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Radioactivities: The Life and Times of Mr. and Mrs. Kraftwerk

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I knew David and Jennifer long before they became Mr. and Mrs. Kraftwerk. Actually, David and I used to pal around in college, performing on-air hijinks on college radio stations and attending Butthole Surfers concerts. There was always a performance art aspect to David’s humor, probably spurred on by the mischievous subcultures you’d find sneaking around late ’80s campuses. As the Subgenius slogan went, “Fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke.“

The honorary title of Mr. and Mrs. Kraftwerk was unwittingly foisted upon David and Jennifer. As you’ll learn, David is the fabled Florida man who changed his name to ‘Kraftwerk.’ Or so they say.

As self-described ‘super fans’ of the German uber-group, David and Jennifer at first happily embraced getting tangled in the mythos of Kraftwerk. Now they unashamedly encourage and propagate it. If this were one of those movie ‘expanded universes,’ you’d have to now refer to their contributions to the Kraftwerk story as canon.

This post breaks down the timeline of David and Jennifer’s Kraftwerk-related activities, projects, and art pranks. A common theme is the automobile — what begins with a memorable driver’s license photo ends up with the five-figure purchase of the very Beetle spotted in 3D at Kraftwerk’s current shows.

You won’t be surprised to learn this list is incomplete. There are the gingerbread cookies, the BBC Radio interview, the Computer World computer project, the new concert-going outfits, the teletubbies, and so much more. Like musique, this project is non-stop. The tale of Mr. and Mrs. Kraftwerk is an ever-developing story.

The transcript below is taken from a much longer conversation — nearly 45 minutes, in fact. The full interview goes into many other Kraftwerk-related shenanigans and some nerdy details. You can listen to it all in the handy audio player below.

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FLORIDA MAN CHANGES HIS NAME TO KRAFTWERK

Mr. Kraftwerk's Driver's License
Mr. Kraftwerk's Driver's License

David: When we moved to Florida, we had to get new driver’s license photos.

Jennifer: And David went to the DMV as Man Machine. And specifically asked the photographer to make sure that his — I don’t know how you managed to pull this off — but get your shirt and tie in the photo because they always cut it off at the Adam’s apple. The fact that you were able to ask for that, without it raising any red flags or strangeness, and them doing it — kudos.

Michael: Was that the same day that you took all the other photos of Man Machine out and about?

Jennifer: Yes. Because since he was already in costume, why not continue taking photos, documenting this costume, and then doing things that are out of character for a Kraftwerk robot.

David: You mean like having humanity?

Jennifer: Yes. Like doing something other than standing motionless on a stage.

Mr. Kraftwerk feeds the ducks.
Mr. Kraftwerk feeds the ducks.

David: So we fed some ducks, put some gas in the Subaru, and enjoyed some delicious iced coffee. Then at the end of the day, I went to bed.

Michael: Then you posted the photos online.

Jennifer: Yes. It took about six or eight months, and then somebody found them and just made up a story. They didn’t reach out or contact anybody.

David: It was Dangerous Minds. And they made this whole story up based upon the photos. Florida Man Changes His Name to ‘Kraftwerk.’ I woke up that morning, had a cup of coffee, and took a quick look at my social media feed. At that point, I’d already had like 50 notifications, and I was puzzled.

Michael: And then it ballooned from there!

David: Nevermind that Vice Magazine interviewed me, and Road and Track got in contact because of the DMV end of it. Oh, and New Music Express wrote a story. Nevermind that. We were in Lakeland, Florida, of all places, at a record store, and somebody started whispering, “Hey, it’s that’s the guy. That’s the guy who changed his name to Kraftwerk.”

Jennifer: It was finally a bit of fun news about a Florida man. Nothing that involved an alligator or an arrest.

David: It was probably the first positive Florida man story to be written in a decade.1You can read David’s ‘inside story’ of this experience here.

THE KRAFTWERK WEDDING

Kraftwerk wedding-goers in 3D glasses.
Kraftwerk wedding-goers in 3D glasses.

David: We were planning on getting married, and I half-jokingly said to Jennifer, “What about Kraftwerk as a wedding theme?” And she wasn’t half-joking with her answer. She was full on.

Jennifer: So a red shirt and black tie were obvious attire for all of the wedding party, including me. Then we made two Kraftwerk podiums. They’re like lecterns but are actually the cases that they stand in front of when they perform. We found some traffic cones that didn’t have stripes and proceeded to mask them off and spray paint them, give them stripes. And when we went to see Kraftwerk in Atlanta, both of us had the foresight to collect as many discarded 3D glasses on the way out of the venue as possible.2There’s a lot more that went into this wedding — read this blog post.

Michael: And everyone dressed as Man Machine.

Jennifer: Yes. That was the only request.

Michael: And the wedding got written up in a bunch of places, including in Germany.

Jennifer: Yes, in the Rheinische Post in Düsseldorf.

