Pick-a-Band

Maybe it was a symptom of not being at SXSW, but I've been craving live music lately. And not just the bands I know either.

In addition to seeing a bunch of different live shows last week, the other night I nearly made it out to a non-predetermined club to see whoever was playing. I don't think I've ever shown up at a club for no reason. There's always been a reason - I like their music, a friend wants to go, I work for them, I need to check them out, I was given free tickets. As I said, I nearly made it out, so I don't get full credit, but it felt liberating to not have a plan.

On the planned side, I saw the weirdest live music performance I've ever seen in the form of Tanya Tagaq, an Inuit throat-singer. I've seen and admired the Tuvan style of throat-singing, but this was different altogether. Imagine that sound you make when you stretch first thing in the morning but while inhaling and beatboxing and sounding tortured. And imagine that you're Bjork and you hug everyone and you really like steaks. I sound like I'm making fun of her, but the cool thing about her was her sincerity and lack of irony. That and she ended the night by saying "Thank you for accepting weird." I was enamored.

The following night at Rock and Roll Hotel I enjoyed the crack band and countryesque croonings of middle opener April Smith and the Great Picture Show while remaining underwhelmed and disappointed by the droning from indie darlings Here We Go Magic - kind of like Arcade Fire but with fewer hooks. Also liked The Dig at the 9:30 Club who I've been meaning to see because they're friends of a friend and Port O'Brien. Portugal. The Man headlined, but by then I was too hungry to hang around; did learn that they're from Wasilla, Alaska though.

Now I head off to New Orleans for another few days of talking about activism with musicians and a rock show at One Eyed Jacks.

I guess the pick-a-band adventure will wait until another night.

Music as Gewgaw

I admit I live in the bubble of the embattled independent music world. Given that, it was an interesting experience to spend two days in the Corporate Music World when I attended Digital Music Forum East on February 24 and 25 in NYC. Some thoughts on my foray into that strange land:

- Music-as-most-definitely-a-business: I was looking forward to hearing David Pakman, formerly CEO of emusic, now with venture capital firm Venrock, because I'm a subscriber and emusic's obviously been looking to grow their audience and their bottom line lately. The noteworthy point for me of his interview was that, contrary to the many emusic subscribers who cried foul when they started offering some Sony titles last year, Pakman describes emusic's niche of independent music as a business decision. They took the path of least resistance - with the independent labels who were more willing to license to them at decent rates - and built a business model around them. Which says to me, that while the indieness-as-godliness image of emusic might still be "authentic", it's an image built to support a business model, not the reverse.

If that's the case, there's nothing wrong with that since it enabled the rise of one of the most successful digital music retailers ever...but I'd bet it's an affront to all those people who hold emusic as a standard-bearer for the indie aesthetic (whatever the hell that means these days). If you think I paint too strong a picture, try googling "emusic sellout" - it's not all about this topic, but it's a prominent theme.

- A guy from MTV Music was asked why they don't play more music videos. That's probably the most asked question to all MTV employees ever. He talked about how the channel is about more than music videos. And since the schedule has all seven hours of music videos programmed, from 3 AM - 10 AM, I agree. But why not own up to it? Just say that "My Life as Liz" garners more viewers than music videos ever did. No, they're not saying that in so many words but they did quietly drop the words "Music Television" from the logo recently.

- Branding, image, markets, profits, brand penetration, so much about music as a thing to sell other stuff. For example, a question asked from the stage: "do you need music to brand a product or just an engaged audience?" Now I recognize that many indie bands would happily license their song to Sears to fund their next tour. Making money to further your career isn't selling out - these days, it's surviving, which translates to winning the game.

My beef with this whole line of discussion is that it's not about music, rather it's about how to make McDonald's/Proctor & Gamble/Jeep more successful - with the incidental help of X artist/song. Throughout my two days there was very little discussion about paying artists, many complaints about licensing costs, and I'd almost swear I saw the audience smile kindly and condescendingly at the one guy who spoke from the stage of signing artists to his label for their music rather than their marketability! As they all acknowledged, it's a rough business to be in - now and ever. If you're not in it for the music, then why bother? Go sell tires instead already.

It's like that call I got once from some guy wanting to know how easy it was to make good money making music. He seemed to expect me to have a roadmap handy. *Smile* *Sigh*

Sipping from the Garden Hose of Words

To lessen the feeling of being perpetually behind, I've been trying to be more intentional with my literal and virtual piles of stuff to read.

I currently have magazine subscriptions to Outside, Cook's Illustrated, and The Atlantic. I also sold my name to TapeOp's mailing list in exchange for a subscription. At the beginning of the year, I swapped Paste Magazine for The Atlantic.

