perfidy

A couple years back, I accompanied the wife to the actual Wammie award ceremony, and we were both amazed by this:

You can actually see her perform in this one - at about 4:55 - but the audio quality is significantly poorer. That girl's got a lot of voice.

To Dead Men's Hollow, my wife's band, on winning what is I believe their eighth Wammie award.  The Wammies are the Washington area's regional grammy-equivalent and this year they won for Best Bluegrass Recording for their album Angels' Share.

Angels' Share is Bluegrass Gospel, and its some good stuff.  Strangely, they don't seem to have any songs from the new album on their page, but you can hear snippets on the amazon page I linked above.  You can download some older live recordings here, or listen to more stuff on the band's myspace page.

My wife's band is better than your wife's band.  Unless you're Mike, Gavin, or Ari.  In which case your wife's band is my wife's band.

Because John Lanius reminded me of this.

Some years ago, before I had kids, Mrs. Buckethead and I used to have fun. We'd go out and see bands play. We'd drink and laugh. We saw our friends. Sigh.

Where was I? Back about a decade ago, shortly after we moved to DC, we were taking in a show at the Iota, (probably my favorite venue in the area) and the headlining was Mount Pilot, an alt-country, bluegrass, blues-rock, country gospel band out of Chicago. Their live performance blew me away; fantastic playing and incredible energy.

I was so impressed, I bought the album.

That album - Help Wanted, Love Needed, Caretaker - has been one of my favorites for the last decade. But something like my curse on tv shows I like seemed to be operating that night, and the band split up shortly after. I knew of a second album - their second, self-titled release; but never could I find it, despite having the awesome power of the internet at my command.

Until yesterday, that is. Every year or so, I look to see if the disc is for sale anywhere, typically a futile and frustrating endeavor. But late last night I saw the disc for sale through the good graces of Amazon and the ill-named 2DollarMusic. Add to cart? Yes! The magical disc will arrive sometime between now and July 1st. (I appreciate an online retailer with that level of precision.)

I'm all a-tingle. My ten year quest will soon be over. Now, I'll be free to resume my plans to take over the world.

[wik] I was talking with Patton the other day about The Hickories, another alt-country band whose base player was an ex-blogger and friend of Perfidy Phil Dennison. Their stuff is available on iTunes and CDBaby. Well worth a listen. I wonder what Phil is up to?

There comes Lopt, the treacherous
Lusting for revenge
He leads the legions of the dead
Towards the Aesir's realm

They march in full battle dress
With faces grim and pale
Tattered banners and bloody flags
Rusty spears and blades

Cries ring out, loud and harsh
From cracked and broken horns
Long forgotten battle cries
In strange and foreign tongues

Spear and sword clash rhythmically
Against the broken shields they beat
They bring their hate and anarchy
Onto Vigrid's battlefield

There comes Lopt, the treacherous
He stands against the gods
His army grim and ravenous
Lusting for their blood

Nowhere is longer safe
The earth moves under our feet
The great world tree Yggorasil
Trembles to its roots

Sons of muspel gird the field
Behind them Midgaard burns
Hrym's horde march from Nifelheim
And the Fenris wolf returns

Heimdal grips the Giallarhorn
He sounds that dreaded note
Oden rides to quest the Norns
But their web is torn
The Aesir rides out to war
With armor shining bright
Followed by the Einherjer
See valkyries ride

Nowhere is longer safe
The earth moves under our feet
The great world tree Yggorasil
Trembles to its roots

Sons of muspel gird the field
Behind them Midgaard burns
Hrym's horde march from Nifelheim
And the Fenris wolf returns

Listening to this makes working at home really, really tolerable.

Matt Barr, once of the blog BTD, which now seems to be a weird forum thingy, tagged me in with this delightful little meme.

"Go with your gut here. These are the songs that emotionally resonate with you, that linger in your head long after they’ve played. Every time you hear one of these songs, all you can think is, “Damn, that’s a good song!”

Toss logic, reason, and ideas about what music “should” be out the window. We’re going for pure gut response here. Maybe it’s the beat, a great guitar riff, or just the lyrics, but something about each of these songs should really strike a chord inside of you. These may not even necessarily be your favorites, just the songs that really “sock it to you” on a fundamental level."

