8-Sided Blog • Page 3 • thoughts about music’s place in the 21st century

Music, Memory, and Sleeping Next To Boomboxes

Musical Moments, UncategorizedJanuary 10, 2019

My friend, writer Jamie Blaine, is interested in nostalgia — the things we remember and how we selectively remember them. We’ve had many discussions about memory and our memories. Jamie and I grew up in central Louisiana and have been good friends since our teenage years, so there are a lot of recollections we share. He’s much better at remembering the details than I am.

I wouldn’t say I’m distrustful of nostalgia, but I do try to be aware of how it shapes our attitudes and feelings in the present. I’ve had arguments with the ‘music was so much better then’ crowd — what you listened to when you were young and actively discovering music for the first time is always going to sound like the best music ever. I’m certain that present-day teenagers will be saying today’s music was the best thirty years from now.

I like Andrew Weatherall’s attitude. In an interview with The Guardian, he was asked to name his favorite period of music. Weatherall said, “Last week. I’m not a golden age kind of person.”

But there is something about those special songs, heard for the first time under magical circumstances. They aren’t ‘the best,’ but they’re the best for us. These songs are intertwined with our memories and, when listened to, cause spine chills. Is there another art form that imprints on us in this way? Can a painting be locked with a memory?

Jamie loves this story of my most affecting song moment:

I craved new music as a teenager in Pineville, Louisiana, but it wasn’t easy to find. I ended up learning about new music from far away college radio stations, all static-y and fading in and out. Baton Rouge’s KLSU would come through under certain weather conditions, as would Houston’s KTRU. But the most reliable signal came from Lafayette and the college station KRVS. The format was mostly NPR and regional music (Cajun) programming, but from midnight to 6 AM the students took over and played ‘alternative music’ (what we used to call it in the mid-80s).

I couldn’t exactly stay up all night listening to the radio. My solution was to buy a pack of 120-minute cassette tapes (60 minutes per side, the longest you could get) and record the station nightly. I’d put a boombox next to my pillow and start recording at midnight and fall asleep. Once the tape ran out the ‘record’ key on the boombox would make a loud click. This sound woke me up for a second so I could groggily change the tape.

The next day at high school I would listen to the radio show from earlier — on my commute, in between classes, on lunch break, whenever I could. That’s how I kept up on all the cool music that was coming out.

That’s the set-up. The actual story is this:

One night I’m sleeping while the radio is recording and I’m suddenly semi-awake. I’m in that halfway state between asleep and cognizant, not fully conscious. And I hear this music playing, the weirdest, strangest music (or so it seemed at the time). I’m in bed, partly dreaming, and this magical sound is all around me, and I can’t quite believe it. I feel euphoric. Then I fall back asleep.

The next day I’m up and trying to remember. I’m not sure what happened. Was that music real? Was it all a dream?

So I’m at school trying to steal any chance I can get to listen to my tapes of the radio, to see if this strange song exists and if I’d even recognize it. And then — and I remember being in the middle of the hall on the way to class — the tune suddenly comes on. It’s this:

I’m frozen and get chills. It’s not so much that the song is so amazing (though it kinda is), it’s that weird connection with how I heard it for the first time — and how I heard Cocteau Twins for the first time — that moved me. I still get chills when I hear the song, and it brings me back to the time when I was just starting to get excited about discovering music, discovering my music. It transports me to that boombox next to my pillow, and to that high school hallway where I stopped in my tracks with a big grin on my face – “This is that song!” It brings me back to the best music ever.

Update: After reading this post, Jamie wrote to me to say, “Nostalgia is just history with feelings.”

CultureJanuary 10, 2019

Chances are you heard about the 2019 International CES debut of this revolutionary television:

As the host notes, these will be super-expensive at first, no doubt. But flat-screen TVs were expensive as well, and now almost everyone has one. Likewise, I think this ‘rollable’ TV (and the inevitable competing versions) will catch on in a big way. What interests me is how our culture is affected when the TV is no longer the centerpiece of our living rooms. A TV that’s made to be hidden— replaced by a painting or whatever is behind its previously allotted space — proposes a mindset that’s foreign to almost every generation. Can you imagine a house where a big screen isn’t the focus of the primary social room’s furniture and all the attention?

Streaming’s Song Disparity

CommentaryJanuary 10, 2019

Buzzangle Music’s 2018 U.S. Music Industry Report has tongues wagging this week as there’s a lot of information to analyze and digest. Everyone agrees it shows a music industry in transition (though, when was it not in transition?) and growing financially. I may highlight other aspects of the report in future posts but, for now, let’s focus on this nugget via Rolling Stone:

The most popular 10 percent of songs accounted for 99 percent of all audio streams. … Flip that statistic around: 90 percent of streamable music is responsible for just one percent of actual streams.

