South of Gilman St.

Welcome to South of Gilman St., an mp3 streaming/internet radio site dedicated to the music that put the Bay Area punk scene and the Gilman St. Project on the map. Click on the Listen link to tune-in (this may require some tweaking in your browser) or point your favorite mp3 player at http://stream.southofgilman.org:8000 and start enjoying.

And while you're listening, explore the database to find out more about the bands, albums, and songs you're listening to and even make requests. Don't forget to rate stuff you like (or dislike)!. The console is a little window that will keep you up on what's currently playing while you're exploring other parts of the site. There's even a forum where you can chat about stuff as well as see and post flyers and album art.

Want to know more about the site? Here's some info. Curious about what the Bay Area scene was like? The liner notes from the seminal Turn It Around 2x7" really captures what Gilman St. is about. For a more recent perspective, check out an interview with band-member and punk insider Jesse Luscious.

News

2019-03-15 - 20 Years

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the inception of this stream and site. As cliche as it may sound, I still remember the start like it was yesterday. The original stream was run from a Windows NT box using Shoutcast, the hot new thing that got me interested in trying this. Encoding mp3s took about 30 minutes per song on my computer then, not to mention the time it took to digitize vinyl and cassette playback. And I learned PHP and SQL to build my first dynamic web site.

And then, in the blink of an eye, it's all turning 20 years old, old enough that I'm sure someone out there who visited/listened was born after that week in 1999.

Thank you all who've stopped by some time along the way, to listen, to browse around. to drop a note. You'll probably hear next from me at 25 - til, then enjoy!

2016-01-30 - Things very old and very new

That was a long quiet spell. I won't bore you with the details of my private life but I'm going through some changes right now and that's afforded me some time and renewed interest in revisiting this site and music.

First off, there's been a bunch of stuff queued up for addition to the stream. On the "very old" front, we have tunes from The F.U.'s and Squirrel Bait, a couple of somewhat influential East Coast bands from the mid-80s. Of more "local" interest, I've fleshed out the song lists for the Skinflutes and Corrupted Morals, a couple of bands that should be familiar to Bay Area punk fans.

On the "new" front, I've added a few items from a recent Fat Wreck binge. The highlight is Constructs of the State by Leftover Crack. I can't even pick out a notable track because they are all so good.

Slightly older we have Keep Your Heart from The Loved Ones, also a solid album. And rounding things off, the latest Fat comp, Going Nowhere Fat, which I haven't fully listened to yet but hope will lead to some discovery.

Finally: I finally got around to a project I had in mind for a while, getting that live Crimpshrine recording up on YouTube with some minimal visuals. In case you haven't given it a listen, you can do so there now.

2013-08-28 - The Once A Year Update

Been a while huh? No site updates to report but I've added a few new musics I've come across recently. First up is Homepage, a completely unfortunate band name when it comes to doing searches. As best I can figure, they are from Moscow and their primary "homepage" (hahah) is on bandcamp. I was actually a bit surprised to find out they are Russian as the vocals were in fluent English as far as I could discern. Anyway, the music is that girl-fronted pop punk that I'm a sucker for (see Coed, Unlovables, Discount for other examples). Their music is available on their bandcamp page via donation or on last.fm.

The other new add is Bleached, a pair of sisters from L.A. cranking out a grungy retro sound, kind of doing for punk what Best Coast does for pop.

So check 'em out, rate & request, and let me know what you think on the boards!

2012-06-07 - Updates (aka v5.1)

Well it's been an interesting few weeks handling this migration. All in all, I'm quite happy with the new system but there have been a few glitches (sorry about the requests queue getting backed up!).

Since last time:

So the deal with the forums is that I wanted to ditch the old one because it was a huge spam beacon and not worth the hassle for the amount of traffic it posed. Plus, it was a pain in the butt for people to post because you had to get an account, login, forget your login, etc. So I replaced it by repurposing the image board software that was already there and focused on pictures to be more text/chat friendly. It isn't a spam magnet and it's easier for you to post because there's no login. Just say who you are!

Not like you guys are a chatty bunch, but I'm glad to have something usable for you to communicate again.

The final piece of the puzzle is playlists: this one is complicated because it integrated with the old forum which is technically in read only mode now. I'll figure something out eventually - if you feel like this is urgent, give me a prod. I've also got to add back the ability to submit band info and song lyrics at some point...

Lastly: I've uploaded a bunch of new albums since the move, so check 'em out:

The Unlovables are perfect chick pop punk while The Bangs are a nice grungy counterpoint.

2012-05-15 - Version 5.0

If you are reading this, then welcome to the new home of South of Gilman St.! I was hoping to have made the move a couple of months ago to mark the 13th anniversary of this project but true to form, I kinda missed that deadline.

So what's new? Well, there's the new URL, southofgilman.org which means finally there is a dedicated domain for the site. I don't know why I waited this long, nor do I know why I feel it important after all this time. But use it from now on! The stream itself is at http://stream.southofgilman.org:8000 now.

Next: the site has been completely rewritten. It doesn't look like much has changed at first glance as I haven't really altered much from the visual/design standpoint, but the code is a complete from-the-ground-up rewrite. Unfortunately, not all of has been rewritten yet so certain features are still missing. These include the ratings, requests, and playlists which are a priority to get to next.

Other "features" have been completely removed, particularly the old forum. It was a huge hassle to fight off spammers and no one really ever used it. In it's place, I'm going to repurpose the existing image board I had in place for general "chat" purposes. It's working now but I need to clean it up quite a bit.

Finally, the last thing I want to mention for now is the one feature I'm most happy with: the SoGS Console (click the link upper right corner) now can directly play the stream! You don't need any additional software anymore. This is a feature I've been wanting to add to the site for years and years and I'm stoked that it exists now. The old way of listening to the stream (ie point your favored mp3 player to http://stream.southofgilman.org:8000) still works and both listen.m3u and listen.pls methods still work too.

I hope you like the new digs - feel free to drop me a line or post any comments you have!

2011-03-17 - That time of year

Oh hey, it's that time of year again where I wax nostalgic about another year passing and then post some more songs.

I actually had some bigger plans to mark this year's cycle but there are some factors outside of my control that threw a wrench in that (hint: the non-arrival of Centos 6) so that news will have to wait.

I've got a pretty wide range of "new" music to throw into the mix, however, from the 90s girl-fronted power pop of Discount, to reformation band Shotwell, to the hilarious formula of Tuuli, and an early work from Pidgeon.

Discount's Half Fiction really brings to mind Co-Ed and Tilt, both that also feature really strong female vocals. Musically, it leans a little poppier than Co-Ed so give it a listen if that's your thing.

Shotwell is, well, Shotwell, filled with ex-band members: ex-Crimpshrine, ex-Gits, ex-Bedlam Rovers, ex-Flophouse. Musically, you definitely hear the post-Gilman heyday - see if you can trace all its influences on Celery, Beef, and Iron.

Tuuli... what I can I say, I saw the Rockstar Potential CD in the used bins at Amoeba and just had to get it, sound unheard, just from the cover. I was actually pleasantly surprised. It's not gonna knock your socks off, but it's a fun slice of goofy power pop.

And finally, From Gutter w/Love, Pidgeon's first release. Pidgeon was one of my favorite finds a couple of years ago and I'm puzzled why I didn't pick this one up sooner. Val's anime-cute vocals cutting through the gritty, hook-y guitars just melts me inside. Check out Down for my favorite track.

2010-11-18 - Revisiting Bands

So I gushed about Double Dagger and Japandroids recently - More and Post-Nothing remain two of my absolute favorites from this decade . I picked up follow-ups from both bands a while back (err... actually back in the summer) and while I can't say neither Masks nor Art Czars/No Singles are quite up to their predecessors, both are solid works. Japandroids' cover of Big Black's Racer X is a must-hear: they out-Big-Black Big Black!

2010-07-26 - Crimpshrine Sessionography

Paul Colucci wrote in to share some extensive research he's done into the complete sessionography of Crimpshrine. He's allowed me to share that information on the Crimpshrine page and I think all you hardcore Crimpshrine fans (me included) will find it fascinating and, frankly, AWESOME.

Thanks, Paul! I can't tell you how cool it is to have that information here.

2010-06-01 - Dumb name, awesome band

Two posts in one year? I know, crazy, right? I actually came across something recently that I'm really digging, though, enough to get it up for listening here.

