Slumberlord
Thursday, October 21, 2004
"You like your music fast, I like my music slow"
I checked out insane freakout band Cerberus Shoal Sunday. The opening act was a duo. The girl played guitar and the guy upright bass. On the first song he used a bow. The next he plucked the strings. On the third he slid his hands along the wood sides of the bass to make squeaking noises, like wet sneakers on a nursing home's linoleum floor. That's when I decided to get another another beer and hit up the Playboy pinball machine.
In other news, the shrimp blog is killing it even without much help from my lazy ass. Look at that, 88 referrals on Hip-Hop Blogs in the last five days, oh my. SergDun and now Byron make SMS a force to be reckoned with. David ups the ante with his analysis of a new Chicago mixtape. TITE!
"A Pie for President" is one of the songs the Shoal played Sunday. Yes, they are weirder than ever. Courtesy Northeast Indie.
I checked out insane freakout band Cerberus Shoal Sunday. The opening act was a duo. The girl played guitar and the guy upright bass. On the first song he used a bow. The next he plucked the strings. On the third he slid his hands along the wood sides of the bass to make squeaking noises, like wet sneakers on a nursing home's linoleum floor. That's when I decided to get another another beer and hit up the Playboy pinball machine.
In other news, the shrimp blog is killing it even without much help from my lazy ass. Look at that, 88 referrals on Hip-Hop Blogs in the last five days, oh my. SergDun and now Byron make SMS a force to be reckoned with. David ups the ante with his analysis of a new Chicago mixtape. TITE!
"A Pie for President" is one of the songs the Shoal played Sunday. Yes, they are weirder than ever. Courtesy Northeast Indie.
Thursday, October 14, 2004
Culture wars
The more I read, the more I feel that so many of the ideas I have gone on about recently – like this, this and this – are part of some larger, historical force that extends beyond my limited awareness.
Example. The so-far excellent Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, recommended by Ohio's numba-one dee-jay, takes the long view on dance culture. Whereas landmark books on dance culture like “Energy Flash” scoped in on a particular era of dance music, “Last Night” reaches back to the historical roots of DJ culture to make some wider observations. The results are startling, to say the least. And explain a lot of the barriers between white and black music, rock and rhythm, songwriters and DJs, labels and radio stations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, jukeboxes and small radio stations were playing records, back when the norm both in clubs and on the air was live music by working musicians. Musicians actually went on strike in 1942 to get more royalties to compensate them for business lost to records played on the air and by jukeboxes and DJs in live settings.
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers also went to war with the DJ, charging radio stations for playing records it copyrighted. The stations responded by creating Broadcast Music Incorporated, a separate copyrighting firm, which recruited minority artists who were often excluded from the established ASCAP.
Record labels also took on radio stations; as the authors write, “They thought people were less likely to buy a record if they could hear it played for free. This fear was borne out by some Depression-era figures which showed that urban areas with popular radio stations were suffering a downturn in record sales (they were actually suffering a downturn in sales of everything).” Sound familiar, MP3 age consumers?
The history is interesting to anyone who sees the modern manifestations of this conflict.
Mp3: Space Art - "Elektro Symphonie". Good for one week or 25 dls.
The more I read, the more I feel that so many of the ideas I have gone on about recently – like this, this and this – are part of some larger, historical force that extends beyond my limited awareness.
Example. The so-far excellent Last Night a DJ Saved My Life, recommended by Ohio's numba-one dee-jay, takes the long view on dance culture. Whereas landmark books on dance culture like “Energy Flash” scoped in on a particular era of dance music, “Last Night” reaches back to the historical roots of DJ culture to make some wider observations. The results are startling, to say the least. And explain a lot of the barriers between white and black music, rock and rhythm, songwriters and DJs, labels and radio stations.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, jukeboxes and small radio stations were playing records, back when the norm both in clubs and on the air was live music by working musicians. Musicians actually went on strike in 1942 to get more royalties to compensate them for business lost to records played on the air and by jukeboxes and DJs in live settings.
The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers also went to war with the DJ, charging radio stations for playing records it copyrighted. The stations responded by creating Broadcast Music Incorporated, a separate copyrighting firm, which recruited minority artists who were often excluded from the established ASCAP.
Record labels also took on radio stations; as the authors write, “They thought people were less likely to buy a record if they could hear it played for free. This fear was borne out by some Depression-era figures which showed that urban areas with popular radio stations were suffering a downturn in record sales (they were actually suffering a downturn in sales of everything).” Sound familiar, MP3 age consumers?
The history is interesting to anyone who sees the modern manifestations of this conflict.
Mp3: Space Art - "Elektro Symphonie". Good for one week or 25 dls.
