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Monster in Eleven @ Sixty-Seven
:: Posted by davidly on June 06, 2013
I remember, from rather recently, how he told a guy squatting at the stagefront in an attempt to viddy the procedings with his (tm alert!) iPhone, "You can’t do that."
The result was more effective than my having thrown my jacket over him the first time he’d tried.
Happiest of Birthdays to T-Levin!
Add...
:: Posted by Bakullama on June 05, 2013
And bobs ale tastes so much better than bud...
Inequity
:: Posted by Bakullama on June 05, 2013
Meanwhile Carlos Santana has his Hawaiian mansion up for sale for 8 million dollars.... Wasn’t he on Columbia most of his career? Somehow it seems the industry has been kind to him. AirPlay in the 60s, 70s, 80s... Even now! May have much to do with mega success in the business... It is a business after all... Right? Budweiser is a multimillion dollar business and bobs ale can’t afford to buy more bottle caps.
Prog Spring
:: Posted by emperornobody on June 05, 2013
As per the Prog Wars on the News page, I read the initial Rob Sheffield review and then the blog post in response to it and my reaction was the same: WTF are Sheffield -- and all the "prog is worthless, laughable bullshit music with 17-minute songs about magical trolls and elves" critics that ever learned to type -- talking about? What specific songs feature faeries and elves and trolls? What’s not funky about that Apple Blossoms Bloom track? Mountains don’t fall out of the sky, they come out of the sky, and they stand there. That song alone has made millions upon millions of people happy... why do the anti-proggers, the rock-as-adolescent-pelvic-gyration-accompaniment-only purists, always want to shit on everyone’s good time? Is Bruford’s snare in general and the Roundabout groove in particular not snappy and tight enough for them? People still make these dumbass distinctions about what rock music should and shouldn’t express or represent, really?
Me, I love KC and VDGG and PFM and Henry Cow, and I also love the Ramones, the Sex Pistols, Suicidal Tendencies, Bad Brains. And Chopin Etudes. And Marc Moulin. And Rotary Connection (which is not an unprogressive band either, and yes, Minnie was a once-in-a-lifetime goddess sent from above). And Radiohead, and Ian Dury, and Can, and Persian Music, and Orchestre Poly-rythmo de Cotonou, and Dr. Eddie Henderson and Edith Piaf and Kate Bush and everything in between, beneath and behind. Never once would I try to ruin someone’s enjoyment of the music they love the way the no-prog purists seems to always want to do for prog enthusiasts. What the f is the matter with them? They really make it seem like they are just reacting to easily debunked stereotypes leftover from the mid-1970s and they’ve never bothered to even scratch the surface of so-called Progressive music, the lazy bums. They rely on people’s ignorance to spread their disease of sadness and discrimination and they don’t even do it stylishly, they do it like awkward, wannabe-cool teenagers. Lester Bangs at least made eloquent, sincerely vicious bloodsport of it once in a while, jeez.
I mean, OK, Mr. Art Police Sargeant-at-Arms Rob Sheffield, maybe Brain Salad Surgery isn’t your cup of tea. Maybe Atom Heart Mother isn’t what you want to get up and dance to at the shindig, that’s fine and fair enough. Maybe the climactic section of Supper’s Ready, which has brought some folks to tears since 1972, is just unintentionally funny, ridiculously-costumed twaddle to you that has less to do with what you’d term "real rock-and-roll" than a Lawrence Welk TV marathon. There’s nothing wrong with feeling that about this particular kind of music... it might be on the reactionary and unconstructive side, but it’s an opinion to which people are welcome and entitled and I can see, in some cases, where they are coming from.
There’s that famous (hilarious) quote from Paul Stanley (from the band KISS) where someone tells him (in the early 1970s, before KISS really got big) "You should listen to Emerson, Lake and Palmer..." and he replies, "No, you should listen to Emerson, Lake and Palmer." There are valid arguments, possibly, to be made about why prog is often self-parodic, overblown and silly, but my objection is that songs about elves and faeries really aren’t why. And no, Songs From the Wood doesn’t count, because it rocks just fine, as do all Tull records. The elves fixation is an idiotic, anti-factual stereotype and it annoys me to listen to otherwise knowledgeable folks like John Schaefer harp on the shame people experience who love this music and quote these empty, spurious stereotypes -- trolls & elves, concept albums about trolls and elves, 20-minute drum solos by trolls and elves etc etc -- as if they are based in fact when they really are infantile and easily deflatable.
As if music of any kind for any reason should induce fear and shame and hiding your liking for it from others for fear of their reactions... at least when it comes to music, life is too short not to love what you love and revel in loving it, am I right? Isn’t life hard enough without that? Plus, the same critics who decry "concept albums" and how pretentious and worthless they all are will be the first to claim Dark Side of the Moon as the single greatest record of all time in the next rock doc coming up on Ovation Network. And what is the Piece for Assorted Lunatics but a flawlessly executed, thematically unified treatise on madness.... a concept album if e’re there was one. Thankfully, they’ll be playing Pink Floyd (and Genesis when Hackett was there, and Gong, and Yes and Eno and most certainly the Crimson King) generations and maybe even centuries from now -- and their jaws will still be on the floor at the artistry on display, just like ours were -- but my educated guess is they won’t be reading much Rob Sheffield.
