8Sided Blog

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Handwash Jukebox: Battling COVID-19 With Music Discovery

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At the beginning of ‘Corona-Time,’ I was re-introduced to Daniel Bremmer, who I first met around 1999 at a coffeehouse in Orange County, CA. I was on tour with the band GusGus, and he invited me to do an impromptu off-the-beaten-path DJ set at the café before the Los Angeles show.

Time goes by, and we all move on to different things and careers. I’m doing … well, this. And Daniel is a creative director working with the likes of National Geographic, No Kid Hungry, and Barack Obama’s youth voter registration campaign Vote For Change. So I was psyched to hear from Daniel after all these years and learn about his brand new project: Handwash Jukebox.

“The idea came to me in the shower,” Daniel explains. “I had just watched a video that explained how the detergent molecules in soap break up the SARS-CoV-2 virus behind COVID-19. I had, of course, read that washing your hands worked, but that made it visceral and real, and the 20-second thing made sense. I wondered if there was something I could do to help people wash their hands for the full 20 seconds. I’d heard of the alphabet song, but that sounded tedious. Then I wondered if these smart speakers we already have in our homes could be a cool way to solve that problem, by offering different fun 20-second experiences that would keep people washing their hands to the end.”

Utilizing Amazon Alexa, Handwash Jukebox is a ‘skill‘ that — upon the command, “Alexa, open Handwash Jukebox!” — plays a cool 20-second song to accompany your sudsy routine. Unlike the same old “Happy Birthday” refrain, the songs are hip and fun, coming from the likes of The Slackers, Lisa Loeb, Azalia Snail, Rithma, and Shana Falana. The artists are diverse, across all genres, and from around the world.

Not only is Handwash Jukebox a brilliant move to make washing hands for the allotted time fun, but there’s an embedded element of music discovery. A voice-over reveals the names of the artists and where to find their music when each song finishes. It’s a fascinating concept, exploring an outside-of-the-box opportunity for bands and musicians made possible through emerging technology. Handwash Jukebox presents a compelling tie-in without that brand-aligning ickiness. It should make us eager to brainstorm other unexpected technology-meets-discovery collaborations.

I spoke with the core team behind Handwash Jukebox — Daniel Bremmer (creative director), Layne Harris (creative technologist), and Lucy Kalantari (artist & music supervisor) — to get their insight and perspective on the project, the reactions they’ve gotten, and how it opens doors to future similar artist-technology collaborations.

What were the challenges in putting together Handwash Jukebox? What’s it like working with the Alexa platform on something like this?

Layne: I have worked on a few branded Alexa Voice skills in the past, so I was pretty familiar with how to both make and promote them.

Daniel: The software was the easy part — Layne had a demo up in a little over a day. The most time-consuming process was reaching out to artists and working with them to get music that was right for the occasion, getting the licensing done correctly and working with Amazon’s Alexa team to make sure that we weren’t in violation of any laws or policies relating to a skill directed at both children and adults.

Layne: Alexa is a pretty friendly platform to develop on, but it’s helpful to have had experience with building these. You sometimes really have to have your ducks in a row to get approval. Things like sound compression settings can be very specific.

How did you quickly find your first musical collaborators?

Lucy: I’m a songwriter, composer, and producer and have been focusing my work to make quality content for children and their families. My last album won a GRAMMY award for Best Children’s Album. The Kindie community (that’s what we call kids independent music) is a close-knit group of musicians. And when I put a call out to my friends about needing some hand-washing music, I had a handful of tracks within 15 minutes! During this trying time, we feel the need to DO SOMETHING, and this was a call-to-action we could all get behind.

And how have the musicians reacted to their music in Handwash Jukebox?

Lucy: The artists are thrilled to be participating in something meaningful during a difficult time. And since I’m friends with some of the artists, they often recount what the experience has been like for their children using the skill at home. Emotions range from, “Hey, that’s my mom’s song!” to groovin’ to the addictive beats of Kent Lucas’ awesome track. I love that we can become each other’s fans, and families around the world get to dive into all this great new music with us.

I imagine creating experiences for people during a crisis in a delicate act. How did you approach this differently than you would in normal times?

Daniel: One of the things we’ve really tried to adhere to early on is the mindset of the user. When we started, all this felt precautionary — but we knew that people were going to be personally affected. So we’ve made an extraordinary effort to keep the tone light and fun. Yes, we all need to change our habits for a serious reason, but no one wants to be reminded of why when they know someone who has COVID-19 or just lost their job. I hate having to ask artists who are volunteering their time to change lyrics or to turn down submissions I personally like, but if we aren’t making it a rewarding and useful experience, then people aren’t going to use it and aren’t going to slow the spread.

Now that people are using Handwash Jukebox, have there been any surprises?

Layne: I love that people who know me were using it not knowing it was me that built it! That’s pretty exciting and humbling.

Daniel: Something I only discovered by using the final pre-launch build was that certain songs make the 20 seconds fly by — even if they are actually longer. My favorite example is the song by Icelandic artist Ólöf Arnalds. The song switches perspectives halfway through the song, and the musical build carries the listener. It not only makes the time pass, but it gets stuck in your head. I’ve found myself walking our dog and signing it to myself.

It’s great that people can find new bands by simply washing their hands. How important was the discovery element in developing Handwash Jukebox?

Daniel: While this is primarily a tool to get families to wash their hands, we designed this from the very beginning to give the artists credit and to direct people to where they could support the artist. This caused some delays in the approval process, as it kept getting flagged as advertising. But it was important to us, so we worked with Amazon to make sure that it was absolutely clear that we were just crediting artists and not up to anything untoward.

How did your own experiences prepare you to work on a project like this?

Layne: I think of myself as a maker, the result of which is ending up in roles where I either take the lead on coming up with wacky inventions or support other people’s creativity. I’ve been a huge fan of voice tech for some time, and have really enjoyed developing content for voice platforms, so this project was a no-brainer for me.

Daniel: This is kind of a perfect combination of things I’ve been obsessed with since I was a kid — music, technology, and trying to make the world better. Like Layne, I make my living in advertising — creating experiences and campaigns that people like to connect with. And like with any creative job, you bring your interests and experiences to your work, but seldom this many at once.

