I may be ruffling feathers..

[Rick and Roll]

but someone has to.

I popped into the Moon this morning (to quote Ian Anderson "as I all too seldom do") and I see that "Ikea By Night" by Flower Kings recently played.

Do we HAVE to do this?

[Avian]

If I'm not mistaken, one of our regular members that we all know and love requests that song about once a day. Am I correct in this?

I'd also like to see the FK situation rectified.

Avian

[Rick and Roll]

:p Not a personal attack, he knows that.

But I find the "Marbles" record somnambulent, but I'm not going to request a short Marillion tune.

Just seems to me there's an easier way. Isn't there?

[Bob Lentil]

This must be put to a stop! I move that someone start requesting Driver's Seat every few hours so we don't have to sit through that tepid 4 second song ever again! These Ikea by Night fans are out of control!;)

[Rick and Roll]

there's a top 10 post nominee!

[Roger -Dot- Lee]

I'm working on a few different scenarios that will hopefully help rectify this distressing situation. One of the possibilities includes swapping Ikea by Night and Driver's Seat or I Am The Sun (part I or II, which ever gets overrequested so much). That way whoever's overrequesting both gets the other.

Yes, I can be a right bastard sometimes.

On a more serious note, I'm getting very close to pulling the entire FK collection. I don't WANT to do this, and I won't be doing it on a permanent basis, but that seems to be the only alternative to the daily Ikea By Night and Driver's Seat showing that we've all been subjected to for the past couple of months. Maybe a month long yank or something like that.

Or maybe just the ones that have been requested repeatedly over the last week or so.

Or maybe songs that are < 2:00 and > 10:00 (or whatever arbitrary limits I decide to set (varying on a number of factors (including bribes (ahem)))).

Gah. I look like a lisp programmer.

Anyway. The short of it is that I'm working on a viable alternative. And rest assured, there's nothing going to be done that doesn't get bounced off of Jim.

Roger

[pupo]

And what about the Appleseed Cast over requesting? It's bringing me down every day...

[Yesspaz]

Truly. It makes me sad, because the whole album is that good, and some ninny-hammer out there is going to wind up getting one of my favs booted off the Moon. I wish that punk would quit. R.L, find him and block his IP!

[Rick and Roll]

Originally posted by Yesspaz
Truly. It makes me sad, because the whole album is that good, and some ninny-hammer out there is going to wind up getting one of my favs booted off the Moon. I wish that punk would quit. R.L, find him and block his IP!

1) Are you assuming someone is doing this on purpose?
2) If not, why would you assume this will make the Cast be booted from the Moon?
3) Is this person a "ninny-hammer" or a "punk"?
4) Block his IP? really?

We are going too far. Sanity, please!

(I still think Bob L.'s Ikea post is a riot)

[Yesspaz]

Originally posted by Rick and Roll
1) Are you assuming someone is doing this on purpose?
2) If not, why would you assume this will make the Cast be booted from the Moon?
3) Is this person a "ninny-hammer" or a "punk"?
4) Block his IP? really?

We are going too far. Sanity, please!

(I still think Bob L.'s Ikea post is a riot)

1. Do I think they are requesting the same song over and over on purpose? Yes, of course. They are not accidentally doing it. Do I think they have ulterior motives? No.
2. Do I think that this will make the Cast get booted? No. Do I think it'll get "Blind Man's Arrow" booted? Yes. It happened to "Rome," did it not?
3. Do I think this person is a "ninny-hammer" and "punk"? If he thinks we are so in love with his favorite song that we want to hear it daily like he does, then yes he's a ninny-hammer. I love Don Caballero, and request them frequently. But I don't think for a second anyone wants to hear "Repeat Defender" every day for a month.
4. Block his IP? Of course not. I used hyperbole to express my aggravation. It is a common rhetorical device. An well-worn is "I could just kill so-and-so." You won't really kill them will you? But you make your point. However, if it turns out to be the same guy who did "Rome" and thus points to a pattern of wearing a song out, yeah. Axe one guy for the good of the whole station? As Mr. Spock logically stated, followed by Kirk: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few." "Or the one."

[Roger -Dot- Lee]

HEAR YE HEAR YE!

I have spoken with ProgDirJim (well, not spoken, actually, but more like exchanging PMs and the like) and he liked the idea of a temporary ban on certain Flower King songs.

Effective last night sometime, all FK songs that are less than 2:00 and longer than 10:00 have been removed from the rotation. They're still on the station, so it won't be a problem to put them back once Jim gets home and we have a chance to discuss this thorny issue.

So the long and short of it is that the long and short of it has been trimmed, and everyone should be happy in the Mundo Maravilloso de la Oz.

