This is a complete conversation I had this morning at Starbucks. Italics added for emphasis.
Starbucks barista: Have a good weekend, sir?
Kyle: (Not paying attention, ears covered in giant headphones) …hmm?
SB: Good weekend?
K: Yeah, yeah great.
SB: Here’s your latte, sir.
K: (Noticing that Radiohead’s new record, In Rainbows is priced for $20.99) Um…
SB: Yes?
K: Okay, I know I’m just here to get a latte, but…seriously, twenty bucks?
SB: I’m sorry, sir?
K: How does that happen?
SB: (Noticing that I’m talking about the album) Oh, you mean because they gave it away online for free?
K: Well, they gave it away for whatever people wanted to pay for it. But yeah, free. How does it go from free to twenty bucks?
SB: I didn’t price it.
K: I know that. I’m not accusing you, personally. But across the street at Chapters, they’re selling it for thirteen bucks. At HMV, they’re selling it for ten. How does Starbucks get off selling it for twenty?
SB: The problem is that people want to buy it, I guess.
K: (Seriously holding back an early morning freak out) …Yes, the problem is that people want to buy it.
It’s been nearly three years since I took my pilgrimage to Indio, California, in search of a festival that seemingly never disappoints in delivery. The 2005 Coachella festival was a landmark occasion for me, not only because it was my first time in California, my first time seeing more than 50 bands play in a weekend, and my first piece of proper music journalism. It was my entrance exam to the sunlit realm of the world of indie music. Oh, I’d dabbled. My CFRE radio show “Let’s Rave On,” which spawned my 60-column set on Inside Pulse through 2005-07, acted as my introductory tour of the music available. It allowed me to sample, experiment, and wade in the waters. But Coachella blew the roof open. After that weekend, I would never again listen to mainstream radio, never again buy a mainstream CD from a nationwide outlet store, and never by considered anything less than a pretentious music snob to my peers.
Every January since then, I’ve eagerly awaited the poster for the concert. I’d been introduced to so many bands in 2005, the list would surely steer my playlists for the coming year. 2006 and 2007 did that, to a certain extent. Though I knew more of the artists involved, there were always a couple gems that were unearthed for me.
This year was no different. The poster came out yesterday, and as if it was Christmas day in indie-land I opened my browser and arrived at the Coachella.com main page to find it awash in ethereal blue. The poster lay on the right side. It was full, another three-days filled with every conceivable touring band this summer.
There have been major complaints as to this years’ lineup, that it isn’t as impressive as years past. I thought this initially, and do think they’re guilty of one thing: Coachella’s promoters are still just as good at keeping their fingers on the pulse of what people want to hear, but they haven’t kept up with exactly how fast the people on the internet can go through music. In 2005, I didn’t know 80% of the roster. This year, I don’t know about 30%. That isn’t really a knock on Coachella’s promoters. It’s in fact a compliment to me and everyone else who don’t think that there are enough blowaway bands on the bill; we’ve simply become better at finding and digesting music. We’re cynics. Nothing short of a Clash reunion with a zombified Joe Strummer would have made all of us happy.
Now, the three headliners do kind of stink. Jack Johnson is asshole filled pabulum. Roger Waters is only part of a band that we’d want to see (and I’ve never really been a Floyd fan, to be honest). Only Portishead, this year playing the over-seas big band (ala Bjork last year) suffices as a proper headlining act. But one must remember that the headlining acts are never the reason to go to Coachella. Please, Coldplay headlined 2005, only to be bested mainstream overkill by RHCP last year. The real headliners are the bands that still show up in large font, just below the big three. These bands –The Verve, The Raconteurs, Kraftwerk, Death Cab For Cutie, Love and Rockets, and My Morning Jacket — are what should be considered the big names of the show.
More importantly, as with any festival, is the undercard. How good or bad one believes the undercard to be is absolutely a matter of how on top of the new music scene you are. If you’ve seen or heard to death this list of artists, then you are likely organizing festivals yourself already. Personally, while I’ve heard of the majority of bands, I’ve only seen three or four live (is it me or is Tegan and Sara a permanent resident of the festival?) and would love to check the rest off the list.
I began this morning kind of disappointed at the list, but as I dwell on it, the prospect seems more and more likely that I’ll be championing this list of artists by the weeks end.
