I hate CDs that have hard-to-remove stickers on the jewel case. Specifically, pointless stickers which simply say "contains the tracks..." when any idiot can see what tracks it contains by simply turning the thing over and looking at the back. It just adds more proof to my theory that everyone involved in music promotion is a moron.
Rant over.
A lot of pubs, particularly chain pubs, have a habit of putting on charity events. These are generally fun days with live music, possibly guest beers, etc etc, and all in the name of some charity. It could be a local charity, a charity close to the hearts of the owners or punters of the pub, or just a charity that is supported by the pub chain. Afterwards you get the obligatory 'big cheque' photos in the local papers.
This week, some friends of mine who are in a band (who shall remain nameless so they're not associated with this overly critical blog post, but whose identities will be known to those who read this blog often) had one of their gigs cancelled by a pub at very short notice. The pub will also remain nameless, suffice to say it's part of a pub chain owned by Mitchells and Butlers, and located in the south of England. The reason for the gig not going ahead was due to an ultimatum given to the band by the pub: it was a charity do and they were expected to turn up and play for free, despite being previously booked on the understanding that they'd get paid. Of course, the band decided not to do the gig, as they have running costs and can't afford to simply gig for free whenever a pub decided to put on a charity gig, and it's more than a little cheeky of the pub to "move the goalposts" in this way anyway. Of course it's easy to assume the band are heartless bastards for not playing at a charity gig, and only in it for the money. But the whole thing made me think a bit more about the situation, and I can only conclude that charity gigs in general are a massive scam.
Charity gigs are usually run by pubs, and the pub is often open as usual. You can go in, buy drinks, listen to live music for free, and there are collection buckets around into which you can throw your loose change. The atmosphere is usually pretty good, and giving money to charity is generally a good thing. But there is one constant in the entire thing that never changes, charity or not - the pub. Think about it - on a normal gig or event night, the pub will pay a band, DJ or other entertainer to appear. The whole point of booking said events is to pull in punters and sell more beer and/or food. On a charity day the bands and entertainers don't get paid, they effectively 'donate' their time to the cause, but the pub don't actually donate anything. In fact, the pub have basically just conned a bunch of bands and entertainers to appear in their establishment, thus earning them extra bums on seats, without actually having to pay them. OK, so they've put a few charity buckets around the place and told one or two of their already-employed staff to run around hassling people for change, but the pub actually contribute nothing to the charity, financially or otherwise, yet reap the benefits of having live entertainment. The pub will usually even get free advertising in local papers in the weeks after the event, which is where the big cheque photo opportunities come in. The local paper will run a story that a nearby chain pub has raised [x] thousand pounds for charity, yet in actual fact they did bugger all, sold loads of beer and food on the back of a load of entertainers they didn't have to pay, and to cap it all off, they're now getting free advertising in the local paper.
So what am I saying? Basically, if you own a pub, run charity events. They're a fantastic way to make money while convincing gullible punters that you actually care about their poxy charity. If you're a band, please don't feel guilty about turning down charity gigs, you can't possibly be as immoral as the pub holding it. And if you're a punter and your favourite local band is playing a charity gig, please give generously. In fact, take all the money you would have spent on drinks and put it in the charity buckets instead. You'll be doing far more good than the pub are.
It's Rock Band III... making the keytar cool again. [arstechnica.com]
Everyone seems to have an opinion on the fact that HMV have gone into administration. Some think it's the decline of the high street, some think it's the rise of the internet. Some blame the economic climate, some blame piracy, some blame consumers. It seems to me that nobody is blaming the actual cause - the collective attitude of the recorded music industry.
Cast your mind back to 2000. US punk band The Offspring were on the verge of releasing "Original Prankster", the first single from their new album, "Conspiracy of One". At the time, decent legal music download services were nonexistant, and the band decided, for whatever reason, to pre-release the new single as a free download from their website the week before its official release on CD. Anyone could go to the band's official site and download a DRM-free digital copy of the song without paying a penny. This would have been much less of a publicity stunt, had HMV not got stroppy and decided not to stock the single. Despite the song being available for free online and the fact that HMV, supposedly the biggest music retailer in the UK, were refusing to sell it, the song went straight to number 6 in the UK chart on its first week of release, and remained in the top 40 for a month. This should really have been a wake-up call to HMV that they're not as tough as they think they are.
