Animator. Director. Artist. Scapegoat.
The immensely talented Todd Michaelsen composed and performed the fabulous title track and much of the score for Sita Sings the Blues, which are now available for streaming (free) and download ($0.99) at toddmichaelsen.com. He has lots of other great music on his site too, you won’t be disappointed.
Pipe Wrench Fight!
Hat tip to
Music collector Matthew Lanoue has made available as free downloads the Annette Hanshaw songs used in Sita Sings the Blues. These recordings are only available anywhere due to the efforts of record collectors, NOT Big Media corporations. Thanks Matthew!
Update – today, October 18, is Annette Hanshaw’s birthday! How’s that for fortuitous timing? Hat tip to Stewart and Steven for emailing me.
Naturally I keep up on the latest grim developments in copyright law. The new Enforcement of Intellectual Property Rights Act, which unsurprisingly “is strongly backed by the music and movie industries,” would “(allow) for the Department of Justice to bring civil suits against IP infringers.”
Continue reading “Am I a Criminal?”
Here’s that Very Good Idea I promised yesterday. Please bear with this long post, it’s worth it I promise.
I.
Everyone’s heard of Dark Side of the Rainbow: You play your own legally-obtained audio of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, while watching a legally-obtained video of the Wizard of Oz. As long as the audio is legal, and the video is legal, enjoying them at the same time is legal.
Continue reading “The Bright Side of the Dark Side of the Rainbow”
With the help of old record collectors and Annette Hanshaw fans, I’m hoping to put together a free, easily-downloadable “soundtrack” of the 11 old Hanshaw songs in Sita Sings the Blues. The collectors will provide the tracks – MP3s probably – and I’ll provide the “album cover” and publicity.
Who wants to provide the server? We need a server to put all this on. Please contact me if you have some server space to donate.
This isn’t to make money, it’s to bring Hanshaw’s beautiful music to new eager ears for free. It’s also to publicize that all the effort in preserving and sharing Hanshaw’s voice has been on the part of record collectors, not the music industry.
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The new music in the film is the responsibility of its respective composers, who are busy artists like me and haven’t yet had time to organize an album. Hopefully we’ll have a soundtrack of their stuff for you eventually, but meanwhile you can sample their delights at their respective web sites:
Todd Michaelsen
MASALADOSA
Rohan
Nik Phelps and the Sprocket Ensemble
Rudresh Mahanthappa
Any volunteers want to produce an album of their “Sita” music? It’s like herding cats, but they’re all super-nice, just very busy, like me.