3 Recent Books For Your Holiday Wish List

I have been doing quite a bit of reading lately. Here are three books that I highly recommend:

1. "Life" by Keith Richards and James Fox.

The autobiography of the Rolling Stones resident pirate and bad boy is indispensable reading for any rock and roll fan. He even answered my most burning question: "Did they really replace all of his blood?"

Google Books Link

2. "Al Jaffee's Mad Life" by Mary-Lou Weisman and Al Jaffee.

I grew up reading Mad magazine, and always admired the work of Al Jaffee, especially "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions" and the fold-ins. As it turns out, he has lived a very interesting life as well. The beauty of this book is the fact that he also illustrated it!

Google Books Link

3. "The Big Payback: The History of the Business of Hip-Hop" by Dan Charnas.

I'm currently only halfway through this book, but it's a great read. A truly comprehensive history of hip-hop, and highly recommended.

Google Books Link

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Prince Vs. the Internet

I have always been a Prince fan, and I have often found his eccentricity almost as interesting as his music. However, his latest pronouncement that "the internet's completely over" even has a diehard fan like me scratching my head. In an interview with The Mirror, he compares the internet to MTV, claiming that the web will become outdated just as the music channel did.

Even more odd, he is releasing his new album as a free CD for subscribers of the print edition of The Mirror. That's it - no iTunes, no CD's available in stores, and he has even shut down his website. In other words, if you don't happen to live in the UK or subscribe to The Mirror, he doesn't really want you to hear his new CD.

You can read the full interview at The Mirror.

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Metal Machine Music Revisited

The Quietus has an extremely entertaining and informative interview with Lou Reed regarding his noise masterpiece "Metal Machine Music." It's a must-read! (via New Music Reblog.)

The Quietus.com: Lou Reed Interview: Metal Machine Music Revisited

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"The Music Biz Could Cure Its Ills In One Week" According To Radiohead

Ed O'Brien of Radiohead had some amazing things to say at the Midem Conference. Check it out on the paidContent:UK website:

Radiohead: The Music Biz Could Cure Its Ills In One Week | paidContent:UK

(Via Well-Rounded Radio)

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10 Years That Changed Everything

As we near the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, we're seeing the typical year-end and decade-end lists that tend to make the rounds. As I think back on the last ten years, I see it as a time of major change for the music industry. Here is my list of some of the changes I have witnessed in the past ten years:

• Digital downloads surpassed CD sales
• Independent labels became major players
• Established artists like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails successfully opted to release their music independently, rather than sign a new record contract
• The ever-shrinking major labels lost their mojo, desperately clinging to outmoded ideas and suing children, the elderly, and dead people
• Numerous distribution avenues emerged, allowing independent artists to get their music directly to fans
• Social media emerged, allowing artists to interact directly with fans
• A new generation of music consumers emerged, ingrained with the belief that music should be free

I'm sure I could come up with many more examples, but we'll stop there. Feel free to post your additions and thoughts in the comments.

All of these changes have left musicians and music industry types wondering where we will be when the dust clears. How do we make a living? How do we "monetize" our product if the conventional means no longer work? In fact, what is our "product," if not our songs? Many have come to believe that the way forward is to think of the artist as the product or "brand."

Meanwhile, the major labels are floundering. Frankly, they have lasted longer than I would have anticipated. One lifeline for them has been the popularity of reality television. If you doubt that, just look at all the buzz around Susan Boyle with her recent album release.

At this point, it's anyone's guess what the future will hold. Judging by what has happened in the last ten years, though, I'm convinced it will still manage to take most of us by surprise!

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Amanda Palmer is Not Afraid to Take Your Money

Please read her blog post on this, and there is a link below to discuss it. However, I would also like to relate what happened to me this week. I was moving to another house in the Boston area, and we hired a moving company to help us. 3 of the 4 guys who showed up were musicians. Two are in "indie" bands that are currently active and fairly well-known (one of them recently performed on Conan and Jimmy Kimmel) and the other was in a band that was, until recently, on a major label. I'll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

blog « amanda palmer

Discussion on the blog post

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Live on the Web: Matthew Ebel

My Twitter friend and fellow Massachusetts resident Matthew Ebel has been performing a weekly live web concert for some time now, and has been quite successful with it. As further proof of this success, NPR recently did a piece on him, which is a must-read:

wbur.org » News » Live From The Basement: Geek Rock!

