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Live Indignation & Ticketmaster Slavery

[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 9, 2010 by admin in Music

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

It would be nice if the cost of live music were to enjoy the same market adjustment that recorded music has over the last decade, but things will probably get worse before they get better with the merger of Ticketmaster and Live Nation.

Few things have made me more ecstatic than the explosion of indy music over the past decade. But I still have one complaint. Ticket prices. While the average pop song has settled nicely at a price of about a dollar, and the artist generally takes a bigger slice of that dollar in spite of the lower unit price, concert tickets rose in price by over 80% between 1996 and 2003, and have continued to rise consistently since then. What’s behind this insane inflation of concert prices? Well, everyone’s pointing fingers, but most agree that it began over a decade ago with the aggressive and monopolistic practices of Clear Channel, who devoted most of their energy to decimating the diverse network of venues and promoters that used to exist. But as easy as it is to place ALL the blame on them, the fact is that “premium artists”, i.e.: dinosaur rock baby boomer idols like the Rolling Stones and the Eagles – are just as much to blame in many ways, by charging upwards of 300 bucks for shows, in order to offset their lousy album sales and still be able to stay in $2,000 a night hotels while on tour. Even a next generation act like Green Day can be accused of this greed, if you believe the numbers in this infographic; Green Day’s 65% cut makes the promoters and venues look like they’re being reasonable. It’s rough enough out there that even a well-established artist like Imogen Heap had to throw in the towel recently. And it’s probably going to get worse before it gets better, in light of the DOJ’s recent approval of the monster merger of Live Nation and Ticketmaster. I think it’s time we started to practice some asymmetrical warfare techniques against the concert ticketing industry. It would be amazing if a network of non-ticketmaster promoters and venues could pull it together. I personally would be out every night of the week if I could catch a decent band for ten or fifteen bucks on a regular basis. We’ve done it with record labels, lets change the game with radio and live music too.

Entertainment For The Braindead

[ Comments Off ]Posted on June 3, 2010 by admin in Music

Thursday, June 3rd, 2010

No, it’s not a roundup of this summer’s blockbusters, it’s a charming lo-fi electrofolk music act from Cologne Germany.

The sixteen year old me is really mad at Julia Kotowski, the twenty-something from Cologne, Germany that is the voice and talent behind Entertainment For The Braindead. You see, when I was first mumbling my moody songs into a microphone in my bedroom as a teenager, if I wanted to layer my simplistic guitar picking, I had to take my open-reel Revox tape machine and put scotch tape over the erase head to create multiple tracks with a method we called sound on sound. There was no way I could perform the stuff live in a cafe, staring at my feet moodily mumbling to charm the audience with my shy genius after setting up a groove on my digital looper. Plus I probably had to walk barefoot uphill both ways in a foot of snow to get to the gig, just like my grandad who worked in the coal mine did. Okay. I’m not mad anymore. See how temporal teen angst can be? It’s hard to stay mad at someone like Kotowski if you just toss on some of her music; the stuff was literally recorded in her bedroom, and although this kind of post-emo lo-fi electrofolk can be really annoying, there’s a delicate genuineness here that works. And the price is right; the two releases I’ve listened to – Hydrophobia and Hypersomnia are available as free downloads. Entertainment For The Braindead also seems to receive some kind of distribution support from “netlabels” aaahh-records.net and Aerotone.be, which as of this writing both seem to be restructuring their sites. ETFB’s site also has an amusing note on the “shop” page about how they received more than 75 orders and couldn’t keep up with the demand. Time to come out of the bedroom guys. Read the rest of this entry »

Bell Gardens – Hangups Need Company

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on May 22, 2010 by admin in Music

Saturday, May 22nd, 2010

Members of the groups Stars Of The Lid and Furry Things get together to form the immaculately anachronistic pop group Bell Gardens.