As someone that works in music, it feels odd to no longer receive print music journalism in the mail. But I found I wasn't looking forward to reading Paste anymore since they're so focused on adult-contemporary genres. That, plus having so many sources to find music now, meant that reading it didn't seem necessary. The last music magazine that I remember wanting to read from beginning to end in one sitting was Musician magazine. What was cool about Musician magazine was just how many genres and musician-related issues they covered. Maybe it was a slight foreshadowing of the work I do now?

In terms of long-form reading, I've succeeded in consolidating the "to read" list to one online list on goodreads.com. I still add more stuff to the list than I read - but at least I know what I've been meaning to read.

The blogs, however, are killing me. Can't keep up. Too much content. Not enough time. And the brain only takes in so much in one sitting. Do other people just let all the daily knowledge wash over them? Do they use services to sort through it all? Even though I'm slowly unsubscribing, I think I'm only managing to swap the stuff I don't care about for less stuff that I care more about -- which only makes the problem worse.

Too much stuff to read! Magazines! Blogs! Books! Ahh!

Ode to Snowstorms

I love snow. Even today, on my fifth day of being held semi-hostage by two consecutive snowstorms - I still love snow.

For me, snowstorms are about trudging down the middle of the street in a city that's as quiet as it's ever going to be because lots of snowflakes have forced me and everyone else to give in to something they can't control.

It's not only that snow covers bare ground and purifies the landscape and gives us days off, but it's what a good snowstorm does to people. I come from one of those places where strangers don't talk to each other unless it's about snowstorms or the Red Sox in the playoffs. In DC, like in Boston, snow brings people together. My experience has been that during snowstorms people are kinder to each other - shoveling, pushing cars, helping people over snowbanks; they're more patient - driving slower, standing in lines at the grocery store; they have more fun - sledding, skiing, snowmen, forts, snowball flights. Kindness, patience, and the ability to enjoy life can get lost in the daily grind of "accomplishing things" and snowstorms give people the chance to rediscover and embrace them.

Fair Use Now

I attended Public Knowledge's World's Fair Use Day last week - an entertaining and informative day-long exploration of the state of fair use and how technology is pushing people to invoke it for new purposes.

Fair use is a principle of copyright law that entitles the public to freely use copyrighted work for commentary or criticism without needing permission from the copyright owner - full definition with examples here and here. In order to determine whether a work is fair use, a judge weighs four factors: 1) the purpose and character of the work, i.e. is the use of the work transformative or educational; 2) the nature of the work, i.e. is it fiction or non-fiction, published or not; 3) how much of the copyrighted word is used and is it the heart of the work; and 4) what does the use do to the value of the original work.

Stay with me here, because I know it sounds like a pretty opaque concept at first, but it's used easily and without mishap often. Basically, a song parody or a book review that includes a quote takes advantage of the fair use principle to use the original song or the quoted material, respectively. (Notable exception: Weird Al Yankovic gets permission from recording artists and licenses every song he parodies rather than claiming his songs as fair uses. Check out artist reactions to Weird Al's requests to parody. Kurt Cobain's reaction is priceless.)

What I find so compelling about fair use is that it sits exactly at the place where the law and popular culture and digital culture are colliding. As has been noted umpteen times in the last few years, we live in a remix culture, and remixed work relies upon source material, and source material requires money to create. So the law struggles to untangle the need for creators to make a living from the need for the rest of the public to inform, criticize, comment, and mashup. And that's what fair use deals with.

Most of the programming I saw at World's Fair Use Day dealt with multimedia uses of copyrighted work that were critiques/commentaries that were clearly transformative to me. For example, Jonathan McIntosh's So You Think You Can Be President is an overt critique of the political process but it's an even more inciseful commentary once you read about what he's trying to accomplish below the comedic surface. The same holds true for his Buffy vs. Edward from Twilight (accompanying explanation here).

Fair use in multimedia can be a murky proposition, but seems to be an easier case to make once guidelines are established. That may be wishful thinking on my part, but it's still a far easier argument to make than fair use in music.

After all, practically speaking, how do you recognize a critique or commentary of a song that's being sampled? How do you delineate a non-transformative use of a sample from one that is transformative? I consider Girl Talk, for example, to be transformative in how he juxtaposes and recontextualizes samples, but is that fair use? Cardozo Law Review writes two fictitious opposing opinions, Idolator stands firm, and the New York Times even weighs in.

The existence of that gray area is exactly why I find the topic of fair use so fascinating: sampling in music today creates art that's valid, valued, and culturally relevant but the law has no standardized way to recognize it - imagine it as music in its own private Guantanamo Bay.

All that's not to say there aren't ways to deal with sampling in music. There are, but unfortunately, they're clunky and expensive and not conducive to the creative process. There are also creative remedies to improve the current sample clearance process. But those remedies are almost beside the point if musicians have to circumvent fair use - the system set in place by copyright law for precisely this purpose - to create music that doesn't flout copyright law and and allows them a chance to make a living from their art.

