Earlier this evening indie-rockers Grandaddy delighted longtime fans and latter devotees alike with a live performance of their “Sophtware Slump” (2000) record in its entirety to mark the breakthrough album’s 25th anniversary. The crowded silver jubilee show at Brooklyn Steel comes near the close of a reunion tour that has spanned the width of America over the past two months, wrapping in Philadelphia this Saturday.

Grandaddy’s performance consisted of three sets: Every single track off The Sophtware Slump in order, followed by a first encore heavy with Sumday (2003) tunes, and a second encore closing with the raucous career-early hit A.M. 180. After the show I headed backstage to say hello to the band. (It’d been several years since last chatting with them in person as part of an impromptu interview for my music and politics rag, Tweed Magazine.) I sheepishly passed Jason a little handwritten “thank you” note for all the countless hours of enjoyment his music has given me—and for not suing me when I made my fan video for Jed’s Other Poem.

This week marks twenty years since publishing my music video for Grandaddy’s song “Jed’s Other Poem”—a musical elegy for a deceased robot character. What began as a renegade fan video would eventually become embraced by the band and their label, V2 Records.

It feels like a lifetime ago; an entirely different online landscape. Before smart phones existed. Before social media took over. In honor of the anniversary I spruced up my old description of the project with more photos, screen grabs, and personal anecdotes. I’ve even caved and added the Jed source code to GitHub. Also timely: Grandaddy is currently on tour in the US in celebration of the 25th anniversary of their breakthrough album, The Sophtware Slump. Catch ’em while you can!

ASCII lyric vids are music videos made primarily of a song’s lyrics rendered as computer text and animated over time to pair with the vocals. [What is ASCII?] These pure lyric vids are distinct from representational ASCII art vids which use glyph shapes as abstract textural components, rather than as text meant to be read. These genres are not mutually exclusive, however. [What is ASCII art?] To celebrate being blown away by the new Petula Clark video, here are a few notches in the genre listed in reverse-chronological order. If you know of more do mention it.

Stefan Post of PostWare recently took it upon himself to port the source code for our Jed's Other Poem music video from its original Applesoft BASIC form to Commodore BASIC. This means Jed can now run on the Commodore 64! You can read Post's notes and download his C64 port here: http://www.postware.nl/site/Jed2.html
Mac OS X users can download Vice 2.3 which is a package of several related emulators. When downloaded, open the x64sc emulator and from the File menu select Smart attach Disk/Tape (or hit Command+O). Select Posts's PRG file and before long you will see Jed's blinking cursor. Adjust the emulator's speed as necessary.
Of course you can still download the original Applesoft BASIC code and run it on an Apple 2 emulator. For OS X we recommend Virtual ][ which emulates the Apple ][, ][+, and //e. And if you happen to have an actual vintage Apple laying around you can use the audio file included in the source code package to load Jed onto it via the cassette port—just like the guys at Panic Software! See their blog post about it: An Apple //e, an iPad, and Jed.

Studio Music is a blog that "provides an insight into the creative process of visual practitioners, through the music that they listen to whilst working." (Text from their About page.) And today they've posted my current top ten countdown complete with little anecdotes per song. (The direct link is http://studiomusic.fm/_smith.html.) Because a lot of these tracks have a nice music video visual component I've posted YouTube embeds here along with the original text. —Stewart

Next Wednesday, November 10th, Stewart will give a short lecture titled Code Play: The Value of Play in Coding at the Creativity and Technology conference in London. The theme of Code Play will be illustrated by way of some favorite projects from around the web as well as some Stewdio work--primarily Browser Pong, Jed's Other Poem, and a sneak peek at a new collaboration with Robert Pietrusko titled Under Vine which opens at the SFMOMA later this month. Stewart was interviewed by Creativity Online last March in a piece called Face to face with the brains behind iQuit, Browser Pong and other experiments in digital fun. Here's the schedule and a list of speakers for next Wednesday's conference. If you plan on attending drop us an email (just replace the "A.T" with "@" in the email address) or come up and say hello after the lecture.

A few weeks ago Stewart happened upon pictures of Panic Inc's new offices. In the shuffle was a photo of their vintage Apple //e computer sitting at an empty desk. Lovers of vintage hardware can't resist. Stewart emailed Panic to ask if they would "do him the honor" of running the Jed's Other Poem music video source code on it. Despite their tight schedules—including the recent release and promotion of Transmit 4—they did indeed get the code onto their Apple //e and even filmed their own version of the video! Have a look at what we're affectionately dubbing “Jed Panic.” Jed's Other Poem is a music video for the Grandaddy song of the same name. And (perhaps) the world's first open-source music video. You can download the Jed source code package to run on your Virtual II emulator or even your own vintage Apple II series machine. To do the latter just play the audio from the “cassette tape” source code file into your vintage Apple's cassette drive port. You'll need an audio cable with male mini-jacks on either end. (Read up on Apple DOS and the “LOAD” command, you'll be fine.) After Panic posted their version of the Jed video other Apple-related sites—such as Daring Fireball, TUAW, and 9to5 Mac—linked to it. The flood of traffic brought down Panic's site temporarily. (We think that's pretty hardcore.)