Dreamtime Trucks Along With Episode 56

Time for a Dreamtime plug, which I haven't done in a bit. We're up to Episode 56 and about 3,000 regular listeners, as far as I can tell, which ain't bad for an amateur podcast.

It's Summertime, the living is easy, and our July Twenty-Ought-Eight show is all about solar rays and happiness, direct from the sun and fun capital of the world, Merrimack, NH.

Featuring Eric Burdon and the Animals from the Summer of Love, Mickey & Sylvia, (with a sidelong look at Dave "Baby" Cortez and The Rocky Fellers), Bob Denver (in-between gigs as Maynard G. Krebs and Gilligan), thoughts on the Man Who Walked on Water, our favorite Disney girl, Annette and her seldom-seen belly-button, a visit to the racetrack, and winding up with a hip-hop version of Cruel Summer. Plus Dreamtime favorite Summer movies, and a few jingles thrown into the mix.

Episode 56 - Ho Daddy! The Summer Surf and Turf special

The Miami Beach audience is the greatest in the woild - Jackie Gleason

Dreamtime catchup

The blog/podcast that just keeps on going is at Episode 49 with a show on Blossom (Dearie) and Jack (Sheldon), two jazz artists with a mutual Schoolhouse Rock! connection.

I made several changes in late 2007, finally creating a dreamtimepodcast.com domain, cloaking the blog - which is still hosted by blogspot - under the aegis of that domain, and moving the then-45 podcasts away from my original host, Solidcasts, over to their new Dreamtime home. The transition went relatively smoothly, except for iTunes. Note to any burgeoning podcasters out there - do not let your RSS Feed out of your control.

WARNING - Heavy geek weather ahead: Unfortunately, when I originally signed Dreamtime up in the iTunes directory, I used the direct Solidcasts RSS Feed. While Solidcasts had the benefit of creating/updating the feed through a simple form entry system, they provide no way for you to manually update the feed. Thus, no way to redirect to a new feed location. Plus, when you kill the Solidcasts account, they simply delete the feed. As far as I could determine, I had about 150 listeners who were subscribed through the iTunes directory, so I had to create a special show giving them instructions on how to find episodes when I moved. Most seem to have made the transition. But the old Dreamtime listing - now pod-dead - still sits in the iTunes directory, the iTunes' team ears deaf to my pleas to redirect the listing to the new feed.

The solution to the problem - if you care at this point - is to 1) make sure that your original feed is under your control so you can create a feed redirect if necessary, and 2) Use Feedburner as the feed address for all podcast listings, including iTunes.

End Geek Storm.

Now Master of my own Domain, I'm getting better tracking of audience stats: Dreamtime the blog gets about 4-5,000 a month visitors a month, about 60 percent of those coming from a referring site, such as Expecting Rain, which is my #1 supplier of visitors. #2 is "Night Time in the Big City," more-or-less a TTRH mp3 download site, and #3 is usually the TTRH Wikipedia article.

About 30 percent of visitors come through some sort of search, and the remaining 10 percent hit Dreamtime directly. And that pretty much reflects my subscriber base. I seem to have about 500 subscribers to the podcast, a smaller - but I think, more accurate - figure than the numbers reflected by Solidcast's stats. And I have a slightly higher number of regular readers at the blog itself.

The Greatest Soul Singer You Never Heard Of

Episode 43 of Dreamtime features Sterling Harrison, a soul singer who never quite made it out of South Central, but whose legacy lives on, thanks to Eddie Gorodetsky, Bob Dylan, and in a small measure, maybe even me. I also found one low-quality video of Harrison performing live at M&M Soul Food which I posted over at Dreamtime's sister site A Series of Tubes. To paraphrase Dylan, who was speaking on another subject, I figure if one person gets curious about Harrison and his music thanks to Dreamtime, I've done my job.

