trippin' the rift can you trip like i do?

100th

Posted by tipkin

Here it is, my dearest readers and listeners. The 100th post. A micro-anniversary in trippin' the rift's mini-history. I want to raise this glass of this fine Oatmeal Stout to all of you, who's been reading these posts (not always inspired and almost never grammatically correct, but always honest), listening to my tiny radio station, watching videos and even going as far as leaving comments. Appreciations all around. There is iTunes Almighty, there is a mega-community of Last.fm and yet there still is this blog and there are those exceptional (and very attractive, I'm sure) individuals who keep checking it out every once in a while. Thank you.

I wanted to make this post memorable. I could have made a compilation of my top 100 trip-hop tracks (hm... not a bad idea actually. How about a poll to pick top 100 trip-hop tracks ever?!), write a long boring "ass"-ey about history of trip-hop and "how Coldcut started it all" and how "Portishead, Tricky and Massive Attack made everyone care". But I'll save those novel ideas for the future anniversary posts. This very first one should be small and intimate, full of hope, love and good trips. And it kind of came out like that, despite its big topic.

How do you get people to listen to your Shoutcast radio? Right, play what they want to hear. Trip-hop fans want to hear "trip-hop" - the Wikipedia version of it. And that's a pretty solid version, but built around the same proven names and with a devastating "post-trip-hop" ending. Nothing about the future. It's all in the "post-". It all starts with Portishead and ends with Morcheeba. If you don't hear either of those or anything in-between, then it's "not trip-hop", and you can enjoy your shitty radio all by your lonesome. Well, how about that - I'm listening to Josh Furey's album Archaeology available at Bandcamp for "name your price (no minimum)" and it doesn't sound even a bit like a fuckin' past. It sounds like a good fuckin' trip-hop and it's CC-licensed and that means that I can play it on my radio. And I do. With pleasure. And apologies to all you guys who stopped listening after I went 100% CC-licensed and thank you for being with us for as long as you did, but kudos to ones who are listening now. There aren't many (like, right now it's 0 as in "zero"), but just yesterday afternoon two dudes (or gals) from USA, and one from Russia, Germany, Brazil, Czech Republic and Chile were listening to (and I'm sure lovin' the shit out of) Josh Furey's (Canada) songs. Or Botany Bay's (Germany). Or KARIZZA's (Ukraine). Or Veell's (Russia), who isn't even trip-hop, but kicks major ass anyway.

And that's the weirdness of it. Of the whole entertainment industry and us its consumers. We're still readily forking over 99¢ for a song (here in the US. Most of us do. I think...), but watching new Dexter episode on an illegal website without any hesitation or emotional discomfort. We're starting to realize that there's no actual need to pay for something when there's so much FREE SHIT out there. And that they apparently have no idea how to fight it. Or simply cannot fight it because how do you fight artists offering their music (ready for it?) for free? Willingly. Just so people (I bet you're not ready for this one quite yet) would listen to it. What's even scarier for them is the fact that people are often paying money for those artists' music even though they don't have to! Wrap your head around this one. I asked some of the people whom I interviewed or reviewed their music to shed some light on what the F is going on in the music industry today and what is poor little aspiring musician to do in all this craziness. Here's what they had to say.