The CerebralRift

One of the things  I haven’t written anything about so far is the podcasts I listen to.  In fact, I probably get more podcasts than anyone should get.  Recently as I was going through my podcast directory I came across some new downloads for podcasts I didn’t even know I had.  This comes from the fact that I have 81 feeds in my podcatcher configuration, and many of the links are dead or produce new episodes very infrequently.

A lot of the podcasts that I listen to are technical in nature.  A smaller subset of them are non-technical, talk oriented podcasts.  And the smallest subset of podcasts are musical in nature…  In fact, there are only three music podcasts that I get regularly.  It’s those three podcasts that I am going to talk about today.

The first of these three is Rathole Radio produced by Dan Lynch who I first encountered listening to the Linux Outlaws podcast (but we won’t talk about that here…  I’ll save that for some other place and some other time).

Dan is a sound engineer and very accomplished musician whose musical interests seem boundless.  On Rathole Radio he has found a forum to explore an eclectic range of music, throw in a little social and political commentary, and invite other artists on to be interviewed.

Another dimension to the show: he streams it live while interacting with an audience on irc. And to make it more interesting a portion of the music that he selects for the show comes from recommendations from the audience.  (I have a small bias for this as several tracks I’ve suggested have made their way to the show…)

Overall, the live nature of the recording comes out in the podcast itself, giving the show a unique flavor that is as fun to listen to offline as it is to participate during the streaming.

The next podcast I want to talk about is The Juiced Penguin. this is a mostly randomly produced show of music.  It’s more like listening to a radio show without a lot of commercials, just an intro and an outtro.

The show has several contributors: terryf, Lord Drachen Blut and Randy (The Nose) Noseworthy.  The range of music they tend to work with is rock, hard rock, country and a little pop.

The show is a fun listen, typically about an hour with little to no overlap with music you might hear on other podcasts.  Note: this is an ogg only podcast (aka an oggcast).

The most recent addition to my podcatcher is The BugCast by Dave and Caroline Lee.  Originally Dave was the presenter of the show, with Caroline filling the role of researcher, however Caroline has moved into the role of Co-Host with her husband.

The show takes a similar approach to Rathole Radio in that Dave and Caroline frequently stream the show live as they are recording it and chat with listeners in an IRC channel.

However, where the show differs substantially is that it is not 100 percent dedicated to music.  The BugCast is a little more of a mixture of music casting with some talk mixed in.  The talk can range from opinions on topical news stories to a-day-in-the-life type stories.

The BugCast typically features music is more MOR to AOR in format, mixed with the occasional singer / songwriter, and occasional jazz piece. Aother feature of The BugCast is the inclusion of a ‘mystery’ comedy song.  They will frequently play a song without telling the audience the title or the artist to allow the punch-line(s) of the songs fresh and interesting.

And it is this mixture of chat, artist bios and music that makes the show a real joy to listen to.  I often have the feeling that most radio these days is pretty dry, but Dave and Caroline have been breathing life into a format that has been missing from the airways for a long time.

So, these are some of the shows that I listen to on a regular basis.  Hope you check them out and have fun listening to them.

Related posts:

1. The Faust Cycle: Day Six
2. Review: OG – 01
3. Finding Music Online: Part One
4. The Faust Cycle: Day Two
5. The Faust Cycle: Day Three