It’s both a curse and a blessing that I’m so easily diverted… this morning, mention of Alan Lomax’s Cantometrics (in Ned Sublette’s Cuba and Its Music) got me hunting for the various resources I already have and could find to augment what I have. Alas, Lomax’s Cantometrics: An approach to the anthropology of music (1978, audiocassettes and a handbook) is long out of print and seemingly unavailable via the usual sources (though WorldCat tells me that Colby and University of Maine at Orono have it). A Google search led to Tim O’Brien’s posting of a talk by Armand Leroi A New Science of Music: Digital Cantometrics and the Evolution of Music, a 30+-minute YouTube video which I want to listen to (but don’t want to take the time to watch at the moment –though O’Brien provides a transcript). I remembered that Rob Kehler had found a conversion utility that (among other things) extracts YouTube audio to an mp3, so I found his reference in an email message and tried out vixy.net on that video. It stalled at 74% of the conversion, so I tried VidtoMP3.com, but its conversion dead-ended with no MP3 file. So I fired up Audacity to capture the sound in real time, for listening as I walk or drive. Meanwhile, a trip to the file drawers in the barn did locate the Cantometrics folder, with some photocopies and course handout materials from 20-odd years ago, so I added a few more bits of paper, and more than an hour later I’m ready to go on to something else. So it goes.

Not everybody shares my interest in the further fringes of cultural expression, so not everybody will be diverted by today’s WFMU vinyl finds posting, on stuff from the ummm woolier side of Oz. It did lead me to one of the more magnificent intersections of band-name/album-title/cover-art:

I can state pretty authoritatively that you shouldn’t play any of the items on offer, and be warned that travel to Sydney would be a baaaad idea…