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I’m not terribly thrilled about the PC response to the Mac ads – don’t ad agencies ever consider that we might choose a computer for reasons other than because we want to belong to a cult of personality? And besides, if I did want to be part of a cult of personality, it wouldn’t be one that included Deepak Chopra – ick. But Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis) does get something exactly right in this ad, when he says, “Software, computers, it’s the most punk-rock thing that’s happened ever. People just come up with ideas – there’s twelve-year-olds who just hear music and then they go out and make something amazing.” You could make a pretty good argument that the DIY ethic of punk rock was a quarter-century ahead of its time – that while punk rock’s inception was in reaction to societal conformity, it’s only now achieving its logical expression, with the democratization of both the means of producing music and of distributing it.
It’s Veteran’s Day, Remembrance Day in Canada. For many years, I’ve re-read “In Flanders Fields” and listened to the Pogues’ version of “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” on this day. A few years ago, I started listening to the “The Green Fields of France,” by the Dropkick Murphys, as well. Both songs are by Australian folk singer and songwriter, Eric Bogle, and they both commemorate the fallen in World War I, at Gallipoli and in France respectively. They are also both superbly powerful indictments of war.
Asked to respond to the word banausic, I chose to take the most grandiose, willfully complex thing I knew and express it as mechanically and cold [sic] as I could manage. ‘Destroyer’s Rubies’ by Destroyer was that thing.
Burrows transcribed the entire album and used the data to produce a limited-edition print, which is now available for preorder. It’s beautiful, if a little pricey to consider using as dorm-room decor. He’s also announced that it’s the first of the ‘Modern Listener’s Guide’ series of indie-rock infographics; I can’t wait to see the rest.
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Regular readers of this blog know that, while it’s mostly about indie pop, there’s also a healthy dose of geekiness, and today we are departing from our usual musical genre to amp up the geek quotient.
I was intrigued to hear that the mystery of the opening chord of “A Hard Day’s Night” (which you can hear in the video, above) was finally solved. For forty years, it’s vexed guitar players because no one could replicate the sound. But a Dalhousie University mathematician, Jason Brown, used a Fourier transform to figure it out. This mathematical technique can be used to decompose the sound into its component frequencies, and Brown showed that there was one frequency that couldn’t be accounted for by George Harrison’s 12-string, Paul McCartney’s bass, or John Lennon’s guitar. This extra note was a clue that the missing element was a piano chord, played by ‘fifth Beatle’ George Martin.
There’s a nice post on Noise Addicts that includes links to a PDF of the paper and to additional information about the chord.
I guess it had to happen. On November 24th, Christie’s is holding an auction of punk-rock memorabilia. It includes everything from a signed Ramones test pressing to a Sex Pistols press kit to a bondage jacket. That kick-ass Sandinista poster, above? Expected to fetch between two and three grand. Says a Christie’s spokesperson:
The generation who can now afford to buy this stuff is interested in different things. They’re not as interested in the Beatles as they are in the Sex Pistols or Nirvana. Ten years ago, punk memorabilia probably wouldn’t be something we’d be auctioning here. But now, people of a certain age have a certain ability to splurge on this material.
The sad part is that, if I had a spare eight hundred dollars lying around, I’d probably happily spring for a copy of Linder Sterling’s Orgasm Addictposter.
I stumbled upon this sweet, geeky love song by Australian singer-songwriter Fergus Brown. It has an amusing backstory; apparently Brown wrote it about a particular girl that he had silently admired from afar. One of his friends told her about it, and gave her a copy of the song. In a perfect world, they would be happily together, but either Brown is very discreet about it, or they are just friends.
As far as I can tell, this track and its B-side, “Last Winter” are the teasers from his debut album, scheduled for release next February. I’m looking forward to it – Brown has the same gentle, playful-but-melancholy vibe as Jens Lekman, with a similarly beautiful voice. If these two songs are any example, I’ll be reaching for the full-length CD to get me through grey winter days.
With all the talk of the demise of the music industry, it’s easy to forget that this has all happened before. And, equally importantly, all not happened before. Television heralded the demise of the music industry, as did cassette recorders. And while they unquestionably changed the industry, they didn’t kill it. As debcha has noted, for better or for worse, the industry will continue to find ways to change.
