Blogs

Funny thing blogs.
When you start one, you intend to update and post new things all the time but in actuality a few posts in and I can't really be arsed any more!

More on my track 13 mix

Just thinking about that mix and how it took three goes to "get it out".

The first was when I included it on several floppy disks with other songs I did at the time to a PD house in exchange for other disks. For those who don't know, in the days before the internet was cheap and widely available, and faster than a 9600bps connection, it made sense to get freeware and shareware and other large downloadables on a disk from PD houses or Public Domain libraries.
The deal with this was you could either buy the programs you wanted, usually at something like 20p each or say £5 for one of those newfangled CD-ROMS full of stuff. Or if you contributed several items of software, you got several 'credits' you could use in exchange for stuff on a disk.
For some reason I never got my 'credits' for the disks I sent in so I can only assume the guy running the PD house thought they weren't worthy enough!
Needless to say, I didn't use that particular PD place again!


The second go was when I put it and a few other things that I had done onto a limited run CD which I gave away to friends on my college course. Being the big-headed so and so that I was back then and mostly for a laugh, I signed them so that when I became famous eventually, my friends could flog the CDs for lots of money.
Hmmm... I might go and check on eBay.... lol!!

And now, third time lucky, thanks to the wonders of the internet, its out there being listened to and hopefully enjoyed by probably hundreds of thousands of people!

:o)

The new BBC Weather graphics

Have you seen the new BBC Weather graphics?
They have now been slanted with a clear bias on the south of England. Fine for those who live in the south but for us choochters it is now really hard to see if it is going to rain, snow, or whatever.
Even their 3D sweep of the country only goes up as far as Newcastle (wayaye man) before rising westwards to glipse Northern Ireland then sinking southwards back over Cumbria.
You need binoculars to see what the weather on Stornoway is doing.

I dont know if it is pissing down outside now but I do that the BBC has pissed away millions of pounds of the TV Licence payers' money developing this new system. Daft.

My track 13 mix as used by Queen

As you have probably read on the flossmixes site, one of my mixes has been used on the into tape to Queen's currents gigs.
Wow! is a serious understatement and I'm just gobsmacked!

But i didn't even know the actual mix used existed up until last week:
Bart Lammey, my fellow fanmixer and you could say the original fanmixer, emailed me along the lines "so you're famous now" with a link to queenconcerts.com and the snippet with "Its a beautiful day 2005 techno mix - DJ Koma - Ross Robertson [mix tape]".
I assumed someone had ripped my mix of Bo Rhap which used Beautiful Day so i basically emailed back along the lines of "Hmph". Some lowlife probably taking credit for one of my mixes on some mix tape. It's happened before with some Japanese guy palming my Christmas mixes of WWRY as his own mix.

I was going to leave it at that but I thought I might as well follow the link and take a goosey.
BOOOOM!
I had to take several retakes at the page - It was a tracklisting of one of Queen's current concerts and and the first track to be played was this Ross Robertson / DJ Koma mix as an intro before the first live track.
In total shock I spent the next few hours doing some serious digging on the internet to find out what was going on.
The first link took me to queenzone.com, not one of my favourite sites as i find there is way too much bitching and knowledge snobbery, and someone whining about how crap they thought this mix was.
I managed to find a link to an audience recorded snippet of this mix from one of the concerts and on listening to it I discovered that it wasn't the mix that I thought it was.

This DJ Koma had ripped my Track 13 mix. Ironically the only one of my original compositions that I have made publicly available and the only "flossmix" that really has no connection to Queen!! :)

It was one i did while faffing around with my keyboard and a programe called Impulse Tracker or something. Its been years since I did this and I dont really remember the details.
Anyway, I think it was for one of the QFM contests that I decided to use this as the insparation for the track was from one of the echoey riffs from track 13 of Made In Heaven.

To say Im a bit cheesed off here is an understatement. Don't get me wrong though, I'm honoured and thrilled that Queen have decided to use this as an opening to their concerts (they could have let me know about it though!) and I'm not cheesed with Queen, I'm cheesed with this DJ Koma guy.
He has ripped one of my own songs without even asking me or letting me know about it, grafting the beginning to Beautiful Day on the start and dubbing some Freddie samples over it. Its been done okay I suppose, but it essentially remains my song. I guess I should be grateful that he has at least kept my name in the title and given me some credit for it!

If he had taken one of my Queen mixes as a base then added to it, then yep. Again an email would be nice but at the end of the day it would have still been a "Queen" remix. By using my Track 13 inspired mix, one of my original songs, without permission, notification or anything and altering it (and not very much at that) it really gripes me. Probably because I feel the song is "my baby" and I feel like its been stolen from me!

Lol! Listen to me. I know some people would say its poetic justice for what I have been doing to the Queen tracks but at least QP knew about it. Greg Brooks knows about my mixes. So does Jim Beech. So does Brian May (apparently).
I didn't know about this mix to my song!

Listen to me, I sound like some old housewife whos had her sheets nicked!

At the end of the day I'm just really happy, thrilled, honoured et al. that Queen have used my mix in their live shows and they are more than welcome to continue using it.

If they feel the need, then by all means send me some signed CDs, DVDs, unreleased demos, etc or even divert some funds from Brian May's wig fund to me.
Did I tell you that I am in great need of a new Honda Accord type R, and my fiance' is constantly bugging me to buy her a Seat Leon. Lol! Only joking.... I know Brian May doesnt have any wigs! :)

24 hour takeaways?

It's going to be after midnight before I can get round to having something to eat. I really fancy either a Burger King Whopper or something from the "Wing Wah", my local chinky or chinese takeaway to be PC.
But as sods law dictates, both these places will be closed by then.

We have 24 hour supermarkets now so why cant we have a 24 hour chinky?

Mmmmm... saturated fat.... :)

The Obligitary Test Post

just to see that this works!