TMWQ - The Man Without Qualities

SLAM

2010-02-25T16:52:09Z

On Tuesday, like several thousand others, I attended the SLAM rally at Parliament House. I finished work too late to make it to the fun bit, but got to hear most of the speakers, and I'm glad I made it down.

As a musician in a couple of small independent bands, the closure of small-capacity venues would likely have an adverse affect of the number of gigs I could play in any given year. I haven't played many gigs in Melbourne recently however, so, unlike the closure of the Hopetoun in Sydney, I haven't lost any gigs because of the changes so far. On Tuesday we heard stories from those people who have already lost gigs, as well as stories from more famous musicians who have largely outgrown the sort of venues most likely to be affected, but still feel passionately about the importance of such places. However, while the fear of losing gigs was no doubt an important part of Tuesday’s rally, there were many other ideas people touched on.

People are fond of saying that laws that affect the cultural life of a community affect everyone in that community, and I'm not denying that. However, there are certainly many people in Melbourne who won't notice any changes to their lives due to these laws. Amongst the people who will likely be affected, there are two distinct groups: those who’ll be affected because of a loss of income or performance space; and those who’ll be affected by losing a place to attend as an audience member (though obviously many people do both).

It's easy to see that musicians and venue owners have a very strong interest in fighting these changes. Venue owners that are forced to pay for security guards at gigs attracting fewer than 50 people to the bar are going to find it hard to break even, and when you consider the financial burden on them - through the cost of P.A. equipment, sound techs, booking agents, etc. - it's hard to see why anyone would bother having bands play anywhere. Small venues are often run on very small profit margins, so the cost of two additional staff members each night is easily enough to tip them into running at an unsustainable loss. In this situation, venue owners have limited options: they can stop having live music, which would remove some of the security requirements; they can try to become a venue that books bigger-ticket bands that will draw bigger crowds and generate better income; they can close before 1 am; or they can close completely. In many cases, the last option is the only reasonable one. If you think of the Tote, the amount of money that it would take to convert the band room into a useable space to fill with enough drinkers to justify the rent would likely be prohibitive. Not to mention that a lot of the venue owners are more interested in running a music venue than a bar. It makes sense that people in their position should vigorously challenge the new laws, as their business' survival is at stake.

Musicians, too, will suffer if they lose places to play. Mid-to-large-sized venues are great if you can fill them, and are where bands need to play if they want to profit in any sense, but gigs at small venues are crucial, particularly for newer bands and local acts wanting to play more than once every few months. Bars like the Tote, the Birmingham and the Empress - among others - are famous for their month-long residencies, which many bands use to build sizeable audiences. The number of Melbourne bands you hear of getting popular after a building a fan base through a residency is surprisingly large, and it's a format that bigger venues simply can't offer. Also, if you're a new band, you simply won't be given a gig at a mid-sized venue, unless you're lucky enough to get put on as an opener for a more popular band. All of this mainly speaks to bands who play in the mainstream of rock and its relatives. If you're a jazz musician, smaller venues are even more important, because it's much less likely that you'll become popular enough to ever draw crowds large enough to warrant bigger clubs. On the other hand, most jazz clubs aren't likely to be affected by these laws, as they tend to not have liquor licenses that go past 1 am, (though saxophonist Andy Sugg pointed out at the rally, his residency at the Cape Live on Brunswick St. - which has gone on for several years now - has been cancelled, as the Cape Live doesn't operate as a music venue during the week anymore). Even musicians who are unlikely to be directly affected by the changes are still going to be against these changes, as they clearly feel like their community is being threatened. It probably isn't a stretch to say that most musicians in Melbourne would be opposed to the changes, and that the laws are not in their best interests.

Then, of course, are the people who have careers in the music industry that operates around performing artists. Venue bookers, concert promoters, sound technicians, band managers, and publicists all stand to lose income if fewer gigs get put on in Melbourne as a result of the laws. Again, no one in the music industry is helped by these laws, so it stands to reason that they're all going to be opposed.

