©05 The Media Desk
Charlie Robison is a musical friend of a friend of the Desk. In case you don't fall asleep with Country Music Televison on every night, Mr. Robison is an 'overnight success' in country music that's only been working at it for about twenty years paying his dues in the music scene around Austin, Texas before going solo in the late nineties. He currently has a couple of videos out, has recorded several albums, and appears live at venues both small and intimate and large and crowded.
Well, the Desk's friend, Lady Di, sent it a link to a page on the CMT.com site where it could watch a couple of Charlie's videos. Some time ago she had sent out links to Charlie's own site where some clips and even full-length songs of his were available for listening.
OK, fine. We go to the CMT site and find Charlie's video page there, then click on the link to see one of his videos. That's when the grinding of teeth and incoherent swearing begins.
The Desk isn't a rabid country music fan, but it also has nothing against it. Good country music is good music and that's that. Yes there are some really gawdawful country acts out there, but then again, there are some really lousy rock acts still on tour as well. Somebody must like it, or they wouldn't be doing it.
C.R.'s music isn't gawdawful, in fact, his songs actually lean to the pretty good side of things. The boy can sing and play, and he seems to have pretty good taste in material. So the Desk was not adverse to actually watching his videos, once it was able to, but more on that later.
Good Times, from his latest album by the same name, is straight up traditional country music. In which he mentions at least a couple of the things required in David Allan Coe's Perfect Country Song: drinking and pickup trucks.
One of the remarks the Desk made to another friend while watching that video, which is simply a recorded studio session instead of a 'music video' video with pretty girls and great visuals, was that Charlie seemed to be enjoying singing.
That's key to any performer no matter what genre they're in. Are they having a good time? So many artists these days get up in front of the crowd or the camera and are working at it. They aren't having fun, they don't seem to really want to be up there doing what they're doing, but it beats moving boxes in a warehouse to earn their daily bread. The bad thing is that the fans can tell, and sooner or later, they'll give up on the performer.
We the People want to see singers and dancers and entertainers and musicians and magicians that are having Fun putting on the show. If it is just a job.... "well, heck, we all have jobs we don't like. Why don't you come watch me mix paint and match wallpaper for eight hours?"
Well, just from the sampling on the CMT website and more on his own site http://charlierobison.com he is having fun making his music.
The other video the Desk and its friend watched that morning was El Cerrito Place. It is a 'music video' music video with the pretty girls and great visuals and all that. Charlie looked a little more serious in it, but he seemed to still be enjoying what he was doing. Yet the one thing the Desk gleaned from talking to Lady Di was that Charlie is very serious about his music. Which is a good thing.
One thing the Desk and Mr. Robison have in common is that they both like cigars and whisky.
One thing that appears to be very different is their choices involving the same.
The Desk likes Wild Turkey bourbon and Dutch Masters cigars. It can only afford 'el Cheapito' cigars and Old Stumpwater whisky at about thirteen dollars for a half gallon of it in a plastic bottle. We are sure C.R. does a little bit better by both.
Now back to the point.
No sooner than the Desk had clicked on the link to the video when one of those cheerful message that it needed to download MS Windows Media Player 9 to watch them popped up.
Well, OK, we'll do it.
You have to close all your browsers and click innumerable buttons to install the thing, then you have to fight with it to convince Media Player that it WILL NOT BE the default player for all things multi media. Face it, Media Player is a memory and processor hog, and while at one time it was the only game in town, nowadays it is an interesting but nearly useless footnote in the history of computers. But CMT is an MS ONLY type of site, so you have to deal with it.
Once Media Player Nine was installed the Desk opened its Firefox browser back up and went back to CMT.com and found Charlie's videos again. It clicked on one and then it got another cheerful message that CMT's web video people don't recognize, support, trust, care for or even like the Desk's choice of browser. Sorry.
Well, OK. We'll do it in IE.
The Desk had to go through the start menu to find MS Internet Explorer, the one program that is fully capable of bringing out the absolute worst in the World Wide Web.
We type in the CMT web address after telling IE that we are aware that our version of it is out of date and we'll live with the consequences of using it. Back to Charlie's page, back to the music video links. Click one and watch Media Player open up and actually start to play the video.
Then EVERYTHING stopped and another one of those cheerful message windows from Bill Gates opened up. It said something about that there was an UPDATE to Media Player available and it would now be automatically installed. Then the thing begins to download Media Player TEN!
Oh well. It's not like we're in a rush or anything. Charlie's videos will still be there once the computer is all happy.
Once again we click through all the install boxes and tell it that we have no interest in letting version ten, even with all its enhancements and tattle-tale features be the default player for anything other than MS's own proprietary media that won't easily play on anything else.
NOW! We're all set! Finally. BACK to CMT and so on.
Click here then there. NO Dad-Rat It, Media Player WILL NOT be the default player for everything ever recorded since the invention of the Victor Talking Machine.
Finally.
Charlie is singing about having a good time.
And the Desk notices something.
While he mentions whisky and girls and trucks and all that. He Does NOT mention....
Windows Media Player.
-selah-
Links will open in a new window.
Charlie Robison's website:
http://charlierobison.com
He has albums for sale as well as other fan merchandise like hats and shirts.
Country Music Television. CMT.com
Get the Mozilla Firefox Browser here: http://www.mozilla.org/. The Desk recommends it in spite of some sites not fully working with it- yet.
[NOTE: All song titles, items, lyrics, software, TV Networks, browsers, and everything else belongs to their respective owners. No infringement or defamation is intended.
- Thank You ]
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http://themediadesk.com