A Primer In Complaining About "The Industry" Like A Real Musician

More music news from Wired, this time about a music management company trying to free bands from the shackles of the Big Record Labels.

I don't have much to say about this one, but for those of you who've never taken an interest in the business side of music, the article does a pretty good job of describing the major commercial problems with the industry right now, all artistic discussions aside. Two case studies in music marketing are the new Barenaked Ladies project and how Sarah McLachlan crossed the Canada-U.S. musical border.

After you've read the article, let me know what you think about this new business model.

Gathering Moss, Gathering Lots of Moss

Seeing the cover of Rolling Stone this week reminded me that Wired magazine recently reported a sweeping, curmudgeonly generalization coming out of the mouth of a musician so boring and antiquated he was once not the subject of Rolling Stone but a PBS documentary. On the recording industry: "I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really." On music piracy on the internet: "Well, why not? It ain't worth nothing anyway." Guessed who it is yet? That's right, it's Bob Dylan, quoting his next album straight into the bargain bin!

I have to put my foot down now with such comments, I really do. I am sick to death of this trend among songwriters of Dylan's era and stature revelling in their own documentaries and swan song albums, and using their press cycle to shit on the progress of modern music. These eulogies for their own careers aren't even worthy of the term "masturbatory" because no one gets off.

Now perhaps "trend" is too strong of a word, but consider this: back in March, Neil Young said of his latest album (in which he rhymed "war" with "door", and then followed that with "door" and "war" -- brilliant songwriting, no?) that he was just frustrated to no end that young musicians weren't writing war protest songs. How about the Dresden Dolls' "Yes, Virginia"? Or even more directly, what about, oh... this entire list of protest songs?

It appears that what Young is frustrated with is the fact that the anti-war movement hasn't magically resuscitated the 1960s/70s era folk idiom (that style of direct and pointed lyric-writing), so much so that he comes across as a dinosaur, or worse, a bad writer. You don't have to sacrifice poetic language to write an anti-war song -- in fact, it does the entire art a disservice to require all political content in songs to sound like campaign literature, like Young's "Let's Impeach the President for Lying".

I would love to impeach the president for any number of reasons. I would love to write a song about it. But setting the latest post on leftyblogs.com to music kills all the depth and complexity that is songwriting. Mr. Young, put the microphone down.

And as for you, Mr. Dylan, and your carefree attitude towards internet piracy: arrrrrgh, matey, prepare to be boarded!

Sometimes the Clothes Do Not Make the Man

This would fall into the "other diversions" category, but I couldn't resist picking on American Apparel after finding absolutely nothing in their store worth paying for in genuine US currency. Read Bernard Dolan's report on American Apparel, and see for yourself how quickly you forget about the clothes and start fixating on the tailor.

I picked this up from tinyluckygenius -- a tip-off on an American Apparel expose from Clamor Magazine that, in its online preview, hints at blowing out your stereotypes about the most overpriced T-shirts on all of Newbury Street:

Like everything else about its business, American Apparel's marketing showcases the bizarre contradictions of postmodern consumer capitalism. The company possesses a downtown textile factory straight out of the '40s, a sexploitation ad campaign from the '70s, and a marketing strategy so sophisticated it almost seems to come from the future.

There are some interesting comments on Clamor's website you can read that testify to American Apparel's obvious displeasure at revealing the curtain of their non-marketing marketing campaign. But I would actually argue that it isn't American Apparel's non-brand-identity-brand-identity that makes it such a hip little poster child for postmodern meaninglessness. Instead, it's the conflation of its eccentric and attention-loving(grabbing?) CEO Dov Charney with its corporate and brand identity that signifies an arrest of traditional meaning. AA has simply replaced the traditional, logo- or attitude-based brand with the Dov Charney brand. Charney loves attention -- and interviews! -- and the media eats his oversexed, 70s trucker-at-a-gloryhole persona up with a spoon in lengthy business-turned-personal profiles. Charney has even been featured in ads (in his underwear), further confirming that his reputation for exhibitionism is marketing, plain and simple.

Granted, this is nothing new -- Bill Gates is synonymous with Microsoft, Steve Jobs with Apple, Donald Trump with... well, whatever the hell he owns now. But the press has been the one highlighting the emperor behind the empire in those cases. I can hardly see Bill Gates as the type to run around the office in his underwear to get his profile in the New York Times. So perhaps American Apparel's non-brand strategy is leaving an intentional void, one to be filled in by its emperor, new clothes and all.

