About
Sisyphus Tracks
Who
we is, why we roll
Working
Stiff Summary
For the
executive summary, roll on down to some other mobile
boulder website, Bubba - ain't no execs here. Existential
discussion of whom we are and why we roll our
stone.
STRR Then
and Now, More or Less
Wally and The
Beaver assess the ontological implications of Web radio;
also, a brief and incomplete history of ST to where
we are currently, and a summary of ST's streaming
operations and programming.
Money
Matters
"Matters" in
the verb and noun sense both. We may not like the idea
that - in the words of the song from Cabaret - "money
makes the world go 'round," but the fact is it
does matter. ST can't make it
without it - and neither can you,
for that matter, so there.
Sisyphus
What?
If the closest
you've come to ancient Greek culture is the Parthenon at
Centennial Park in Nashville, read this.
Tracking
Sisyphus
Background
information and our founding credo, more or less, written
back in September 2000. On the radically changing nature
of community, radio, and music production/distribution as
rapidly developing technologies continue to spin a
tangled Web.
Sisyphus
Tracks is about great roots music -
be it folk, rock,
"Americana," traditional country, blues, bluegrass,
old-time,
alt country, or world. Our primary goal is to serve as an
alternative to traditional radio for a worldwide
community of artists and an adult audience whose needs
are largely overlooked or ignored by it. We aim to
provide our services in an intelligent, timely and
entertaining manner, to offer writings about music and
related matters with wit, irreverence and insight, and to
accomplish all this minus the commercialism and hype that
pervade not only the WWW, but all the media. Sisyphus
Tracks Roots Radio - STRR - is noncommercial,
listener-supported, and structured on the American
community radio model, with a major difference: Because
we're web-based, our community is not bound by geography,
but by a love for roots and roots-related music and a
sense of shared alternative values. As far as we know,
STRR is the only web-based station functioning in this
manner.
The
Music: Our
primary focus is roots, branches and stems, mostly
American but also from around the globe. Our approach to
programming is highly eclectic, integrating old with new,
traditional with modern, hillbilly with urban, famous
with obscure, etc. We are more interested in the music
itself than with genres; we shine a light on artists,
performing songwriters, and bands with roots-imbued work
that stands out for its musical soul and integrity while
being intelligent, honest, literate and moving lyrically.
Often, the artists and/or songs we feature - both old and
new - are obscure to one degree or another and/or suffer
from relatively poor exposure, whether the release is (or
originally was) from a large record company, a small
indie label, or an independent out there all by his
lonesome.
Indies
Count: Our
mission is to support a worldwide community of artists
and listeners who share our love of the music we feature,
and to be supported by that community in return. In an
age where the quantity of independently-produced music
continues to grow, we want to help get it to an audience
that is dispersed but most definitely out there - but
with no means of hearing much less purchasing through
existing channels.
We thus actively support
quality independents and independent labels. If you are
interested in having music heard on STRR - and fit with
our musical bent - email
us here.
STRR Then
and Now, More or Less:
Our streaming
operations began back in the late Summer of 2000 on
Live365, when they were a new operation. This provider
originally appealed primarily to youngsters, but that
changed over time - particularly after fees were
gradually added to what initially had been a free, and
commercial-free, service for all.
Anyhow:
When we started over there, our brothers- and
sisters-in-arms were often of the "Hey, Wally -
wanna listen to my brand new radio station -
KBVR?" school (and, of course, the subsequent
immortal exchange: "Come on, Beav, how could you have
your own radio station? You'd need a big tower and a
zillion dollars worth of equipment and DJs and stuff."
"It's on the Internet, Wally!" "Oh, grow
up, Beav!!!").
