While browsing the web today in search of content for the blog, I discovered one news worthy story that lead me to encounter another. Both are intimately related even though they describe two businesses that pertain to two very different musical realms.

Story number one:

“Classical music’s most advanced response to the digital revolution”

We all know the recording industry has been going down hill, and its classical music divisions are probably first in-line in the downfall. Classical music has been suffering for many years now for a number of reasons that tend to make me ask myself how it survived up until now, two of which are as follows: orchestras costs a fortune to maintain, and the number of classical music aficionados are most likely decreasing as time goes by.

In response to its potentially grim future, the Berlin Philharmonic Ochestra has partnered with the Deutsch Bank to create the first ever online classical music listening experience. They want to revitalize the classical business by bringing concerts directly into people’s homes through a paying-streaming model. They call it the Digital Concert Hall.

The Berliner Philharmonie (Berlin’s orchestra primary concert hall) is now equipped with high definition cameras, and an audio recording infrastructure that enables the performances to be captured in the highest quality possible in order to be streamed by anyone with the appropriate Internet connection bandwidth. 30 concerts per season will be broadcast to those who wish to pay to see them.

The model is innovative but ambitious as live classical music performances tend to represent to ultimate listening experience in terms of quality of musicianship, sound, dynamic range etc. Although through a streamed representation musicianship is conserved and probably improved due to the different camera angles, sound quality and dynamic range will ultimately be impoverished due to data compression. I don’t know if the delicate comprise will lead people to adhere to this new model, but it’s remains a great idea that is totally worth trying out.

Story number two:

When I read about this new venture I immediately recalled a similar project that I blogged about once or twice many months ago: FabChannel.

FabChannel had the exact same idea but for pop/rock upcoming acts in a well known Amsterdam venue, The Paradisio, and at the Roxy Theater in Los Angeles. They captured hundreds of excellent artists (Xavier Rudd, DJ Shadow, Feist, Amy McDonald, Method Man, Kate Nash, Roni Size, Sigur Rós to name a few) in high-definition video and audio, and set-up the videos on their website for people to watch. With more than 700 live concerts, festivals, performances, debates and lectures, Fabchannel.com built a substantial concert video archive.

As you might have noticed, I am using the past tense to describe FabChannel for the simple reason that to my grand demise the company put a halt to its activities in march. After reading about Berlin’s Philharmonic project, I stopped by FabChannel’s home page only to be greeted by a long heartfelt text written by its former founder and CEO, Justin Kniest, entitled The Reasons Why We Stopped. Justin’s justifications is a great read, highlighting both the recording industry’s lack of entrepreneurship and the public’s attitude towards free streaming services as two of the main reasons behind FabChannel’s death.

The company had garnered the interest of sponsors and investors. In November 2007, the city of Amsterdam and Foreman Capital each took a 25% share in Fabchannel. The city of Amsterdam paid 1.25 million euros for the share. Universal Netherlands also contracted a deal with the concert hosting site in February, 2008 to webcast the shows and perceive revenue via ads. Despite this deal, the business model underlying Fabchannel proved difficult to maintain, with no clear source of direct revenue from the end users (viewers), and with copyright holders (artists and/or record labels) being reluctant to allow premium value content to be streamed for free. Moreover, notwithstanding tight security measures, Fabchannel content got pirated on places like Youtube and Peer-to-Peer filesharing networks (wikipedia).

Read The Reasons Why We Stopped at www.fabchannel.com.

Impressions on both these stories:

Since the Berlin Philharmonic/Deutsch Bank project is new and has yet to prove its worth, I cannot fully compare it to Fabchannel, but I find it a tad ironic that a project such as Fabchannel, who’s niche market is much broader than Berlin’s Philharmonic’s, and who’s execution seemed flawless (9 years in activity, an archive of over 700 concerts, beautifully well captured shows of renowned and respected artist, some of which became massively famous over the years etc) did not succeed at creating a sustainable business model.