The group that I'm particularly interested in are the fans and patrons of the affected bars. What do these people feel like they're losing because of these laws? For many people, the Tote was their local, and that's an important factor in many people's lives. Live music was a large part of why so many people chose to call the Tote their local, as opposed to other bars along the same road, though there were other factors as well, related to those ineffable qualities that create a good atmosphere. On top of that, many music fans prefer going to gigs at bars, as opposed to larger, specialised music venues. There are several reasons for this. Generally it's significantly cheaper to see a band at a bar, as the door charge is lower – or even non-existent – and the drinks are often much cheaper too. Bars also afford a group of friends the opportunity to see a gig without making it the central feature of their night out. If you go to a gig at the forum, you really only go to hear the music. If, on the other hand, you see a gig at the Tote, you can hang out at the bar, or go outside and have a smoke, plus chat between sets (as well as during the sets if you really want to). You can hear a few tunes, catch up with your friends and have a drink, without feeling like you need to give all of your attention to the music. For a musician, this could be seen as slightly dispiriting, but it's actually a very good thing. When you're starting out, it can be nice to know that people in the audience can have a good time regardless of whether or not you play a good set. You're only a small part of their evening, so you don't have quite the same pressure on you as you do when you're headlining a 300 capacity venue. At the same time, there's something special about catching a rising band at the point in their careers just before they get big. Many music fans who regularly attend bar gigs will have a memory of the time they saw some band playing to 10 people one night of a residency, only to come back the next week to see them play to the same room, now packed to the brim. Hearing bands at that moment is exciting, and they're often fondly remembered as the band's best gigs, both by the audiences and the musicians themselves. Special moments happen in all sorts of music venues, but there's something unique about the kind of thing that can happen in small bars, and music fans are rightly worried of losing the opportunity to hear them.

If we look at the way that these liquor licenses have been imposed, you can infer a particular set of premises, which would go something like this:

• Alcohol causes violence.

• The later a venue stays open the more likely it is to create an environment that is conducive to people getting violent.

• Venues with live music are more likely to have violent incidents than those without.

• Increased security is an effective way of curbing violence in venues.

The most contentious of these premises, and the reason for the protests resides in the third point, that somehow venues that host live music are immediately considered to be "high risk", and therefore require more security.

From the rally, these were the points that SLAM used to counter those premises:

• "High Risk" venues are important to the community and should be protected.

• Increased security is unnecessary, and therefore place an unfair financial burden on venue owners.

• Small venues can't profit if they comply with the new security requirements.

• Live music has no correlation with violence.

• Music promotes behaviour that is in opposition to violence, that, as was quoted (not particularly accurately) at the rally "Music hath charms to soothe a savage breast".

It was this last claim that made me uncomfortable, and that seemed to be a case of overreaching. It's in the interests of SLAM to deny all of the claims made by the government in relation to alcohol-related violence, and, largely, I think that they're correct to challenge them. However, everyone listens to music. To suggest that violent people won’t listen to music and, in some cases, use music as a way of psyching themselves up, is absurd. This isn’t because any music is immoral, but because it’s amoral. Music is like food, or like air. Its importance in the fabric of people’s lives is why so many are protesting these laws, but it also means that it’s ridiculous to suggest that it only ever calms violent people down.

Another issue I had with the speeches at the rally is that I never heard anyone mention the factor that opening hours play. Most of the extra cost imposed by the new regulations are for venues that open later than 1:00 am. For instance, in regards to security cameras, the Liquor Control Reform Regulations Regulatory Impact Statement (pdf) states,

The Director of Liquor Licensing has the power, under the Liquor Control Reform Act, to impose conditions on liquor licences. The Director routinely imposes a condition requiring the installation of security cameras on premises that:

• trade after 1 am and have live or amplified music.

While I can understand that it may not be possible for these places to make a profit without staying open past 1 am, this issue wasn’t really dealt with at all. However, these are minor issues, and really only examples of people at a rally not choosing to talk about both sides of the issue quite as evenly as they could. This is to be expected. It was a rally, not a debate, and it wasn’t there to air opinions of the opposing side. The government has already done that, largely by instituting these laws in the first place.

Of course, people at SLAM didn’t need to make any claims about music being anti-violent, it only needed to quote from the very report that led to these laws: the Liquor Control Reform Regulations Regulatory Impact Statement. This report specifically mentions live-music venues as being examples of venues for which they don’t have much data:

In relation to other venue types, particularly those offering live and recorded music, limitations in the data (missing or incomplete data) prevented drawing any firm conclusions about whether they represent a risk factor.

In fact, many of the implied premises of the laws can be challenged simply by looking at the Impact Statement. While live-music venues are being forced to provide security staff now (though I can’t, unfortunately, find the licensing section that mentions this requirement), the impact statement notes that

higher frequency of aggressive acts at licensed premises has been linked with the following staffing and management practices:

• Aggressive security staff.

It’s clear that the suggestion that live-music venues are somehow more susceptible to violent acts is not backed up by any data, and therefore the new regulations that are being imposed are entirely inappropriate. Near the end of the rally, it was announced that the SLAM organisers had reached an accord with the State Government. You can read this here (pdf). It certainly seems to suggest that this issue may be resolved in a way that should be much better than the regulations currently active but, unfortunately, this will be all too late for some much-loved venues.

