Every Breath You Take

I was just watching an episode from the second series of Love My Way; it’s the one where Tom (Brendan Cowell) has a go at his brother Charlie (Dan Wyllie) for owning a Sting CD. To paraphrase, Tom states the obvious – Sting in the Police equals cool, Sting solo, uh, not so cool. Charlie bites back, arguing that the album in question is Sting’s first outside of the Police. Tom argues that it doesn’t matter; the CD would not have been around at the time, it clearly would have been vinyl. This, he contends, settles the issue, and he threatens to throw the offending piece out the window.

There’s something in this exchange that really emphasises, for me, the dynamic relationship between music and technology. This blog was established for my Technology, Media, and Culture class at university on the basis that it would provide a web log of my thoughts and experiences on an aspect of culture and its connections with technology. That I chose to focus on music looks, in retrospect, to be a bit of a cop-out. As a heavy peruser of blogs, music ones especially, I am aware of what is already out there and, while I have felt an urge to join the Mp3 revolution, for the benefit of my course I have attempted to avoid this line of posting (not to say it won’t happen in the future!). So far as technology goes, I have attempted to showcase the human aspect; in particular, the ways in which advancements frame our listening and consumption habits. How important is it to stay on top of things? At what point does society (or at least e-society) deem something uncool or outdated? Who exactly dictates these trends? When does borrowing become stealing and how does technology facilitate such acts? Questions no-one can answer, true, but they sure make for interesting discussion.

Class is winding up for the year and this is my summarising comment. What’s ‘round the corner? You'll have to wait and see.

Before You Was Famous

Marj Kibby, in her as-yet-unpublished article ‘The practice of music fandom on the internet’ (2006), reasserts the long-held notion that cultural capital is central to music fandom, and examines the ways in which intimacy and authenticity can heighten musical experiences.

She goes on to talk about how new technologies of communication, such as the Internet, have led to disintermediation in that they enable a connection between producer and consumer, musician and fan, without the need for an intermediary. And it’s true. Nowadays many ‘stars’ have blogs or treat their official web site in a less than official manner (check out The Whitlams’ Tim Freedman and his attempt to get back at the Chaser boys). As Art Brut say in 'Formed a Band': ‘It's not irony / And it's not rock and roll / I'm just talking / To the kids’.

It may be stating the obvious but is there any better way to feel a connection to music than to be somehow in direct contact with it? Like talking to your favourite artists or having semi-famous people reply to your blog. I don’t think there is, although sometimes, such as when it comes to friends’ band, it helps to have a little distance.

Funny I should write all this. Yesterday my sister pointed me to the MySpace front page, where it appears my girlfriend has become the face of the Laneway Festival. Now, there’s no way we’re going to miss that!

Sample Credits Don't Pay Our Bills

Come Away With...ESG

I must sound like a broken record going on about this kind of stuff, but…I must sound like a broken record going on about this kind of stuff. I mean, someone has got to say it. At the moment my musical taste is just so sample-driven. Call me a product of the digital age, I don’t care, but I dig the re-appropriation of sounds – old, new, borrowed and blue. Whatever. Except mash-ups which are 98% lame.

Well, on to today’s history lesson: ESG. The four Scroggins sisters - Deborah (bass, vocals), Marie (congas, vocals), Renee (vocals, guitar), and Valerie (drums) – simply have to be amongst the coolest coolsies of all time (please, please, please ignore what has to one of the most unappealing promo pics ever, above). Back in the late ‘70s, when all were teenagers, their mother (add her to the cool list) bought each of her daughters an instrument to keep ‘em away from the trouble of the South Bronx streets.

Somehow, almost certainly not by design, ESG became flag bearers for post-punk, no wave, hip-hop and house music. According to AllMusic, the group's only aspiration was to play their music – simplistic in structure and heavy on rhythm – and sell lots of records. And despite borrowing heavily from their influences, such James Brown and Motown, when it came to originality, the girls had it goin’ on: figuring people would know when they screwed up a cover, the group decided to write their own songs in order to sidestep audience knowledge of when mistakes were being made. Through a mixture of ignorance and bluster, ESG have been responsible for some of the most dance-able and purely enjoyable music out there. Their full-length debut, Come Away With…ESG (1983), is a classic, but the critical admiration never transferred to commercial success. ESG disbanded shortly after that high-point but reformed, to great surprise, in the early ‘90s.

And yet the monetary reward still wasn’t forthcoming. In their absence, their music had become popular amongst hip-hop artists on the look-out for samples. The likes of TLC, the Wu-Tang Clan, Beastie Boys and J Dilla all made use of ESG rhythms and beats, often uncleared, and the Scroggins were left uncredited and out of pocket. The gals (by now middle-aged mamas) addressed the issue in the coolest of ways: by naming a 1993 12” EP Sample Credits Don't Pay Our Bills.

