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Rip It Up, Issue 240, 1 August 1997, Page 8

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AN EXCLUSIVE FROM TAFKAP Crystal Ball, a new triple album set from The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, will be limited to 100,000 copies worldwide, and will only be available from the Love4OneAnother website — where you can also hear soundbites from the album. Plus when you order it, you can contribute to the artwork. Become part of the Artist’s database, ”X-periment In Truth”, and by participating, you can get one of the limited free copies of his new 12-song acoustic album, The Truttr. www.love4oneanother.com ONLINE RETAIL UPDATE A recent USA survey on the prospects of Internet music retail estimated that by the year 2002, on-line sales of music will account for 7.5% of total worldwide sales, or USsl.6 billion in revenue. SEE BILL’S GATE If the trivial thrills you, check out Driveways of the Rich and Famous. More than just tons of photos of celebrity’s driveways, there’s brief interviews with such luminaries as Linda Ronstadt’s postman (“She doesn’t write songs about postmen”), Aaron Spelling’s pizza delivery driver, and Kirk Douglas’s pool cleaner (“Their dog uses the pool most often”). All this and more at: www.driveways.com INTEL FEST In mid July, the Intel New York Music Festival saw the launch of a host of music-related net technology. It also included live netcasts of over 300 acts from 20 venues, including Ween, Better Than Ezra, DJ Spooky and Combustible Edison. Of note on the technical front, Res Rocket Surfer (the company founded by Londonbeat’s Willy Henshall and Dreadzone’s Tim Bran) has developed software that enables users to play and jam in

real time with others over the net, and give performances in a virtual music venue, the MUSE (Multi User Studio Environment). All you’ll need is a computer, internet connection, a MIDI instrument, and the Distributed Realtime Groove Network (DRGN) software.

PERSONALISED NZ NEWS SERVICE The NBR NETwork site now has a new service “NBR Desktop Reporter” that will report directly to users when the news they want appears in any of the NBR NETwork 21 databases. This site has feeds from NZPA, Radio NZ, National Business Review and Reuters news services. Registered users can enter key word searches, instructing the site to scan its 21 databases, up to three times a day and directly e-mail news headlines to the users’ computer. Registering is free via the NBR NETwork homepage. Registered users are issued a user ID and a password: www.nbr.co.nz PORTISHEAD PREVIEW At the Portishead web site there is access to the Portishead rehearsals, a live gig and an international press conference to promote their upcoming album Portishead, due for release first week of October. www.portishead.co.uk FE-MAIL XW, a site for NZ women — includes a weekly style column, polls on topical issues and a ‘bitch column’, where recent topics have included, “the difficulty in getting fashionable clothes for average-sized women" and “the boss’ unreasonable demands”. XW is at: www.xtra.co.nz/contenVlilestyle/xw/ PRIMUS AT HOME Primus can be found at their homepage, newly redesigned in a fetching brown with some simple but effective animations, and complete with a chatroom, audio, and the ‘wit’ of Bob C. Cock. Shake hands with beef at: www.primussucks.com/

FLIPSIDE ON-LINE ’ The Wellington dance record store. www.flipside.co.nz PLUGGED BUT UNFURLED A new music website, unfUßLed, has appeared. It’s a joint deal between MTV and Yahoo! (the search engine). Aside from music news, polls and excellent links to other sites (which will also be reviewed), unfUßLed features information (updated weekly) on MTV’s top 20 acts, in the ‘Ultimate Artists’ pages, www.unfurled.com Another music resource that is worth a look is www.muchmusic.com, and if it’s only the links you’re after the good old alphabetised Ultimate Band List will be of some use to you: www.ubl.com JAMTV Audio and video webcasts can be found at Jam TV, which includes a daily music news video programme, as well as music videos and audio top twenty radio programmes. If you don’t have the software necessary to access all this, it can be obtained from their site: www.jamtv.com OUCH! For hideous stories of the unbelievable objects found in dogshit — padlocks, stockings, tennis balls etc. (And no, there’s no pictures, you sicko). Read about what Rover’s been eating at: www.concentric.net/~staroche/poop.htm ON THE WIRE

Hot Wired, the cyber arm of Wired magazine, features — amongst other things — weekly live broadcasts from guest DJs, (audio and video) which are then archived and can be accessed at any time, www.wired.com/ is the place to hook up and subscribe.

TROY FERGUSSON