Lucy: When Layne approached me about Handwash Jukebox, I felt the immediate need to connect with families who struggle to have their children wash their hands for 20 seconds. I know I was having a hard time with my own son. He would sing the alphabet at lightning speed, cutting it down to a mere 7 seconds, which was impressive in itself but wasn’t getting the job done.

Despite the stressful times that inspired Handwash Jukebox, it’s fun and surprising that hand-washing is now something that helps people find bands.

Lucy: People digest music in so many different ways, and discovering new music while doing a seemingly innocuous thing like washing hands is not something I ever would’ve predicted a few years ago! If we can find more ways to integrate music into our daily routines — creating a soundtrack for our lives — we’ll discover some incredible and eclectic works being published. It’ll be an important and new way to feed our musical souls.

Learn more about Handwash Jukebox at www.handwashjukebox.com.

On the Guest List: VIP Clubbing Goes Virtual

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We hear a lot about virtual concerts, with artists and bands performing using various tools (Twitch, Instagram, YouTube, and so on). These tools were (at least) tangentially created for these uses. Twitch is perhaps the most appropriated, initially intended as a video gaming platform, and now hosting all manner of live experiences.

Zoom is now being led far astray from its original purpose. It’s a business conferencing platform transformed into an engine for the likes of happy hour meet-ups, birthday celebrations, and family check-ins. Despite its immediate growing pains and merited controversies, Zoom is leading the isolation zeitgeist, inspiring memes, and brilliant #stayathome music videos:

Bands are successfully adapting their performances and experiences to the livestreaming space, but what about the nightclubs? That leads to another unexpected role for the Zoom platform: the virtual VIP club. As this article in Bloomberg reveals, “Just as a choose-your-own-adventure book hacks the static nature of a novel, these parties are hacking corporate technology for new purposes.” Here’s more:

In some senses, if you’ve been to one Zoom club, you’ve been to them all. The platform’s layout is always the same: A featured musician performs a set underneath a carousel of small windows with voyeuristic views into people dancing or lounging in their homes. Channeling the true spirit of nightlife, it’s up to the crowd to create the party’s vibe via active participation—turning down the lights, throwing on a costume, talking to each other in the group chat. These social interactions can feel new and awkward, but we’re hungry for it.

These ‘clubs’ are more elaborate than you might think. Zoom’s technology allows for multiple rooms, including ‘secret’ rooms that require a password. Each room can have a theme, or a DJ, or a dress code. There are sponsors — according to the article, Red Bull and Paper Magazine are in on the act — as well as bouncers and mingling celebrities. And ideas for monetization are materializing.

The biggest Zoom nightclubs — and some of them are quite big — were dreamed up by desperate promoters no longer able to throw parties in the meatspace. And, as happens with these things, finding ways around one set of limitations reveals new possibilities. As one promoter says in the piece, “We now have access to people who can’t attend clubs because they have children, social anxiety, disabilities, or live in places that don’t have clubs.”

The requirement is that we all agree a space — virtual or otherwise — is a nightclub. This idea reminds me of the time I was invited to an exclusive day time event on the beach in Miami. When I arrived, I found an impromptu nightclub, created by a large circle of folding chairs connected with rope. Inside the circle, there were about 50 people, a bunch of coolers serving as the bar, and a DJ priming the sandy dance floor. There was a cover charge — though you could hear the music just as well outside of the ring of chairs, you weren’t inside the circle (literally and metaphorically), so, incredibly, people were paying for the privilege. I knew the promoter and he motioned me in, like lifting some invisible velvet rope. I followed him into the ‘club’ and discovered there was an additional half-circle at the far end of the circle of chairs — a lip in the larger ring that served as the VIP room. Remember — this was all happening on an open public beach, an exclusive nightclub invented by some rope, a lot of folding chairs, and the participants agreeing on the idea.

It seems these spaces for creating community alongside a sense of exclusivity can exist anywhere. I admit, my first thought was a dismissive one upon hearing about the Zoom nightclubs, which is why I thought about Miami Beach. But now I see these virtual clubs as an inventive way for some promoters to adapt to the Strange Times and for stuck-at-home party people to recapture the clubbing experience. As with a lot of the recently concocted ad hoc solutions for maintaining a hint of normalcy, the concept will likely outlast COVID-19 and spawn new platforms. I’ll see you on the dance floor.

Update: I expanded on this post in the latest issue of my weekly newsletter. Check it out here.

Curiosity, Mystery, Anonymity

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An anonymous artist paradoxically often attracts more attention because of anonymity. Curiosity draws us in for a closer look. Just look at Bansky, with mentions of his accomplishments usually sitting alongside guesses to his identity. And we can’t forget all the electronic artists accused of secretly recording as Burial throughout the end of the ’00s. The scrutiny created problems for the reclusive recording artist and, unlike Banksy (so far), he gave in to the pressure. Hua Hsu in the New Yorker:

When Burial was nominated for the Mercury Prize, a British tabloid writer tried to figure out his true identity, but was thwarted in part by Burial’s fans, who wanted him to live according to his own choices. As the curiosity about his identity started to overshadow his work, though, Burial revealed his name: William Emmanuel Bevan. Still, he refused to do interviews or to perform live shows, and he claimed to have little interest in the Internet.

Disguises became a thing, too. Artists as mainstream as Sia obscured their mugs, but there wasn’t anonymity. We know Daft Punk aren’t robots and recognize their real names (some of us even DJ’ed with them before they donned masks). There’s a purported idea of ‘let the music speak, not the image of the musician.’ But isn’t the mask, the anonymity, an image in itself? Of course, it is. And, same as the outrageous exploits of a controversial rock star (including those also disguised), it can even overshadow the music.

The Residents followed a doctrine of ‘The Theory of Obscurity.’ Formulated by the equally mysterious artist N. Senada, The Theory of Obscurity poses that an artist can only deliver their most authentic work without pressure or influence from an audience or the outside world. The Residents decided anonymity would help them follow the theory but the outside world proved inescapable. The band changed their appearance frequently through the ’70s but got stuck in the eyeball and top hat disguise for years. The image was just too popular with fans to shake.