Update on Guitar Tablature Lawsuits

[A quick thank you to everyone who came out to Roggie's last night -- I had a lot of fun, so I hope to play there again soon.]

This week the New York Times picked up the story about the guitar tab controversy, with some interesting new takes on the situation (see my earlier post), and some new legal defenses from the webmasters -- such as "Our website is in Russia, US copyright laws don't apply to me!" I take this to mean that some of the webmasters, like this one, have opted against actually hiring a lawyer in a legal battle. Perhaps they're buying case study books off of Half.com to teach themselves?

Sorry for the cheap shot.

The Times picked out a nice quote from one of the user forums on guitarnoise.com, however: "The ironic thing might be that a service like that — with fully licensed music/tab offered at a low per song rate — might actually benefit guitar players by providing the correct music/tab and not the garbage that we currently sift through."

Which is a good point, but my question is: if the music publishing industry isn't already producing tabs for their non-megastar artists, why are they going to start now? What did all of you guitarists do before the internet? I say "you guitarists" 'cause let's face it, we pianists have been transcribing our own parts by ear since Hendrix and the Beatles, and the folios that the publishers put on the shelves are often drastically simplified arrangements that are sometimes even incorrect. I doubt this is going to change soon.

But then, what else do you get for the gay boy who already has every Tori Amos album?

What's Makin' Me Sorta Antsy This Week

Is one of my favorite Inman Square music venues, the Lily Pad, going to close? If so, will it just be replaced by more generic not-punk "punk" rock parading up Prospect Street from Central Square?? And if so, will somebody tell those kids if it's just two guitars a bass and a drummer it's rock, like just-plain-rock rock???

Do I, umm...I'm even embarassed to ask this... to get new listeners, do I now need to create a Second Life avatar in addition to the MySpace profile that I neglect? Will my Second Life avatar be incomplete like said MySpace profile, and live in a two-sided house, have no clothes, and stand in place for weeks at a time?? Do I have any friends on Second Life??? Am I their First Friend or Second Friend????

Will the in-progress Smashing Pumpkins album restore my love for angsty late-90s melodic rock? Will it restore my faith in Billy Corgan? Will it remind the country that Chicago is a kick-ass rock factory?? (I mean, besides the organizers of the Lollapalooza, Intonation, and Pitchfork Festivals, the crew from KEXP, and everyone who lives in Wicker Park???)

Remote Updates

No time for a lengthy update this weekend (I'm visiting Chicago), but I wanted to post two quick updates:
(1) Jessie's Zack Hickman photos have been added to the Josh Ritter concert debrief.
(2) I'm going to be the feature at Roggie's Open Mic on Tuesday, August 22nd. Signup/show starts at 9pm. I'll add the show to my calendar when I get home, but in the meantime, save the date! I'll be trying out some brand-new songs, too. Bring your friends!

More Ambiguous Internet Copyright Questions

OK, everyone, to celebrate the new commenting system, I'm giving you lots of questions and no answers. Ready? Go!

NPR did a story earlier this week about a crackdown by the Music Publishers' Association on free guitar tab sites. The major contention chronicled in the story is the MPA's claim that these sites are making a profit (from web ads) off of somebody else's copyrighted material. Sites like Guitar Tab Universe and Guitar Zone have issued statements citing the greed of the MPA and the innocuity of learning to play your favorite songs from guitar tabs.

As a performer and a songwriter, I'm having a hard time deciding where I stand on this one -- especially as a pianist, who winds up learning most everything by ear for the general lack of piano sheet music in the pop/rock genre. I don't feel dependent on someone else's transcription to learn the music, and I strongly believe songwriters are entitled to any money they can scrape off of the share that publishing companies are taking (generally 50%). But the question is, how much are songwriters and publishers losing when these sites illegally post free tabs -- if it is, in fact, illegal? (I believe this is still being decided, otherwise there wouldn't be a story.) Does this act hurt the copyright owner?

Conversely, is such a site profiting off of someone else's work? According to the NPR interview, Guitar Tabs Universe earns just enough off of web ads to cover their expenses for web hosting. But are they really only making the $30 a year that a basic hosting account costs? Does transcribing a piece of music (without permission) merit a fee?

