8Sided Blog

the scene celebrates itself

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.

Ten Films

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There’s a social media ‘challenge’ going around where you’re assigned the task of posting images from ten films that had the most personal impact. I’m sure you’ve seen it. Today the gauntlet was thrown in my direction so I must oblige. But rather than responding to the challenge on social media (and spreading it out over the required ten days), I thought I’d post my answers here. I have trouble following rules.

I’m interpreting ‘impact’ as films that changed me in some way. That could mean through mind-altering insights into the world, or an introduction to a new kind of language (not the spoken type), or by sending me down a rabbit hole of other films, artworks, or philosophies. These aren’t necessarily my favorite films (though my favorite film is here, and I doubt it’s the one you think it is). And I’m leaving off anything recent that’s blown me away as these things take time. It’s no surprise that half these movies were first watched before the age of 15.

Some of these images are obvious straight away — and probably show up on everyone else’s lists — and others are more obscure. I’m not supposed to identify the films but each photo has a hyperlink that reveals all.

I guess I’ve ditched the rules at this point so I’ll break the ‘no explanations’ mandate on a couple of them. The first one is what I watched the week of 9/11/01. I had no idea how heavy, affecting, and appropriate it would be for that particular time. And the last one I watched repeatedly while working on Invisible Airline. I related somewhat to the main character (which is not really a good thing), and there is a song on the album named after a magic chant in the film. I could probably tell you a story about all of these — perhaps someday I will.

#Worktones: Onlee’s United Isolation Ambient Mix

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https://soundcloud.com/onlee/united-isolation-ambient-mix

Our ‘strange times’ lockdown has inspired many artists and DJs to create ambient mixes. These mixes help calm the thoughts and nerves of others, especially those not used to working from home for long stretches. But it’s safe to say these mixes also serve the DJs creating them — something is reassuring and meditative in compiling a set focused on texture rather than beats.

My good friend Boris, DJ’ing as Onlee and running the cool experimental techno label Lichen Records, has undoubtedly delivered on both results with his United Isolation Ambient Mix. It’s nearly four hours long and reaches into selections that aren’t too dark or dramatic but never dull. There’s no tracklist, but, honestly, keeping tabs on the songs would distract from treating this as one long evolving soundscape.

I’ve played this in the home office for the last few days, and it’s effectively kept rogue brainwaves at bay. So, yes, this mix is a suitable prescription for strange, unsettling times.

Exploring New Opportunities in Livestreaming

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Quarantine has led to the proliferation of livestreamed concerts, confirming the need for music in uncertain times. I’d guess that many more people are checking out livestreams than regularly went to shows before the pandemic. And like every other change that’s occurred in quarantine’s wake, there’s a lot of thought on how livestreaming might remain established once things normalize (fingers crossed). Before COVID-19, there were suggestions that virtual touring might gain popularity as a means to offset the environmental toll of actual touring. Current events have pushed the prospect to the forefront for entirely different reasons.

It seems there are two main categories of livestreamed concerts. First, there’s the streamed band performance, like a concert movie with the artists playing a straightforward set from a stage. And, secondly, the intimate live-from-home show, where band members — individually or together — perform casual, stripped-down versions of songs. The nature of live-streaming changes the dynamics of performance through its limitations, but, for the most part, it’s an imitation of an in-person performance. Here’s Cherie Hu in Pitchfork:

Recreating such emotions in livestreaming requires taking advantage of the medium, which often means getting rid of the superfluous spectacle you might otherwise see in normal stage setups. From the fan’s perspective, the “stage” in a livestream is just the screen, and the audience is the chat room. There’s a diminished sense of hierarchy between artist and the fan, leading to interactions that can be much more social, interactive, and intimate.

There’s a lot for the artist to lean into here. The trick is emphasizing the unique aspects of livestreaming — the loss of hierarchy, the ability to interact with fans (and for them to interact with each other), the flat screen — rather than relying on what’s lost. The platforms that win are the ones that build features that could only exist in a digitally livestreamed ecosystem. And the artists fully exploring and exploiting these features will have the upper hand, too.

Creating experiences that are exclusive to a live-streaming format — you won’t get this in clubs! — also adds possibilities for monetization. The key is giving something special, not found elsewhere. Free streams of concerts are found all over YouTube, and, to offer a high-profile example, Coachella livestreamed the last few festivals without any fee. As DJs are also finding out with their DJ sets, years of offering performances for free makes monetization of similar content difficult. Getting creative and thinking far outside of what happens in a club environment is a must.

Another note: if, after COVID-19, live-streaming remains an established part of a band’s marketing and income toolbox, then I see an opportunity for studio spaces and music venues. Many cities could have brick-and-mortar ‘livestream studios’ where bands could perform. These spaces would have the technology and infrastructure to stream performances and make each one distinct and tailored to the act. The interactive and livestream-exclusive features I mention above are built-in, with each studio offering a different specialty or feature set. Engineers and staff are on hand to manage technical as well as online (e.g., chatroom and social media) tasks. The artist would book a date, plan the details of the performance, show up, and play. The business could be stand-alone, or part of a live music venue, a recording studio, or even a co-working space. And it’s not just for bands — theatrical plays, author readings, performance art, and academic talks are some of the other potential client use cases. If live-streaming continues its path to normalization and you’re an entrepreneur looking for a future business idea, this might be something to consider.

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.