One for the road

While the car remains one of my favorite places to listen to music, I've found myself gravitating more and more towards audio books as a means to enliven long drives. When we're at home in Oakland, we have the good fortune to live on the same block as a public library. As it's a small branch, I also used to make frequent trips to the downtown branch, where the selection is superior. Late one night as I was packing for a trip to Ventura, I realized I'd forgotten to visit the library, and wouldn't have a book to pass the time, so I did a quick google search and struck literary gold with librivox.org.

Now, Robin Cook fans will be disappointed to read that librivox deals only in works that are in the public domain, so fans of histrionic medical dramas will be forced to look elsewhere. Still, there's plenty of Twain, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hawthorne, so you can at least avoid UK spelling, which just sounds weird on mp3. Another advantage that librivox has over the library, which admittedly does offer a tantalizing supply of potboilers to pass the miles, is that you can copy the files right onto your ipod, which beats swapping discs every hour and a half, or ripping ten CD's the night before. 

The audio quality and performance vary somewhat, and some novels feature a revolving cast of readers, which always seems to make the least capable orators all the more obvious. I've been considering volunteering, as I have all I need to make a professional recording here in Dubai, and would love to contribute to this excellent resource.

Lastly, because many folks just don't enjoy downloading legal content, here's a blog offering over twenty unreleased white album demos. I had planned on describing the sound of the generator we encountered at TBR by linking to the album version of "Back In The USSR", with it's opening woosh of jet noise, but I became distracted when I found these recordings-- score one for the legal team at Apple Corp, sort of.