Cab Sessions

This past week I nearly scored a performing artist for the inaugral Cablog Sessions. However after scampering from Maccas and climbing aboard with a guitar, his first words were, "Thank Christ I'm out of there, mate. The joint was full of niggers and blacks."

Nice, and an instant disqualification from being invited to perform. Ironically, though, the clown left a home made CD in the cab, which may or may not contain his music.

Here is the original cab sessions, The Black Cab Sessions recorded in London taxis,

"A CHALLENGE HAS BEEN LAID DOWN. FORGET CHART POSITIONS, FORGET TICKET SALES, OR BRAND-EXTENDING TOILETRIES OR MYSPACE FRIENDS OR ANY OTHER MEASURE OF SUCCESS. FROM HERE ON IN, IT'S ALL ABOUT HOW WELL YOU CAN ROCK THE BACK OF A CAB."

Thirty plus musicians have been taped to date and I've watched around half. Some favourites are Eugene McGuinness, Emmy the Great and Seasick Steve amongst many accomplished musos. Plus a special mention for the intriguing St Vincent.

(For readers without Quicktime installed the Black Cab Sessions can also be found on YouTube) 

Comments

[Jono]

This isn't directly related Adrian, but I think I've found something that may help your ever-more ambitious phone-based
multimedia projects. It's a program called Qik (pronounced "quick") and, provided you have a suitable data plan on your phone, it allows you to stream video direct from your mobile to the Internet. And those streams are automatically recorded too so you can record for hours without worrying about running out of space on your phone. I've read that it works particulalry well on the N95 too. I'm not sure if the right data plan exists in this country (what with Telstra running things) or if it will cost you an arm and a leg, but I thought you might be interested in checking it out - you could turn Cablog into a TV show. www.qik.com

[James]

Are you sure you didn't just pick up Chris Rock? He's the only performer I know who makes such a fine distinction as your pax!

[adrian]

Jono, I recently looked into Qik for the very reasons you've outlined. However the major stumbling block is data cost. For example, I taped a recent cab interview on the N95 and the 33 minute runtime resulted in an +800MB file. So until Aust telcos introduce flat rate data plans streaming to the Web will have to wait. Nevertheless thanks for the worthy suggestion.

James, I wondered the same thing-re the distinction-and he explained there were African customers imitating US rappers and dark South Asian kids working in the joint. FWIW he was a country and western musican.