Category: Rock & Roll

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Easy music downloading gives not much for history

The simple matter of fact is that we can all download music to our heart’s desire. You can pay for it or not, and some of it can be obscure to the mainstream. Got that favorite music track that you heard on the local, hot hits radio station that you just can’t live without listening to at least 40 times on single repeat until you get absolutely sick of it? No problem. The Internet has you covered.

What does that do to music history though? Are the generations of music fans to come going to experience the greatness of finding new music outside of saying, “Yeah, I downloaded that. It’s sweet!”

I remember parsing through bin after bin of CD’s and records, asking the dude who reeked of patchouli behind the counter if I could listen to it, and making some killer purchases of music to add to a library that still exists today. I’d go home and listen to what I bought, fell in love, and had to know more about this band I discovered. Then that would lead to other bands who might sound similar or would be name dropped in an interview that I would read somewhere.

Then you go over to your friend’s house and parse through their collection. While you hang out, you flip through their stash, toss a record on (yes, I had friends who were vinyl junkies, but the portability of CD’s always prevented me from heading down that path to obsession), and bask in talking about bands, who is who, the odd time signatures of a song, who else we should be checking out, etc.

Anymore, collecting music is so A.D.D. You want this track, go get it right this second. Then you throw it on your iPod, only to repeat the process with so many, various tracks that you hardly ever get your hands on the album in its entirety. Then as your mp3 player plays back, you find that track that you listened to 40 times on single repeat and skip forward to the next song.

I’ve known of people to download music based on just what they heard in a commercial. You’re hanging out, all of the sudden Modest Mouse shows up in the midst of a variety of mainstream country and top 40 tunes. You do the typical and ask the question of not knowing that they were into them. They reply, “I liked their song in that one car commercial, so I downloaded it. I really don’t know much about them. Who is this again?”

It’s something I’m guilty of as well. More often than none, that sparks me on a pursuit of getting as much as I can about that band, not just that one song. On top of that, I can spend, and have on many occasions, hours with Google and Wikipedia doing a meandering of research on rock and roll history, finding out who is still around and what happened to who.

Do you ever think to look deeper into that music? Get that whole album, listen to it from start to finish, and then think about what the artist was trying to do with this thing that they created? I fear that the love is getting lost in this new digital age. Don’t get me wrong, I’m wading out there with the rest of the kool-aid drinkers, but the appreciation of the art seems to be getting left behind.

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Jeff Buckley (November 17, 1966 – May 29, 1997)

I was going to let my last post about Jeff Buckley ride, but there has been a little bit of commenting on that post to make me do a little bit of a quick update.

It was today in 1997, Jeff Buckley passed away.

On May 29, 1997, as the band’s plane touched down on the runway to join him in his Memphis studio, Buckley went swimming in Wolf River Harbor, a tributary of the Mississippi River, while wearing steel-toed boots, all of his clothing, and singing along to a radio playing Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”. A roadie of Buckley’s band, Keith Foti, remained ashore. After moving the radio and a guitar out of reach of the wake from a passing tugboat, Foti looked up to see that Buckley was gone. Despite a determined rescue effort that night, Buckley remained missing, and the search was called off the following day due to heavy rain. One week later his body was spotted by a tourist on a riverboat marina and was brought ashore. [wikipedia]

A new album has been released, as of today, featuring some best of studio tracks as well as recordings of certain live performances.

The recognition of his brief time in rock and roll history is getting a lot more attention from fans than I expected, but it’s not too surprising. Amar Bakshi for the Washington Post left a comment about an interview he did with British singer Karima Francis, and it’s worth checking out the effect that Buckley is still having on musicians, ten years after the fact. NPR has a nice story about him as well.

I want to do more and explain why I’ve come to appreciate his music like I do, but the fact is that we don’t have much to go on. As he was rising up as an artist, the world lost an incredible talent. We’ll never know how good it could have been. When I go back to the small catalog that is, it makes you wonder. Plus, there are only so many people who can cover “Lilac Wine” and do it well, especially when you consider that Nina Simone did the same.

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Lou Barlow – monkey begun

Lou Barlow[wiki] has been a guy that I’ve been following for a long time, but I fear that I am going to completely embarrass myself right now. It wasn’t until this past Friday that DaveO gave me the full back story on the guy, and I discovered that Barlow was one of the founding members of Dinosaur Jr.[wiki], a piece of rock and roll history that has alluded me up until now.

Like any bit of discovery that I stumble into like that, I try to get the complete story as much as I can. Venturing down the YouTube route, I found this clip of Dinosaur Jr. performing on the Jenny Jones Show. Wait, what the… Jenny Jones? Yeah, that floored me, too.

