Unempty Untold

Citizens, be warned!

I've been informed the weather and temperature is just right for zombies to spontaneously appear in Yerba Buena Gardens at 2:13pm on Saturday.

More details at SFist.

Stylus magazine recently got a hold of a series of leaked emails containing big label reps discussing The Kooks, and how they should continue marketing them. The language and way these people talk about artists and fans varies from fairly gross to hundred percent pukeworthy.

Nice to see they regard their customer base as complete idiots and cash cows.

Check it out.

Steve Jones (Sex Pistols) Riffs

Steve Jones (of Sex Pistols fame) reminisces over some classic punk riffs. Good stuff.

Well, here's a great win for large corporations and society as a whole.

Masami Toyoda, a 73-year old harmonica player is being sued for playing beatles covers in a bar without paying royalty fees.

Here in the US, the kind of "permission" discussed in the article is granted to venues by paying an annual blanket fee to ASCAP / BMI set to cover average royalties for music played in the establishment. It's one of few music rights-related organizations that actually do a decent job, but it's far from perfect. In reality, the system is relatively poorly enforced, rules are arbitrarily defined, small venues often ignore it all together, and small-time artists with few repeats (tracks played multiple times) often never see any cash. So it's a flawed system that works on averages, but in a way its fairness, its humanity, lays in the cracks between.

I realize that the organization suing this old man is the japanese equivalent of ASCAP, but come on. Let's not pretend that Sony, owners of the Beatles catalogue, were not involved in enforcing the targeted crackdown on this individual old man. And obviously, it was decided by lawyers without involving the PR dept, because even a feral hamster could figure out that suing an old geezer with a mouth harp is going to mean bad publicity.

ITt's thanks to the flaws in the system, Papa's donut's can keep on playing old 78s to their five customers, auntie Maggie can mesmerize the kids with her uncanny ability to play any Allman brothers song on her trusty old banjo. And where it works, Mick Mullet sees a check when his band's latest song is played on local radio. It could be better, but it would also have to be very different. My point being, if the existing system was perfectly enforced, the world would be very silent.

Indeed, the harp of Masami-sama is silenced.

Recently, Sony lawyers came down hard on another individual, Clayton Counts, who did The Beachles mashup  - a noise collage of Beach Boys and Beatles, which he made just for fun. Not only did the lawyers go after the mashup artist, but demanded IP logs from his web site to track down anyone who had downloaded it. They also argued that not only was distributing the mashup illegal, but merely creating it was as well. Think about the implications of that for a second. Thought crime yay!

Is this what music has become to society? Mere property to hoard and profit from? Is this what culture is today? Should I be writing songs not based on my own aesthetics, but that encompass as many chord progressions as possible, so I can "own" them and later profit from royalties and lawsuits? An hour or so of pure white noise would surely be the perfect revenue generator, since it by it's very definition will contain all possible tonal and rhythmic combinations. Absurd for sure.

If you want to stand up for independent music, please strongly consider boycotting anything Sony/EMI, UMG and Warner. And in case you're wondering, that's roughly about 70% of the market between those three corporations.

Few can argue with the musical ability of these fellow swedes. Or rather, you might, but you'll lose. Two parallel time signatures kept tight by Thomas Haake on drums. Complex polymetrics effectively delivered by guitarists Fredrik Thordendal and Mårten Hagström, and a heartbeat by Dick Lövgren on bass. All over the place and in a world of his own, Jens Kidman turns his lungs inside out just for you.

When it comes to metal bands, The might of Meshuggah rules them all. Twice.

The world's gotten to a pretty sad state when artists, especially independent ones, constantly have to consider legal consequences within their creative process - second-guessing themselves and having to research copyright laws, business practices and royalties to avoid stepping in giant potholes filled with land sharks. Instead of writing music, making a (meager) living and making the world a better - or at least nosier - place, artists anguish over wether their riff or melody might be in prior works. Always the subconscious fear there's a lawyer hiding behind the muse, impeccably dressed and greedily rubbing his hands while smirking.

In a larger perspective, how exactly does this enrich our culture as a whole? It's so obvious it's a system rigged in favor of money over talent or even hard work. How does sampling a snare drum from a funk record or singing a song in a karaoke bar hurt the creator of the works? It's not realistic to doggedly claim (in imposing baritone voice) "the original artist deserves a cut" without realizing that most independent artists will simply not create anything when faced with this obstacle. It's simply not worth the money, effort and energy required to "clear samples". What's more important to culture? Submission and conformity to assumed authority or diversity with a splash of colorful chaos?

Now, in this supposed era of enlightenment, you can't even sing a U2 song bastardization at your bank staff party without getting sued, even if it's lame and done just for fun. Universal sues Myspace for "illegal use of their property". For fuck's sake, do you think 100 million teenagers buzzing about your tracks is going to HURT your business? And don't even get me started on the shear pile of malignant idiocy that is Microsoft Zune. That whole thing is just an expensive leash you have to pay for yourself. In blood and brain cells.

It seems in the bigger scheme of things, the culture of music is alot further back than it ever was before - and I'm thinking back to medieval times here. Sharing music, creating music together, changing others works or building upon it, often without prior approval. It's always been an integral part of musicianship. A given, even. According to letter of the law today, you're not allowed to jam with other artists, playing old classics and record it for mum. And absolutely not it in the park where innocent bystanders might accidentally hear your seditious acts. Heaven forbid you'd cause some poor schmuck to crack a smile.

Something's not right here. Not at all.

Fair use is dead, music is "intellectual property" and Britney paid fat lawyers in cash to allow K-Fed fart "God save the queen" backwards while banging cymbals like a monkey. Money wins, artists, music consumers and aesthetics loses and the whole place stinks like an outhouse.

Please consider this when you buy music, and purchase from and by independent artists and labels who truly work in the interest of music and art whenever you can. RIAA Radar is an excellent service to find out if an album is independently and intellectually honestly released.

What song makes you rock the karaoke mic?
Submitted by Ann.

Philip Glass and Matmos. They rock it like nobody's business.

Mark Mothersbaugh, mostly famous for singing in Devo, is besides being a really cool painter and artist one of my very favorite composers. He has an awesome music production company in LA that goes by the name of Mutato Muzika, and they've scored some great stuff like The Royal Tenenbaums (and all other Wes Anderson's movies, in fact), Rugrats and most recently Scifi Channel's Eureka. He also composed songs for Pee-Wee's Playhouse.

Weird america recently interviewed him, and published this delightful video:

That pug is awesome.
Oh, and here's another, more composition-related interview.