This is what I came up with:

Conquistador, Procol Harum
Life During Wartime, Talking Heads
Death’s Black Train is Coming, Gob Iron
God’s Gonna Cut You Down, Johnny Cash
Cure for Pain, Morphine
Tremor Christ, Pearl Jam
Broken, Beat & Scarred, Metallica
Lonely Avenue, Ray Charles
One Way Out, Allman Brothers Band
Ball and Chain, Social Distortion
Ashes to Ashes, Tarbox Ramblers
Blood and Roses, The Smithereens
Pride and Joy, Stevie Ray Vaughan
World Leader Pretend, REM
Cinnamon Girl, Neil Young
Soundtrack to Mary, Soul Coughing
Would?, Alice in Chains
Kansas City, Wilbert Harrison

I cheated, and put 18 on the list because I just run like that.

I also just noticed that only two maybe three, songs on this list could be even remotely be called happy. I must be more depressed than I realized.

From that compendium of wonderful things, boing boing, we find this:

My current favorite metal band, Amon Amarth is not on this flowchart, but I imagine it would be under "Foriegn Sounding" under a new bubble for "Invented Languages" or "Elvish." Clicky on the pic for the flowchart in its full, uh, flowcharty glory.

Until you become a parent, you simply can't imagine the compromises you make without a thought to accommodate the needs of your children. Quite apart from the poop factor (in which the pre-kid categories of “no poop” and “poop” are joined by new states of being like “just a little poop,” “no visible poop,” and “I don’t smell anything, let’s make dinner”), all parts of your life are subtly altered in ways you don’t even notice until something throws the changes into stark relief.

Take music, for example.

My kid turned one year old this week, which means it's been a pretty cool year. He’s already musical, capable of banging a drum in time for up to five beats in a row or strumming my guitar with his little fist if I make a chord for him. That's wonderful, but it also means that he cares what noise is on the stereo. Therefore, anything that isn't kid-approved has for now mostly passed from my life.

The Boy's favorite music is metal (Iron Maiden, Amon Amarth, Metallica), bossa nova, and bluegrass, which mean's I'm an incredibly lucky person with an incredibly hip youngster. But his favorite favorite music is one specific lullaby album that he needs to hear every night at bedtime, and often at naptime too. Given that bedtime can ramify without warning from a fixed moment in time into an exhausting four-hour campaign of sorties, clever feints, temporary détentes, and diplomatic appeals to reason (lost, by the way, on the infant mind) which only through Herculean effort grinds toward a denouement in which our little angel drifts away to dreamland, sometimes that damn CD gets played straight through five or six times.

The upshot is, no matter how much NPR and jaded indie-rock I can cram during the daylight hours, the last twelve months of my musical life have been owned by “Dancing with Bears” and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.”

Which is why the latest release from the New England-based Midriff label has been so welcome. The 2006 release by their flagship band, The Beatings, titled Holding On To Hand Grenades, was my favorite album of that year, and several other Midriff releases have come close to that very high standard. Since Midriff is essentially “the Beatings and their friends and collaborators,” the various projects, side projects, solo releases and guest appearances add up to something like a white, postcollege Wu Tang Clan. Protect ya neck, New England!

The latest Midriff release is called The End of the New Country, and is attributed to a duo calling themselves Get Help. Get Help is a collaboration between Beatings guitarist and vocalist Tony Skalicky and New York musician Mike Ingenthron, who began writing songs together as a break from writing ad jingles. If Midriff has a GZA, it seems to be Skalicky, who has a very clear idea of what he wants his music to sound like and sticks to the plan like a pro.

What this means on vinyl (or in bits or scattered photons) is that like many other Midriff releases, Get Help drenches well-written songs and strong melodies in layers of fuzzy guitar and feedback which gradually build and ebb between enormous climaxes and quiet moments, a sound that is definitely, undeniably, refreshingly adult - not at all for little kids, and not at all like jingles.

Ok. I will admit, even without a kid in the picture this kind of stuff is like catnip to me. I can’t deny it. Give me some reverb, some layers of distorted guitars, and a slightly downcast lyric and I’ll go for it like a sucker. But – and this is important – at the end of the day, the songs need to be good. Without a great song, pretty sounds are just pretty, and the bloom quickly comes off the rose. That’s the story of dozens, if not hundreds, of albums that have crossed my path in the last two decades, and you probably haven’t heard of any of them.

