8Sided Blog

a celebration of sound, culture, and the punk rock dream

Undermining, Not Underlining

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Discovery vs. Intention → What a fun conversation between Brian Eno and Stewart Brand, promoting We Are As Gods, a new documentary on Brand’s fascinating life. The first half uses Eno’s soundtrack contribution as a topic launching pad. The conversation touches on the intersection of film scoring with ambient music, how multi-track recording brought music closer to painting, and how endless options are making us all permanent curators. My favorite part comes at 17:00 when Brand asks Eno to differentiate, in terms of the creative process, discovery from intention: 

I think the thing that decides that is whether you’ve got a deadline or not (laughs). The most important element in my working life, a lot of the time, is a deadline. The reason it’s important is it makes you realize you’ve got to stop pissing around. You have to finally decide on something. Whether I finish something or not completely depends on whether [a piece of music] has a destination and a deadline.

Eno goes on to describe his fabled archive of half-finished music — “6790 pieces … I noticed today” — most of which is created through discovery, i.e., “pissing around.” Then, when he gets an assignment (a destination with a deadline), he pulls something relevant to the project from the archive and finishes it. That’s an inspiring process and one I’d love to replicate. 

I wonder how much time Eno spends “pissing around” and building this archive. I imagine an ideal would be one or two hours a day. And I’m curious how he decides on and enforces self-imposed deadlines to move his own projects forward.

Oh, and this quote in the video from Eno is a keeper: “What I like better than underlining is undermining.”

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Etcetera → Seth Godin’s advice on how to make your Zoom calls better. Now I want a beam splitter. ❋ This 2015 compilation is a psychedelic overview of On-U Sound’s post-punk dub: Trevor Jackson Presents: Science Fiction Dancehall Classics. ❋ Writer Ernest Wilkins explains why he’s joining the parade of newsletter publishers leaving Substack. This part is especially eye-opening: “I’ve lost anywhere between $400 and $1100 in churned subscriber revenue due to paid subscribers not wanting to give money to this platform anymore. I need it to be clear that for the two years on Substack before this, I had a 0% subscriber churn rate.” ❋ I’m excited about this forthcoming documentary on ‘sound activist’ Matthew Herbert, A Symphony of Noise. ❋ Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine in The New York Times: “My nieces and nephews — they would complain to me, ‘Why are you so purposely obscure? You know, it seems stupid.'”

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Rachika Nayar – Our Hands Against The Dusk → I’ve been delightfully obsessed with Rachika Nayar‘s debut album over the past couple of weeks. The Brooklyn-based artist (in both visuals and sound) has accomplished some heavy-lifting with Our Hands Against The Dusk — the album is unabashedly experimental and uncompromising but somehow remains accessible and, yes, beautiful. Guitar is the main instrument throughout, but it’s looped, processed, and sometimes ‘glitched’ into unfamiliarity. The opening track, “The Trembling of Glass,” is an introductory window to Nayar’s technique, with layers of texture and manipulation swept away in the last half to reveal a bare acoustic motif. It hooked me in straight away.

Interviewed in Magnetic, Nayar explains her method: 

I see one aspect of my process on this album as tearing up an instrumental sample into a million pieces and then putting those fragments through cycles of recombination … these processes feel to me like exploring a single idea through multiple and multiplying perspectives — seeing one thing in all its different realities and selves. 

When one listens closely, there are many opportunities to identify what Nayar is up to, but her execution is nuanced and organic, despite the music’s inherent digitalness. One hears these ‘million pieces’ as a whole, as guitars ring with hopeful tones on “New Strands” and pianos and cellos combine and intertwine on “No Future.” The effect is mesmerizing — dancing somewhere between music that’s ambient, experimental, and influenced by modern classical — but, most of all, it’s affecting. The emotion that went into creating this album is anything but disguised. 

Our Hands Against The Dusk is the most impressive debut I’ve heard in a while. Don’t hesitate to open your ears and heart to it.

NFTs for the Rest of Us

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Since my last swipe at NFTs, the hype and debate have skyrocketed. Thankfully, some are looking into the ecological concerns (beyond the band-aid of buying offsets) where solutions would ultimately benefit all blockchain technology applications. And others are exploring how to use the malleable format of NFTs to create or enhance a new kind of art.  

Unfortunately, many see eight-figure sales of a digital collage, and their eyes become dollar signs out of a Looney Tunes cartoon. The overwhelming conversation around NFTs is driven by monster-sized auction results and incredulous “she got how much for what?” takes. This chatter drives the motivation of many artists getting into NFTs: it’s all about making loads of easy money.

Of course, I believe that deserving artists and musicians should be paid handsomely for their art. Duh. But if you’re looking at Beeple getting $69 million for his NFT (and a lot more is going on there) and thinking, “I need to get in on that,” you might want to examine why you’re creating art in the first place.

I’m an idealist, and I think that using the hope of an NFT payday to guide your artistic process is no different than letting a soft drink company change your song lyrics for an ad. That’s cool if you’re cool with it, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that your money-making scheme is anything else just because it’s attached to hip technology.