The podcast continues to pick up its Season 2 legs, the blog now getting about 4,000 visitors a month; somewhere between 100-200 a visitors each day. The shows themselves get around 500-600 downloads in the first couple of weeks of their release, and then hit a steady-state of around 50 downloads per month respectively thereafter. As far as I can measure: iTunes is a total black hole as far as measurement is concerned. But if I had to make a guess, I'd say Dreamtime had around 500 regular listeners, and wouldn't be shocked - gratified, but not shocked - if it had around 1,000. Much more than 1,000 and I would be shocked.

One of the things I want/need to do this year is improving - and then freezing, if possible - the podcast recording production values, which frustrate me no end. Every time I think I finally have the recording quality stable, it falls apart again in the next podcast. It shouldn't happen. The equipment and settings are the same. But one show I'll sound okay. The next as if I'm broadcasting from under a rock. I'm never going to have a radio voice, and I'm okay with that. But Jesus, I should be able to get a consistent recording.

And there's a new Dreamtime

Episode 41 - And the Angels Sing, on four forgotten singers of rockabilly, R&B, and blue-eyed soul.


If you have any information on Fay Simmons at all, please write to Dreamtime!

Some useless Dreamtime stats

But what the heck, I'm a geek, and geeks like stats. Here's the top 10 Dreamtime podcasts over the past 14 months...

1. Episode 14 - Working for the Yankee dollar (1279 downloads) - released 9/19/06
2. Episode 5 - Two voices from Chronicles (1263 downloads) - released 7/25/06
3. Episode 7 - The donkey that wouldn't die (1132 downloads) - released 8/4/06
4. Episode 12 - Love, Theft, and Emails (1122 downloads) - released 9/7/06
5. Episode 16 – "Gene Vincent said, 'Bubba, let's go on tour'" (1100 downloads) - released 10/6/06
6. Episode 22- All Along the Watchtower (1047 downloads) - released 11/27/06
7. Episode 1 - Elvis & Dino (1033 downloads) - released 6/30/06
8. Episode 13 - Stay away from planes and automobiles (1025 downloads) - released 9/14/06
9. Episode 21 - Def Poets' Society (1015 downloads) - released 11/16/06
10. Episode 17 - October in the Railroad Earth (996 downloads) -released 10/12/06

The first time a 2007 episode appears on the full list of 40 podcasts is in slot 13 - Episode 30, A Good Walk Spoiled, which aired on 2/19/07 and has had 889 downloads to date.

Probably not much you can read into the numbers without getting into speculation. I'm not surprised about Working for the Yankee Dollar, which from emails and blog posts appears to be the most popular Dreamtime I've created to date. The Tommy Facenda story in spot #5 might be a surprise, but there's an active rockabilly community on the Web that regularly points to that story. Love, Theft and Emails gets a lot of traffic from people searching for the roots of "Love and Theft" the album. Possibly the only false positive is #10, whose title is taken from one of the subject's - Jack Kerouac - poems, but shares part of its name with a popular Americana band. But who knows? Put the phrase into Google, and Dreamtime is #1 on its hit parade. So maybe I do get a lot of people looking for the poem.

I won't talk about "least popular," as they're all my favorites.

Other thoughts: When I started out, over 75 percent of my monthly traffic was coming from 2 or 3 sites that had linked to Dreamtime. Sometime towards the end of `06 that started shifting, and now about 60 percent of my monthly traffic is from Google/Yahoo/MSN searches. Bad news connected to that is that I don't retain many reader/listeners who come in through search. About 80 percent of my traffic is first-time visitors.

I'm currently getting around 2,000 visitors to Dreamtime a month, a minuscule figure by Web standards, and less than half what I was getting at my height of popularity - right around this time last year - when Theme Time was airing new shows weekly. I expect the numbers to get back to around the 5,000 visitors figure in a few months or so after TTRH Season 2 starts up next week, since Dreamtime rides on the shoulders of that giant.

It pays to advertise, of course. A graph of visitor traffic shows a dramatic spike every time I make an announcement of a new episode on Dylan-related sites. But the nice thing about the Web and podcasts is the ever-green factor. Even the oldest Dreamtimes still get regular downloads, as you can see from #7 above, a show that sounds like it was recorded in a barrel, too.