Before Hardy Fox died in late 2018, he revealed that he was a founding member of The Residents and responsible for most of their musical output. In turn, we surmised that the still-active Homer Flynn is the ‘singing Resident,’ supplying most of the distinctive vocals. Die-hard Residents fans suspected this as Flynn and Fox acted as ever-present representatives and spokespersons for the band and their company, The Cryptic Corporation. When Homer Flynn speaks, it’s with an all-too-familiar southern drawl that those familiar with The Residents’ songs instantly recognize. Here’s a video documentary from 1991 with Flynn and Fox making appearances, and a young Penn Jillette also acting as an early-80s band representative:

(There’s a more recent, feature-length documentary titled Theory of Obscurity. It’s available to stream on Kanopy and some other spots.)

Fans whispered that Flynn and Fox were secretly the main two eyeballs in The Residents. As with Burial, the fans also — for the most part — protected these identities. And the two repeatedly denied any connection beyond their duties as managers/spokespersons. But then Hardy Fox nonchalantly revealed his actual role in a newsletter to fans a year before his death from brain cancer.

As a longtime Residents fan with a shared North Louisiana connection — more on that in a sec — I’m torn by the unmasking. The mystery of The Residents was a big part of my appreciation of the music. Again, there’s the paradox. If a purpose of anonymity is to present music without the baggage of personality, then how can the opposite result happen? It was impossible to listen to The Residents without separating them from the unearthly presences in their videos. They didn’t seem human, like they arrived in 1972 fully formed and naïve to the expectations of us earthlings and our musical norms. The mystery made them ominous, too. Just look at them here in what might be my favorite promotional photo of any band ever:

The Residents at Mount Rushmore

But now I think about Hardy Fox when I listen to The Residents. I think about how he met Homer Flynn in Ruston, Louisiana. They were randomly assigned dormmates at Louisiana Tech University. I went to that school for a semester and DJ’ed on the radio station for longer than that. Often I played The Residents across Ruston’s airwaves, no idea that I was paying homage to local heroes. I also think about Hardy Fox’s ARP Odyssey synthesizer, which is the star of this touching article in Tape Op. These weirdos were big-hearted humans in the end. How could they not be? But, in this discovery, the Residents lost the sinister enigma of the strange photo above.

But I also appreciate these revelations. It’s all part of the tricky business of anonymity and mystery. There’s a great quote from psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott: “It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.” In a way, the unveiling is a gift — we listen to the music differently with this knowledge. The songs almost become new. Even Burial’s atmospheric tunes take on new meanings to explore with a name attached, even if still not much is known about the producer.

I’ve heard The Residents’ music many times before, but now there’s a history attached. The context shifts and, in a way, the music becomes something else. “Santa Dog” is an especially wild proposition when it’s traced to these artsy outcasts, freshly escaped from a life in the Bible-belted deep south. And, now listening to the music, boy, can I relate.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Aliens That Look Like Automobiles

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In the late ’80s, I was heavily into zine culture. Isolated in Central Louisiana, I was an outcast kid into weird stuff, craving connections to an outside world of strangers. I can’t remember how I initially discovered zines and the related mail art community. I’m sure my love of DIY punk rock played a part.

Eventually, I obtained an issue of Factsheet Five. The mag inspired me to open a secret post office box, so all this unusual mail wouldn’t arrive at my parents’ house. After sending off several envelopes containing a few quarters, or postage compensation, or an enthusiastic letter, I was part of the zine scene. I was connecting and corresponding with like-minded weirdos across the world. Kind of like I still do today — but without sending out stamps.

Let’s get a couple of definitions out of the way. ‘Zine’ is short for ‘fanzine’ — a short-run, self-published, often obsessive, and sometimes free magazine made by (and for) a ‘fan’ of something. The first documented fanzine was created in the ’30s, probably by mimeograph. That original zine, like most zines in the mid-century, was focused on science fiction. Punk rock created another significant zine movement, and, in the ’90s, the format reached an apex with riot grrl zines.

But zines could be about anything. There were zines for collectors of you-name-it, anarchist zines, intimately personal scream-for-help zines, zines by moms about mom-life, conspiracy and UFO zines, comix zines, and on-and-on-and-on. One of the most unique and heartfelt zines I read at the time was Duplex Planet. Published by an employee of a nursing home, the zine featured interviews and updates with the residents as they arrived and (often sadly) departed. I’m pleasantly surprised to see that it’s still around. Duplex Planet showed the possibility of zines and self-publishing as a vehicle for a personal voice.

If you think this sounds a lot like blogging and email newsletters, then I’d say you’re not off course. I recently subscribed to Rusty Blazenhoff’s Electric Dreams email newsletter, and right there in the header, it’s called “An Inbox Zine.” Wherever you go, there you are.

I’m thinking about zines because of Factsheet Five. Factsheet Five was like a search engine for zines but it was also a zine. Hundreds of single paragraph reviews of zines filled its pages. And the reader was also given the zines’ addresses and how to get them (such as “.50 or two stamps”). There were also music etc. reviews and editorials from various zine luminaries. But you got this for the zine listings. It was a joy to go through all these zine descriptions and highlight the ones that created the most curiosity. From my perch in Tioga, Louisiana, these were pre-internet windows to the wider, weirder world.

One could receive Factsheet Five a few different ways — by sending three dollar bills and a couple of quarters to the editor, or by mailing something to review (music, your zine), or by contributing something (writing, artwork). I did all three of those throughout college to get my issues.

And here’s why Factsheet Five and zines are on my mind. Early this week, I was on Archive.org and thought, “I wonder if any old issues of Factsheet Five are archived here?” I did a quick search and discovered just under a dozen issues. I picked one from 1988 — as that’s the time I was most active in my zine-collecting — and flipped through the virtual pages. Amazing! I recalled when, to me, all of this was new and dangerous. I glimpsed some familiar names, including a few ‘pen-pals’ who I met through zine-trading. And then, to my surprise, I ran across a name I certainly recognized:

Plague On Wheels reviewed in Factsheet Five

In 1988 I decided to publish my own zine. It was called Plague On Wheels. The name comes from the title of a fictitious book written by Kilgore Trout in Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions. It’s about aliens that look like automobiles. And ‘Michael Behaviour’ was my punk rock name. A lot of us young miscreant-wanna-bes had punk rock names in the ’80s.

