Cedar Staff Blog

A Stevie 99 Rebuttal

2009-11-14T10:38:00.005-06:00

I took me a while to figure out what that high-pitched noise was which started at 1:43 this past Thursday afternoon. Turns out it was the whining of Ms. Veronica Fevers with her latest blog posting, trying to support her previous provocative claim that "Mr. (Steve) Jobs has been wrong from the get-go and has been doing a disservice to the industry and the music lover for years."
Actually, there's not much in the new post to support the "wrong from the get-go" claim, and while there are actually some valid criticisms on places where the iTunes/iPod model falls short, I'm going to dispense of that previous claim right now... If nothing else, Steve Jobs needs to be thanked for rather dramatically proving to the completely clue-less titans of the music industry that a pay-for-download model was not only something that could work, but if designed simply and elegantly enough, is something folks would actively flock to. It's easy to forget that before iTunes, this was generally dismissed as a workable model. Now whether that alone qualifies him to be crowned "savior for the music business," something Veronica admits to be looking for, I cannot answer. But clearly that was the first big step, and he was right.

Veronica categorizes her two main complaints as the lack of community and absence of innovation. I, for one, think the best commerce model tends to be incompatible with the kind of community to which Veronica aspires. With music retail, it always goes back to re-creating the corner record store, where there was at least one clerk who knew your musical preferences, and could recommend new things or gently push you in new directions knowing your proclivities were more likely to respond positively. Ms. Veronica, being a former member of the Tower Records empire, remembers fondly the rather brief period where this kind of thing was de rigueur (pardon my French, literally) at individual Tower stores.

But what happened at Tower should be the cautionary tale of mixing commerce and this form of "community," and I'm not talking about its bankruptcy and financial collapse, although this may well have been one of its first mis-steps toward that end. What happened is that the concept of personal recommendation became seen as an opportunity for another revenue-generating profit center. Each slot on that main wall of recommended new releases, once a source of great debate and pride among the individual store's staff members, became something that was sold to the highest record company bidders on a national level, and became an important "profit center" for Tower corporate.

The same thing happens at Amazon (and every other national music retailer, to my knowledge). If you believe that the "other customers who purchased this title also bought these" recommendation system is based on some pure mathematical algorithm from their purchase history database, consider yourself a newly enlightened chump. As a record label, I can pay money right now to have someone buying a Beyoncé album be recommended, say, a Garmarna record.

So I would argue that the community part is best left to disinterested third party bloggers and recommendation sites (who will still, inevitably, get a kickback from iTunes (or whomever) for the link). Frankly, I would always be skeptical about any recommendation system, but especially those generated directly by any major retailer.

As for the innovation issues, here is where Ms. Veronica finally lands a few punches. But she seems to be unaware that iTunes began offering a lower price-point, 69 cents, at the same time that it started offering the higher price point of $1.29. So far, the lower price point has hardly been utilized by the record companies or the artists that have direct deals with iTunes (of which there are more and more). It is, after all their decision to set the price point, not that of iTunes (albeit at those three limited choices). So a good amount of the innovation blame goes to those putting these things into the iTunes store in the first place.

As for the flood scenario (what would you do if you lost all of your iTunes music in a flood?), here's where Veronica actually builds a stronger case for the value of the 99 cent download. For the first time in history, Veronica's entire music collection, all 49,577 tracks, can now be copied endlessly onto storage devices, each the size of a pack of smokes. It's pretty much common sense now for anyone with a large data music collection to maintain at least one backup volume, and if you want to protect yourself from fire or flood, it's pretty easy to have one of those backups be a portable drive that you keep off-premises. Need I remind you that this was never an option with LPs, tapes and CDs?

Considering this ease of portability of digital files (which also enables you, theoretically, and also for the first time, to maintain an endlessly playable, near-perfect copy for all eternity), I would say that ever since the record companies allowed iTunes to be rid of DRM restrictions, and to upgrade to 256k, 99 cents per track and $9.99 per album actually represents enormous value. And I think I need to remind Veronica that before the $9.99 iTunes model came along, the selling price of most reasonable new-release 10-track CDs which were "produced, manufactured, packaged, shelved, shipped, received, shelved again," as she accurately put it, was more like $15, or about 50% more.

Now, don't get me wrong. I don't see Steve Jobs or iTunes as the panacea or savior of the music industry. I do also subscribe to emusic, although I have to say that while it's a great deal for the music consumer in me, it's such an awful deal for me as a record label that I won't go near it! There is plenty of room for improvement, further innovation, and better execution at iTunes and elsewhere. But it has unarguably altered the landscape of music retail for the better, and as a music consumer, I for one am grateful.

* * *

To leave on a more musical note, it's going to be difficult to top last Wednesday's packed Dirty Projectors show. Here's a recent live clip with a taste of the amazing things they do:

It's contagious

2009-11-13T16:45:00.000-06:00

Though my classmates are disappearing, and hand sanitizer dispensers are sprouting from the walls, I'm not talking about H1N1 or seasonal flu.

But rather music exchange: The mix tape, the mix CD, the flash drive filled with hand-selected tracks.

It's contagious in more ways than you think. Someone gives you a mix tape, and you are compelled to return the favor. A coworker overhears the exchange: "Well, if you made a mix for so-and-so, I want one too." But lately, I've found a third route. When in mix making mode, I tend to be more aware of what I am listening to. I tend to ask "What are you playing now?" more often. Frequently, this is rewarded with a response like, "WHAT? You've never heard this Brian Eno record? You don't know the old Raveonettes material? You've never heard a singing saw? I can't believe it! I will make you a mix tape."

Through a surprising number of conversations like this, I am now responsible for making four CDs (This includes one for Ms. Veronica Fever, whose is embarrassingly overdue. I get a break from school soon, and will hopefully have a little more time for music).

That's all for now. This is one bug I hope you do get.

Stevie 99 Part Two

2009-11-12T13:43:00.005-06:00

The following is based on the opinions of one Veronica Fever, and is not necessarily representative of those of any Cedar staff members or, in fact, anyone else I know.

It is hard being an idealist.

If you are one, you know: your candidate wins, so you expect the promised change you can believe in. You fall in love and you're sure this time your heart won't end up squoze in a vise. For me, it's continually believing there will yet be a savior for the music business. At least I'm clear-eyed enough to see it will never be Steve Jobs.

As a music-store operator, Jobs is a dandy iPod and Mac designer and marketer. The iTunes store is surely one of the most overrated sites on the web. Yes, it is a 'success story' of sorts, but only as a seller to people who pretty much know what they want going in. The site itself is cluttered and lifeless, and it lacks two major components in what should be expected from a leader who would help the industry claw out of its pit: community and innovation.

Community. Where are the peers, the tastemakers, the music-lover next door? Where is the incentive to explore? Where are the recommendations you want to follow, the opinions you want to believe? OK, fair enough: the entire web is chockablock with all that, and iTunes is a point of destination. Tower Records filled that role ten years ago. Where are they now?

This isn't talked about a lot, but the digital music commerce growth curve is slowing, and it ain't because the business is mature. Two-thirds of people who buy music still buy CDs exclusively, only fewer of them. Where is the incentive for those people to get in to the game? After the hurdles of ripping all their CDs and mastering their vexing playback gizmos, then what? Paying 99 cents or $1.29 for tracks condensed to a fraction of their original (already condensed) file-size?

(Time for a shred of fairness here. While I see the price as too high, the major labels see it as too low. In the cases of big-name artists, neither is Apple's fault. Pricing innovation won't come without revisiting some of the fixed costs attached to getting a song to market. I would only suggest that if a 10-track CD could be produced, manufactured, packaged, shelved, shipped, received, shelved again, and sold for $10, surely there is some cost wiggle-room with unpackaged binary data.)

(Hard to stay on the rails here; please bear with. Can my ears detect the difference between a CD WAV (or lossless) file and a 320 rip? Not readily, no. Can I tell between 320 and 192? You bet. It's all to do with ambient space. That's a big deal for some, and a psychological factor for others. If we allow that 192 has been a sweet spot between sound quality and player storage capacity, let's also allow that 192 is an inferior product to a WAV file.)

This brings us lurching to the second point: innovation. At the time, uniform per-track pricing seemed novel when Steve Jobs insisted on this concession from distribution and label mavens who fought the idea hammer and tongs. And as much as I wanted to disagree with many of these boobs masquerading as trading partners, they seemed to have a point. The internet was a gigantic petri dish for experiments in retail...why not try anything and everything? My belief, which admittedly morphed quite a bit over time, was that individual song pricing could be based on a number of factors, e.g. fixed costs, popularity, and bandwidth usage. For instance, 'Hey Jude' ripped to 320 would naturally retail for much more than, say, 'Wild Honey Pie' at 128. Also, you could blend in subjective pricing factors such as essentially giving away baby band tracks to start and then adjusting according to popularity.

Yes, all of that would have been a real chore to implement and administer in the beginning, but what about now? Where is the innovation? We're seeing some of that elsewhere...but not in the iTunes store. They would seem to have little reason for such effort, because they're the runaway leader who benefits from masterful integration with the deservedly popular iPod. So. Apple has no incentive to innovate and acts accordingly.