Ad revenue didn’t prove to be enough for Fabchannel. Maybe they should of opted for a subscription model like Berlin’s Philharmonic. Or is it just the demographic of each business that makes the difference?

What are your thoughts?

“He who rejects change is the architect of decay”.
Harold Wilson

Ever heard of Joel Tenenbaum? Well I hadn’t really paid any attention to that name until today, and more precisely until I read this article from The Guardian – “How it feels to be sued for $4.5m“. I have always known thousands in the states had been sued for absurd sums for sharing music, everyone’s aware of the RIAA’s sissy-fits, but to read such a testimonial set me aback some. Do read it: it was written by Joel himself, and weather you’re with him or against him, it won’t leave you indifferent to his cause.

I don’t want to go into the details of his story because  it is all written marvelously well in that article. What I’ll say is this: Joel is one of the tens of thousands of people who have got their lives crushed just for sharing music. Joel is not the compulsive file-sharer type who detains tera bytes upon tera bytes of music storages on dozens of 7200 rpm, RAID intertwined hard-drives, he’s just one in 50 million file-sharers who unluckily won the RIAA lottery. His battle started off small, just in for a couple of thousand of dollars. Now he is in for millions because he fought back.

He finally made it to the trial which started yesterday (most people cave in before reaching that point). Joel’s story struck a chord in many music lovers’ hearts, and he is now backed-up by thousands from all over the world. He has got his proper “Joel Fights Back” twitter account (@joelfightsback), twitter feed (#jfb) and website.

The Guardian’s article holds ten pages full of comments, but the very first one made my day. It was written by a nut who hammers Joel by invoking the “you just shouldn’t steal from people more creative than you. You deserve what’s coming at you” speech. I can take a step back like any other and realize there are laws for a reason, that these laws must be reinforced to maintain order. I am not defending Joel 100% just because it’s easy and comforting to be on the martyr’s side, engaging resistance against corporate fat cats, I’m on Joel’s side because if we succumb to absurdity, we are headed straight for a brick wall, the likes of which mankind has a tendency to bang its head against over and over again.

For such trials to be enacted in this day and age is absurd for the simple reason that there is no balance whatsoever between technological advancements and copyright law anymore. The later has, since its most primitive founding, been intimately linked to the former. They both go hand in hand, and when one changes, the other follows briefly after. The recording industry caved in on many accounts in the past because of ever-evolving music distribution mediums, yet now, the RIAA still won’t accept the change p2p brought to their consumers’ consumption habits. And why are they so aggressive? Because of scalability. Never have the paper-rolls, the radio, the cassette-tapes and so on scaled such a gap between consumers and content owners. So members of the RIAA have litterally been shittin’ their pants these two past decades. Their solution: to frantically sue customers at random for completely absurd sums of money for no reason other than fathering fear and making up for decreasing profits.  I would like to repeat myself here: it is only to engender fear and make money that the RIAA is suing. There is no long-tail humanitarian purpose here, there is no will whatsoever to educate the masses, there is no greater master-plan behind all this grief - just fear and money.

We don’t burn people on stakes anymore just because they refuse to believe in the virgin Mary. Same should apply to file sharing and music in 2009. But apparently, that is still far from being the case.

Accepting change is the key to healthy evolution. The first step would be for major labels to admit their wrongs in terms of serving musical garbage to us all these past 10 years. Economic instability, growing gaming industry, DVDs and Internet- related-entertainment didn’t help them one bit in getting back that entrepreneurial spirit they lost so long ago. Add to that p2p networks, and it all seems so logical that the RIAA affiliates are going down the drain, taking 15% decreasing market blows every year or so.

That is just the ways things have changed, and those who go against what has changed, although it is completely beyond their power to do anything about that change, are fools, plain and simple.

Good Luck Joel. You have my total support.