Last week, MTV began putting its catalogue of videos online. As the article rightly notes, most of this stuff is on YouTube, so it remains to be seen whether people will actually make use of the site, but I think that ignores two factors, one good and one bad. First the bad: MTV actually contracted, at some point, to use these videos in some context. And, presumably, their lawyers believe they still have the right to use them in this way. They probably do – I don’t know. YouTube leaves the stuff up on a “so long as nobody complains” basis. Now that there’s an “official” and “licensed” Internet presence of this material, I’d expect to see an increase in complaints.
But second, YouTube functionality is great if you either a) know what you’re looking for; or b) don’t really care that much what you see. It’s not well designed for browsing or separating music video from poorly filmed concert footage – you can do it, but it’s easy to get swamped in a deluge of “not really what I wanted”. MTV’s site is better suited to wandering the aisles and stumbling across things you’d never seen or forgotten about. So, whether I want a combination of horror movies and newsreel, or puppets, or bands that it’s hard to imagine being talked about on MTV, I know I’m more likely to discover it here than on YouTube. On the down side, they don’t yet have XTC’s The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead, one of the very few videos I can actually remember watching on MTV, but then YouTube only has the UK video, not the one I remember. And the Crash Test Dummies cover just doesn’t fill that void. Sorry, Canada.
But this Web site just serves as a reminder that MTV has seen better days and that changing an industry is sometimes better for the industry than it is for the agent of change.
Like most progressives in the US, I’m rapidly oscillating between giddy optimism and fear. Naturally, I had to find a set of songs that reflects this. For best effect, set your iTunes playlist to ‘shuffle.’
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Wait, that headline sounds a little more NSFW than I intended…
Built to Spill covered MIA‘s ‘Paper Planes’ at a recent concert in Rome. I’ve heard mixed responses to it, but I quite like Doug Martsch’s ringing guitar. Check it out for yourself.
Mayor Greg Nickels thinks that Seattle is not getting the recognition it deserves as a music city, and last night he unveiled the Seattle Music Commission. Modeled after similar organizations in Austin and Chicago, it has a twelve-year mandate to work to improve Seattle as a city for musicians, for live music, and for music businesses. Nickels has had a somewhat rocky relationship with Seattle music venues, having spearheaded some fairly draconian city bylaws, including asking for the authority to shutter clubs that didn’t comply (the City Council balked, and ultimately Nickels decided to veto the scaled-back versions). However, he’s recently proposed rolling back the admission tax at venues and providing city assistance to help new venues start up. Last night also marked the release of a new economic impact study; highlights include the 20 000 or so music-related jobs in Seattle, the 1.2 billion dollars of revenue, and the fact that about 40% of this revenue comes from sales outside King County, bringing cash into the area. Nice to see the Mayor’s Office step up to the plate to help Seattle get even better as a music town.
I’m delighted to report that noted Canadian auteur Bruce McDonald (best known for his films Highway 61, Dance Me Outside, and for his onstage comment on winning an award for the movie Roadkill, which came with a large cash prize: “This will buy me a big chunk of hash.”) is creating not just one, but three sequels to the 1996 cult classic, Hard Core Logo. The original is a mockumentary about punk band Hard Core Logo’s last cross-Canada tour, and is often compared to This is Spinal Tap. But it’s a lot darker, to say the least. That’s part of the reason why the announcement of sequels is so surprising – the end of Hard Core Logo is, well, terminally depressing. The movie also wasn’t what you’d call a commercial hit, although it’s developed a steady fanbase on DVD. On the other hand, both the leads are now draws in their own right: Hugh Dillon has gone from his punk roots as lead singer for Toronto’s Headstones to a well-respected actor on Canadian TV, and Callum Keith Rennie most recently played one of the Cylons on Battlestar Galactica. And playwright Daniel MacIvor is signed on to write the second sequel. More details of the sequels can be found in this Calgary Herald article.
I’m a total sucker formixCDs, and you’ll never catch me sitting around bemoaning the death of the Album. So a website like My Secret Playlist tickles me. They ask artists what songs they are currently listening to, and then post an annotated playlist (you can stream all the songs). Recent contributors have included everyone from Chris Walla of Death Cab for Cutie to Donna Summer to a bunch of people I’ve never heard of and am really looking forward to checking out. It’s a great place to hear both the old and the new music that is inspiring artists today.
