Calling out for help with Marian’s TV show.

A step by step way to get ‘Marian Call: Live at Pandemonium Books’ on your local cable station.

Want to help distribute a Marian Call Concert? Read on below…

Hi – I’m Tom, and I’ll be your guide to getting our friend Marian Call’s concert on your local PEG (Public/Education/Government) Television station in the USA.

First – let’s find out if you have a Public Access Station local to you. If you do, you should well on your way. Local viewers usually can’t be denied access to playback of programs they submit if they live in town. If you do have issues with a local channel, contact me at (boffoyux at gmail dot com) and I can help walk you through the process. (Look for Public Access Channels. Gov’t channels don’t usually play outside programs, and the Educational channels usually just play school related shows. There are some combo channels, but it depends on where you live.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_public_access_TV_stations_in_the_United_States
or http://communitymediadatabase.org/

Call or email your local station about how to place a program on the air.

Many have forms and policies online to walk you through a submission process. Most times if you are a local resident, it involves filling out a form to be a local ‘producer’ and then you can submit programming to air on the channel.

This show is released under a Creative Commons license BY-NC-SA . Content is Copyright Marian Call, with the production created by Tom Giarrosso in affiliation with Salem Community Television. This program may be freely duplicated and distributed under the creative commons license, but can not be sold.

(Basically you can air it, copy and distribute it for free as long as all attributions are kept with the program, but you can’t sell a physical copy or put ads in/around it during rebroadcast.)

I’ve got a rainstick, and I’m not afraid to use it!

How to get a copy of the show –

If your PEG station is a member of the Alliance for Community Media (many are), they can download it free from CMDA – search ‘Marian Call’, and they can download an MPEG2 version that is the standard for computer playback at most stations.

The MPEG file is also available for PEG stations at http://www.pegmedia.org – search for Salem Community Television / SCTV17

Or, you can download the .iso file at this mirror site
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B8Udmyf_bBOLbFJXcE1VUVRXbmc
which you can burn a DVD and hand to your local station for playback. Burning a DVD from an .iso file is built in to Windows 7 and there are several free software packages you can use – here’s one FAQ for burning an .iso DVD

http://pcsupport.about.com/od/toolsofthetrade/ht/burnisofile.htm

I wonder how many stations will play me?

Why am I doing this?

To be honest, I’ve met a number of people struggling to get their music out to find an audience, and see this as a unique way to get new people to sample their content. I’ve been involved with PEG programming for many years, and it’s something most artists overlook or aren’t aware exists as a venue to expand their audience at a minimal cost. Also, it’s fun to pay things forward.

There are challenges to this approach, but it’s similar to streaming your material for free. The stations get free quality programming to play, and the artists get exposure to new markets and hopefully people who will support them while touring. Win – win for everyone. I’m hoping this will be the first of a series of self producing artist concerts from friends I’ve met on the internet and the various music competitions I’ve been involved with. (Masters of Song Fu, SpinTunes, Song Fight)

I would appreciate help spreading the word on this, and an email on the location and station you’ve gotten the show on. I’ll put together a Google Map on stations that will be playing the show (so far, 4 have shown interest and downloaded the show this week on their own)

I’m hoping for 100 stations to play the show by September. With over 2000 PEG access channels in the US, (About 1/3 of them Public Access Channels) I think we can hit this goal and then some!

Thanks for the help

Tom Giarrosso

Boffo Yux Dudes

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When I get old and losing my hair….

The Butties in Concert, 2007 – Manchester, VT

 

If you’re going to be in the Manchester/Loundonderry VT area next weekend (July 11-12, 2008), it’d be worth your time to catch the 25th anniversary concert tour by The Butties , the BYD favorite Beatles Tribute ensemble.

 

They’re playing an outside free concert Friday evening in Manchester, VT, and the 5 hour Beatles lovefest on Saturday at Magic Mountain.

 

Also I saw on the illustrious internet, that Sam’s band from Scrubs, ‘The Blanks’, has a New England Gig planned at Mohegan Sun on August 17th. More info here. I always thought they should do an acapella cover of ‘Spider Man’ to the tune of ‘Stray Cats Strut’, but then again, I like cheese. Go figure.

Here’s a link to one of their Scrubs appearances.

Enjoy

 

Roger Daltrey’s not going to like this…

I don’t know why this story came up in my brain, but I worked for a summer as a roadie at Syracuse University – a fun summer where we’d set up and breakdown for events at the Carrier Dome and other places around campus. One of my co-workers passed on this nugget from when The Who played there in the mid-80’s.            

 

This guy was security at the front of the stage… they usually were between barricades and the crowd, so they were in the buffer between the band and the stage.  He was with another security guard, and literally 5 feet from Roger Daltrey while he’s singing a number.. they look up, and notice his fly is open.  The guys are trying to signal him that he needs to fix things… he notices their hand waving, and pointing to their zippers. Roger waves at them and says “No…No Thanks“. 

Now, this is in the middle of him singing a song.  

The security guards are trying to keep him from embarrassment, so they wave and point more frantically at their crotches, trying to let him know that his pants are undone in front of 30,000+ in the audience. Again, Roger says “Really.. thanks.. but no.” and keeps singing.   It finally dawns on the security guards that Roger wasn’t thinking about his fly.          

He was graciously declining a blowjob from them.