(Credit:
Steve Guttenberg)
I'm not sure why, but there's a never-ending stream of articles cheering on vinyl's comeback. I guess if it's a slow news day, editors can't resist plugging in yet another story about booming LP sales, and they always claim something along the lines of "Kids are digging the grooves, they've seen the light, and now crave analog sound!"
Puh-leeze!
Don't get me wrong; I wish it were true. Maybe in some alternative universe, vinyl is flying off the shelves, and kids are ditching their iPods and buying turntables.
Back here on the Earth we know and love, 2008 sales of LPs were up 89 percent, from 990,000 in '07 to 1.88 million in '08. That's hardly a boom, now that CD sales are in the hundreds of millions. The best-selling LP of 2008 was Radiohead's "In Rainbows," which sold a piddling 28,800 platters. Second-place honors went to another British band, The Beatles, which sold 16,500 "Abbey Road" LPs. If those numbers are accurate, and Radiohead's Thom Yorke and company were trying to live off LP sales, they'd have to get day jobs.
So sure, there's more and more new and reissue vinyl, and that's great, but only a teensy-weensy number of people buy new vinyl. Most of my vinyl-loving buddies regularly score free records on the street, or pay a buck or two for used vinyl to play on their megabucks high-end turntables. Again, no problem there, but it's not the same as a true vinyl resurgence. That's just media hype.
I love vinyl because it looks cool and sounds great. I own around 4,000 LPs. And I'm hoping that the vinyl revival keeps growing. But the market for physical media--CDs and LPs--has nowhere to go but down. More than anything else, people want cheap or free music, playable anywhere they want.
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I was never much of a fan of music videos or MTV. I couldn't understand why anyone would want to watch a band act out a silly story or lip-sync to a make-believe "performance." Why not just shoot the band playing for real in a studio?
The geniuses at IFC have done just that with Nigel Godrich's "From the Basement" series, which is now coming to DVD. There's an amazing roster of talent to see and hear.
High points include the White Stripes. Jack's wailing vocal acrobatics and scorching guitar riffs bouncing off Meg's pounding drums on "Blue Orchid" are a sight to see. When Meg's really into it she rears back and sticks out her tongue.
Jarvis Cocker is a wild man, he and his band seem to be channeling late '70s Elvis Costello and the Attractions. OK, maybe it's Cocker's thick glasses that threw me off, but the music really does have an early punk vibe to it. Too bad there's just one cut from Cocker.
Radiohead opens the DVD and Thom Yorke closes it. Me, I preferred Yorke solo, playing an upright piano. There's a palpable quality in the sound of the instrument, every creak of the wood and clatter of the keys add dimension to the music. I love the way Yorke modulates his voice against those amazing chord changes, it's a commanding performance.
The "From the Basement" Dolby Stereo, Dolby 5.1, and DTS 5.1 mixes are you-are-there intimate. There's no heavy production, editing, tweaking, or effects to muck things up. You hear the "room," the sound of the singers and band filling that space. "From the Basement" is one of the best-sounding music DVDs I've heard in a long while. It's set for release on March 3 with a retail price of $14.98.
If you didn't make it to the Outside Lands music festival in San Francisco last weekend (or you did and want to relive it), check out our free playlist and photo gallery below featuring some of the top acts. While everyone had their own unique experience, the climatic triple threat of Bon Iver, Broken Social Scene and Wilco on Sunday was my personal highlight. A common theme throughout the day was crowd participation (there were several occasions when the audience was invited to clap, sing, and scream along). From the reviews that I've read, and from general word-of-mouth buzz, the festival appeared to be a great success. Hopefully the artists and promoters feel the same way and will book a second annual Outside Lands next year!
Free playlist featuring Manu Chao, Radiohead, The Cool Kids, Nicole Atkins, Beck, The Walkmen and more:
Outside Lands photo gallery below courtesy of Ryan Salm - Ryansalmphotography.com
More photos...
... Read moreGoogle has quite a bit in common with British rock band Radiohead: both have reputations for shattering corporate and artistic boundaries, both make constant headlines in the tech press regardless of what they do, and both will likely be seen as icons of early-21st-century futurism for years to come. (And both likely have some beef with record label EMI: Radiohead ditched the label to embark upon the high-seas adventure that is In Rainbows; Google lost chief information officer Douglas Merrill to EMI earlier this year.)
But it's still a surprise that Google, long known for keeping its hands out of content creation, has chosen to outright promote Radiohead's new video, for the In Rainbows track "House of Cards." The reason? The super-cool technology behind it.