Well, the days are getting shorter and the weather is turning colder. But for those of us who look forward to winter (and maybe to encourage those who don’t), outdoor outfitters REI got a bunch of gear companies to sponsor songs about the snowy season, from bands including Apples in Stereo(above), Eagles of Death Metal, and Seattle power-pop band Quadrillion. The best part is that REI is making the songs available as unrestricted audiofiles for download. The MP3s are up already, and it looks like videos for most of the songs will be up later this winter.
This is clearly ‘future of music’ week in the zeitgeist. I wrote a bit about it based on a Boston Herald article about how Pretty & Nice met Built to Spill‘s bassist managing a Jiffy Lube in Boise, and I just stumbled on a Village Voice music blog post on much the same theme, this one focusing on licensing versus developing a fanbase:
Which is to say the model now is to completely bypass the consumer—whose thumbs-up/thumbs-down was once the obvious, inarguable standard of success—in favor of the television drama, the movie soundtrack, and the TV commercial….What is curious about this model is that it essentially imagines an industry future without fans. People will consume music the way they consume actors and actresses: as part of a much bigger whole, to be judged as such. Beatles-type fame is a casualty, although I’m sure these dudes have no trouble getting laid; so are about a million tropes, some good, some bad, traditionally designed to appeal to ‘music fans,’ a demographic that may well not exist in ten years.
So, to recapitulate: mobs of screaming fans – out; a modest revenue stream through licensing, direct CD sales, merch, gigs, podcasts, etc, etc, and yet more etc – in. Hmmm. I’ll have to give some more thought to what I think this trade means for both fans and artists. If you have thoughts, feel free to share them in the comments.
Boston band Pretty & Nice had a sobering run-in with one of their musical heroes:
This may be the most telling anecdote about modern rock ever: A new band with a seemingly bright future meets one of its idols – a guy signed to a major label with 15 years of storied records and tours under his belt – and he’s managing a Jiffy Lube in Boise, Idaho….
The bright new band: Pretty & Nice, which plays a CD release show for its new album “Get Young” Sunday at Great Scott. The idol: Built To Spill bassist Brett Nelson.
“We met Brett at the Jiffy Lube he manages in Boise.” said Holden Lewis. “I came out from paying and was wondering, ‘Who’s this guy talking about touring?’ The whole interaction was about 30 seconds long, but he came to our show in Boise that night and invited us to their Boston show last month.”
The article focuses how what it means to ‘make it’ in the modern music industry, and how the days of being wildly successful (a là KISS and their ilk) are pretty much over. Hugh Dillon‘s character in Hard Core Logo says of his bandmate, “Billy wants the models and limousines, while I’m happy with hookers and taxicabs,” and it looks like it might be all cabs, no limos from here on out. There are clear parallels to other media, and how they are becoming increasingly niche-oriented: instead of everyone sitting in front of their TV watching Dallas on a major network, we moved to the 500-channel universe, and then to watching clips on YouTube. Music seems to be going in the same direction – instead of relatively few bands that are massive and ubiquitous, there’s a complete ecosystem of bands thriving in a wide range of niches. At least, I hope that’s how it plays out; I really need to keep going to shows and buying CDs, Pretty & Nice’s in particular…
I’m not a musician. I’m just a fan. So I’m kind of amazed (and grateful) that the bands I like are willing to put up with smelly vans, sleeping in a different place every night, and what I’m sure is pretty marginal pay to keep making new music and coming out to entertain me. I’m acutely aware that it wouldn’t take much for most of them to pack it in, go get a day job, and maybe play gigs with their friends in their hometowns occasionally. I therefore have a strong vested interest in seeing the bands I like succeed, at least to the point where putting on the green apron doesn’t seem like a better alternative. So listen up, new bands – please go read Beatnik Turtle’s Indie Music Survival Guide.