Like Double Dagger from my last post, Japandroids are a two piece (and make a sound way bigger than believable for two people). They're out of Vancouver and lean more toward a pop sound (if it can be called that) than Double Dagger (which I'd say has more of an art sound). I guess it goes without saying that they have a spare/minimal sound - focused I will call it.

Anyway give it a listen - Wet Hair in particular is ridiculously infectious, a pop punk sound reduced to its barest elements.

They're on Polyvinyl Records and when you order CDs from them, you get "Instant" MP3s as well - very cool.

2010-03-08 - Another year, another post

This time I actually have some new music to mention - both are recent finds for me and while neither are in the traditional Gilman sound, they have blown me away. They share a similarity in the sense that I'd lump them in the "post-punk" genre (I'm lousy about genres though, so chime in if you've got different ideas) but other than that, they are quite different bands/works.

Pidgeon hails from San Fransciso and right away you'll notice their distinctive hard/soft guy/girl sound. A friend of mine pointed out similarities to the Pixies, especially in their early years before Black Francis took over most of the singing. Another point of description is "a punk rock Asobi Seksu". Of course, I'm sure they'd gag to hear either of these comparisons, but at least they'll get you in the ballpark. Their disc Might As Well Eat Worms comes from Absolutely Kosher.

Double Dagger comes out of the other coast, from Baltimore. The trio (vocals, drums, bass - no lead guitar!) makes a huge sound, filled with hooks aplenty. More is their latest work, off Thrill Jockey records. Love it!

Anyway, as always, give it a listen and enjoy!

2009-03-03 - The First 10 Years

My mind can't fathom this, but today marks the 10th anniversary of this radio stream...

Where were you 10 years ago? I remember the origins of this idea pretty well, all things considered. I was playing around with this exciting new "Shoutcast" thing and tossed up a 100 songs or so. Back then, on my PowerComputer Macintosh system, it used to take about 30 minutes to encode a short punk song into mp3 format so it was slow going. I'd bring those into work (probably on a Zip disk!) and load them on to a WindowsNT4 test box we had, and that's what ran the stream for that first year.

I remember I couldn't even listen to my own stream at home because there were no Mac mp3 players that could stream music for the longest time. But while at work, I'd listen from my Linux workstation using xmms.

The web site came a short while later, first some static stuff for me to throw up news and planned "shows" where I would actively set a playlist, then later, as a place where I learned PHP and PostgreSQL, skills that have become a huge part of my career and now pay my bills.

There was one redesign of the site, back in a period of unemployment in 2002, but since then, very little has changed with this site, even as the world and the Internet has progressed at light speed. I've started redesigns a couple of times, but never followed them through to completion. Still, this site represents a lot to me: not just for the music, but as the soundtrack to my personal history, as a trail through my music tastes over time, as a log of my technical development, and, at the risk of sounding overly maudlin: a mirror of who I am.

Thanks for listening.

2008-10-27 - Has it really been 6 years?

If you've been following this site for more than a little while, you might know that Dillinger Four ranks as one of my favoritest bands, just behind Crimpshrine. Their last album, Situationist Comedy was just brilliant and I remember thinking that I couldn't wait until the next one.

This one took a little while - you can read the sordid details on wikipedia - but finally, after 6 years, they released Civil War this month on FatWreck. Needless to say, my hopes and expectations were sky high, probably unfairly, and on the first couple of listens, I admit to a little bit of disappointment. It sounds a little more polished (and I don't mean that in a particularly good way) and a little more pop - these tend to mark the death knell for me. But, after a few listens, I have to say it's really starting to grow on me. It's still Dillinger Four after all!

2008-09-30 - Johnny Foreigner

It's been forever since I've added anything new here, but recently, a band crossed my radar that's really blown me away. It's not in the Gilman vein, so if you're not interested in more recent music, then you can stop reading now.

The band is Johnny Foreigner and they released a bunch of demos and such collectively called I Like You Mostly Late At Never and then followed up with their first studio release earlier this year, Waited Up 'Til It Was Light. Very hook-oriented, very driven, and the boy/girl vocals harken to the kind of dynamic Pretty Girls Make Graves had but in a more raw musical context. I love it- give it a listen!

They even have a video for Salt, Pepa, and Spinderella:

2008-08-20 - Inside 924

I feel lax for only now finding this, but recently, Jessiahbell posted up a great set of images from inside Gilman. Check it out, a rare treat for those who haven't been in awhile (or ever), and that's probably 99% of you all.

Thanks so much for the post Jessiahbell!

2008-05-19 - Crimpshrine Live!

If you've been following this discussion, you may have been waiting for some news on that front. I'm pleased to announce that I finally finished up digitizing the VHS recording of Crimpshrine, live in concert!

Much much thanks goes to Shelly for providing this rare treat of a recording - what a awesome addition to the content available here!

The video runs about 44 minutes and appears to be a splice of two separate gigs (some songs are repeated - the break occurs about midway). The quality is pretty awful, as you'd expect from a low budget recording that is 20 years old - but it's Crimpshrine! I've recorded to 320x240 Quicktime (mpeg4) and it clocks in at 218MB, so be prepared for a long download.

Right-click download this link

Here is the set list(s):

(break)

Enjoy! (and thanks again, Shelly)

2008-04-07 - Japan Nite 2008

Wanted to give you report on a show I went to recently, entitled "Japan Nite 2008" at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood back on March 23. It was the last leg of a tour that started at the SXSW festival and it featured six bands at the LA stop: Scandal, Petty Booka, Ketchup Mania, Detroit7, The Emeralds, and The Beaches. All were completely unknown to me prior to the show and it ended up being a very fun night and I was blown away by a couple of them. Anyway, the report is on the imageboard and the sampler CD available for listens, so have a look and listen.

I also invite any of you interested to share your show reports, too! The image board is open to any of you for posting content - not just show reports as I 've done here but for any thing at all.

2008-03-09 - 9 Years Old

Dang it! I missed it again - this site turned 9 this past week (March 3rd, to be exact). 9 years old ...

I used to muse about how some of the people here were not even born during the hey day of the Bay Area punk that this site is dedicated to but soon enough, I'm sure someone who wasn't even born when this site went live will show up. I'll shed a tear then, I think.

I actually have some plans for this site this year, so I hope to have a little more presence this time around. Thank you all for the support over the years, and enjoy!

2008-01-12 - New Server

So I'm moving things around and if you are reading this, then you are seeing things on the new server. This site is quite a mess, though, and I'm not sure that all of the functionality is working, so if you see something odd happening, shoot me an email.

Happy New Year!

2007-06-27 - A Day of Silence

For some of you who noticed: the stream went dead for a day in support of the Save Net Radio campaign. As I've mentioned many times before, I've not made a single cent from this site over the 8+ years it's been running and the day it starts to cost me is the day it dies.

And I'm not the only one- there are a lot of other net radio sites that would go dark, leaving only a few large ones that can afford it. Think your tastes will be served? Ha.

So, get informed and act!

2007-01-02 - Happy New Year!

I made a couple of changes over the holidays to the stream that I want to mention.

First, I updated lame, which is used to encode the stream. I'm hoping the update will resolve issues with certain files not being read properly and perhaps increase the quality a little bit.

Second, and more noticeable, I up'd the bitrate of the stream to 96kbps. This makes a big difference in the stream quality, I think. Back when the stream started, I went with 64kbps as a bitrate that could still be (barely) enjoyed on a dialup connection, but here in 2007, I think it's time to really move into the broadband age.

Of course, the other downside is that the stream takes more server bandwith, but with the low listener counts, it should be able to handle it OK. It also takes more CPU at 96kbps, but again, it's still within reasonable limits on this antiquated hardware.

Hope you enjoy the new and improved stream!

2006-12-12 - Band To Band

Just came across this site called Band to Band and am having a great time exploring it. It's like Six Degrees of Separation, except for bands. You can look up a band and see all of the related bands having members in common. Very cool!

An example: the entry for Crimpshrine shows that Crimpshrine and Dillinger Four (my two favoritest bands here) are related via Cleveland Bound Death Sentence. Cool!

They also have extensive discography and album art which I'm jealous of. Check it out!

2006-11-24 - New addition

Listener Konrad wrote in and introduced me to his band, DekOiZ. He also provided some of their music which I thought was a great addition to the stream here. Thanks Konrad!

Check out their website and if you're in the area at the time, they'll be playing Gilman on Dec 2.