OK Go Isn't Allowed To Go Viral Again

2010-02-22T17:25:59Z

Damian Kulash Jr., the lead singer of OK Go - a band probably most famous for its music videos like this and this– has a piece in the New York Times, in which he says that their label, EMI, no longer allows people to embed their video clips on websites.

Interestingly, he gives a pretty convincing argument that not only are these sort of restrictions bad for his band because fewer people see their clips, it's actually financially detrimental also. He also points out that the video clip for "Here it Goes Again" was made "without telling EMI... and posted... [on] YouTube without EMI’s permission."

Closure in Moscow Dropped From Soundwave Lineup

2010-02-19T16:57:04Z

A few years ago, one of my bands was playing a support slot for an international band, at a good venue in Melbourne. The gig had been organised through our manager, who knew the promoter. I can't remember how we got the gig exactly, but I suspect it was because our manager spoke to this promoter about potential international supports, and this was the one we were given. As far as we could tell, everything was great. We showed up to play, we met the band and their manager and everything was still good. But then it came down to a detail about the night, where we had been told we'd be doing one thing, and they thought we'd be doing another. It turned out that our manager had made a demand that the promoter was now suggesting was unreasonable, and was going to make the night run less smoothly. We didn't particularly care, except that out manager had led us to believe that it was an important detail, and that he'd helped us out by getting this term agreed to. Things actually got a little bit tense, because we were dealing with phone conversations with different people involved, who all had different opinions on who was being demanding and who was getting a raw deal.

In the end, everything was fine, largely because we were happy to go along with the new arrangements, and most of us were in the room together: we could all talk, and we knew that there wasn't any attitude. I suspect, however, that the relationship between the promoter and our manage became a little strained as a result though. Part of the problem was because the promoter felt like he was doing our manager a favour in the first place by even having us on the bill, so it irked him to have to go along with demands that he though were detrimental to the way the night would run. This happens all the time in the music industry. All the time. Mostly, people work it out, but often it ends badly.

Closure In Moscow - an Australian band who've been living in the US recently - have just been dropped from the lineup of the 2010 Soundwave festival. Here is the post on the Soundwave website announcing the decision, and here is Closure in Moscow's response, from their Myspace blog.

Firstly, I have to assume that both parties are being honest, from their point of view. I don't know any of the people involved, and there's no way to tell if anyone is deliberately lying in their statements. Obviously though, people have different interpretations of events. Here are a couple of points:

• The organiser of Soundwave claims that he only booked Closure in Moscow as "a favour to their manager", which the band is happy to accept as true. Aside from anything else, this is almost certainly a big part of the problem. Doing things like this as a favour leads to resentment from both sides. Also, the fact of the manager's involvement makes it likely that Closure in Moscow weren't entirely aware of how the deal was made. AJ (the Soundwave organiser) suggests that Closure in Moscow were being paid "10 times above what they are worth", while the band states that "nobody asked him to offer us as much as he did". I wouldn't be surprised to find that the band were kept somewhat in the dark when it came to the financial arrangements between AJ and their manager. So, while they may be telling the truth, AJ may have already fostered some resentment towards them for negotiating a deal that he considered extravagant.

• It's quite common for people to have conversations over the phone that leads one party to think that everything went fine and the other to feel like they were treated rudely. AJ claims that the Soundwave worker who took their call was treated aggressively, while the band denies having even raised their voices. They do, however, suggest that they didn't have any information about their flights or accommodation, and were calling in regards to that. It's easy to imagine that they may have been frustrated at having to leave such arrangements so late, and it's equally easy to imagine that the person they spoke to would interpret this as them being aggressive.

Is there anything to learn from this? I think the main thing is that if you have someone acting on your behalf, like a manager or booking agent, let them handle all of the arrangements that relate to their field. If you're on your own, then good communication with the people who book you is crucial, but if someone else handles that side of your affairs, let them deal with all of it. Stepping in at the last minute, without knowing the people involved, and without a good understanding of the agreement you have with them is a sure way to put people's noses out of joint, which is probably what happened here. It could be that this problem was a result of one side simply behaving badly, but I doubt it.

Ruby

2010-02-18T14:46:12Z

Sad news about Ruby Hunter, who died last night of a heart attack. She was only 54. As Sophie Cunningham writes at Meanjin, her "voice was so deep that listening to her was sometimes like listening to the low rumbles of an earthquake. Moving and powerful."

She will be missed.

Down Under

2010-02-15T19:23:33Z

Peter Mclan wrote a piece for The Australian, on the ruling about Men at Work's "Down Under". He's completely right.

