Searching for the elusive figure of Bonnie “Prince” Billy
Songwriter David Singer’s pop muse matures gracefully.
We celebrate Valentine’s Day with an interview with Riskay, the self-proclaimed Drama Queen.
Record labels are trying to plug album leaks by all means necessary. Will going to war against writers do the trick?
There’s a lot to want to like in permanently-in-pre-release-beta audio playlist software Songbird, an open-source challenge to iTunes that includes all the post-iPod expected functionality and interfacing, along with a robust mp3 blog searching engine that’s built on top of Firefox. Songbird holds a ton of promise–being able to head over to Fluxblog or the Hype Machine and listen to the tracks as if they were a radio, for example, is pretty cool–and then being able to integrate those mp3′s into a playlist along with music on my hard drive. In concept it’s seamless and brilliant–in fact, the built-in Firefox functionality enables you to scroll through any website, and the mp3′s embedded on it, like you scroll through your own personal mp3 collection. Brilliant.
The bad? Like Firefox, with which I am quickly losing all patience, the software feels like you’re navigating an Abrams Tank: it’s slow, cludgy, and prone to crashes. Like Firefox, you love all the functionality, but can’t help feeling like you could be doing everything you want to be doing much quicker if the code was a ton leaner. Firefox’s unresponsiveness has been driving me increasingly to Safari (even the buggy XP version), which is quick and clean despite far less functionality (the lack of del.icio.us plugin and Gchat support has always been a big dealbreaker for me with Safari.) All the same, Firefox’s behemoth system footprint on both my PC and Mac is growing all the more frustrating, and the thought of using an audio program that somehow is built on Firefox and is even less responsive makes it a tough sell for now.
I have a lot of hope for Songbird–it’s the kick in the ass iTunes desperately needs. iTunes was innovative in its simplicity and usability in its first three or four iterations, but has only grown more maddeningly slow and weighed down by unwanted features. What Songbird needs to do is tighten its code up a ton, and focus on the two things people want: an intuitive audio database for their mp3 collection, and a way to surf audio online, within the same application. Cut out the dross, make it fast and responsive, and the developers will have an open-source iTunes killer on their hands.
In this day and age of big-budget punk, Open Source Software offers a lot of object lessons in how to do things right (once again).
Ah, the heady days of 2002. A time before Bush’s re-election. A time when political engagement was still valued in some social circles. A time before independent rock bridged the gap punk rock had worked so hard to create, by allowing hippies into the tent (see: freak folk). Good days indeed. Still, at the time, my nutrition primarily came from Budweiser and vodka and day-old bagels, and I spent my hours more pissed about asshole customers than media consolidation and the increasing synergy of independent and corporate culture.
Out of personal torpor and an antsiness that defines both of our personalities, my good friend Pete Bernhard and I organized Tastes Like Burning, our first CD-R comp of indie, punk and folk bands from the Santa Cruz local scene along with a number of like-minded folks from other West Coast areas.
Few of these bands exist anymore, though a handful do. The obvious historical quirk is the inclusion of a couple demos by our friends-of-a friend in The Thermals, who have gone on to a well-deserved measure of success (including releasing one of last year’s most critically acclaimed albums). There are some great nuggets in here by musicians who’ve gone on to bigger things (such as Pete, with the Devil Makes Three) as well fantastic songwriters and bands that deserve a bit more historical re-estimation (including great Santa Cruz indie popsters Sin in Space, brilliant songwriter Boaz Vilozny who gave up music for organic chemistry, and Sweatitout, an amalgam of ’80s metal and the Cars that would have made Brooklynite hipsters swoon if they’d formed on the other coast.)
The other day, this blogger Steve, who runs the great Cover Freak blog and had ordered the other two CD-R comps I put together after Tastes Like Burning, sent me an email asking if I had any copies of this comp left. Unfortunately, I only have a couple copies kicking around the apartment anymore, both of which are slowly submitting to the decreptitude that awaits CD-R’s and home-silkscreened covers. His email inspired me to rip the tracks and archive them while I still could, scan the art, and post it all online for posterity.
So I offer to you, gentle readers, a .zip download of a small footnote in Santa Cruz (and west coast) DIY history. For people put off by the 120 MB download, please note the mp3′s are all ripped at 320 kbps VBR, or take a listen to a couple of the tracks first:
Sweatitout – “Takin’ Forever” mp3
Boaz Vilozny – “Waiting All Night” mp3
Download Tastes Like Burning .zip file (120 MB, 320 kbps VBR)
After the jump, the track listing and links to the current musical projects of the bands and musicians involved.
An interview with Lou Barlow of Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh and The Folk Implosion.