KRAFTWERK’S NEW PRESS PHOTO

Kraftwerk (?) at the Dimensions Festival 2018, Croatia.
Kraftwerk (?) at the Dimensions Festival 2018, Croatia.

Jennifer: We reached out to a photographer friend named Jon Wolding. Sort of last minute, maybe a month before the wedding, and told him our idea.

Michael: This is the photo taken at the end of the night, replicating the Man Machine album cover.

Jennifer: He managed to pull it together in the back parking lot; that’s the exit staircase of the second level of Ella’s. He stuck some red photo paper to the outside of the building with gaff tape, and he and his, team managed to set up and light that amazing photo.3Editor’s note: Yes, I am one of the four participants in this photo.

Michael: Then, unexpectedly, the photo starts appearing in strange places.

David: It was at a music festival in Croatia. The Dimensions Festival 2018. And, on their website, they used our photo as the photo of Kraftwerk, the festival’s headliner. And if they printed flyers and posters like that, I would pay a King’s ransom for one.

Michael: I think what happened is somehow, through rampant sharing, the picture built enough SEO credibility that it somehow marched its way to the top of an image search result for ‘Kraftwerk.’

David: Yeah, apparently that’s what happened. And then there were other things as a result of that. Like bandanas and other apparel being sold on Amazon with our wedding photo on them.

KRAFTWERK SKY DANCER

Kraftwerk Sky Dancer

Michael: What was the next project?

Jennifer: We carved the pumpkins for Halloween. Then, soon after, around Christmas, the neighborhoods here are full of those inflatable Yodas and Santa Clauses and stuff. And I thought, “Wouldn’t it be fantastic to have a Kraftwerk sky dancer?” I mocked it out on packing material paper and got some ripstop nylon, and sewed it together.4Jennifer will show you exactly how she made the sky dancer in this blog post. And I found a guy on Craigslist that had a surplus of wind sock fans. I don’t know why. We did a test run out in the front yard, and it worked! But now we need to find someplace with a nice backdrop for a video. So we guerrilla-style drove up in the backside of the Tampa Museum of Art, put the hazards on, wheeled the fan and the sky dancer out, and plugged it into an outlet. That’s the video that you see of the sky dancer video on YouTube.5Be sure to read David’s blog post for more detail on building the sky dancer.

David: You should make it very clear: we tried to get them to sign off on it. They just looked at us like we were offering a lightly fried weasel in a bun. So, we had to take matters into our own hands and just go do it.

Jennifer: Since we had met Wolfgang Flür,6A meeting which you can read about in David’s excellent blog post. it seemed logical to put his face on the sky dancer. So it’s a Wolfgang Skydancer, which he thoroughly loved. And he’s used that video footage in his recent concert backdrop video.

KRAFTWERK PUPPETS

Kraftwerk Puppet Video

Jennifer: The puppets were also an idea that I’d had, but, again, how to get from an idea to making something three-dimensional — I didn’t know how to do it. And it occurred to me that maybe I should look on YouTube. And sure enough, Adam Kreutinger has a whole how-to one-on-one series on making puppets.

David: And Jennifer vanished down a puppet rabbit hole, like a wormhole in space and time, not to be seen for months.

Jennifer: So now we’re the proud custodians of four rather large Muppet-sized Kraftwerk puppets,7Jennifer documented the creation of the Kraftwerk puppets in this Flickr album. which we used to shoot a video set to the “Autobahn” cover by New David.

David: New David did a lovely cover of a number of Kraftwerk songs. I think that his cover of “Autobahn” is the most significant because he takes a song that is intrinsically very synth-laden and with no real-world instrumentation, and he turns it into an ode to a drive in the country. And it’s beautiful. We were listening to it and had the idea that this was something that we could do a video for. We began working on an homage to New David’s homage. Then I got in touch with him and said, “Hey, can we use your music for our video?” and he was all for it. It worked out well, and the rest is history.

FLORIAN SCHNEIDER’S BEETLE

Florian Schneider's Volkwagen Beetle.
Florian Schneider's Volkwagen Beetle.

David: And then the bad news came.

Michael: Which was Florian Schneider’s passing.

David: Yeah. It was a large loss. You could feel it. For us, it was like, and I guess, how the world felt about the loss of David Bowie except a little more poignant. I wrote a story about the 26 days of silence following Florian Schneider’s death on Medium, and I led that story off with a photo of his Volkswagen Beetle. But we didn’t know about the car going up for sale until Claudia8Claudia is Florian Schneider’s sister. You’ll have to listen to the full interview in the player at the top to learn how she figures into this tale. ‘at mentioned’ one of us on social media about it being for sale on the German equivalent of Autotrader.

Jennifer: The more we thought about the opportunity, it seemed that we should at least make, as they say, the college try. We should at least reach out to the dealer, give him a little backstory on who we are, why we’re interested in the vehicle, what we’re prepared to spend on it, and ask, was he willing at all? Is it possible for him to make any kind of compromise on the going price?