Luckily, at least half of the songs on The End of the New Country (due out October 14) are very good indeed, with Skalicky’s brittle baritone voice (which resembles a cross between Ian Thomas of Joy Division, British folk icon Richard Thompson, and Jimmy Buffett) and Ingenthron’s lighter voice cutting through the sumptuous bed of dissonance and soaring overtones that is one of the Midriff label’s trademark sounds. The musical DNA is Sonic Youth, Morphine and My Bloody Valentine, but Skalicky and Ingenthron manage to invoke the sounds of their influences without becoming a thin imitation of them. (Does the fact that all the comparisons I can draw with Get Help are a decade or more old say something about them, or about me?)

But I did say “half.” One weakness many musicians have in common is an attenuated ability to self-edit. Call me old fashioned, but it's usually a mistake to assume that just because a CD can hold 74 minutes of music, it therefore should. That’s so wrong. An album takes as long as it takes -- and that time is generally under twelve songs and 45 minutes. Ask the Ramones; given half an hour, six microphones, and four chords you can make an all-time classic.

In the case of The End of the New Country, the album opens and closes extremely well, but the sheer number of songs on the record (fifteen), and a tendency toward sedate tempos and plush guitars means that the middle sags somewhat and some gems get buried. "Traveler's Shave Kit," which opens the record, and "Growing Circles" which closes it, are good enough to amount to statements of purpose. However, apart from the excellent title song I find myself hard pressed to identify standout songs when playing the record straight through.

Take for example “The Town Fires,” which is the twelfth song on the album. It’s a quiet and understated song that in the context of the album fails to stand out. But when it emerges in a random playlist it turns out to be a very welcome, winsome, and lovely three minutes of music. I guess too much of a good thing amounts to too much of a good thing.

The End of the New Country is a jumbled and slightly messy project with stretches of real beauty, strong melodies and sumptuous production. But on the songs that aren't standouts, the production is merely soothing rather than dramatic. This record is worth buying, ripping, and then making your own ten-song version out of the raw materials presented. Most importantly for me, this album does include at least ten very good songs that provide an alluring and mature break from lullabys and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider."

Previously published on Blogcritics

I was listening to that new song that all the kids like, "Handlebars." And I dig it. It's groovy. Swell, even. But it also occurred to me that the one line,

I can split the atom of a molecule/of a molecule

That just doesn't play for me. I could go into the chemistry and physics of it all, but that would be pedantic and rude.

So, how about we just fix it, mkay?

I can split an atom of uranium/of uranium

Or, my favorite,

I can fuse atoms at room temperature/at room temperature

That's better, isn't it?

[wik] Another thing, when I first heard that song on the radio in the car I thought it was a parody. Mocking megalomania and whatnot. Saw the video later and was stunned by the disconnect between my perception of the tone of the song and the apparent intent of the artist.

...seems it's never too early to, you know, get my preferences out there.

I figure if everyone at the Ministry kicked in merely half of their economic stimulus money, you could all easily swing this for me.

And I can't tell you how much that would in turn stimulate me.

In a previous incarnation of itunes, Hendrix/Band of Gypsys followed Coltrane's "Love Supreme". They worked pretty well end-to-end, better than I would've guessed, and I would never have put them together on their own. It was pretty cool the first time they played all the way through.

Nowadays, in my current setup, Dave Brubeck follows all my Danzig.

It's not really working out.

Back in September Lady Lethal, the Li'lest Lethal, and I went to a coupla local town fairs.

You know, peach harvest festival-type stuff. Petting zoo ("Behold the esquilax!"). Balloons of every shape, color, and stripe *except* pornographic. Cub Scouts hawking some widget or other as they aspire to be Boy Scouts, who in turn are preparing a surprising variety of doughy foods, as they wait to be old enough to enlist at the Army's recruiting booth, and ultimately wind up in one of the sausagenpepper sandwich carts run by opposing factions of veterans groups. There were even rides operated by drifters and gypsies. And sight was overwhelmed by smell, as the competing aromas of deep fryers, hay, body odor, and vomit (from children who ate sausagenpeppers and went on a ride tended by a drifter or gypsy) filled the air and settled in your clothes.

It was as authentic a slice of 21st century Americana as it's possible to cut.

Each fair also had a band. Each singer howled something like, "HELLO TOWN FAIIH-YUH!" every so often (which made me laugh for hours afterward). Each was similarly competent, yet similarly lame, because they played pretty much the same set list. "Brown Eyed Girl"; "Takin' Care of Business"; "Bad Case of Loving You"; and such like.