But sadly, HMV are just the tip of the iceberg. The bully-boy attitude is rife throughout the industry. It's a fact of life that the world changes, and you need to change with it in order not to get left behind. Music, specifically the consumption of music, is changing faster than most things. The problem is that for the last 10 to 15 years the recording industry has been spending all of its time and money trying - unsuccessfully - to prevent this change, rather than adapting to it. Instead of embracing the internet as a music distribution mechanism, the recording industry sees it as a threat. Rather than look at the success of Napster as proof that people like to download their music, they see it as proof that people don't want to pay for music. Slowly things are getting better, but it is very slowly. The first music download services involved a mammoth monthly fee and if you stoped paying it you lose access to all your music. iTunes (which is basically Napster that you pay for) is phenominally successful, but it's only in the last few years that you could download songs and play them on your car stereo, as early versions were locked to one piece of software and one brand of MP3 player. And let's be honest - Apple had to drag the recording industry kicking and screaming into business with it, again to get them to let them provide DRM-free songs, and again to let them charge what they want for them. As a small aside - the movie industry also need to get a grip on reality, HMV and Blockbuster are in administration so let's have a decent DRM-free movie download service soon before too many people start relying on the Pirate Bay, who provide exactly that. It's a problem that affects every content-producing industry, not just recorded music.
So to summarise, if every HMV store shuts down, nobody will miss them, they'll just be another relic of the past as children in years to come ask their parents "did you really have to go out in the cold and buy a plastic disc every time you wanted to buy music?". When I was a teenager, the only way to get your music heard was to get a recording contract. These days, anyone can release their music online, and nobody buys CDs any more. The recording industry, HMV included, have excluded themselves from this brave new world, and they only have themselves to blame.
A hint to all aging rock bands... if you really do want to look cool in the Web 2.0 world, there are better ways than simply automatically re-posting every single tweet containing your band's name on your website...
Last year, a large percentage of the population went out in their droves and bought the song "Killing in the Name" by Rage Against the Machine in the week before christmas. The result is that, despite its new release and market hype, the X-Factor winner didn't get to number 1 for christmas, as had happened for several years previously. RATM getting to number 1 for christmas was a triumph, not just for people who dislike the X-Factor, but also for those who remember the days when people actually cared who was number 1 in the charts; for the first time in years I actually sat listening to Radio 1 just before 7 on a Sunday to find out who had won. But everyone remembers it in their own way, and this is why the same thing won't happen this year, as I will explain.
So far this year, I've had numberous requests via Facebook, Twitter and email to buy songs to 'beat' the X-Factor. As early as last summer I was asked to buy something by System of a Down, and just recently I've been asked to buy 'The Bird is the Word', Motley Crue's 'Girls Girls Girls' and even a delightful ditty entitled 'Use My Arsehole as a Cunt'. I'm sure if the sales for all these songs were combined they'd easily beat X-Factor, but none of them can get to number 1 on their own because they just don't have the support of enough people. We're in the situation parodied beautifully in The Life of Brian, in which the various rebellious groups couldn't possibly beat the Romans because they were too busy squabbling among themselves.
I think the problem is that people don't realise why Killing in the Name actually won. The reason is that it had everything going for it. Hard rock and metal fans bought it because it was their chance to get a rock song to number 1 for a change. People with a childish sense of humour bought it because they wanted a song with repeated use of the word 'fuck' to get to number 1. Charitable people wanted it to get to number 1 because RATM are famous for their charity work, particularly in the area of human rights, and the band made it clear early on that they would give all profits from pre-christmas sales to Shelter, the charity for the homeless. Those of us who are sick and tired of the X-Factor being number 1 every bloody year bought it because it was a chance for something different to get to christmas number one, with the added benefit of being able to tell Cowell very clearly "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me".