So many years of flipping through CDs at the store and thumbing through station libraries, always thinking, “Hey, I should give that a spin sometime.” I never did, and now the price is being paid. I feel like I should be flogged.

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10 years after Jeff Buckley

There is something about Jeff Buckley[wiki] that keeps me coming back time and time again. I remember seeing his video for “Last Goodbye”[youtube] back in those glory days of MTV. You know that they used to show videos? Amazing, I know, but it’s true. It was also a track that I was requested to play for a fellow KRUI DJ as she drove away from the station for the last time and graduating the next day, never to return.

Sentimental, tacky crap? Hardly, but it certainly does evoke some memories of a fond time in life.

Jeff Buckley video on The GuardianThe Guardian published a pretty cool video on their site today that trips that thought among any fan of Buckley’s; it’s a shame that he died so young. Hard to believe that it’s been ten years since he died, and I recall the news when it happened pretty vividly. The Reverend got me a copy of a show he did in Paris just before Buckley passed, and it comes up in my playlist every so often. It’s the next best thing I’ve got to actually seeing him, and I try to imagine what that would have been like.

Go check out the video for yourself. It’s worth the viewing.

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Hum – stars

Hum[wiki] surfaced on my playlist this morning, so I thought I would poke around on YouTube to see if any, still rabid fans have posted anything there. As you can see, they did.

The track “The Pod” was the one that grabbed my attention this morning, but this video for their song “Stars” tripped my memory a tad. I know it’s such a low-fi video, but this was in the days of the mid-90’s where video production wasn’t as accessible as it is now. We were talking that not many people actually make videos these days, and that’s really interesting because all you need a laptop and a camera.

Hum - You’d Prefer An AstronautAnyway, it was one of the first few shifts at KRUI that I discovered Hum. For a few weeks, that zebra on the cover of “You’d Prefer An Astronaut”[wiki] made me curious, but I never gave in until a caller requested this particular song.

Aside from the sudden, quiet to loud beginning of the song that completely over modulated the air signal by peaking the needles solidly in the red of the VU meters (meaning that listening to this on the radio end, it sounded really distorted and like crap), I was immensely in love with the thick, heavy sound that Hum is so well known for. Even in those wee hours of a Saturday morning, sometime between 4AM and 7AM, I knew that this was something to make a note of. One of those moments you remember when and where you were at a time that you discovered something influential in your life.

Hum put out another album after that, “Downward is Heavenward”[wiki], but the band parted ways nearly two years following the release, the farewell show taking place on the final night of the last millennium. There has been a reunion show more than a handful of times, and Matt Talbot went off to lead Centaur[wiki] as well as pop up in other various projects, one of them recently being Neverending White Lights[wiki].

Thus ends this musical lesson journey inside my mind.

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The Lost Patrol Band – automatic kids

The Lost Patrol Band is the side project of Dennis Lyxzen[wiki] that has gone from a solo thing to a full fledge band. Name doesn’t sound familiar? Try his previous stint with the band Refused[wiki], and if that doesn’t ring a bell, then The (International) Noise Conspiracy might trip your trigger. Fear not, T(I)NC is still alive and kicking. This is just what Dennis does during the off season.

This is a recent discovery to my musical knowledge. It’s a noticeable departure from what you’ve seen from the previous things that Lyxzen has been apart of. I’ve often read about his guitar playing abilities, so I’m not too surprised to see him with one strapped on. A far cry from his stage dancing, rocking out that I’ve come accustomed to at T(I)NC shows, and the music is a tad more laid back as well. Kinda poppy, a little post-punk, almost power pop. I can dig that.

If you want more, check out the video for “I Don’t Understand” and “Golden Times“. And if those videos aren’t too much for you, gander at “Alright” which features Swedish pop singer Lisa Miskovsky[wiki]. I like it all, and there is some strange flash of Bryan Adams that goes through my head when watching them. Must be that hip, retro thing.

After that, watch the video for “Capitalism Stole My Virginity” and “Reproduction of Death” by T(I)NC. Then for a full circle trip, “New Noise” by Refused. You may want to systematically turn down your speakers as the rock increasingly progresses.

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The clever marketing of Nine Inch Nails

Let’s really date myself, ok? I was talking just yesterday with Rebecca that I was one of “those kids” in high school. One of those folks who would sketch the Nine Inch Nails logo in my notebook as study hall would tick along. Was I a social outcast in the midst of a goth phase during my adolescence years? Nope. I just dug the tunes, and that hasn’t changed a whole lot today, minus the notebook doodles.