I don’t really know if I’m helping matters by posting mp3s of their work but I see it is as spreading the good word. I’ll be knocking on your door come Sunday. Anyway, this is a victory for the little guys. Check out a couple of tracks from the band, as well as one from indie-rockers Liars which borrows, uh, liberally from ESG’s ‘UFO’.

ESG – Dance
ESG – UFO
Liars - Tumbling Walls Buried Me In The Debris With ESG

When it’s all over we still have to clean up the mess

So, yeah, it looks like Mess+Noise, inarguably the finest free music mag devoted to Australian content, will no longer exist in printed form. It’s a shame; not only because I’d just recently started contributing but rather as the physical form has always seemed to me to carry a sort of reverence, I guess in some way linked to disposability.

Talk is there will be a substantial boost to online content and, hell, it ain’t even official yet (and may not even be the full story). This supposed move does speak volumes for the lure of the Internet though. Music criticism and journalism, if you’ll allow it to be known as such, are so integral to the culture cycle that it’s always a shame to see a genuine outlet fall by the wayside. And I’m sure you can bring the whole ‘online democracy’ debate into this mystifying episode but truth is anyone can blog, anyone can review. But I, for one, don’t want to read it all. Anyway, I’m sure M+N will maintain the high quality product it has become known for.

I’ve got fond memories of trips to Sydney degenerating into hunt for M+N goose-chases, and it’s true that, 15 bi-monthly issues in, my coffee table will never look the same again. It’s not the end, in any case. You can always print your own copy, right?

DIY: Damned If You do? Damned If You don’t?

Stolen picture!

Technocrats are always arguing the social networking capabilities of the Internet and, yeah, it’s difficult to not see the benefits of a connected society. But, for all these advancements, how much better off are we? I mean, Facebook costs employers countless amounts in earnings and lost productivity, MySpace promotes the collecting of fake friends, illegal downloading is destroying the music industry, legal downloading is plagued by DRM locks... and it all becomes clear the Internet is not quite the democratic utopia that many claim. I do not subscribe to the notion that the Internet is detrimental to music, the universal human practice, only that it impinges on the industry of music as we have come to know it. But I’m not writing here to launch a tirade against said industry; that’s all be said and done. I’m more interested in music’s role in the shaping of self and group identity, and how this has been affected by increased commodification and the growth of online practices.

I, like many, view music as an aestheticisation of experience. That is to say, through listening to music – and interacting with other people, their experiences and opinions about music – I establish, form and maintain elements of my social identity. As Frith says, ‘the experience of music is an essentially humanising experience, a kind of ideal of sociability, a way of making us feel what it is to be engaged with other people’ (Frith, 2001: 28). Online, I align myself with several web sites, tastemakers if you will, from which I also form part of an imagined community, made up of likeminded individuals. It is this point that greatly interests me.

There are some that view these new online music communities as an extension of older movements. For instance the late 1970s New York punks or the Bronx hip-hop scene of the same time; the former who communicated through handmade fanzines, and the latter who copied and traded tapes. This notion sits well with me, especially due to my participation in a number of identifiable subcultures.

More and more I find that I align my identity with the do-it-yourself ethic, which first came to prominence in the punk movement in the late 1970s. Maybe it’s the sincerity of unmediated wares that allures me, or that I’m simply defining myself by what I’m not (i.e. commodity fetishist), I don’t know. Perhaps I’m over-analysing things – as I am quite prone to do.

Back to this idea of online social networking, I’m interested to see where the traditional values of D.I.Y. fit in. As noted, I regularly attend D.I.Y. shows at warehouses and art spaces, which, despite a lack of conventional promotion, draw reasonable attendances. This Wednesday I will be attending a gig by hardcore act La Quiete from Italy, at Newcastle’s Sushi + Cigarettes gallery. Shows like these, and the small-time bands involved, rely heavily on the Internet, in particular networking sites like MySpace, which “provide an outlet for groups and artists to promote their music to a wider audience” and build up vibrant culture of online discussion about music where fans and artists of specific genres seek out likeminded individuals (Bennett, 2005: 338). The Internet, then, can be used to impart and obtain cultural capital, upon which communities can be sustained on- and off-line.