I wrote a couple of things about art and the public domain here (and a followup here). My initial entry point into discussing intellectual property was different, but likely gives you an idea about what I think about this whole thing.

One of the things I remember saying to one of my bandmates when I first heard about this case, when I was in Brisbane recording, was that I thought it unsightly that Colin Hay should have to bother pretending that the flute riff wasn't ripped from "Kookaburra". I'm not saying I think they definitely did consciously take it, but that, if they did, they should be able to be proud of that. It disgusts me to think that this sort of quotation should be discouraged.

Mclan nails it when he talks about the danger of the term "recognisability". Every musician is influenced by others who came before, and as they work on their music they will inevitably incorporate aspects of those songs that have influenced them. As anyone with musician friends could probably attest, it can sometimes become a game to listen to a new album and find parents: "that drum pattern's the same as that Shadow song on Endtroducing", or "Hear how that string line's basically playing the riff from "She Said, She Said"?". That's a good thing. It's how it's supposed to work.

And there's another issue, that Colin Hay brought up in his statement about the ruling, which you can read here. Solos aren't usually thought of as being part of the "composed" song. I've played any number of solos on songs in which I'm not credited as a writer: that's how it's done. And in live performance particularly, it's incredibly common to quote other works during solos. Charlie Parker famously quoted a line from The Rite of Spring at a gig when Stravinsky was in the audience. I remember attending a Bob Dylan concert in 2001 in which he played the melody for "Waltzing Matilda" during a guitar solo. The crowd exploded. It would be a pretty big shame if musicians felt like this was no longer something they were allowed to do.

Google Shuts Down Music Blogs

2010-02-15T18:50:18Z

According to this article from the Guardian, Google has been deleting music blogs for infringing on copyrights, without bothering to confirm that such infringements have really occurred.

The comments are informative, as it seems that a lot of people think it's not an issue, or that if they'd really cared about their content they shouldn't have been hosting their sites on a free web-hosting service. Aside from the troubling nature of the report, I'm always unpleasantly surprised to see how much some internet-savvy people hold their less knowledgeable peers in contempt.

Also a little disappointed to see the Guardian resort to the cheap move of featuring a screen-grab of the popular blog Gorilla Vs. Bear, even though it hasn't been affected by the crackdown.

Campus A Low Hum: Reflections

2010-02-05T21:24:13Z

On the Friday afternoon, before taking the evening bus to Campus A Low Hum, I was lucky enough to go and see the Yayoi Kusama exhibition: The Mirrored Years, at Wellington's City Gallery. Included in this collection was a work from 2000 called Fireflies on the Water: an installation consisting of a small room in which the ceiling and all the walls were mirrored, and the floor - except for a small section for the viewer to stand on - was a pool of water. Filling the room were many coloured light bulbs hanging from their wires: the fireflies. Despite all the lights, the room was very dark, as it was otherwise unlit, so the effect was akin to nighttime, or space. It felt as if a "perfect" imagining of such a scene would consist of seeing nothing but the lights, the water and the blackness, but of course this couldn't be, for no matter where I looked, there I was, from all angles. If I looked straight ahead I was staring back, and if I turned my head in any other direction I could see the top of my head, my back or my profile. In one way, it felt like my own body was getting in the way of the artwork, but it was clearly no accident. The mirrors weren't there just to extend the space of the room, but to anchor my body within it. Unlike other installations in the same exhibition, in which I was able to stand in particular places and see nothing but the works themselves, Fireflies forced me to be constantly aware of myself as a body within the space. I was forced to reflect.

The label "independent" is becoming increasingly meaningless when used to describe musicians who have albums released outside of the major labels, but it is also difficult to claim that such a label is a genre of its own. Campus A Low Hum (formerly Camp A Low Hum, but this year it was at an old agricultural college, and was slightly school-themed) is, loosely, a small-scale music festival of independent bands and musicians, but the lineup features music from all sorts of genres (read about it all here, if you want to get a better idea of the festival itself). Nearly all of the bands that played there would be categorised as "indie", but it didn't have anything to do with their label, and it doesn't adequately sum up the range of genres that could be heard. There was something that tied the bands together though: perfection wasn't a priority.