"A few weeks ago we heard about a project Radiohead was working on," Google product manager Ola Rosling wrote in a post on the company blog on Monday. "The band was making a new video, but they weren't using any cameras, just lasers and data. As you might imagine, we were intrigued."
The video, a trippy display of 3D renderings that show faces, conversations, and eroding architecture, uses scanning technology from Geometric Informatics and Velodyne.
A Google-hosted site for "House of Cards" leads interested viewers to the video, a "making of" clip along with links to learning more about data visualization and laser technology, and options to embed a Google "gadget" containing the video or a Radiohead iGoogle theme--as well as play with the technology itself.
"Whether you're a music fan or a developer (or both), we agreed with the band that it would be great to give you a deeper look into how all of this was done," Rosling wrote, "and even a chance to play with the data yourself, under a license that allows remixing."
Google, for that matter, uses 3D laser scanning for its Street View project. And it's been taking more interest in the art world, hosting a glitzy event in May to kick off artist-designed themes for the iGoogle personal home age service.
It was just two months ago that Nine Inch Nails released its album Ghosts I-IV in multiple formats, from free nine-song download all the way up to a deluxe LP/CD/Blu-ray set. Today, the band started taking orders for free downloads of its next album, The Slip; like Radiohead did with In Rainbows, the band will subsequently release the album on CD and LP format.
The download era may see a return to the kind of prolific output we saw from The Beatles and other artists in the 1960s.
Everybody's interested in the business model--has free-then-fee already gotten old?--but when's the last time you saw a band release two albums in two months? Sure, Trent's interested in making a living, but he's also got lots to say and he wants you to hear it.
And over here in the other corner, we have Beck rumored to be following the Raconteurs and planning to "surprise" release his next album within the next four to six weeks--no advance copies to reviewers, no pre-release radio single, no preparatory wave of marketing hype. Across the pond, The Cure plans to release 13 singles over the next 13 months leading up to its next album release--and some of the B-sides won't appear on any albums.
This all sounds a lot like what the Beatles and other pop musicians and labels used to do in the 1960s--quick-release tons of music, mostly singles, and let the fans decide which sink or swim. Sure, there was a earload of marketing back then as well, but the ratio of hype to music was a lot lower. Perhaps the new model's going to be the same as the old model?
Radiohead made it official: the band won't be giving away music like it did with the album In Rainbows.
"I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation," the band's lead singer Thom Yorke told The Hollywood Reporter. "It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don't think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time."
Many music fans had hoped that the band's now famous pay-what-you-want promotion was an attempt by the group to discover a new way to sell music. Now it appears Radiohead at best was after publicity.
Radiohead has never revealed the promotion's sales figures but there was speculation that the money wasn't very good. Nine Inch Nails, led by Trent Reznor, followed Radiohead by offering the digital version of the album Ghosts I-IV for free as well as charging for premium versions. Reznor said last month that to that point the album had generated 781,917 transactions and $1.6 million.
Reznor was critical of Radiohead during an interview with The Chicago Tribune.
"I think the way (Radiohead) parlayed it into a marketing gimmick has certainly been shrewd," Reznor said. "But if you look at what they did, it was very much a bait and switch, to get you to pay for a MySpace quality stream as a way to promote a very traditional record sale."
It appears now that among marquee artists, no one is doing more to experiment with the Internet as a distribution channel or alternative music-business models than Reznor.
Radiohead's new material fits nicely in the post-"Amnesiac" era, where electronics are key but not the focus. They've pushed the envelop even further by launching their "create you own Nude remix" website. Holy F**k's version is the most popular one so far.
Earlier this year, Radiohead singer Thom Yorke explained to the AP that the band was going to take concrete steps to minimize its contribution to global warming, including traveling by airplane only when necessary and using solar-powered generators. But the biggest contributor, by far, to the band's global carbon footprint are its fans, who drive by the millions to its shows every time Radiohead tours. Hence, Yorke said that the band would play only "in places that have municipal transport systems in place or that we can persuade promoters to put on transport."
Radiohead is playing a venue (3) located halfway between Seattle (1) and Mt. Rainier National Park (2).
(Credit: Screenshot (Live Search Maps))Apparently this dictate doesn't apply in Seattle. Most touring acts of Radiohead's popularity play in Key Arena, the basketball stadium (at least for another year, until the Sonics move to Oklahoma), which holds about 17,000 people. It's owned by the city, located in the middle of Seattle, and is easily accessible via the city's Metro bus system. But according to stories in today's Billboard and elsewhere, Radiohead will play the same venue they played last time, the White River Amphitheatre, a Live Nation venue located on the Muckleshoot Indian Reservation 35 miles southeast of town. (See a map with both venues here.)