David: Obviously, you don’t have a good idea what sort of value to place on the 1949 Volkswagen Beetle owned by Florian Schneider. It’s hard to wrangle a price, especially when you’re doing it over a phone line regarding a car that you’ve never laid eyes on in person. So I laid out the case for the two odd-ball Americans, so very far away from the Beetle’s homeland in Germany. He felt certain synchronicity with us, and he was willing to do it.

Michael: So then the car had to get on a boat, but did you go there to see it first?

David: Yes. We really wanted to go see this car in its home, before it came over. And so we went, and that afforded great opportunities to meet journalists who suddenly found our purchase of the car to be very, very newsworthy.

Michael: So once again, the news cycle kicks into gear.

David: I don’t remember the journalist’s name who wrote the story in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, but that newspaper is the German equivalent of the New York Times. It has national distribution across Germany, and Germans are fanatical readers of the newspaper. It was a really big deal. And the story was on page three of their A section. It didn’t go in the C section or the D section. It was page three and the entire page, top to bottom, in the A section. Because the Germans took a great interest in the idea that this piece of their cultural heritage was going to get loaded on a boat and go to Florida for two American Kraftwerk fanatics.

Jennifer: And then the car got on a boat for what we thought was going to take a month. It turned out to be closer to four and a half.

Michael: Well, the car finally arrives, and you’re ready for it. And you’re able to fully document the arrival.

David: (Laughter) There was a lot of emotion; it’s going to be here any day. Now we were thinking, with great confidence, they will definitely give us notice before it gets here. Except that there was zero notice. I happened to be up, and I heard a noise outside at 1:30 in the morning. I peek out of the blinds, and there’s this enormous automotive transportation trailer. They’re offloading cars, and I think, “Oh, that can’t possibly be for us. They must have had a flat or something.” I walk out there in my jimjams and my bed head with a flashlight, and sure enough, at the back of the trailer is our Beetle. And we were prepared to have a friend of ours do videography and document the joyful reunion of us with Florian Schneider’s Beetle. And instead, it’s me holding my telephone at arm’s length with bedhead and trying to pretend that I’m happy.

Michael: Would they have left it in the street if you hadn’t been there?

David: I can’t tell you. I regret walking outside as I’d like to know what they would have done.

Michael: So, then, what are the plans for the Beetle?

David: The plan is to bring it to Volkswagen events and show it not only as a fantastic, very close to the war post-war artifact but also as a piece of German cultural heritage. Perhaps with a cutout of Florian Schneider and some Kraftwerk playing.9and hopefully Wolfgang Skydancer dancing alongside!

Michael: Do you foresee driving around in it?

David: Well, we still need to finish its legalization in the state of Florida. But you know, a lot of terrible yet ironic things seem to happen in this world. And it would be just totally ironic and terrible if a distracted person sending a text were to t-bone this car while in Tampa traffic.

Michael: And driving a neon pink modern Volkswagen.

David: Yeah. So, while it will occasionally be driven, it’s only going to be under the auspices of a Sunday morning drive while all the particularly bad people are still in bed, recovering from hangovers. It will get taken to car shows, but we’re going to get a nice flatbed trailer to transport it. To that end, we purchased a tow vehicle: a big white GMC truck. And Jennifer is in the midst of making some amazing vinyl graphics that are going to be on the side.

Jennifer: I’ve already purchased little metal letters for the back tailgate. This truck is now the Kraftwerk Edition GMC truck.

David: It looks very official.

Kraftwerk Edition GMC Truck.
Kraftwerk Edition GMC Truck.

KRAFTWERK IS THE REASON

Michael: I’m curious — besides being big fans, what do you feel makes Kraftwerk ripe for this?

David: It’s the absurdity of having a sense of humor about a band that takes itself so seriously. Or, more accurately, whose fans take the band so seriously. I don’t know that Kraftwerk take themselves that seriously …

Jennifer: Their fans sure do.

David: But the fans do. Talk about a bunch of killjoys.

Jennifer: Kraftwerk has created such a simple and bold pallet to pull from: vivid colors, vivid shapes, iconography, symbols … like visual samples that can be reused and reconstituted and put together in completely new and different ways. And I like putting things together in ways that are incongruent with this severe hard visual aesthetic that’s been put out by the band.

Michael: I also think the mysteriousness of them allows people to fill in their own blanks. And, to me, you’re starting to take on sort of a Kraftwerk-ian version of The Yes Men.

David: Thank you for drawing that analogy. That’s good.

Michael: It’s this idea of these intentionally bizarre things putting a stop to people’s normal brain processes and making them think in ways they’ve never thought before in order to try to figure things out.

David: That was the tenant of the surrealists. And that’s kind of what we hope to achieve. There’s an absurdity that we want to poke at to the point that it makes people uncomfortable. I mean, we are super fans, but at the same time, we’re also kind of trolling the super fans.