I wish I could get a better breakdown of who is listening and how they're listening. I've had around 40,000 visitors to the site since I started measurements in late July 2006, and about 31,000 "downloads" in toto of the 40 podcasts to date. But "downloads" as all good lil podcasters know can mean just about anything. My stats also indicate that I have around 5,000 podcast "subscribers," (I wish) but that figure is highly suspect too, and I think based on more than a little Kentucky windage, given the numbers above. In any case, it's pretty obvious that my listening audience is a much smaller percentage of my readership, and my podcast subscribers probably number in the 100s, rather than thousands. But who knows? I knew when I started this I wasn't going to get rich from it - or even make more than ceegar and poker money - but making bread was never the point.

Having fun and writing well was the point... and those two goals are accomplished.

And over at Dreamtime

This is a real ghost story, but like all real ghost stories, you don't get to see the ghost.

Episode 40 - A Ghost in Blackface

And, in case you missed it,

Episode 39 - The Lost Theme Time iPod

New at Dreamtime

According to the story in Chronicles, Gorgeous George told Bob Dylan, "You're making it come alive." Here's a brief biography of the man who during his heyday was one of the most famous entertainers in the world. Running time: 10 minutes

Episode 38 - A Wink or a Nod From Some Unexpected Place

Summer Reading Recommendations

"I had a great run, no question. Woodstock. The 'Alice's Restaurant' movie. 'City of New Orleans.' I recommend it to anyone who's 18. But as a life? No thanks." - Arlo Guthrie

From Today's Globe : a very funny interview with Arlo Guthrie.









"...if you wave your arms around hard enough, sometimes you can fly."

The best science fiction novel I've read (so far) this Summer: The Accidental Time Machine, by Joe Haldeman.







The best non-fiction book I've read (so far) this Summer: Ted Anthony's Chasing the Rising Sun, Anthony's journey into the heart of The House of the Rising Sun, as well as into the heart of America itself.

If you haven't heard the Dreamtime podcast on the song, btw, why haven't you?

And over at Dreamtime

It's all over at gather except for collecting my pay at month's end. And things are getting back on track with Dreamtime and the new site A Series of Tubes.

Episode 37 - Chasing the Rising Sun - an exploration of the roots of The House of the Rising Sun, is up at Dreamtime. I'm hoping to stick to a twice-a-month schedule with the podcast.

The Dreamtime Podcast - Episode 35 - Cooking (and Drinking) with Bob

Today on Cooking with Bob, Mint Juleps! Rum and Coca-Cola! Barbecue! Beer! Figgy Pudding!

And Bob's Mom's Banana Chocolate Chip Loaf Bread!

Dreamtime Episode 34 - He Was a GraveYard Smash

A goodbye to Bobby "Boris" Pickett, who passed away last week at age 69.

Somewhere in a special spot of heaven reserved for beloved monsters like Frankenstein and the Wolfman, the ghoulies and ghosties are doing the Transylvania Twist.

Episode 34 - He Was a Graveyard Smash

Dreamtime, btw, has made it to the NY Times, or at least a subset thereof. Eric Asimov, chief wine critic for The Times, discusses the pleasure, culture and business of wine, beer and spirits at his blog, The Pour. Scroll down to Mr. Asimov's blogroll, which you'll find on the right, and nestled amidst links to various wine and foodie blogs stands "Dreamtime: Blog on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour"

Mr. Asimov is obviously a man of impeccable tastes.

Dreamtime Episode 33 - Oh Baby, Me Gotta Go

How does Dreamtime fit in over 50 different versions of "Louie Louie" in a 14-minute show? Listen and find out. Starring Bob Dylan, Julie London, and even Your Host singing the religious version of "Louie Louie" - an experience not to be missed. I succeeded in making Peggy laugh out loud when she heard it.

Episode 33 - Oh Baby, Me Gotta Go

Frank Zappa Meets Robin the Boy Wonder

where else, but in Episode 31 of of the Dreamtime podcast?