Not knocking Van Morrison, or BTO, or the other guy.

Mmmm, ok, not knocking Van Morrison.

Just sayin', is all...I mean, if you're going to go through the trouble of getting a rock band together, and learn a bunch of songs, and market yourself, and get paying gigs, how about playing some music that maybe is even better and almost as well known?

If it were me, I would do like this: have everybody in the band write up a dream sheet of 10 standard rock songs they want to play out at, say, oh, the town fair. Then we collect everybody's list, which can yield enough material for at least 90 minutes. You look them over, eliminate any duplication, then burn them- vigorously, enthusiastically. Then you make better lists. With better songs.

Here is my proposed set list for my new project, Generic Town Fair Rock n Roll Revue (the preferred name of the band is Killbot Factory, but for PG-rated gigs we're going with Generic Town Fair Rock n Roll Revue):

-Search and Destroy (Stooges)

-I Want to Take You Higher (Sly and the Family Stone- sax player takes harmonica bits. Did I mention that Killbot Factory has a sax player...?)

-Big City Nights (Scorpions)

-Working Man (Rush- some sort of abridged version)

-Can't You Hear Me Knockin' (Stones)

-One Step Beyond (Madness- we can unspool this and jam for a bit if we need the time)

-Hey Hey, My My (into the black) OR Cinammon Girl (N Young)

-Bloodfeast (Misfits- if we can slip it in without anyone noticing...)

-Nighttrain (James Brown)

-Ziggy Stardust OR Moonage Daydream (Bowie)

-What Do I Get? (Buzzcocks)

Keep 10 or 15 Ramones tracks in your back pocket just in case you need to fill 5 minutes at the end, and we're done.

Now, assume you play in the band- what's *your* dream sheet? Uh, assuming the one you submitted the first time has already been burned.

Not a webquiz per se, just a question asked amongst friends.

When you hear "Sonic Reducer", how do you keep from punching people in the fucking face?

Yesterday, Buckethead emailed me a link to an article in that there Wired publication, about how the future of recorded music is... vinyl, which is gonna come back big.

Bucket commented at the time, "the idea that vinyl could make a real comeback seems absurd, but there it is in print, on the internet, so it must be true."

Ah, so pretty and so very naive.

Here's the deal.

What's a "real" comeback? Honestly. Vinyl isn't dead, and it's not dying, but it's not exactly picking itself up off the canvas and taking another bite out of Evander Holyfield, either.

The future of music recorded on physical media is this: it is going to slowly dwindle into a niche pursuit like the model train industry, or home brewing or whatnot. A hard core of hobbyists and aficionados will favor the sonic quality of analog or of audiophile digital over the portability and convenience of commercial digital, and by doing so keep vinyl and probably tape "alive" for decades to come. There's already thousands of independent used record stores around, and unless they are legislated out of existence by aggressive copyright law reform (a real possibility), they'll still be there a hundred years from now, a little run down, a little tattered, but crammed with more 12-inchers than Tiffani Towers. On the same page, there's hundreds of little local labels out there run by kids with Chuck T's and sideburns pressing small runs of vinyl (both 7'' and 12'') of their releases - sometimes as the only medium the album comes out in. It's art!

But a "real" comeback, that's more than a piss in a rainstorm? Impossible. The music business, no matter how it diminishes, measures its revenues in hundreds of millions of dollars. Vinyl doesn't need a lot to stay on life support, but no way it's going to *ever* be the domain of anyone but music nerds ever again. Music is a convenience nowadays, a *utility* like water or electricity or internet access, especially to the all-powerful demographic of people under 25. These days normal people don't have solar panels on their house, they don't carry a bucket to the well when they want a drink, and they sure as hell don't walk over to the turntable when the side ends. What's a "side?"

In fact, as we just saw with the new Radiohead release, habits form fast. The album was free if you didn't want to pay for it, available for download right there on the internet, and still many thousands of Radiohead fans went to Bittorent to pull it down illegally rather than visiting the official site, where it was right there for the taking. There was literally nothing standing in the way of getting the album for free and totally legally on the internet, and people still stole it (from the point of view of copyright law), only because they were in the habit of going to bittorrent and stealing music. Why? Because that's where music comes from! Flip this switch, the light comes on! Turn the tap, water comes out!

The lessons to take away from this?