Seth Godin and Bob Lefsetz have written wise words on NFTs with varying levels of criticism (or realism). But I think that MusicREDEF’s Matty Karas has written the most useful critique so far on what NFTs mean for the music industry. I’m going to quote it almost in full because more people should read it:

Show me this works and I’ll believe NFTs really, truly work: Put an album up for sale as an NFT, straight up, with no bonus content, no scarcity, no exclusivity. A simple $9.99 token available anytime to anyone who wants it. Why would anyone do that?, you ask. For the same reason anyone would sell an MP3s on BANDCAMP or ITUNES, I’ll answer, with the bonus that everyone, from the artist to the songwriters to anyone else who needs to get paid, can get paid instantaneously, no waiting weeks or months, no need to ever wonder if the numbers are being reported accurately, no need to worry about someone pirating the music, and if someone wants to resell it at a discount (because that’s the only way you can resell something that’s readily available) or at a markup (because maybe one day you’ll put it out of print), the artist can get a cut of the resale either way. I get the fun of auctions and the allure of exclusivity and the dream of seven-figure transactions, and there’s a place for all of that of course … But if you’re telling me NFTs are important because they’re a way to authenticate ownership and control distribution and streamline payments, then show me they can do that without raising the price of an album from $9.99 to $9,999.99 and without creating one more experience your average fan can never have.

That’s the rub. There’s a ton of promise in NFTs and blockchain for artists and labels. The technology adds personalization and ownership to digital music and might be a path for fans to move away from the mess streaming’s gotten us into. But before that can happen, we’re going to have to stop looking at NFTs as a high-dollar fad, a get-rich-quick shortcut, or patronage from the crypto-affluent. It’s time to get into the bones of what the technology means for everyday fans, artists, and recording artists and steer the conversation toward the future.

Update → Via a recent post on David Gerard’s Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain blog:

Put a large price tag on your NFT by buying it from yourself — then write a press release talking about your $100,000 sale, and you’re only out the transaction fee. Journalists who can’t be bothered checking things will write this up without verifying that the buyer is a separate person who exists. Just like the high-end art world!

Digging In Our Heels

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Though universally revered, Martin Scorsese is sometimes viewed as an old-fashioned relic as he digs in his heels against changes in contemporary media. Previously, he got lots of nerdy flack for referring to superhero franchise films as “theme parks” rather than “cinema.” And, recently, in an essay on Federico Fellini, Scorsese went off on algorithms and the overuse of the word “content” to describe artistic output. He’s mainly referring to visual media, of course, and how “the art of cinema is being systematically devalued, sidelined, demeaned, and reduced to its lowest common denominator” when we refer to it all as “content.” Here’s Scorsese:

“Content” was used more and more by the people who took over media companies, most of whom knew nothing about the history of the art form, or even cared enough to think that they should. “Content” became a business term for all moving images: a David Lean movie, a cat video, a Super Bowl commercial, a superhero sequel, a series episode. […] … it has created a situation in which everything is presented to the viewer on a level playing field, which sounds democratic but isn’t.

A platform’s reliance on algorithms that can’t separate artistic intention from specious cash grabs exacerbates this perception. There’s so much talk about freeing ourselves from the gatekeepers, but perhaps ‘old-fashioned’ human curation is a gatekeeping we need. Scorsese again:

Curating isn’t undemocratic or “elitist,” a term that is now used so often that it’s become meaningless. It’s an act of generosity—you’re sharing what you love and what has inspired you. Algorithms, by definition, are based on calculations that treat the viewer as a consumer and nothing else.

“Scorsese is right,” tweeted music critic Ted Gioia. “Anyone who refers to film, music, or writing as ‘content’ is simply not a trustworthy custodian of anything of cultural value. Unfortunately, these are the key decision makers in media right now.”

I don’t have too much of a problem with media companies calling the music or movies they stream “content.” It’s like a politician using blatant dog whistle language — at least you know who’s in this for the right reasons and deserving of trust. What’s insidious is when we, as artists, are convinced to start using the word “content” instead of “art” or even “our work.” A musician creates a beautiful song, puts sweat into editing an accompanying video, and then thinks, “here’s some content for YouTube” — that’s distressing. 

Language is powerful, and the words we use in our heads change our behaviors. If we start replacing words like “art” with “content” — even just internally — our intentions shift. We start feeding the companies hungry for content. Instead of making music and films for the fans or the human curators, we’re producing content for the algorithms. 

Seth Godin must have read Scorsese’s rant. Soon after the essay’s publication, Seth wrote his own rant on his daily blog: 

Publishing to an algorithm is not the same as publishing to an audience. And living in a culture that’s driven by profit-seeking algorithm owners is different as well. Because without curation, who is responsible? Who is guiding the culture? Who pushes the boundaries or raises the standards? […] …we benefit when we realize that the algorithm isn’t rooting for us and quite probably is working against us. The only winning approach is to earn permission and a direct connection with our fans and then act as curators for ideas (and as our own publishers).

Getting back to the power of language, I touched on this topic on the blog a few years ago when I commented on Cherie Hu’s idea that “The word ‘creator’ does more harm than good.” (Cherie’s original essay is offline, but I wholeheartedly recommend her Water & Music platform, where you can find many of her enlightening pieces.) I wrote this in my blog post: 

It may seem like semantics, but the way we adopt and use language rewires our thinking. Hu’s point— which I never considered — is that the more we refer to ourselves as ‘creators,’ the easier it is to submit to the notion that our creations are in fealty to others. Notice how the services almost all use ‘creator’ — a sampling of examples Hu points out include YouTube Creators, Facebook for Creators, Spotify’s “Creator Marketing.’ So when a platform sneakily claims ownership of our work we’re desensitized against protest.