As Queer as a Five Dollar Bill

I have some resentment towards this new show from Logo, MTV's all-queer cable channel. The show is a reality series following twin gay brothers trying to succeed in rock music. As Logo promotes it:

In another twist the pair, raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses, have to deal with whether or not to come out to their religious family (ouch!). And in the music biz, they’ve got to face the issue of being marketed as openly gay musicians. And what if they get dropped by their record label??? Yep, they have a lot going on!

Well, first off, unless Jehovah's Witnesses can't use the internet, I think their family would have probably seen their gay, gay MySpace friends, and that's kind of a giveaway, huh?

But the misleading aspect of this promo blurb is the apparent connection between being "marketed as openly gay musicians" and getting dropped by their record label. Does this insinuate some sort of connection that if the forces of mass market homophobia prevail, their label will drop them? Or that they are aspiring to become icons in the gay niche market?

Look, I'm not going to claim that the music business is friendlier towards gays than any other big industry, but give me a break here -- if you're going to claim to face homophobia from your music, at least be fucking out yourself! They don't write their own lyrics (again, check out their MySpace page and click on "lyrics"), the lyrics they do have are washed clean of any queer subtext (let alone content), and there's nothing even culturally queer in their choice of genre (generic rock). What, so they're trying their best to overcome music biz homophobia by what -- by assimilation?!? By trying to trick straightey into buying their album??? "Aww, dude, I didn't realize these guys were fags! Now I gotta eBay this album before I go gay."

Hell, Lance Bass was more out than these boys and he had his own walk-in closet.

Musicians like this need to wake up and take a look around. Artists like the Scissor Sisters, the Magnetic Fields, Rufus Wainwright, and Placebo (just to name a few) are already proving that openly queer artists can have a mixed following (queer and straight alike), and hey, guess what? They don't even need a reality TV show to launch their careers.

[technical update: comment system]

FYI: I've switched the commenting system on the blog over to Haloscan to attempt to correct a problem with Blogger's comments not appearing on the main page. In the process, I think I unfortunately lost the comments that were here before, so apologies to those of you who have commented already. (Jessie, I haven't forgotten about your moustache pics.) Unfortunately for now this involves ads on the comment pages until I shell out for an upgrade. Let me know if they get too obnoxious.

Josh Ritter Report: A Mind Of Its Own

Due to a lack of funds, I haven't been to many shows recently, but thankfully summertime brings with it massively corporate-sponsored free shows, like last night's Josh Ritter concert. I really wanted to write a post-concert review or report of some kind, but how to keep with the blog's theme of a pomo/homo spin? Ritter's straightforward, emotionally direct songwriting style doesn't leave a lot of room for deconstruction or queer ambiguation.

No, just about the only postmodern theme from last night's performance is that one day, at its current rate of growth, bassist Zack Hickman's moustache will one day take over Hickman's entire face, and possibly the entire band. (The pics on his website do not show the full Wild Western-ness Hickman has now.) It doesn't even look possible or authentic, it's like a simulacrum of a moustache. It quietly asks other moustaches to leave the saloon if they know what's good for 'em. I've never seen Hickman wear a cowboy hat during a Ritter gig before -- did the moustache make him wear it? Did the moustache steal the suit Ritter used to wear at all of his shows? Is it singing Hickman's harmony parts? What next will it demand???

Photos from Jessie Gladin-Kramer:

Everytime I Look Around, It's Thom Yorke's Face

A Serious Inquiry For My Readers:

I was walking through my local Barnes & Nobles and couldn't help notice on the music rack that Thom Yorke is on three covers of three music magazines right now: Paste, Mojo, and SPIN. Does Yorke really need to be on three covers at the moment? More specifically,

• Are his rabid fans going to buy all three of them?
  
• Has Yorke done something so tremendous with his solo album that other frontpeople haven't done? I have to admit I don't have his new album (what?!? shut this so-called "music" blog down!) but is it amazing enough to warrant such homogenous media coverage?
  
• Is he just too popular now to not put on your cover?

Immediate reaction: it's better to see 3 Yorke covers than my least-favorite-Wilson on the cover of Blender. Come on Owen, stop puckering your lips. You look like a collagen factory.