Mruff

Pride in new rock and roll seems to have sunk somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, why else would we care so little about discovering our own great bands? For years I have been discovering the best new North American bands in British magazines and it doesn’t seem right or logical. This isn’t a slight at North American music fans but rather at our music industry consisting of magazine, TV, radio, and record labels who consistently wait for NME, Q, Uncut, and various other British magazines to tell them who our best new bands are. When was the last time you saw a new American band on the cover of Rolling Stone or Spin before they have been on the cover of NME? Actually, when was the last time you saw a decent new American band on the cover of RS at all (I am purposely forgetting Fall Out Boy and Panic At the Disco! being on the cover of RS last year because I don’t want to bring back painful memories)? The culture of discovery in North American music has dwindled because of a lack of support in the industry.

What I am getting at is that North America is sorely missing a major music magazine, radio station, or label that takes pride in discovering new rock and roll bands. There are countless small and independent magazines around that do a fine job of promoting new bands but they don’t reach a large audience the way NME does on the other side of the pond. Every month NME is putting bands on its cover that haven’t even released a full album yet but have a devoted and enthusiastic following. Sure the British music press has an old habit of building up new bands just to tear them down the minute they realize they aren’t going to being on the walls of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in thirty years (think Razorlight) but at least they are attempting to find the next Oasis themselves and aren’t waiting for Sony to tell them who it is. However, whether it’s acting, music, painting or any other form of art, for every diamond that is discovered there are a thousand chunks of coal that are discovered, looked at, and thrown away. Nonetheless, if no one is willing to show you the coal then you will never find the diamond.

Just look at the popularity of some the best American bands in Britain compared to in their home country. Kings of Leon have sold out an arena tour of Britain in a matter of hours but are playing the Kool Haus when they are in Toronto. Their album came out last month and is still in the top forty over there but has long been off the Billboard charts here. The same can be said of the White Stripes, BRMC, The Strokes, MGMT, and Arcade Fire who have reached a level of stardom in Britain that eludes them in their own countries largely because of a lack of mainstream support, whether in magazines, on the radio, or on TV. This is not to say that they aren’t popular here, surely the White Stripes and The Strokes have had a few hits here and are considered popular acts but the level of respect granted to them is not comparable. As well, with all of these bands, they made it big on the other side of the ocean before anyone in the American press gave them any notice and only did so after they sold out tours of England.

This is a shame and can be blamed on a number of aspects from the death of independent DJs who are now given the playlist they must put on the air to the music editor who is told what act to put on the cover because they will sell the most issues. There is no room for innovation and discovery because every dud that makes it on the cover cost some corporation money. Recorded music has always been a commodity but for awhile, namely the sixties and early seventies, the true music lovers within the machine were able to fight back enough to make the good bands also the popular bands. What happened to RS being the place you would go to discover the next big thing? Now you have to already be the big thing before you can get in an issue. Yes, they will occasionally have a piece on “bands to watch” but that is far from being in every issue. NME, on the other hand, only require that your band has created a stir in some bar in some part of the country before they put your name on their pages. They clearly take pride in discovering new bands, including our new bands, so that when these bands make it in North America the British fans and writers can stick their nose up and say “we’ve had them for years already”.

I suppose this can’t all be blamed on the laziness and greediness of publishers and editors, since part of it can be chalked up to geography. If a great band in Vancouver or LA is creating a scene, they can’t very well pick up and go play a show in Toronto or New York overnight. In England where you have a population greater than Canada’s stuffed inside a space the size of Ontario, thus creating a cauldron of creativity, it makes it easier for a band to make a name for itself and be discovered. The sheer density of the English population makes it easier for bands to become popular through word of mouth but websites such as Myspace are breaking down these barriers. However, this doesn`t explain why those in the North American music industry lack the zeal for discovery that their British counterparts seen to have, maybe the corporations’ shadow is blocking the light. Also, the lack of a national radio station that plays home-grown rock and roll is nonexistent in America unlike Britain where there is BBC Radio 2 as well as TV shows such as Later with Jools Holland that are geared toward the alt rock crowd. Both of these were essential to the success of bands like Oasis and The Libertines and no such support system exist for new bands here. American bands only get on the TV and on mainstream radio once they have already proven they can sell records and tickets which creates a catch 22.