“Content” is the same. The language implicates employment, that we’re delivering goods in a fiefdom. Responsibility, leverage, and agency shift to the “content provider.”

Buckle down, folks. Dig in your heels like Martin. You’re artists making art. Don’t let anyone tell you anything else. 

Embrace the Genre

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Like end-of-the-year best-of lists, new genre names are something that music fans love to hate. There’s a mixture of disdain for perceived pigeonholing and a failure to keep up with the latest trends — nothing makes a music lover feel older than a new, incomprehensible genre. Then there’s the sub-genre and the micro-genre. Seriously, it never ends. It’s genres all the way down.

Instead of feeling intimidated, I say embrace the genre and all its fancifully named layers. Genre is an identifier, important in pointing the way and gluing together scenes. There was a time that you could walk into an indie record store, look at the clientele, and guess what genres they listened to by how they looked. It’s harder now that genres are less-defined and blur together — which I’ll argue is a good thing. But it’s also why genres are reaching beyond sonic vibes and sounds, increasingly representative of technological innovation, communities, and desired lifestyles. 

If you’re a musician, there’s nothing worse than the question, “What do you sound like?” We shuffle our postures and avoid answering, or vaguely go for something broad like “rock music.” If you look up old artist interviews with me, you’ll see I often responded with “funk,” which was unfortunate. Why can’t we just own our genre — or create our own? Consider the genre as an elevator pitch. It’s a chance to claim a plot of land and plant a flag. 

Here’s how Seth Godin thinks about genre, as explained in his recent appearance on The Moment with Brian Koppelman:

“People who are creatives bristle at the idea of genre because they think it has something to do with generic. It has nothing to do with generic. It’s the opposite of generic. Genre means that you understand your part in the chain — [and] in the process, in the market — well enough to make something magical that still rhymes with what came before. You’ve done the reading. You respect the audience enough that you can’t just show up and say, ‘This is like nothing you’ve ever seen or heard before.’ It actually is where it belongs.”

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It’s fun to look at the birth of genres. The sounds predate the descriptive monikers, often by many years. Traditionally, genres are christened through these sources:

  • An artist or band name. Bill Monroe’s Blue Grass Boys is where we get bluegrass.
  • Song or album titles. Ornette Coleman’s 1960 album Free Jazz and The Maytals’ 1968 single “Do the Reggay” popularized those terms.
  • Compilation album titles. A ‘scene’ is pre-built into the curated collection of artists, such as the now-legendary producers assembled on 1988’s Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit.
  • Lyrics. “I said a hip-hop, the hippie, the hippie to the hip, hip-hop and you don’t stop …”
  • Record labels. In the late ’80s, you would’ve called Skinny Puppy something else if Throbbing Gristle didn’t start Industrial Records.
  • Music Journalists. Simon Reynolds is the ninja of the genre name and is still at it. But even before, there was ‘heavy metal,’ applied to music for the first time in 1970 by Mike Saunders, future vocalist of punk band Angry Samoans. Writing for Rolling Stone, he referred to Humble Pie as “27th-rate heavy metal crap.” Ironically, Sauders did not come up with ‘punk rock,’ which was coined the same year in Creem Magazine.
  • Music Executives. Seymour Stein of Sire Records came up with ‘new wave’ to market all these bands he was signing fresh off the stage of CBGBs.
  • The technology. Dub comes from ‘dubplate,’ which is technically a music-delivery format. But dub is hardly ever heard on a dubplate these days.
  • Territory. We can call music from Guatemala Guatamalen music even though the locals undoubtedly have a more specific name. And the ‘western’ in country & western refers to the western US where many rural workers migrated and settled, especially during the Dust Bowl.
  • Radio. Famously, Alan Freed named his radio show The Moondog Rock’n’Roll House Party. Like in many of the examples above, Freed didn’t use the phrase first, but he popularized it.

There’s one more traditional method of genre creation, which I hinted at in the beginning. The artist comes up with it herself. There’s a lot of power in naming your genre as, if you’re successful and others catch on, you become the forebear. Fela Kuti did this with Afrobeat. And Brian Eno did this with ambient music:

“All the signs were in the air all around with ambient music in the mid-1970s, and other people were doing a similar thing. I just gave it a name. Which is exactly what it needed. A name. Giving something a name can be just the same as inventing it. By naming something you create a difference. You say that this is now real.”

Quick side story: in the late-90s, a friend and I often DJ’ed trip-hop records and hip-hop instrumentals with the turntables pitched up near +8. Speed garage was the genre du jour at the time, so we jokingly named our genre ‘speed downtempo.’ It didn’t take off.

But, yes — sometimes a joke or off-handed comment will spawn a genre name. NYC’s DJ Olive came up with ‘illbient’ as a sarcastic response when a journalist asked if he played ambient. And Gilles Peterson famously once joked that his side room at an acid house party was the ‘acid jazz’ area, birthing a repackaged jazz revival. 

Genre is intrinsically tied to the music it denotes but spreads out to other qualities of the genre’s followers. Goth is as identifiable for its fashion as its sound, and close-knit genres like nerdcore are increasingly identified by membership in their communities. 

What’s interesting — with technological developments inseparable from how we interact with music — is the emergence of genres outside of a musical style. That is, the communities or the platforms define the genre, and the music comes later. 

