Very brief hiatus!
I ran out of shows to upload. I usually keep ahead of this time-consuming task, which involves checking a year's worth of shows for duplicates, partial duplicates, and more. I finished the 1970s shows a few days back, but I've been super busy. I hope to get 1971 checked and uploaded today, so the podcast will resume tonight. Tomorrow night at the latest.
Also, we're currently at 595 published episodes! We'll reach 600 on Thursday or Friday!
I ran out of shows to upload. I usually keep ahead of this time-consuming task, which involves checking a year's worth of shows for duplicates, partial duplicates, and more. I finished the 1970s shows a few days back, but I've been super busy. I hope to get 1971 checked and uploaded today, so the podcast will resume tonight. Tomorrow night at the latest.
Also, we're currently at 595 published episodes! We'll reach 600 on Thursday or Friday!
posted by ShepFan at 12:52 PM
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60 Comments:
Thanks for the update, I wondered whay had happened to the usually rock solid solid posting schedule.
Keep your knees loose! :)
The feed is running again, and stocked up for the next 100 days. I'll try to get 1972 done before the Christmas Craziness begins!
Hats off from keeping this humming. I am in awe of your fortitude. Even Shep took some nights off.
Keep you knees loose
http://www.flicklives.com/FanPages/eb_010/010_Brass_Figlagee.jpg
Thanks, Tom! And thanks for the Figlagee... my first one!
I LOVE LOVE LOVE your work, and have downloaded as much as my PC can hold. Each show brings a smile to my face - every one I listen to. I wanted to ask about a couple of the episodes, they don't download, maybe the links are broken?
1969 09 27 Almost Busted
1971 05 29 Fishing and Raccoons
1963 04 xx Compassion and Cantalopes
1963 04 xx Cause & Effect
I'm in awe of the work you've put in, it's all great!! Thanks so much.
Thanks, Anon, your feedback was very helpful. You're right, those shows needed help. All is well again, and I've verified they will download correctly now. Depending on the podcatcher software you're using, you may need to delete the failed downloads and try again. I use iTunes on the Mac, and I couldn't restart the failed DLs—I had to click "Get" again.
Please let me know if you find any other problems.
Thank you VERY much for the compliment; it is a bit of work, for sure, but to paraphrase Sir Isaac Newton, I am fortunate to be standing on the shoulders of giants. Not only the great Shepherd himself, but all the fans who faithfully taped him for years, and generously contributed their tapes to the Jean Shepherd Project. And of course the JSP too, for all the long hours they put into converting tape into about 1300 MP3s. And Charles Hayden's Shep Archives, where I first found most of these files... Lots of folks have lent a hand.
Spread the word!
Dear Shepfan,
Thanks for the fixes - iTunes was very kind and let me download them without hassle. And thanks for the swift response. I know this massive compendium is a labor of love because nothing else makes us work so hard. I've got my brother signing on and listening, as we did together all those years ago.
Excelsior!
Teresa [the artist formerly known as Anon :)]
Shepfan,
I just want to say thank you SO much for all the hard work you put into this fantastic podcast.
A daily dose of Shep really helps me struggle through the days at an otherwise frustrating job.
Luckily I've only been listening for a few months, so I have a large backlog of Brass Figlagee episodes to keep me going.
You're doing a heroes work and lots of us out there in the darkness appreciate it.
Thank You Shepfan..!
I just discovered your blog and podcast.
It is a great collection.
the Jean Shepard Project website should point people to you. their website seems to be out of date and
they were unresponsive to my emails .
i just dowloaded all of them. i can not wait to listen to them. itunes had a problem downloading a few.
when you get a chance, could you please fix these. thank you again...
problem tracks:
1964 02 14 Valentines Party
1963 07 03 Army Fourth
1963 12 24 Atomizer
1963 12 25 American Xmas
1964 07 04 1 Fireworks
1964 07 04 2 Date With Pearl
Woot! What a fantastic site . I used to listen to the Shep when I was in 6 th grade " St Marys school of Sister Mary Lois ". I remember listening to Jean almost every night on Wor Am 710 .
The collection of shows you have gathered is impressive. I wish I would have thought of recording them myself. But I guess I thought he would always be on.
I just spent most of the afternoon drifting off listening to the greatest story teller ever.
the problem tracks above, worked fine today.
thank you !
