Swap Meet
Piracy – Karaoke – Conviviality
Saturday, September 1
9pm until late
Free
The results of last month’s 90s experiment? Hackers = awesome, if only despite itself. Singles = like kryptonite, and not the fun red kind.
Speaking of movies, maybe you’ve seen that Miss Teen South Carolina video that’s been going around? The one where she incoherently says that we need more maps? For the children? Perhaps you even gave a little megalopolis-dwelling chuckle of superiority at her quaint befuddlement, ho ho ho.
Well you know what? You can just lay the hell off of Miss Teen South Carolina, because Spacetime is confusing!
Take Swap Meet for example. First of all, this is the “August” Swap Meet… and yet it’s taking place on September 1. Riddle me that!
As if that weren’t bad enough, from 10:00-11:00pm there will also be a karaoke ice cream truck in nearby association with Swap Meet… and yet it won’t actually be at Swap Meet! (How could we fit an ice cream truck into a basement? Come on now.)
So to summarize, there will be midi karaoke and piracy here, midi karaoke and ice cream there, and it’s all taking place in the wrong month. As if explaining Swap Meet wasn’t hard enough already.
Which brings us to the “August” Swap Pack Themes:
BITE MY STYLE
and/or
IN MY MIND I’M GOIN’ TO CAROLINA
What is a Swap Pack? Glad you asked!
About Swap Meet
Swap Meet is a monthly gathering where you can come with your favorite music files and trade them with other physical human people. Then, holler along with the dulcet tones of handcrafted MIDI karaoke. It’s like the Internet, but with people and beer.
Here’s the (outdated and incomplete) house karaoke list, so you can prepare yourself. If something you’d like to sing is not on the list, you are welcome — nay, encouraged! — to bring your own hand-crafted .KAR files. They’re MIDI-tastic!
What to Bring
- bring: drinks, or a kindly donation (optional)
- bring: your singin’ voice and dancin’ shoes (optional)
- bring: some storage media and/or a Swap Pack (optional)
- bring: a defiant sense of joy in the face of our eroding cultural freedoms (required)
Swap Pack Theme
Bite My Style
and/or
In My Mind I’m Goin’ To Carolina
Swap Pack how-to
- 1. Take note of the one or two themes chosen for a given month’s Swap Packs
- 2. Pick out 128 Mb of music (roughly 25-40 MP3s) which interprets, tangents, or ignores one of said themes
- 3. Put the music into a folder
- 4. Put the folder onto portable media (flash drives are handy)
- 5. Take your portable media to Swap Meet
- 6. Swap
- 7. And then we sing!
- (For more details, see the Swap Pack FAQ.)
Some questions you might have and some answers we might have
Do I need to have an iPod to come?
No. Many people come with hard drives, flash drives, or other alternate file storage devices/media.
Must I swap files at all?
No. You don’t have to swap to sing.
Wait — must I sing?
No. You don’t have to sing to swap. Indeed, you don’t have to sing or swap and you can still be powerfully entertained by the singing and the whatnot. (But beware the power of MIDI karaoke. Maybe you didn’t intend to sing Phil Collins…)
Swap Meet is presented by Superbunker and The Royal Academy of Nuts + Bolts.
For more information and helpful links, please see the Superbunker Swap Meet project page.
Please note:
According to recent legal decisions, inducing anyone to use physical space for the purpose of sharing music may render the space-time continuum illegal. Use the space-time continuum at your own risk.
Make Swap Meet your friend.