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I want to look at a few recent arrivals in the pantheon of genres to see how defining our music ends up describing so much more. Be warned — many of these sub-genres contain references to other sub-genres. You might get genre whiplash.

Hyperpop

On the excellent Jaymo Technologies blog, Jay Springett writes about the daunting proliferation of genres and how streaming platforms affect genre creation: 

The world is now dominated by microgenres and subcultures, shaping perception of reality via niche hashtags and network effects. For better or worse someone at Spotify finds or makes up a genre name and then populates a playlist with content. The idea that people would be mad about an online genre having a name and coming from nowhere now seems quaint.

Jay is possibly hinting at hyperpop, a genre name popularized by Spotify via the in-house playlist of the same name. The actual sound of hyperpop is debatable and evasive, with many of its elements drawn from vaporwave, an older genre (by a few years) but somewhat more explainable. There’s a Gen Z do-it-yourself aesthetic, and many of hyperpop’s ephemeral stars are in their early teens. Lizzy Szabo, who helps curate the playlist, understands that hyperpop is “an artist and listening community” as much as it’s a musical genre. One thing to notice about that quote: the listeners are included in the definition, powering hyperpop alongside the creators. To participate, throw aside any reservations about a movement dreamed up by a big corporation. 

Glitchcore

Glitchcore shares many of the artists found on the Hyperpop playlist. Its defining sonic trait is the ‘glitch’ — quick edits, stuttering vocals and syllables, things that would have once made us check our compact discs for scratches. Some even take hyperpop songs and add these ‘defects’ for glitchcore remixes. But glitchcore’s difference is in its inspiration and intention. TikTok videos, with visual glitches matching the audio ones, along with bright colors and flashes, are the reason and original platform for most glitchcore tracks. Like how a TV signal popping in-and-out changes the quality of a show’s dialogue, it’s a visual aesthetic influencing the sound. Glitchcore is a genre given shape by a video editing technique mixed with a nostalgia for digital’s early days of jarring imperfection.  

Lo-Fi Hip-Hop

Like hyperpop, lo-fi hip-hop (or lo-fi beats, chill-hop, or, sometimes, ‘music for studying’) gets its name from a curated spot on a streaming platform. In lo-fi hip-hop’s case, these are streaming channels on YouTube playing an endless selection of music usually accompanied by a looping anime scene. A Gen Z variant of ambient music, lo-fi hip-hop is meant to accompany studying, video-gaming, or zoning out. This is another genre that’s expanded its popularity in COVID-times, with the studying girl of the ‘lofi hip hop radio – beats to relax/study to’ channel serving as a lockdown work-from-home companion. The music itself draws directly from boom-bap hip-hop and — for those in the know — the mellow side of ’90s trip-hop, but is more basic, often constructed from interchangeable sample libraries and beat kits. Lo-fi hip-hop is a diluted version of its predecessors, which is why it’s so effective as in-the-background focus music.

Bedroom Pop

Bedroom pop started as ‘what it says on the tin:’ pop music made in the bedroom. Its unexpected ancestor is the lo-fi indie movement of the ’90s, with bands like Sebadoh and Guided By Voices recording albums on four-track cassette recorders. Nothing kept those bands from visiting a studio, but the constraints inherited through four-track recording were integral to their sounds (and brands). 

The bedroom pop aesthetic predates the pandemic but has unsurprisingly grown during months of lockdown. The songs are generally sparser and have an air of intimacy not found in your usual pop. Vocals are often delivered at an ASMR volume instead of belted out. 

Billie Eilish is the patron saint of bedroom pop. She does record most of her music in a bedroom with her brother, though these raw tracks are then mixed in multi-million dollar studios. As you might have guessed, unlike the four-track to the lo-fi bands, the ‘bedroom’ part is no longer essential to this genre. As the bedroom pop artist Girl in Red says, “Pop bangers are being made in bedrooms and bedroom pop-ish songs in studios. It’s more about how it sounds than where it’s made.”

Slowed & Reverb

Slowed & reverb is one of the oddest new genres, its name a play on the seemingly ancient (a decade+ old) hip-hop sub-genre chopped & screwed. Slowed & reverb appropriates other songs, but instead of ‘glitching’ or ‘remixing’ them, the music is slowed down (‘screwed’) and then doused in reverb. Recent hip-hop tracks mostly receive the slowed & reverb treatment but, as an offshoot of vaporwave, cheesy ’80s AOR songs are frequent targets, too. This genre is all about the feelings evoked — listening is like being lost in a fog that’s hazy, nostalgic, dream-like, and druggy. It also tends to turn upbeat songs into melancholic sobfests. 

Because slowed & reverb uses pre-existing songs, you can only find its ‘hits’ on YouTube, SoundCloud, and (sometimes) Bandcamp. The other platforms have copyright barriers, though some producers have gotten away with compiling slowed & reverb mixes and servicing them to Spotify as podcasts. In a recent development, a few artists are now commissioning official slowed & reverb remixes of their singles, so perhaps there’s growth potential after all.

(Are you interested in creating your own slowed & reverb track? There’s an app for that.)

Ambient Television

This is the newest genre on the list, coined by Kyle Chayka in The New Yorker last month. I’m fudging a little as ambient television is not a music genre but a television aesthetic that draws influence from the same well as lo-fi hip-hop. This example shows how, as with glitchcore, different mediums are interacting to create new genres. 