That the modern major labels and the larger indies have doomed themselves to a slow and painful decline by giving their fans (and an entire generation of new ones) eight years in which to get used to getting music off the internet for free from places that don't pay copyright fees of any kind. Yep - music's a utility now, and the companies that make the most high-profile music have no way of controlling or monetizing that fact.

That vinyl will do just fine, if by "just fine" you mean "out there if you want to find it, and isn't that quaint."

And that the future of music belongs, as always, to people with Chuck Taylors and interesting sideburns.

Everyone off the train! It's gonna crash and burn!!

BoingBoing made my morning today by linking to this incredible metaphorical trainwreck that happened last week at a Van Halen concert in North Carolina.

Y'see, the recorded backing synth track that starts "Jump," their concert finale, was played back at the wrong speed - not just at the wrong pitch, but in between pitches, so no matter how hard Eddie tries to find a key to play in that works with the disaster in progress, he can't.

Which is awesome. The Van Halen brothers are widely reputed to be world-class jerkholes, most recently proving this hypothesis by kicking founding bassist Michael Anthony out of the band in the press. That's right, Anthony found out on TV.

So, sit back and dig the horror as Van Halen do their best to carry on as the wheels come off.

[wik] And if you relish the gory technical details of what went wrong, here's an explanation.

The supplies you want on hand as a last survivor is a fairly common topic here at the Ministry.

We have riffed extensively on weaponry, equipment, security and storage, and packing lists in case of disaster (never forget your potable water or your iodine tablets!). In a similar vein, we have discussed desert isle-castaway books, essential reading material if you knew you were going to be marooned forever. Somewhere along the line, we probably fit musics in there as well- asking what might be your essential 3 or 5 or ? albums absolutely neccessary for your long-term survival.

They're really not so far apart; they're just different ways of expressing the same sentiment- making do as the last person on Earth, whether literally or, in the case of the desert island, figuratively.

But there is an opposite, as with all things in our universe. There can just as easily be a list of things that, if you had them with you, would virtually guarantee sapping your will to live and letting yourself fail and die, prey for infection, predators, and scavenger birds; or simply just giving it up altogether and throwing yourself off the first conveniently-sized cliff you came upon.

If any of the following records somehow wound up in my castaway bag, I would first laugh at whoever it was that put them in there; laugh at my own hubris in thinking I could assemble an effective survival kit in the face of irresistible, implacable Nature; and then, ribs sore from laughing so hard but still managing a final sardonic chuckle, drown myself.

Forthwith:

-Anything by the Eagles

And that's about all I can think of right this second. I could get by with just about anything, but please Lord please spare me any more fucking Eagles music.

Feel free to add your own contra-castaway selections.

Johnny Rotten is not impressed with the Police reunion. Plus drug advice!

I don't know who the hell Ronald Jenkees is, or where he came from, but this freaky mothereffer has his shit together. Such a geek! Such incredible beats!!! How soon till H.O.V.A. calls Ronald up for his next inevitable comeback? How many of our readers thought that last sentence was total gibberish?

Support your local independent musicians, y'all!

(found via boingboing)

It's so sad.

The New York Times Magazine has a deeply depressing ten-page spread this week about the New Savior of the Music Bidness, the One Hero Who Can Save Us All From Certain Penury and Unemployment From Our Phoney Baloney Jobs... Mister Rick Rubin!!

Yep, Rick Rubin. Helluva record producer. Helluvan ear on that guy. LL, Run DMC, Slayer, Anthrax, the Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash's comeback, Neil Friggin' Diamond's very good comeback... that guy knows music for sure. But to save the music industry? Rick Rubin?

Please.

The thrust of the article is that Sony has made Rick Rubin the co-Head of Columbia Records, in the hopes of injecting a little of that wyld-ass energy he's got into the proceedings, and in the process transmogrifying the ailing Industry into something leaner, meaner, and more efficent at siphoning money into the pockets of shareholders.

Now, there's nothing whatsoever wrong with that, really. The job of a corporation is, indeed, to "maximize shareholder value." So good luck with that. But check out some of the "hot" "new" "ideas" that Rubin and his co-Head, a middle-aged run of the mill British record exec named Steve Barnett

(I once worked for a sharp and dapper gentleman, a young pretty thing and a rising force in the Industry, who had a taste for shiny suits, expensive haircuts, and the saddest upscale parties I've ever been near, lame affairs where the lower echelons sucked down furious premium cocktails on the company dime while a D-list hipster celebrity like Tricky or the guy who played drums on that Bjork record lurked sulkily in a padded banquette until enough minutes had crawled past that he could reasonably said to have performed the favor of appearing. This particular person had a penchant for arranging the firings of underlings who, in his estimation, were not partying hard enough at company outings. This man had executive power and the trust of a wealthy aging blowhard who once was a person of some consequence in music, at least until he was let go.