Nine Inch NailsWhen I think about it now, my mind starts to contemplate the marketing genius that Trent Reznor[wiki] conjured up when he formed this music project, and this is outside of the realms of creating music. He’s not afraid to say that the reason that he created the whole “NIN” branding is because it is just that. Instead of needing a name for recognition, he has garnered a symbol.

Of course he’s not the only guy to do this. Off the top of my head, Prince did the same thing. It was a little later in his career that this happened, but that squiggly, male/female thing will be forever branded with him and his fans. Other bands do this from time to time, mostly as a branding for their album. I’m sure that someone else can chime is with examples of both of these methods.

I have to extend a little more credit to what Trent Reznor is doing right now. Some would call him washed up, but say what you will. Every time I hear something new, I have the thought in my head that I used to listen to that when I was 16 and that seems soooo 1995 now. Then, I find that I actually like it. Am I afraid to admit that? Not really, and there are so many other things that I listen to that would probably throw you for a loop, not to mention if you even heard of them before. So, whatever.

Anyhow, it was this piece of news that prompted me to say anything about our conversation from yesterday.

Nine Inch Nails, who are proving themselves one of the most daring and forward-looking artists on a major label today, have released three tracks from their brand new album, Year Zero via BiTorrent, and more astoundingly, have done so via the controversial giant BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bay.

The Pirate Bay, a wildly popular BitTorrent site, has earned the scorn and more than one lawsuit from law enforcement worldwide, but has proven to be astoundingly successful. The planned leaking of music by a major label artist on a site which exists in – at best – a legal grey area is truly remarkable. In this case, Nine Inch Nails released full multi-track versions of three songs from the album for users to remix or listen to at extremely high sound quality. They are promising that the entire album will be available over the next few weeks. [punknews]

I like forward thinking, plain and simple. This also makes me more than likely to get my hands on a free copy of this new album. You can argue if that’s wrong, but if I tell you where you can download this as well, and then you like it, what’s the chances that you’ll check out more of their stuff or go to a show? Take that concept away from Nine Inch Nails and apply it to someone else that you are a fan of.

This is close to where I would like to see the music industry go, but there has to be some certainty to the formula. Harvey Danger has tried this, but I can’t be sure about it’s success. Their website is still up, so that’s a good sign.

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Response from students who opposed a U.K. rock show

Awhile back, I made a post about how I couldn’t believe that students at a small college in the U.K. protested against a rock show by the band Clinic so they could focus on their studies instead. You can read my post and get more background information here.

The beauty of the internet is that someone who was actually there found my post and left a comment on it, four months after the whole ordeal. Additionally, “Sue” was one of those students who opposed the show and gave her account of what happened and why. I find this incredibly fascinating that I’m posting her comment here to make an update to my previous post in this topic.

This is such an old story if feels odd posting a comment, but I only came across all the internet ranting on the issue today. I was one of the students that protested about the gig, to be honest we were told it had moved venue and thought nothing more of the matter. However now I feel that I should set the record straight(although probably no-one will even read this).

The gig that was to “last a couple of hours” demanded that we destroy our sculptures in order to move out of the performance space; our studios. We were given one weeks notice. A couple of weeks after the scheduled gig we had a very important assessment that lead directly into our degree show. After three years of studying our result is determined by the degree show. This assesment was CRUCIAL. However we were told to remove everything from the studio(which demanded destroying many of the works). We would have less than 1 week to build new work before our 3 year degree began to be assessed on the basis on what was being presented.

Also in response to the endless record company lies, It wasn’t the first gig to be played there since the sex pistol. A year prior to the clinic scheduled gig a big promotional gig with the paddingtons had happened to mark the 30th anniversary of the sex pistol’s first gig. Central Saint Martins has used this fact to establish itself as a venue to whore band, making false connection with rock’s history, to create artifical connections between the music industry and art students, when infact its just the old money making men pushing promotional bullshit. It was a disguting act of record label PR/branding. Yuk!!!

And finally, not to be rude but St Martins is not a “small” school, it is internationally reknowned for its on going contribution to our creative environment. Its just a shame that the reality of this reputation (you see really the sex pistols played for 5 minutes before college heads unplugged them and chucked them out)is perpetuated by vulgar marketing, where the dean ignores his students in order to contrive PR stunts with money hungry record companies.

Thanks for the clarification, and I certainly stand corrected on the details. I am very much against having anything destroyed when it comes to art, so you officially have my support, Sue. This shows a real beauty in the reach that blogging has, and your comment certainly reached me.