Roger -Dot- Lee, "Ninny-Hammer"?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!!

[perjensen01]

You will have to pardon my ignorance on the subject of FK because this is my first time here. (Hello Roger!) I've looked through these messages and haven't picked up on the angst with FK (thus the heading for this message!). Do the FK guys need to be force-fed "Magic Brownies" perhaps?:D Per Jensen

[Yesspaz]

Hello perjenson, and welcome to the Moon. You walked right into the line of fire on this one. No one at AM has a problem with TFK. It just that a knucklehead out there, who's probably not a forum reader, constantly requests the long Flower Kings songs daily. For a long time, every day we'd hear "I am the Sun" and two hours later "Devil's Playground," two hours later, "Driver's Seat," two hours later, "Big Puzzle," then "Love Supreme," then "Stardust We Are,".... This was EVERY DAY. To fight back, some members have begun requesting the short ones all the time. See, there's a built-in buffer time so that an individual artist can't play all day. The limit was two hours, which means if a TFK song started at 8, 10, 12, 2, 4, etc. and was on average 20minutes long, well, it's pretty much a TFK marathon. by reqesting short ones, this moved the long ones out.

There's also been request abuse with Transatlantic, but nowhere near as bad as with TFK. Again, there's been abuse of certain songs. "Rome" by Blue Shift has been pulled from the station because some superfan was requesting it twice a day everyday. Currently, Marillion's "Grendel" and The Appleseed Cast's "Blind Man's Arrow" are starting to get that way. The regular chatters and forum-folk ask them to stop, but it's likely the offender(s) aren't forum readers.



Hope that catches you up, and welcome to the Moon! Feel free to request away, just not the above mentioned songs!!!:eek: :D

[perjensen01]

Good to hear from you so soon, and thanks for welcoming me. Simply a great, great site here, just knocked out by it. Heck, I like it enough that this is the only chat site I've ever joined!... Anyway, I've spent a lot of time in or near radio stations all my life, and I've seen a lot of really weird things, like people throwing empty beer cans or trash at the station's front door if the DJ wasn't anwering the request line, but hey, "He who spins the discs is he who spins the discs he wants to spin!" :p

[progdirjim]

must be a hotbed of prog! We've got Teermin8r, we used to have BigTwin, and now perjensen, all from OK City. What's the secret, something in the water?:D

Welcome PJ, hope you enjoy it here. We like the Flower Kings, but we have over 12,000 pieces of music in our library, so hearing the same 3 or 4 Flower Kings songs EVERY day was really wearing on those of us who run the station, as well as the regular listeners.

We're really trying to preach variety and experimentation here...

[Rick and Roll]

Originally posted by perjensen01
this is my first time here.

And hopefully not your last. Hello!:)

[perjensen01]

...and to think that a legend came from such a place... In Oklahoma it seems that Tulsa is the most 'happening' place, but with with Internet the music world has shrunk dramatically. Home for me is actually Minneapolis, but OK City is a startling surprise of many things, and I know of some guys in Paducah, KY (can you imagine that!?) who are fantastic. The love of music is everywhere! You just KNOW there are people in Barrows AK crankin' a King Crimson CD right about now. Yes? No?

[perjensen01]

Oops! Sorry for not saying a big hello to you sir!

[Avian]

Hey - another one chimes in from the OKC. If you think OKC is a strange place for Prog, just drive up Rt. 35 to my town, Mayfield, Kansas, population 100! Aural Moon had been "headquartered" there for two years - most people in Mayfield don't even have internet access, or have even heard of the internet!

Avian

[perjensen01]

... a la Alan Jackson could be their ideal theory of Prog Rock possibly!? Oh man! Sorry, but I'm sitting here laughing my keister off at such a little city! I mention Ferlin Husky because we were playing a little VFW club years ago in Tennessee, a little place called "The Apple", not in a town, just a little stand alone place somewhere between 'villages', that when we started the evening with "I Saw Her Standing There" we got complaints! It was a l-o-n-g night...

[perjensen01]

...and yes, there was a Mayfield, KY near our 'base of operations', but not quite as 'humble' as yours. To this day, if you drive through the place, you'll swear you're in Mayberry...

"Hey folks, is Sheriff Andy around?"

[Rick and Roll]

My father used to rub my head and say "rub the head of a read headed boy (An Andy Griffith quote)...ok tmi there





Originally posted by Avian
Mayfield, Kansas, population 100!
Avian

As they say on Hee Haw...Salute!