Bandcamp’s Roots in Fandom

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Bandcamp’s Ethan Diamond doesn’t do a lot of podcast interviews. So his conversation with Andrew Dubber on the MTF Podcast is a good find. Recorded sometime last April, the Bandcamp CEO gives personal insight into the platform and its philosophy. He also talks about the introduction of Bandcamp Fridays to help artists struggling without tour income. The interview happened after the first one took place. 

Bandcamp

And it’s fun to hear of Diamond’s music fandom, including a story about ordering an obscure vinyl LP from a Norwegian band called Koppen — “one of my favorite records.” The creation story of Bandcamp comes out of fandom, too. Diamond was inspired when he bought a digital download directly from the site of a band he liked. The profound technical issues he experienced — this was the web of the mid-00s — put him on a mission to serve the music community by making something better. In other words, Bandcamp is a platform sparked by fandom and in service to musicians. Compare that with whatever inspired Daniel Ek’s recent remarks about Spotify’s artist community — he seems to feel artists should serve him.

But there’s no animosity or sense of competition. Diamond explains that Bandcamp can coexist with Spotify. He rightly believes the two platforms each appeal to different tiers of listeners:

The way I think about it is when I was growing up — so listening to music in the late ’70s and the early ’80s — there were lots of people who exclusively interacted with music through the radio. And then there were the people who bought tapes and bought vinyl records. Not everybody needed to do that. There were a lot of people who were totally happy listening to stuff on the radio. They like music so they turn on the radio. They have this channel that’s kind of the style of music they like. I feel like that’s exactly what’s happening now. The streaming services are a lot like radio. And playlists are a lot like radio. And then there’s this different kind of person who wants to go deep and interact with the artist and own the music. That’s a subset and I’m happy to cater to that subset.

This is spot on. We forget that, in the pre-digital era, the vast majority of people didn’t buy music. The radio or background listening in stores or on TV was sufficient.

Spotify — or any mass audience streaming service — has the goal of monetizing casual listeners’ listening habits. That’s great — there are many paying $9.99 per year who would never buy music otherwise — and the more prominent labels are certainly profiting. But the danger is in pushing listeners who qualify as ‘fans’ to passive listening habits. Labels and artists need to do the opposite: motivate listeners away from radio (Spotify) and into fandom (Bandcamp and their own websites).

Why a Tip Jar on Spotify is a Bad Idea

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In discussions with artists, in think-pieces, in Twitter threads — here’s an idea that comes up all of the time: streaming platforms (Spotify, etc.) should add a ‘tip jar.’ If you enjoy an artist, you can ‘tip’ them, like a dollar bill in a busker’s guitar case. It’s a way of helping the artist in a time of dwindling streaming payouts.

The suggestion is well-meaning and, at first, sounds like a great idea. But there are a lot of problems.

Let’s start with logistics. The streaming platform would need to implement a direct payment system. And the only way a ‘tip jar’ would work is if the payment goes directly to the artist. A label or distributor could be a conduit, but if the idea is to eliminate the ‘go-between,’ then having someone in the middle — accountable for payments and likely taking a cut — defeats the purpose.

For this ‘tip jar’ to work, the artist would need to contact the platforms and set it up personally. And, unlike a single distributor that maintains relationships with multiple platforms for an artist, the artist would have to directly manage each platform (assuming different spaces come on board to the idea).

But could we even get to that point? This concept wouldn’t work unless Spotify came on board. And what’s the incentive for Spotify to do something like a ‘tip jar?’ It would take an investment and change in infrastructure to set up this feature and facilitate direct payments. What’s in it for them? As a shareholder-controlled company, there needs to be a profit motive embedded in everything they do. And, again, if a platform takes a cut of the ‘tips,’ then the purpose is defeated.

I don’t harbor an illusion that Spotify would install a ‘tip jar’ without a profit motive simply to support the artist community. It’s not hard to discern Spotify’s interests, given the company’s recent moves: the opposition to raising copyright payouts to songwriters, the shift to podcasts, Daniel Ek’s insistence that Spotify is an ‘audio company,’ not a ‘music company.’ Spotify, and other corporate platforms, seek profit above all else, and a ‘tip jar’ doesn’t fit into that equation.

Now let’s pull back and look at some broader problems. We have to accept that, on its face, a ‘tip jar’ on streaming platforms is a bad idea. It disguises the insufficient payouts to artists — as well as the lousy record deals where many artists find themselves trapped — by claiming they can (and should) live off tips. There are already ethical problems with paying service industry workers far below minimum wage due to the possibility of ‘tips.’ We shouldn’t continue to normalize this practice by extending it to recording artists.

Also, an artist tipping system harms non-artist songwriters. Songwriters would not receive these tips. If fact, non-artist writers would probably receive less royalty. It’s possible services and labels would use the tipping feature as an excuse to reduce royalty payouts.

