TMWQ - The Man Without Qualities

Way Cool Jr. on Hyperbole

2010-05-14T22:32:10Z

A while ago I linked to an article in the Guardian about Google shutting down music blogs hosted by Blogger, due to perceived copyright infringements. Well, it happened to popular Australian blog Hyperbole recently. Way Cool Jr. has a good interview with its founder. The moral:

For any blogger that wants to develop any kind of profile as an MP3 blog: don’t do it on Blogger. Simple as that.

Helienne Lindvall on the Gender Gap

2010-05-13T13:25:26Z

Hellienne Lindvall of the Guardian writes about the small proportion of women working in the music industry in England. Based purely on my own observations it seems likely to apply to Melbourne too. Can’t agree more with her closing statement:

I, for one, would love to see a music industry that reflects the general population – in gender, age and ethnicities. Would the musical landscape and the way artists are promoted and marketed be different? Would the music industry be better off for it? I think it would.

The Weingarten Post

2010-05-08T21:59:41Z

A couple of weeks ago, I was forwarded a link to Everett True’s blog in which he featured a presentation by rock writer Chris Weingarten, which you can see here. True posted his own thoughts on his blog, which were later posted on Crikey. I found his comments a bit of a mess, and not necessarily enlightening for anyone who isn’t exactly sure what Weingarten’s presentation was really about. True’s piece seemed directed at people already knowledgeable about the issues Weingarten raises, but wouldn’t really help anyone who wasn’t. So I’ve tried to tease out the main points.

Of course, it’s difficult to get past the tone-setting opener, in which he claims that the Internet has “officially sucked all the fun out of it (music writing).” Why the broader public should be particularly concerned as to whether or not writing about rock music should be fun isn’t really addressed, it’s just taken as a given that this is a very bad thing. Which may seem like a throwaway point, but it does seem to get to the core of Weingarten’s perspective. Several points he raises makes it fairly clear that he’s wedded to a particular culture of rock journalism, and he hasn’t necessarily examined why the status quo he’s defending was so much better for music fans themselves. But I’ll get to that later.

Weingarten’s initial target that he uses to frame his argument is a website called The Hype Machine, which is essentially an aggregator of content pulled from independent music blogs, to provide a rundown of the most talked-about music on the internet. You can read their mission statement here. The part that gets Weingarten’s goat is what’s written under the heading “why?”.

We are creating tools that empower independent voices that write about music. We think a select group of passionate people can produce more engaging conversation than a huge social mob, or a rigid hierarchy of editors. We amplify their posts and the audio they choose, to help this vibrant culture spread.

Weingarten responds to this veiled criticism of the kind of publications that he writes for, such as Rolling Stone, by suggesting that simply by collecting the most popular music from a whole lot of blogs and putting them together in a list is actually “the very definition of lowest common denominator.” He then goes on to say that “at least when we had a rigid hierarchy of editors, some of their favourite random shit would find its way into magazines.” I think that he has a good point here, in that the way The Hype Machine presents music makes it less likely that less popular music will find its way to listeners, as opposed to a magazine in which slightly oddball music has a chance of getting reviewed and presented in a prime location. And, if you look at the wider context of journalism in general, it’s fairly obvious that you get provided better quality material by organisations that exert strong editorial control over their content, versus those that mere recycle other content and rank it according to popularity. As it turns out, many other comments that Weingarten makes do relate to the problems that news organisations have been struggling with for several years now.

For instance, Weingarten objects heavily to the phenomenon of “firsties” – a term that describes the sort of comments that seem to exist purely in order to be the first at something, rather than to say anything useful. The problem, as he sees it, is that music writers are in such a rush to be the first to cover something that then becomes a popular topic that they increasingly end up covering every unimportant detail of every event that they attend – such as music festivals – in the hope that one of the things they write about becomes a meme. They care more about being the first to discover new bands than providing any sort of criticism, and that “insight and artistry are no longer the end goal; they’re afterthoughts.” This is obviously the result of an addiction to getting traffic on a website, and news sites are particularly guilty of this rush to create link bait. As Weingarten puts it: “when clicks are your lifeblood it doesn’t matter if the writing is any good.”

He then goes on to talk about the lack of negative reviews on music blogs, mentioning that “Pitchfork just bailed on negative song reviews… which I guess would be news if blogs hadn’t bailed on negative song reviews years ago.” The problem, as he sees it, is that “no one posts negative commentary anymore, because no one googles for bands they don’t like.” This is no doubt true, and it’s a slightly worrying phenomenon, if you think that criticism is an important part of any art-form. Of course, a ranking of the most popular music on blogs serves to filter out the music that people think isn’t any good, but negative criticism generally serves a higher purpose than simply telling people what not to listen to: it’s a means of engaging with ideas about higher values in art. Some of the time. Weingarten says that the lack of negative criticism means that “no one is left to say the new Broken Social Scene song sucks,” which he then goes on to say himself, thus either ruining his argument or suggesting that he’s the sole voice of reason within the music writing community – something that he comes across as believing for much of this talk.

Finally, he turns to the artists themselves, and tells us why this atmosphere is bad for bands as well. Due to the high speed nature of music blogs, “bands have to fight for blog attention all the time,” so that “bands have to offer websites a constant stream of art with their names on it just to stay alive.” In trying to constantly create something new that will go viral, bands don’t have the time to spend honing their real craft, which is (or should be) making music. I think this is a legitimate concern, and one that has been felt in many circles. Part of the problem is no doubt that it’s hard to see how anyone is making a living from playing music, so there are very few successful examples to follow. At the moment, the general consensus is that you have to come up with some crazy new idea of getting your music to audiences (a firstie problem of its own), rather than simply playing gigs and promoting them, then publicising an album when it’s released.

