Every Last Friday of the Month Doc Martin’s Exclusive LA Residency with special appearances by his friends from all over the world.

This month’s guests: Harvey, founder of Black Cock Records, resident at Hawaii/London’s Quiet Storm and the new classics buyer for WAX. Harvey will be playing all night long!
Located at Blue in Hollywood1642 Las Palmas Ave,
Just south of Hollywood Blvd18 & Over, Full Bar for 21 & Over
Doors open at 9pm$10 Cover before 10:30pm, $20 afterInfo 323.993.3392
Lighting by Donovan (San Francisco)
Sound by Sound Factory Systems

There was some question whether WMC 2002 would be in Las Vegas or good ol’ South Beach next year. According to wmcon.com, it’s still going to be happening in Miami Beach.

POST/VIEW WMC EVENTS HEREHype: “On March 24-28, 2001 more than 6,500 music industry professionals and enthusiasts from around the world converged in Miami Beach for the 16th annual Winter Music Conference. WMC is credited as the most important date on the dance music calendar where every aspect of the industry worldwide comes together…”

By all rights, it should be a banner few months for digital music.
A high-powered new generation of digital music players is heading for Christmas stockings. Almost simultaneously, the major record labels are releasing their catalogs online after years of stalling. Unfortunately, the two campaigns might as well be happening on different planets. People using hot new music devices such as Apple Computer’s iPod or Compaq Computer’s iPaq will not be able to play music from the Pressplay and MusicNet subscription services, which for the first time will make songs legally available online.
The disconnect speaks volumes about the fragmented state of the so-called digital rights management industry, which provides anti-piracy technology. Consumer electronics companies that once paid some lip service to helping fight digital music piracy are now releasing products that will boost demand for the huge amount of free–if legally questionable–music still available online.

Artcile from CNET News.com

The new release is supposed to contain better MIDI TIMING, latency correction, enhanced Athlon performance, plus a some neww VST instruments. I haven’t tried it, but I would love to hear anyone’s comments who has already taken the plunge…’Cubase 5.1 - more instruments, more effects, more power
The new Cubase VST 5.1 version is now available. Three new VST instruments and eleven additional virtual effect processors offer new creative possibilities for music production. ‘

We all may have owned or at least toyed with a Kurzweill keyboard at one time or another. I used one on one of my first records actually. Some people may not know that Kurzweill has also written some amazing books, like “The Age of Spiritual Machines". The concept of the book is that eventually computers exceed human intelligence. Which to most readers, does not seem possible, at least in our time. But through a series of essays and eventually the future time line, he does prove his point (at least in my non-Luddite mind).

I’m not sure where the guy comes up with this stuff. He’s either a genius or totally INSANE. His new book is even more bizarre, it’s titled “The Singularity is Near". a quote from the website:
‘"The Singularity” is a phrase borrowed from the astrophysics of black holes. The phrase has varied meanings; as used by Vernor Vinge and Raymond Kurzweil, it refers to the idea that accelerating technology will lead to superhuman machine intelligence that will soon exceed human intelligence, probably by the year 2030. The results on the other side of the “event horizon,” they say, are unpredictable. We’ll try anyway.’

Read more at: KurzweilAI.net

After adding the BBC Music News to muziqnet (via RDF block), it caused everything below the top header to disappear. I’m starting to question this software . The problem is now corrected. We deleted that darn limey news link. Enjoy!