eskanda

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nope! dark nights get cold

their next gig is at Jamboree though, so I'll be there.
http://myspace.com/jamboreemembersclub

eskanda | 19 Mar '09, 01:08 | X | Reply

this article is pretty much spot on

except it naturally, for our musical times, focusses mostly on what was happening in New York at the end of the 70s and start of the 80s.

as to whether poverty = better art, from a european and american perspective, you only have to look at the fact that almost all of the most important musical pioneers of the 20th century (robert johnston, miles davis, james brown - inventing blues, jazz, r'n'b, rock 'n' roll, soul, funk, hip-hop and house) were black. It's not co-incidence all these people are American. Obviously black guys in America have had a fairly rough time in the last hundred years. Almost without exception, these musicians came from very humble backgrounds.

That's not to say of course that only poverty can bring good art. The whole point though is that White westerners have just fucking loved 'black' music and have aped and assimilated it into their cultures. Over the last hundred years, Britian for example has gone from a musical culture that relied on live music only (no record players remember), sitting round a piano, folk songs, and classical performances.

It's impossible to answer the question because we currently enjoy a mixture of these two cultural forces. Who's to say Bob Dylan is more or less important than James Brown...

eskanda | 10 Oct '08, 21:49 | X | Reply

bands should be paid

a small, fixed amount for every stream on myspace! it's essentially radio with a greater degree of interactivity. radio stations (and even bars and shops) pay pennies every time they play a track, the money is collected by the PRS and is paid to the artist. there's no reason myspace and other sites shouldn't be subject to the same rules!

the internet and myspace in particular have given literally millions of bands an instant medium for getting their music heard. but the tide seems to be turning away from the people Who Actually Make the Music and towards these sites that generate their income from advertising, by, as szism says, exploiting other people's copyrights.

fuck labels, they need to evolve and sell their music in a new way, same as it's always been. what we don't need is faceless corporations making millions upon millions without passing on a fair percentage on to the bands.

billy bragg agrees with me, or the other way round...

"The musicians who posted their work on Bebo.com are no different from investors in a start-up enterprise. Their investment is the content provided for free while the site has no liquid assets. Now that the business has reaped huge benefits, surely they deserve a dividend."

"Technology is advancing far too quickly for the old safeguards of intellectual property rights to keep up, and while we wait for the technical fixes to emerge, those of us who want to explore the opportunities the Internet offers need to establish a set of ground rules that give us the power to decide how our music is exploited and by whom."