Welcome to the Chicago O’Hare International Airport. To Chicago, where a double whiskey that costs $5.50 in Missoula costs $16. Enough to turn a guy sober. And smokes for $6.50? Are you (cough) kidding me?

Wrote a bunch on the plane. Will have a few stories in my traditional vein come Monday.

Well, I think it’s really dead. I can’t decide if I want to sell it for parts on eBay, take it out back and shoot it Old Yeller style, or strap nitroglycerine to it, take it out into the woods and shoot it Hunter S. Thompson style after getting good and loaded on Wild Turkey.

I can get it to boot into Classic with the Norton disc, so I was able to save all of my data. Forgot to save my email mailboxes, but cest la vie. Meanwhile, it will not boot from any of the original software discs I have. So I booted back into Norton + copied the system folder from my external drive. That got me booted into Classic without a CD, but the damn thing crashes when I try to save any work, upload anything to the Internet or download anything.

Canceling Internet @ home to save $$. For now, I just have a computer @ werk. NO big deal, right? The weather’s nice and I should be outside anyway.

Still, if you’d like to contribute to the “Get Marc Back Online” fund, I won’t stop you. Drop me an email and let me know how much you’d like to donate.

So, the laptop is still down. I can now boot into Classic but not OSX. But I am consistently bombing out upon shutdown. have not tried putting it to sleep yet. Pep was right, it’s a clean slate. I still haven’t given up yet, though. I have one more thing to try. I burnt MSIE + iTunes for Classic onto CD so that I can have basic functionality, but I did not have Stuffit Expander for Classic. @ Amy’s now burning that.

Meanwhile, Chad came by to help me work on the Volvo (suspected that the fuel pump is bad, but still researching.) Anyway, he made me laugh, ‘cos he had a modified “Support Our Troops” magnet on his car. I decided my Amy modified “God Bless the USA” magnet had finally found a home, and here is the documentation.

Sort of.

Will still be on the air, but the below should explain why I will not be doing a download show. No fun.

The update is that I have tried every Apple install disc. The machine will not boot from any of the discs, even when I attempt to boot using the option key. It will not boot from Norton, either, in OSX. But I was able to get it to boot with Norton in Classic mode, and ran Disc Doc. No avail. But I was able to get it to recognize my external drive. I copied the System Folder from my external drive, and I was able to get it to boot into OS9.2. But I have no web browser, so getting online is out (yes, I tried FTP to Apple + Microsoft. No good.)

My good friend Amy was kind enough to let me boot in Target Disc Mode on her Mac Mini, but that was no help.

I am ready to wipe this thing clean + attempt installing WIN XP on it for crying out loud.

I only lost a bunch of email, basically. I back almost everything up online - writing, art etc. An I back up to my external drive as well, so I’m not that excited about data loss @ least.

Still, frustrating.

Sold the Maxima. The Volvo needs a fuel pump. I will not be going to Bozeman on Tuesday, as I had hoped, to see Elivs Costello. The raise has still not come through.

Headed to the Old Post for a burger + a beer. Done with computers for a while. I guess everything happens for a reason. If I can’t get mine working anytime soon, will cancel Internet @ home until i get a machine that works. Way to save $$, Marc. /shrug

The machine has been a faithful companion, but I may have to take it out back and shoot it HST style.

Rock + Roll has always been about rebellion. From Alan Freed’s Moondog Coronation Ball in Cleveland, Ohio, the first rock + roll concert, to the original Woodstock to the Rock for Change tour of 2004 and, even closer to home, to the infamous last night at The Ritz here in Missoula.Rock music, all music, should be seen and heard live to be able to be fully appreciated. The 45 RPM, first developed by RCA in the 50s, the 8-tracks, the vinyl, the tapes, the CDs, even the MP3s are all incidental. Yes, artists must make a living, and they should be paid for what they do, but the current business model, which, strangely enough, seems to be based on the same type of business model that is shared between pimps and hookers, a business model encouraged by the Recording Industry Association of America, does not support innovative music + creativity + does not pay artists the money they deserve.

Napster began to change all of that. Napster was rebellious in the way that it delivered music to the people. The consumer now had a choice as to how he acquired his music. Now he had the opportunity to download his music for free. The money he saved could be spent at concerts where artists actually get paid. He could use the money he might have spent on an overpriced CD where most of the profits would go into the pockets of the suits at the RIAA to buy merchandise at a concert, where more of the money goes directly to artists.

Napster gets shut down. We see MP3.com get revamped. More legal download music sites spring up, from Rhapsody to the iTunes Music Store to Sony and Napster 2.0.

People still download music. Downloads do not hurt music sales – and this is a fact that must be understood. Music sales may be suffering from a variety of other ailments, including the poor economy, or, gasp!, mediocre music, but downloads are not the issue that the RIAA wants you to believe that it is.

Technology changed the way consumers and artists think about music distribution. People could now get music on Usenet or via P@P programs such as Grockster and Limewire. And now, Bittorrent.

Artists also realized that they have a unique opportunity to take back control of their music and its distribution. They are no longer chained to the record companies to help them distribute their music. They could release it themselves – on their websites.

Artists as diverse as Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys to REM and Radiohead to Wilco and the Smashing Pumpkins have embraced this new opportunity, and Radio Dystopia was founded on the idea that this opportunity is a good one which encourages artistic control of the music, of the creative process.

The first part of tonight’s show will explore artists who have released entire albums for free on their websites either before the album was available in stores, or as web exclusives. The second hour will push the limits of the conventional music industry as a way to encourage the industry to re-think its business model as I play Fiona Apple’s newest album that her record label, Sony, refuses to release.

Listen to me grit my teeth and try not to yell and break shit. The update is, I am looking for parts. Ugh.