2006-11-02 - Spammers Ruin Everything

Just want to mention a change to the forum. Due to the enormous amount of interest spammers have in it, I've had to disable forum registration. I was getting sick of weeding through email after email from failed registrations.

The forum itself is disused so I'm not to concerned about that. What I am concerned about is that the playlist system uses the username and password from the phpBB-based forum.

I plan rollout an altogether different forum sometime in the near future but the above issue has led me to drag my feet. In the meantime, if you are new to the site and would like to make use of the playlist feature, please send me an email and I can manually register you.

My apologies for the inconvience. It's been an annoying fight and though I'm loathe to give in, the spammers have won.

2006-05-01 - Dumb politicians

Hey, do you live in California or South Carolina? Well, Senators Dianne Feinstein and Lindsey Graham from those states respectively are cooking up a bill (S2644) that, among other things, will outlaw streaming music in mp3 format over the Internet. Instead, some DRM format will be required. Details available from this EFF article.

You can imagine what this means to this site and stream.

So, make yourself heard - I joined this Pledgebank petition and will be contacting Senator Feinstein's office directly. Midterm elections are coming up - don't be a slug.

2006-04-03 - A new poll

Wow, kinda embarrassing that the last poll had been up almost two years. But then, it's got a lot of comments, and even the spammers found it :p.

I got something a little different than the usual fare here lately - Be Your Own Pet's self-titled debut album. It's not too different though, and you can hear shades of the Gilman sound in their music. I especially like Wildcat and Adventure.

Have a listen!

2006-03-08 - Year 7

Welcome to Year 7! Hopefully, Year of Spam (aka "Year 6") is behind us. Probably not. I've been thinking about switching over to different forum software because I've really grown to hate phpBB over the years.

One of these days, I'm gonna go on another cassette digitizing binge and have "new" music here, I swear!

2006-01-25 - Please allow me to introduce myself

I can't believe it's been 10 months since I last posted anything here. Year 7 is creeping up (in fact, I bet the next you'll hear from me is in March, with some maudlin comment about the passage of time).

Anyway, got some new stuff on the stream. 3 are more recent things Bear Vs Shark - Terrorhawk, Popular Shapes - Bikini Style, and Bearsuit - Team Ping Pong. Take a listen to Drinkink - what a great album starter.

And just to show I'm not completely losing touch with the "roots" here, there's also Spitboy. You know, for the longest time, I thought that was a male singer.

2005-03-27 - Year 6

Earlier this month (March 3rd to be precise), this stream marked its 6th anniversary. I don't know why I feel the need to mark the occasion. It's just that every year that number becomes harder and harder to believe.

Over the past year (actually, since the beginning of 2005, really), the site has grown quite a bit. During the work week, it seems like there is always at least one listener. And thanks go to all of you who have submitted info and lyrics for stuff in the database.

Don't have much to say beyond that. Just thanks for listening, all of you. And check out a few "new" things: Gorilla Biscuits' Start Today complete finally, and a couple from Idol Punch, a new find for me. It's kind of different, but I like it.

2005-02-15 - Good Stuff

It's been awhile but I've added some new tunes. 4 new ones featuring bands from that one comp I raved about. The Pear of the West and I Excuse ones are standouts. I love them!

On the "old stuff" front, I finally got around to getting what I consider a seminal album in my personal history with East Bay Punk - MTX's Night Shift At The Thrill Factory. I can still sing along with History of the Concept of the Soul to this day!

Finally, a bonus - Dillinger Four song.

Enjoy! And as always, I try to update my recent faves playlist for songs that I think are standout. Give it a listen.

2005-02-12 - Another old show

Here's the "B-side" to that Crimpshrine live tape:

Mr. T Experience @ Sproul Plaza, UC Berkeley, 1989 (91MB)

I forget the exact date of the show. This one came out a little better, and didn't suffer the odd truncation/interruptions like the Crimpshrine show, but it does end prematurely (tape ran out or something) and there were these two annoying sorority girls just yapping away next to me at the time. I'd forgotten about them. You can hear them throughout the show.

I decided to leave in a lot of pre-show banter at the beginning because it gives you a good feel for what MTX was like.

There are 15 songs:

Enjoy!

Addendum: I think this is the flyer from the show.

2005-02-06 - Old shows

I've been talking about this for a long time, but I finally got around to it. I attended a Crimpshrine show back in 1989, at Gilman, and taped it. Now, amost 16 years later (shit, some of you weren't even born), I've made it available here in mp3 format.

Crimpshrine @ Gilman, 11 Feb 1989 - 83MB

The quality is really bad. It's got hiss that I tried to remove but ended up warping it a little. I didn't chop it into separate tracks. One of the songs got truncated, and one of the songs is interrupted in the middle (I don't know what happened to this tape). The whole thing ends rather abruptly. But, it's Crimpshrine. Live. For about 40 minutes.

There are 11 songs:

Addendum: Here is the flyer from the show. I think it was one of Crimpshrine's last gigs.

2004-12-25 - Pictures! Pictures! Pictures!

Hey, remember me? I used to post stuff here every once in a while. I've been working on some other projects of late, so I haven't been spending too much time on this site. But, there was a change to the site I've been mulling over for some time and the stars have finally aligned.

I've decided to switch over to some new software to handle the image gallery stuff (you know, the flyers and album art). It occurred to me that it might be more fun if you, the listeners, could post and share pictures related to this site and the music yourselves, so I'm moving it to an "image board" rather than a "photo album".

Rest assured, all the old stuff is still there - I've moved them over. The only things lost are 2 comments (that no one probably ever noticed - the hiding of comments has always been an annoyance for me) and the views count.

Perhaps of some significance is that quite a lot of people have linked to images in the former gallery - these will now break. The new software also disallows deep linking of images altogether. I've given this some thought and I decided I'd rather not have my bandwidth used like that, often times with no attribution back to this site.

Anyway, the last piece of this puzzle is a new picture sent in by an listener!!! Thanks, Shelly, you made my day. And I expect your picture will be very popular.

Comments »

2004-08-30 - SEND ME PICTURES

OK, so I finally got someone to send in a picture (see here). I now expect the flood gates to open and you all send me one too.

I'm not picky - it'd be cool if it said somewhere, like on a sign you hold up, the site name and URL, but that's not necessary. It'll be fun to see other listeners, no?

As soon as I get 3 more, I'll post mine.

2004-07-12 - Konnichiwa, minna-san!

OK, I lied, I'm switching this 'cast all over to Japanese music, starting with this absolute gem. Next up, saccharine girl pop and anime soundtracks! You'll love it, I promise.

Seriously, it's good pop punk, that album, and totally fits in here. Hell, most of it is in English. Actually, now that I'm writing this, I wonder if those bands are even Japanese. So, OK, nevermind, it's a newly unearthed East Bay punk album from my collection - enjoy!

Hey, and that Guitar Wolf that a guest posted to the forum is pretty good too, especially if you like your punk on the noisier side.

In other news: I've tweaked the ratings page, adjusting the formula to calculate ratings for songs and bands. There were some minor changes in the final tally, so have a look. And rate some songs, dammit!

Oh, I deleted a bunch of login accounts for the forum/playlists because they were spam. Bastards. If I deleted yours by mistake, please re-register and post a message saying hi or something so I know it's a real person and not some spambot.

» Comment

2004-06-16 - south.gilman.st

Wouldn't that be a killer domain name/URL for this site? south.gilman.st or maybe south.of.gilman.st. That would kick ass. But, no, Daisuke Nakata of Yachiyo, Japan registered gilman.st, so I'm thwarted. I shake my fists at you, Daisuke!

Still, I gotta give props to some of the music coming out of Daisuke's homeland. I discovered a band called eX-Girl recently, just downloaded a few sample mp3s from Alternative Tentacles's site and I was hooked. I can't really describe it; give it a listen- I know what I'll be looking for my next trip to the record store.

I'm sure most of you are growing concerned with my interest in Japanese music- fear not, I won't be converting this 'cast over to bubbly jpop anytime soon. Proof: listener John the Baker sent along a hello and some link to music from his band. Much more in the Gilman vein - thanks John!

2004-06-08 - D4 PWNZ U

I've been listening to a lot of Dillinger Four lately. In fact, nothing but Dillinger Four, for the past 2-3 weeks now, 61 songs on shuffle. I can't believe how great they are. Seriously. If you don't agree with me, then I don't understand why you are here!