White River's about five years old. It's a fairly small (maybe 12,000 capacity) outdoor venue in a pleasant setting, but it's plagued by a complete disregard for traffic planning. If every car disappeared from the road, it would take about 40 minutes to drive there from downtown Seattle. But because the last five miles leading to the arena are on a two-lane rural road, and because it is in a particularly sprawling exurban part of of King County where growth has gone more or less unmanaged for the last 15 years, it actually takes much longer--the one time I drove there, after work on a weekday, it took me a little more than two hours. Most of the time I was standing still, emitting great gouts of CO2 into the atmosphere.
The venue is aware of the problem, and has put up a Web site with driving directions and instituted a free shuttle from the relatively nearby Auburn Supermall. But for the 550,000+ folks who live in Seattle, they'd have to drive 30 minutes to Auburn, park, then take the shuttle, which (according to people I know who've taken it) still takes about 30 minutes to creep the last few miles to the venue.
Draw your own conclusions. I'm prone to think that Yorke and the band are trying to do the right thing, but are too busy to worry about the details of every venue on the tour, and one of their promoters or assistants saw the note about the free shuttle and thought "sounds like public transit to me."
Beck is ready - rain or shine
If you live in the bay area (or plan to be here the weekend of August 22nd), get ready for the first annual Outside Lands music festival! The Bonnaroo-size line-up features some of the biggest names around, such as Radiohead, Beck, Tom Petty, Jack Johnson, Wilco, Primus and more (see below). Tickets go on sale this Sunday, March 30th at 10AM on Sfoutsidelands.com
The festivities will take place in Golden Gate Park August 22-24th, and it's being produced by Another Planet Entertainment, Superfly Productions, Starr Hill Presents, and the San Francisco Recreation & Park Department. It will be comparable in size to the The Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, which that takes place every October, however that three-day event is free to the public, whereas Outside Lands will require you to purchase a ticket to get in...but with a line-up like this, it'll be worth it.
The line-up so far: RADIOHEAD, TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS, JACK JOHNSON, BECK, WILCO, MANU CHAO, BEN HARPER, WIDESPREAD PANIC, PRIMUS, RODRIGO Y GABRIELA, STEVE WINWOOD, DEVENDRA BANHART, SHARON JONES AND THE DAP-KINGS, BLACK MOUNTAIN, DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS, GALACTIC, BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE, and more will be announced.
The Alps, one of the bands that Slicethepie members can buy shares in.
(Credit: Slicethepie.com)A lot of people have talked about selling stock in bands as a means to help finance promising musicians. In Great Britain, a company called Slicethepie.com is enabling fans to trade shares of music acts the way they would a publicly traded company.
The Web start-up has financed 13 bands and generated the equivalent of nearly $80,000 for its 40,000 "scouts," according to a story from Reuters. The company enables members to test their skills at evaluating talent and in this way they become mini music moguls.
"We effectively turn every music fan into a record label," David Cortier-Dutton, the company's CEO told Reuters. "Everyone can invest in new artists on an economically attractive basis."
The good news for Americans is that you don't need to live in Great Britain to invest, according to a note on Slicethepie.com.
This is the latest attempt to find an alternative business model for the ailing music industry and provide fans more direct interaction with entertainers. Last year, Radiohead walked away from its record label and in a ground-breaking move offered the album In Rainbows directly to the public via the Web. The band allowed anyone who wanted the music to pay what they thought it was worth.
Selling shares in a musician is not new. In 1997, David Bowie sold Bowie Bonds, which gave a single buyer (the Prudential Insurance Co.) the rights to future assets derived from Bowie's first 25 albums (287) songs for a total of 10 years. In return Bowie received an upfront payment of $55 million. After 10 years, the rights returned to Bowie.
Bowie, of course, was an established artist, and Slicethepie focuses on bankrolling unsigned and largely unknown performers. The way Slicethpie works is that members review a pool of about 7,500 acts, Reuters reported. The 20 or so with the highest ratings every month "go forward to qualify for funding."
Only about one or two acts receive enough financial backing to create and release an album. According to Reuters, a band would need to sell 100,000 albums for a major record label to break even. But at Slicethepie.com, a band need sell only 1,000 units for the Web site's members to make money.
Investors receive $1.98 for every album sold, according to Reuters. The wire service used as an example the Arctic Monkeys, a popular U.K. band. Had the group been on Slicethepie and sold 1.1 million copies, then someone making a $40 investment in the band would have received $4,000.
Artists are allowed to opt out and sign with a traditional label provided they pay a 50 percent premium, Reuters said. Next month, the indie rock band, The Alps, will be the first act from Slicethepie to release an album.