The review refers to Plague On Wheels as a ‘pfanzine,’ which is zine slang for a music-oriented zine. The ‘p’ stands for ‘punk,’ but a pfanzine can be about any genre of music. My zine had a lot of music in it, including interviews with a few random bands that answered my letters. I doubt I even heard these bands beforehand — I wrote them to get free music in exchange for some ‘press.’ Luckily, none of their music was awful.

Plague On Wheels was handwritten, not typed. I didn’t have access to a photocopier (or the money to photocopy), so I had a pen-pal friend in Miami do it for me. I met this friend via Factsheet Five. He was a school teacher and could get free photocopies, but the quality was poor, and all the blacks faded in various tones of gray. Combined with the sometimes difficult to decipher handwriting, my distant friend and I agreed the flaws added a distinctive character.

My friend Flipper — also from Tioga — wrote the ‘How To Start a Radio Station’ piece. Now he has a book out through HarperCollins and regularly writes for established music magazines. I sent him this Factsheet Five review, and he told me that I was the first ‘publication’ to publish his writing.

Plague on Wheels. What a trip.

I feel like there’s something I can say here about zines and blogs and newsletters. I should pull out my recurring theme of ‘the way we use new technologies can’t escape tradition.’ It does feel like I’ve been doing this a while. Running across a blog with an exciting point of view is similar to finding a cool zine on Factsheet Five. It just seems, with zines, the freak flag flies a little higher.

Zines are still around. And blogs and newsletters are resurgent. As long as singular voices are looking to connect — to find the others — we’ll have zines and blogs and all these things. And maybe our current state of isolation, this self-quarantining, has me thinking about how vital these voices are when we can’t seek each other out in person. Many of us need the weird little windows to the outside world, especially when those worlds seem cut off from us.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

The Comfort in Listening

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I haven’t quite settled into the writing rhythm, and putting this week’s newsletter together was a struggle. The working-at-home aspect isn’t a big deal as that’s where I’ve worked for most of my (sorta-)professional life. But the background hum of uncertainty, concern, and — let’s face it — fear throws new challenges into the mix.

I’m not alone in walking a tightrope between ‘now’s the time to get stuff done’ and ‘take it easy for your mental health.’ It’s an unusual juggling act, at least for me. I miss the days — they seem so long ago — when I would get lost entirely in creative tasks, the mind focused straight ahead for hours. It’s been like that for a while, but lately, the distraction dial goes to 11.

It’s about reclaiming space, throwing that bellowing inner voice off to the side. It’s a modern ploy to call this act ‘mindfulness,’ and I’ve regularly meditated for years, but that’s not helping right now. We need solace and beauty — something that whispers hope. We need art now more than ever.

In my review of Jogging House’s beautiful album Lure, I talk about music as an optimistic glimpse at what’s possible. I quote Brian Eno: “One of the reasons one makes music, or any kind of art, is to create the world that you’d like to be in or the world that you would like to try.” And, in the case of music, the listener experiences a taste of this world by losing herself in the sound.

Pioneering experimental composer Pauline Oliveros called this ‘deep listening.’ Deep Listening originally was the title of an album Oliveros recorded with her ‘Deep Listening Band’ in an empty underground reservoir. The space featured a natural 45-second reverb tail, creating washes of sound out of the trombone, didjeridu, accordion, and other employed instruments. There’s no resisting this immersion in sound.

But ‘deep listening’ was soon synonymous of a “radical attention.” Oliveros explained this interpretation as “listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what one is doing.” It’s the opposite of how most people (myself included) stream music: in the background as a complement to our mood, office productivity, or housework. With deep listening, you LISTEN — no other activity is in the foreground.

Deep listening pops up in Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing, which I recommended a few newsletters ago. Odell poses the concept as a resistance to a constant inundation of information and newsfeeds. Oliveros and deep listening also appear in Kyle Chayka’s The Longing For Less, which I’m presently reading. Chayka writes, “Such intense listening is meant to inspire compassion and understanding, a kind of acceptance that goes beyond the noisy concerns of the current moment that usually crowd our consciousness.”

Chayka, citing Oliveros, refers to this listening as “meditating on the organic sounds of nature and experiencing the resonance of unique spaces like caves, cathedrals, or wells.” But our present crisis makes it difficult to go out in public to explore these places. In quarantine, we need to listen deeply at home.

In the Los Angeles Times, Randall Roberts proposes a different take on deep listening: we should do it with albums. Silence your phone and any other potential distractions, set the mood (“Light a candle or not.”), sit comfortably between two speakers or put some nice headphones on, and listen — really listen — to an album from beginning to end. Lose yourself in the sound. Examine the lyrics and the performances. Imagine where the music is taking place. Roberts says, “The point is to listen with your ears in the same way you read with your eyes.”

Though not emphasizing the ‘deep’ aspect, Amanda Petrusich wrote about the reassuring qualities of listening to a favorite album in The New Yorker. (Side note: that article has the coolest gif and I wish I could steal it.) She refers to one album as “a reliable and instantaneous balm, no matter what’s happening to me or the world.” Petrusich also offers this: “The best thing about records is that, even when you don’t have anything left to give, they keep showing up for you.”

I propose we regularly set time aside to lose ourselves in albums. Choose an album and listen without productivity or house chores on the agenda. What should you listen to? A new album is fun, but hearing something for the first time might be too much work. No playlists allowed — only an intentional album song sequence will do. A favorite album or one that’s attached to nostalgia is good. Maybe an album you like but haven’t listened to more than a few times. Or perhaps listen to an album you’ve enjoyed but have only heard in the background while working or cooking or all the other things. Give it the attention it deserves.