...but at least let go more gracefully than the one who was sacked after refusing to leave his hot tub to take an urgent call from the CFO, with an unfortunate sequence of words by way of instruction to his minion, such words being unfortunate due to their inference as to the character and moral standing of the CFO, and their audibility in the conference room at the other end of the line, the minion having failed to put his hand over the mouthpiece of the phone...

... the wealthy aging blowhard mentioned two paragraphs prior recently being heard to remark an interview, "I love iPod. I think iPod is great...")

...a run of the mill British record executive named Steve Barnett have cooked up to save Columbia, save Sony, and save the World.

This summer, Columbia Records began a program called Big Red. The company invited 20 college students from Harvard, Penn State and the University of Miami to work on various music projects. The interns concentrated mostly on the digital marketing and promotions departments in Columbia's offices in Midtown Manhattan, which are on Madison Avenue in a granite skyscraper designed by Philip Johnson.

At the end of their paid internships, the students took part in focus groups that were closely observed by Steve Barnett, Rubin's co-head at the label, and Mark DiDia, whom Rubin brought in as head of operations, as well as by other Columbia executives. The focus groups may have been the real point of Big Red — Barnett and the New York executives, especially those who had been at Sony for years, wanted to try to take the pulse of the elusive music audience. "The Big Red focus groups were both depressing and informative, and they confirmed what I — and Rick — already knew," DiDia told me afterward. "The kids all said that a) no one listens to the radio anymore, b) they mostly steal music, but they don't consider it stealing, and c) they get most of their music from iTunes on their iPod. They told us that MySpace is over, it's just not cool anymore; Facebook is still cool, but that might not last much longer; and the biggest thing in their life is word of mouth. That's how they hear about music, bands, everything."

Well, duh. But wait! There's an idea here!

At Rubin's suggestion, [Barnett] has also set up a "word of mouth" department, which will probably employ some members of the Big Red focus group along with dozens of other 20-somethings. The "word of mouth" department will function as a publicity-promotional arm of the company, spreading commissioned buzz through chat rooms across the planet and through old-fashioned human interaction. "They tell all their friends about a band," Barnett explained. "Their job is to create interest."

Wow. Damn. The secret to rescuing one of the greatest labels in the history of the world, and the flagship of one the big five... four... three sir! record companies is, pay some teenagers to go on the internet and pretend to give a shit about bands to their friends.

Shit! If only someone'd tried that eight years ago, set up a guy as, I dunno, the "internet marketing manager" and given him money and access to interns eager to tell their buddies all about the next big never-gonna-be, an', an', indie companies that you could pay to get content on dorm-room televisions, an', an' on campuses and into high schools and skate parks! If only every label in the world had tried that exact strategem back at the advent of the decade, the ship mighta been wrenched around by that critical arc minute to swing it juuuuust wide of the iceberg!

Oh, wait. They all screaming goddamn well did.

Brilliant, gentlemen.

But what else have they in mind?

Rubin has a bigger idea [I bet he does (-Johno)]. To combat the devastating impact of file sharing, he, like others in the music business (Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine at Universal, for instance), says that the future of the industry is a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set. "You would subscribe to music," Rubin explained, as he settled on the velvet couch in his library. "You'd pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you'd like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home. You'll say, 'Today I want to listen to ... Simon and Garfunkel,' and there they are. The service can have demos, bootlegs, concerts, whatever context the artist wants to put out. And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now."

So, say I'm somewhere like, I dunno, my buddys fire pit in Northeastern Ohio. We got a bale of primo bud and a cooler full ale. And we wanna rock the fark out to Motorhead. All we gotta do is... wait... dude, do you get broadband out here?

But at least Barnett sees reason here:

Steve Barnett is nervous about the subscription model. "Smart people have told me if the subscription model is not done correctly," he said, "it will be the final nail in our coffin. I've heard both sides of the argument, and I'm not convinced it's the solution to our problems. Rick wants to be a hero immediately. In his mind, you flick a switch and it's done. It doesn't work like that."