[perjensen01]

Unless one is retiring, I've never heard of anyone going back home until retirement if they've lived in large metropolitan areas. In rural areas they're so ignorant or behind the times that when they get in their trucks to go somewhere they never use "R" when putting it in gear - they think it means "Race". Or a good Saturday night for them is sitting on the front porch with a case of Bud and counting how many flies get zapped in the bug zapper. Or they get p!ssed off when they can't find the 8-track of Tom T. Hall's new album...

[perjensen01]

But hey, I keep forgetting to say that this is a great friggin' website and it's a good thing you're there to help keep it going...

[VAXman]

Originally posted by Avian
If I'm not mistaken, one of our regular members that we all know and love requests that song about once a day. Am I correct in this?

I'd also like to see the FK situation rectified.

Avian

It's so wondeful to be loved! :)

I've seen The Flower Kings live probably more time than anyone here on the moon. I love TFK but it was getting to be like "Roundabout" on the commercial "classic rock" radio stations... and I do love YES too. They overplayed Roundabout to the point where I loathe the song. This TFK requests were beginning to fall into the same cyclic play pattern of the "classic rock" stations.

As for Ikea By Night, I wasn't alone but I'll admit to queueing the lion's share. The effort was well intended.

[VAXman]

Originally posted by Rick and Roll
:p Not a personal attack, he knows that.

But I find the "Marbles" record t, but I'm not going to request a short Marillion tune.

Just seems to me there's an easier way. Isn't there?

None of Marbles has played to the extent of the latest TFK!

FWIW, is you want something somnambulent, queue up Philip Glass.

[Roger -Dot- Lee]

Originally posted by VAXman
None of Marbles has played to the extent of the latest TFK!

FWIW, is you want something somnambulent, queue up Philip Glass.

heh...uh, no thanks. I finally ended up removing that 12 part snoozer that PDJ had removed about a month ago...although I may have been premature. I could have swapped the binaries with some of the TFK songs or something.

Of course, then y'all would have probably come after me with assorted blunt, heavy objects, bent on, if not my destruction, at the very least the infliction of more pain than my current pain medication regime is capable of defeating.

Roger -Dot- Lee, taking his vocabulary out for a run, wondering how many wished he'd take it out back and have it shot.

[Roger -Dot- Lee]

Originally posted by Roger Lee
heh...uh, no thanks. I finally ended up removing that 12 part snoozer that PDJ had removed about a month ago...although I may have been premature. I could have swapped the binaries with some of the TFK songs or something.


Hrm.

GY!BE might actually be good for something other than getting me off of the computer afterall!

Roger -Dot- Lee, moving elsewhere. Quickly.

[Roger -Dot- Lee]

Originally posted by perjensen01
The love of music is everywhere! You just KNOW there are people in Barrows AK crankin' a King Crimson CD right about now. Yes? No?

Likely not at this moment. The Alaskan contingent usually log in about midnight or so eastern time (that'd be about 6pm their time).

Don't know if they're in Barrows or where they are. They just have an Alaskan ISP. For all I know they could have a cable strung across the Bearing Straits and are listening in from the Kamchatcha Peninsula or something.

Roger -Dot- Lee, pollutin' the forums with more useless trivia.

[Bob Lentil]

Originally posted by Roger Lee
Roger -Dot- Lee, pollutin' the forums with more useless trivia. I'm up for as much useless trivia as I can get. Keep it coming.

[Rick and Roll]

Originally posted by Roger Lee
Bearing Straits

Bering Straits, named for Vitus Bering. Sorry, I just had to:p

Juneau? (no I didn't, Alaska).

[Rick and Roll]

Originally posted by Bob Lentil
I'm up for as much useless trivia as I can get. Keep it coming.

ok....

It takes 16 lbs of pressure to break off a human ear.

There are 336 dimples in a golf ball.

And, my favorite -

If you drop a Ken doll from the top of a Barbie townhouse, he will land on his head every time (trust me it's true)!

[Sharuru]

Elephants are the only animal that can' t physically speaking JUMP

[perjensen01]

Interesting quote. Would've fit perfectly well with Donald Rumsfeld's public example of political gibberish. Unless the reference to 'Can' was that great group of guys from Germany...

[perjensen01]

Dropping Ken on his head from that heigh is a subconscious reminder of what would like to be done with the TK freaks. Yes? No?

[perjensen01]

...would be to drop 2 of Sony-BMG's exec's on their heads since it's partly their doing that makes it so difficult to find such great Prog Rock. Their names alone are perhaps the best example of such a mindset - Andrew LACK and Michael SMELLIE...

[Roger -Dot- Lee]

Originally posted by Rick and Roll
Bering Straits, named for Vitus Bering. Sorry, I just had to:p


er...no, actually the Bearing Straits, between the villages of North Dogsled and Dewlap, Alaska. Named after Willfred Ball, inventor of the Ball Bearing.