That, pretty much, sums
up the nature of the "radio revolution" to which Live365
was referring in late 2000. Thing is: We took that
tag a lot more seriously, figuring there indeed
was a radio revolution in place, even as it
had little, if anything, to do with Live365. The last
true radio revolution had begun with the spread of
community radio stations (see
Tracking Sisyphus)
using guerilla tactics and creative, often inspired
programming on a shoestring budget. Obviously, running a
web-based radio operation without the large investment
for equipment required by land-based stations creates an
ideal opportunity to do just that - thus, we had to
assume that the time for a new radio revolution
had arrived, and that the idea of "radio" itself and
"community" needed to be redefined in light of the
Internet's transcendence of geographical boundaries.
Live365,
of course - with apparent deeper pockets than the myriad
others who suffered grisly sudden death during the dotcom
bust - got ultracommercial as soon as they could, and
came up with all kinds of novel ways to collect money
from literally everyone - listeners, advertisers, and
broadcasters alike - while maintaining a workforce (the
independent webcasters) that toils without pay. Viva la
revolucion!
We saw this coming long
before it occurred, but remained with Live365 until late
2002 - at which time we finally were able, with the help
of listeners and supporters who responded positively to
our first ever pledge drive, to scrape together enough
dinars and pesos (not to mention technical know-how) to
go our own way. Since then, we've been a true,
commercial-free independent, and attend to the technical
side of delivering web radio programs along with
everything else.
So here we are, in the
present. These days, we're beholden to no one, work a
zillion hours, and still struggle along financially, but
hey, what else is new? We're still here, y'all, after
more than four years, and the quantity and quality of our
services and overall operations have continued to grow
and improve despite the rocky road and hardships.
Click
here
for STRR's current roster of original and syndicated
recorded and live-music programs. .
Money
Matters: STRR relies
solely on voluntary contributions via annual pledges and
donations from listeners and supporters, even as it's
continually a struggle to make ends meet..
Our costs are lower than
antenna-dependent radio stations for sure, but we've got
significant expenses nonetheless. Fundraising is a fact
of life if we're to pay our bills and continue rolling
our stone, and to this end we run quarterly pledge drives
with - compared to local community or public radio
stations - relatively modest goals..
Please be fully aware
that y'all are it - we have no grants of any kind, and as
a web-only operation, we are not eligible for public
funding from the CPB. Our survival depends on your
support (Click
here for
information on pledging and membership).
Sisyphus
What?
We play 'em and
we roll over 'em ourselves in his wake. All hail mighty
Sisyphus, our hero, the sorry-assed erg-omaniac for whom
we're named.
For those of you not up
on your Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king and favorite
of the gods until defying them by not wanting to be dead,
indeed doing his very best to avoid this ultimate
fate of all mortals. The punishment for his hubris
- i.e., having the stones (excuse the pun) to defy the
will of the gods - was condemnation to an eternity of
pushing a very large and heavy boulder up a mountain, and
having it roll back down to the bottom each time he
reaches the top. It's a familiar and depressing cycle for
most of us - we toil, we achieve, we fall or get knocked
down, we toil again, we achieve again, and on and on,
until finally we drop dead (generally after a long
and dreadfully painful illness or as the end result of a
gory accident, like being decapitated by your lover's
spouse with the previously unused 
plastic
knife from the Wendy's salad you ate for dinner with your
fingers), leaving behind your recently acquired Hideki
Matsui bobblehead doll along with the rest of your
priceless collections (stamps, spare change, rubber
bands, unused and used condoms dating back to 1968,
guitars, children, ex-wives, toenail clippings,
grandchildren, etc) picked up, at great effort and cost,
along the way to your final destiny.
Realizing a perfect
Existential metaphor when he saw one, Albert Camus, in
"The Myth of Sisyphus," wrote eloquently about how
Sisyphus is All-of-Us, an absurd hero toiling bravely and
with purpose through the meaninglessness of life. Since
Camus and the other Existentialists proposed that it is
our human responsibility to create meaning out of
nothingness, what hi
gher
purpose could music possibly serve while we roll our
collective and individual stone? And what else makes us
dance and sing and rejoice and brood and cry and smile?
Bobbleheads, perhaps?
To learn more about the
Myth of Sisyphus click on Camus' pic or the book
cover at right.