The fans aren’t blameless either though. The producers of Radio 2 and Later with Jools Holland did not keep these programs on the air because of an altruistic love of alternative music, they kept them on the air because people watched, listened, and made them money. If there is one thing the American entertainment industry takes pride in it is making money and they will air a program consisting of people playing the guitar with a carrot if people watch.

If you have been following me, the point I have tried to make is that there seems to be a lack of pride in the discovery of new bands in North America. Sure there are fans who love finding new bands, I wouldn’t be writing this if there wasn`t, as well as people within the industry with the same passion, but the numbers are too few and the support too weak. We need major magazines, radio stations, TV programs, and record labels that are willing to take chances with new bands in order find the ones that will line the walls in Cleveland in thirty years’ time.

I was reading a column by Allan Cross the other day where he made the argument that rock and roll is usually at its best when Republicans are in power in Washington.  The argument goes that rock and roll is rebel music so therefore it is usually best when it has an authority to rebel against.  There were great music scenes in America and around the world during the Nixon, Regan, and Bush Sr. administrations and a relatively low influx of decent rock and roll during the Carter and Clinton administrations.  This got me thinking of another correlation in rock and roll, that between music scenes and the drugs that dominate them.  However, in this case it is less clear which came first.

Let’s start in the 1960s, when the relationship between drugs and music left the jazz clubs and entered the mainstream.  The communal feelings of sixties music was very evident in their music and in their choice of drugs.  Marijuana, magic mushrooms, and LSD became increasingly popular.  All three of these drugs lend themselves to communal setting where people are keen to see music as a revolutionizing force that could bring people together.  These are not inherently selfish drugs and that is seen in the music. Rock and roll by bands such as Dylan, The Beatles, The Greatful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Crosby, Stills and Nash promoted a people’s revolution and new era of community living. The music was about “we” and not “me”.

However, as the communitarians gave way to the hedonist, the drugs likewise became more hedonistic.  Band such as Led Zeppelin and The Eagles brought hedonism to a new level with their stadium concerts, private jumbo jets, and endless groupies. During this time, marijuana and LSD gave way to cocaine, a very euphoric but isolating drug.  The desired affect becomes less about a communal experience and more about instant gratification for the individual.  As such, the popular music of the era stopped talking of a people’s revolution and became about have a good time in the here and now.   When you are on cocaine, it becomes hard to think of revolution when you are so preoccupied with the magnificence of your fur coat.

In the late 1970s, as stadium rock became too overindulgent and punk music rose from the ghettoes of New York and London.  Punk was a much more drug free scene than its predecessors and it was evident in the music.  As the people in the scene came back down to Earth, punk brought music back to basics.  The jumbo jets and fifteen minute drum solos were gone and two minute, three chord songs were emerging.  Of course, this didn’t last.  Singing about the reality of being poor (another reason for the lack of drugs, who could afford them?) could only last for so long before people wanted an escape.  This brings us to the 1980s.

In the 80s, music became mind-numbingly selfish.  With hair-metal, the airwaves were dominated by music that focused on womanizing and partying and unsurprisingly cocaine made a comeback.  Like the mid-seventies, the 1980s needed a drug to match, a drug that gave people a self-congratulatory feeling such as cocaine and speed.  This can also be seen in the Madchester scene of the late 80s lead by bands such as The Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays.

Madchester was scene that evolved in Manchester England and which created a fusion between rave culture and rock and roll.  Like all music scenes before, it embraced a drug that could bring the desired effect, that drug was Ecstasy.  Ecstasy created the communal yet surreal feeling needed to create a good rave.  Bands such as The Stone Roses mixed rock, funk, dance, and number of other influences to create a truly original sound that couldn’t be fully understood without the right setting and the right mindset.

A little later in the early 1990s, Grunge was making headway in America with its depressing sound and lyrics.  You can’t really write a song like Nirvana’s Dumb when you are on cocaine and think everything is bloody fantastic.  Grunge music was matched with the equally depressing drug Heroin.  While Heroin may be euphoric at first, that feeling quickly gives way to a major comedown and addiction which can be seen in the music of many early 1990s American bands such as Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, and Blind Melon.