Listen. Sit in one place, close your eyes if that’s comfortable for you, and listen with purpose. Pick out all the instruments, hear the acoustics (natural or digital) they’re playing in, follow the lyrics, note how the sequence flows. It could be tricky — sitting still is for meditators, not music buffs. But don’t give up. There will be a moment that you forget what’s going on in this world, replacing it with a “world that you would like to try.” That moment’s why we’re doing this.

What albums come to mind? If you try this out, what albums will you play? Why? I’m so curious. Please let me know in the comments section for the newsletter. I’ll get the thread going with a couple that I’m starting with. These aren’t recommendations, just the albums that are helping us get through this thing. We’re listening together, rooting for each other. It’s what we do.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Are We Running Out of Notes?

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In the mid-70s, a music scholar, maybe a professor, definitely someone we’d now call a ‘musicologist,’ wrote an alarming letter to Rolling Stone magazine. He stated that, by his estimation, within a few years the notes would run out. That is, musicians were about to exhaust all available music notes in every possible timing and context. He warned that soon there would be no more original songs. 

Beneath this letter was a response from John and Yoko. They were apparently enlisted by Rolling Stone to address this crisis. Their two-word reaction to song-pocalyspe: “Lighten up.“

I should point out that I can’t verify this happened. I saw the exchange printed somewhere many years ago, but I can’t find evidence online. Regardless, it’s no surprise that for decades music intellectuals have raised concerns about a limit on new songs. And that the songwriters have always reacted with a shrug.

The notes are only part of a song. Also critical: instrumentation, dynamics, performance texture, tempo, studio trickery — the list goes on. Those notes don’t seem as limited when we take these extra elements into consideration. But it’s still reasonable to imagine a few people coming up with similar melodies. And if some of those other elements align, then there might be a raised eyebrow or two. Is it plagiarism?

I’m not saying everyone is innocent of copying notes or lyrics or songs outright. But we’re led to believe it intentionally happens a lot less than it does. A dirty little secret is that songwriting isn’t all that difficult if you know what you’re doing. Having a ‘hit’ song is tough, but all of those elements I mentioned above — and some additional ones, like charisma and promotional budgets — contribute to making it a hit, too. When you think about all the potential downsides, it’s a lot easier to write a song than steal someone else’s.  

Minneapolis-based ‘record selector’ Mike 2600 has an amusing YouTube series called Songs That Sound The Same. Using two turntables (and I suspect some pitch manipulation), he goes beyond the ‘mash-up,’ drawing attention to songs that share an uncanny resemblance. This one‘s a lot of fun. As is this one and this one. 

A lot of Mike 2600’s comparisons rest on similarities in chord changes and sequences, a chord being a combination of usually three notes providing a bed for melody. Combinations of chords are a lot more limited than those of individual notes. There are a lot of similarities out there for Mike 2600 to choose from.

Mike 2600 could do one of these videos for “Stairway To Heaven” and Spirit’s “Taurus.” Maybe he has, but probably not — that resemblance is so well known it’s low-hanging fruit. Journalist Michael Skidmore thought he’d reach for that fruit when he filed a plagiarism suit on behalf of the late Spirit frontman Randy Wolfe. The two songs’ similarity elicited murmurings since the release of “Stairway To Heaven,” but the lawsuit didn’t appear until 2014. 

Yes, the iconic opening riff of “Stairway To Heaven” is bizarrely similar to “Taurus.” But so are a lot of things. The same descending chromatic chords, as noted in defense arguments, are found in the music of JS Bach and Henry Purcell, and also the song “Chim Chim Cher-ee” from Mary Poppins (which puts Led Zeppelin in an unlikely context). There are only so many chords used in so many ways.

Last week, judges agreed and cleared Led Zeppelin of wrong-doing. But the ruling added another twist — the court’s dismissal of ‘the inverse ratio rule.’ What’s that, and why is it interesting? Let’s dig in.

Understand that plagiarism doesn’t have to be intentional to warrant legal punishment. If it’s believed that you heard a song anytime and anywhere, then the plaintiff can argue it’s possible that plagiarism occurred, whether you meant to do it or not. The more famous a song is the easier it is to make this argument. George Harrison encountered this notion when “My Sweet Lord” was accused of copying The Chiffon’s “He’s So Fine.” The latter was a massive hit in 1963, at the same time The Beatles were making no secret of their admiration for American R&B. So the jury was convinced that Harrison, at the very least, unconsciously copied that song. 

This idea of access and sublimation came to its ridiculous conclusion in the recent case of Flame vs. Katy Perry. In my opinion, that case was already absurd, involving two somewhat similar and short melodic phrases representing modern pop’s zeitgeist. But Flame’s attorney argued that since his client’s song had 6 million online plays — spread out among platforms like YouTube and, yes, MySpace — it was undoubtedly, at some point, heard by the writers of Perry’s song. The jury ended up agreeing. 

Taken further, it seems the internet demolished the limitations of access. It’s now presumed that everything is available — how are 6 million streams on YouTube any different than an emerging artist appearing on an obscure but influential Spotify playlist? Arguably the potential for accidental thievery is the same. Almost all music is available by tapping the screen of a smartphone, so the idea of access is passé. The court in Led Zeppelin’s case recognized this change in our culture, and the ‘inverse ratio rule’ — which gave preference to the more widely distributed song — is toast.

There are other ways that technology alters our concepts of plagiarism. Let’s consider how companies like Splice are affecting musical ownership. Splice is a market-place for sounds, where recording artists can download loops and phrases to use in their own songs. After paying a subscription fee, the user is given these sounds as ‘royalty-free’ sonic building blocks. That means an artist can use these bits in a commercial recording without royalties or attribution to Splice, and claim the rights to the song as her own. No one owns Splice’s sounds — they can be used simultaneously in any number of songs. 

Of course, this model reached an inevitable outcome. A melodic loop from Splice was used in a song by — of all people — Justin Bieber. Within 24 hours of that song’s release, artist Asher Monroe accused Bieber of ripping off the instrumental hook from his song. But they both got the phrase from Splice. As did many other artists, including Korean hip-hop artist YUMDDA. According to The Verge, that leads to another 21st-century problem:

Because Monroe and YUMDDA’s songs have portions with the unaltered sample and nothing else, Shazam gets confused. The app sometimes identifies Monroe’s track as YUMDDA’s, and vice versa. But it has no trouble identifying Bieber’s song, likely because there are other percussive elements always layered on top of the sample.