That concentration was only a smidgeon less severe at the top of the distribution in 2018, according to BuzzAngle’s latest report. The top 500,000 most popular songs in 2017 accounted for 93.6 percent of all streams. The comparable number in 2018 fell the tiniest bit, to 92.4 percent of all streams.

Music Business Report takes a rosier view of these statistics:

The interesting bit: in 2017, the USA’s Top 500,000 tracks racked up 14.6-times as many audio streams as every other piece of music. In 2018, however, this multiple had fallen significantly, down to 12.2. Despite on-demand audio streaming’s overall volume growing by 41.8% in the US in 2018, the actual number of plays dedicated to the Top 50 tracks fell harshly – down by a pretty shocking 74.6%. […]

In other words (give or take a couple of billion streams): pretty much all of the growth in the US audio streaming market last year came outside the Top 500 tracks (aka outside the weekly Top 10 chart).

I suppose that could be interpreted as great news for independent labels though the popularity of back catalog on streaming platforms might cancel out some of the joy. But is this disparity really a consequence of streaming? Twenty years ago, I’m not sure if 10 percent of songs represented 99 percent of what was played on the radio, or sold in all record stores, but I bet the statistic was close. I’m not as alarmed by the statistic as some.

And if the disparity has indeed gotten worse, then that may also be representative of other factors than the platform. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I was pleased to see Rolling Stone hit the nail on the head with this easily overlooked sentence:

… the fact remains that the rampant inequality that has become pervasive in other aspects of American life is similarly acute in the streaming-verse.

Items of NoteJanuary 8, 2019

I’m happy that John Green is doing this Crash Course series on Navigating Digital Information. This is important and I look forward to all the episodes.

John recently gave up all social media for a year. Here’s his first-day video and here’s his one-month follow-up. In the latter he states: “Now I have sometimes believed that I’m like immune to misinformation but I’ve come to understand that such a belief actually makes you more susceptible to it.”

An 8D Industries Update

Daily UpdateJanuary 8, 2019

There’s been a bunch of activity in the label realm, so I thought I’d give a quick update on my 8D Industries imprint.

Terry Grant AKA More Ghost Than Man participated in Big Shot Magazine’s 2018 Rewind, answering a few questions about the past year and the present one. In response to a new year’s resolution, Terry quotes Gustave Flaubert:

“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.”

(I also submitted to the 2018 Rewind if you’d like to check it out.)

More Ghost Than Man’s Everything Impossible Is Far Away album continues to fascinate, providing evocative instrumental soundscapes for your mind-movies. In 2019 Terry will release a long-gestating short sci-fi film using the album’s songs. Terry’s been dropping clues on Instagram — he’s built a city in his garage and created some sort of space-age sickbay.

We’ll be releasing the follow-up to Everything Impossible Is Far Away later this year.

Monta At Odds have been busy, building on the deserved hype for last year’s Argentum Dreams album and they just performed a bunch of New Order songs (as ‘Blue Monta’) at a special end-of-the-year concert. To keep the momentum going, we’re reissuing Monta’s 2005 debut album Unsuspecting. It’s currently out of print, and it shouldn’t be — it’s a terrific ride, and, though more on the ‘downtempo’ tip, isn’t that far off from the sound of Argentum Dreams. Two stand-out songs you can listen to now: “Disappointment” and “A Nick A Scratch A Scuff.”

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Our reissue of Unsuspecting will be out on January 18. If you’re a Bandcamp user, follow 8D Industries there to receive a message once the album is available. Like all of our releases, it will be ‘name your price’ on the Bandcamp platform.

San Mateo delivered his just-completed album this week, and it’s fantastic. The cover art is stunning as well. I can’t wait to send this out into the world. Mid-April, perhaps? It’s the early stages of release planning — once Unsuspecting is out, I’ll have a better idea. In the meantime, dive into San Mateo’s previous work if you’re new to this expressive audio artist.

And an upcoming Q-Burns Abstract Message release? Stay tuned.

Micro-Licensing and the Act of Crossing Fingers

CommentaryJanuary 7, 2019

Micro-licensing sites — where you add your music to an online library portal and licensing rights are granted for a small fee — have an allure. For one thing, they’re convenient as you merely upload your songs and fill in some info. The only other step is to cross your fingers and hope your music takes off on the site. Micro-licensing sites promote royalty in scale — that if your music is successful, it won’t matter that the license fee is $15 (or whatever). Thousands of those will add up.

But it’s common knowledge that it’s a 1% of 1% that have such success on these sites. And I’d wager these successful composers work super-hard at it, doing quite a bit more than crossing fingers.

You also have to accept that, in most cases, you’re losing complete control of your work when you supply music to one of these content providers. You don’t know who’s licensing, and you certainly can’t deny a license, and you won’t be able to gauge or benefit from a commercial entity making loads of money off your work.