Rechanneling Their Passion

Nice article on the rise of satellite radio deejays who play "anything they want," via The Washington Post:

There's no high-tech studio here, no sound baffling or soundboard -- just a few electronic components and a wind-socked microphone to capture [Mojo] Nixon's patter and periodic "yee-haws!" between songs.

He doesn't play concerts, not even locally; he doesn't record and he doesn't write songs any longer. "I could have turned Mojo Nixon into a cottage industry catering to 5,000 or 10,000 fans," he says. "But that doesn't sound very Mojo. I could exercise, lose weight, do all of that and continue touring, but who wants to do that? So I thought I'd get a job in radio or something."

He's not alone. Nixon is one of an ever-expanding roster of major and minor performers who are working as full- or part-time hosts of programs broadcast over the digitized airwaves of New York's Sirius and Washington's XM Radio. The advent of convenient, efficient technology and an open-arms attitude by the satellite networks have made for a new type of deejay. As much as their names are a draw, so is their deep knowledge of the formats they play.

Musician jocks for Sirius include B-52s singer Fred Schneider, New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, Ramones drummer Marky Ramone, glam rocker Joan Jett, country fiddler Charlie Daniels and area folk heroes the Kennedys, among others.

XM has icons including Bob Dylan, Tom Petty and Graham Nash, pioneering producer and performer Quincy Jones, rappers Snoop Dogg and Chamillionaire, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis -- and more to come, says Lee Abrams, chief creative officer of XM.

And lil White Balls with Dimples in Dreamtime

In honor of Theme Time's Host's recent purchase in Scotland, Dreamtime plays at "Theme Time," with an extra-long 29-minute episode featuring music, jokes, email, and commentary all related to the theme, "Golf."

Episode 30 - A Good Walk Spoiled

Fred on Gather

I have so many cross-promotions going, it's getting hard to keep track of them all. :-)

But for those of you who have asked, here's the link to my Gather page, where you can keep up on my weekly column, Music You Never Forget, as well as other postings. If you're a die hard Fred fan, you can even join Gather and click on that little "Connect" button you'll find in the left column, and then get email updates whenever I post something "new."

"New" is in quotes because at least one reader expressed disappointment that I've been reworking several articles that originally appeared either in fhb or Dreamtime. And, that's true, but considering the size of my audience in both blogs, I figure I can get away with pushing re-runs out to a larger readership. Constant Readers - that would be you, O husband of Joyride - will be happy to know that yesterday's column, Somebody Say a Prayer, is brand-spanking new, although I just cross-posted a version to Dreamtime.

Between Dreamtime and Gather, I'm now writing the equivalent of two weekly columns, as well as regular posts on fhb, and let us say, only getting fully reimbursed in the spiritual sense for my efforts. But, by God, I'm having fun, and who can ask for more?

And over at Dreamtime - Episode 29 - Please Don't Go Topless, Mother

I'm off-topic with this episode, since Theme Time hasn't played anything sung by Troy or Bennie Hess. But, if Dylan hadn't mentioned Eddie Noack's "Psycho," I would have never discovered the God Less America compilation and would never have found this song. And as with most - if not all- songs, there's a great story behind it.

Also, a special guest appearance by Jailbait's older sister, Jailbird Joyride Jones.

That Big Announcement Time

Thanks to Dreamtime I've signed a deal and will be writing a weekly music column for "Gather," a social networking site, that's sometimes been described as "the MySpace for the NPR set." You can see the site here...

http://www.gather.com/

... and you can track my writing at Gather here.

The column's name is currently "Under the Radar," although that will be changing to avoid confusion with a music mag of the same name.

Whatever I end up naming the column, it will have the same general theme as Dreamtime; stuff you wouldn't hear on the radio; trivia, stories about music and musicians. Sometimes the content will be the same thing as I'm posting over at the Dreamtime blog - edited to make sense for non-Theme Time listeners - sometimes it will diverge. I have a couple of things in mind that wouldn't fit in Dreamtime that I've been hankering to write.