99 cents or $1.29. For what, again? A condensed slice of ephemera? Yeah, that's fine here and there. Say you're sitting in a Starbucks and you're talking with friends about the TV show 'Lie To Me.' Someone says they like the opening credits theme song, so you do a Google, find out it's 'Brand New Day' by Ryan Star, hop onto iTunes, purchase, and bam, you're all listening to it. Very cool.

But take a longer view. If you lost your entire music collection in the same flood that took Toad's ID, what would you do? If you're me and you lost all 49,577 tracks, you won't be spending fifty large at iTunes to replace 'em all with inferior rips and with no incentives to buy big.

See, that's the thing. Where are the pricing models that encourage exploration and bulk buying? In the world I imagine, I could go somewhere and commit to buying, say, Steve Earle's entire oeuvre for, I dunno, sixty bucks. Or a whole 'if you like' 50-track playlist for twenty. How about a Costco model: Pay a membership fee and then buy in bulk the music available from participating artists and labels. And let's not forget the sliding pricing scale. OK, so supply-and-demand doesn't exist in the digital world, but artist development still does. Get artists out there at 20 cents a track and adjust upwards if the grassroots catch fire. And, of course, there is always the all-you-can-eat on-demand music buffet. The subscription model is still in play; apparently Spotify is meeting with resistance in procuring content for its free, ad-driven on-demand service, and MySpace is looking at moving to a pay model from its (currently) free streaming service.

Oh, and why isn't Apple offering an on-demand service? Presumably because they fear cannibalization of its own prematurely peaking music sales. But also because Mr. Jobs claims that people want to own music, not rent it.

Actually, most folks believe that, and it's a reason why the movie studios will still have sources of reliable revenue for longer than the music industry did: people are cool with not owning the movies they stream because they're used to the rental model. Music admittedly does have a higher hurdle there. But all revenue streams must be considered, even if that means hammering away at music-lovers' traditional expectations of ownership. Piracy is rampant, and all too available: do it once and it's real easy to do it again. The industry must combat it in two ways: keep swinging the Whac-a-Mole mallet, while figuring out how to compete with free.

Me? 99 cents or $1.29 per track is a last resort, and if I deploy it I'll do it at Amazon, where one can be immersed in community if desired, find that all available tracks are ripped to 256kb and on sale for 99 cents, and have their purchased tracks passed through a downloader that adds 'em to their iTunes library automatically.

But before I even go there, I'll check out eMusic (wide array of indie-label tracks that average out to about 40 cents per, depending on the package a subscriber chooses), Amie Street (much smaller indie retailer...limited selection but with pricing based on the afore-mentioned popularity sliding scale), or I'll see if the desired music is available on a $3 used Amazon Marketplace CD, which I can then rip and resell.

99 cents or $1.29 is a convenience price, and the iTunes store is a giant, virtual, music 7-11. Convenience is a compelling motivator for the shopper on the go. But it ain't enough to fuel digital music sales growth that is unaccountably sputtering.

**********

As an au courant music critic of the highest order, I like to keep up with what the kids are into. The following is gonna be a big hit, I can tell:

Among the Heathens

2009-11-11T10:18:00.009-06:00

DJ Blanche and I journeyed over the river and through the woods to a metal festival the other night, mostly to see Swiss "pagan-metal" band Eluveitie, but partly just to check out the scene. "I'll be the one in the black t-shirt," she quipped as we made arrangements to get ourselves over to Heathenfest in St. Paul.

So, yes, I was throwing the horns and jumping up and down with all the youngsters for a while there, but I just have to say, (for about the millionth time) we are so spoiled by the Cedar's sound system. I don't know if the poor guy over at Station 4 had ever worked with instruments beyond the holy trinity of bass/guitar/drums or not, but the mix was so far down in the Murkwood quality range. Alas. I keep pulling out my earplugs hoping to hear a bit of the upper register instruments, but they were just buried by the onslaught 95% of the time.

Not what you want your sound system to reminds the audience of...

Too bad, because it's the fiddles, hurdy gurdy, bag pipes, whistles and mandola that make Eluveitie so much more interesting to me than the average metal band. I've blogged about this band in the past, so I won't dwell on their merits, but their recorded work harnesses the raw power of metal but juxtapositions it nicely with the acoustic instruments mentioned above. Fans of old Garmarna and Hedningarna stuff might dig it. The lyric cycles in Gaulish describing the rise and fall of the Helvitii tribe work with with this mix, although few people can translate the ancient language. You know me, I'm perfectly happy not to understand the lyrics; I'd rather have vocals be just another strand in the chord. Plus you gotta love a metal singer who uses adjectives like "sublime" to warn fans of a slower tune coming up. (Especially refreshing because the "black metal" band Belphegor earlier on the bill that night had about two words in their lyrical vocabulary, "Satan" and "F---ing.")

There was a great moment near the end of their set when Eluveitie front man Chrigel Glanzmann was pulling out all the stops, eyes rolled back in his head, flanked by fiddler Meri Tadic and hurdy player Anna Murphy, both their heads of long hair spinning in unison, the guitars and drums thundering behind. Wish I'd had a camera, that is the beauty in the power. But Glanzmann's mandola work, Tadic's fiddles...so lost in the mix that most of the time the band sounded like metal mush.

Eluveitie on the Paganfest-Europe tour last year.

I do have to plug Nathan, aka The Sword Lord, for organizing metal shows around town. (Sorry I did not get the last name.) The guy is a tireless promoter, and is part of the team that fills in Earl Root's mighty footprints on KFAI's Root of All Evil overnight metal show. (He does the "Dragon's Hall" segment.)

The Monday night crowd, about equal parts wide eyed high school kids in brand new Heathenfest shirts and oldsters in their pirate/buxom wench gear was friendly and really quite free of attitude. ( I think the pirates were fans of Scottish "Pirate Metal" band Alestorm. Gotta love those metal sub-genres!) Room was made for those who wanted to mosh, but hands were there to catch those who got out of bounds, rather than shoves. A rather welcoming community, if I can say that.

Good for Station 4 for providing a home for local metalheads, and for doing the 16 and over shows, but golly folks, please put some money into your sound system! And while you're at it, maybe a little pipe insulation for those exposed hot water pipes along the wall. Ouch! Or some kind of padding for those big pillars that run down the middle of the floor. Whine whine whine.

You know what I'm going to say now, don't you? Just makes me appreciate the Cedar clear sight lines, amazing sound system and skilled sound techs all the more. We love you, Chris, Eric and Ray! Ray's work on Tuneyards' set was great tonight, with some pretty tricky stuff.

Would love to see Tuneyards back here soon; nice folks, really fun to see them do their loops and samples live with Merrill's amazing vocals!

Live Music on Television

2009-11-07T11:17:00.003-06:00

Broadcast television is in a tenuous place, with more people turning to their computers and the internet for their on-screen entertainment needs. But there's no question that it still holds a commanding role in our cultural landscape, not so much by setting agendas as by ramming previously tenuous ones down our collective throats. TV has become widely dispersed and specialized. There's a food channel, a travel channel, a golf channel, "women's" channels, Black Entertainment Television, etc. etc. There are music channels of course, and MTV can be seen as the granddaddy of this specialization, but there's not actually a whole lot of music there anymore, and almost no live music.

Live music performance can be found on television, of course, regularly on the late night talk shows, which more recently do seem to have expanded their traditionally narrow scope as the major label stranglehold has loosened here, like so many other places. Just last week there was our old friend Andrew Bird, surrounded by those hometown boys Martin Dosh, Michael Lewis and Jeremy Ylvisaker with a great performance on yet another network talk show, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon:

There's also the venerable Austin City Limits for something closer to a full set by a wide range of hipster bands.

However, considering the impact live music seems to be having on the entertainment industry in general these days (just look at how much of an appetite for even poor quality amateur live music clips on YouTube there apparently seems to be), there is a real lack of imagination on the part of television broadcasters to bring this into their programming strategies. You would think that these folks would be motivated... they are pretty much all international entertainment conglomerates with music divisions anyway.

It does not take much to appreciate the impact a special live music event can have on a broadcast. The Ed Sullivan Show was a square, often tedious weekly variety show, but electrifying performances by Elvis Presley and The Beatles on that show are still considered important cultural landmarks.

And few would argue that this television moment in 1983 forever changed modern dance, while catapulting its performer to unprecedented international super-stardom:

But live music performance does not have to be structured as a traditional television variety show to make an impact. One of my favorite live music performance television moments came on Sesame Street, of all places, back when Jim Henson's creative genius was behind everything...

Unfortunately, it's just hard to imagine any television program turning over nearly seven minutes of airtime in this day and age for a creative jam by one of the world's most creative musicians. Yet it's just as compelling to watch this clip today as it was some 35+ years ago.

Why are there not more moments like this on mainstream television now?