Stock photo sites operate the same. Which brings us to this story reported in Petapixel:

It turns out a Newfoundland-based company called Islandwide Distributors (IWD) had licensed [Michael] Stemm’s photo royalty-free from Shutterstock for just $1.88. The company then turned around and made at least 500,000 units of products with it [and sold the products in Walmart stores across Canada] — Stemm learned this number after reaching out to the company. So while Stemm’s experience may seem unfair, it was likely entirely lawful and within Islandwide’s rights.

The salt on the wound:

Unfortunately for Stemm, he isn’t even able to withdraw the $1.88 he earned, as his account needs to reach a balance of $50 before he can see the funds.

Techdirt has no sympathy for Stemm:

Stemm said Shutterstock could license the photo. Shutterstock did exactly that. The fact that Walmart has more than 500,000 items featuring Stemm’s photo is probably unexpected, but if you really want to retain full rights to your creation, you don’t hand part of those rights over to a middleman. When Walmart licensed the picture from Shutterstock, it didn’t seek Stemm’s permission because it didn’t need Stemm’s permission. […]

It certainly seems unfair when a company can make hundreds of dollars from a $1.88 license. But there’s nothing unfair about a process that involves a voluntary relinquishment of control. Shutterstock can certainly find a greater market for someone’s photos, but no one should go into this relationship believing it will result in newfound personal wealth.

I agree with Techdirt’s sentiment here — when you enter into an arrangement with a stock photo library, or a music library, or the record label that will own the rights to your songs, you need to accept what you’re getting into. Moving forward, any mistake is but a learning moment as you got yourself into the mess. According to Petapixel, even Stemm admits he didn’t read Shutterstock’s licensing terms before clicking ‘submit.’

That said, I do believe these sites could do a better job explaining what’s in store for content creators and to favor realistic expectations. The idea that an artist will make ‘easy money’ through a micro-licensing site supports a rare exception. The artist might have better luck buying lottery tickets. Just like the lottery, the allure is strong — I’ve certainly been tempted, by both these licensing libraries and the lottery. And it’s okay if you play — just understand the agreement that you’re entering, the potential outcomes, and how frustrating it is to be in Michael Stemm’s position.

‘Best Of’ Lists Revisted

CommentaryJanuary 6, 2019

I recently wrote about ‘Best Of’ lists and the practice of using them as a guide to finding acclaimed albums one might have missed over the past year. Since writing that post, I’ve decided that playing catch up on the previous year — which might take all year! — only ensures that I’m always catching up. I’ve started the year, as part of my ‘album a day’ routine, looking to the present with the goal of my own ‘Best Of’ or ‘Favorites’ list at the end of 2019. I’ll be a better music-listener if I stay current.

But these end-of-year lists remain a fascinating study. They reveal trends, changing attitudes, and clues to where the mainstream is going.

Rob Mitchum has been aggregating many year-end charts to create a mother-of-all-lists. He’s been doing this since 2013 so comparing his results over the last five years is starting to reveal swings and transitions. This year is marked by diversity, increased critical acceptance of popular artists, and the lack of a clear breakout winner for the number one spot.

The Outline:

When asked about why there isn’t a breakout pick for best album of 2018, Mitchum pointed to a paradigmatic shift in music writing that’s led to better representation and coverage of music genres across the board, with more albums thus vying for preferential treatment. “Music writing has become a lot less indie rock-focused, and there’s a better diversity of music opinion, which levels the playing field a lot for albums …” he said. “You can see in 2013 already how critics have been broadening out to other genres. If I had started the project fifteen years ago, it’d be more apparent how music writing has changed.” […]

Mitchum stressed that it’s good for music when critics move towards a wider variety of genres, and more consideration of the popular and the mainstream. “There’s a lot of alarmist writing on algorithms and streaming, but data-driven music discovery can be good… and I guess that [my] project is another way of saying that,” he said.

These results also show how much the mainstream has changed in the past several years. The sound of popular music has been affected by unlimited access to emerging sounds and cross-pollination of genres that previously would have stayed in tight niches. There hasn’t been an obvious new musical movement or style since perhaps the ‘90s, but I’d argue that a lot of current popular music would sound downright experimental to someone listening ten or fifteen years ago. It’s good to see critics supporting this.

However, for a ‘Best Of’ list reality check here’s some straight talk from book publisher Anna Trubek from her always enlightening Notes from a Small Press newsletter:

… I feel a fool for falling for [Best Of] lists, which are really “favorite books read by critics, who must read the must buzzed-about books for their jobs, so much-buzzed-about books are a large percentage of the books they read, so they often end up on the Best of lists, which are really just their favorites, and a tiny percentage of the total number of books published in a year, and so these lists are all a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy.”