Perfection in art is a myth because perfection in humanity is a myth, but some artists have had different relationships to the idea. Many artists have dealt with the notion of perfection in quite philosophical ways, but the mainstream music industry mainly approaches perfection in the same way that fast food companies do: by trying to remove as much that is organic about a product as is possible. All mistakes are removed in the recording process, and most secondary sounds (I may be inventing this term, by the way) are taken out also: the squeak of a drummer's chair; the sound of a finger sliding on a guitar string; the tapping of the keys of a saxophone. The sound of the singer breathing in is one of the few secondary sounds that are kept in many recordings, likely because it's more closely related to the primary sound in the listener's head. Even if perfection is impossible, most pop records at least aspire to it - forever chasing the perfect realisation of a perfect song. I don't think this is a good or a bad thing necessarily, it's just the way that studio recordings on pop records have evolved. Indie musicians not only don't seem to care about perfection much, they don't even seem to believe in it as a worthy pursuit, in anything tied to their music. No song is perfectly formed, no delivery is perfectly executed, and no sound is perfectly realised. And there is little distinction between the primary and secondary sounds. You know all the crackles and hums and screams of equipment malfunctions you get at indie performances? They're there because - whether they admit it or not - the musicians are happy for them to happen. If they really cared about such things they would ensure that their equipment was in better shape: it's really not as hard as it may seem. This is true of mistakes as well. Very few indie musicians play songs that they find particularly challenging to perform, yet they make mistakes all the time. It would be easy to criticise a band for not playing well enough, but it would be misguided. I'm not trying to be harsh when I say that if a musician truly cared about not making any mistakes during a performance, they wouldn't make any. But in indie music, accidents of all sorts happen, and it's why so many people love it so much.

Most of the bands I heard at Campus A Low Hum shared these traits. People made mistakes. Instruments didn't work. Arrangements were sketchy. The degree of competence at their instruments that many bands had would be seen as laughable in other genres. And all of this somehow added up to a music festival that, from what I heard over the weekend, was the highlight of many people's lives.

Leaving for New Zealand

2010-01-20T16:19:27Z

I'm going to New Zealand for ten days, with Potential Falcon. I hope there are still some live-music venues left in Melbourne when we get back.

The Tote is Closing

2010-01-14T17:54:21Z

The Tote, one of the most loved music venues in Melbourne, is closing this weekend (you can read the statement put out by them on many sites, including Mess and Noise).

It's always sad when a venue like this shuts down - it wasn't too long ago that local musicians were mourning the loss of Sydney's Hopetoun Hotel, a similar sort of venue in terms of its status in the music scene.

New venues keep popping up in Melbourne, a fact that a lot of people conveniently ignore when they talk about things like this being the beginning of the end of the live-music scene, but they never really fill the gap. I always had a good time when I played at The Tote, and the staff always treated the bands well, which is not as common as you might expect. As this is its last weekend, I encourage anyone to go down and have a last drink if you're in the area.

UPDATE: There's a good article at The Enthusiast, which covers the problems that live-music venues have as a result of changes in liquor licensing laws.

Jazz Versus Metal

2010-01-10T17:06:21Z

Largely due to Rupert Murdoch, the past year has seen more and more people talking about the idea of making newspapers charge for access to online content. I think that there are many reasonable points to be made on both sides, and I'm not really here to weigh in on the issue as a whole, but there are a couple of points I've been thinking about.

To me, the concept of free really breaks down into two separate ideas: something that doesn't charge for use, but uses adverstising to help pay for the running of the website (or newspaper or whatever); versus something that, for lack of a better description, hides its costs from the user. That is, a website that doesn't ask anything of the reader in return. As much as we are used to saying that ad-supported content is free, I think that it's fair to make the distinction, as really the reader is having to pay a price - just a different sort.

Traditional newspapers have always been semi-free, in that the vast majority of the money required to print them comes from advertising, rather than the price the reader has to pay. At the moment, online newspapers are ad-supported, but otherwise free, though this may change. On the other hand, most blogs are completely free, though most very popular blogs have a small advertising presence. As great as they are, would anyone pay directly just to access, say, Kottke, or Daringfireball (two blogs that aren't entirely free, as they feature some advertising)?

The reason why I'm asking this is because newspapers, in their attempt to make their online versions more appealing to an internet audience, tend to feature a lot of blogs themselves, with articles like this one, from the New York Times, about the similarities between Jazz and Metal. As soon as I read this piece it made me angry, but it took me a while to really work out why. It's a reasonable piece, albeit fairly small in scope, and its angle is one that, while not surprising to many Jazz or Metal fans, may be interesting to the casual reader. But it disappointed me, largely because the author seemed uninterested in any sort of research. I wish that he'd interviewed some of the artists he'd mentioned, because he would no doubt have found that, while the audiences may be very different, Jazz artists are often big fans of Metal (possibly vice-versa, but I don't know nearly as many Metal musicians to make a judgement). To me, this sort of light research would have turned the article into something genuinely interesting, and much more insightful.