I can't think about real music this week

2009-11-06T00:56:00.002-06:00

I try, and this is what comes up:

Stevie 99 Part One

2009-11-05T13:57:00.004-06:00

"But if there's a rare Charlie Patton recording out there that's worth hearing, I'm perfectly happy to wait until it's available to download from iTunes for 99 cents." -- Main Figurehead

What is the value of a song?

While MF was plying his trade with Rykodisc way back when, I was a desk jockey at Tower Records. One of my chores was to master all things music pricing, specifically from and among suppliers, wholesale-to-retail margin, and between our competitors. I picked up a lot of inside baseball arcana. For instance, Columbia/Epic was aggressive about cutting prices on its older catalog while the Warner/Elektra/Atlantic group never met a fare increase it didn't like. In order to survive, music specialty retailers operating high street and mall shops had to net at least $4.50 on the average $10 wholesale CD while maintaining year-over-year same-store sales increases. And Best Buy was one of the first coffin nails in the packaged music business that they, too, now find unsustainable.

Sentimentality aside, one notable price shift came with the introduction of the CD. At the time, top-tier LPs and cassettes wholesaled for about $5.75. From the start, CDs were priced almost two-thirds higher, and eventually climbed another third after that. At the time, I wondered whether economies of scale would bring the prices back down, and when they didn't I decried the labels' and distributors' avarice. Looking back, though, the shift seems less unreasonable. The CD represented a quantum leap in product quality, and the market was willing to bear this value-added surcharge (if you will), which fueled the last great music boom.

Over time, of course, the much-discussed perfect storm gathered itself together and blew the perceived value of music right out of the water.

So. Turn the scrapbook page to the present day, and what do we see? 99 cents per digital song file as the de facto standard. Now, one could argue that a buck a song is where CD retail pricing ended up, assuming a CD's sweet spot became $10, with album lengths eventually coming back down to the 40-45 minute range, or the equivalent of 10 average-length tracks.

What we have witnessed, however, is another stealth price increase. And this one seems ever-less defensible. While some might argue that Apple is doing the thankless but crucial job of propping up perceived value, I'm here to say that Mr. Jobs has been wrong from the get-go and has been doing a disservice to the indsutry and the music lover for years.

More on the subject next week.

**********

Let's hoist a few at the 3-Dot Lounge...

Lately I've been in some discussions about cover songs. What constitutes a great cover? Reinvention? Popularity? The ability to make another's material your own? One thought that has stuck is The Beatles were (and are) the most difficult popular act to cover. I mean, fine for the hired hand with a mike and a guitar to blend 'Yesterday' in with his Eagles and Neil Young set-list. But to record a Beatles cover for posterity? Why bother? And yet, I know of no one who has mangled 'Across the Universe.' That song seems to work no matter who assays it...

One test of a music critic is a willingness to assail the unassailable if necessary (for instance, one day I'll work up the gumption to describe in detail the depth and breadth of the abyss of boredom into which I fall whenever I am subjected to The Band). So, I'll just come out and say it: Rosanne, I love you to death, but your critic-proof release of country standards your daddy loved '(The List)' has so much reverence for its own material as to be an instant museum piece devoid of life, best put straight on the shelf and looked at...

Lest it seem that cranky pants are my only clean garments, I am heartened to see John Gorka in the Cedar lineup for November. I've been a fan for years; he roped me in almost 20 years ago with 'Jack's Crows.' As one who was ticketed for the life of the farmer before it became apparent that small family ag operations were ticketed for oblivion, I have a particular soft spot for this song of his.

Ice sheets, shellac and glass plates

2009-11-04T12:26:00.000-06:00

Sometimes a musician tells of story from stage that just really sets off my historical imagination. I'm a history nerd, what can I say? Well, I subscribe to more academic podcasts than music ones. Like years ago at Nordic Roots when Jenny Wilhems from Gjallarhorn explained the strong asymetrical rhythm in Scandinavian polskas by saying the common people in those lands were forbidden to possess drums for hundreds of year. Some say it was the Lutheran church who came down on percussion because it might lead to sin (like dancing the polska?) and some say it was the military, because only soldiers could have drums. Either way, facinating factoid.

So when Warsaw Village Band's Wojtek Krzak spun a tale of a 17th century freeze on the Baltic Sea and Scandinavians walking across to Poland and taking home new dances - like the polska - it got me to wondering. Yeah, OK, I know they could've just gone in a boat, too. The Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden used to freeze too, and starving peasants from both sides walked that dark crossing, just looking for work and a chance at a better life. And maybe a few new tunes.

Not so far apart.

Not to revisit that familiar topic of complainig about our country's artist visa/security system, but...

I was talking to some of the members of Warsaw Village Band prior to the concert, expressing my disappointment that they hadn't brought along the really cool old-style instruments, like their suka, nyckelharpa, hurdy gurdy and that big hammer dulcimer. Fiddler Krzak said they could only bring one instrument per person this time, then percussionist Maciej Szajkowski told how the security guards didn't believe Krzak he was really a musician so they made take his fiddle out and play for them at the airport. Pretty demeaning. And you wonder why European artists don't really want to come over here. Hey, at least they get in the country...often the African artists are just refused visas.

I really enjoyed the WVB concert, although without the old intruments we got fewer of the quiet, more delicate numbers. It was the driving, rock-out version of the band, which was cool, too. Very percussive use of the fiddles and cello. It was great to see people dancing all over to the band's triple-drummer second encore "Is Anybody in There." As they say in Poland "It kicked."

I have to wonder, however, what does it take to get people to check out a different sort of "world music?" I mean, really. The crowd for that show was Polish expats and U of M students plus the handful of Cedar World music freaks, many of whom were volunteering already to get in free. (Yes, I include myself in that freak group.)

* * * * * *

So just to continue this 78 rpm discussion for one more minute, I SO can't picture owning or even wanting to own that $8k piece of shellac. What does one do with it? Look at it? Put it in a box? You can't play the thing. Sheesh.

I have a few antique little glasses. Cut glass, very nice. They were dated 1910 at the dusty little antique store by the side of some nameless highway near the Illinois border on the way back from a cousin's wedding. They're so pretty, I just like to look at the light shining through the facets. But every time I fill one with wine at a party, I feel compelled to say "Be careful. It's 100 years old," as I hand it to a guest. Sheesh again.

The 78s that interest me are the stuff that will never ever show up for 99 cents on ITunes, like those Turkish discs I mentioned last week. DJ Pepper Patriot (who still hasn't answered my emails for an interview...) was trying to get some sound out of a disc he'd brought back from Istanbul that had a big chunk out of one edge. It was crackly, but we got part of the tune. LO-FI!

* * * * * *

So has anybody noticed that you don't need to put the .org on to Google this blog any more? It's another milestone. First it stopped asking if one meant "cedarbog.org" then it stopped sending us to "Cedar's blog" if we left off the .org. We win. It's all us now, no matter how you search it.

* * * * * *

And in a non-music note, Sergei's back in town! As in more of those amazing 100+ year old color photos from "Photographer to the Tsar" Sergei M. Prokuden-Gorskii at the Russian Museum of Art. If you missed the initial showing of his work last summer, drop the five bucks and get yourself over to this. The new exhibit "revealing the Silk Road" focuses on what is now Central Asia, you know, "the 'Stans." Many of the photos are from legendary cities like Samakan and Bukhara, in what is now Uzbekistan, and what was then the legacy of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.

There's something about seeing people from so long ago in color...details you would never notice in black and white. Little things like creases in a rabbi's boots, stains on a peasant's apron, or the verdigris patina on an Orthodox church's downspouts. You can even get free passes from the Minneapolis Public Library's Museum Adventure Pass program, so no excuses.

Check out the tile work.

To Geem or Not To Geem

2009-10-31T13:13:00.005-05:00

Staying on topic here, and the subject of collectors. I think there must be a collectors' gene, and I feel fortunate that I was spared (although I'd consider trading it for the one that predisposed me to eczema and migraines). Back in those old record company days, some of us at Rykodisc made up a word for compulsive collectors- "geemers," and a corresponding verb, "to geem." Back then one of our public slogans was "large enough to matter, small enough to care." Internally this was twisted to "large enough to spiff, small enough to geem."

Of course, not only did geemers make up a sizable number of our staff, they were also quite a critical consumer base for us. I have to acknowledge that I'm sure that a portion of my IRA can be attributed to geemers, and their willingness to shell out big bucks for things like the Yoko Ono limited edition boxed set in an Anvil case with a glass key and signed certificate from Ms. Ono herself. That's right, a six-disc boxed set collection of Yoko Ono's complete solo work from 1968 to 1985 housed in a white Anvil case. As though the $100+ retail boxed set by itself was not enough. Apparently it wasn't, because we sold all 500 of the special editions quite rapidly, as I recall.

So this fascination with 78's, Victrolas, rare vinyl LPs and singles? It's the same as stamp collecting to me. Sure, I'm often impressed by demonstrations of archaic technology in its effectiveness for reproducing sound. But if there's a rare Charlie Patton recording out there that's worth hearing, I'm perfectly happy to wait until it's available to download from iTunes for 99 cents. If it's the music he cared about, think about how much $8,000 could have bought that dude who spent it on the rare Charlie Patton 78. This isn't really a music discussion, is it?