Anyway, I noticed that one of their songs here was mislabelled (Thanks for Nothin Pt 2 was actually another copy of Thanks for Nothing), so I've re-up'd the correct version. This is very important because that is one of their more kicking-your-ass songs. Note: all of their songs kick your ass, this one just a bit more so. Note2: I mean "you" in the generic sense, as it kicks my ass as well.

If I find out which one of youse are rating their songs below "3", I'ma gonna make you pay.

2004-05-23 - Cometbus!

I picked up Despite Everything - A Cometbus Omnibus recently. It collects 600 pages worth of Cometbus from over the years. I don't see how I'll ever get through it all in my lifetime, but fortunately, linear reading isn't necessary.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the zine, Cometbus was put out by Aaron Cometbus, drummer for Crimpshine. While it's not directly about the music scene, it intersects with the East Bay punk culture over the years. For me, it's a nostalgia trip. Check it out if you get a chance - it's only $15!

On the musical front, I've added a few notable items. In the "old school" category, a couple of Stikky albums. On the new front, listener Brian of The Bomshells wrote in and introduced his band and sent along a CD. Fun stuff! It feels Gilman in the way The Frisk do and I'm glad to have their music here.

And finally, something a bit different. I listen to a variety of music from Japan (remember this song?). I recently came across an album from a band called Number Girl. It reminds me of a mix of Shellac, Superconductor, and old Pixies. It's awesome, and I don't wanna hear it if you don't like it.

» Comment

2004-04-30

Hey kids!

I was browsing around the playlist page and was quite encouraged to see so many of you using the playlist feature; it's fun listening to other people's playlists. It got me to thinking that there wasn't anyway to see how "popular" your playlist is, so I went ahead an added that feature. There's a little counter next to the "Request List" link on the playlist page and the most popular are listed on the Top Lists page. Or, rather, they will be once the counts get meaningful. I'm kicking myself for not having done this before.

Another 'feature' I added awhile ago is a list of recently added albums, which appears at the bottom right hand side of each page. Sometimes I add albums without mentioning them directly, so this is a way for you to see what's "new", if you're interested in that kind of thing. It also appears on the Top Lists page.

Finally, and I don't remember if I mentioned this before: on album pages, you will sometimes see a "See Album Art" link next to the thumbnail of the album cover. This will link to the album art gallery when applicable. There's not a whole lot there, but if you have a request and I have it available, I'll try to get it up.

2004-03-17 - Shameless Plug

I put together this shoutbox thing at http://shout.x-maru.org. A shoutbox is a way for users to leave messages and (almost) chat as they visit your site. Clicky-clicky on the link and you can see what I mean.

Anyways, if you've got a web site, check it out. You just have to add a line or two of HTML to your site and it magically appears.

2004-03-02 - 5 @!#% years

Tomorrow marks the 5th anniversary of the birth of this site and stream. 5 years, 3 jobs, 6 servers, 3 URLs, 2977 songs, 1 million+ web hits, 3 site designs, 11,129 song requests, thousands of dollars. 5 years.

It's all a bunch of numbers. But, half the age the Web- that's something, don't you think? I never thought it'd be my longest running web project. And I never thought that people from back in the day, former members of former bands, would come here and find my little tribute. That, and seeing something other than "0 listeners", makes it worthwhile.

I guess I don't have really that much to say. I am suprised at the recent increase in visits (what's up with that poll response count?!? Either there's a lot more people finding the site as of late or you guys really feel strongly about Blink 182!), so I have to say this: it's these numbers that keep me going, knowing that there are other people out there who appreciate this music. Thanks for listening.

Comments »

2004-02-17 - About Comps

I like comps. They're a good way to find out about new groups and music for me since I don't listen to the radio at all, don't read any music related magazines or sites, and don't follow any "scenes" in any detail. So I pick up comps where I recognize (and like) some of the bands and figure the rest is in the same vein and maybe there will be something new there to discover.

I "discovered" Dillinger Four this way, when I picked up Take Action! based on the presence of a couple of Fifteen tracks. This led me to Hopeless/SubCity, and a bunch of other stuff.

I've picked up quite a few comps lately where a heretofore uknown to me band really jumped out at me: The Crush's You, Me And The Emergency Room from Every Dog Will Have Its Day; The Eyeliners Wishing On A Star from Lookout Freakout 2, and Cursive's Gentlemen Caller from Take Action 3.

I've picked up albums from all three - 2 in the case of the Eyeliners and Cursive - and I have to say that I'm kinda disappointed. Not that I was expecting the same level of brilliance as in those songs, but I found that the rest was just OK. Cursive, in particular, was bordering on mediocre run-of-the-mill indie music.

Maybe my expectations are unrealistic. Still, I think back to Dillinger Four and Co-Ed...

Speaking of Co-Ed, I've also added that Crimpshrine tribute to the 'cast. Now this isn't something that disappointed. I was expecting something kinda lame, but it's f#$!# awesome! To hear all of these different takes on those old classics is pure bliss. Some of them are straight-forward covers, and very true to the original song (for better or worse); others take more liberties with various results.

You gotta listen to it!

Comments »

2004-02-11

I'm planning on a server move this weekend. My current provider has proved unhelpful in addressing my crashing/hardware problems, so I'm jumping ship. This means that the stream and this web site may not be available for long periods over the weekend and maybe into next week. Rest assured, I'm not going anywhere.

For those keeping count, I think this will be the 4th or 5th server to host the stream.

2004-02-03

Another visit to Amoeba: a couple of Eyeliners; The Frisk's latest, complete; and another Hopeless comp.

I'm also pleased to have added a bunch of stuff from Scholastic Deth - thanks to band member Chris for introducing me to this band and providing the tunes!

I'm still waiting on that Crimpshrine tribute :p.

Comments »

2004-01-28

Check it out. I ordered it.

2004-01-12

So, I had an idea. Mostly from reading this site, which really has nothing to do with this one, but amuses me.

The idea is this: people send me pictures of themselves at Gilman, then I post them here in the picture gallery. Pretty stupid idea, huh? I bet I get no response, but hey, if you've got some pictures, send them my way. Please make sure they are pictures of you, or that you took; I don't wanna get busted. Even cooler would be if you were holding up a sign plugging this site or something.

Told you it was a stupid idea.

Comments »

2004-01-04

Happy New Year!

This is going to be one of those geeky "about the site" posts. I was looking through the referrer logs, and noticed some interesting things. First off, Google is the biggest referrer by far. The most common queries are Gilman St. and Crimpshrine. That's pretty cool.

More amusing is that the number 2 referrer is search.msn.com and the most common query by far is milf. Ha! I bet you porn seekers were pretty disappointed when you landed here. The other popular query from msn is Thrice. I find it fascinating that Google referrers and msn referrers differ so much (there isn't any overlap at all).

The other interesting find is that other than the search engines, most linkage seems to be directly to individual flyers. Very few are actually linking to the site in general. So, either none of you have web sites or you all suck ;p.

Comments »

2003-11-14

Comps!

I also got the Lookout CD re-release of their first 7"s, so the following are now available complete (I left out the Yeastie Girlz) with decent rips (previously, I'd ripped of vinyl/casette):

Enjoy!

Comments »

2003-10-21

Rareties:

The Operation Ivy/Downfall/Basic Radio is a neat find; you can download them yourself (plus a lot more) at www.operationivy.com. I actually have a Downfall set on tape, including one song still not listed and one day I'll digitize it. Same goes for some more Shop Assistants tucked away somewhere.

Enjoy!

Comments »

2003-09-21

You may notice some subtle differences across the site- I've rolled out the most significant update since the site redesign of a year and half ago. Part of it is a re-working of the layout to using tableless/CSS-based design- this will make the site look like crap in older browsers (though it should still work OK). I don't care. If you're using an older browser (v4), you know the consequences of your choice, so you probably don't either.

The other significant change is the addition of a "playlist" feature, something that's been a long time coming and was harder than I originally thought it would be. It's kind of like bookmarks your favorite songs. You can create up to 10 playlists and have 10 songs per list. I chose these numbers to simplify the process of requesting songs within the 10 per/hour restriction. I may change them.

Neat part - other people can check out your list. I see this as a way for all of us to share our tastes and perhaps introduce one another to stuff we may have missed.

In order for this to work, I need to know who you are, so a login is required. I know that sucks, but to help ease the pain, I hooked into the logins for the forum so you can simply use that one. If you've already got a login there, you're ready to go. If you haven't yet, go there and do so.