This pattern of music scenes reflecting their drug of choice has continued since Grunge, whether it’s Britpop (cocaine) or American bubblegum pop (pills).  However, unlike Allan Cross’ perceived cause and effect correlation between politics and rock and roll, the cause and effect correlation between drugs and music is less obvious.  It is like the age old question of the chicken and the egg, except in this case it is what came first, the Ecstasy or the rave?

Well it’s done, Trent Reznor just deleted his Twitter account. He was one of the first to be harassed by puny users and other Twitterazzi types, and one of the first to leave ship.

From Rolling Stone: “When Twitter made it’s way to my radar I looked at it as a curiosity, then started experimenting. I thought it through and in light of where I was / am in my career I decided to lower the curtain a bit and let you see more of my personality,” Reznor said. “I watched some of you get more engaged because you started to realize there’s a person (flaws and all) back there, and I watched some of you recoil in horror because I’m not what you projected on me”.

I find this quite interesting. The other day I left some comment on Hypebot’s “Amanda ‘Fucking’ Palmer (Part 1) interview” (which is a must-read by the way). One commentator commented upon the fact that a seemingly indestructible platform such as Twitter clearly has a life expectancy. His arguments, some straightforward and simple deductions that go along the lines of “Twitter is new and fun for now, but the narcissistic social game it engages its community in will eventually get old”, got me thinking about the real impact Twitter has on most people, and if that “social game” is really worth the time spent perfecting the skills required to a “must-follow” type of user. And now there’s Mr. NIN, one of the most influential and “must-follow” accounts, that decides to bail. Although I believe he did so for personal reasons other than “Twitter is boring me”, Trent is also saying “Twitter ain’t for me, at least not anymore”. I think many will come to that realization at one point or another. Not every massively popular service is for everybody, and the more some play the game of opening-up-to-the-world, the more they might realize they just don’t like opening-up to the world.

All in all, Twitter can be seen as a sort of gratification game, or tool. I share my insights, my news, all the while shedding some light on my personality, and when I get that RT or that mention, I feel as if I made some impact, as if my presence on the Twittersphere ain’t useless and that some people out there appreciate it. And by Jove how it feels good to achieve that sense of accomplishment in this absurd world (even if it’s only due to words and not actions). Add to that the fact that Twitter is a powerful networking tool, and for me the game is still fun and exciting, as it is for an increasing number of people.

It seems to me that all the social-media success stories are due to specific traits of character. In that Amanda Palmer interview cited above, one particular sentence struck me as being very revealing: “I simply feel blessed that I’m an emotional exhibitionist right around the time is seems to be expected and en vogue.” Not everyone is like Amanda Fucking Palmer, or Trent, or others, weather they be exuberant social figures or more of the discreet kind.

I also want to quote what that commentator (know as “Old Recod Guy”) said on the interview: “Music, and art in general, is cyclical. Right now, most artists have to engage, have to get close to their fans. This is a new sensation for both sides, especially when it comes to bigger acts, for whom a one-to-one dialogue was never really practical. So fans and artists are learning where the boundaries are, what works and what doesn’t, and what the tolerance levels are on both sides.

BUT…..

Sometime in the future, people will get tired of this. They’ll become used to the interaction, the access, they’ll realize that not every artist has something interesting to say, they’ll suck all the ideas and news and gossip and photos and free downloads out of the trough until they want to puke. And that’s when some artist, or movement, will bring back that sense of mystery, that unattainability, and they’ll be huge. They’ll use the new tools to accomplish the task, but they won’t be Tweeting during their colon cleanse. They’ll rebel against the banal status quo, and legions of fans who are sick of it it too will follow them.

And that’s what’s great about art. The new burns down the old to be burnt down by the new, until we fondly remember the old and burn down the new.”