Obviously bands have been doing the whole D.I.Y. thing since before MySpace was even a twinkle in Rupert Murdoch’s overpowering eyes, so what else does the Internet give us? I suppose there is wider access to information for a wider population. And every so often, you’ll come across a site that will offer something innovative. Take the FatCat DIY Resource, for example. FatCat Records, on of the most respected indie labels, have designed a site to ‘help new artists and labels find out what they need to know to get their own work out into the world’. The resource features a large, UK-centric database containing information on various areas such as mastering, manufacturing, distributing and legal, including lengthy contact lists. It also includes interviews with noteworthy D.I.Y. acts, helpful links, step-by-step guides and the opportunity for artists/companies to upload their own data. It’s far from exhaustive but then you gotta take whatever help you can get.

[Bennett, T., (2005) ‘Editorial’ in Popular Music and Leisure Leisure Studies, Vol. 24, No. 4, 333–342, October 2005.]

[Frith, S. (2001) ‘The Popular Music Industry’ in The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock. Eds. Simon Frith, Will Straw and John Street. Cambridge University Press: New York, pp 26–52.]

***

I watched with interest part one of Marcus Westbury’s new documentary Not Quite Art, which aired on the ABC last Tuesday. Westbury travelled to Newcastle – his home town, my adopted home – to take a look at the art culture emerging from outside the supposed proper avenues. He contrasted our fine city with that of Glasgow, Scotland, and it wasn’t exactly pretty. The latter have experience a transformation from industrial city to a hub of youth art in Europe. We, well, we’re still waiting. Nice glimpse of Sushi + Cigarettes, though.

Part two of three will air Tuesday Oct 23 at 10pm. You can download this first episode here.

Dance to the Underground

According to this, a Sydney nightclub promoter has started a campaign to ban a style of dance that he says is a danger to other patrons. Apparently, 'shuffling', a 'mix between the moves of one-hit wonder MC Hammer and the frenetic steps required by dancing machines in amusement arcades' has long been a staple of the Melbourne rave scene but is only now taking over Sydney.

"It used to be in those clubs where people stood two metres apart from each other and they were all on ecstasy, so if they bumped into each other they'd give each other a hug," he [Tim Sabre, nightclub promoter] said.

"In Sydney, on the other hand, they try to do it on a crowded floor while drunk.

"You need precision and when you're drunk you lack that, so when somebody goes staggering around and hits the wrong people … it's not good."

Well, booze + dancing = dangerous. Obviously... WRONG! says DJ Peter Glass.

"That's their self-expression, that's what dancing's about," he said.

Duh, ain't you never watched 'So You Think You Can Dance'? That's an art. I'm quite pleased that this long-overlooked form is finally being recognised. Don't believe the smear campaigns.

Bad dancers: danger to society. Keep children away at all times.

Workinonit!

Sometimes at night, especially when I have things on my mind, I like to set aside time just for listening to music. I lay myself down in a darkened room just before bed and listen through headphones to an album in its entirety. The past few nights I’ve found myself returning to the same two albums: J Dilla’s Donuts, a new purchase that has hit me immediately, and Prefuse 73’s One Word Extinguisher, an album from my collection I’ve neglected for far too long.

The two are linked stylistically, both working as complete works as opposed to collections of disparate songs. I don’t want to go into back-stories too much but it is obvious that these two albums were pieced together with the utmost care. Donuts, particularly, runs like one long song. Now, I don’t claim to be the most knowledgeable when it comes to hip-hop – in fact it is the main genre where subserviently I seek recommendations – but these two make a progressive impact that I cannot ignore. Approaching some sort of post-modern urban terrorism, each album relies heavily on samples – vocal snippets, chopped up instruments, glitchy beats – but the heart remains in traditional hip-hop. The results haven’t changed so much as the methods. Much could be said of today’s shorter attention spans but in cases like these we have an intriguing statement for the value of unrest in the digital age.

I’ve been sleeping well, baby. Enough said.

[No, I’m not going to post mp3s because that would do both artists an injustice]

BUY J Dilla - Donuts BUY
BUY Prefuse 73 - One Word Extinguisher BUY

***

In other news I have a couple of reviews up on Mess + Noise.

Big Pay Out!

With tickets to the Big Day Out music festival going on sale in just a few days I’m bracing myself for the inevitable torrent of slang-ridden MySpace bulletins cursing scalpers, and blaming everything from alarms clocks to online queues for denying one’s God-given right to acquiring tickets.

Spare me the sob stories. I’ve seen it all. Well, almost.

You see, in yet another attempt to circumvent scalpers and online reselling, the organisers of the festival have imposed a limit of two tickets per customer for the Sydney leg, held January 25 at Homebush. In the other five cities, punters will be able purchase up to four tickets at a time.