Conventional wisdom might tell us that an unsigned artist couldn't possibly garner an audience this way, much less make any money. Kudos to Matthew for proving the conventional wisdom to be wrong!

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Gerd Leonard: How Musicians can Thrive in the "Link Economy"

Berklee Today features an interesting interview with media futurist and Berklee grad Gerd Leonard. His comments are in line with what we have heard from several forward-thinking people, such as Trent Reznor (see his comments here.) I think his main point is that artists need to think in terms of their "brand" rather than their "product." Take, for instance, this quote:

"In the new music economy, you need to build an audience and energize them to act on your behalf and forward your music virally. Later, they can become paying customers. Don't ask them for their money first. Once fans are sold on you, you'll be able to 'upsell' them special shows, backstage passes, webcasts, a live concert download, a multimedia product, your iPhone application, a premium package for $75."

Read the full article here, and you might want to follow his blog as well.

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How I Learned To Beat The Music Industry

Subtitle: The Method Behind the Manifesto

I want to briefly explain some of the reasoning behind my previous post, "The Artist 2.0 Manifesto" (here it is, in case you missed it.)

After years of trying to "get signed," I made the decision to concentrate on teaching, while still writing and performing on the side. However, I never let go of the "musical dogma" I had developed over those years. That is, the ideas pertaining to the commercial potential of a song, sticking to a certain musical genre, creating an "image" etc. Even though I no longer had a burning desire to get signed, these thoughts still colored my thinking and perception.

Over the past 3 or 4 years, I have spent quite a bit of time researching emerging methods unsigned artist can use to disseminate and promote their music. My initial motivation was that of convincing my students that they don't need to "get signed" in order to have a successful career. I've learned a lot, which is nothing new to readers of my blog, so I won't bore you with the details.

I have also developed a theory, for which I have little or no hard data, only my own observations. I believe that most people are much more eclectic in their musical tastes than the "Music Industry" would have you believe. For example, most of the people I know, whether they are musicians or non-musicians, have a wide variety of musical styles in their ipods and iTunes music libraries. I have also noticed a number of independent artists recently who are incorporating numerous genres into their music. This is most prevalent with artists in the Creative Commons movement (Jamendo,) but I'm even seeing it on MySpace. I've also met many people who are not musicians, but enjoy listening to more "challenging" music.

I also believe that the success of Susan Boyle calls into question nearly everything the industry has asked us to believe regarding "image" over the last 30 years. If you doubt this, go to allmusic.com and look at some of the artists who were successful before 1981 (the year MTV went on the air.) Some of those folks were not very pretty, but they were amazingly talented. In fact, many of them continually evolved as artists as well, and one album often sounded completely different from another. In fact, you might find a wide musical variety on one album. All of those things are "no-no's" by today's major-label standards. Here's a good example: Van Morrison would probably not get signed today.

I think we have quite a bit of ground to cover before we find a working business model for musical artists, but I do believe the old rules no longer apply. It's time to let go of old dogma!

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Trent Reznor: Advice for Up and Coming Bands/Artists

If you ever get a chance, you should watch all 40 minutes of this interview. However, I feel this particular segment is very important to new and emerging artists!

Update: The video was supposed to stop when he began talking about his favorite gadgets, but apparently it does not. Feel free to watch the rest, but understand that there are 20 more minutes. Also, look for @recdmavn's name and (briefly) her face while Trent is talking about Topspin!