If you enjoy perusing the meandering sub-genres of current indy pop, you might be intrigued by Bell Gardens’ new EP “Hangups Need Company” (available on vinyl as well as digital). Bell Gardens features members from ambient act Stars of the Lid, which is what first drew my attention. I fell in love with Stars of the Lid mainly because their music sounds so much like some of my own music (listen to “On The Eve” and “Redshore” from that link for comparison). Don’t look for the same ethereal ambient stylings in Bell Gardens’ music though; while they themselves reference the Beach Boys’ Cuddle Up, Jack Nitzsche’s We Have To Stay, and Bobby Vinton as influences, I can confidently say they lifted pages straight from Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother and the entire gestalt of obscure 60′s folk psychedelia. The songs have a strangely comforting honesty that’s created by – as they put it – “mainly live instrumentation, thinking about what was available in studios from the 50s to the mid 70s”. If I had heard “Hangups Need Company” without knowing who it was, I would be certain that it was some lost pop treasure from the late 60′s. The videos they’ve made available so far (see below) capture a sort of David Lynch vibe with their quirky and surreally anachronistic images. Read the rest of this entry »

Robyn With A Why

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 21, 2010 by admin in Music

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

How and why I finally succumbed to the Europoptasticalness of Robyn


Swede Dreams Are Made Of This

Make that three whys. Why, why, why do I like Robyn? I’m supposed to be a mildly snobbish follower of quality indy music like, I dunno, Grizzly Bear, and Hot Chip, and Flying Lotus. That sort of thing. The effects-and-compression slathered beatbox pop of someone like Robyn should be total anathema to me. And frankly, when I first heard her a few years ago, her music was. On my first listen, I thought “Ack! It’s like Pink meets MIA meets Ephemera meets Powerpuff Girls”. Or something like that. And then I listened to it a few weeks later, and was mortified to find myself liking it. I think I was resisting because it was so much like music I was trying to do in the eighties, except what Robyn is pulling of is perfectly, plinkily, Europoptastical. I think I was also struggling with the fact that in her pretty/ugly asymmetrical perfect-hair androgyny, she looks like the the girl I used to WISH I looked like AND the guy I would want to want to date me. If I were a girl who looked like that. And if I liked guys that way. So it’s been a struggle, but I finally relented. Robyn rocks, and if you don’t agree, you probably don’t like pure, perfected pop. I’m not surprised she hasn’t really broken in a big way in the states; self-aware Europop genius like this is often lost on us. And to add to the challenge, appreciating the fairly genuine sentiments expressed in her best tunes requires being thoroughly in touch with your inner melodramatic teen. Check out the widget and video below, or learn more about the odd career of the Swedish/Brit pop phenom on Wikipedia.  Read the rest of this entry »

I’m With The Brand: Musicians As Corporate Groupies

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on April 14, 2010 by admin in Music

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

You know it’s over when Iggy Pop Licenses “Lust For Life” to Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines

If you’re a working musician who understands anything at all about how the music industry works and want to earn a decent living, you’ll quit your job right now and start a record label. Oh wait. That doesn’t even work anymore. So what’s a penniless musical genius to do these days to make a living? Well, if you’re Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails – the two acts always cited when talking about making a fortune online with your music – you’re all set. But the fact is that these are pretty exceptional cases, and both acts had a major label deal before their success on line. In reality, there probably are a lot of acts out there that are happy with what they’re making if they self-produce, choose the right distribution channels, and remember that oft-forgotten secret ingredient, HAVING FANS. We’ve come a long way since the days when the typical artist/label arrangement meant the band would sell a couple million units, the label would make a mil, and the band would end up 50 grand in debt. If you think that’s an exaggeration, read this classic piece by Steve Albini (probably best known for producing Nirvana’s In Utero) that breaks it down in detail, or this quick Wikipedia entry about “recoupment”. To get an idea of how many songs an artist has to sell these days – and how – before they make US minimum wage, check out this handy infographic. So while it’s possible these days to make some kind of living as a musician, how does one make “superstar” money? Well not by being Lady Gaga selling tunes on Spotify, that’s for sure. No, much like any other art-meets-business activity, whoring yourself is probably the best solution. Devo was one of the early geniuses of this, building their brand as anti-corporate rebels while making fistfuls of money as savvy and willing team players with Warner. More recently, according to this Wall Street Journal piece, we’d have to tip the hat to Black Eyed Peas. Apparently will.i.am pitches his band-slash-brand to major sponsors like BlackBerry with PowerPoint presentations. Yes, it’s hard to tell the band from the brands these days. In fact, try this clever FastCompany quiz to see if you can tell the names of the bands from those who name the brands. Read the rest of this entry »

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