The problem this year is that we don't have a song that ticks all the boxes. We now have metal fans suggesting we should buy System of a Down, the anti-X-Factor crowd suggesting we should buy Bird is the Word, the purile crowd suggesting we buy the expletive-laden song... there is no one song which, like Killing in the Name, unifies everyone's purpose. And it's for this reason that Simon Cowell's X-Factor whitewash will, once again, happen this year. Does someone care to write and record a song in time for next year? Preferably a catchy rock song, with subtle political or anti-corporation undertones and lots of swear words? Actually, fuck it, just buy 'Dinosaurs Will Die' by NOFX : )
This weekend the band with which I associate have had two gigs, both made less pleasant by a pub landlord or landlady who clearly doesn't realise "how it works". It seems to me that these days a small minority of pub owners and managers book bands purely because it's the done thing - the bands themselves are more a necessary inconvenience than anything else.
If this is how you think, then please don't book bands. Be a sports pub, or a food pub, or a real ale pub. Don't book bands if you don't actually want them there. Most pub bands do what they do for the love of it, they're not in it to make a profit. If they were, they probably wouldn't be playing pubs. So when a band turns up to a gig in a pub only to be ordered around and effectively told that they don't know how to do what they've been doing for years by some self righteous arse who likes to assert authority, it's more than a little bit irritating. It also doesn't help if you blame the band for not bringing hundreds of adoring fans with them, or taking up space where paying customers might want to stand; pub bands are not an investment. They just set up, play, and leave when finished. Their job is to play music, not sell drinks - that's the pub's job. The band will publicise the gig as much as possible among their friendlies, but they can't guarantee it'll be a blast. After all, if people who want to see a band have a choice of seeing them in a shit hole venue one week or a much nicer pub just up the road the week after, they're going to pick the nicer pub and you can't really blame the band for that.
The sad fact is that we live in a time when pubs and live music are both in the same boat - struggling to survive. We all have a much better chance of survival if we stick together. Most bands are quite reasonable, but they're not your employees. Treat them like human beings and they'll be more than happy to come to an agreement that benefits all parties. Asserting authority, making unrealistic demands and generally treating bands like dirt is only going to piss them off. This isn't helpful for either live music or the pub trade, so why do it? And if you really can't grasp this concept then maybe you should be asking yourself why you want a band in your pub in the first place?
Guns N' Roses suing Guitar Hero game over Slash [BBC]
Oh, Axl, Axl, Axl, when will you wake up and realise that the whole world thinks you're a cock? So you're worried that Guitar Hero is "emphasizing and reinforcing an association between Slash and Guns N' Roses and the band's song Welcome to the Jungle". Because, you know, co-writing a song, playing lead on the original recording and then playing it live at every gig for the next ten years doesn't associate a guitarist with a song anywhere near as much as appearing alongside it in a computer game does. Twat.
I read this in the BBC last week, it's an interesting take on peoples' attitudes towards music. Speaking as someone whose music collection is a 2TB hard drive full of MP3s which is permanently on shuffle, I admit I do have sympathy for bands who produce masterpiece albums and then have people effectively picking and choosing the best bits. Despite this, I listen to what I like - yeah, there are some great AOR albums out there, but let's face it, few albums don't have at least one track that makes you wanna hit the track skip button. I could sit on the fence forever.
That said, today I bought Taking Dawn's album "Time To Burn" - as a digital download, as much of my music is these days as it's cheaper, I get it quicker and it saves me having to rip the CD. I had two options - buy the original album release for a fiver or the 'special edition' for eight quid. The special edition had three extra tracks, but get this - you can buy all the tracks seperately for 79p each. So basically I bought the standard edition and then bought the three extra tracks individually and it cost me over a quid less than buying the special edition.
I think I'll be supporting peoples' rights to buy individual tracks for some time yet : )
Last night I went to see "We Will Rock You" in Southampton. I'm not really into musicals, so I'll forgive the melodramatic acting and wafer-thin plot as I'm sure theatre-goers are used to this kind of thing. However, although no fault of the show, I will not forgive the Mayflower Theatre. In a time when farming battery hens is such a big no-no, I can't understand how the size and density of the theatre's seating arrangement can be considered anything like acceptable. But I digress.