* * * *

We are now in the throws of an unprecedented 20 events in 20 days at The Cedar. We've already had one sold-out show, our co-present of múm at Walker Art Center last Thursday. And I'm really looking forward to tonight's sold-out double-bill of Chris Smither and Loudon Wainwright III. We've already got another sell-out coming, another double-bill with The Mountain Goats and Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett) on February 7. And just a few tickets remain for the much-anticipated Dirty Projectors show on 11/11.

But here's one I don't want to slip through the cracks for y'all... a singer/songwriter I saw this past summer at the Winnipeg Folk Festival that blew me away with his lyrics and delivery, Joe Pug.

So I leave you with this... no collectable, just a simple video from YouTube that I suspect could bring you as much if not more happiness than an $8,000 Charlie Patton 78:

Echo Chamber

2009-10-29T16:46:00.003-05:00

Great post from M.E. Dub the other day. If you haven't read it, have a go and then peruse this July New York Times article about 78s collectors.

The picture here is what my 1923 Victrola VV-105 would look like with a tassel and a much better finish. As for the player's software...there but for the grace of the angels go I. The idea of chasing down and procuring desirable 78 titles and labels is so seductive, and the reality so expensive. I am quite happy employing my O/C gene with the procurement and cataloging of music I discover and enjoy. If I dived into the 78s and cylinders hobby my familiarity with the sun would rival that of a St. Paul resident in February.

Oh, and here's a fun little bar-bet tidbit: the number of grooves on one side of a 78 and an LP is exactly the same.

**********

More echo-chamber stuff: Mr. Fig's point about live music being the last commonly-found concentrated listening experience is right on the money. While I contend that as much (or more) good new music can be found now as ever before, extended situating between the speakers and zeroing in to the exclusion of all other external stimuli seems an ever-more bygone experience. And this is not merely a lament about the wacky ambiences bedeveling the upper demos...college kids have so many more distractions these days too. Not the least of which is constantly moving on to the next torrent before absorbing the last one.

Give me good acoustics, sound system, and seating, and I can be rapt. Last night for instance: Mondavi Center, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, and a first half that included a Mozart overture and a Haydn Cello Concerto. Bliss. OK, so I nodded off a bit during the Schubert 9th, but come ON! The thing sprawls and meanders.

One suggestion for all live venues: in addition to the usual admonitions about cell phones, illicit recording, and brown acid, stage announcements could be amended to include a request that 'all overpowering perfumes and after-shaves must be neutralized at this time.' Last night's heady mix was omnipresent. Hardly anyone noticed my Vitalis.

***********

If I could be granted one wish in this blogging enterprise, it would be to offer up a single playlist of, say, a half-dozen songs and have them all be playable on a single site. I wanted to do this with Rhapsody (to which I am subscribed), but in order to hear 'em you gotta sign up for the 14-day free trial. I love the service, but I'm no shill.

But I like the idea of an occasional 'Thursday Random 6-Pak' thing, so let's do it the old-fashioned way: with MySpace and YouTube. The only common factor with all six is that I like each of 'em a lot. Please keep in mind that your host is a deep-middle-aged 3-minute-pop-tune-lover. I hope at least one of these brings you the inspiration to dig deeper...

Let's start with Robert Gomez. His indie pop is all understated charm and would appeal to Musee Mecanique fans. When you get to his MySpace page, try 'Hunting Song.'

Wovenhand, anyone? This has been David Eugene Edwards's project since 16 Horsepower disbanded. Edwards is at once scary and entrancing. Try 'Winter Shaker' to start.

And...oh, let's see: how 'bout some ska? Here is Andy & Joey, doing the 1966 Studio One original of 'You're Wondering Now,' since covered by The Specials and Amy Winehouse.

Spinnerette: This is a Queens of the Stone Age-related group fronted by Brody Daille, formerly of The Distillers. This is 'Impaler' on YouTube, with only the album's cover art as a visual.

Time for another journey with Mr. Peabody & Sherman. Here is Be Bop Deluxe from 1976, with 'Crying to the Sky,' as posted on YouTube, also without motion visuals.

Finally, Celestial. They are a Swedish jangle-pop outfit. Just good, clean, throwaway fun. Try 'Dream On.'

Spinning Fast in the Slow Lane

2009-10-28T20:16:00.002-05:00

Maybe it was the lure of the old gear, when I heard there were a bunch of ancient turntables set up. Certainly it was the fact that I had not yet missed the set of vintage Turkish music. It probably didn't hurt that I knew a couple of the djs. Well, I just thank the powers that be for whatever serendipitous combination of factors dragged me over to North East Mpls in the wee hours Saturday night to the First Annual 78 RPM Summit.

Featuring "six nonstop hours" of 78s played by "eight different shellac jockeys" the Summit got together people who like old records and old gear. The man behind the Summit is DJ Pepper Patriot. Hopefully we'll have an interview with him in an upcoming blog. The guys behind the gear are the Vintage Music Company team. The djs that I saw were all very much in love with the old time gear.

I must confess I just like antiques. I was raised in the '70s by people who were constantly refinishing old furniture, so I headed right over to the wax cylinder player. ( Another confession, I also really wanted to check out the cylinder player because on the liner notes for Karelia Visa, Hedningarna talked about learning old tunes from wax cylinder recordings.)

Mike from Vintage Music Company in south Minneapolis graciously answered all my questions about the 1904 Edison cylinder player they'd brought over for the event. The guy is the mother load of information about old turntables and music systems and really explains them well. I must confess, I have often walked by the Vintage Music Company shop (it's right there in my neighborhood) and imagined it being run by some seventy year old guy with Einstein hair in a ratty cardigan. Well, Mike is slender 30-something with hipster glasses and short dark hair, so he is certainly not that guy. Maybe the owner is? I never met him...anyway, I hope to do a future post on Vintage Music Company and walk over there and take a few photos. Thousands and thousands of 78s in stock?! One of the "shellac jockeys" Saturday says the Vintage guys are so good with their inventory of disc that they can pretty much just point you to the right section of the right shelf.

KFAI's Greg Carr ("Dig Up the Roots") was pretty much jumping up and down as he showed me his double turntable 78 rig from about 1950. It's even portable (sort of - like a big suitcase), but the best part was the typewritten note from the manufacturer taped inside the cover with yellowing cellophane tape. The unit has three tone arms and with a bit of knob twisting; one can do some primitive mixing on it.

Drew Miller (long ago KFAI alum, now usually thought of in conjunction with his bands Boiled in Lead and Felonious Bosch) whooped and hollered as he put on a 78 of "Cigarettes, Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women," then got even more excited as he explained the Pathe' set up there. More on the Pathe' label later.

Between Drew and Mike, I think I got the 78 thing down. It's wider grooves, thus not as many of them on a disc equals one tune per. OK. While the old discs did have a certain percentage of shellac in them, they were mostly a thermoplastic blended with lots of of other ingredients in formulas that were closely guarded, according to the very informational page at the Wolverine Antique Music Society. You had to replace the needle after every play because they were very soft steel and the discs were fairly hard plastic. One or the other had to take the wear, and needles were a lot cheaper, was how Mike explained it to me. He also talked about all the different needles available, from novelty ones made of natural materials to specialized weights that gave you the ability to vary the sound in a primitive way, sort of an eq effect.

The needle moves back and forth within the groove on most 78s, just like it does on 33 lps and 45 singles. The unique thing about the Pathe' discs mentioned earlier is that the needle moves up and down in the groove on their discs. Obviously, you can only play Pathe' discs on a Pathe' player. Perhaps more uniquely, many of their early discs started playing at the center hole and went toward the outside. The Pathe's also used a different type of needle, sapphire tipped, (I think) which could be reused hundreds of times.

I love this kind of nerdy trivia stuff. I love that people came through all evening and were singing along to the wax cylinder recording at 12:30 in the morning. (And they all stopped talking so we could hear the thing!) I think it's totally cool that people are into 78 RPMs all over the internet and all over the world.

It's the anti-MP3.

The anti-instant download.

It's a bit like the Slow Food Movement, only at 78 RPM, everything's spinning faster.

* * * * * * *

I would urge anyone who missed it to check out the link to the New York Times article on Pandora's Music Genome Project in Veronica Fever's post last week. An interesting discussion of that, as well as one of the lyrics vs. music debate made for a great post. Thanks, Fever!

Of course I come down on the side of the music. As I once explained to a younger co-worker who was trying to sell me on some really great emotional lyrics, "I could give a #%&* about some youngster singing about his relationship. Give a grizzled 65 year old who's being playing his instrument since he was twelve any day!"

And on the Pandora thing, while I ordinarily would cheer anything that gave employment to a roomful of musicologists, I do find the system a little creepy.

* * * * * * *

I'm very psyched for Warsaw Village Band Thursday night at the Cedar. Hope I'm not the only one who finds the combination of dark fiddles and close vocal harmonies alluring. Also hope I remember how to say "Dobry wieczor, panstwu!" (good evening, ladies and gentlemen)

They rocked Glastonbury this summer, they made the cover of the August/September issue of Folk Roots and they're opening their first North American tour in four years at our place tomorrow. (OK, I thought my son was a little bitty kid the first time we saw them together...sheesh, four years...)