Gather has been around for about a year. It's Boston-based, partially funded by NPR, the Hearst Corporation, several others. It don't think it's been as successful as anyone would like.

When I joined last year Gather reminded me of an out-of-control writing workshop, with everyone clamoring for attention for their own writing and no one willing to read anything else. Most people who I sent to Gather found the interface very confusing, too, as I did. I cross-posted a few articles from fhb and Dreamtime at Gather with little reaction over the past year, and eventually decided it was too much of a hassle for the 'lil Gather dollars that the articles earned.

But I think they're making a good move, I'm one of what will eventually be 70-80 "Gather Correspondents," for various groups such as politics; music; writing; movies; cooking; and so on - and whose agenda - outside of writing - will be to put some order and consistency around the chaos.

Gather has changed their user interface too. It now seems to be simpler and easier to find things you're interested in reading. But we'll see how it works out. The gig doesn't pay much - few freelance writing gigs do - but it does pay real moola now as opposed to their "Gather dollars", and the exposure may be good, especially since I can cross-advertise Dreamtime, fhb, and my Amazon Dreamtime store. And heck, I even get free CDs.

And that's the Big Announcement. I was touched that several family members and friends contacted me in the hopes that XM, or NPR, or Mr. D., or somebody was tossing bags of gold my way. But Dreamtime is the best sort of writing. No pressure, no censors, no editors. Of course no money and a small audience too. :-) But I still find it fun, and at this point, having fun writing is a very important thing to me. I'm hoping the Gather gig will be fun too, but whatever happens, you'll hear about it. Promise.

We now return you to the regular blog, already in progress.

Hey, Hey, I'm a Monkee

Come watch Dreamtime sing and play. I'm the young generation and I got something to say.

Well, at least 10 minutes worth. Episode 27 of the Dreamtime podcast features Mike "Wool Hat" Nesmith, Liquid Paper, Tiger Beat, Charlie Manson, Jimi Hendrix, and the Mike Nesmith/Bob Dylan non-collaboration, "Rio."

As I mentioned earlier, one of the things I miss from the closed White Man Stew Theme Time Forums was someone posting "Theme Time" artist videos found on YouTube. I've added a new segment to Dreamtime that I plan on offering on an "off-week" (that is, when I don't have the next podcast in the works) basis... always keeping in mind that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and sometimes I'll be posting a podcast that week, sometimes a YouTube video, maybe sometimes I'll post both, like this week.

The first of the two videos currently on the site feature the female Elvis, Wanda Jackson, ripping through the rockabilly number, "Rock Your Baby" from 1958. The other is one of my favorites, from 1989, with Van Morrison reading the Slim Gaillard passage from "On the Road," as Gaillard himself recreates the scene as described by Kerouac.

Both - and more as I post them - can always be found through the Dreamtime video label...

http://fhb-dreamtime.blogspot.com/search/label/Video

If you come across a Theme Time-related video that you'd like to see up on Dreamtime, feel free to email me.

Dreamtime, Nancy Sinatra, Theme Time Videos and Big Announcement pending.

Did you know that Phil Silvers - Sgt. Bilko - wrote the lyrics to Nancy with the Laughing Face? I didn't until Bob Dylan informed me, and that's one of the reasons I love Theme Time Radio Hour. Read all about it here.

I'm also adding a new segment to Dreamtime that I plan on offering on an "off-week" (that is, when I don't have the next podcast in the works) basis... always keeping in mind that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds and sometimes I'll be posting a podcast that week, sometimes a YouTube video, maybe sometimes I'll post both.

One of the things I miss from the closed White Man Stew Theme Time Forums was someone posting "Theme Time" artist videos found on YouTube. Here's one of my favorites, from 1989 Van Morrison reading the Slim Gaillard passage from "On the Road," as Gaillard himself recreates the scene as described by Kerouac. Dylan read the same passage in the "Moon" episode of Theme Time.

And finally, in the spirit of Big Announcements, I hope to have a Big Announcement made public Real Soon Now. And no, neither Dylan nor XM has offered me a job. It's not that Big.