Items of NoteJanuary 5, 2019

Via The New Yorker, last night I read this thought-provoking profile of Elizabeth Anderson, a philosopher of growing renown in that male-dominated field. She’s working to disconnect the inverse relationship between freedom and equality. That is, the idea that freedom is expanded at the expense of equality and vice versa. I never thought about the ‘left vs. right’ debate boiling down to that underlying assumption. From the article:

If individuals exercise freedoms, conservatives like to say, some inequalities will naturally result. Those on the left basically agree—and thus allow constraints on personal freedom in order to reduce inequality. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin called the opposition between equality and freedom an “intrinsic, irremovable element in human life.” It is our fate as a society, he believed, to haggle toward a balance between them. […]

The trouble was that many people, picking up on libertarian misconceptions, thought of freedom only in the frame of their own actions. If one person’s supposed freedom results in someone else’s subjugation, that is not actually a free society in action. It’s hierarchy in disguise.

The piece is a long one (Pocket estimates 38 minutes), but it’s worth the read, sometimes heady but entertaining throughout: The Philosopher Redefining Equality

On a side note, mid-way through the article there’s a New Yorker cartoon that’s the most bizarre one I’ve ever seen.

Sun Ra Exotica

ReviewsJanuary 4, 2019

There’s an effort to make the entire Sun Ra catalog available online, and that’s no easy task. The inimitable jazz artist’s catalog is vast and perplexing, and previously unknown recordings are unearthed on a regular basis. Admittedly some of his work is impenetrable to the uninitiated, creating an impression that Sun Ra is a cacophonous weirdo. That would be a misunderstanding. Irwin Chusid, who is managing the reissue series via Sun Ra LLC, had this to say in an interview with Bandcamp Daily:

He is an institution. He is a cosmic force. He is a genius. He’s one of the great neglected composer-musicians of the 20th century. There’s no question what this man created is singular. There’s no one like Sun Ra. […]

I think 75 percent of Sun Ra’s sprawling catalogue is accessible … Is it slick? No. Is it smooth? No. Is it mainstream? No. But it’s fun. It’s musical. It’s engaging. It’s adventurous. It’s diverse. And a lot of it is jazz.

Diving into the catalog is daunting but rewarding, and it’s not difficult to find starting points. That Bandcamp Daily article suggests many good intro albums. This piece in Vulture has some excellent recommendations, too.

I’ve been going down the Sun Ra rabbit-hole, exploring the extensive catalog available on Bandcamp, and ran across the compilation Sun Ra Exotica. I do love the strange ‘50s genre of ‘exotica,’ exemplified by the likes of Martin Denny, Les Baxter, and Arthur Lyman. The style, in a way, is a precursor to what Jon Hassell coined ‘fourth world music:’ a blending of different traditional styles with Western music to create a previously unimagined sound.

I had never thought of Sun Ra in the context of ‘exotica,’ but it makes sense. He was, after all, an exotic dude. And his oeuvre is so expansive that contextualizing groupings of his compositions under a theme, like ‘exotica,’ reveals something new about Sun Ra’s work.

From the release notes to Sun Ra Exotica:

Was Exotica kitsch? Did it represent “cultural appropriation”? Was it a dilution of indigenous art? Who cares? Music should be enjoyed on its own terms. … Exotica has roots, but those roots are uncopyable. What emerges is something derivative, yet original. Here you have Sun Ra, of African-American extraction, influenced by Les Baxter, a Caucasian from Texas, who was in turn influenced by primitive jungle rites. It’s a cultural feedback loop, best enjoyed by leaving politics out of it.

Sun Ra Exotica is a terrific starting point for those unfamiliar with Sun Ra’s spaceways. It’s also a pleasure for this longtime fan, the 25 tracks fitting together effortlessly in Ra’s cosmic sonic puzzle. It’s the soundtrack for my weekend.

CommentaryJanuary 3, 2019

Vulture explores today’s topsy-turvy state of the album release strategy in an article that asks Does the Surprise Album Release Still Work? My answer: it can if the strategy fits your brand and fan expectations … and, as the article points out, if you’re not looking to release vinyl on the same day.

This quote from Beggars Group’s Matt Harmon in the article is important:

“Streaming means that we’re not getting the sales that we used to get the week of release or the first three or six months of release, but that those sales or streams or equivalent units are stretched over the first two, three, four, five years …”

Longterm thinking is increasingly vital and that’s a good thing. The first-week album splash might still work for the music industry’s 1%, but anyone else not actively promoting an album — and a body of work — continually for the entirety of his or her recording career is playing the wrong game. Streaming rewards maintaining interest in a back catalog. Take advantage of this and stop looking at a release date as the crest of your promotional efforts.