Okay, I got my hosting problem resolved, and in case you’re wondering exactly what the hell happened, I’ll explain.

For several years I’ve been using Dreamhost as a hosting service for Lost Turntable. In fact, even before I moved my blog away from Blogspot I was using the Lost Turntable URL and server space provided by Dreamhost to host my MP3s. I chose Dreamhost, quite frankly, because they were cheap.

Well, you get what you pay for sometimes. While Dreamhost is dirt cheap, they’re about as reliable as the Raiders starting QB (oooh a sports reference!). Ever since I signed up with them, not a month would go by without at least some sort of temporary outage or disruption in service. If you follow me on Twitter (and if you don’t you really should – see that button up in the top right corner, why don’t you click on that?) then you’ll know that whenever this happened it drove me nuts.

A few weeks ago someone at Dreamhost must have spilled a cup of coffee on the wrong power cord or something, because my site went down for over 48 hours. That was the last straw for me. Sure, I don’t make money with the Lost Turntable (in fact it costs me money), but I like to keep a reliable site up for my readers, and I do use it as a reference for potential employers sometime, employers who don’t mind liberal use of swear words and casual piracy.

With the help of a friend, I migrated my site to Nearly Free Speech (NFS) another hosting service. I chose NFS for two reasons. One, they have a very hands-off approach to the sites they host, so I would never have to worry about them shutting me down, and two, because of their unique pricing system.

Hosting services like Dreamhost sell their services as a flat rate. That’s great it you need a lot of bandwidth and a ton of storage, but if you just need a little bandwidth and not that much storage, it’s kind of a waste. I thought that my site didn’t take up that much bandwidth or storage, so switching to a service that used a pay-what-you-use model made sense to me.

Okay, that was my mistake.

Turns out that you fuckers download a lot of music from me. How much?

About 7 to 10 GB a day.

That’s a lot of bandwidth. Furthermore, because of my generous nature (I know, I know, I’m great) I typically have about 6 GB of files hosted on my site at any time. With that much bandwidth and storage, I was looking at a monthly bill of about $130 from NFS, that’s more than what I paid Dreamhost for a year of hosting.

Now, I like you guys, but not that much. I needed to change severs and fast. But one problem, ICANN (the governing body of the Internet, yeah there is one! Crazy huh?) says that a site cannot change hosts twice within a certain timeframe, something like 60 or 90s days. Meaning that my site is stuck at NFS for the the time being.

I found a workaround though! Using a third hosting service (which will remain nameless at the moment), I registered LTfiles.com, and then I moved ALL the MP3s I’m currently hosting to that server, which i’s the server I’ll be using for the foreseeable future. So from now on, when you download an MP3 from The Lost Turntable, you’ll technically be downloading it from LTfiles. It’s not an actual site though, so don’t bookmark it or go there. It’s just a placeholder.

It’s kind of a roundabout solution, but it was the best I could come up with. And, actually, thanks to the deal I got at that hosting service, I’m still going to end up saving money on the whole thing. All my hosting combined should only be about $100 for the upcoming year. So while I appreciate the offers for donations, they won’t be necessary  Besides, I’m kind of morally opposed to anyone asking for donations if they run a site like this. I don’t own these songs. No one is making me post them. If I can’t afford to do it or find someway to make it work on my own, then I feel that I really shouldn’t be doing it. But whatever, I’d rather not drag other site’s names through the mud just because I don’t agree with how they operate.

And besides, if you really do want to help me out, may I remind you that I am currently selling some of my records to get some cash for my trip to Asia. Why don’t you check out what I have for sale and make an offer?

See what I did there? I’m clever.

Anyways, enough of this boring nonsense, how about some music? Kind of a lean most musically tonight, but don’t worry, I got some cool stuff planned later this week.

Soundgarden
Come Together
I’ve heard this cover on the radio  since the mid-90s, and it goes back even farther than that. I grabbed it from the 12″ single to “Hands All Over,” which was released in 1989, I don’t know where it first showed up. One thing I do know, however, is that it has never been issued on a proper Soundgarden album, which is fucking crazy considering how great it sounds and how well known it is.

Shelia E
A Love Bizarre (Parts I and II)
Save The People
Let’s take these songs one at a time.

As far as I can tell, there are three versions of “A Love Bizarre.” The album version, which is over 12 minutes long, a brief single edit that runs a slight three minutes and forty-six seconds, and this version, which is smack dab in the middle at seven minutes and sixteen seconds in length. I would assume that this means the full 12-minute version is the three-part version, and that final part is the part that has been removed from this slightly abridged one, I don’t own that uncut version though, so I’m not sure. Regardless the song kicks ass, and is one of Shelia E and Prince’s best (the track is pretty much a duet between the two).

As great as that song is though, “Save The People” really blows it out of the water. Lyrically, the track is very simple, with the only words being the occasional repeated chorus of  “save the people/feed their hungry eyes/save the children/don’t let them die” (surely a Live-Aid inspired message). But the lyrics are nearly inconsequential to the rest of the tune, which is an eight and a half minute funkified epic of face-melting guitar riffs, amazing drum solos and a blistering bassline that would make Les Claypool do a double take. It’s brilliant funk, something right out of a Funkadelic album. Amazing, awesome, spectacular stuff. The kind of track that makes me happy that I collect vinyl, and even more happy that I have a site like this where I can share it with you all, enjoy!

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2012 at 11:18 pm and is filed under B-sides, Shelia E, Soundgarden. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.