Now this is just amazingly cool. By scanning his record, Ofer Springer was able to decipher the audio from the image. Not being a scientist of any school old or futuristic, I have no idea how he did this, nor can I translate his steps into regular English.
The sound isn’t the same as on the record. It sounds as if it’s being played backwards while spinning just above the gates of hell, but the fact that there’s audible strands of notes at all is staggeringly impressive.
The Macworld keynote begins tomorrow, and while this isn’t a music-based event (we got that one back in September), it’s likely that Steve will perhaps mention something itunes or ipod related. They always do. And usually next to the fact that there are more ipods in the world than mediocre rock bands is a new feature added to the itunes store. It’s never anything huge. Usually just an update or the mention of a new feature they’ve been working on. Inexplicably, their afterthought itunes update changes the way we listen to music.
One thing I’m expecting is a drop of the DRM on everything. Besides showing that Amazon has nothing on them, Apple has fewer and fewer reasons to keep the experiment going. Jobs himself was one of the first of the distributors to decry the practice, and since then just about every label has stopped insisting on it’s presence. It’s a real possibility, given everything that’s gone on in the last year in regards to mp3s.
Quite likely, any mention of something like this won’t strike down as large news. But if they were to announce this tomorrow, it would eventually mean more than any floating, wireless laptop they might be cooking out. The funny thing is, it wouldn’t necessarily mean anything particularly great for Apple. The DRM card has actually played well in Apple’s favour thus far. The itunes store is and has always been the easiest, most pain-free way to legally purchase music online, and up until recently only specific labels were DRM-free, which meant that only music from those labels could be played on anything but an ipod. Dropping the DRM means that Zunes, Zens, iRivers, and what have you will soon be sporting itunes-purchased music, which will actually cut into Apple’s hardware share.
Something like this would be fantastic. It’s what I’ll be looking forward to more than anything else. As an ipod owner, I actually want fewer people with ipods. The site of white earbuds actually bothers me. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the blind corporate control over the general population. But every time I see someone with a Zune or a Creative Zen or what have you, I’m always a little impressed. Superior, but impressed.
Post-Macworld Update
Not even close. Ah, well. I’ve never been the guy people go to for predictions anyway.
I want to direct everyone’s attention to this article by Ryan Singel of wired.com, where he gives us a short correspondence with Liz Kennedy of the RIAA.
He’s asking the question that’s been on the minds (one I mentioned on my show); does the RIAA (the people who are in charge of suing file sharers across America) believe that ripping a CD and transferring those files to a media player (or listening to them on your computer) is an illegal act. He doesn’t really get an answer, which is not only ridiculous but will only help to unwind any of the credibility this organization hopes to uphold.
Key quip from Liz:
“It’s also okay to copy music onto special Audio CD-R’s, mini-discs, and digital tapes (because royalties have been paid on them) - but, again, not for commercial purposes. Beyond that, there’s no legal “right” to copy the copyrighted music on a CD onto a CD-R.”
Wait, so it’s okay to copy to a CD-R, but there’s no legal right to do so?
As much as the giant iPodopoly on mp3 players is a bane in certain areas, it can actually come in handy when confronting the RIAA. There are simply too many ipods (119 million, according to wikipedia) with too many legally obtained mp3s for the RIAA to dump something like this on the public and expect it to stick. For better or worse, the digital media player is king right now, and it’s going to be a long, uphill battle that will end in complete disillusionment in terms of PR at best and disintegration of the cause at worst.
Video mashups are incredible fun and, much like mp3 mashups, are best when surprising and don’t wear out their gimmick. This one caught my eye today and I thought I’d share. The footage is from the movie Seven and the video for 15 Step by Radiohead.
"The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side."
- Hunter S. Thompson
New Sound Now
NSN is a weekly video blog with a mandate to illuminate the music news normally swept under the carpet by other televised music news shows. Instead of talking about fashion or when a new album is dropping, NSN reports on topics about the industry as a whole, including both brazen new concepts and brutal failures.
Host K Sawyer Paul, former DJ and music columnist, provides an honest voice in the increasingly corporate venue of music reporting.
As well, every week we highlight several remarkable music videos that would normally fly under the radar.