Thanks for the comments, everyone. Voncheech, thanks for the problem report (I appreciate them... things do fall through the cracks some times), and especially the followup to let me know it's OK.
Hubz, thanks as always for the kudos; I'm just the librarian and podcaster. My contribution is organizing the library, occasionally fixing an MP3 file, and updating the feed every night. I listened to Shep as an adolescent (didn't everyone?) but didn't have the foresight to tape any of them! Most of these episodes were downloaded from the great shep-archives.com, which sadly is about to fade away, at least for now until a the new management hopefully sets it up again.
Charles, you did a great job!
Shepfan :
Will the fading away of the Shep archives have a impact on your site ?
Can i do anything to help ?
I would hate to think after stumbling upon this great site
I may not be able to continue to listen to Jean.
Hubz,
No worries. I was fortunate to download the whole archive a few years ago, and there haven't been any additions since. I've also gotten some extra goodies via peer-to-peer file sharing. The podcast should continue well into 2009. After that, it will remain online for anyone to pick up from the start.
I hope the Jean Shepherd Project revives before then, because they're sitting on some unreleased material, and they also distribute it freely so long as no one sells the shows.
Thanks for the offer of help. A fan from Great Britain will be taking over shep-archives.com, though he can't commit to a timetable yet.
God bless you for bring Shep back to life! My iPod is already filling up with broadcasts! This is a Shepherd fan's heaven!
I'm currently listening to your latest cast, which is "OPC - 1971 Press Conference 1"
It's great to hear Shep unleashed!
Thanks! :)
Part 2 is coming up next!
I'm hungry! (for more)
Hi! I was trying to download the latest addition, via iTunes:
1972 04 xx Banana Oil
but got a message saying the file could be corrupted or not in an iTunes format.
A day without Shep is really a day without sunshine! This Shep fan is constantly throwing Brass Figlagees your way for all your terrific work.
Hi Teresa,
Thanks for the report, and for the Figlagees!
You're right, the 1972 shows are offline right now. The hosting service is having a temporary problem, and I submitted a trouble ticket last night (EDT). The same problem happened once before, and was quickly corrected. Be patient, it will be fixed soon.
Do you have all of the shows? Including the current 1972 group, there are 775 as of today, going back to January 23, 2006. Don't be fooled by the listing in the iTunes Store--they only display the last 100 episodes.
Hi, and thanks for the update!
I checked my iPod - I 've got 777 shows. I'm not sure why I have 2 more than your total, but it's probably a couple of duplicates. And yep, my list goes right back to your inaugural date.
You have no idea how much my family appreciates these shows. We listen to Shep every day, he keeps our perspective, well, in perspective. :)
While we're waiting for archive.org to get better, have you subscribed to podcasts, "Mass Backwards" and "Jean Shepherd Revisited"? There are links in the sidebar. They can tide you over for a while!
As always, you give far more than a person could ask for! :)
I hadn't known about the Shep Revisted URL, and am downloading my first four shows; they should tide me over. And yep, been a fan of Max for years and have a bunch of the Mass Backwards podcasts of Shep.
So, from sunny and windy NJ, have a nice holiday weekend!
Good news, everyone!
Archive.org has fixed the problem, and you can now download shows from 1972 again!
You have brought great joy, guffaws, choking with laughter, and smug satisfaction among the Shepherd cogniscenti.
Thanks for keeping this going and hope to get more broadcasts from you soon.
What a priceless heritage of great talk. I even enjoy the ennui.
Thanks for maintaining this, especially now that shep-archives appears to be no more. Shep gets me through the boring stretches of my work day.
I very much appreciate your effort. I listened to Shep in Boston with the AM fading in and out depending on conditions.He contributed to my early adolescence in the buttoned down early sixties in a very liberating way. Thanks again!
is shep archives dead?
Charles H., who ran shep-archives, gave it up earlier this year because his server kept getting hacked. He did find another fan who was willing to take over the site on another server. I understand the new webmaster intends to use the same URL, but when and how it will show up are still unknown.
When this podcast is finished, it will be a permanent repository of over 95% of what was on shep-archives. I'll be leaving out copyrighted works, and the non-Shep tracks (music, mainly) that Charles had. Plus, I've identified many partial and full duplicates and removed them.
Personally, I hope that the Jean Shepherd Project comes back soon. They said they had new shows to release, and I'd like to include those in the podcast. Max Schmid is getting new shows donated from his contacts, but he sells those, so I'd have a hard time including those in good conscience.