The way it works- once you're logged in, go to the playlist page and create a list or two. Then, browse around the site and whereever you see the add-to-playlist icon (+list), click on it and you'll be asked to which list you want to add the song. That's it. Back on the playlist page, you can manage your lists, removing songs, requesting them, etc.

Related to both of these new features: I've introduced a fair bit more javascript to make it all go. For compatible browsers (I test with Mozilla and half-heartedly with IE6), things should be as convenient as I can think of to make. For non-compatible browsers- well, sorry, things probably won't work too well. Download Mozilla (or Moz-based broswer) - you won't regret it.

There's sure to be a lot of bugs that need to be worked out but I've been sitting on these revs for a few weeks now, using them and testing them, and decided to go live with them. Let me know if you find some glitches.

Hope you find this stuff cool.

Comments »

2003-09-14

Added Everyone's Entitled to Their Own Opinion. Highlights: Danny Partridge and Empty Experience.

Comments »

2003-09-06

I'm pleased to present an interview with Jesse Luscious.

Thanks for the interview, Jesse!

2003-09-05

Following up a forum discussion, and to irritate those who answered "Lose the girl bands" in the current poll, I've added a bunch of Heavenly/Marine Research:

Space Manatee is a great piece of pop.

I suppose now I'm due for some new stuff...

Comments »

2003-09-01

"More old stuff" is winning handily in the current poll, so here's some seminal stuff that for some reason I've never made available before now: Ian McKaye's early stuff. The full Minor Threat Discography is available now, as well as the the Egg Hunt one-off and the first Fugazi album. Waiting Room is freaking brilliant.

Comments »

2003-08-28

I finally got around to flowing in the rest of Jesse's donation:

I also added 20 Years of Dischord.

Enjoy!

Comments »

2003-08-10

Way cool: a listener by the name of Jesse Luscious has donated a bunch of music- thanks Jesse! If the name rings a bell - well, he's been in Blatz, The Gr'ups, and The Criminals and is currently a member of The Frisk. It's a honor to have you listening, Jesse.

The new stuff is going to take some time to get ripped and uploaded into SoGS, but I've done a first batch with: check out some advance tunes from Frisk's upcoming album, some old Criminals, some new Pansy Division, and some Fleshies. I haven't had a chance yet for in depth listening, but some early standouts: Small Town Myopia, Stopgap Ending, and Rosa.

Enjoy!

Comments »

2003-07-30

4-2 Pudding!!!

Comments »

2003-07-01

My server hosting provider is making my life miserable. Access to this site may be disrupted for extended periods over the next week or two. Thanks for your patience - I'm not going anywhere.

2003-04-24

A couple of neat finds - Mid Carson July's Wessel and Co-ed's Sometimes Always Maybe Never.

Mid Carson July's influences are pretty obvious - listen to the opening track and tell me you don't hear Fuel, Dillinger Four, and a handful of other bands here.

I was really excited to find the Co-ed, based on the Going Going Gone. It turns out they're more pop punk than I had thought (I was thinking more of a regular indie sound), but I like it and seems to fit the rest of the 'cast pretty well.

Comments »

2003-03-02

Quiet over here. This server has been prone to going down and my provider has not been any help. I dread the idea of moving again.

I added Yaphet Kotto - The Killer Was In The Government Blankets. It's pretty good. And I started adding some full album scans to the image gallery (the menu link has been changed from "Flyers" to "Images" to reflect this). I have to get a new scanner, as my is dying, and even then, I don't know how much time I'm going to want to spend doing bulk scans. Stil, enjoy what I've done so far - Crimpshrine (ie Aaron Cometbus) is always good for a good read.

Comments »

2002-12-27

This 'cast has always been streamed at 56 kilobits per second (except for the short lived experiment where I'd switch to 28 on weekends). Lately, I've been dissatisfied with the quality and have played around with the settings, trying to balance sound quality with cpu load and network utilization.

For the past few weeks, the stream has been running at 64kbps. It's a smidge better sounding and hasn't caused any hiccups. So, for the time being, I think I'm going to stick with it. At 56kbps, you needed broadband anyway, so what's 1 more KB per second?

If you have violent opposition to this, speak your mind.

Comments »

2002-11-05

Well, that sucked.

Name service for "gilman.dhs.org" failed for about a day, as dhs.org's servers apparently died. I figured it was about time for me to stop using that service because depending on it means exposing myself to issues like this, or even worse (what if they close up shop?). Plus, things got bad enough for dhs.org last year that they actually required "donations" in order to continue using their service.

So, the new URL for this site and stream is gilman.duckpond.net. Please change bookmarks, email address contact info, blah blah blah.

Sad to see the old name go - it's served well o'er these 3+ years, but I'd rather be in control of my own destiny.

Comments »

2002-11-03

It's been more than a year and half since the request system was initially created. I can't imagine not being able to make requests anymore. Sure, most of the time, I just let it random play, but sometimes I'm really in the mood for a particular song, you know?

While I've been mostly happy with the request system, it's been plagued by an intermittent problem that would cause the stream to die. Not a huge deal as it would automatically resume in a couple of minutes, but it was irritating nonetheless, especially since it lost all previous queue information.

I finally mustered the motivation to something about it and hacked up the code a bit so that the requests are now handled differently. Basically, I've separated the queue management out of streamcast, so (a) it shouldn't die anymore and (b) even if it should, the queue shouldn't be affected.

It remains to be seen how well this will work out, but it seems much better (quicker response as well as more stable) so far. Please test it out by making some requests and let me know if you have any problems.

Comments »

2002-11-03

Added Good Health by Pretty Girls Make Graves.

It's a hard album to figure out. Sometimes I think it's not really appropriate for this stream, that it's not quite punk enough. But sometimes I think it fits in with a lot of the other emo stuff on here.

It's on Lookout, so I suppose it's not way out of place, and I do happen to like it.

Comments »

2002-09-27

Something really old and something really new.

The Husker Du is seminal, of course. I've always been more partial to Bob Mould's songs than Grant Hart's, and Celebrated Summer is one of my faves.

Kaito just recently showed up on my radar and I haven't given them a thorough listen. The energy of Sweet Allie is absolutely infectious though.

Comments »

2002-09-06

I've added some new tunes (been awhile) from a couple of bands that are quite popular here according to the submitted ratings: Dillinger Four's latest and a Jawbreaker "best of" (well, maybe not quite - it doesn't have Busy on it.

The D4 is brilliant as usual, even if slightly less than their Hopeless releases- they have the best song titles ever. A number of the Jawbreaker tunes were already on this 'cast but there are a few new ones now from their earlier days which I like. Their newer stuff - eh.

Enjoy, and thanks for putting up with the recent glitches here.

Comments »

2002-08-29

Something's going wrong with the stream (icecast, to be more specific). I'm going to take it down for awhile until I can figure it out. Sorry for the downtime!

2002-08-13

I'm moving the site and 'cast to a new server - if you're reading this now, you're being served by a faster machine with a fatter pipe. Plus, it appears that I got title streaming to finally work, so everything should be better all around.

There might be some glitches I overlooked, so if you uncover any, drop me a line, or post in the forum.

2002-07-01

As mentioned in a forum discussion, I've been meaning to get some old show flyers posted here. Scanning is slow work, but I've got a first batch up- follow the flyers link in the menu bar up top.

The neat part is that it's searchable, so you can look up flyers for specific bands, or locations. Of course, that's all data I have to enter, so it's slow going but check back to see if new ones have been posted. It seems like there are quite a few more than I originally guessed - maybe close to 100.

2002-05-20

Not that the previous incarnation was particularly popular, but I've installed a whole new forum for this site. It's better lookin' than the previous one and has all sorts of slick features. So check it out (you can follow the link in the menu up top, or check out recent posts in the box on the right) and better still, post something.

2002-05-13

Added a few albums, something old, something new, something borrowed something blue.

This song kicks ass. I don't know about the Garrison album - a couple of songs are pretty good, but much of the album doesn't seem to fit too well with the rest of the 'cast. Oh well, post in the forum what you think.

2002-04-29

Added Lookouts - Big Green Monsters by request. Thanks to my bro' for doing the rip.

2002-04-08

Problems, problems, problems...

My ISP fell off the net for a few hours this afternoon, so the stream and site were unavailable. Sorry for the inconvenience.

A few days ago (last Wednesday), the icecast server died for some unexplained reason, so the stream was down for few hours. First time that's happened as far as I can remember.