Yeah, that's it!


Juneau? (no I didn't, Alaska).

Oh boo.

Roger -Dot- Lee, Didja do 'er, Mike? Iditarod.

[perjensen01]

There is no doubt whatsoever that 'balls' give men their 'bearing'... (ahem, ahem)

[the_original_ib]

You guys did the right thing, now if you could only fix the problem with the constant Drago Mlinarec requesting...

[the_original_ib]

BTW some clever person has gotten around your ban by playing the Flower Kings song of the PD01 sampler.

[RogorMortis]

er...no, actually the Bearing Straits, between the villages of North Dogsled and Dewlap, Alaska. Named after Willfred Ball, inventor of the Ball Bearing.

As R&R pointed out it was Vitus Bering the Danish explorer who found the straits. But remember he is born in my home town of HORSENS. Don't forget that Dot. Or you wil be sent back to school!

[Roger -Dot- Lee]

Originally posted by the_original_ib
BTW some clever person has gotten around your ban by playing the Flower Kings song of the PD01 sampler.

Yeah, I noticed that myself. Fortunately that song is about half as long as the other version, if not shorter.

That's OK, though. It's no less susceptible to getting yanked than the other one. If it shows up more than a time or two by next friday, I have NO problem yanking it, either. Along with the rest of the FK collection as well, should they push it.

Roger -Dot- Lee, getting REALLY fed up with having to babysit here, too.

[perjensen01]

For what it's worth, an old DJ friend was having a similar problem with "Get It On" by T. Rex. One night he'd ingested too much Lysergic Acid Dyathilamide and decided to deal with the problem. That was the only song he played the entire night! His personal 'entertainment' on-air was too much to believe, but it was, shall we say, effective. In this case, how about you play "Copacabana" by Barry Manilow every time someone requests TFK???

[perjensen01]

Or maybe you could try "Come On Get Happy" by the Partridge Family...

[Roger -Dot- Lee]

Originally posted by perjensen01
Or maybe you could try "Come On Get Happy" by the Partridge Family...

Interesting ideas.

However, I fail to see where subjecting the rest of the listening population to that would cure the offenders of overrequesting.

Besides, there are too many that know about where I live and what I look like. I don't want VAXMan coming after me with a large implement of doom.

No, I'm actually working on something much more effective. So effective that I can in fact start putting all the Flower Kings and the recently booted Marillion chart back without fear of it being overrepeated.

Can you say Access Control Lists? I just KNEW you could!

Roger -Dot- Lee, knows how to use ACLs as well as he knows how to SPELL them!

[perjensen01]

Yeah, Partridge Family is a challenge to Sanity Retainment isn't it?

[Roger -Dot- Lee]

Originally posted by perjensen01
Yeah, Partridge Family is a challenge to Sanity Retainment isn't it?

Challenge? I'd have to say impediment, if not down-right antidote!

Roger -Dot- Lee "Here's a story...of a lovely lady..."

[perjensen01]

Oh! Such a classic! Now my eyes are welling with tears because of that exquisite, heartfelt... "The hills are alive with the sound of music!..." :eek:

[the_original_ib]

Roger,

I'm pretty sure SAM will allow you to control requestability frequency, although I haven't played with that part of it much (obviously I have had no need to).

Regards,
Sean

[Roger -Dot- Lee]

Originally posted by the_original_ib
Roger,

I'm pretty sure SAM will allow you to control requestability frequency, although I haven't played with that part of it much (obviously I have had no need to).

Regards,
Sean

It does, to a certain extent, Sean. However, in order to limit one, we're forced to limit all. The functionality to block requests based on user, IP, or song just isn't there. And I see no reason to punish the 99% of the users that don't abuse the priviledge just to get the idea across to the 1% that Hasn't Gotten the Idea. I also don't like the idea of having to punish The Flower Kings because someone hasn't got the imagination to look beyond the end of their nose.

That's why I'm looking at the possibility of blocking based on domain name or username. That's going to require a significant change to the code, and I'm not at all thrilled with the idea of going to that level. But I have to do SOMETHING!

Hopefully I won't break anything else.

Roger -Dot- Lee

[alians2]

why not keep a count in the DB of the number of times a song gets requested over a period of time ... when it exceeds a threshold, output a SORRY!!! message ... blah, blah, blah

[Yesspaz]

hello alians2. Nice to meet you.

This whole problem has been addressed and solved actually, so this is a moot discussion now. Thanks for the input though. I look for ya on the boards in the shout and chat.