly gaps we all strug­gle with when we sit down to blog. It does­n’t have to be so hard!

So here’s what I want from you: I’m look­ing for peo­ple who are writ­ing fre­quent­ly and engag­ing­ly on almost any­thing. Drop your sug­ges­tions in the com­ments box if you feel so moved to rep for your­self or some­one you’re read­ing. Keep in mind that I actu­al­ly sub­scribe to the blogs I list. It takes a vil­lage, right?

Posted on by J T. Ramsay 1

I RAN 13 MILES TODAY!

I’ve been blog­ging about train­ing for the Philadel­phia Marathon on three dif­fer­ent plat­forms (first Tum­blr, then Pos­ter­ous, then final­ly Dai­ly Mile. For the record, I liked Pos­ter­ous best.) I’m decid­ing right now to go the Lizzyville route and make my progress a part of this blog going for­ward. Sound good? Good.

The last two weeks have been inter­est­ing. I’ve been run­ning for nine weeks. As I’ve men­tioned before, I’m fol­low­ing Hal Hig­don’s inter­me­di­ate two sched­ule. It’s gone well so far, even if I’m intim­i­dat­ed by some of these dis­tances. Last week, I was hob­bled by shin splints and gen­er­al stiff­ness. This week was a 180 degree turn­around and I have no idea why. Weird, right?

I don’t know what was dif­fer­ent between this week and last, but I hope I can keep run­ning like I did this week­end. We spent the entire week­end at the Jer­sey shore, cel­e­brat­ing Helen’s 30th birth­day at our friends Suzanne and Frank’s house in Atlantic City. It was a great time, punc­tu­at­ed by two runs totalling 19 miles: six on Sat­ur­day and 13 this morn­ing. Both were com­fort­able and quick.

This morn­ing’s run was great. Rob and I hit the boards at just about 6 a.m. and ran two miles and change to the Vent­nor end before turn­ing around and run­ning all the way to the top, past the casi­nos on some of the rick­eti­est board­walk I’ve ever set foot on. But we weren’t fin­ished there. We turned around and ran all the way back down to the Vent­nor end before mak­ing one last turn to fin­ish the last mile and a half. It took just under two hours and was a per­son­al best dis­tance for both Rob and me. I nev­er thought a 13 mile run would feel so good!

Now I’m real­ly excit­ed to run the Philadel­phia Dis­tance run. Today’s run told me that I’ll be ready for it!

Posted on by J T. Ramsay