Response to albemuth posting on June 01, 2013
:: Posted by BornCynic on June 04, 2013
In response to your point 1
It’s not just the Quakers. Other examples are:
If you have a large family business that you want to sell who are you going to call? The Sage himself, Mr. Buffet. Why? Because you know that he will give you a fair price - he’s making money through his ethics.
E-Bay - would you buy anything from anyone with less than 95% positive feedback? That feedback demonstrates that the seller is honest and deals fairly with customers. Interestingly were we all that honest to begin with or are the computers making us all more honest - now there’s a thought...............
For your comment on giant companies - look at the brewing industry. It has consolidated into a few global players (ABInBev, SABMiller.........). The effect on consumers has been to lower the cost of the beer and provide guaranteed quality. OK, but it now all tastes the same - so microbreweries have sprung up to meet the demand from consumers for beer with a distinctive taste. This illustrates that you can have your small, local companies and your global players - there is a place for both.
DGM Live Questions
:: Posted by gruffydd on June 04, 2013
Some questions for DGM Live:
1) I’ve been listening to sections of ’Robert Fripp...Unplugged’ and was wondering if there is any chance of material from the tour of Japan by Fripp/Sylvian/Gunn showing up on DGM Live?
2) Is there a search function on the forum?
3) Is it possible to add a ’wishlist’ function on the "My Downloads" or "My Profile"?
4) What happened to the imminent re-issue of the 2 works by Fripp & Summers?
that’s all for now. Thank you.
I want my mar-ket-share
:: Posted by albemuth on June 03, 2013
1. BornCynic’s example of Quaker companies is nice, but is it likely that the future will be made of E.F. Schumacher’s "appropriate" technologies and economies (or Robert Fripp’s small-independent-mobile-intelligent units)? It’s a nice idea. But it seems more likely that giant companies will sell products that are made to appear local (such as food products made essentially the same way but marketed to mimic regional and national traditions).
2. Sometimes it seems that DGM, the Vicar, and so forth believe that music industry is somehow the most unethical of all industries. Do companies really care what they make beyond market share? Snack food companies will not respond to current health concerns by reducing fat-sugar-salt content any more than the Ford Motor Company was willing to respond to safety concerns by delaying entry of the Pinto. Sometimes it is beneficial or necessary to appear concerned about health, safety, ethics and so on, but these are secondary considerations. This sad circumstance is not due to a lack of ethics or appropriate spirituality on the "inside" of a person. Instead, our ethical principles arise from our day-to-day experience of the constraints and logistics of being part of a business and making it a going concern. In capitalism, "all that is solid melts into air."
Response to emory0
:: Posted by BornCynic on June 03, 2013
"First, why do all the accounting issues always result in under- or non-payment of the musicians? If it was purely an issue with volume and complexity, you’d think that, once in a while, they’d overpay."
They will be making overpayments - the musicians will not notice or do not report them or the overpayment is buried in a summary and no-one notices.
As for the rest - no comment - it’s just too much effort (apologies).....................................
Accounting challenges?
:: Posted by emory0 on June 03, 2013
"BornCynic’s diagnosis of the circumstances of the big music companies faced with enormous accounting challenges (not only because of sheer numbers but also changing technologies of music making and music delivery) rings true to me."
Maybe I’m missing something but I thought it ignored some very serious facts.
First, why do all the accounting issues always result in under- or non-payment of the musicians? If it was purely an issue with volume and complexity, you’d think that, once in a while, they’d overpay. (My father the trombonist would usually go straight to local 802 if he saw something he hadn’t been paid for, and they usually got him paid, even if just partly.)
Second, remember that one of the main PRODUCTS of big record companies is management of their musical portfolios. That’s their JOB. It’s not like accounting is a secondary necessity: They make records available precisely by paying artists to make them and by tracking what each disc is making. If they can’t do that then they should have to relinquish control (and also repay what they owe).
Finally, lets remember that most artists don’t actually make a ton of money. They NEED the money their music makes in order to, say, eat, or pay rent. The big record companies, on the other hand, have for the most part been swimming in cash. That’s a huge asymmetry, and if they can’t handle the accounting then they need to get them a CFO that can do the job.
So to be honest, that whole analysis on how "complicated" the account is rings hollow to me.
Indeed, in my mind it gets summed up by one of the industry disputes described on the Fripperblog. Though he didn’t say how much the dispute was for, I think it was very easy to imagine it being far less than the cost of those very expensive in-house lawyers. That company could have settled for what was asked and saved themselves a ton of money, even if they way overpaid. But instead, they threw up a phalanx of middle managers and it ended up looking very nearly no-win for either side. And perhaps that’s the point: The record company can afford to make it not worthwhile, and that’s the message they sent.
wtf
:: Posted by cantspelldiKc on June 02, 2013
kinda blows me away that someone could withstand the assault of say Larks Tongue and get upset over the word fuck, anyway, here’s the latest i got to say about the evil recording industry, Mr. Fripp’s time spent on the recovery of stolen income is playing into the hands of the scum, the more time wasted in pursuit of financial equity the less time availible to make this a better world, some fat assed piece of shit somewhere is getting his jollies at r’s expence and best of all it cost them nothing, sometimes i think rules and laws are for chumps
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