Sorry for the long response. It's been very much on my mind.
thanks for the info.
can you provide a list of what copy righted material you are referring to? be a completist...
isn't Max already selling the same recordings that you are offering for free..?
I don't have a complete list, only examples: Tracks from Shep's albums, which are now sold on CD; any television shows (e.g., Larry King in 1982); radio shows aired after January 1, 1979 (not much of an issue, thankfully). Shep did a few radio interviews with Alan Colmes, Anne Ligouri, and others in the 1980s that are copyrighted. Compared to the ~1300 shows by Shep, it's a small loss.
This site goes into more detail, but radio shows aired before 1979 are generally considered public domain. I rely on that to make these shows legally available.
The shep-archives comprised shows distributed by the Jean Shepherd Project, which were sourced from members' collections and donations from Shep fans. I'm not familiar with Max's catalog, but on his podcast he plays shows that have been recently donated to him.
One could argue that those recently-donated shows are public domain. But if Max is putting his labor into transferring them, expecting to put bread on his table, I have an ethical problem giving them away without permission from either Max or the donors. And since I only know Max by reputation, and don't know the donors at all, that seems unlikely.
I hope that the JSP comes back from hiatus, releases more shows, and attracts more donors.
It would also be amazingly wonderful if fans with collections would loan them to me for transfer to MP3. I would treat the tapes with great care, give credit to the donor, and give the shows for free to the Shep community.
Just found you today, great work and I am now a subscriber
I'm downloading all of them and am filling a player to give my dad for Fathers day. However, I've got to confess I'm listening to many on the way down. My childhood returns.
Thanks ever so much to you and all involved. much for taking the time and energy to do this!
I got a wild hair tonight and worked up an omnivores playlist of the shep files on archive.org. You can listen to them one at a time or via the yahoo embeded player all from this same page.
http://jeanshepherdpodcast.blogspot.com/2008/06/easy-play-shed.html
I even added some shep images in the player.
EYFH
-tom
Did I miss something, has the Shep Archive folded up and called it a day?
Unfortunately, the Shep Archives is on indefinite hiatus. The former proprietor, Charles H., announced it on the Yahoo Shep group. He was tired of people hacking his site and having to rebuild it. An English Shep fan offered to take it over and host it in the UK. I know the men met and data discs changed hands, but the new guy couldn't commit to a timetable. Their plan was to transfer ownership of the shep-archives.com domain as well, so perhaps it will someday come back to its old home.
Please start at the beginning when you run out of episodes! I love Shep and have been downloading weekly Mass Backwards shows and just discovered this podcast.
Hi Nate,
Welcome! You'll find that all the past episodes are still here, going back to a few 1953 shows Shep did. I'll never delete them. There are currently 890 shows in the podcast, and when I get all the shows through the pipeline there should be about 1300, give or take. They'll always be there, so long as there is an archive.org!
Shepfan,
The convenience of having the podcast delivered to iTunes every day is what I am talking about. After you run out of chronological episodes, how about starting over again with the oldest etc.? That way I keep getting them without having to do something manual.
Nate
Shepfan,
Did you understand what I meant? Coming in now, I have iTunes set to download the latest episode. This leaves hundreds greyed out - the older ones. After you post your last show, the old ones would still be greyed out. And yes, I could manually go back and download the oldest, listen to it, then download the next one, etc. until after a few years I will have listened to them all.
But it would be more convenient to have the whole thing loop. So after you post your last show, the oldest one appears as new in iTunes and is automatically downloaded. Then the next day the next oldest appears, etc. It is all done automatically and I don't have to do anything.
Is this doable? Do you think it a good idea?
Nate
Nate,
I understood you, and I think that after three and a half years of doing this every night, plus all the "invisible" setup work that goes into doing this, I'll be ready to move on to other things by the time all the shows are done.
I'm hoping to find more content to bring to the podcast, shows that aren't from the shep-archives. I'm actively working on that. But I can't promise I'll do this the rest of my life...
The good news, Nate, is you can turn all those grey titles to black by clicking the "Get All" button at the top of the Brass Figlagee list in iTunes. This isn't what you're asking for, I know, but consider this: It has never before been possible to click one button and get so much of the shep-archives, with more to come automatically. At least, not without typing in a credit card number!