If we can ignore this bad behavior, then there’s an additional danger. A tipping system on Spotify, used by artists for income, would ironically increase reliance on the platform. It’s another method of separating artists from their fans, with Spotify standing in the middle. If the domination of corporate streaming platforms is what brought us here, wouldn’t it make better sense to offer solutions that lessened an artist’s ties to them? I worry that including Spotify et al. in plans to help independent artists shuts us off from outside-of-the-box ideas that further artist independence.

I also don’t think that artists should have to busk and beg on the side of a road that runs alongside corporate property. It’s a bad look, and it’s demeaning, and, despite what we’re led to believe, there are other options. Yes, artists need to make a living, and streaming payouts are awful, especially in the niche genres. But ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ isn’t the answer here.

The answer lies in fandom — it always has — and finding ways to cultivate and engage an audience without a middleman controlling access. For starters, a robust artist website is key. Create a hub that draws new listeners and repeated visits from diehard fans. Reward with bountiful content, consistent updates, surprises (very important), and full streams of the catalog. Your website is where you send people, not Facebook or Spotify or another platform that controls access to fans. One can still use those platforms, of course, but use them merely as tools to get people to your site. And, if you want, that’s where the tip jar goes.

Vaughan Oliver’s Invitation to Decode

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Vaughan Oliver - Pixies Cover Art

My first job was at a record shop (Camelot Music, a staple of ’80s shopping malls), and I enjoyed a generous employee discount. That offered the freedom to purchase records based on the cover art — if the cover’s cool, the music’s gotta be cool, right? — and a lot of those records would be released on the seminal British label 4AD. The enticing cover art was by 23 Envelope, the design team of Vaughan Oliver and photographer Nigel Grierson.

Years ago, I wrote about the power of cover art in a tribute to Factory Records boss Tony Wilson. There was a cool record shop in the beach town where my grandmother lived. It was next to the grocery store, so, while visiting my grandmother, I’d pop in to look at records when she’d go for groceries. I was 12 or 13 years old and recall seeing those early New Order records — Movement and Everything’s Gone Green — sitting in the mysterious bin labeled ‘imports.’ These records were strange, not like anything that I’d seen, and it was impossible to resist their vibe. It would be a couple more years until I heard these records, but the sound, the feeling, wasn’t that far off from the cover art’s first impressions. The designer was Peter Saville, often mentioned in influence alongside Vaughan Oliver, and it was like he was transmitting signals to me across the Atlantic.

That’s what remarkable cover art — or design in general — does to us. It’s an invitation to decode, revealing (or hinting at) the intention of the creator. Or, as Oliver told an interviewer, “[An album] cover should work as an entrance door that invites you to cross it.”

Clan of Xymox - cover art by Vaughan Oliver

It’s not a stretch to believe there would be a lot fewer graphic designers in the world if not for Vaughan Oliver and Peter Saville. I can’t think of a single designer friend of a specific age range that wasn’t significantly inspired by the outputs of 4AD and Factory. But it wasn’t only budding designers who received inspiration. There are also a lot more independent labels because of these designs. Or a lot more labels that approached everything they did as a representative package.

Oliver understood that the appeal he added to 4AD was emotional, that fans of the label picked up on common threads and identified a community. Oliver stated, “This was kind of branding before branding—and I generally don’t use the word branding—but it was creating a vibe that made you trust in something.” He continued:

I was always a bit wary of putting an identity on the label itself, but I wanted individual identities for the bands that were consistent. Then, with time, you would see a thread start to appear. There was a unity, but without a corporate branding stamp on it. It was very fluid. Eventually, it became an emotional response that people had with the work. Thirty years later, I’m talking to students who call it “emotional branding”—how people become emotionally involved in what we were doing. I’ve got clients who ask, “How can we have that now?” I say, “We don’t have that now. It builds with time; it also builds with the quality of the product.”

It’s a challenge to create this emotional community without the tangible effects of a physical totem. It’s not impossible — many well-crafted artist websites successfully transmit intention to potential fans. But basing an artist’s vibe on the limitations of a social media platform’s template or a thumbnail in a streaming app is a losing battle. The Guardian’s Ben Beaumont-Thomas said it well: “[Vaughan Oliver’s cover] design tells you that you’re about to go on a journey. With streaming, you’re suddenly teleported in without a map.”

Unlike Oliver, I’m not afraid to use the term ‘branding’ as long as I get to define how I use it. And I define branding, in music, as the promise an artist makes to her audience. That’s the vibe of trust that Oliver refers to above, and it’s essential. An artist or label that gains that trust, that cultivates a community, that repeatedly transmits a signal, becomes a cultural curator. An expectation grows in the listener, and this expectation is a necessary tension. What’s next? Will this label fulfill my expectations? How will this artist continue to reward her community of fans?

That’s how we felt about 4AD. The cover art, the music, the ambiguity allowing us to fill in our own interpretations — these worked together to build our tribe. If, circa 1985, I saw you pick up a Cocteau Twins album in the record store I’d strike up a conversation. We’re in the same club.