Anyway, the band says "After almost 4 years of silence at last we will back to Unites States and Canada! Hope that You will support WVB during the tour (Maja and Wojtek will have to leave Lena for so long for this first time...) and this 8 gigs will be great adventure for all of us! Come people come and be a part of this whole!"

Music Therapy

2009-10-24T14:01:00.007-05:00

Here in Minnesota, this was the week that many of us dusted off the light therapy boxes, made adjustments to our anti-depressants, and/or started doing whatever we feel we need to do to ward off the onset of S.A.D. It was cold, rainy, and dark. It's the beginning of a long season of dark and cold, so we're trying to prepare ourselves. After such a week, it was nothing less than nourishment for the soul to be at The Pines CD release show last night.

There's something particularly life-affirming to go into a warm, intimate venue on a cold, rainy night and experience an acoustic ensemble play a gorgeous set at the top of their game. The Cedar's original and masterful sound engineer, Chris Frymire, helped create the masterpiece, dialing in the perfect balance of instruments and vocals to complete the experience. A fixed-camera video of a sky-plains scene where the clouds moved almost imperceptibly for the duration of the set on our new full-sized screen behind the stage really enhanced the ambiance.The band played their entire new CD, Tremolo, and it's a great one.

Sitting there in the dark with 400 people focused exclusively on music got me thinking about how live concerts have become the singular way that most people now experience music at such a level of focus and intensity. The days of sitting in a living room with or without friends, quietly and exclusively listening to music, appear to be behind us. Much has written about the demise of the album, usually focused on how iTunes and downloading has brought emphasis strongly back to single tracks. But more than the method of consumption, it's been the increased portability of music as data files which has truly altered our relationship with it.

As a direct result of that portability, recorded music now mostly accompanies other activities. We listen as we work, drive, walk, or while doing something else in the living room (for those of us who still have a "stereo" in the living room... as more and more folks just listen to music on their computers).

So, it appears that live concerts are where folks are most willing to tune out the rest of the world and focus exclusively on music. That reality puts even greater responsibility on a "listening room" like The Cedar to present as much that is worthy of undivided attention as possible. It's a responsibility we proudly accept... and I think the coming weeks of shows may be among the best line-up in our 20 year history.

This coming week we have two "sleeper" shows. The first, as mentioned by the Angel of Rock, with Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, paired with the Portland Cello Project, could really be special:

The other consists of a trio of teenage siblings from Tupelo, Mississippi who play the blues in a manner that belies their brief years. Well, almost teenagers... the sister, Taya, on drums, is only 10! Check out the Homemade Jamz Blues Band (and notice their homemade instruments- from auto parts!):

Come chase away those seasonal demons and let the healing properties of music feed your soul!

Quick update

2009-10-23T07:27:00.000-05:00

Being busy with school, I haven't been getting to all that many shows lately. But I am pleased to say that I will be at every Cedar show (excepting for Gustafer) from now until Tuesday. Not only that, a couple are shows I have been looking forward to for weeks!

The weekend starts with a CD release by local group The Pines. And what's more, they'll be joined by The Spaghetti Western String Company. Both bands have become household names for my family - Mom claims The Pines as a favorite band. My sister keeps me updated on where she saw "the cute one" last. I think she uses this to refer to more than one person. Gets to be a little confusing, kiddo. In any case, if you like folk and string music that has a little edge, a little mystery, and maybe a little something tragic or sinister to it, we'll see you at The Cedar.

The other show I have been eagerly anticipating comes next Tuesday: Thao and the Get Down Stay Down with the Portland Cello Project. Ms. Thao has definitely been in my heavy rotation. It's gotten to the point where a couple coworkers asked me whether or not I was going through some kind of phase... 'fraid not guys. That would mean I would have to stop listening to her, right?

***

I've been invited to a soul dance night next month. There are a few major problems with this. The main one being that I don't really dance. At all. So blogger friends, if I were going to practice, what should I listen to? Any suggestions?

***

I work for a magazine. Today in the office someone tried to put music on. He stopped. Laughed. Then said: "Pandora must be signed in to your account. The only stations listed are for Low, Balkan Beat Box, and The Meat Puppets."

erm.

***

Thanks E Dub for playing along. Maybe we can keep this going?

Albums (mostly) without lyrics for listening while reading (for those of us with concentration issues):

Erik Satie - After the Rain

Nomo - Ghost Rock

Spaghetti Western String Co. - all

The Album Leaf - Into The Blue Again, In A Safe Place

Your turn.

Schadenfreude

2009-10-22T14:12:00.004-05:00

It's my favorite guilty pleasure just lately.

Example: being a Giants fan as the Dodgers are sent packing. Or: the faux strokes being suffered by book publishers over the price war being waged between Amazon and Wal-Mart. You can read about it here.

Love this quote: 'If readers come to believe that the value of a new book is $10, publishing as we know it is over.' Sir, have you not been noticing the sea changes in media? The packaged music industry is in tatters. The video side is trailing right behind. Newspapers are endangered. Publishing as you know it is over.

While the larger issue is really digital vs. analog, there is a pleasurable nostalgia in reading reactions to these sorts of skirmishes, as content-holders attempt to prop up perceived value and re-barn those escaped horses.

A similar battle is being waged on the video side right now, over those Redbox vending machines that rent new release movies for a buck a night. A few of the major studios (Universal, Fox, and Warner) are choreographing delayed placement in the Redboxes until the regular sales and rental markets have slowed down on given titles, as they fear devaluation of their products in the consumer's mind.

This fits with the author James Patterson's quote at the end of the fore-cited article: 'Imagine if somebody was selling DVDs of this week's new movies for $5. You wouldn't be able to make movies. I can guarantee you that the movie studios would not take this kind of thing sitting down.' Yessss...Universal would surely boycott Amazon and Wal-Mart if a similar war broke out on their hot titles.

The over-arching dark warning is that predatory pricing tactics will result in fewer listening, viewing, and reading options for enthusiasts.

No. It will result in fewer middlemen and less-frequent big-budget publicity cramdowns. The quantity of both have no correlation to the quantity or quality of choices we have.

**********

Last week we were musing about Pandora and which music makes the cut and why. Days later, this article appeared in the Sunday New York Times Magazine section. Interesting reading.

The article's author took his time getting to the key question: as Pandora's library is about 5% of iTunes' (which itself is merely a subset of all available music), who decides? And while the claim is that Pandora attempts to apply objective science in its Music Genome project, an a-ha comes in this telling quote from Pandora's founder: 'We struggle more with making sure we're adding really good stuff.'

**********

Still more good reading in this Wall Street Journal review of music critic Robert Hilburn's new memoir, 'Corn Flakes With John Lennon.' The reviewer makes a few good observations and offers his take on the age-old music vs. lyrics debate.

For what it's worth, this reporter stands firmly on the music side. Well-surrounded moon-June lyrics can result in gorgeous, involving listening. Insightful lyrics with indifferent accompaniment is all too often merely sung poetry, altogether better-suited for boho coffee shops.

There. That should make 'em forget the whole cowbell miasma.

**********
Finally...Nick Hornby is on something of a roll. He wrote the screenplay for 'An Education' (number one on my wish-list for if and when our local art house ever finishes its remodel), and he has a new novel out, 'Juliet, Naked.' For anyone who found his 'High Fidelity' the perfect mashup of music obsession and everyday banality: you gotta read this. It is cotton candy on the pop-culture midway.

The Politics of the Blues, the Wizard, Riff on the Rut and Aris San

2009-10-21T11:19:00.002-05:00

In the "Who Knew" category:
I saw two of the yard signs in less than an hour the other day, so it must be true. Papa John Kolstad is running for mayor! The old school West Bank blues man (and father of Cadillac Kolstad, famous for the Sunday night Cadillac vs. Cornbread piano blowouts next store at Palmer's bar)
says

"Remember, I am running without party affiliation. I have the best interests of the people of Minneapolis in mind. Individuals across the spectrum of political thought are supporting me in my effort to bring clarity and honesty to Minneapolis city government."

Rock ON, Papa John!

Just in time for Halloween...
Comes this reminder of Halloween at the Cedar in 2008. Remember how tickled these guys were about their outfits, and that they had smuggled them in from Winnipeg?

You're not in Massachusetts any more, Crooked Still!

A month or two ago, I wrote a post about how ouds work and some groovin' recent tunes featuring that ancient instrument. Jules Gilchrist from Cannonball PR caught the blog and contacted the Cedar with some links and more info about Speed Caravan's disc Kalashnik Love . Thanks Jules! I am finally posting your stuff including this great interview with oud player Mehdi Haddab. In which, among many other things, he tell us:

The oud comes from the desert, where water is precious." Haddab's voice softens. "It looks like a water bowl. It's shaped like a teardrop. There is no instrument for me that is better." He flashes a grin. "Soft or loud," he says.