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20 Albums That Changed My Life, Part 3

This is a continuation of my series on 20 life-changing albums. If you missed the first two, here they are:

Part 1

Part 2

Now, on to the good stuff:

5) Subliminal Plastic Motives - Self

I discovered this record literally by accident. There was one hit that was being played on the then-fledgling alternative rock stations, the song "So Low." At the time, I liked the song because it sounded a bit like Nine Inch Nails. I came to realize later that Self (which, like Nine Inch Nails, was actually one person, Matt Mahaffey) was actually poking fun at the morose and depressing lyrics that were dominating alt rock at the time.
When I finally found the record, it was so much more than I had bargained for. Here was a true original, an artist who was able to effortlessly and effectively blend elements from a wide variety of musical genres into his own unique, quirky style. There are elements of grunge, hip-hop, jazz, and more, with a healthy dose of weird noises and samples. Bridges tend to consist either of blasts of noise and samples over music or a foray into an entirely different musical style, and there is not a guitar solo to be found. Above it all, Mahaffey's voice weaves catchy pop melodies. It seems like it wouldn't work, but it does. Here are some of the highlights:

• "Sophomore Jinx" - a humorous song about the curse of the sophomore album, blending hip-hop, grunge and powerpop, if you can believe that!
  
• "So Low" - What begins with industrial mayhem suddenly breaks into a Beatle-esque bridge, and pulls it off nicely.
  
• "Marathon Shirt" - What starts out sounding almost like a prog rock song with some Sting influences breaks suddenly into a cocktail lounge jazz bridge.
  
• "Big Important Nothing" - A song about the marriage of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley. The verses are sung over a Thelonious Monk-inspired piano loop with a loping shuffle beat, and the chorus is plucked right out of the vocal jazz stylebook. The song also has the trademark Mahaffey blast of noise in the instrumental bridge.
  

"Subliminal" sounds a bit dated now, mostly due to the guitar sounds as well as a few of the lyrical themes. Still, it's one of those rare records that I can listen to without skipping over songs. The next full-length Self album, "Breakfast With Girls," is arguably even better, taking the genre-bending even further with higher production values. The 3rd and final Self full-length was "Gizmodgery," made entirely with toy instruments.
It's obvious to me and most of his fans that Mahaffey is a musical genius, and it almost seems like his lack of commercial success is intentional. He enjoys subverting and/or overturning pop conventions, both lyrically and musically. He is still working actively as a producer, did a recent collaboration with Jeff Turzo of God Lives Underwater called "Wired All Wrong," and does a bit of soundtrack work as well. I don't think we have seen the last of him.

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20 Albums That Changed My Life, Part 2

Here is the next in my series of 20 life-changing albums. I have a lot to say about this one, so I'm limiting the post to one album:

4) The Downward Spiral - Nine Inch Nails
I could probably make a case for Trent Reznor's debut as Nine Inch Nails, "Pretty Hate Machine" (hereafter referred to as PHM.) To some extent, that was a life-changing one for me. However, in retrospect, I believe PHM and the followup EP "Broken" opened the doors for "The Downward Spiral."
I believe some context is in order. PHM came out in 1989, but I didn't become aware of it until a 1991 Spin magazine article about Trent Reznor, following his triumphant summer in the Lollapalooza tour. I wasn't the only one late to the game, either. The tour and the resulting press brought many new listeners to his debut album. This record was a revelation to me, a guitarist who loved the sound of a power chord, but also had a fascination with synthesizers that began with bands like Kraftwerk and Devo. Here was the best of both worlds for me. I'm not sure I even noticed at first that there were no guitar solos, which is surprising for me!