Ambient television follows Eno’s maxim of “as ignorable as it is interesting,” or as Chayka explains, “something you don’t have to pay attention to in order to enjoy but which is still seductive enough to be compelling if you choose to do so momentarily.” These are the new breed of Netflix design shows or, as Chayka pinpoints, Emily In Paris — TV shows you can look away from to read that iPhone notification without feeling like you’re missing anything. 

There are more intriguing ramifications here when thinking about how streaming influences the ways we absorb digital media. Here’s Chayka again: 

Whereas the Internet once promised to provide on-demand access to limitless information and media to anyone willing to make use of a Google search, lately it has encouraged a more passive kind of engagement, a state of slack-jawed consumption only intensified by this past year’s quarantine ennui. Streaming companies once pitched themselves as innovators for offering the possibility to watch anything at any time, but do we really want to choose? The prevalence of ambient media suggests that we don’t.

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Genre-chasing can seem ridiculous. But, as you see, the names we use to bond music together says everything about how we listen. New genres are a commentary on the present culture. And old ones are an archeological dig. As Seth Godin said at the top of this essay, genres help us understand our “part in the chain.” That goes for the fans as well as the musicians. Genres decode the links formed through technology, platforms, fashion, and community. Embrace the genre.

Here’s a music genre list to scroll through. And here’s an interactive genre chart provided by Every Noise at Once. The latter offers audio samples but keep in mind the music is only part of the story. Chances are both lists are seriously behind on all of the new genres, even if they were up-to-date a week or two ago.

A Body of Work for Hire

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Going through an old archive, I rediscovered this terrific article on Burton Silverman, best known (to his chagrin) as the painter of the cover art to Jethro Tull’s Aqualung. Here’s an age-old story — an artist does an inexpensive, flat-fee work-for-hire. And then the product takes off and earns millions for everyone except that artist. From the article:

The tale of how Chrysalis Records had done him wrong was turned into somewhat of a running family gag. Given the haggard figure he created, we mused that he might eventually embody his own artistic creation — a destitute, howling figure draped in rags and huddled in a darkened street corner. Buried within this bit of gallows humor lies a nagging truth: There’s a palpable sense of unease and frustration at seeing something he created become immensely popular — define his career, even — only to see his ownership of the work taken away, thanks in no small part to the persistent myths and outright falsehoods that have been told about the artistic inspiration for the cover.

The ‘persistent myths and outright falsehoods’ refers to how Ian Anderson, leader of Jethro Tull, keeps telling everyone that the figure on the cover is a representation of him. Silverman insists it’s not, and one wonders if he’d care so much if Anderson wasn’t such a knucklehead about this.1I believe Silverman here — the article is convincing — but, tbh, it does look a little like Anderson. 

Burton Silverman's 'haggard figure' from the cover of Jethro Tull's Aqualung

Silverman is a successful enough artist — recipient of countless awards and permanent collection inclusions — that his Wikipedia entry barely mentions his association with Jethro Tull. So, it’s not like Silverman owes his success to the band. But it grates on him. Silverman’s handshake agreement with Chrysalis didn’t anticipate all the t-shirts, the merchandise, the dorm room posters, and Anderson claiming ownership because he believes he’s the scary cover dude. (Anderson has also annoyed Silverman by publicly referring to the cover as “messy” and “not very attractive or well executed.”)

There’s no contract, an error on Silverman’s part, so maybe he doesn’t have a right to complain. Legally this is a grey area, detailed by a copyright attorney in the article. 

I recall other work-for-hire arrangements where there was a cut-and-dry contract, the project takes off, and the artist feels cheated. In particular, there’s one producer who did a remix of a known ’80s song.2It’s not essential to this story to name names. The remix took off, becoming a top-charting hit in the UK. The producer signed a ‘flat-fee’ agreement — no one forced him — but he felt the label should pay him royalties.

The remixer started publicly complaining that he wasn’t paid enough and should be entitled to a cut of the song royalty. “My remix is why this is popular,” he reasoned. He brought this up in every interview and article that featured him, perhaps oblivious that this remix of someone else’s popular song was the only reason for the interview.

In other words, rather than adopting a ‘body of work’ mindset and building on the success of this project, the producer was publicly renegotiating an arrangement that wasn’t negotiable.

A couple of labels commissioned the producer for other high profile remixes over the next several months, but nothing else was a hit. He disappeared from the charts and public interest shortly afterward. I am sure many in the industry passed on working with this producer because of his attitude and public airing of ‘sour grapes.’

Seth Godin writes about situations like this in a 2018 blog post titled Considering the Buyout. He brings up the “I Love NY” logo, which Milton Glaser designed for $2000, and the Nike swoosh, designed by Carolyn Davidson for an astonishing $35. Godin refers to these projects, and the remix and album cover above, as illustration, not art. They might be artistic — especially in Silverman’s case — but, Godin says, “Illustration has a client … taking on all the risk. The artist is free to wander, and free to own the consequences.” He continues: 

As Milton Glaser has shown, being associated with dramatic success as an illustrator opens the door to even more success. It can fuel your art and create opportunities for higher leverage in your illustration work as well. Illustration can pay some bills at the same time it chips away at your obscurity problem.

Derek Sivers talks about how if your answer isn’t an enthusiastic “hell, yes!” then it should be a definite “no.” But, he adds a caveat: when you’re starting out and building leverage, then often a “yes” will do. “Hell, yes!” is for artists with leverage, and it might take a few frustrating work-for-hire ‘yeses’ to finally exercise that privilege. 