However, as a blog post, it was no more lightweight than anything on any other blog, such as this. So why the anger? I think because it was a blog attached to the New York Times. It made me wonder, if readers are going to have to start paying to access newspaper content, aren't they going to expect to be of a higher calibre than that found in free - or mostly free - blogs? Or is this the kind of stuff that will always be free, and we'll just have to pay for actual journalism? If that's the case, is that another nail in the coffin of quality arts journalism?

UK Singles Sales Highest Ever in 2009

2010-01-09T00:10:36Z

152.7 million singles last year. And, as reported in The Guardian, 98% of those were downloaded.

Is Being Signed to a Major Label More Important Than Ever?

2010-01-09T00:07:18Z

There has been a lot of talk about the long tail over the past few years: the idea that, while musicians on independent labels may not be as popular as those on major labels, there is a growing audience for their music. That, taken as a whole, independent acts would account for a much greater share of sales than they did previously, due to the diminishing power of traditional music marketing (or the internet, or "social media").

Helienne Lindvall, over at The Guardian, points out that this, however, is not the case. In fact, these days, "the top 10% of artists are now responsible for 90% of all music sales".

Wikipedia's article about the long tail is interesting, particularly if you follow the footnotes. A particularly interesting couple of articles that I'd missed: Patrick Foster's article for the Times Online from December 2008, in which he says that, out of the 1.23 million singles available on a particular online retailer, "only 173,000 were ever bought, meaning 85 per cent did not sell a single copy all year". The other is by Andrew Orlowski at The Register, from November 2008, in which he suggests that the usual graph used to depict the long tail is completely unrealistic, and comes up with an alternative, slightly more chilling one (if you're an independent musician, that is).

Danny Barnes on Making a Living Playing Music

2010-01-03T17:18:57Z

This was sent to me by Simon, of Potential Falcon fame. I've never heard of Danny Barnes, so I won't pretend that he's worth listening to simply because of how amazing he is. Rather, it's worth a read because, to me, it seems like good advice.

I always tend to trust people who say "have interests outside of your art".

Hipster Runoff's Lists

2009-12-23T11:41:09Z

Hipster Runoff have their list of "The Most Authentic/Relevant/Successful Artists of the Decade (The Best Albums/MP3s/Songs/Artists/Bands/Humans of the Decade)". It's huge, but there's a lot of gold in there. Of course, it's always hard to tell how deep the joke is, but it's certainly a more entertaining best-of-decade list than most.

A sample line:

I feel like Grizzly Bear is the Most Authentic Band of the second half of the decade. Some how, their latest album ‘charted’ at #6 on the mainstream charts. That seems pretty successful. I feel like the thing most music critics hold against Grizzly Bear is ‘not being from the first half of the decade.’

David Byrne on Arts Funding

2009-12-23T11:29:33Z

David Byrne, on discovering that a new production of Wagner's Ring Cycle has been budgeted at $32 million writes:

Take that money, that $14 million from the city, for example, let some of those palaces, ring cycles and temples close — forgo some of those $32M operas — and fund music and art in our schools. Support ongoing creativity in the arts, and not the ongoing glorification and rehashing of the work of those dead guys.

It's Byrne's typical line, because, for him "it’s more important that someone learn to make music, to draw, photograph, write or create in any form than it is for them to understand and appreciate Picasso, Warhol or Bill Shakespeare". Fairly provocative stuff, and definitely worth a read.

Would Cop Killer Be Banned?

2009-12-16T20:47:41Z

Music is unlikely to bear the brunt of internet filtering in the same way that literature might, but that doesn't mean that it's not an important issue for music lovers. Where does the Labor government stand on "Cop Killer?". Are there any bands that might have their websites put on a blacklist because of the lyrical content of their songs?

http://nocleanfeed.com/

Pitchfork's Top 100 Tracks.

2009-12-16T17:53:45Z

Another list. Everything I said last week still applies. Posted here because it reminded me of another thing about these sorts of lists: I pretty much only read the reviews of tracks that I've heard. So basically I'm just... doing what? Finding justification for my own taste? Finding words to describe stuff I've been listening to?

[UPDATE] Stereogum have also published Pitchfork's list and, like I pointed out in my earlier post, noted that there's no metal. There's also no jazz or classical, but hey, those genres are dead anyway aren't they?

Click Tracks

2009-12-10T18:16:12Z

This is the first of a series of posts I'm putting up that relate to the recording process. Since spending a bit of time in the studio recently, I thought I'd deal with a few of the things that happen there. This first piece is about click tracks. It's a little bit long.