Finally, I've noticed that the newest version of lame that I'm using has trouble with some of the mp3 files that make up this stream. I think it's more picky and those didn't encode perfectly to spec or something. What results is just some brief garbled chirping instead of the song. If you notice this, please let me know which song exhibited this behaviour (remember, you can always use the request feature to double check yourself) so that I can re-encode it.

2002-03-29

I'm a little late with this, but earlier this month was the 3rd anniversary of the launch of this stream. That's a long time in internet terms and I've outlasted a lot of dot.coms in that time (including my own employer :p). It's hard to believe it's been that long.

As part of this milestone, I've been working on updating the site (which should be rather obvious). Though it's served me well, a 3-year old site design is just that: 3 years old, and it was about time to deal with a lot of the cruft and compatibility issues that arose with the several generations of browsers that have come since then.

I hope you find it looks and works better. I've tried to reduce the amount of clicking needed to get anywhere and in addition to having a lot more information always available, making requests should be less cumbersome now. Also, as there are sure to be glitches, please drop me line and let me know if you find any.

The one new feature is the poll, and I hope you'll take a moment to vote. I've always been curious about the listeners here and as you are for the most part a quiet lot, being able to find out more about you would be a benefit to both sides.

The other major bit of news I want to relay is the current controversy surrounding the future of internet radio, and a piece of legislation called CARP. You can find out more information at this site. What it boils down to is that I'd have to pay labels and copyright holders for the right to play their music. A considerable amount if CARP goes through. This has always been a labor of love for me and come out of my own pocket, so needless to say the day I get presented with a bill is the day this stream goes away.

I'm not completely sure where I stand in relation to all this since the bill mostly concerns the big labels and most of the music here comes from indies. I really can't see the folks at Hopeless or Lookout giving me grief. This bill is almost completely against what punk is all about. However, I do have some music on the playlist that is from majors so I'm going to be phasing those tunes out shortly, both to cover my ass and as my own form of protest. Fuck the RIAA, I don't need their shit. There's so much music out there it's ridiculous that they have such a stranglehold and that it persists.

The obvious ones that will be removed are Quicksand's Slip and Rancid's stuff. I'm sure I'll find others.

2002-01-22

By request- added the remaining tracks from Dischord's State Of The Union comp. Thanks to my li'l bro' for doing the vinyl rip.

2002-01-13

115 songs added:

2001-12-27

I just added 107 songs to the 'cast and noticed that the total number of songs in this stream is now 2002. Just wanted to mention that.

I still have the new Hopeless comps to load up, sometime next week, but for now, check out some oldies here, here, here, here, here, and here. And a comp that I really liked on first listen, even if it's more pop than punk (I'm a sucker for this song).

2001-12-17

I just got a new shipment from Hopeless - they're running a promotion right now where you can get any of their samplers for $1, so I picked up the 2 that I didn't have yet. If you liked any of the songs on this cast from those comps, by all means go order 'em! They're cheap, shipping is free, and Hopeless is cool.

They also just released their 50th release comp, with one song from each of their previous releases, as voted favorite in an online poll. If you look really hard, you'll see my name in the "thanks" section :).

2001-10-30

My ISP has been suffering connectivity problems as of late; this server was off the map for several hours this morning. I hope things will settle down soon. In the meantime, my apologies if you have trouble connecting to the stream or the site.

2001-10-14

Finally got around to adding the latest batch of CDs. The highlight: a buncha new Dillinger Four stuff! Thanks to my bro' for filling in some holes for me.

2001-09-19

Cool beans! I got a hold of the Lest We Forget comp recently. The best part is the addition of a "new" Crimpshrine song! The quality isn't too hot, coming of a tape digitization, but give the album a listen- there's some good stuff on there.

I also got another shipment from Hopeless, 6 CDs (3 comps, 2 albums, 1 EP). I'll be adding them soon.

2001-09-04

I had to shutdown the machine to install some much needed RAM. This was the server's first scheduled downtime, so I hope you'll forgive the disconnect. It took a bit longer to get back running than I anticipated, but things seem to be back to normal now.

Another thing I've been meaning to mention: I've posted a forum message with a list of albums I've been meaning to add to the 'cast. Take a look and if you see one you'd like me to move to the top of the list, reply in the forum. It's mostly old stuff, but that's sort of the intent of this 'cast ;).

2001-05-21

I just noticed that the stream was down. Hmm. I don't know how long it was like this- I'm guessing quite some time.

I'll be putting in some measures to make sure it doesn't stay down for prolong periods again. If you ever notice the stream being unavailable, feel free to email me.

2001-03-27

I got my shipment of CDs in this past weekend. It's been slow going, inputing the information into the database and encoding the tunes, but I just added more than 250 songs to playlist, bringing the total to more than 1500 songs. I haven't really had a chance to listen to much of it yet, but some early favorites include Samiam - Sunshine and the two Dillinger Four albums (here and here)- they kick ass!.

Once I get all the songs up and running, the next thing on my slate is a redesign of the site. I realize the request system is cumbersome, so I hope to address that with some better organization.

## 2001-03-18

You may have noticed- the request system is in place. To make a request, browse the database and on pages for songs that are on the playlist, a "request song" button will appear. You can also check out the request queue. Please note that I've put in a 10 songs per hour restriction on requests, which I hope you'll agree is quite reasonable and should help prevent abuse.

In other news, I've just order bunches of CDs from Hopeless/Sub City, Fat Wreck Chords, and Lookout. Can't wait to give them a listen and add them to the stream.

## 2001-02-28

Hey, I'm back. Finally got around to researching software and discovered something called streamcast (I love freshmeat!). It took a little work to get it working but I eventually got it and brought the stream back up and tweaked the site to accomodate the difference in software.

Not only do I expect that streamcast will be more stable than liveice, streamcast has a request system built-in. Not only that, it's written in perl, so I can tweak it to no end to make it do what I want (I already have, a bit). No, you can't make requests just yet, but I'll be incorporating it soon.

Thanks to all of you who sent in supportive emails during the hiatus. I hope you'll find SoGS better than ever- I've already added a buncha new songs and will be picking up a lot more soon.

## 2001-01-26

If anyone actually checks this site/'cast anymore, they might've noticed that the stream is not up anymore. As I mentioned previously, I've been unhappy with how the software works and with it dying all the time and not listing the stream at the Shoutcast/Icecast directories, I've decided it wasn't worth the effort for now.

One of these days, I'll bring it back up. Really.

## 2000-08-13

I'm rather unhappy with how the new setup is working: Icecast and the Shoutcast directory aren't playing nicely together, so I'm not getting listed there, which means no one is ever going to find this 'cast. Even stupider, it doesn't even seem to get listed at yp.icecast.org.

A more serious problem that I've been noticing is that liveice is dying for reasons unknown. Seems like it can't even go a whole day without quitting out. And, because of the way it works, it has to be restarted manually, which means there are long blocks of time before I notice, or can get to it, that the 'cast is down.

So, I'm aware of these problems. I hope to address both of these issues soon: please have patience! I have more tunes coming in soon.

## 2000-08-02

I'm back... Some notes:


## 2000-06-30

The Shoutcast server is now on hiatus. This web site will be going away over the weekend. Hope to be back soon.



2000-06-15

I've given 2 weeks notice at my current job. This means that come the end of the month, this server is going away. I haven't worked out the details exactly, I'll post them as they come to light.

I would very much like to continue running the 'cast, though, so my plan is to :

  1. Get a job
  2. Get a DSL line
  3. Buy a server
  4. Rebuild the SOGS site & cast from home

The rate limiting step is the first one- I'm not going to have much play money to do anything else until I find another job. So, it looks like there is no avoiding a hiatus where this site and the 'cast will not be available.

If you care at all, and would like to hear news of if/when the site comes back, email me and let me know you want to be on the list.

2000-06-08

I fucking hate Windows.

The server is down and I won't be able to get to it until this afternoon.

2000-05-23

I'm undergoing a move at my workplace and as a consequence the box that serves up this web site is going to be unavailable for some time, probably for the most part of tomorrow. Sorry if this inconveniences anyone.

2000-05-07

In a fit of insomnia, I create a couple of buttons for this site. Check 'em out on the links page.

2000-04-24

Changes... I bit the bullet and bought another drive this weekend for the 'cast. I now have 10+ GBs to fill, so no more excuses for the stagnant playlist.