Since I feel incapable of finding a proper conclusion to this post, I will simply ask what you all think about this. Is Twitter popular for the simple reason that we live in a time where gratification and validation are important? Is Twitter working for music just because the former industry model is crumbling, and that Twitter’s direct-to-fan model appeared around the corner at the right time? Is indirect messaging a la Twitter truly to the new communication medium, or is it just a craze?

Woof!

Where has the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll gone? This is something I often asked myself in high school as I started discovering the brilliance of Bob Dylan, CSNY, John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, and countless other classic artists whose music contained a message and a political consciousness.

As I began to expand my musical interest, I realized that music was never going to be the center of a youth movement in the same manner it was in the 1960s. There are simply too many genres for kids today to choose from. Revolution was drowned out by a thousand different messages bombarding youth. It was easy to have a unifying message forty years ago. You essentially had three genres dominating the music world: rock and roll, folk, and blues. And they all had related messages of peace, love, and tolerance.

Personally, I blame disco. The coke-fuelled overindulgence of the disco scene was about selfishness, not brotherhood. Its music was mindless escapism. But this was only the beginning. From this point on, music became more diverse, lacking a focused message. There is a musical genre for every feeling you may have. Feeling angry? Listen to punk, heavy mental or gangster rap. Feel like partying? Listen to disco, pop, dance, hip hop, funk, or electronic. Feel like protesting? Listen to umm…… I’m not so sure anymore.

Yes, a few bands out there who get political on occasion. Think of Bruce Springsteen, REM, Bright Eyes, and most obviously, Rage Against the Machine. There are others, of course. But the point is that rock and roll is no longer a unifying force that politically conscious teens and twenty-somethings can rally behind.

What about U2, you ask. Clearly, U2 is an incredibly popular band – possibly the most popular band – but Bono has climbed so high on his pedestal you have to squint to see him. You have to give him credit for achieving more in the name of progressive politics and human rights than any of his predecessors in the music world. Still, most youth have hard time identifying with him because the level of esteem he now carries.

We are missing a new, young band or artist who professes a desire to make the world better and who can connect with young listeners on a large scale. And even if we were to find a new Dylan, would he or she have real impact? I am not too confident. As great and inspiring as Dylan was, he was a product of the times and came out at possibly the most opportune moment in music history for an artist of his style and message. In the early and mid 1960s while Dylan was earning the moniker “voice of a generation”, there was an incredibly unpopular war waging in Vietnam. A generation was coming of age that had never dealt with the consequences of all-out war the way their parents did. Television sets glowed in every living room with the realities of war, poverty, and racial segregation.

Possibly most importantly, the target generation in America was subject to military draft. Nostalgia can be a funny thing. It makes people gloss over the facts of earlier times. I am continuously amazed at the lack of importance given to the military draft and the role it played in instigating the youth movement of the sixties. It does not take much to forget that all the protests, sit-ins, die-ins, etc. that appear so altruistic when seen as brief black-and-white news clips actually had a very self-interested motivation behind them. There is something about the real possibility of dying pointlessly in a foreign land that motivates young people to take to the streets. Had there not been a draft that threatened to send an entire generation of young Americans off to their deaths, I am willing to bet that the 1960s would not be the blueprint for political consciousness it has become.

Over the span of years that mark the current war in Iraq, there are have been protests against the war, yet no one claims that the anti-war movement is currently as strong as it was in 1968. Sit in on any university political science class as they discuss the war and the public’s reaction to it and you will hear countless students lamenting the lack of action taken by their peers. Surprisingly, few of these passionate and frustrated students will provide a more thorough explanation as why this is the case other than to say that “young people just don’t care anymore”.
I think young people DO care about ending the war; they just don’t care as much. Students today would like to see the war end but they have people to see and Facebook pages to update and in when it come down to it, they are not the ones going to war. When seen in this light, it is easy to understand why anti-war protests don’t draw the numbers they did in the 1960s. This brings me back to the original point, the music.