🔗→ My Dad Painted the Iconic Cover for Jethro Tull’s ‘Aqualung,’ and It’s Haunted Him Ever Since
🔗→ Considering the Buyout

A Lot of Honking: The Age of Social Distanced Concerts

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I expect a lot of honking. Ray, a longtime friend, alerted me to The Road Rave, an event billed as “North America’s first-ever drive-in festival of the COVID era.” The festival is led by EDM sensation and Ultra Music Festival veteran Carnage, performing alongside at least four other acts. A maximum of 500 cars will line up in formation, facing the stage, each with two to six inhabitants encouraged to stay seated during the event. “Roaming golf carts” will take concession orders.

The Road Rave takes place Saturday, June 20 (postponed from the original date of June 6), about six miles from my house. It’s sold out. No, I’m not going, but thanks for the invite. That said, I’m close enough that I’m sure the not-too-distant sound of 500 cars honking will echo over Lake Holden and into my eardrums throughout the evening. Every bass drop — honk honk honk. Every on-stage glitter explosion —- honk honk honk. Every DJ raising his hands in the air — honk honk honk. There will be a lot of honking.

We’re now in the phase of The Strange Times where watching a concert from the seat of a car seems attractive. I get it — we’re making our way through this any way we can. And even a glimmer of normality that’s not normal at all can provide reassurance. But, man — all those cars.

In the last several months, there was a push to explore the idea of environmentally-conscious, carbon-neutral touring. Massive Attack and Coldplay were high-profile advocates of the concept. So it’s ironic concert-goers are now encouraged to lean into the fossil-fuels, idling their automobiles as a festival broadcasts over an FM signal, and a guy in a golf cart takes another nacho order.

It’s not only The Road Rave. The concert promoting Borg, known as Live Nation, is planning nationwide ‘drive-in concert’ tours this summer, taking place in the various parking lots of its 40 amphitheaters. And for promoters who don’t own stadiums, drive-in theaters are a no-brainer for events. However, most existing drive-ins are far outside of bigger cities, and the owners would rather show movies. Says one proprietor, “We don’t mind doing one-off special events, but most of us feel we’re here to show movies.” Less hassle, less honking.

In an article about the absence of live music, the drive-in theater aspect inspired Rolling Stone contributing editor Rob Sheffield to remember a scene from ’70s movie dystopia:

There’s a scene I keep re-watching from the Seventies sci-fi zombie trash classic, The Omega Man. Charlton Heston is the last human left alive in LA after the plague. He drives out to the empty theater that’s still showing the “Woodstock” documentary. He sits alone in the dark, a ritual he’s done many times before, watching the hippie tribes onscreen boogie to Country Joe and the Fish. “This is really beautiful, man,” a dazed flower child tells the camera. Heston recites every word along with him. “The fact is if we can’t all live together and be happy, if you have to be afraid to walk out in the street, if you have to be afraid to smile at somebody, right—what kind of a way is that to go through this life?”

Charlton Heston gives a sardonic smirk. “Yup—they sure don’t make pictures like that anymore.”

On the other hand, there are approaches to social distanced gatherings that border on performance art. For example, the restaurant outfitted with mannequins and the TV show with an audience of balloon people. A precursor to social distanced performance art might be 2018’s Mile-Long Opera, where listeners walked along NYC’s High Line. Singers were encountered along the path, each singing in tandem, and, as an ‘audience member,’ you are encouraged to keep moving. It’s a compelling idea, but nowadays, even a performance in motion has its COVID-19 dangers. Jane Moss of The Lincoln Center, considering the option, worries about transfixed groups stopping to watch in a virus-spreading bottleneck: “The more ingenious and intriguing you get, the more people want to come together to see what you’ve done.”

Performance art directly inspired one daring concert experience. Marina Abramovic’s exhibition (and terrific documentary film) The Artist Is Present featured the artist sitting across from a stranger in silence. The simple act of this face-to-face meeting — at about a socially distanced six feet — caused intense feelings of intimacy in many participants. Some of the seated museum-goers broke into tears during their sittings. From this idea came performances at the dormant airport in Stuttgart, Germany. A musician from the local orchestra gave a series of ten-minute ‘concerts’ to solitary audience members. They faced each other at a short length, with no conversation and no applause. In a NY Times piece covering the event, listeners spoke about the same sort of intimacy that Abramovic’s temporary partners felt.

This intimacy is unexpected, but innovative answers to the live-music-under-COVID problem will produce unexpected results. That’s the subtext of all performance art — experiment with people’s expectations and things will happen. And the further away we get from a traditional live performance, the less it looks and feels like a concert. Understandably, that worries a lot of people.

Others have attempted to zero-in on the center of the Venn diagram linking live music and COVID-19 safety. There was this small event in Münster that featured famed DJ Gerd Jansen, social distanced dancing (in theory), a 100-person limit, and €70 tickets to break even. And in Arkansas, blues-rock singer Travis McCready played to a sold-out — but still smattering — crowd who were temperature-checked before entering:

On the surface, the concert had all the makings of a typical rock & roll show. Stage lights set the mood. The audience clapped along, with some even dancing in their “fan pod” seats (tickets were sold in blocks to keep groups six feet apart). But when the bank of floodlights at the front of the stage illuminated a nearly empty 1,100-seat theater during Travis McCready’s set, the reality of the situation was clear. The first socially distanced concert in the US felt more like a dress rehearsal than a typical concert experience.