I was also struck by the dark tone of his lyrics. I had been criticized for many years for my dark, depressing lyrics, and I had finally found someone who was even more depressing!
When Broken came out in 1992, it was a completely different record. At first, I didn't like it, but it quickly grew on me. This was a guitar record, although there were still no guitar solos. The synths were there, but they were buried in a wall of distortion. I came to love this EP so much, I quit listening to PHM for a while. Lyrically, there was even more anger, spurred on by the problems he was experiencing with his record label.
After an agonizing two-year wait, "The Downward Spiral" arrived, and I probably purchased it on the very day it showed up in the stores. Here was the record I had been waiting for! I listened to the entire thing, from the brutal, sledgehammer opening of "Mr. Self Destruct" to the blast of distortion and feedback at the end of "Hurt." For the next several months, I listened over and over again, not just to individual songs, but the entire thing start to finish. This was that kind of record. You couldn't just listen to one song. I would hear "Closer" on the radio, and it just seemed weird that they didn't play "Ruiner," the next song on the album.
This was not just a collection of songs. It wasn't even a concept album or a rock opera, where the lyrics unified what was otherwise a collection of songs. This was almost like a symphony, which was probably why it appealed to me, an educated musician. Much like classical music, the album had extreme dynamic range. "March of the Pigs" is a great example of that, with a soft piano/vocal break in the middle, followed by silence, followed by a blast of noise. I know I was fooled by it the first time! There was also the recurring piano motive, heard most prominently at the end of "Closer," but heard several other times as well.
I was also struck by the production, and spent many hours listening with headphones, trying to pick out individual layers in the massive wall of sound that permeated the entire record. This album, more than any other, sparked a returned interest in the recording process for me. After being a recording major as an undergrad, I lost interest for a number of years. I had a home studio, but it was just there to facilitate the songwriting process for me. "Downward Spiral" reminded me that the studio is a musical instrument, capable of as much expression as any acoustic instrument! Here was a pop artist using the same "Musique Concrete" techniques I had learned when I studied electronic music in college.

As a Nine Inch Nails fan, this record combined the songcraft and production of PHM with the raw energy of Broken. To me, it was the perfect Nine Inch Nails record. There were synths and guitars aplenty, and he even brought Adrian Belew in to play a guitar solo! And the lyrics were more dark and depressing than ever.

"The Downward Spiral" was a turning point for me, both as a listener and as a musician. Of course, given the fact that Trent Reznor and I are close to the same age, and he was struggling with similar addiction issues as I was at the time, this is certainly no surprise. If I were to rank all my life-changing albums in order of importance, it would certainly be number one!

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20 Albums That Changed My Life, Part 1

One of my Facebook friends, who hosts a radio show here in Boston and is somewhat of a musicologist, tagged me recently with this note:

Think of 15 albums, CDs, LPs (if you're over 40) that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it. Royally affected you, kicked you in the wazu, literally socked you in the gut, is what I mean. Then when you finish, tag 15 others, including moi. Make sure you copy and paste this part so they know the drill. Get the idea now? Good. Tag, you're it! >:) ha-ha-ha-haaaaa.....

Another Facebook/Twitter friend then inspired me to turn it into a blog post. So I took my original list, already posted on Facebook, added some commentary and 5 additional albums. I also decided to do a few at a time. Otherwise, this was never going to see the light of day! These were never in any order of importance, as I consider each of them equally important.

1) Revolver - The Beatles
This was the very first Beatles record I bought, as a teenager, and it did, indeed, change my life. Over the years, I have probably listened to "Sgt. Pepper" more often, but "Revolver" had a profound impact on my early development as a musician. I must single out "Love You To" and "Tomorrow Never Knows" for setting me on the road toward an appreciation for musical experimentation and non-western sounds.

2) Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick
My first Cheap Trick album was "In Color," their second album, which is much more polished and squarely in the power-pop vein. Of course, I then bought their eponymous debut thinking it would be more of the same. It was not, and in fact, it blew my mind! This record is equal parts punk, hard rock, and power-pop, and there is even a ballad! Even though the production is less refined, the Cheap Trick songcraft is already fully-formed, and the lyrics display Rick Nielsen at his sardonic best!

3) Now - The Tubes
This is another example of a band who drew me in through their more commercial work, in this case "Completion Backward Principle." Once I discovered "Now," which is probably their least accessible and most eclectic effort ever, it opened a door musically to avenues I have continued to explore to this day. From their collaborations with Captain Beefheart ("My Head Is My Only House Unless It Rains") to the proto-New Wave of "Cathy's Clone" to their cover of band member Mingo Lewis' fusion classic "God-Bird-Change." This one has everything, which fits my weird eclectic musical tastes. However, the label suits probably had no idea what to do with it, and neither did radio!

At the time, the Tubes had 9 members, and almost all of them were contributing songwriters. Their more commercial efforts were helmed by producers who had a strong musical personality, specifically Al Kooper, David Foster, and Todd Rundgren. I think I love this album because it is an example of how the band sounded when they were given free rein!

More to come!

