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Coffee, Computers, and Song! Coffee, Computers, and Song! is Steve
Savitzky's first |
But as long as you're here you can check out the cover artwork and listen to some Sample Tracks:
[ogg] [mp3] Guilty Pleasures True story: I finished this song at about 2am while everyone else was asleep. And if you think they're not guilty pleasures, just ask my long-suffering wife. [ogg] [mp3] High Barratry The one live track on the album, as featured in comments on groklaw.net. This one is about SCO vs. IBM, RedHat vs. SCO, SCO vs. {Novell, Autozone, Daimler-Chrysler}... and has recently become a bit more topical as The SCO Group is rapidly proving that their original name, Caldera, was unexpectedly prophetic.[ogg] [mp3] Paper Pings When I read of the first implementation of RFC 1149 (A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers) in April of 2001, I knew that I was going to have to parody one of my own songs to do it justice. [ogg] [mp3] The World Inside the Crystal My first serious computer song. If you're a programmer, you know what this is about. If not, there isn't much I can tell you, but maybe this will help. Features two flute parts by the incredible Callie Hills.
0x01 (01) Guilty Pleasures (Savitzky) This was actually written in realtime--I finished it at about 2am after everyone else had gone to bed. 0x02 (02) The Programmer's Alphabet (Savitzky/Trad.) My first computer song, based on various sailors' alphabets. 0x03 (03) The Mushroom Song (Savitzky) Wrote this one while my job at Zilog was going down the tubes. They'd just hired a CEO named Sack, and that's just what he started doing... 0x04 (04) Stuck Here... (Savitzky/Trad.) Ever wonder what it would be like to have your mind uploaded into a computer? You could live practically forever... 0x05 (05) Bugs (Savitzky) A big favorite with kids, for some reason, based on a poem I once read in Datamation magazine. It sometimes acquires topical verses. 0x06 (06) High Barratry (Savitzky/Trad.) Performed at Baycon2007. There are two kinds of barratry: in civil law it's filing bogus lawsuits for harassment or financial gain. In admiralty law it's like piracy, only an inside job. Both fit SCO. 0x07 (07) Vampire Mega-Byte (Savitzky) An old Silicon Valley folktale from the days when men were men and transistors were germanium. 0x08 (08) Demon Lover (Savitzky) I wrote a story that included a description of a duet between a singer/songwriter and an AI built into his guitar. So of course I had to write the song to fit the description. 0x09 (09) Silk and Steel (Savitzky) Another song about the AI guitar. I still don't know the full story behind this one--there's a big gap there. 0x0a (10) Daddy's World (Savitzky) I wrote this one for my older daughter based mostly on some of her favorite computer games. 0x0b (11) The Little Computing Machine (Savitzky/Trad.) A song of seduction, obsession, and madness. Written while listening to Golden Bough singing "The Black Velvet Band" and wishing I could afford an Apple ][. 0x0c (12) Cicero in the 21st Century (Savitzky) More than 2000 years ago, the Roman orator Cicero wrote: "Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book." It's amazing how little has changed. 0x0d (13) Paper Pings (Savitzky) Sometimes you just have to parody your own song before somebody else does. 0x0e (14) I Wanna Be a Webmaster (Savitzky) Some of the numbers are a bit dated, but it's amazing how little has changed in the last 10 years. That should be www.mydotsite.net, by the way. 0x0f (15) TEOTWAWKI v2.0 (Savitzky) As it turned out, the biggest problem the doomsayers of 1999 had was how to dispose of the leftover canned goods. But they may still come in handy. 0x10 (16) Uncle Ernie's (Savitzky/Trad.) Inspired by a now-defunct surplus joint in Oakland called Mike Quinn's. 0x11 (17) The World Inside the Crystal (Savitzky) My first serious computer song. You can always tell the programmers in the audience. They've been there, and they know. 0x12 (18) Someplace in the Net (Savitzky) The Usenet, and alt.callahans in particular, is what made me realize that cyberspace is a place.
Yes, of course the tracks are numbered in hex. What did you expect? 12 hex is a hacker's dozen.
It's been a long, strange trip. I first started thinking about a computer album sometime in the very early 1990's. The idea was trolled past several different publishers, most of which are defunct now, before home-recording technology finally advanced to the point where I could do the whole thing myself. (I did all the audio; I had sense enough to go to some extremely talented local artists for the graphics.) This may have been a mistake, and certainly involved a lot of learning on my part, but it's finally finished. As I type these words, on August 3, 2007, the album is making its way through a fab line at Oasis.
There is a LiveJournal community (multi-user blog) devoted to discussion of my albums, but it's almost completely inactive at this point. You'll do better looking at selected articles in my own blog.
The working directory can be found in ../Albums/coffee/; the to.do list is the place to go for the definitive, up-to-date status.
Stephen Savitzky
<steve@savitzky.net>
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