And now here’s something else:

Damien Riehl — a lawyer, coder, and musician — and Noah Rubin pulled an impressive stunt. They wrote a program to generate every possible melodic combination of notes. The program then stored all 68.7 billion melodies to a hard drive. But rather than using up all the songs, as the Rolling Stone letter-writing musicologist feared, Damien and Noah put the contents of the hard drive in the public domain. All melodies are now free to use, they argued. From here forward, lawsuits for copyrighted note sequences are all frivolous. 

Of course, Damien and Noah’s effort is meant to make a statement and probably won’t change anything. The Led Zeppelin ruling will have more effect on songwriters (as will the appeal-in-progress on the Katy Perry suit). But it makes an interesting point. And it helps highlight the limited nature (and mathematics) of notes, and how subconscious plagiarism could become an outdated concept now that we’re subconsciously consuming everything. 

UPDATE: Soon after I wrote this post, Katy Perry and her co-writers won their appeal and the judge overturned the plagiarism ruling.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Marc Méan’s Collage: Imperfect in the Best Way Possible

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Long before Brian Eno dreamed-up the term ambient music, there was “Furniture Music.” Coined by composer Erik Satie in 1917, “Furniture Music” intends to “make a contribution to life in the same way as a private conversation, a painting in a gallery, or the chair in which you may or may not be seated” (Satie’s words).

There’s a story of the debut of “Furniture Music” (or more correctly “Furnishing Music” — ‘musique d’ameublement’). Satie performed it during the intermission of a play, and the audience was encouraged to mill about as they usually would during a theater break. Instead, and much to Satie’s frustration, the audience stayed seated and listened. 

Marc Méan is a Zürich-based musician who has found inspiration in Satie’s “Furniture Music” 100+ years later. It informs his fascinating album Collage, a set — and cassette — of two twenty-minute compositions that vibrate from ethereal soundscapes to lightly percussive sound design. It’s experimental in sound and process and, though “Furniture Music” serves as a launching pad, like Satie’s intermission music Collage leaves the listener more attentive than passive. 

“[Satie’s] approach fascinated me,” Marc says. “Before that, I was playing mostly jazz and improvised music, which required me to be active and personally involved as a listener and as a performer. It’s music where you have to be highly reactive to everything around you, where everything happens fast, where one prefers evolution to repetition. I wanted to find an approach to music where I could slow things down, where I could stretch time, be more passive, find simplicity.”

The inspiration came through the acquisition of an unusual electronic instrument. Marc explains, “It all began when I acquired Peter Blasser’s instrument the Ciat-Lonbarde Cocoquantus. It is a weird synthesizer-sampler that has a life of its own.” 

Originating in Portland and partly hand-crafted out of wood, the Cocoquantus is a sampler combined with looping delays and multiple analog synthesizer engines for modulation. Blasser himself describes the Cocoquantus as “not for the faint of heart: but once you speak its language, nothing else is quite the same.”

“Peter Blasser’s instruments don’t come with manuals,” Marc says. “Nothing is labeled on the instrument, so you have to explore it yourself. And I have never been someone who likes to practice for the sake of practicing. I always need to work in a musical context to learn something new. So while taming this new instrument, I recorded all my experiments.”

The process developed into a creative game (or, as I like to say, a tiny accident). Marc explains: “I like the idea of organized chaos, of controlled randomness in my work. The more I surprise myself in the creative process, the more interesting the music will be to me afterward. In the end, I felt that the material had a strong unity because of the gear I used. The Cocoquantus has such a strong personality that it binds the recordings together.” These exploratory pieces were combined to form the backbone of Collage. 

The resulting album is a lovely and imaginative trek through experimental ambiance. There are haunting piano moments, teasing through snatches of melody transmitted from a distance. Distinctively electronic antics appear, manipulated bleeps and clicks that soon give way to luminous passages. For all of its digital manipulation, Collage is warm and organic sounding, and the two twenty-minute stitched-together compositions don’t sound stitched-together at all.

Though there are elements of ambient ‘drone’ music, Collage‘s pieces develop and subtly change, sometimes offering surprises for the listener. “I can’t help myself but to have things evolve and have some drama,” Marc says. “The two sides are designed as a response to each other. One doesn’t need to listen to both sides back-to-back, but I would recommend listening to each in its entirety.”

I get this impression even as I listen to Collage as a digital stream on Bandcamp. The nature of the tracks, their grainy sound, and 20-minute lengths make Collage imaginable in a cassette format. Marc embraces Collage on cassette: “I like when music can be tangible; when music pairs with an object. It grounds things into a reality in this era where everything is virtual. Also, analog tape was used during the recording to transform and give color to certain elements. So for me, it makes sense that Collage is available on a physical medium.”  

Thus Neologist Productions has issued Collage on cassette, limited to 30 copies. The artwork is beautiful and visually fits the tone of the music. And, as Marc points out, the cassette may be the best way to experience Collage: “Because of the physicality of the cassette the listening experience is different. Cassettes sound different than a digital medium. Cassettes are lo-fi in comparison, they wobble a bit, they age, they are imperfect in the best way possible.”

Listen to Collage on various streaming platforms or on Bandcamp (where you can also purchase the limited edition cassette).

Tiny Accidents

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A useful skill in songwriting is the subtle deployment of the unexpected. When there’s a sudden chord change out of nowhere, a melody that rises when you think it should fall, a strange production effect that changes the tone of the song — these surprises generate listener goosebumps. My favorite: when the bass line in The Feelies’ “Slow Down,” which is a constant single note for most of the song, changes to a second note at 2:19. There’s nothing to this — it’s so simple — but it gets me every time.

The trick is that these surprises can’t be too surprising. Sure, in compositions aiming to unmoor the listener (often in experimental music) the surprises are abrupt and heavy. But I think there’s a higher art in subtlety — sonic and compositional changes that are unexpected but not necessarily out of place. Sometimes these sound like accidents, but tiny ones.