I’m sure that Vaughan Oliver, 23 Envelope, and label founder Ivo Watts-Russell partly knew what they were doing. But I also think they stumbled into a lot of this. The point here is that it’s not that difficult. It’s all about developing intention. Understand who you want to reach, as narrowly as possible, and create only for them. Cohesively apply that aesthetic to everything you deliver to the world.

Vaughan Oliver passed away in the final days of 2019. As I commented on Twitter, it’s a triumph to be remembered for a distinctive contribution to culture and style; one that’s identifiably his own as well as freely lent to others. Oliver transitioned to education in his last decade, and that’s fitting. Many of us in the music industry were his students. He taught us all a lot, and, in a more ephemeral digital age, these lessons now serve a higher purpose.

🔗→ Lost worlds of sex and magic: Vaughan Oliver’s album sleeves for 4AD
🔗→ Sight, touch, hearing: an interview with Vaughan Oliver
🔗→ Vaughan Oliver (Interview Magazine)
🔗→ Cover Star: Vaughan Oliver interview
🔗→ interview with graphic designer vaughan oliver

Looking Back to Go Forward

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Predicting is a slippery business. We can spot trends and have a general idea where things are going, but how can we accurately predict? Is it worth the effort? Alvin Toffler said that “No serious futurist deals in prediction,” while Warren Ellis stays out of the game as “it’s a quick way to look like an idiot.”

For example, in the ’90s, there were plenty of yearly predictions, but few that foresaw the approaching tsunami of the internet, soon to wipe away the music industry. Some accurate predictions, or at least ones that the powers-that-be would listen to, would have been helpful. Instead, there were a lot of ‘idiots.’1I didn’t see the tsunami coming, either.

David Bowie was known for his prescience, and he wasn’t afraid to casually lay down a prediction or two. After all, it’s the seasoned player — but one open to changing possibilities rather than in resistance or denial — who has great insight on the future. The young are often seduced by the new, while nostalgia binds the oldsters. But some are like Bowie, using tradition and history as lenses for viewing technological disruption.

Here’s what David Bowie told the New York Times in 2002:

“Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity … So it’s like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You’d better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that’s really the only unique situation that’s going to be left. It’s terribly exciting. But on the other hand it doesn’t matter if you think it’s exciting or not; it’s what’s going to happen.”

The idea seems quaint now but, in 2002 — the age of Friendster! — Bowie’s words were a shot across the bow. The most radical part is his acceptance, a confidence that the genie is loose, and the bottle is rolling down a hill. Only a few in the industry felt this way. Instead, there was the grasping, the hanging on, the desire to extend the status quo of inflated compact disc profits.

Some more from Bowie:

“ I don’t even know why I would want to be on a label in a few years, because I don’t think it’s going to work by labels and by distribution systems in the same way,” he said. ”The absolute transformation of everything that we ever thought about music will take place within 10 years, and nothing is going to be able to stop it. I see absolutely no point in pretending that it’s not going to happen. I’m fully confident that copyright, for instance, will no longer exist in 10 years, and authorship and intellectual property is in for such a bashing.”

Again, crazy talk for 2002. Of course, copyright does still exist, but Bowie wasn’t too far off. The magnitude of user-generated content and YouTube’s use of ‘safe harbor’ under the DMCA was unforeseeable, from a copyright perspective, in 2002. It turns out Napster was the pre-show.

But this disruption isn’t total. That’s why it’s wise to listen to voices that can look back and understand how technological developments fit within longstanding traditions. We can change how we listen to music, but we’re still listening to music in the same way. We can change how we make music, but we’re still essentially making music in the same way. Our incentives remain untouched by the march of progress.

Looking forward is important for reasons of preparation and, as my friend Craig says, “going where the puck’s headed instead of simply chasing the puck.” But we should always remember why we’re here. Despite all the talk of AI and VR and which tech company is acquiring a different tech company, we want to love music. We want to get excited and tell our friends and exist in this music universe as social beings. David Bowie is right that changes are happening whether we like it or not. But the exciting part is working out how these changes bring us together as music fans. To lose sight of why we’re here is as misguided as chasing the genie’s bottle down that hill.

With that in mind, I participated in SynchTank’s Trends to Watch in 2020 (‘trends,’ not ‘predictions’), joined by three industry pundits of serious smartness. Bucking Ellis and his quote above, their predictions are wise and thought-out, and their proximity to my opinion certainly helps my case.

I’ve been thinking a lot about social media and an artist’s fealty to corporate platforms. My contribution to the Trends piece reflects this and combines prediction with a dose of wishful thinking:

Over the past decade, artists and labels — using technological tools — have become increasingly independent, capturing control and ownership of publishing, masters, and avenues of distribution. But independent marketing fell into the trojan horse of social media, with many artists exclusively relying on the likes of Facebook to get the message out. The keys to discoverability were firmly in the hands of a new crop of corporate gatekeepers.

