Welcome to my new blog.
This blog is the successor to my Hit of the Week Updates which I maintained from 1999 through 2010. Let’s just say that any website that was started in 1999 and has not had significant upgrades beyond the actual content is starting to show its age.
When I first started the Hit of the Week most people still connected to the Internet with dial up and RealAudio was the best and most commonly used format for anyone who wished to stream audio over low bandwidth connections. And whenever I posted a Hit of the Week update, I had to generate the html and manually archive my previous posting. Towards the end, I added an RSS feed – which I had to manually create for each and every posting.
The software that powers my new blog will automate a lot of the work that I had to do every time I posted and will, hopefully, enable me to post more frequently than I was able to during the final year or so of the Hit of the Week updates.
Another thing that will save time and enable me to post more frequently is a slight change in format. Rather than every update featuring multiple popular music recordings and a short essay plus an “extra” section featuring multiple recordings from different musical genres and an additional essay, postings here will usually feature less commentary and fewer recordings per posting.
Finally, I am pairing this blog with a Twitter account from I will be sending out frequent “tweets” recommending and linking to the same sort of music that others are making available on the web. The nice thing about posting to Twitter is it only takes less than a minute to do so. So if things become too busy and I do not have time to put up a posting here, chances are good that I will at least have time to post something to Twitter.
If you do not have a Twitter account of your own, you can still follow mine either by going to my Twitter Page or by following the Recent Tweets section in the right hand column of this blog.
My new blog also comes with all sorts of neat bells and whistles. The icons you will see after each posting will enable you to share and pass it along to friends either though email or various social networking sites – a great way that you can help to bring any recordings here you especially like to the wider audience that they deserve.
The blog also, by default, also includes comments. For now, I am going to leave the comments feature turned on to see how well they work out. If I end up having to spend too much time weeding out spam I might, unfortunately, have no choice but to turn the comments off.
Also, just so that there are no potentially hard feelings – please do not be offended if I fail to reply back to any comments. This blog is a hobby – something that I do in my free time. There are times when my real world commitments and various necessary chores and errands crowd out the time I can responsibly spend on my various hobbies.
Nevertheless, this is a hobby that I get a great deal of enjoyment from and through which I have met many wonderful people. Over the past year I became so busy with other projects that something had to give – and I decided that it would have to be the Hit of the Week updates so that I would at least still have time to work on Radio Dismuke. But I did enjoy putting the Hit of the Week updates together and have missed doing so. I hope to get similar enjoyment from this new blog – and hope that those who followed and enjoyed my Hit of the Week updates over the years will as well.
Radio Dismuke
Dismuke
I loved your hits of the week and will love this blog too. I cannot tell you just how much enjoyment I get listening to this vintage music while working. Thanks so much for all the work you do and that you enjoy this hobby. I share all the info I learn on your site with others.
Thanks for your nice comment. I am glad you enjoy it.
I second Tamie’s comment; Radio Dismuke (via Live 365) is on pretty much all day here in the studio. I’ve passed on the station to a few friends and they seem to be hooked as well. Always looking forward to new additions to the loops. Thanks again for such a “cheerful little earful” (in keeping within the era).
IS THERE ANY WAY TO COPY THESE SONGS TO MY COLLECTION LIKE THE OLD HIT OF THE WEEK ?
Hello –
Unfortunately, not. The old Hit of the Week used Real Audio files. The audio files for the new blog are mp3. Making the mp3s available for downloading potentially opens all sorts of cans of worms that I would rather not open. Sorry about that.
To BERN: When downloadable are not available, you can “livestream capture” what comes over your computer’s speakers (with little, if any) loss of sound quality by using something like “Wire Tap” or “Audio Hijack Pro” software applications. I think “Audacity” (a free one) may even offer this capability. (You can livestream capture whole podcasts – yes, ENTIRE RADIO DISMUKE segments and specialty shows – and doing a livestream capture on your end will also keep Dismuke from having any liability on his end, as he has no control over how you use your home computer!)
Some drawbacks to this approach are that (1) you will have to do it in real time (you can’t just download files), and (2) you will have to build your own metatags (iTunes song names, artist names, year of issue, etc., for each selection), but this method will work for the offerings here – AND you will get another chance to listen to them as you capture them. After you’ve captured them, you can edit the silence from the front and back (I use and older version of Sound Studio for my editing) and convert them into any format (.wav, .ogg, .m4p, .mp3, etc.) you want.
As a listener from almost the very beginning (did I get your website address from a recommendation in MacWorld magazine?) … I LOVE the new blog format! I, too, missed the Hit of the Week while it was dormant, and am glad to see that it was resurrected in this form.