I've also bought a dozen or new CDs over the past couple of weeks, so there's already a backlog of stuff waiting to get rotated in. About 50 new tunes were added over the weekend, bringing the total playlist to over 1000 for the first time. In case you're interested, the latest additions are all from comps, from Lookout, from Sub City, and a covers tribute to Op Ivy. I haven't really listened to any in depth, but I'm excited about the Sub City comp.

Enjoy!

2000-04-20

A couple of things you might wanna check out: I've updated the encoding tests section. It now includes the results of a bunch of encoders for Windows (thanks Ken!).

Also, here's a screenshot of what the site should look like. Or, at least how it looks like for me. I know that it looks much crappier on Windows (especially IE) and one of these days, I'll do a site redesign so that things are more "compatible". In the meantime, I suggest toning down your default font size (I mean really, does Microsoft think you all are myopic??) and keep in mind that I really am not that bad a site designer!

2000-04-16

It's been awhile, but I have some things to mention.

This slipped my mind totally, but about a month ago, this 'cast celebrated its one year anniversary (3 Mar to be exact). I want to thank all the people who've dropped me a note and all the listeners. I would probably keep the 'cast going even if I was the only one listening, but it does make me feel a little better to hear from you guys.

I've been working on a few new things for the site as well. In case you haven't noticed yet, clicking on the "What's Playing" link now pops up a console window. I got the idea from the Fat Wreck Chords 'cast. I hope you guys like it. The old page is still available from the console for seeing the 10 last tracks.

Another new bit is the ratings (also cribbed from Fat Free Radio). This is again available in the console for any currently playing song. Eventually I'll get the form propagated to other parts of the site.

Please participate in the ratings. It's actually somewhat important because I hope to busy myself in another encoding/digitizing binge, but due to the disk space limitations, I am going to be taking songs out of rotation. I'll decide what to remove based on how songs get rated.

Well, that's it for now. If you haven't explored the site recently, please check it out.



2000-01-28

I had to move the server this afternoon around 5:00pm from it's temporary position to something that should be more permanent. Sorry for the disconnects!

I also wanted to bring up an issue that's becoming more common lately: people leaving their computers connected to the 'cast for lenghty periods (several days). I'd appreciate it if you would disconnect when you stop listening. Thanks.

2000-01-20

The server is now back up (noon) in a temporary location. It's still unclear how long it's gonna take to make the flooded room inhabitable but I would imagine at least a week. At least the server made it through the flood!

2000-01-19

More bad news: the room where the Shoutcast server resides was flooded out when an overhead water pipe broke. The extent of the damages remains to be seen (the server was elevated on a table top at least), but for at least a day or two, the South of Gilman St. is out of commission. Check here for updates as I get them.

2000-01-19

The server got hung up again sometime today so I had to take it down and upgrade some non-Shoutcast-related software that I think may have been causing problems. Sorry if any of you were disconnected or unable to connect.

1999-11-19

Just for kicks, I'm going to do a South of Gilman St. A-Z, meaning I'm going to take Winamp off shuffle mode and start from the very top of the playlist. I'll start this sometime Monday morning, 15 Nov and let it go until it's over. I estimate this will last almost 2 full days (about 45 hours).

1999-10-07

There's going to be a power outage in the building this evening, starting at 10:00PM PDT. The Shoutcast server and this web server will be down until Friday morning. Sorry for the short notice.

1999-10-05

This will probably be the death knell for traffic to the web site but... I spent some time cleaning up file names and such and am now streaming titles so you should be seeing song titles in your mp3 client's display if it supports it. Let me know if you notice any glitches in the titles (the numbers at the end are supposed to be there, btw) or the status page.

1999-09-21

I was scanning the Shoutcast directory just for kicks and discovered Fat Free Radio, a 'cast run by the crew at Fat Wreck Chords. Very cool setup, using Icecast streaming at 24, 64, and 128 kbps. They play a lot of stuff of their own label, obviously, but lots of other stuff too. Their playlist is apparently >1500, shooting for 10,000 (are there that many punk songs?!?).

If any of you work for Lookout: give me a job! I've done half the work already!

1999-09-10

I'm planning some software upgrades for this web server this weekend so there will be periods where the forum and database portions are not accessible (this news page you're reading right now is database driven, by the way). I hope it won't take too long but the forum portion may be non-functional for awhile. No time frames set- it depends on how my weekend goes.

1999-09-02

Gabe pointed me to an online petition to save the Gilman St. club from closure by the city of Berkeley. The actual petition is offline as of 1:30p due to "amazing popularity" but there is a lot of information available about the ongoing struggles the club has faced. It's amazing to me that after all these years, the club and project are still being persecuted by the local government.

In other news, it appears that there have been some backbone problems today, originating somewhere in Cable & Wireless' or Exodus' realms so depending out your route, the server may have been unreachable. Blame cw.net/exodus.net :p.

1999-08-27

I just want to bitch about Winamp's absolutely brain dead random number generator. Shuffle mode my ass.

1999-08-20

I decided to do the switching over a little sooner- the "Listen" and "What's Playing" links above now point to the new server. The new server is now listed in the Shoutcast directory and the old one is not. I'll keep the old one going until this evening. I apologize for any inconvenience this move over is causing (sorry for the disconnect this morning, guys).

A comment on a new feature: the "what's playing" list is now linked to the database so you can explore from there. I also put in a "show lyrics" toggle that will display the lyrics for the current song if it is available. Hope you like it.

1999-08-19

The new address for the South of Gilman St. audio stream is 164.67.78.199. The server is up now. The current server will be downed sometime Friday evening, 20 Aug, and at that time I'll switch the "what's playing" thing over.

1999-08-17

Well, the Mac scene is catching up like gangbusters. Yet another streaming audio client has been released, Audion from Panic. Very elegant interface, typical of Panic's efforts although the info windoid is a wee bit small and truncates this 'casts description. It also has some built in directory functions, although I'm not sure which directory it's looking up.

Unfortunately, Audion is commercial- $18. I guess I'll stick to xmms for now, but of the 3 available clients for the Mac, Audion looks to be my favorite, at least at first glance.

1999-08-11

The South of Gilman Street Shoutcast is going to be moving in about a week or so to a different box and a different address. I don't know what the address will be yet so please check this site for further details and updates.

At that time, I will be rolling out a couple of new features I've been thinking about and I'm hoping that this will get me restarted on expanding the playlist some more, after having been somewhat stagnant for a while. So stay tuned!

Update: just to clarify, this website will not be changing/moving but the actually audio stream will. You mp3spy users will probably be affected most if you rely on a bookmark (or whatever, I've never used mp3spy). Those of you who come to this site and use the "Listen" link will be fine.

1999-08-04

I've added a couple of things. First, the results of my encoder testing, in which I test 6 encoders for the quality of their mp3 output at 56kbps. Check it out and contribute with results with your favorite encoder. Secondly, I've put up a link to listener stats, something that I've been doing for awhile but just never provided a link.

1999-07-27

The future of the South of Gilman St. shoutcast is uncertain due to some technical issues... please see the forum discussion of the specifics and let me know if you have any ideas to help me keep it going.

1999-07-20

It's been quiet from my end for a while but I'm still here :). I wanted to report on my attempts at getting this 'cast going on a different system with multiple streams, etc.

From what I can tell, the only current way to use Icecast such that streamed audio is re-encoded at the desired bitrates is to use liveice with some external encoder. Liveice sounded very promising, especially the part about being able to re-encode at a variety of bitrates at once and send out multiple streams.

Suffice it to say, this wasn't the easiest of configurations. I got it going eventually, though, using the LAME encoder.

First conclusion: dual-streams are not gonna work on the hardware I have. When I was running two streams, the two encoding processes were each pegged at about 45%-50% and both of the resulting streams skipped a great deal. This is on a 266 MHz PII, which is the fastest hardware currently available to me. Based on this experience, I would say minimally a 350 MHz PII is needed and I don't see such a box in my future :(.

Second conclusion: "freeware" encoders have a lot of room for improvement. The quality of the 56K stream, while definitely listenable, was noticeably worse than the current 'cast (which uses the MS Netshow encoder). It suffered the same "swimmy" artifacting endemic to alot of mp3 encoding. I guess when you are Microsoft you can afford to pay the Fraunhofer Institute for their "good" encoders.