Undesirable actions by these platforms — such as algorithmically cutting access to fans and unrepentant involvement in political and privacy scandals — started opening eyes to the pitfalls of this reliance. Displeasure continues to grow as these companies fight back by further segmenting audiences and requiring even larger ‘boosts’ to reach one’s fans. The 2020 election — a looming social media shit-show — will move this dissatisfaction even more into the mainstream.

Thus, independent artists are increasingly introducing homegrown strategies that are entirely within their control. We see this in the rising talk of reclaiming fandom, direct support of artists, and the importance of individual ‘stories.’ And we see new twists on old concepts. Email lists, creative artist sites, blogs, localized grassroots outreach — tactics that predated social media, now coming together with the latest technological innovations to form a new breed of DIY.

In the aftermath, social media will remain a tool, but merely a tool — downgraded but still handy. It’s a hammer, not a house. Independent artists will understand that, along with increased interest in owning masters and administering rights, control over how artists reach and interact with their audiences is just as vital.

The point stands: technological breakthroughs, especially those that promise too-easy solutions or purport to disrupt, should face the lens of tradition. We relied on these technologies — these shortcuts — to deliver our messages to fans. We believed online connections were authentic when, in fact, our fanbase was closer to commodity, inaccessible and exploited in our names. Instead, we should use technological tools to claim our rights, creative works, and fanbases, not to transfer these to others. That transfer is the easy route, and unfortunately, it’s what the technology was built to offer.

That’s why I’m looking back as I go forward. The future is filled with possibilities that are promising and, yes, others that are terrifying. But considering the roots of why we act like humans — how our intentions are evergreen — can keep us sober and grounded as technology continues to seduce and overwhelm. Our decisions and actions as artists and listeners should rely on our deepest fundamentals and a core understanding of what brought us here. So, TL;DR: In 2020, let your love of music be your guide.

🔗→ David Bowie, 21st-Century Entrepreneur
🔗→ Music Industry Analysts on the Trends to Watch in 2020

Taking Your Fans by Surprise

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Craig Snyder has launched a blog and one of the first posts has terrific observations on forming a community around a creative project:

So you want to build a community? Be human. Talk with your fans. The beauty of a community is that they start small. So it doesn’t matter if you have 10 listeners or 500. But your goal should be to grow your community. How do you do that?

You talk with them. You get to know them. You ask them to invite their friends that will also like your music/podcast. You don’t need any membership sites to do this. Invite them to email you. Or chat with you after a performance.

Craig recommends that performers meet fans at the merch table. That’s how I met Mike Watt circa 1987. I wrote him a few letters over the previous year — which he responded to — and I let him know I’d be at the fIREHOSE show in Baton Rouge. I found Watt at the table hocking his band’s shirts and shyly introduced myself. He yelled my name and gave a warm bear hug. Then, the next surprise: he was hungry and asked if I’d like to have a snack with him at the restaurant next door. Just me and Watt, talking about life and music over french fries for thirty minutes before the show.

That experience solidified my Mike Watt fandom. And I’ve repeatedly run into him at his shows over the years and he was always generous. The last time I saw Watt, a couple of years ago, he didn’t remember me. Understandable as I was just ‘a kid at the gig’ and it had been over a decade since our previous encounter. But he still put me in a warm bear hug, just like the first time we met.

However, the point isn’t that you can only attract fans for life by inviting them to dinner or giving bear hugs. But these experiences, including others that Craig mentions in his article, do have an essential element in common: surprise.

An unexpected gesture goes a long way toward building a bond with an audience. For a touring band, this could be meeting fans at the merch table, or enjoying the opening band with the audience1I was watching the opening band at that fIREHOSE show, after the fries, and Watt wandered in and stood next to me. “Great band!” he yelled as he shook his fist in the air to the rhythm. It could be inviting people on the mailing list to the show with a personal email or postcard, or even pulling out an unexpected cover song that the group rarely plays. Think of actions that will create surprises, both one-on-one with individual fans and to an entire audience at the show. Not only do these experiences make fans feel special and members-of-the-club, but they also create stories told to future fans.

Thinking in terms of ‘the surprise’ allows non-touring acts to participate, too. If you don’t do shows, what are ways that you can surprise your listeners? Know that it’s tough to be surprising on social media — that’s by design — so think outside of Facebook and Instagram posts.

Your mailing list is a powerful instrument of surprise, whether you’re touring or not. Gather physical addresses in addition to email and send fans out-of-the-blue postcards or stickers or other trinkets. Make sure you personalize everything with a short note or autograph. Random personal email messages work, too, but make them fun and mysterious. Invite fans to private live hangouts with only an hour’s heads-up. Send them to secret websites to download unreleased music or videos — and (poof!) the site is gone the next day. Keep your fans on their toes and they’ll remain engaged.

How about a birthday text message, or a pre-show scavenger hunt, or an unannounced stream of a practice session? The surprise is fun, and it’s organic. Thankfully, the surprise doesn’t rely on social media or paying publicists. And the surprise can be simple and remain special. Mike Watt once surprised me with a bear hug, and I joined his community of fans. That’s as simple and special as it gets.