Well this is interesting. Radiohead announced last evening on the band’s blog that they will be releasing a new album, In Rainbows, in ten days (presumably self-released,) initially for sale only through the website inrainbows.com. The record will be available on vinyl and via variable-priced digital download
The only CD version (so far announced) will be sold with the vinyl package:
THIS CONSISTS OF THE NEW ALBUM, IN RAINBOWS, ON CD
AND ON 2 X 12 INCH HEAVYWEIGHT VINYL RECORDS.
A SECOND, ENHANCED CD CONTAINS MORE NEW SONGS, ALONG WITH DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS AND ARTWORK.
THE DISCBOX ALSO INCLUDES ARTWORK AND LYRIC BOOKLETS.
ALL ARE ENCASED IN A HARDBACK BOOK AND SLIPCASE.
While the digital download of the album will be variably priced, with the buyer choosing how much they want to pay for it. Really.
The stunning thing about this move is that while others have experimented with this sort of thing, none with Radiohead’s clout or continued cultural relevance have–the best analogue would be Prince’s ill-fated move to self-released albums in the ’90s, years before distribution of media online was practical to most music fans, and years after his cultural and musical peak. It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out–the music distribution model I’ve been most impressed with in recent years is the “buy the vinyl, get a free mp3 download” approach that indies such as Touch & Go have been experimenting with. The model acknowledges both the fetish-object appeal of vinyl (which still inspires a generation-transcending collector’s devotion that CD’s never enjoyed) while letting listeners also enjoy the music far more conveniently on their iPods–without having to re-buy an album they already own, or Bittorrent something they legally own in another format.
What will be interesting to see is how much Radiohead’s clout will affect sales and the industry as a whole–since there are no metrics for this sort of thing, the dinosaurs at the major labels and the RIAA will likely declare it a failure outright, but even if the band sells less units on vinyl and makes less gross income from variable-priced downloads, their net income could even out with what they would make by foisting a traditionally-distributed CD at an ever-shrinking market. The RIAA will no doubt declare it a failure regardless of the outcome, just as the anti-industry hordes will declare it a triumph, and only Radiohead and their accountants will really know for sure, after looking at sales, production costs, reduced distribution and marketing costs, and tour ticket sales. But whatever the turnout may be, this clearly marks a turning point for the industry, as the band is uniquely positioned with the cultural and economic clout to land a severely disruptive blow at the industry status quo.
In the various music-related roles that I have encompassed over the past few years (musician, bandleader, freelance writer, publicist, show promoter and blogger) I have spent a fair amount of time browsing band websites and reached a critical mass navigating band sites that are ugly, anti-functional, slow-loading and profoundly frustrating to the people they are presumably trying to impress.
Here are some simple observations that I’m presenting as axiomatic. Granted, a lot of them display my subjective preferences about web functionality, but the simple fact is that many of these simple mistakes drive away fans, writers, editors, label people, etc
It seems like there’s three acceptable ways to approach old-time string band music nowadays: either play wanktastic academic jam-band bluegrass for the dreadies, affect a pissed-off punk-grass posture, or play it so straight that any sense of life is effectively drained out of musical forms that once celebrated the earthly, the visceral, the emotional and the carnal–hence the term “folk” music. (Let’s not talk about the faux-hillbilly schtick approach, which should have been dead and buried about fourteen years ago.)
I’ve never had much time for the first option, as I openly despise anything reeking of “jam” band music, and the third option feels too much like a classical recital to get any enjoyment out of. Increasingly, I’ve grown bored with the punk-grass phenomenon.
That’s why I appreciate San Francisco’s Crooked Jades as much as I do–not all of their music appeals to me, but frontman Jeff Kazor makes a strong effort to unearth truly obscurantist threads of American folk music, the bizarre strands that have disappeared in the decades as ideas of folk, string-band music and bluegrass have been codified and rendered painfully dull. Here’s an excerpt from a feature I did on the band for the Metro Santa Cruz a couple years back:
“People want the form frozen in time, but when you do that it becomes stagnant,” says Kazor. “We’re artists sensitive to the world and the environment, and it’s impossible to stay in a bubble to what’s going on in the world.”
To this end, the band aims for an eclecticism in its music that has been largely forgotten by the strict bluegrass traditionalists and old-time revivalists. Kazor points back to the original world music folk forms that influenced the development of old-time music, and aims to reconnect it to European and African traditions that disappeared from the form as it cemented itself into the very strict formalism of bluegrass.
“Some people may feel that there is too much of an edge to the Crooked Jades. … We’re really into restoring all that lost music. It seems bluegrass straightened it out and made it more accessible,” Kazor explains. “The band is really all about restoring what has been lost.”
The Jades are all over the place, and sometimes can test your patience, but at least they’re leaping high and reaching for some truly unique and original art, unlike most of their ilk who fail to breathe any new life or sense of relevance into music forms that desperately need new, revolutionary lifeblood. The Crooked Jades are great because they’re revolutionary, but not in a slavish, obvious way–they’re tweaking the form, ripping it asunder, and rediscovering much of what has been lost in modern folk.
Paul M Davis