It’s something, but is it helping? And by that, I mean, helping us cope or return to something like our ordinary lives? Since reading the Vulture piece I linked to above I think a lot about this paragraph:

The first fallback options—play to an empty house (as a small sub-ensemble of the Berlin Philharmonic has done) or distribute a few hundred listeners around a hall that could seat 2,000—would only emphasize the melancholy weirdness. That kind of event can have an impact as a ritual of mourning, a dramatization of all we’ve lost. But it’s no way to lose ourselves in some alternate, virus-free world of the imagination.

The music is only one reason we go to concerts, festivals, nightclubs, or raves. We also go for the community, to connect with (as Seth Godin says), “People like us who do things like this.” We’ve all forged at least one friendship with someone we saw at ‘all the same shows.’ Many of us even met our future life partners at a club or concert. These solutions I pointed out — attending in cars, listening alone to a flute player, or boogying at a distance in a near-empty club — only solve the ‘music’ part of the equation. It’s true that we miss and crave the rush of volume, performance, and the live music experience. But until we regain the electricity of community that accompanies it, we’ve, so far, only captured the facsimile.

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 Seven Book Challenge

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You’ve probably seen this floating around on social media: “Post seven books you love, one book per day, no explanations, no reviews, just covers. Each day you will ask a friend to take up the challenge.” I was challenged before and participated on Twitter. Since then I’ve been challenged a few more times, so I thought I’d make it into a blog post. Here are my seven books:

I do want to give a quick explanation. Yes, these are books I love, but I also chose the books that had the most significant impact. I read most of these as a teenager or in my early 20s. All of these books changed the way I looked at the world in some way. Someone (I can’t find the reference) called these types of books ‘earthquake books’ because they shake your foundation. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend them all — I bet the Industrial Culture Handbook hasn’t aged well — but these books perfectly lined up with my age and what I was pondering at the time. These books are a window into what shaped me.

And books continue to shape. I was an avid reader the first 25 years of my life, but let it go as my eyesight worsened.1 I suffer from an eye condition called keratoconus. And I never warmed up to audiobooks — I don’t retain information through listening as I do with reading. About three years ago, thanks to improvements in available contact lenses and apps like Marvin for the iPad, I picked up the habit again. It wasn’t easy to get back on the book train — out of practice, I was a slow reader at first — but now I’m catching up on all the recommendations I’ve gathered over the years.

The seven books above are quite different than what I read now, but make sense in context. Presently I’m finishing Ted Chiang’s Stories of Your Life and Others and Ryan Holiday’s new one, Stillness Is The Key, is on deck. I update my recent reads in this blog’s /now section.

Speaking of Ryan Holiday, his article How To Read More — A Lot More is a classic. It helped inspire me when I started reading again and was frustrated by my slow speed.

And check out the podcast 3 Books, which is all about impactful books. Ryan Holiday is the guest on a recent episode. And Seth Godin was a guest a while back — I’ve heard Seth on a lot of podcasts, and this is my favorite of all his appearances.

PS – Oh, right — I’m supposed to challenge someone in return. I challenge you. Please reveal a book that impacted your life in the comments. I need new recommendations!

PPS – I’ll be attending MondoNYC in New York this Thursday and Friday. If you plan to be there, too, hit me up.

Choosing, Not Chosen

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Here’s an informative video that inspired a spirited conversation in my household:

I can understand the overwhelming temptation to appease and filter for THE ALGORITHM when you’re making a living off your YouTube and online efforts. But there’s a loss of voice, akin to the loss of agency that casual listening creates. Rather than choosing we’re being chosen.

There’s an SEO plug-in installed on my blog, and it tells me that I should optimize my titles and my content for traffic-catching metrics. I was paying attention to its demands for a while, changing snappy short titles to longer (less fun) ones that complied with SEO-recommended character limits. I was told to insert keywords into the content and always attach eye-catching featured images (I was never good at that aspect). I’d get stressed out when the plug-in told me that I wasn’t adhering to the internet’s mysterious ordinances.

But, here’s the thing: there are many blogs and newsletters that I love, and none of these follow the rules. Some of these authors have a voice that flies in the face of these rules — one-word titles, blog posts with only a few sentences, the minimalist of minimal site layouts. I frequent these outlets for the voice of the author, not any click-worthy title or high search rank. I fear that if we all follow the SEO or algorithmic guidelines, then these voices would disappear. Pleasing the SEO computer is trying to please everyone, and we all know the cliché about what happens when you try to please everyone. But it’s more than ending up not pleasing anybody — it’s about not connecting with your people, to not have a flag on the map of your territory, to be invisible from your tribe.

There are those who are going for mass and, according to their goals, choose to follow the rules. That’s cool. Derek Muller, in the video above, is doing so grudgingly but he’s in the machine where 5 million vs. 10 million views have a direct impact on his project’s budget. Veritasium is a channel with — at the least — staff and travel requirements, so there’s a good reason to keep the views and funding high.1And it’s a well-done science channel, worth your subscription in my opinion. But my needs — and the needs of the bloggers and channels I follow — are different. We’re looking for that longterm connection and an audience that’s on board because of our way of saying things. It’s not that Derek doesn’t want that — it’s evident from his video that his voice and point of view are essential and he’s struggling with maintaining these — but the success of his platform is affected by more important things. On the other hand, at this point, I measure my success by people enjoying what I do and, to paraphrase Seth Godin, missing me when I’ve gone quiet.

