My Divshare account has been deactivated

Me (singing) + Steve McDonald (guitar)
Hollister, Calif., 1978 or 1979
photo by Doug Sherburne

I woke up this morning (now I know why every other blues song begins with these words) excited to post a recent acquisition to the Bodega shelves: Nazia Hassan + Biddu's ground-breaking Disco Deewane (1981) and Star (1982). I had a lot to say about this double-album CD, which I scored yesterday evening at what I believe is a Punjabi-run South Asian media store on 74th Street in Jackson Heights (aka Gary's Favorite Neighborhood).

I was excited in great part because I knew how much certain Bodega Pop regulars -- Holly and Carol in particular -- were going to love it.

Alas, after RARing up the files and logging in to Divshare, I was rerouted to a page that said:

• Sorry, your account has been deactivated. This is usually a result of abuse of the DivShare service. If you have any questions, plese [sic] contact DivShare Support.

Imagine! My indignation! Well, you'll have to imagine it, because I'm not really indignant at all. I knew this day was coming; I just didn't know it would be this morning.

YOU: Yeah, but, Gary, I didn't even download half of th'albums I wanted from th'Bodega! Plus, you're always braggin' about how what's up here now isn't even a quarter of your total massive international CD collection! WTF?

ME: Okay, first? Calm down. I can see you're upset. I'm upset, too. And depressed. And forlorn. And lost. And empty yet uncomfortably bloated, like I've swallowed a bunch of clouds.

Speaking of which: You certainly don't need to worry that I've lost all of my music files in The Cloud. That's what 1TB hard drives the size of a wallet are for.

YOU: Does this mean you're going to reup everything somewhere else and restore all of the links?

ME: I'm not sure. I was paying for that Divshare account. Granted, only $40 a year and my first year was going to be over in less than a month, so it's not like I've been financially burned or anything.

But if I do get another file-sharing account -- which is the most likely scenario -- I'm going to have to pay for it as (a) I don't plan to post anything under 320 KBPS if I've ripped it from CD and (b) there are limits on how much you can store with a free account, and let's face it, I've got a lot of shit to share.

YOU: So you are going to reup everything. 

ME: I didn't say that. I'm considering it. But I'm also considering taking Bodega Pop in a slightly new direction. A friend of mine with a press in Los Angeles wrote me a month or two ago saying he'd be interested in a Bodega Pop book of some kind. In the back of my mind this blog has always been, in part, the very rough draft or outline-sketch of a David Toop's Exotica-like book project. Plus, I've always fancied starting an online magazine or broader-ranged site at any rate, focused on international music, in which music blogging would likely take center stage (as we are, us bloggers, the primary English-language info source about international music, in case you hadn't noticed).

YOU: Well ... is there anything we can do? You know, like, to help?

ME: Yes. First of all, you can give me suggestions for file-sharing options moving forward. You can comment here or write to me and lend your now-much-needed emotional support. You can throw out all of the suggestions you might have for an online international music zine you'd like to see: existing models, must-have features, etc.

If you're in the New York area next Monday, you can support me by coming to the launch of the Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry (2nd Edition), where I'll be reading with two-dozen other exemplary east coast poets included in the book. (Yes, I'm in the Norton Anthology; though you may be surprised to hear that I'm not the only music blogger who is.) (I can't name him, as his identity, at least with respect to his blog, isn't exactly public.) The info is as follows:

Wollman Hall, The New School

Mon, Apr 29, 2013, 6:30 pm, FREE
66 West 12th Street
(Between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas)
New York, NY  10011
(212) 229-5600

And stay tuned here. I'll keep you updated as I decide what to do. I may even post Disco Deewane/Star if I can find a free server that will take a 192MB RAR file.