The idea of the show is that it's set in an Orwell-style dystopian future in which freedom of expression and free thought are banned, along with rock music. All music is electronically produced and owning an instrument is illegal. There are some very snide yet, in my opinion, valid swipes at Simon Cowell and TV talent shows, and in general the message of the show is one with which I think many people can agree. The opening 'timeline' video documenting everything from Elvis and the Beatles to the show's present includes such wonderful lines as "Simon Cowell sent from Hell to destroy rock". But this brings me to my first problem with the show: it doesn't rock.
The first half of the show I assumed the music was all pre-recorded. The sound was very soul-less, top-heavy and compressed to hell, and it plodded along in perfect time with a set of background videos while the cast sang karaoke-style over the top. So imagine my shock when towards the end of the second set the background was removed to reveal a live band stood at the back. The sound did improve slightly for the last two songs (We Will Rock You and Bohemian Rhapsody) and during Bo Rhap they actually let the guitarist down onto the stage to play the solo, but it still had some awful compression artifacts that make me wonder if the guitar was actually amped up at all, or simply plugged straight into the mixing desk and bombarded with effects. Whatever the reason, the sound was a disaster.
My second problem with the show is its hypocrisy. Here we have a show which is ruthlessly vicious towards TV talent shows and their part in the destruction of music, yet a large number of the main cast are all TV talent show 'stars'. We have Hear'say's Noel Sullivan - Hear'say were the product of the TV show "Pop Stars", Jenny Douglas from TV's "Over The Rainbow", and not in the Southampton cast but billed anyway we have X-Factor alumnus Rhydian Roberts. Noel Sullivan actually has a good voice, but he's clearly a pop singer and simply not suited to sing songs by Queen. The part - in fact all the parts - should have gone to rock singers. Still, in his defence, he wasn't anywhere near as bad as the female villan, played by Tiffany Graves, who was absolutely frickin' awful and seemed to think that ridiculously over-the-top acting was an acceptable substitute for singing ability.
My final, and certainly my main problem with the show is that it seemed gratuitous as if it were using the legendary status of Queen to promote what is, in effect, a below average theatre show. Queen actually do play an integral part in the plot towards the end, but it seemed like the whole show, particularly the first half, was just an attempt to shoe-horn as many Queen songs into a bad plotline as possible. Some make sense, such as the protagonists singing "I Want to Break Free" as they endure their oppressed lives, but some just seem stuck in for the sake of getting as many of Queen's songs in as possible... what the hell was "Flash" doing in there? But the most unforgivable act of the musical arrangement: if a song really didn't fit anywhere, rather than not use it, the lyrics were changed so that it did. And if the bastardisaton of the songs of a great band just to fill a musical wasn't bad enough, most of the changed lyrics couldn't actually be understood because of the piss-poor sound that I mentioned earlier. "One Vision" and "Radio Gaga" were the worst offenders.
In fairness, the show wasn't without its good points. The rendition of Bohemian Rhapsody that finished the show wasn't bad, especially as Queen never actually played it in its entirety live, and Jenny Douglas performed an excellent rendition of "No-one But You", proving herself to be by far the best singer in the cast, despite being a lowly supporting character. The show was stolen, however, by Ian Reddington who plays a stereotypical roadie and reminded me of Ralph Brown's character in Wayne's World 2. His deadpan delivery of a multitude of rock clichés and shameless sexual innuendo provided the most entertainment of the night for me.
In conclusion: I'm not going to say it was crap, this is clearly a popular musical. Maybe I just didn't get it, or maybe I expected too much. I'm sure that veteran theatre-goers with a passing knowledge of Queen's greatest hits will love this, but if you're actually a Queen fan, do yourself a favour and stay away... at best you'll leave disappointed, at worst you'll leave offended.
https://diyelectromusic.com/2022/04/28/bare-metal-raspberry-pi-minidexed-dx7/
Building a DX7 equivalent out of a Raspberry Pi.
https://rathergood.com/2015/09/09/bagger-288
Any person who gets in its way is soon to be de-meated.