The political music of the 1960s did not create a climate ripe for protests, the protests created a climate ripe for political music. Songwriters often write about what they see, and in the 1960s they were seeing upheaval and political activism. Dylan did not write The Times they Are A-Changin’ and wake up the next day to find that indeed something was a-changin’. He wrote the song because he saw and sensed that things were changing. Youth didn’t take to the street of Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention because Graham Nash wrote the song Chicago. Nash wrote the song because the kids were in the streets.

So what does the lack of politically conscious music mean for today’s music lovers? It is a symptom of our times? Properly read, the symptom tells us we aren’t likely to be sent to war anytime soon and in the meantime, we have a lot of options in what we listen to.

So maybe the lack of political songs is a good thing. After all, if tomorrow I turn on the radio to hear Avril Lavigne singing “tin soldiers and Harper coming…”, I may start forwarding my mail to Khandahar. Well, I would do that as soon as I stop laughing at the thought of Avril Lavigne getting political.

There has been a lot of talk on the blog sphere lately about how bands are, or should, or could be making a living. Since Kevin Kelly posted his ‘1000 True Fans’ article on march 4th, and Nine Inch Nails has so ingenuously released his last project ‘Ghost I-IV’ also around that time (oh, and he just put a new free song for grabs, there’s no stopin this guy), artists have been going bonkers asking themselves how to re-actualize their ‘business models’. Although it’s quite obvious not every band can expect financial success using methods like NIN has, we should all take into consideration that such methods bare their fruits nowadays thanks to the distribution outlets internet provides. Your fans will be the first to appreciate the gesture. But bands must also capitalize on communication. Not the kind that brings you one timer friends only serving to show off how popular you are, but the kind where a real interaction takes place. The 1000 true fans is a powerful concept that struck a nerve due to the simplicity of it’s logic. Basically it goes a little something like this: if you can manage to get 1000 fans spend at least one days wage per year on your music you can make a decent living without living under the poverty threshold or without reaching the summits of stardom. Kelly explains that 1000 is just an arbitrary number of course, all depends on the many aspects of your status and ambitions as an artist. The main point being that spending time everyday consolidating a real relationship with your fans can and will pay off in the mid-long term. I encourage you to read it with attention, as well as the comments that follow. Although I consider there to be many flaws in the 1000 True Fan theory, it most certainly gets you thinking about the importance of developping such relationships. It also got me thinking about the eternal question, or rather the eternal dilemma of how to perceive and use art as a strategy to market and increase business as opposed to just writing music for tha purpose of creating art. But that’s a whole other debate altogether.

Woof !

A film on the Kinks’ reunion on its way and now this, 2009 is going to be an exciting year for rock documentaries. Sony Picture Classics is going to release a motion picture that pays tribute to the electric guitar and chose three iconic rock heroes as its ambassadors: Jack White, The Edge and Jimmy Page. Actually, Sony didn’t have anything to do with the concept. They just acquired the film from Thomas Tull, CEO of Legendary Film, and are probably gonna get all the credit. Directed by Oscar-winning director Davis Guggenheim (dude who directed An Inconvenient Truth, that documentary on global warming presented by Al Gore), the rockumentary received great acclaim as it premiered at Toronto’s International Film Festival last September. It Might Get Loud, to be released next summer by the way, ‘isn’t like any other rock’n roll documentary. Filmed through the eyes of three virtuosos from three different generations, audiences get up close and personal, discovering how a furniture upholsterer from Detroit, a studio musician and painter from London and a seventeen-year-old Dublin schoolboy, each used the electric guitar to develop their unique sound and rise to the pantheon of superstar. Rare discussions are provoked as we travel with Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White to influential locations of their pasts‘.

We will even get to see them jamming together. Yay! (unfortunately not in the video below)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QioaoEDwOjw&feature=related]

The choice of the three legends is interesting as their musical backgrounds were put to contribution during very different rock eras. Jimmy incarnates the highlights of the sixties and the seventies classic rock period, Dave Evans (The Edge) embodies the textural (over-reverbarized) guitar sounds of the 80s and 90s pop-rock scene, and Jack White, well Jack is the byproduct of the counter culture surrounding contemporary pop-rock.