So, despite his general attitude that can be fairly grating, his perspective seems correct. But he glosses over a number of things, largely as it relates to the nature of the industry before all of these issues came up.

During his talk, Weingarten brings up the idea of a “stumble culture”, in which music fans discover new and interesting music through happenstance. This is something that he feels is being destroyed by factors like The Hype Machine, as what we are stumbling into is that which others have decided we should discover. There’s no chance of discovering something outside our usual comfort zone. But he suggests that things were different back in the day, when “we used to just stumble upon bands on the radio or MTV or whatever.” Umm, MTV? How is MTV a proponent of stumble culture, as opposed to a blog written by someone who has no commercial ties to the music industry? Is he seriously suggesting that watching MTV was a better way to discover music that strayed off the beaten track?

Secondly, in his criticism of “firsties”, he suggests an example where he might be at a gig and “something interesting happens, like Jay-Z brings a guest out”, whereupon he could talk to his editor and write an amazing piece about it, but it wouldn’t matter because the most traffic is going to go to “whoever got it up the fastest.” Now, I can’t help but feel that treating the coverage of who Jay-Z invites on stage (spoiler alert! It’ll be Beyoncé!) as being “something interesting”, let alone remotely worthy of an in-depth piece in a music publication, is not offering a convincing argument about firsties being the problem. That’s exactly the sort of news that should be tweeted immediately, and then promptly forgotten. If you’re bitter about firsties scooping you on that sort of bombshell, you don’t really deserve to be on a high horse about what’s killing good writing.

Likewise, when he claims that “good writing dies at the hands of search engine optimisation”, did he not think to apply this general idea to an earlier time? When you look over a rack of music magazines and all of them have photos of The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Curt Cobain or Led Zeppelin, is it not fair to think that good writing is suffering from needing to constantly rehash the same article about a dead 60s icon in order to generate sales? Why is it not surprising to see that Rolling Stone’s front page has an article entitled “‘Let It Be’ 40 Years Later: A Look Back at the Beatles' Final LP”, and another “100 Greatest Guitarists” list (you know who ranks number 1)? Don’t get me wrong, I love a good Beatles article, but it’s always the same one, and, more importantly, it’s not great writing and it isn’t remotely provocative.

Weingarten also suggests that blogs are hiding something about their place in the music industry. The lack of negative criticism isn’t simply due to their lack of traffic potential, but because it would damage their relationships with record labels, who they depend upon for exclusive music content. This is a reasonable point, and one that is likely unnoticed, not just by readers but by many of the blog writers themselves. How many bloggers are aware of their internal censors at work when they choose to not attack an organisation that provides them with the material they use to draw in readers? But to suggest that this is problem is unique to blogs is simply wrong. Every publication – that depends on advertising to cover costs – runs the risk of having that commercial relationship affect what they write. Likewise, if a magazine wants to interview a famous band – something that will generate lots of sales for them – it probably won’t help if they give the band’s newest album a panning. Every publication that benefits from having a good relationship with the artists it reviews is placed in this same difficult position, and I don’t understand why bloggers (who’s commercial interest is considerably smaller than that of a magazine) are likely to be any more guilty of pulling their punches than anyone else.

I tend to agree with a lot of Weingarten’s sentiments, as I think that most journalists have good cause to worry about what’s happening to their craft at the moment, and what’s going to be left of it in the next decade or so. It remains to be seen whether or not there is a large enough audience who are willing to pay for thought-provoking, intelligent journalism to keep it operating in a healthy way. But when it comes to music journalism, I think we still need to be shown that there’s something worth saving to begin with.

UPDATED 13/05/10: I added the penultimate paragraph, which I’d been meaning to include originally, but forgot about.

Britney Spears is Bob Dylan, and Better than Gaga

2010-05-07T23:45:59Z

Rob Sheffield at Rolling Stone has a post about the leaked demo of Britney singing “Telephone”, where points out how influential Spears has been for modern pop music. And, because there’s no better way of showing how influential someone is than by comparing them to Bob Dylan, he does it three times.

Which is sort of hilarious, but there’s never anything wrong with getting another fix of “Telephone”, whether it be Britney or Gaga behind the mic.

David Byrne on Collaborations

2010-04-08T21:41:51Z

David Byrne has gotten something of a reputation for being a keen collaborator recently. His piece about collaboration covers not only his methodology, but some of his reasoning for writing so much music with others.

Losing the Desire to Write About Music.

2010-04-08T21:38:58Z

Amanda Schneider that is, not me (see what I did there?)

Definitely worth a read.

Inertia

2010-04-08T21:34:48Z

I don't plan on giving up just yet, but sometimes the longer you go, the harder it is to get back in. A few writing ideas didn't work out, and I didn't have a copy of the iPad to review, so, alas, no content.

Back very soon though.

Computer Music

2010-03-11T22:44:19Z

Miller-McCune has a good piece about composer David Cope, who is most famous for writing a piece of software that could effectively mimic the compositional style of earlier composers (via Kottke).

I remember hearing about Cope's work when I was in high school, but I never really got what the big deal was. I think it's pretty amazing, but I don't understand why anybody gets so worked up about it. This paragraph struck me:

Of course, some composers probably have taken dictation from birds. Yet the most likely explanation, Cope believes, is that music comes from other works composers have heard, which they slice and dice subconsciously and piece together in novel ways. How else could a style like classical music last over three or four centuries?

Probably? Is it a stretch to think of Olivier Messiaen as being one of the most influential/highly regarded/famous composers of the 20th century?

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).