Beatnik Turtle, themselves an independent band, have collated everything they’ve learned into this guide, which is available either as a PDF [PDF link, duh] or as a paperback – something you can read during those quiet stretches in the tour van. The guide is a pretty enlightening read even – maybe especially – for a non-musician. It starts by busting the myth of ‘getting a record contract, getting heard on the radio, and being a rock star,’ and then goes into the tools a band can use for a DIY approach. Topics include promotion, putting on shows, filesharing, the basics of recording an album, and a nice primer on copyright and alternatives (like Creative Commons licenses) for independent bands. Speaking of which, for their own music and other work, they decided to improve on Creative Commons licensing by starting with Sampling, Attribution and Noncommercial and adding a proviso: “Don’t make it suck.”
Read more about the Indie Music Survival Guide and join the online forums here, or purchase a dead-tree edition here.
My Old Kentucky Blog just wrapped up a series entitled “The Ten Commandments Guidelines of Concert Behavior.” Reading it makes me realize that I’ve been exceptionally fortunate at concerts, as when I wrote my own version, I didn’t feel the need to include “Thou shalt not puke” or “Thou shalt not fart.” I also feel like I’m pretty pedantic and geeky, so I am humbled by the fact that the author managed to work in both Charles’ Law and Herodotus. The posts contain excellent concert etiquette advice, and are also highly entertaining (if occasionally horrific) reads. The Tenth Commandment Guideline is here, and there are links to the other nine at the bottom of the post.
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[Showbox at the Market, Seattle, WA; October 20, 2008]
I’ve seen the Mountain Goats umpteen times, and every show that I’ve been to has been amazing – I’ve never been to a show where I felt like John Darnielle has given less than his best. Last night was no exception, and the superlative Mountain Goats performance was only highlighted by opener Kaki King.
There’s a fable for artists, whose source is now lost to me. The story is that two budding potters were taking a class. One neophyte potter was told that his efforts should go towards making the perfect pot, and that he would be graded on the perfection on a single piece. The second was told that she would be graded on the volume of pots that she turned out; that she shouldn’t worry much about any given pot, as her grade would just be based on the total number. At the end of the class, the student who was just interested in getting pots made was making better pots than the student who agonized over making each one perfect. I thought of this story last night as the Mountain Goats played ‘Going to Georgia.’ It’s an astonishing piece of songwriting, a perfect merger of music, lyrics, and emotion. I once listened to it a dozen times in a row, and each time I heard “she smiled as she eased the gun from my hand,” I felt like someone had reached into my chest and torqued my heart. Darnielle is famously prolific and, like the potter in the story, it’s clear that he’s honed his craft. It comes through in both the quality of individual songs and in the sheer depth of stellar songs from his catalog that he can draw from for his live shows.
As well as being an exceptional songwriter, Darnielle is a phenomenal performer. He always comes across as happy to be performing and fully engaged in his interactions with his band and with the audience. One of the manifestations of this is his between-song banter. A highlight last night was his response to shouted-out song requests. Like most musicians, Darnielle doesn’t do requests from the audience. (listen up, concertgoers!) He described his response in terms of Kafka’s The Castle, in which the protagonist tries to convince the guards to let him in. “The guards say, “You can give us money. We wouldn’t want you to feel like you hadn’t tried everything you could.” So he gives them his money, and they take it, and they still don’t play Ace of Bass.”
Darnielle’s onstage gifts were thrown into stark relief by his tourmate and collaborator, Kaki King. It’s abundantly clear that King is technically proficient, and I’m happy to see a guitar goddess get added to the mostly male pantheon. But her performance was insular. She barely engaged with her band, much less the audience, and her few remarks were surprisingly mean-spirited. She introduced what I presume was her best-known song with, “I’m contractually obligated to play this song. So you can all touch yourselves now.” Not a very effective way to endear yourself to your existing fans, much less win over new ones. And I’m sorry, Ms. King – you’re just not famous enough to be bored with playing your ‘hits.’ The only time she seemed seriously engaged with anything besides her guitar was when she was sharing a stage with Darnielle – she was smiling, facing him, and her body language said, loud and clear, “I’m playing with you!” (they performed several songs from the Black Pear Tree EP and the Smiths’ ‘I’m so Sorry’). King has a lot to learn from her tourmate, who is admittedly a master – I would follow John Darnielle into Hell if he sang and played his guitar as we went, and I’m sure I’m not alone.
zed equals zee 