Occasionally these surprises or imperfections are genuinely accidental. Think about a singer whose voice cracks mid-phrase, or a botched note in a guitar riff, or a tape delay echo tail that gets a little too out of control. In the podcast series and accompanying book Ways of Hearing, Damon Krukowski mentions his imperfect drumming in recordings by the band Galaxie 500. “We played as steadily as we could,” he says. “But this was a performance. We were nervous and excited. And we sped up at the chorus.”

Sometimes these flaws are unwelcome and distracting. In Galaxie 500’s day, an inexcusable mistake would mean recording a new take of the song. Other times these unplanned incidents are at the edge of unacceptable — such as speeding up in the chorus — and it’s more trouble than it’s worth to re-record. So they get left alone. And, a lot of times, these strange little errors grow to become favorite song moments for both the listeners and the artists.

Now, instead of re-recording, one can ‘fix it in the mix.’ A quantization or manual shifting of beats in the DAW can correct that excited drummer. A singer can choose from multiple takes of a vocal line to replace that bit where her voice cracked for a second. The tape delay is an automated plug-in, so there’s no chance of that echo getting distorted and out-of-bounds.

By nature (or un-nature), digital production provides fewer opportunities for accidents. If a musician or producer wants to incorporate the unexpected in a song, she must program the error into the digital tool. There are now plug-ins and scripts that feature options to randomize settings. One can get carried away — check out the lengths Brian Eno goes to in randomizing Logic Pro:

We commonly refer to these fortunate misfortunes as ‘happy accidents.’ And, outside of software, one can encourage these detours in the analog world. Artists often purposefully set up loose creative environments to inspire a moment of chance. Musicians jam or improvise to see what happens, hoping for a phrase of synergy to develop into a previously unimagined song. Guitarists might try alternate tunings, or drummers might play on unfamiliar percussion set-ups. Even recording in strange surroundings could inspire different outcomes.

There are also creative games. I mentioned Gysin and Burroughs’ The Third Mind in an episode of my email newsletter. The cut-up method detailed in that book is used by a number of artists to summon unforeseen creative options. Here’s a video of David Bowie using the cut-up method. Other examples of creative games are Peter Schmidt and Brian Eno’s well-known Oblique Strategies cards (even used by country music superstars) or John Cage composing “Music For Changes” using the I Ching.

At the beginning of last year, I tried my own creative game project. Before starting a song, I set up a bunch of rules to output random results. These rules covered the sounds I’d use, the tempo, the audio plug-ins, even the song’s title. The project was short-lived but inspired the process of creating the ‘theme songs’ for my newsletter. And I had a name for that project, which I also use to describe the ‘unexpected but not out-of-place’: Tiny Accidents.

In my experience, these accidents are valuable creative exercises. They allow artists to step outside of their heads and develop works that wouldn’t exist otherwise. Each throw of the dice is a chance to learn new techniques by outwitting artistic obstacles. The process is incredibly satisfying. So, I’m resuming my Tiny Accidents practice. And I challenge you to start one.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Commodifying Coziness and the Rise of Chill-Out Capitalism

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In the article Why Are So Many Brands Pivoting To Coziness?, Vox’s Rebecca Jennings reveals a curious marketing trend: brands displaying promises of comfort to attract millennials and Gen Z’ers. In youth-oriented magazine advertisements, we’re used to photos of adventurous consumers climbing mountains or traversing an exotic, unfamiliar city. Now you’re as likely to see a picture of someone sitting at home seated on a couch or maybe even — gasp! — reading a book. Combined with emerging products like weighted blankets and CBD shampoo, it’s evident that chill is ‘in.’

Media theorists point out that horror movies are popular during times of unease and distrust in society. Jennings has a similar reason for the rise of coziness: “Things are bad, and people are anxious about whatever ongoing horrors are metabolizing in geopolitics, the environment, and capitalism.” However, there’s an always-online twist to this movement. “The selling point is that this product will make you feel calm and safe, but the experience of using it is still supposed to look good enough for other people to see.”

Ambient music isn’t exactly mainstream, but it’s more in vogue — and pervasive — than it’s ever been. The flavors are varied, from dark drones to nature noises, from New Age throwbacks to chill-hop YouTube streams. If we’re defining ambient music as music that sits in the ambiance, politely ignored as we go about our lives, then all of those styles qualify. And, like brand-marketed coziness, the music is often pushed as an antidote for a hectic life. There’s something spacey and unobtrusive playing in the background as that person sits on the couch reading his book.

Streaming has enabled an even more utilitarian strain of ambient music, something that The Baffler’s Liz Pelly refers to as “emotional wallpaper” and “music that strategically requires no attention at all.” This music is made to fall into playlists that play on repeat as we study, or meditate, or slowly fall asleep. The primary purpose isn’t to calm our brains but to rack up Spotify plays as the playlists churn in repetition. Ambient music is perfect for this — we can only listen to the same pop hook so many times. An ambient drone might as well be endless.

Of course, music has always had calming and self-healing properties. That’s ancient history. And it’s untrue to say that ‘western’ music ignored this aspect, with blues and — of course — gospel as examples of genres containing elements of spiritual remedy. But the connection came as a surprise to many of ambient music’s forerunners. Take John Cage, whose life and direction changed after a conversation with Indian composer Gita Sarabhai in the 1940s. She pointed out that it’s okay for music to be meaningless, to exist solely to “sober and quiet the mind.” It makes sense to us. But this was a revelation for Cage, a stone thrown in the pond with ripples continuing outward.

What’s new is our era’s odd commoditization of relaxation music. Sure, the New Age genre was a small phenomenon in the late ’80s — those Windham Hill CDs flew off the shelves at the Camelot Music I worked at as a teenager. But playlists targeted to sleeping ‘listeners’ for money-making purposes is a bizarre twist. Consider the Sony-affiliated Sleep & Mindfulness Thunderstorms playlist, featuring 990 one-minute tracks containing sounds of rainstorms. Why a single minute each in length? Because Spotify will deliver a micropayment to a track that plays for at least 30 seconds.