So, what you're sayin' is, your highly paid guru who has no office, no shoes, no phone number you can reach him on, and an oracular perspective on the Future of the Industry, is halfway fulla shit. Noted.

But this is where the antics spill over into full-on Larry/Curly/Moe madness. Check this shit out!

Barnett has other ideas, which he is discussing with Rubin. For instance, asking Columbia artists to give the record company up to 50 percent of their touring, merchandising and online revenue. This is unprecedented — even successful artists like the Dixie Chicks make a large percentage of their income from concerts and T-shirts.

So let's break this down good so even the dim kids in the back of the class get it. Artists signed to major labels get this much money from album sales:

• Zero.

If they go reaaaaaaly far, shift a few million units, that number can rocket all the way up to

• A little.

Artists, every artist, from the overly earnest hairy-legged songbird down at your local coffe joint, to Buckethead's wife's excellent band, to Cheap Trick, to the Rolling Stones, Prince, and Barbra herself, make money in these ways:

• Touring and appearances
• Merch (t-shirts, keychains, beer coozies, etc.)
• Whatever b.s. online revenue streams they can dig up.

If the artist also happens to be a songwriter, or to control their own publishing, they may also get decent to spectacular paydays off of that as well, and forego some of the above. (The rap and electronic worlds also have their alternate revenue streams, but at the end of the day they amount to a new flavor of touring, merch, online B.S., publishing, or songwriting.)

So, basically, leaving aside songwriting and publishing which are separate pillars of the business, with their own contracts, deal structures, and support agencies, the magic bullet that's gonna save Sony/Columbia from disappearing up their own anii while simultaneously collapsing in a fiery heap while offstage a muted trumpet plays "waaah-waaah" is, WE'LL FIND OUT WHAT MONEY OUR ARTISTS ARE EARNING, AND MAKE THEM GIVE IT TO US INSTEAD!!!

(While, one presumes, twisting their moustaches in glee and twisting their monocles deeper into their eye sockets, the better to see the young immigrant boys they hired straight off a plane at JFK for a nickel wrestle each other to their deaths. Sweet suffering Jesus; there's villainy, and then there's incompetent cartoon villainy.)

So, while the money man is looking at grade-skool level larceny as a viable corporate survival strategy, what's the GURU up to, Stu?

[Rubin is] always on a quest to find just the right thing, whether it be a book or a building. Recently, he hunted down the brand of water that claims to have the greatest level of purity (Ice Age); he pored over architectural manuals to determine what kind of hinge would have been used in 1923 (for his house); and when Johnny Cash was ailing, Rubin discovered a kinesiologist whom Cash credited with extending his life. And so on. Rubin has always been passionate, even compulsive, about his interests.

Gentlemen, I say with mingled regret and pleasure that you all deserve everything you get.

[wik] Oh, and another thing about that "Big Red" focus group? Isn't it a truism that kids these days (kids these days!!) have finely tuned bullshit detectors that can see right through most forms of marketing known to man and many which haven't even been invented yet? And a bunch of teenagers on the intarnets getting paid in free.... what.... free CDs??? Free "subscriptions" to whatever music download service Sony pukes up?... are going to somehow outwit their peers?

I've seen it a hundred times. Pimping music is wonderful and even fulfilling when you can really believe in the quality of the record you're working. Then it's no so much like whoring, and more like evangelizing. But nine times out of ten, you're actually getting paid to pretend that some giant steaming turd is really a tasty sandwich, when everyone from Prague to Paducah can see the difference. And that not only sucks the soul right out of you, it's how record companies and their hacks become hacks. The stink of hack clings to the hacky hacks like cigar smoke and drug store perfume clings to the upholstery in the $20 lapdance room out at the Moonlight on old Route 11. And you don't really come back from that.

Color me giddy. Henry Rollins does an interview with Mother Jones.

I fucking love the guy. No, I can't stand the unibrow or the massive SEARCH AND DESTROY tattoo on the back. I tend to prefer my men clean and slightly pretty. But HOLY COW. I can still hear Salt on a Slug and Family Man in my head at the mention of his name.

Strangely I just saw Johnny Mnemonic the other day and I had the pleasure of Mr. Rollins' company onscreen. I thought he and Ice T were good in that film. You can see Ice T just starting to get the hang of acting.

Good stuff. Entertain yourselves, no don't get mad at me for reading Mother Jones. I was following a link about credit card use in the US and stumbled upon the article. And I'm still looking for the damned credit card article for my other blog.