You might also consider a trick I do with my iPod: Smart Playlists. Very good stuff, these. I have a Smart Playlist which includes anything with "Jean Shepherd" as the artist, and which has been played 0 times. I also limit it to about 20 hours, chosen by name. So even though I have over 10G of Shep files, my iPod only has to hold about 200M at a time. And after I listen to one or more shows, and I sync my iPod, the shows I heard are removed from the Smart Playlist and replaced with other show(s) I haven't yet heard.
Shepfan,
Thanks for all you are doing for all of us.
Nate
thank you for these awesome podcasts !
please keep it up !
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Welcome... I'm glad you found the podcast, and are enjoying it!
God Bless You! You have filled a terric void in my life. I has stationed in the Army in New York City during 1961-63 and listened to Shep in the barracks almost every night. I didn't realize his shows went back to 1953.
"Let's go to the PX for a Mars bar!" One of Shep's sayings. There really is no replacement for Shep. And we could surely use an reincarnation of Shep!
I also like the WOR news. There was news at the end of the Robert Service poetry. News about the Vietnam War: flying over the DMZ & a great Civil Rights senate speech. Those were exciting times.
Since the demise of Shep Archives it's been way too hard to get the MP3s. I simply uploaded my collection of Jean Shepherd mp3's and figured I'd share them.
http://www.mediafire.com/shepfiles
I know there are more out there -- the Jean Shepherd Project lists more -- but these are all I have.
Go for it.
Just discovered your podcast and this blog and wanted to thank you for all the work you've done. I, too, used to listen to Shep as a kid back in New Jersey through the 60's, so I consider this a WONDERFUL find. There's actually something almost mystical about the whole thing. Thanks, thanks, thanks, I really appreciate it.
Dave P
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
My husband couldn't believe it when I played him some of the old episodes. He never missed a night when he was a kid growing up in NJ and we're planing on giving all of them a listen. It's been wonderful getting to hear to this amazing storyteller! Thank you so much for making these available!
Shepfan,
When you run out of episodes to upload, will the podcast remain on iTunes with the old episodes? Because I started here in July and there are hundreds of old episodes that I don't necessarily want to download now to my disk. But when there are no new ones I *would* like to get an episode one by one to listen to, as if the podcast put it there each day.
Nate
Good question. The audio files and the podcast file (the "RSS file") are all hosted on archive.org, which also hosts the Internet Wayback Machine. There's every reason to believe they will be around for a long, long time. And as long as they are, the Brass Figlagee will contain all 1300+ episodes it will have when I finally finish.
Just wnt to thank you so much, I buily my first crystal radio and all it would tune in was shep or harry harrison. Although a musician I chose talk over music. And have been addicted since. To once again fall asleep to the great story teller is a greeat gift. Keep up the great work. Ps a former engineer for shep was once a member of a church I pastored. He said he knew of no tapes then and it broke my heart.
Finding all of this in middle age is a wonderful, unexpected gift. Thank you so much for all of your hard work. It is greatly appreciated!
Shepfan:
Thank you for making all these recordings available! As a kid in the 60s I'd get under the blankets with my radio, a tube model that had it's top broken off. By the light of the vacuum tubes I'd listen to Shep every chance I'd get. This archive of yours brings it all back!
Thanks 10^6!
Richard Drumm The Astronomy Bum
Thanks for your work in uploading all the Jean Shepherd radio shows. I met Jean in 1975 when I hired him for the University of Connecticut to give a performance for the students. He gave a great show and a group of us went out to a campus bar with Jean for pizza and beer.
I just discovered these podcasts a few days ago. I used to live in Schenectady and listened to Shep when we could receive it. It was not broadcast locally. (late 50's or early 60's as I recall). Now my worry is, are these podcasts here forever? do I need to download them all and burn them to a disk? Thanks ShepFan if you're still there!
Anonymous,
Forever is a long time, but I tried to choose a hosting service, archive.org (home of the Internet Wayback Machine), that would be around for a long time to come, and whose goal is to archive public-domain content like this. It has always been my intention to leave everything online when I get to the end of the collection.
I would recommend downloading it all, if you want to have it all. This may be the only online, free source for what was once the shep-archives. As for burning it to a disk, it'll be about 13G when complete next year, and that's a couple of double-sided DVDs. Or just keep it on a hard drive--they're cheap enough these days.
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