Most modern popular music is recorded using digital recording software - generally Protools. Even though many rock albums are, at some point, mixed to the older medium of reel-to-reel tape machine, this is essentially an effect: all the songs are stored as multitrack recordings on computer and later, once the stereo mix is completed, the song is sent out to run through a tape machine to get some of the sound quality associated with using tape, before being fed back into the computer once again to be mastered and made into an album.

The advantages of using digital recording software are many. Unlike old tape systems, there is no limit to the number of tracks you can have in a song. In older analogue systems you would eventually run out of spare tracks, and if you wanted to add any more parts you would have to perform mini mixes, in which you would combine, say, all of the drum tracks into one stereo pair. After this, you would never be able to alter the levels of the drum sounds individually: you would be stuck with that drum mix for good. This sort of restriction was no doubt the catalyst for a lot of creative recording ideas – restrictions are always a great spur for creativity – but the freedom of limitless multi-tracking is largely irresistible to bands unsure about the direction they want their song to take in the initial recording stages.

One of the features of digital recording software is that it becomes incredibly easy for a skilled operator to combine different sound files together seamlessly. This generally means that an artist is able to perform several takes of a song, and then the recording engineer picks the best parts from all of the takes and edits them together into a "perfect" track. Again, this was always possible with analogue equipment, but the ease and versatility of the digital medium means that it's a lot less time consuming – and therefore much less costly – which has made the practices almost mandatory.

Of course, in order to combine tracks together, it helps if they were all recorded at the same speed. While speed alteration is vastly more sophisticated than it used to be (it is now possible to speed up entire pieces of music without changing the pitch, and often without a noticeable reduction in sound quality), it is something most engineers are reluctant to do, particularly for sustained sounds. Of course, singers can keep time to the drums, but, when recording several takes of the rhythm section, what does the drummer keep time to? The click track.

The click track is an incredibly important part of modern pop music, though it goes largely unheralded, due to the fact that it never gets included in the final mix. Simply put, a click track is what it sounds like: a track which consists of a simple metronome (the clicks, which often a cowbell sound, or some other sharp percussive beat) beat set to the desired tempo, and played through the headphones of the musicians recording the initial parts of the song. Assuming the drummer is relatively competent at his or her parts, it only takes a few run-throughs to ensure that the recording engineer will have enough material to assemble a drum part that adheres to the click for the entire song. Having the click also means that other instruments can be recorded at the same time as the drums and also edited, without worry that if, say, the guitar part from take 3 is used over a piano part from take 6, they won't be in tie with each other.

At the same time, digital recording software goes hand-in-hand with electronic music that is generated by hardware synthesisers such as keyboards, software synthesisers often run within the recording software, and sampled sounds that are stored on a hard drive. Most modern synthesisers use a language called MIDI: the much-maligned (but now retro-chic) acronym that simply stands for Musical Instrument Digital Interface. MIDI is not a sound, as many people would believe, but a set of instructions used for triggering sounds created by a variety of sources, like those described above.

Now, when I was describing assembling drum parts to adhere to clicks, a lot of people might frown in disgust, probably for two similar, but separate reasons. The first is that this method would appear to be a very big safety net for drummers who aren't very good. Suddenly, as long as they get something near a good take, and engineer will be able to make a good track from their many attempts. This is true, and it's why sometimes bands that sound great on record aren't so good live. It's quite possible to see live clips of modern bands where they completely ruin the timing of songs, seemingly unable to play in time together. This is a fair point, but it tends to exist mainly as a premise for the second argument: that using a click track kills the "feel" of a song. On his blog, Musical Machinery, Paul Lamere decided to test some songs to see whether or not they were using a click, by using a piece of software to analyse tempo variation – reasoning that songs with little variation were likely recorded to clicks. It's an interesting idea, but you can see where he stands on the issue fairly early on, when he says that "some say that songs recorded against a click track sound sterile, that the missing tempo deviations added life to a song". Later, when describing Britney Spears' ". . . One More Time", he says that "(i)t seems that most pop music nowadays is overproduced, so my suspicion is that an artist like Britney Spears will record against a click track.". It's pretty clear where his loyalties lie. You probably won't be surprised to hear that I think he's got it wrong though.

The thing is, since the advent of electronic music, listeners have become incredibly familiar with completely even tempos. Sequenced music stays at exactly the same tempo for hours on end unless the programmer makes it change, and we have become adapted to it. Dance music would sound simply wrong if it were played with the sort of tempo changes that were common in earlier rock songs (disregarding more long-term changes, in which a song is sped up at an even rate as it reaches a climax, and other variations like that). And, as the lines between dance music and rock blur, there are many more instances in which the sounds and aesthetics of one genre inform the other. This is particularly evident in modern R&B: electronic samples and synthesisers prevail, and these are all sequenced to a set tempo. Any live band that wishes to sit well with these elements have to play to a click, particularly if they're recording their parts before the electronic instruments are added – a common occurrence.