I don’t know just how good an idea this is. While the line-up this year is actually almost worth paying for, and I hate getting ripped off as much as the next person, it is a no-brainer that the festival will sell out and, yes, hearts will be broken, friendships expired etc. What I’m saying is, I much prefer a bit of people power!

An article published in the Sydney Morning Herald, entitled Fans sabotaging scalpers' auctions, claims “music fans, incensed at the apparent inaction by governments, event promoters and eBay in preventing ticket scalping, are taking matters into their own hands.”

Enraged fans, blinded by their own fury, are actively sabotaging auctions by placing fake bids seconds before they close. With very little legislation protecting us genuine fans from these dirty dealers – their actions being the very definition of un-Australian – obviously eBay, the bastion of free trade, is where we should vent our anger!

Seriously, what can be done? They’re talking about sending unique barcodes to buyers’ mobile phones but I’ve seen first-hand the trouble that even Moshtix - a relatively tame form of digital ticketing - can cause.

Is this a case of technology proving just as much a hindrance as a help? I even miss those middle-aged pommy geezers spruiking tickets outside the venue. Oh, the still exist. Somewhere in this digital world…

'Kin A! Making 'Head-ways

Anyone with an ear to the wind will know that Radiohead, Best Band in the World™, have a new album on the way – due to drop, in just a few of days, on October 10. With the sudden announcement of record number seven, In Rainbows, I almost feel old hat commenting on it.

That said, Thom Yorke and co. have well and truly pulled the wool over the world’s eyes with this, their latest party trick. I suppose not being signed to a record label, they can do anything they like – and it sure doesn’t hurt being the critically and commercially adored megabrand that they are.

The lowdown is, In Rainbows will be released in at least two but almost definitely three forms. The first to see outside light will be a digital download in which the customer, free-minded beings like you and I, will be able to name their own price. The most exciting format is a “discbox” including the In Rainbows CD, a bonus CD from the recording sessions, a two-record vinyl edition of the album, and a hardcover book. The discbox is available for pre-order from the band’s web site, costing £40 or close to $100 AUD, and every buyer gets access to the download. In Rainbows also looks likely to be released as a standard CD in early 2008 but, pfft, that ain’t innovative and this is Radiohead we’re talking about!

Lazy, I? No, just a little different

So, yeah, wow. I don’t really know what to think and I’ll reserve my judgment for the actual music but still it’s a pretty bold move. As the lad at Pitchfork says: only a band in Radiohead’s position could pull off something so audacious. And as I say: what does it mean for future album releases? In effect, the band have made a mockery of the usual PR circuit – isn’t it requisite nowadays for bands to get their promo on, only to have their music leaked at some inopportune time? Haven’t they effectively leaked it themselves, and asked us to pay for it (if we want to)? Subversion of the highest order! Or is it?

I've Lived On A Dirt Road All My Life

It seems like an age since I've been on the Internet but, at the same time, the past week has just flown by. It began with three shows in three nights - Battles/My Disco, Front End Loader (talk about piggy in the middle!) and M.I.A. - with some TiNA-related madness somewhere in the middle, and a heap of travelling. I presently find myself in Orange where I've had the chance to reclaim my thoughts and heal my body.

Now, I thought I'd post my playlist from Noise Annoys last Thursday, just to keep yezall in the loop.

• Battles – B+T [from EP C/B EP, 2006]
• James Dean – In The Hospital [James Dean CD-R, 2007]
• British Sea Power – Atom [Krankenhaus? EP, 2007]
• My Bloody Valentine – You Made Me Realise [You Made Me Realise single, 1988]
• Fabulous Diamonds – 2.03 [Fabulous Diamonds 7”, 2007]
• Matthew Dear – Deserter [Asa Breed, 2007]
• M.I.A. – Paper Planes [Kala, 2007]
• ESG – Dance [Come Away With…ESG, 1983]
• M83 – Run Into Flowers (Abstrackt Keal Agram Remix) [Run Into Flowers single, 2003]
• Caribou – Irene [Andorra, 2007]
• The Field – Silent [From Here We Go Sublime, 2007]
• Future of the Left – Manchasm [Curses, 2007]
• Eucalypt – Kepéla [Eucalypt/Sophora split, 2006]
• Warren Ellis interview:
• Dirty Three and Cat Power – Great Waves [Cinder, 2005]
• Dirty Three - Long Way To Go With No Punch [She Has No Strings Appollo, 2003]
• Alps - I Burned An Australian Flag [Alps of New South Wales, 2006]

And yes, despite it being possibly the worst show evah, from next week I will be returning to a regular slot of Monday 4-5pm - with a strict no longnecks policy...

Please people, stay tuned because this week is going to throw up some seriously good blogging. I can feel it.