WRONG NOTES: a blog of ear reverence
Wrong Notes collects posts on music, art, culture and fun stuff. Also included: news about the Ear Reverends.
Steal this
I've been meaning to start an ongoing series / dialog here about why the Ear Reverends' music isn't for sale in the iTunes music store.
I've intentionally not released tracks via the iTunes music store (iTMS) because I feel they would offer inferior versions compared with what I can offer here. (Note: you can, of course, still play Ear Reverends music in iTunes and on your iPod—you just can't purchase the tracks from the "iTunes Store.")
But this post was prompted by today's xkcd comic, Steal This Comic, which is about DRM, aka, so-called "Digital Rights Management." xkcd really says it all about why DRM is so bad that one is better off even getting music via questionable sources than buying tracks with DRM:
So, with iTMS, one aspect of the inferiority of the tracks available there is DRM. One can buy DRM-free tracks on the iTMS, but I don't believe it's possible for me to ensure that all of the Ear Reverends tracks sold are DRM-free. And, in principle, I do want to ensure that all Ear Reverends' tracks are DRM-free, so that they remain totally playable / sharable over time.
Of course, I am curious if anyone really does want to buy Ear Reverends tracks via the iTMS—I am aware how important a store iTMS is for music sales. But, ongoing, I am continuing to look for ways to promote the Ear Reverends and sell tracks independent of the iTMS.
(Note that tracks will be for sale, here, soon on the Ear Reverends site!)
Animatronic sausages in New York City
I couldn't help but post about the new Banksy pet store in the West Village.
I was supposed to be in NYC next week, but my trip got canceled—I'll have to put this in the "art shows that I missed" category.
I like Banksy's art. Banksy is known as a prankster artist / street artist / graffiti artist. And, his new "show" is essentially a pet store called The Village Pet Store And Charcoal Grill.
It's really a pet store. But, the pets are . . .
OK, probably best to just go to the site and see the videos. Here's one type of pet—Sausages:
Also, the Wooster Collective shot a video of the store:
The video is just one part of the Wooster Collective's review, which is altogether worth a read, and includes good photos.
I love Love, Love Story documentary
Forever Changes by Love is one of my favorite albums—one of the essential "L.A." albums. Now there's a documentary about Love.
Love Story is "a feature length documentary recounting the story of the quintessential L.A. band Love and their singer Arthur Lee." Definitely sounds like a must-see for me. (Found via BoingBoing).
There is hardly any 60s-70s film footage of Love in concert, but a few things have surfaced on YouTube:
Love performing Burt Bacharach's "My Little Red Book" on American Bandstand:
A rough film of Love jamming at the Filmore in 1970:
Most of the Love videos on YouTube are just album tracks that someone combined with some photos, like these:
"Andmoreagain":
"Alone Again Or":
R. Stevie Moore on YouTube
R. Stevie Moore is a great music artist that more people should know about.
He's commonly called the "Unsung Father of Lo-Fi" and a "DIY Pioneer and Musical Genius." And, he's also infamous for being "criminally neglected by the American recording industry for the last 30 years" and for living "in near-poverty, still creating his very original music and selling it directly through his website."
I often reference R. Stevie as a litmus test that shows how "taste makers" (e.g., the old record label ideals) fail—basically, it's so much easier for so-called "taste makers" to focus on good music that has fast popular appeal, that they fail to tell people enough about other great music (i.e., music that doesn't rise to rapid popularity, and so is left to fall by the wayside).
Anyway, I am a total R. Stevie fan, but I have to admit that I've just scratched the surface of his catalog of recordings—there are a lot of them. So, I am very excited to find that YouTube user autosam (maybe R. Stevie himself?) has posted more than 120 R. Stevie Moore music videos. This is just an awesome way to explore his music.
Partially unrelated, there's a new online playlist service called MixTube that works based on YouTube videos. To get a sense for how it works, I made a playlist of 120+ R. Stevie Moore songs. I am listening to this right now—it's a lot more natural for me to listen to music then to watch videos (though I want to watch them too, as they are cool videos!).
I am definitely going to buy a bunch more R. Stevie Moore CDs, and I hope you'll do the same—they're all available for sale on the great R. Stevie Moore website.
Site update almost ready
The past couple weeks, I've been posting less because I am working on a pretty big upgrade to the site.
The new music player is the big new feature. It's been hard to make it do what I want, but I am getting pretty close. So, maybe within the week.
The first new music up will definitely be tracks from Err or Man. I know this is especially important for the few of my slacker friends who are excited to hear the music, but can't seem to ever remember to just go and buy the CD / Book version (buy it now at CD Baby!).
Of course, getting new people turned-on to the music is the intent, so whatever it takes. If you're here now, and the music isn't up on the site yet, I hope you'll come back and check it out—soon!
Richard Wright RIP / Careful with That Axe, Eugene at Pompeii
I haven't thought about Richard Wright in a long time.
He died today, and it reminded me that I used to listen to Pink Floyd a lot as a kid—around the time I was first becoming a keyboardist. Wright is someone whose playing I really listened to when I first was learning how to listen.
RIP Rick Wright.
That's Pink Floyd's Careful with That Axe, Eugene, performed live at Pompeii.
Play it by ear
Being distracted by words right now.
I periodically find myself deeply distracted in the enjoyment of Michael Quinion's World Wide Words website. So, I thought I'd pick a good, music-related entry to highlight. And, I found this one: play it by ear — which I like to do, personally.
I think that entry is quite copacetic, but you may find some others are even funner.
Art videos, Coltrane, Dolphy, Dylan
From a list of 50 great art videos on YouTube, a couple highlights.
I've started working my way through this list posted on the Guardian, The 50 greatest arts videos on YouTube.
It's a hard list in three respects: 1) many of the videos are so great that you'll waste your whole day watching them, 2) some of these great videos then cross-reference other great videos (thus, even more of your day gone), and 3) some of the videos are pretty boring (it may be great that they exist, but they're not that great to actually watch).
The list includes the classic 1961 film of John Coltrane playing "My Favorite Things" on German TV. I remember seeing this in some larger film about Coltrane. The whole German TV concert / broadcast is also notable because Eric Dolphy is part of the group.
It's a great version of "My Favorite Things," and Dolphy's got a flute solo. But I really love this other clip of "Impressions," from the same concert, with the amazing concentration of both Coltrane (tenor) and Dolphy (alto) on saxophone:
(Both "My Favorite Things" and "Impressions" were posted by YouTube user Astrotype, who's posted what looks like a lot of other great jazz concert films.)
The Guardian list also has this 1963 video of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez rehearsing(?) "With God on Our Side" that, in the middle, then cuts to their famous Newport performance. Today felt like a good day to highlight this:
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