For Plastic Palace Alice, who just finished recording a new album, the choice was an easy one. While we ended up recording one song without a click, the rest of them simply worked better with one. It wasn't a question of whether or not we wanted the "feel" to be there, it was a matter of what feel we were going for – in our case our songs often have heavy disco influences, where you want that constant tempo that a click track provides.

On the other hand, Potential Falcon didn't record to a click at all. We played until we got a good take, then we overdubbed a lot later. The interesting this is that the Plastic Palace sessions felt more "live" when we were recording them than the Potential Falcon ones. We all played together for each take, and several of the vocals that will make it on to the album were recorded during this tracking process, rather than as later overdubs. Yes, some of the tracks are likely to be fairly heavily edited to fit the "grid", but in our ears it's improving the sound of the songs. Yes, there are certainly situations when music suffers a little because people use a click when they probably shouldn't, but this, like autotune or anything else, is a matter of correct use of tools.

Best of the Decade

2009-12-03T21:32:54Z

If you read music blogs at all (and if you don't, why are you reading this?) you've probably read at least a couple best-of-decade lists. It's always an entertainment mix of affirmation and frustration reading them, or is that just me? For me, I either get unnecessarily happy when I see a favoured album on the list; disappointed when one doesn't get included; and a little bit embarrassed when an album I've never listened to gets described as some sort of era-defining cultural artefact. It's all a bit silly, of course, but that's how it goes.

I suspect that the main purpose of a best-of list is to serve as a kind of manifesto for the publication. If we look at Pitchfork's top 20 of the decade, this seems fairly accurate: it's largely made up of successful indie-rock acts, with a smattering of hip hop and dance. There's no metal or country, let alone jazz, classical or "world" music, which isn't surprising, but these genres aren't mentioned as being deliberately excluded. The list isn't simply constructing a history but a future as well: it's making a statement about the kind of music that Pitchfork deems to be interesting and worthy of comment.

In fact, this is probably the list's most important function, as I'm not really sure what else to do with it. The other day I read through the list with the intention of seeing if there were any albums I hand't listened to which maybe deserved some attention. However, it wasn't as helpful as I expected (or at least hoped). Of the 20, I already owned ten of them, so, other than reminding me how much I want The Avalanches to release a new album, those weren't much help as a shopping guide. Of the remaining ten, there were a couple that I knew I wanted to buy. The first was Spoon's Kill The Moonlight. As readers of this blog might know, I'm a bit of a fan of Spoon, but I'd never gotten around to buying any album other than their most recent Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga – Kill The Moonlight was an obvious choice for an album purchase, and I wasn't disappointed. Ghostface Killah's Supreme Clientele fit into this mould too: I love Fishscale and his work both with the Wu-Tang Clan and on Raekwon's Cuban Linx albums, so this was a nice reminder to get Supreme Clientele (and I think I'll bypass his most recent effort for now).

Other than that, however, I have some conflicting feelings. The problem is, I can't really think of a good reason to start getting into, say, The Strokes, at this point of my life, rather than bands who are slightly more current. And this holds for a lot of the albums in the list that I already own as well. I'm not denying that White Blood Cells is a good album, but it wouldn't be something I'd excitedly give someone now. Even Kid A, deservedly ranked as the best album of the decade (not that there aren't other, equally deserving albums) isn't necessarily something I'd recommend above Radiohead's more recent In Rainbows.

I guess my main problem is that these albums are too recent. In saying that, I don't mean that we need some sort of distance in order to work out what should rank in the canon – quite the opposite. Rather, to me, the albums that are coming out now that are showing the influences of ten years ago sound better than their parents, but, at the same time, I doubt I'll have the same feeling in ten years. This could be partly because I'm one of the few people you'll hear constantly saying "I prefer their new stuff". Classics are great, and we'll always have them, but on a day-to-day basis, I'd rather listen to what musicians are coming up with now, than what they were doing ten or twenty years ago.

Tour Journal

2009-11-27T16:45:11Z

Like I've said before, I don't really have any intention of turning this blog into a tour journal, which goes some way to explaining why posting's been so light-on the past couple of weeks. However, Potential Falcon's own Simon Connolly has posted a few highlights of our tour over at our website. If you're interested in what the tour's been like, check it out. Don's taken some lovely photos, so it's all quite pretty.