Jules liked this vid of the band at Womex 2008.

I like this vid of the band tearing up "Galvanize" in Cairo, even if the quality isn't as good. Yeah!!! Notice the Marshall tube amps?

Now, just for fun, I feel the need to riff on the Angel of Rock's rut playlist criteria of last week.

An album to dream to? Hmmmm. I don't fall asleep to music; I read myself to sleep. My sister did share her dreamy psychedelic mix with me on my recent visit down Milwaukee way, and I must say I am needing a daily listen to The Dandy Warhol's "Mohammed" ever since. Not my usual type of thing at all, and yet...

I still don't know this Portuguese language, but as stated last week, Os Mutantes are cheering me (and lots of other folks) up on these grey days. Yeah, it's a little goofy, bordering on cheesy sometimes, but I just close my eyes and picture them all singing those harmonies with their eyes closed. Then I want to sing along, too. In my non-existent Portuguese.

Cooking and cleaning music these last few weeks has definitely been Nigeria Special: 1970-76. Ooh, there is some fine stuff here plus it's a double album, so it just goes on and on while you keep sweeping. Take a listen here, if you like. Sterns Africa keeps up the great work.

Do I have any friends making albums? Huh. Well, I like the new Vasen disc a lot, and they are of course friends of the larger Cedar family, even if some of the band and I just got to the hugging stage rather recently.

How's that, A of R? Anybody else on the blog squad going to rise to the bait?

Last but never least, I downloaded some original Aris San tracks the other day. I thought, hey, I'm a big Boom Pam fan, and they were very much influenced by him, so what the heck?

Whee!! His classic"Dam Dam" is so great!! Get through the "opah" at the Greek restaurant section and you're in for several minutes of primo wanking. Oh yeah! There's not any video, but you can listen up here.

Then look what I found! It's Balkan Beat Box attacking "Dam Dam" at a concert last year in Tel Aviv! Again, not the greatest quality, but still. Love the vj's rotating Aris San heads in the background. Well played, guys. Nicely wanky solo by guest Berry Sakharof, here, too.

So that's where we'll leave it.

Music rut town

2009-10-16T10:04:00.005-05:00

I'm in a rut, musically speaking.

It isn't so bad. Really.

It just means I keep listening to the same things again and again.

They are things that I like. But it doesn't give me much to tell you about.

Or does it? Maybe you'd like them too!

Here is a list of what has been in heavy rotation, so to speak.

1) An album to help me fall asleep, to help me dream, and for enjoying the first snowfall of the year (even if it comes a little too soon): Mount Erie and Julie Doiron - Lost Wisdom

2) An album (well, it's really only an EP, but it FEELS like a full-length) for dancing while also working around the house and generally having fun: Liam Finn and Eliza Jane - Champagne in Seashells

3) Albums to help me practice my portuguese: Forro In The Dark - Light A Candle, Ceu - Vagarosa, Marcio Local - Marcio Local Says Don-De-Don-Dree-Don-Don

4) An album my friends made and that I like so much it's sort of embarrassing: Zombie Season - Our Living Funeral

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Funnels

2009-10-15T15:59:00.005-05:00

The following was inspired by Ms. Dub's most recent contribution.

In a prior life this reporter held a position of responsibility with a large specialty retailer that prided itself in carrying the widest range of available music, purchased locally by store employees. This worked well until the following trends converged: the volume of recorded musical history expanded beyond the ability of a single store's walls to contain it, and the help tired of having to choose between eating and paying rent. Institutionalized objective funneling became necessary.

This writing could easily turn into a screed about profit motive. Instead, let's concentrate on the word 'funneling.' Pandora is a good starting point.

The basic concept is this: a team of experts ascribes certain characteristics to songs, such as instrumentation, tempo, mood, harmony, tonality, atmospherics, and so on. The subscriber seeds a listening experience with one or more favorite artists and/or songs. The Pandora system then takes over, combing its database for songs with similar traits. One could call this a form of directed serendipity, derived from data created in as objective a way as possible. That's the theory.

The execution is pretty good. As a random-play lover, I find that by creating a few dozen 'radio stations' with single songs I consider to be crucial examples of favorite mini-genres and then asking Pandora to blend them, I can replicate my usual listening experience with a whole lot of stuff I haven't yet heard. Nice.

The sticking point is this: wayyyy more music is being produced than is being added to the Pandora database. Admittedly, this is a necessity: without some funneling, the system risks dilution while choking on gobs of lesser material. The question: who decides what will be added or not? The answer: tastemakers. The followup: Do I buy in?

Tastemakers are necessary. A modern-day luxury is the surfeit of these experts, starting with, crucially, our friends. The sheer volume of music and its ready availability creates legions of micro-cultures and their resident experts. Add to this the ocean of online and old-media editorial opinion, and we all find ourselves playing a game of 'Who Do You Trust?'

The point, if I can ferret one out, is while we cannot avoid funnels, we can choose which ones to employ.

In the final years I worked at the aforementioned desk, the company product database grew by about 30,000 unique audio titles per year. I would estimate that number at perhaps double these days or, say, 5000 new titles per month. How does an intrepid music explorer navigate such a tsunami? Funnels.

My ongoing goal is to find as much good new music as I can realistically absorb. This is probably about 12-15 albums per month. How I get there is pretty consistent. I avail myself of about 500 album reviews per month. Around 15% (75 or so) of these pique enough interest to make me seek the music out on Rhapsody. About 15% of this auditioned music makes the cut. The system works well. The one thing I cannot let myself do is think about those other 4500 titles per month that have not come to my attention. I sleep well at night because I tell myself I used the widest-necked and most reliable set of funnels I could find.

And now...a bit of navel-gazing: Do I see myself as a tastemaker?

In short, no. I am a certifiable hermit. My tastes are diverse yet picky, and I doubt they translate well. Assuming the 15% batting average, if I extol an artist or album here, chances are about 6-in-7 you won't agree.

This blog is my first attempt to bring my music-related opinions outside the closed environment of my prior music industry life. I am still trying to find my voice, to see if I will learn anything from what pours out here. What I have absorbed so far can be nutshelled thus:

My drumbeat is for pro-active music exploration, especially by those in the 40+ demographic who find themselves growing estranged from their lost music love. To you I say: subscribe to an on-demand streaming service, read reviews, check out Amazon's Listmania, go to some Cedar shows, join a music listening club.

Everyone has a golden era, music-wise, and it's easy to believe that they just don't make 'em like that anymore. My rebuttal is simple: I came of age with multi-genre Top 40 and free-form FM, and I'm here to tell you that these are the good old days.

**********

Next week I'll touch on some highlights from my most recent music exploration. I'll probably go on a bit about The Apples in Stereo (where the hell have I been?), Monsters of Folk (sneering in the face of my usual allergic reaction to Conor Oberst), and Selena Gomez (yes, from the Disney factory; she's made an album that recalls 'Beauty and the Beat').

For now, though, the listen that brought the biggest smile. I simply don't hear enough tunes about getting drunk and eating a whole damn chicken:

Blue Highways vs. Killer Apps

2009-10-14T10:51:00.008-05:00

I've been wondering lately, every time I see another ad for the latest app for one's I-Phone that will call you a cab, tune your guitar, recommend music, suggest a restaurant...

Wonder who decides what makes the cut. How do they decide? Is there a selection committee at Urban Daddy or Pandora? Do they Google the possible options and just choose the top ten?

I mean, really. There we were at work yesterday deciding which plants we wanted to grow for next year, tossing stuff right and left. Lousy sales last year. We have too many of those already. It was ugly in my garden. I don't like it. Looks just like plant X. So on and so on.

And we're plant nerds, people. One of the last bastions of not-quite-so-corporate, weirdo plants. When the business began , we'd grow almost anything, as long as we thought we could move 10 or a dozen flats. No more. Numbers like that get a plant thrown off the list now, unless the staff really begs and pleads. They're off the list.

Another real life example. I can't find my favorite toothpaste at any of the local food co-ops anymore, as of a couple of months ago. It's still being produced; I went to the manufacturer's website. But our "local" natural foods warehouse stopped carrying it. Poof! No more favorite toothpaste. Off the list.

Not to go all William Least Heat-Moon on you, but you know, before the interstate highways became ubiquitous, there were red highways and blue highways on the maps. The blue highways only went to the little, soon-to-be-forgotten towns. The ones that soon became nothing but a rusting grain elevator and and few houses in ill repair. Off the list.

So what about the clubs that don't make it onto Urban Daddy's list or the bands that Pandora has no place for?

You tell me.

On most days I'd chin up and say the bands'll end up at the Cedar or being played on KFAI and we'll be ahead of the curve and they'll one day develop a cult following.

On this grey gloomy October day, I just say, I do really wonder.

* * * * * * *

Well, I cranked Os Mutantes in the headphones all afternoon, and that just improved my mood, you know. How could it not?

Who needs dumb old killer apps anyway? Or satellite radio? Or that radio station with the dried fruit name? We've got the whole freakin' internet. Plus somebody's out there right now cranking out groovy global roots music apps.