Third conclusion: the liveice interface leaves much to be desired. Much of this stems from the completely garbling of the curses-based interface on my terms. Apparently it can do random/shuffle on playlists but I haven't figured out exactly how. And I don't know if it can provide "current song" info like MTicker but that can probably be easily done by parsing the logfile.

This puts the plan to provide 2 streams on the backburner for the near-term. As for moving to an icecast system... well, though the quality is a downer, I may not have much choice. I'm getting re-org'd at work and hardware allocation may force my hand.

Enough rambling. If any of you have technical tips or ideas on any of the above, please let me know!

1999-07-19

Thanks to Tre for the heads up on another Mac mp3-stream client, MacAmp, currently in "preview". I gave it a try and found the audio quality miserable!. I hope that they get this cleaned up before release because it's really not usable as is, at least not on the 56k stream of this 'cast.

1999-07-15

This is probably of no interest to any of you, but finally there is a mp3 streaming audio client for the Macintosh. This means I can listen from home at long last (well, without some kludgy hack). It's called SoundJam so check it out. Unfortunately, it's not free :(.

1999-06-14

I've posted a new survey in the forum- what kind of music and what bands are you listening to nowadays? Please take part and let me know what's spinning in your CD player/turntable.

1999-06-02

We're experiencing some problems with the network today (looks like hangups upstream). Hopefully, these will get resolved soon. Sorry if any of you had problems with the connection.

1999-05-24

It was bound to happen: I completely forgot to switch over to 24kbps on Saturday: sorry for the inconvenience.

I'm gonna stop doing "shows" for the time being- it doesn't seem like there's much interest so it hasn't been worth the hassle.

1999-05-17

I don't know if anyone was affected, but I wasn't able to switch the 'cast over to 24kbps until late Saturday morning due to network problems at my ISP. If it did: sorry!

In other news: I have yet another hostname change to pass along (in case you haven't already noticed): this site is now located at gilman.dhs.org. This is something of an experiment and I'm not sure how stable/responsive DHS's service is gonna be, but it seems to working fine. If you see some odd behavior on the web site which may have been caused by this switchover, let me know.

This week's show: Songs that are Covers. Wednesday, 10am. I'll be running a quiz again on who performed the songs originally.

1999-05-10

This week's show will be "Chicks" (ie songs featuring female vocals). Wednesday, 10am.

1999-05-03

Not much new to report. I do want to give credit to my li'l brother who is a curator of all things Gilman/punk from the era that much of this stuff is from. He's got quite the collection of obscure 7"s which is gonna contribute much to the database and the playlist.

One minor change to the web site: the news/home page now only lists the 5 latest entries (PHP+Postgres kicks ass!). All the older news is available on a separate page.

This week's show will be Songs by Bands Not from the Bay Area. Maybe I'll run a quiz on where they are from, depending on whether there is any more interest in last week's quiz. Oh, and this time, the show will be at 10am PDT on Thursday.

1999-04-26

Just wanna remind you all: I'd really appreciate any info you can send along to me to make the SGS database complete/correct/free of blanks and "???"s. So dig up those old vinyls you got and send me the 411!

This week's show will be "Songs by Bands that Spun Off from Other Bands". I'll be running a quiz in the forum area for you to guess what bands spun off the bands being played- look/listen for it Wednesday @ 3PM west coast time.

1999-04-22

Hey, actually had some listeners during my show! Sorry for the fiasco getting started- I was trying to avoid disconnects, but wound up doing so anyway.In case it wasn't readily apparent, all the tunes played are available for download, primarily through MP3.com. Check out the albums page for links.

The database front end is pretty much complete- give it a whirl! I've got most of the basic data in place but there's a lot of fleshing out that needs to be done- please help!

Now, back to digitizing more tunes...

I also have a rough analysis of listener stats (just the bytes transferred per host). It's a big table right now, I'll pare it down in subsequent incarnations.

1999-04-21

Sorry about the fuckups this morning. I thought I'd try handling a request but the combination of WinAmp+Music Ticker makes this very difficult :-P. I'm afraid I'm not gonna be able to handle one song requests. My offer for 20-song blocks still stands, though!

...and the afternoon fuckups. MusicTicker is driving me ape-shit, so I'm turning off its list control features. Sorry for the disconnects!

1999-04-19

The database is now live. There's still much to be done on the front end, providing access to it, but the data is mostly in and usable. Take a look. I'll be updating it throughout the week.

I've updated other stuff to, so have a look around.

For this week's DJ hour, the theme will be "songs that you can legally download for yourself". See you Wednesday at 3pm this time.

1999-04-15

So much for my second attempt at being a DJ- zero listeners :-P!.

Some new things: I've set up a discussion forum, although given the lack of interest in anything other than the "what's playing" list, I imagine it'll sit there gathering dust. Who knows, maybe we can get a sort of community going.

I've also changed my mailto: yet again. Stupid free webmail sites (hi Andrew, sorry I didn't write back, Netscape lost your mail :-p). I would recommend not using Netscape, second worse I've had the displeasure of using (after Hotmail, of course).

Finally, in more significant news, there's been some clamoring for lowering the bitrate (as well as some requests to keep it how it is). Turning away modem users doesn't seem "punk" so I've decided to compromise and have Low Bitrate Weekends. We'll see how it goes- let me know what you think. Or post in the forum.

1999-04-12

I've been spending a lot of time putting together a database for the music that you hear on this Shoutcast. It's not quite ready yet, but eventually, you'll be able to browse the bands, albums, and songs that you are hearing, see the covers, read the lyrics. I don't know how long this is going to take- I set up the database yesterday and started flowing in the actual data.

This, of course, is yet another excuse for a not expanding the playlist. I hope you'll bear with me. Once it's done, I'll be sticking another drive into the server to better accomodate a major dump of songs.

This week's DJ hour will feature the album that, in my mind, started it all- the Turn It Around compilation put out by MRR. Hope to see you there- Wednesday, 4pm. If you're tuned in and get disconnected at the beginning or end of the show, my apologies: it's unavoidable when I make changes to the playlist and settings. Just reconnect.

1999-04-07

You must all hate Crimpshrine... well, except for the 2 of you that tuned in mid-way thru. Hope you enjoyed it, and sorry for "hanging up" on you after the show ended- everyone seemed hell bent on talking to me or calling me right around that time.

If you're reading this, you've probably noticed that the web pages are being served off a different address. I was getting increasingly annoyed with running it under NT so I decided to move it here. This will probably not be a permanent home, but I'm happier with it. If you're interested in such boring details, I'll be posting a "plans-for-the-future" page at some point with lots of geek-speak.

1999-04-05

Well, I discovered this week the existence of a couple of CDs that I hadn't been aware of: a Sewer Trout collection called From the Forgotten memories of Punks Failed Hopes and Dreams Loom and a CD version of the What are you pointing at? comp from Very Small Records re-released as Four Two Pudding. I'm trying to track these down (can't wait to get my hands on the Sewer Trout!).

Partly because of this discovery, playlist expansion has really slowed down- sorry!

Finally, something I've been thinking about is having a "DJ hour". Wait, it's not as stupid as it sounds. For about one hour, I'll actually set a playlist, rather than using shuffled mode. This week, I'll play my favorite of the Gilman bands, Crimpshrine. I'm shooting for Wednesday at 4:00p west coast time. Hopefully, you won't all tune out.

For future sessions, I'd like to play, say, 20 of your requests. So, take a look at the (not quite) complete playlist and email me a list of 20 songs you'd like to hear, along with 3 choices for times (MWF afternoons are best).

1999-03-29

Playlist expansion is gonna slow down for a little while. I've started working on a project that I've been meaning to get for a long time now: digitize all the stuff that I have on vinyl/cassette, stuff that will probably never show up on CD, and burn them onto disks.

One upside is that a lot of harder-to-find stuff will be making it onto this Shoutcast- I think this is pretty cool. However, it takes much longer to actually record things than to rip & encode as before. And the quality will, of course, be sub-CD quality as far as hisses and pops go. Nevertheless, I'm looking forward to going through a lot of these songs I haven't listened to in a while.

1999-03-22

Lots more new tunes to come this week, hopefully...

1999-03-14

I finally got around to actually working on things for this Shoutcast this weekend. This web page, for instance. I changed file names around and such so bookmarks and links may have broken- sorry! I also decided to use a different email address now for the purposes of this 'cast- see the mailto: above.

And after a few days of not having expanded the playlist, I added a few dozen more songs including, finally, MTX's "At Gilman Street".

Enjoy!

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