PS – Check out Watt’s new project with Graham Lewis of Wire … it’s called FITTED and it sounds great.

Reclaiming the Intention of Fandom

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Warren Ellis has been reclaiming his physical media, sorting through collected DVDs and CDs — and sending off for new additions — in defiance of this century’s model of ephemeral, digital distribution of art. Ellis’s re-transition is occurring in public, through his fantastic newsletter — Orbital Operations — and photos appearing on his blog. There’s a touch of paranoia about treasured music becoming unavailable, whether through hard drive failures, platform redundancy, the whims of corporate interests, or technological apocalypse. It’s a calculated “withdrawal from feeds and streams,” he says, meaning the download option is considered a form of ownership. Here’s a section from today’s issue of Orbital Operations:

This is, of course, all part and parcel of my withdrawal from the feeds and streams … also, a continuing personal rejection of Music As A Service. I purchase all my downloads. And if something for sale is offered for free on a streaming site, I try to track the thing down and buy it if I love it. Sampling is fine. That’s what radio was/is for. I use YouTube and other services to sample things, and I think – I hope – it can help artists. But renting a music collection is bullshit and bad for everybody. (As is, of course, acting as if music is free like air. That only works if you don’t let all the trees die.)

(But, I reiterate, personal. Not trying to make you feel bad for streaming here. This is just what works for me, and I am well aware of my personal privilege of having an amount of disposable income for music.)

These thoughts intersect with Darren Hemmings’ piece I mentioned in a previous post, and how many of us are re-evaluating our relationships with the transitory delivery of digital art. Hemmings’ reservations mainly come from wanting to give an artist his or her due — some coin directly in the pocket — and a reasonable suspicion into the goals of a company like Spotify. These feelings also motivate Ellis, but he adds the wild card of wanting to own his music and movies and to enjoy them in a way that’s not dependent on a corporate subscription platform. In other words, something other than a platform that encourages ephemerality and distraction through endless options.

And this dovetails into my preoccupation with the societal effects of music streaming and our perception of ‘music’s place in the 21st century.’ I was a late adopter of music streaming — a casual free-tier Spotify user, the launch of Apple Music is what got me fully on board.1 Know that my late-adopter status wasn’t a Luddite-like resistance — I wasn’t listening to a lot of music in the first half of the 2010s, something I may get into at a later date. I went through multiple stages of the streaming listener: excitement at all my favorite albums at hand; discovering new albums and artists based on reviews in niche blogs; getting seduced by the fun of playlists2I temporarily switched from Apple Music to Spotify as my platform of choice during this stage.; and the realization that an obsession with playlists was turning me into a passive listener rather than an intentional one.

Passive vs. intentional is a recurring theme on this blog and it’s something I think about a lot. One effect of ‘newsfeed culture’ is it creates passivity in our consumption — what we see and hear is determined by an algorithm or a curation, a diet of someone else’s choices. This passivity isn’t always bad. When we listen to the radio, we are listening passively, and there have been times when a random radio experience changed my life. But the erosion of intentionality is a disassembling of personality. This condition can deprive us of the agency of our thoughts.

Fandom requires intention, as we decide the artists worthy of our obsession and adulation. Of course, the fan can discover a new artist through radio or a playlist, but there needs to be a push – an inner encouragement, even — to explore further. Whether by design or not, I find that playlists encourage the opposite. There’s always that new niche playlist — updated regularly! — front-and-center on the platform’s launch page, drawing attention with delightful sonic promise.

Like Hemmings and Ellis, my struggles with this brought me to Bandcamp and my personal library.3Unlike Ellis, I won’t go as far as embracing physical media. I’ve flirted closely with hoarder tendencies when I was ‘collecting,’ and I don’t want to go back there. My practice was independent of their individual screeds. Several months ago, I started building a Bandcamp collection of music for sleeping. I noticed that familiar satisfaction of purchasing a release and knowing the majority of my payment will go to the creator — a much different psychological experience than a monthly subscription payment to a DSP. And I was picky about what I was purchasing, thus committing the music to multiple listens and an attachment to memory. At first, I left these releases to play via Bandcamp but soon downloaded the lossless files, adding them to my iTunes library. More satisfaction; I was creating a walled-garden library of music that I intentionally discovered and considered top notch. Sort of like I did when I was a teenager buying record albums and arranging them in a milk crate.

And now I’m visiting Bandcamp more often than Apple Music or Spotify, and I’m purchasing more than ‘sleep music.’ Admittedly, I’m still experimenting — this whole era of digital music has been a constant experiment — and I’ll continue to document all this on the blog. But behind this post is a fascination that as all things internet have lost their luster other listeners and music fans are arriving at a similar place. There’s a questioning of music’s role among fandom and the artists that wish to cultivate fans. I feel like we’re all at a critical crossroads and I couldn’t be more excited.