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Take NIN's Survey

If you bought or downloaded any of the recent Nine Inch Nails albums, you should go and take this survey: https://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=1049187. I think they are trying to determine the best way to release future albums, and I am very interested to see the results!

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Are The Slackers No Longer Slacking?

I just read this great piece in the LA Times Blog about how musicians from my generation have begun taking up political activism. Of course, traditionally, these causes would be taken up the youngest generation of musicians, but I think the irony here is that when we were the youngest generation of musicians, we didn't necessarily care that much about causes. That's probably one of the reasons we were called "slackers." As it turns out, however, there may be hope for those of us who are "past our prime." I think the original piece speaks even more eloquently to this:

Rage Against the Machine in Minnesota and the state of political pop | Soundboard | Los Angeles Times

Of course, Rage Against The Machine has always cared about causes, so they were the exception to this rule. In fact, when I saw Tom Morello on his solo acoustic tour a few months ago, I walked out of there convinced that he should run for office! In this video, which is also linked on the LA Times article, Rage performs several tunes a cappella when their performance is cut off at the "Ripple Effect Festival" in Minnesota protesting the RNC convention. I give you the video here, you know, in case you're too much of a slacker to read the article!

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Two "Rock Docs" You've Gotta See!

Over the summer, I saw several great documentaries recently released on DVD. You must rent or buy these asap - it's the punk thing to do!

"Joy Division (The Miriam Collection)" directed by Grant Gee. If you choose to watch the Ian Curtis biopic "Control" released by the same company, make sure you watch the documentary first! This great and short-lived post-punk band finally gets the historical treatment they deserve.

"The Future Is Unwritten - Joe Strummer" directed by Julien Temple, who previously directed the Sex Pistols documentary "The Filth And The Fury." I've always loved the Clash, but I never realized what an incredible person Joe Strummer really was. This documentary never pulls any punches, showing Strummer at his best and worst, but I admired him even more after watching it. Highly recommended!

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Artist 2.0

Over the past few years, there has been chatter about new media developments, for instance "Web 2.0," "Music 2.0," etc. I believe we are witnessing the emergence of a new type of artist, "Artist 2.0," who will cross traditional borders of media and incorporate old and new media in order to get his/her ideas across. Here are two recent examples:

1. Joss Whedon, during the writers strike, decided to produce an internet musical webseries (his brother actually coined the term "mushortio" to describe it) outside the traditional studio system. "Dr. Horrible's Singalong Blog" turned out to be such a huge success that it crashed their server during the first day of it's release. It was streamed free for one week, but offered for sale on iTunes as well, and it continues to be in the top ten TV seasons now, 3 weeks later. It is currently streaming ad-supported on Hulu.com, and will be released on DVD in a few months. The soundtrack will also be released soon, presumably on iTunes. Whedon and company spent no money on promotion for the series. Instead, they used MySpace and Facebook, obviously to great effect!
   
2. Trent Reznor is in talks with HBO for a television adaptation of "The Year Zero" (see my earlier post.) This will reportedly be accompanied by another album, as well as an Alternate Reality Game (they also did an ARG for the original record.)
   

Now, just in case you think I'm grasping at straws, I Googled "Artist 2.0" and found an NY Times article published more than a year ago where they used the term. I guess I can't get credit for coining the term...

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Zack is Back!

An interview with Zack de la Rocha in yesterday's L.A. Times Music Blog:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/soundboard/2008/08/these-days-the.html

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Trent Reznor Announces More "Year Zero" Plans

Trent Reznor is now in negotiations with HBO to present a two-season "maxiseries" based on "The Year Zero." I have a feeling we will be seeing more of artists crossing traditional media boundaries to get their ideas out there, especially as they begin to untether themselves from traditional media conglomerates. I'm definitely interested to see how this proceeds!

Link: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2008/08/trent-reznor.html

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Another Multitrack Audio Format - iKlax

Somebody commented on my earlier post, so I checked it out, and it looks interesting. iKlax is a music-based social network which allows artists to offer their music in a multitrack format, and listeners can do their own remixes. Interesting concept, and it's free to join:

iKlaxmusic.com - HOME - Download multitrack and interactive music

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