I just know it.

Q & A

2009-10-08T18:53:00.002-05:00

Time to have a peek in the ol' mail bag:

Q. Veronica, have you ever had any musical heroes?

A. In one sense, too many to count. Relatively speaking, though...one for sure: Tommy Bolin. His first solo work 'Teaser' was my favorite album of the 70s; the song 'Wild Dogs' was crucial for its call-and-response guitar duet fadeout. Bolin's work on Billy Cobham's 'Spectrum' made that record a still-enjoyable artifact of the jazz-rock fusion era. And he died in his 20s when that sort of stupidity was still fashionable.

These days? Maybe Lindsey Buckingham. I can't think of anyone who has drawn more zigzaggy lines in the middle of the road than him. I watch him perform 'Come' at a Mac show and wonder about those poor souls in the audience who just came to hear 'Rhiannon.' (Man, am I in for a hazing from the other bloggers for posting this)

Q. You do go on about the wonders of random play. Anything you don't like about it?

A. Yeah, a couple of bits. One is sonic inconsistencies. Not genre-related; I mean disc sound quality. Some older discs sound flat when played in immediate juxtaposition with more modern recordings. Part of this was attributable to shovelware; lots of unremastered catalog titles were rushed to market during the boom. Most of this has been corrected over the years, but some lesser artists who had their run during the late 80s and early 90s sound a bit sickly today. Curve comes to mind; 'Doppelganger' was my favorite aural assault weapon in '92; it sounds tame today. One is tempted to turn up the volume.

Another more insidious problem is the context of random play itself. Subtler musics can get lost in a shuffle loaded with shinier noisier offerings. Some understatedly pleasurable albums might not leave much of a mark. For instance, Musee Mecanique. Main Figurehead turned me on to them; I listened to their album straight through and found it charming. Individually, though, their songs often float right by almost unnoticed in the middle of a random playlist. Big drawback.

Q. Does this look infected?

A. Do I look like a bureaucrat to you? Consult your insurance agent for a proper diagnosis.

Q. What is your all-time favorite guitar solo?

A. Robert Fripp's in Eno's Baby's On Fire.

Q. What is your latest vintage music discovery?

A. Well, I just downloaded a collection of Les Baxter's material, but my most recent eye-opener was Terry Callier's first album, 'The New Folk Sound.' He recorded it in 1964 for Prestige, but it didn't come out until 1968 and went unnoticed. It is a marvel. I know I'm the last kid on the block here, but on the off-chance you haven't heard it...if you have ever loved folk music and/or Nina Simone, this is a must. Next up for me: his three early 70s albums.

Q. Know any jokes?

A. A skeleton walks into a bar and orders a beer and a mop.

Q. Got a favorite current songwriter?

A. Thea Gilmore. I love her to pieces and have for almost ten years. If you have yet to partake, do. Thea writes with real poignancy and grace, and she delivers with a voice that one reviewer placed as somewhere between Alison Moyet, Sandy Denny, Annie Lennox and Beth Orton, a remarkable bit of bet-hedging. She has nine albums and a few EPs out, and there is not a dud among them. Her latest, 'Recorded Delivery,' is a live album that actually serves as a fine introduction, containing as it does a fine sprinkling of career highlights. Here she is:

October new releases

2009-10-07T13:49:00.006-05:00

OK, this is going to sound like a rerun of last month as in "Ya Hoo! Artist XXX has a new disc coming out soon. Here's why they rule and why you should care. Wonder when it'll ever arrive stateside." Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

And yet...I am really psyched to hear some new stuff from Toumast. For my money they are the desert blues act that rocks the hardest and does so well with the change-up tempos and dynamics. Their disc Amachal is out October 26. (in Europe I presume...do I even need to ask the eternal question?)

There are a couple of tracks up now on their Myspace and with a quick listen they sound fuller than those Ishumar, as in lots more instruments, bass higher up in the mix, a little keyboard and some kind of bag pipe going on in "Ibliss." Somebody's doing a little rap - in English - on "Timerhitin." Too busy? I'll give it another listen. No idea who produced it or any of that yet.

You know, I think every culture in the world has a traditional bag pipe of some sort. All those poor goats...

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So speaking of desert blues, how did I miss the new Tinariwen release??? Imidiwan's Euro-release was in June, and the actual physical disc is over here now. The reviews from England sound quite good; supposed to be a more stripped down affair than Aman Iman, fewer overdubs, fewer effects. I'm there.

Meanwhile, they're touring their brains out all over Europe this fall. You know, I cannot understand why we've only gotten a couple of hundred people in to see these guys when we've had them at the Cedar in the past. They. So. Rule.

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Big genre shift.

Shooglenifty's show at the Cedar five or six years ago ranks in my top ten all time here. I'd seen them at festivals before and thought they were OK, but their show up at the last minute/take a quickie sound check/eat a bag of chips/ proceed to blow our minds for two hours thing was way above and beyond. It was extremely psychedelic for mostly acoustic string band (with a funky/dubby rhythm section) music from Scotland. Now, could they put together a U.S. tour again one of these days, please?

Well, we can get some new tunes, anyway. It's been a good while since 2003's The Arms Trader's Daughter and 2005's live Radical Mestizo. [Oh, OK, guess I missed 2007's Troots entirely. Have to check that out.]

The new disc is out October 12, a double album to be called Murmichan which will contain some remixes, some live bits and plenty of those new Shoogle tunes . Looks like they've got yer classic Roman coin artwork thing going on. After a bit of searching I can tell you a Murmichan is a wicked fairy of sorts like a bogle or hobgoblin. (Didn't they study those in Defense Against the Dark Arts class in Harry Potter?) Anyway, gotta love the Scottish vocab words. (like "troot" = trout) Some of the tracks up now on their Myspace seem to keep to the mando and fiddle-driven thing we've heard before, but their remixes head in a totally different direction. Cool. Looking forward to it.

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My Polish bio-techno faves Village Kollektiv have new tracks up and a revamped lineup - with horns! Not sure when the new disc comes out, so I'll report back. C'mon Rafal, get that disc released!! Their Motion Roots Experimental was one of my top discs from 2007.

In the meantime, I'm getting very psyched for their countrymen and -women in Warsaw Village Band to play the Cedar later this month. Although WVB can go plenty techno on their remixes, I'm expecting some of that heavy, dark acoustic strings and vocal harmony stuff they laid on us last time out. And you know I love that.

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Last but SO not least, quite a while back I was drooling over an upcoming show at the Cedar on November 20, but it wasn't finalized yet so I couldn't blab. Well, that show fell through, but what came together for that night is going to be extra-super-fun for all you brass band fans. Nomo (a "Post-Afrobeat Dance Explosion" according to NPR) is going to roadtrip over from Ann Arbor to share the bill with our South Mpls homeboys and -gals in The Brass Messengers. Two cool brass bands: one draws more on the Afro-beat heritage, while the other looks more toward the Balkans, but they both can get all over the place. To get you psyched, here's a link to some free downloads of live Nomo tracks, complete with lengthy explanations of what the heck those long instrumentals are all about. Oh yeah. Circle that date in red.

Don't Miss The Real Deal

2009-10-03T10:34:00.003-05:00

One of the reasons why our fall "roots" festival has now gone Global is to take advantage of the wealth of international artists already in the upper midwest for world music festivals in Chicago, Madison, Milwaukee, Cedar Rapids, and the granddaddy of them all, Lotus World Music & Arts Festival in Bloomington, Indiana. These festivals all fall within the same two week period, and we all work together in choosing artists to perform.

One of the "buzz" bands to emerge from the other festivals this year will be coming to The Cedar this coming Wednesday night: Parno Graszt from Hungary. These guys are the real deal... "They do not use sources of Gypsy music; they are the source itself," says Songlines magazine.

This is one time where we have the unusual benefit of being able to catch a favorite of the other festivals before they leave the country. Don't squander the opportunity!

As far as our own faves, the unanimous staff pick for the high point of our first Global Roots Festival was the Friday night show with Forro in the Dark and Bajofondo. It really was an incredible show.

Live Bait

2009-10-01T15:46:00.004-05:00

Still smarting over Global Roots having once again been staged nearly 2000 miles from my door. I'm starting to think it's me, and so have duly switched from Teen Spirit to Axe.

The only thing for it is to salve my wounds at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass this weekend at Golden Gate Park in San Fancisco. The event starts right off with a schedule challenge: where should one be at the outset when on three different stages are Eliza Gilkyson, Marhsall Crenshaw, and Buddy Miller?

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Remarkable October Cedar schedule. I count six shows I'd like to see (and several others that arouse curiosity). However, as my teleportation super-power is only good once every thirty days, I'd probably opt for Saturday the 10th with Over the Rhine and Vienna Teng. Sure, Vienna is local (to me) but she's always worth seeing. As for Over the Rhine...they never seem to make it out here to the hinterlands. I sure wouldn't mind being in the same room with Karin Bergquist's voice one time in my life.

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Facebook does have its charms. A recent exercise had respondents list 20 live concerts they attended. Here was my response:

Rockpile -- Multiple times. My favorite live band ever. Best setting: UC Davis Coffee House with 200 or so others.