But let’s get something straight. Personally, I love ambient music. I work to it. I relax to it. I sometimes sleep to it. And, if you can’t tell, I’m fascinated by it. That presents a quandary as I’m using the music in the same way as those studying to ChilledCow’s YouTube channel. What makes my cozy space so sacred?

Simon Reynolds’ recent Resident Advisor long-read about the state of ambient music is worth a look. He grapples with chill-out capitalism in his article, stating:

Still, there is something unnerving about the idea of ambient and New Age music uncoupled from any higher purposes and applied to the task of self-repair. Like power yoga or microdosing, it is taking an agent of change that was originally part of a culture of liberation and discovery, and putting it in service of the status quo. As David Toop, author of ambient bible Ocean Of Sound, wrote recently, “if ambient music only serves as an app to incentivise or a backdrop to productivity, networking and self-realisation, then it has no story of its own, no story worth hearing.”

Are we adding too much baggage to ambient music? Perhaps it’s just meant to be, like a soothing wallpaper hue or the bird sounds outside my window. Burdening this music with a special purpose or the responsibility of solace might be self-defeating. But, true enough, so is placing a profit incentive on our coziness.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.

Fail We May, Sail We Must: The Living Influence of Andrew Weatherall

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At the beginning of the week, I ran across The Perfumed Garden, a blog collecting recordings and playlists from episodes of John Peel’s celebrated long-running radio show. The tracklists are fascinating on their own. They serve as trapped-in-amber snapshots of what was musically ‘cool’ that particular week of that specific year. Also, the shows from the late ’70s and early ’80s inspired listeners who later formed more than a few beloved UK bands. John Peel was who they were listening to. This influence remains enormous, and it’s fun to examine these roots.

Where will we look in thirty years to find the musical zeitgeist of today? Is there anyone like John Peel, collecting and noting songs for enthusiasts to study thirty years from now? I imagine there are tastemakers across genres with a similar influence — not only in underground rock and dance, but also in hip hop, in Indian music, in jazz, and so on. But I fear they’re making streaming playlists — ephemeral lists of what’s moving the present culture, but inaccessible to those studying music’s past.

The day after I was thinking about all of this, the news came from everywhere that Andrew Weatherall died. I’m assuming most of my readers know of Weatherall and, like me, are saddened by this news. If you’d like a refresher of his remarkable career, read some of these moving memorials. (Each word at the end of that sentence is a link.)

Weatherall was an X’s X, where X could be several things: a producer’s producer, a DJ’s DJ, a remixer’s remixer, and so on. If one of those Xs was your trade, then chances are you looked up to Andrew Weatherall as one of the best in the discipline of X.

And I did think about Weatherall, the tastemaker’s tastemaker, while I was falling deeper in the John Peel rabbit hole. Weatherall was the first name that came to mind as Peel’s worthy successor. It’s not an original thought — upon Peel’s passing, there was a campaign to give Weatherall the historic Radio 1 slot. But as Weatherall told Dazed & Confused (recounted by Greg Wilson in his lovely remembrance): “The curmudgeon says I’d rather be the one Andrew Weatherall than the second John Peel.”

On Twitter, Joe Muggs requested that we don’t solely remember Weatherall as “the Screamadelica guy.” He unarguably was so much more — for example, the first track on this posthumous single, released yesterday, is stunning — but I’d like to focus on a remix Weatherall did for that Primal Scream album.

I first heard the ‘A Dub Symphony In Two Parts’ version of “Higher Than The Sun” when it came out in 1991. Primal Scream were not on my radar, so it probably came to me as a radio promo (I was a college radio music director and listened to everything). At the time I was dabbling in electronic music production with a few basic pieces of gear. I was mostly (badly) emulating beats and loops found on the instrumental mixes of hip hop 12″ s from the likes of Public Enemy, Black Sheep, Erik B. and Rakim …

In my world, this ‘Dub Symphony’ changed everything. It presented the remix as nearly untethered to the original, artistic branches sprouting from the seed of someone else’s creation. There was nothing else like it.

I was already obsessed with The Third Mind, a book and concept developed by Brion Gysin and William Burroughs that encouraged combining random, unconnected elements to summon undiscovered inspiration. I interpreted Weatherall’s style of remixing as a producer’s version of The Third Mind. Weatherall’s ‘Dub Symphony’ helped me — and many others — approach the act of remixing as almost mystical, a long-distance collaboration.

I don’t have a whole lot of original music to show for my own long and storied music career. But I’ve got a ton of remixes under my belt. I fell in love with remixing — fell in love hard — and most of the time, that’s all I did in my studio. For better or for worse, I can thank Andrew Weatherall for that.

A side note: when I’m consulting music-makers, I always mention ‘the punk rock dream.’ The phrase refers to how, as a punk rock kid, the prospect of self-releasing, worldwide distribution, and instant networking was like a dream to me. And now we’re living it. My colleagues are sick of hearing me spout this phrase which I thought I might have coined. But then I ran across this Weatherall quote in The Guardian as I read a bunch of his older interviews this week: “Here we are at the apex of the punk-rock dream, the democratisation of art, anyone can do it, and what a double-edged sword that’s turned out to be, has it not?” Did I somehow crib that from The Guv’nor, too? I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

Here’s a great selection of Andrew Weatherall’s productions combined with wise words and tales from the man himself. This mix serves as an excellent primer if you’d like one.

Here’s an archive of Andrew Weatherall DJ mixes. The number of sessions approaches 200.

Here’s an archive of his NTS radio show Music’s Not For Everyone. These programs verify Weatherall’s ear for amazing, up-and-coming artists in a variety of genres, and why he gets mentioned alongside John Peel as an influential tastemaker. His last show aired on January 30.

And, if you use Apple Music, here’s a playlist I compiled via various sources. It features Andrew Weatherall productions, remixes, and collaborations alongside tracks he played on his NTS radio show.

I’m not a fan of tattoos, but I like the ones on Andrew’s forearms. They read: Fail We May, Sail We Must.

This post was adapted from Ringo Dreams of Lawn Care, a weekly newsletter loosely about music-making, music-listening, and how technology changes the culture around those things. Click here to check out the latest issue and subscribe.