I’m thinking about the direction of this blog all of the time. I change my mind about it constantly. But what always sticks is that I want it to be fun for you and — most importantly, if I’m honest — fun for me. I’m using this to find my people, to have conversations, and make those connections. And I’m using it to find potential friends, collaborators, clients, and employers. An SEO plug-in’s suggestions won’t be much help there. I see these imposed guidelines as a detriment and I’m happy to resist. So expect the blog to get more personal, more specialized, and obtuse — my private-made-public playground. No holding back the freak flag.

Don’t Let Music Become Software

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Above: another pic from the sticks, hope I don’t get ticks. I’m hiding out in this remote location for a couple more days.

I’m a fan of email newsletters — I subscribe to way too many — and one of my favorites is Cherie Hu’s Water & Music. Even outside of the newsletter Hu is one of my favorite music industry writers/pundits, and she seems to reserve her most thought-provoking opinions for the newsletter. And 2018’s final edition of Water & Music, titled ‘The Music Industry’s Inconvenient Truths,’ is a corker.

The premise revolves around answers to the question, “What is one truth about the music industry that very few people agree with you on?” I can’t say I strongly disagree with any of the responses Hu received, and this one bolsters the direction of my consulting work. But it’s Hu’s two answers to the question that elicit the most thought — this newsletter’s been reeling in my head since I read it a few days ago.

Hu’s first answer has familiarity as she’s dropping some Seth Godin knowledge and I just finished his latest book, This Is Marketing. The concept of the ‘smallest viable audience’ is emphasized, which states that an artist should only seek to please his die-hard fans. Musicianship and ‘honing the craft’ remain important, but not at the expense of serving the needs of those who support you. Says Hu:

Let’s put it this way: as long as music can be materialized as an item or activity whose purchase generates revenue for somebody, music is a product. People who buy or engage with a musical product are referred to by the industry as “fans,” so “fan” is just another word for “customer.” Customers buy the products that best satisfy their own needs and desires. So, like in any other industry, the best music products most effectively address customers’ needs and satisfy clearly-defined gaps in the market that other products haven’t filled.

In This Is Marketing, Godin argues that we are all marketers as individuals seeking to make a change in others. For the recording artist, that change is as simple (or complex) as convincing a listener to check out her album rather than someone else’s. Godin then challenges us to think of ourselves as something more than marketers — also as teachers, delivering value and reward to our customers/fans. With a teacher mindset, we’re encouraged to produce meaningful content for those who are paying the most attention.

I could go on and on about this but I’ll save it for a future post. I’m cutting myself short as I can’t wait to get to Hu’s next proclamation: “The word ‘creator’ does more harm than good:”

I understand that the word “creator” might be the simplest, most easily accessible term for addressing all possible users releasing content on a given platform. And don’t get me wrong: democratizing creativity is undeniably a force for good, and the last thing the world should do is give fewer people access to tools for making art and expressing themselves. But who owns and profits from that creativity is an entirely separate debate, in danger of being obfuscated by the widespread adoption and promotion of “creator” as a job title.

It may seem like semantics, but the way we adopt and use language rewires our thinking (hello, George). Hu’s point— which I never considered — is that the more we refer to ourselves as ‘creators,’ the easier it is to submit to the notion that our creations are in fealty to others. Notice how the services almost all use ‘creator’ — a sampling of examples Hu points out include YouTube Creators, Facebook for Creators, Spotify’s “Creator Marketing.’ So when a platform sneakily claims ownership of our work — as Spotify did with its #PraiseV campaign (see Hu’s newsletter) — we’re desensitized against protest. Hu again:

Throughout history, the democratization of creativity has coincided with a dilution of clarity around ownership […] [and] the mechanisms by which other companies can claim IP ownership in a world of democratized creation are becoming much swifter than reading through tens of pages of a record contract.

I feel like the tech platforms — Spotify, Apple, Amazon, et al. — would like us to start thinking of music as software. That is, we’ve ‘created’ something that’s inseparable from their technologies. Just as Omnifocus, my to-do app of choice, won’t run and can’t exist without my iMac, a song can’t exist without Spotify. Then we start thinking of our music as dependent on the platform when, of course, it’s the other way around. 

That’s one thing I love about music publishing. Its framework forces us to think of compositions as separate from the recordings and undetachable from the songwriter. A song isn’t a creation, per se, but an idea tied to an individual (or individuals, if there are co-writers). The tech platforms have had their problems with music publishing, showing that the intimacy of composition may help protect against music becoming software.  But, as Cherie Hu points out, the real battle may be fought through language and how a shift in simple phrasing affects the ownership mindset of future songwriters. Let’s hold on to our ideas and understand that songs are breathing things that exist on their own, platform be damned. Don’t let your music become software.

P.S. — I realize this last bit may seem in contradiction to the first, where it appears I’m referring to songs as product. But it’s not in opposition at all if you understand the type of marketing we’re doing as artists. Godin’s This Is Marketing will help you understand and I recommend it. 

P.P.S.— There’s no disrespect intended to software and software makers. But I feel programmers have a better understanding of their IP rights in the milieu of platform-dependence than songwriters and artists do.