Extracurricular

About 20 minutes after I turn on my laptop and start writing, my machine has begun crashing and flickering like that fluorescent light flicker that gives you a headache. I've decided not to take it personally and let the Genius Bar live up to its name on Monday. We shall see.

Anyway, here's some cool stuff that's made an impression lately:

- A few months ago, I saw Martin Atkins of Killing Joke & Ministry on his book tour behind Tour:Smart. Book tour is a misnomer since he didn't talk about his book - which goes into great detail on how not to kill yourself on tour and the reasons why being a tour manager can be one of the worst jobs ever. He did talk a lot about marketing yourself though and had some fantastic examples to pass around. I thought these were really cool: 1) Moldovar's CD with a working light theremin, song titles written using circuitry, a headphone jack, and a built-in speaker, which altogether make the CD into an instrument of its own, and 2) Shogun Kunitoki's picture vinyl with animation loops that you can see if you get the strobe light that goes with the vinyl. I have a hard time caring overmuch about the music when there's so much extracurricular fun to be had with the packaging. As long as it's not Top 40 crap.

- Last month's issue of Outside is outstanding with a timely article on the perils and challenges of fighting in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.

- Clone-themed entertainment I've enjoyed lately: Dollhouse Season 1 and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. There's definitely a creepy factor to both of these, but it's a good creep.

- Music Hack Day featured lots of boys slinging code for a couple of days to make music apps talk to each other. I'm still unclear on the need for the table full of soldering irons. But still, it's always informative to look at the music industry from a heretofore unknown angle and see how the consumer challenges get fixed. Check out the hacks.

- Stevie Wonder performing Superstition on Sesame Street. Money says that was the only time Cookie Monster got name-checked during a performance of that song.

- The Muppets redoing the music video of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody. Mama! Mama?

- The Puppy Channel from this episode of This American Life. That is, unless you think we've gone over the cuteness deep end?

Missing Pieces

I went back and forth with my friend Shane last week having one of those political science discussions that could've gone on forever - and still might - and ended with us agreeing for the most part.

Shane argues that the progressive movement lacks strong enough convictions to hold Democrats accountable. The conservative movement has the Federalist Society, Ayn Rand and the Christian right to ground its ideas independent of the GOP's political desires. The movement demands allegiance for its votes and its money and in turn, the GOP slavishly listens. For better or worse, the movement has succeeded in kicking out those whose beliefs differ - thus, no more moderate Republicans. This winnowing might eventually undo the GOP if the conservative movement's demands exceed its vote-getting power...but for the moment, the marriage thrives.

The Dems don't have the same ideological obligation to a movement. While the conservative umbrella gets smaller and more exclusive, the progressive umbrella gets ever bigger. I've always liked that the progressive movement has a bigger umbrella and can handle dissent within, but if the term "progressive" is too broad, it loses meaning - the Stupak amendment to the House version of the health care bill is the latest example of the problem. If a cohesive progressive movement had held Dems accountable on the defense of a woman's right to choose, then poor women wouldn't have been sacrificed at the alter of politics. But if a movement doesn't demand or can't agree to demand an action, then why should a political party strictly uphold any belief beyond its own political ambitions? After all, where are traditional Democrat voters going to go?

I bring this up because I've been gaining new respect for the conservative movement while reading Jeffrey Toobin's The Nine which looks inside the current Supreme Court, profiles the justices, their opinions and legal philosophies, the legal strategies that worked and didn't, and chronicles how the conservative movement gained influence in the Court. It's been a fascinating look at how the groundwork was laid and built upon for decades for the confirmations of John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

After seeing the history laid out, I find myself chagrined that the best the progressive movement seems to have is "Palin 2012" and "Down with the crazy Christians!". I exaggerate, but it was easier to be a progressive when it was solely a reactive movement that could blame everything on Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Now, Dems have power and I supposedly agree with them because I don't agree with the GOP...and yet Bush's policies are still in place on trying detainees held at Guantanamo, the definition of torture, warrentless wiretapping, a woman's right to choose, and don't ask don't tell policies on gays in the military. I'm disenchanted. And I wonder who actually represents me. Well, no one represents me since I'm a DC resident, but that's another blog post.

So, who represents me? Before I can answer that adequately, we need more political parties - after all, I might align with the Dems but if they're not advocating on my behalf then who am I going to vote for instead? And most assuredly, we need election reform - voters should never be put in the position of voting "strategically" as it was artfully called in the 2000 presidential election. So, while I've certainly been talking about convictions, I see the lack of convictions as evidence of structural problems. Consider that a promise for part 2!

And thanks, Shane, for the links and the arguments.