The Mavericks -- 2nd favorite live band ever. Again, multiple shows. One highlight: seeing Raul sing 'Fly Me To the Moon' a capella on the night Sinatra died.

NRBQ -- 3rd favorite live band ever. Multiple shows. Haven't seen them since Big Al left.

The Motels -- I liked them before they had their hits. I was rather fond of Martha.

Richard Thompson -- Perhaps the best guitarist I have ever seen live. A highlight: at the Palms Playhouse in Davis when it was still the converted barn that seated 200. Christine Collister sang 'Warm Love Gone Cold.'

Junior Brown -- What a playbook. A highlight: when he opened for The Mavericks, and then hearing Raul do his Junior Brown imitation.

The Stray Cats -- They were pretty exciting for a little while. Saw them in 1980 at a little club in SF; sweatiest show ever.

Joe Ely -- Multiple times. First time was soon after his tour with the Clash. Classic band with Jesse Taylor on guitar and Lloyd Maines on pedal steel. Killer 'Boxcars.'

Joe Louis Walker -- Recently at the Palms Playhouse. This guy is one of only a handful of really good blues performers on the circuit.

Big Country -- This one just popped into my head. In the middle of the 'Big Country' hoopla.

Charlie Sexton -- When he was 16. He was good, but it was too soon.

Greg Kihn -- Multiple times in the late 70s before he had his hit(s). Tight band; Larry Lynch was a damn fine drummer.

The Who -- Winterland. Yeah, they were good.

Tommy Bolin -- Twice at Winterland, neither time as the headliner but the reason for the trip. Once on an eccentric bill: Graham Parker opening, Heart second, Bolin third, and headlining: Elvin Bishop.

The Moody Blues -- Oakland Coliseum; biggest crowd I've ever been in for a music show; also my first concert. I don't remember a thing about it.

Moon Martin -- Rancho Nicasio. Smallest crowd ever (8 people). He was game, though.

Tarbox Ramblers -- The Palms in Winters. Another small crowd, perhaps 30. They were dandy.

Tindersticks -- Built a trip to Paris around this show at Le Grand Rex in 2001. Terrific show; couldn't see across the theater lobbby because the French love their smokes.

Radiohead -- Barcelona 2000, a few months before Kid A. Capitol Records junket; whatever happened to those days? Great show, although I was bummed that they couldn't get 'Planet Telex' off the ground.

The Roches -- Minneapolis 1995. Distribution company confab. The sisters weren't happy about all the noise from the talking crowd, but I was happy because of the company I was keeping.

Global Roots Aftermath: A view from backstage

2009-09-30T12:33:00.000-05:00

PRe-festival, I really only knew the music of one of these bands (Watcha Clan) and just went into the weekend with an open mind, simply trusting Mr. Main Figurehead to have brought in some cool music.

So scratching my slightly fuzzy head early Monday afternoon (slept until 11:00!! I never do that!) I would have to say he delivered.

A few random thoughts.

South Americans are way more huggy and kissy upon a one evening's aquaintance than Scandinavians. (Yeah, duh, I guess.) I love all the Cedar's Nordic pals, but last week(!) was the first time Olaf Johansen(from Vasen) hugged me and I've been bringing his beer and dinner to the green room for how many years? The wonderful crazy guys in both Forro in the Dark and Bajofondo were my new best friends Friday night...maybe they liked it when I leapt into the green room screaming and started jumping up and down yelling "Otra! Otra! Otra!" Hey, there was so much energy crackling in the air at the end of the Bajofondo set - I was just surfing on those waves.

As a person who loves to turn people on to tunes I like (Duh again, Mama E , say my regular blog readers) it warmed my heart when some of the Brazilian guys were like "Whoa! What is this music?" when I was cranking some Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou (Analog Africa stuff from 1970's Benin) during Friday's truncated, but fun afterparty. Seems like nobody could text well enough at that moment to get the band name into their I-phone...I wonder what Forro ITD's triangle player thought when that paper plate with the album name fell out of his pocket the next day?

Sitting on the couch singing along to the Beatles with the gals from Os Mutantes - slightly surreal! But as with almost all of the performers this weekend, they were so friendly and gracious and just damned fun.

Seeing Watcha Clan on the video monitor and on the internet for months then having them walk in the room and have a beer Saturday was also slightly surreal. For so long they just seemed like one of those cool Euro-bands who would never tour to our part of the world, then they're booked, then they're shaking my hand! Another group of friendly and gracious folk, not to mention hard-working as all get-out. KFAI dj Blanche called their show the Watcha Clan Weight-Loss Plan because of how hard they worked (and sweated) up there as well as how hard we dancers sweated off stage. Wish we could've hauled in a bigger crowd for them, the critical mass wasn't really there for the hand waving and jumping up and down that their set demanded.

After some of the wild green room nights, it was nice to see the Watcha Clan gang sitting family style on the floor around the coffee table, quietly enjoying some vegies and rice as they chilled after their big work-out. We talked some politics and they asserted that the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy is "a disaster" and lamented that Left in France has no leader. They sounded a little jealous of our new president...

I heard at least five languages in the green room over the weekend...which beats an average Saturday afternoon at my neighborhood park by at least two languages.

It was a bit of a blur, but we helped several musicians celebrate their birthdays; keyboard wild man Suprem Clem of Watcha Clan and one of those friendly Bajofondo guys. Or was it one of the guys from Os Mutantes?

Best use of the green room turntable award goes to BLK JKS. Setting up the space was a blast Thursday night because every time I walked through the door with an armload of gear they were cranking something different - from Zeppelin to Madonna. I won't give them the best "abuse" of a staff member award (because they were such great guys), but I'll just say several senior staffers were suffering the next moring after their night out drinking whiskey with BLK JKS!

In the "What Was that Thing?" category, here's the dope on Bajofondo's unusual violin. Did you check it out Friday? It had a skinny wooden fretboard with a metal horn attached for a louder and more directable sound than the wooden body of a traditional fiddle.

I asked fiddler Javier Casalla and told me it was called a "STROH" and indeed, there is information out there about these "cornet violins".

They were popular in prior to the 1920s simply because they are louder and the sound can be aimed by angling the horn.
As electric microphones became more common artists switched back to traditional vioins for recordings, but the Stroh remained popular with some performers of traditional Romanian music and with some Tango artists.

Now that it's Wednesday, I think I'm finally caught up on sleep. Post-festival is always a slightly surreal time; but it's never to early to start that wish list for next year's bands!

Hope to post a few photos in a day or two.

Global Roots withdrawl

2009-09-28T13:12:00.002-05:00

Not surprising that Julie Doiron says it best.

I'm living a life of dreams

With good people all around me

I'm living a life of dreams

Film Returns to 416 Cedar Ave.

2009-09-26T10:42:00.006-05:00

This coming Tuesday, September 29, The Cedar marks a return, of sorts, to the original design of our building as a movie theater. Opened in October, 1948, the Cedar Village Theatre as it was originally named went through a number of owners and identities through the years showing movies, culminating in the early 70's as a porn theater before closing. It opened again in 1975 as the Cedar Theatre and mostly served as an "art movie" house for another 10 years.

On Tuesday we officially add a new program to the Cedar arsenal called Cedar Cinema. And we will launch it with a bang, as the opening night for the Sound Unseen Festival.

This is the 10th year of Sound Unseen in the Twin Cities, a festival dedicated to "films-on-music." And since the whole idea behind Cedar Cinema is to view films about music in a setting with a sound system actually designed for music, we felt it would be a great partnership. What it's about, from their website: "documentaries, rare concert footage, short films, animation, music videos, special performances, gallery exhibitions and dozens of live music events highlighting both local and national acts separate this festival from the usual outdoor mega concerts, film festivals and tours. What began as an underground film festival with 500 attendees has grown to an anticipated array of music, film, new media and art."

We will be hosting four films during Sound Unseen 10. And on opening night, we will host the world premiere of a new documentary on R.E.M. called This Is Not A Show:
Drive - Live at the Olympia in Dublin

On Sound Unseen 10's closing day, Sunday October 4, we are back with three more films... Non-Stop: Gogol Bordello, a doc about the gypsy punk band and its charismatic front man, Eugene Hütz:

...followed by D-Tour, which follows Pat Spurgeon, the drummer for indie rock band Rogue Wave and how he was placed on dialysis for a failing kidney:

...and closing the festival will be this year's Sundance Festival award winner for Best Documentary, We Live In Public, which reveals the effect the web is having on our society, as seen through the eyes of “the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of”, artist, futurist and visionary Josh Harris:

Finally, looking ahead to October 18 (long after the festival is done), Sound Unseen will co-present a documentary about the extraordinary Senegalese singer Youssou NDour called I Bring What I Love:

Maybe you're starting to feel like me... just set up a cot for me in the green room!

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Still buzzing from last night's unbelievable Global Roots Festival show with Forro in the Dark and Bajofondo. It definitely goes on my All-Time Top Ten Cedar Shows list.

Whew!