All About John Kelman's Pick Of 2011
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Wed., Dec 14, 2011
All About Jazz's John Kelman has several picks of 2011 with a familiar Crimson hue about them here. Meanwhile, over at the Philadelphia-based prog radio show, Gagliarchives' Top 100 albums of 2011 has A Scarcity Of Miracles by Jakszyk, Fripp & Collins at No.8, with Steven Wilson's Grace For Drowning hitting the No.1 spot.

Getting Bitten By Grooveshark
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Mon., Dec 12, 2011
The Guardian newspaper has run another article which describes the difficulty facing artists who want their music removed from Grooveshark. 

Mister Stormy's Monday Selection
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Mon., Dec 12, 2011
Here's Mel Collins responding to Starless during the recording of the Red sessions in 1974. Stunning!

Julie Slick's Kick Starter
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Sun., Dec 11, 2011
Julie Slick - bassist with the Adrian Belew Power Trio - is currently putting together her second solo album and is now inviting backers via her Kick Starter page to get the whole thing rolling. You can check out Julie's first solo album via Julie's bandcamp page and you can read my take on the same over on the blog.

New Gavin & 05Ric Album Due
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Sat., Dec 10, 2011
Gavin Harrison and 05Ric have a new album due out next year. It's called The Man Who Sold Himself and you can hear a montage of the album over at their soundcloud page.

Is The Consumer Always Right?
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Thu., Dec 8, 2011
CD Faces Death By Download is the heading in an article which looks at the growth of streaming services such as Spotify. Innerviews author Anil Prasad makes this interesting observation in the piece: "The bottom line is, streaming is a great thing for the streaming companies, their label partners and consumers, but it is horrifically unfair to the artists. Until this is corrected, listeners need to understand that they are fundamentally harming the artists they love by using these services...Remember, Spotify is partly owned by the record labels. They're having a grand old time paying themselves. The artists? Forget about it."

Then there’s this quote from Erin Ward:"Remember when listening to music meant you had to sit in front of a stereo and speakers? If we cared about sonic quality, there would be a reason to buy music again. And most importantly, it would inspire bands, allow them to make money again and to make more creative records. Otherwise, they just won't bother anymore. And then we'll be stuck with Justin Bieber."

You can read the whole article here.

Some Fun With Funkytown
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Thu., Dec 8, 2011
My thanks to Cuicawrangler for sending in this story about the writer of the hit single Funkytown and UMG.

Guitar Craft Themes
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Wed., Dec 7, 2011
Some of the most enduring pieces associated with the Guitar Craft and Guitar Circle communities are soon to be available in notation form via a new book book, Seven Guitar Craft Themes.

Cynical Grooveshark
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Tue., Dec 6, 2011
DGMLive visitor NotSoGroovy highlights his two favourite moments of Grooveshark's breathtaking (and moneymaking) cynicism from the recently featured CNet article: How We Built A Music Service Without,Um, Paying For Music.

First up: “…we are achieving all this growth without paying a dime to any of the labels… My favorite story related to our case is the story of a kid who appears in front of the judge for sentencing for the crime of having murdered both his parents saying judge have mercy on me cuz I am an orphan.”

And this one: “In our case, we use the label’s songs till we get a 100 (million) uniques, by which time we can tell the labels who is listening to their music, where, and then turn around and charge them for the very data we got from them, ensuring that what we pay them in total for streaming is less than what they pay us for data mining. Let’s keep this quite for as long as we can.”

Belew's First Two Reviewed
:: Posted by Sid Smith on Tue., Dec 6, 2011
My thanks to michaelocfor giving us the heads-up about this review of Adrian Belew's first two solo albums.