The choice of the trio is interesting, but intriguing.  Jimmy Page is like a freakin’ crazy genius of a guitar player (I really can’t describe him otherwise if I don’t want to start a novel on his contribution to music) and he set a whole new playing field with his works in Led Zepplin. Heck, even with the YardBirds.

I can’t possibly put Jack White in the same category of genius, be he certainly is one. With the White Stripes he relaunched the classic rock scene and re-opened the portal to one of the greatest rock genres ever. So many bands have gone back to those raw sounds, raw riffs, raw power and energy blasting out of raw tube amps. Just to name a few I’m thinking of Wolfmother, The Black Keys, 16 Horsepower, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, The Raconteurs (also one of White’s projects. Saw them live in Montreal. Incredible show).

Different eras produce different types of prodigies. Back in the old days all musicians were technically better, were monsters of theory, had backgrounds in all sorts of genres and played countless hours a day. Think of all those progressive rock bands the music industry proudly promoted at the time: Yes, King Crimson, Genisis, Deep Purple, Led Zepplin, Soft Machine, Jethro Tull, Gentle Giant, Caravan, Van Der Graaf Generator, Emerson, Lake and Palmer… Man, I could go on and on. All those bands were musical behemoths, and not only on a technical level. Anyways, to put money in such musical genres nowadays is totally out of the question, and a consequence of that is less appeal to virtuoso musicianship.

That’s just the ways things were back then. And besides, technological constraints musicians had to cope with (well at the time to record on a two or a four track seemed like rocket science, so they didn’t feel it as constraints) while recording obliged them to be good. By our current standards, they were robot-good.  Now it’s all about having more than 100 tracks, over dubbing every syllable on the vocal tracks, auto-tuning those vocals, recording guitars in hundreds of takes, remodeling their sounds in post-production, chip and chopping every single element on a damn drum set and gluing them to the grid with sophisticated time-stretchin’-audio chompin’-sample replacin’ tools. And that’s just the visible portion of the iceberg.

Anyways, Jack White is certainly not like that – this seventies-rock revival also embraces live takes in the studio- and his technical skills are very impressive. He and Jimmy are both massive icons of the guitars and represent a symbolic and powerful evolution of two similar genres separated by 35 years.

Now The Edge on the other hand…yea sure he’s good, U2 wrote incredibly catchy beautiful tunes, they are probably the most iconic band in the world right now, but still don’t really get why he got involved. They could’ve chosen so many other guitarists that had a much greater impact on the evolution of the electric guitar than The Edge during the eighties and nineties. Just to name a few Van Halen, Steve Vai, Angus Young, Slash, Pete Townsend, Brian May, George Clinton, Jeff Beck…

Bah, it’s still going to be a great documentary and I can’t wait to see it.

Kaguya is a Japanese Satellite that has been orbiting the Moon for over two years. With its 14 built-in sensors, Kaguya is analyzing the Moon’s surface from many different angles. Using data from one of those sensors, the “and space” Moonbell project team is using a laser altimeter to transform the altitude data into musical intervals. Moonbell is a web-based interface that lets us “listen to the topography” of the moon by choosing an orbit and playing around with a few parameters. The system generates very soothing music. Check it out at http://wms.selene.jaxa.jp/selene_sok/index_en.html.

Ben Walker has done it again. By “it” I mean find some creative and innovative music-related challenge to add to his ongoing creative and innovative list of music-related challenges. His latest finding is to compose 50 tunes for 50 tweets in 90 days, idea he got from the 50 songs in 90 days challenge he participated in last year. Ben calls his music-twitterthon Tweet Suite, and has created a dedicated website to go with it. Check it out at http://tweetsuite.ihatemornings.com.

The concept is quite simple really: Ben chooses tweets he likes and composes a theme for them. Anyone can send him tweets via Delicious by tagging them 5090tweetsuite and via twitter @ihatemornings.

I’m quite surprised by the quality of the orchestrations of most of his music-tweets, as well as the quality of the tweets themselves. Very nice work.

Woof.