Imagine that you lived in some area of the world where wind did not exist. And you sold origami swans from a cart. And business was booming. Until one day the wind came. And it blew all of your swans away. And people caught them. Lots of people. And then some people unfolded them & figured out how to make their own. And one day you look around & you say, “Everyone has my swans!” Indeed, there are more swans in the park than you had ever made yourself. “If I could have made $14.99 for each of these, I would be so rich! But instead I’m broke!” Well, the truth of it is that everyone always appreciated your swans, but not enough to pay $14.99. Maybe $3.99? Or maybe $2.50? Who knows? That’s gonna take some research. And some experimentation. But there’s a magic price somewhere between $0 & $14.99 that plays to volume and maximizes profit. And that volume spills over into other revenue streams where you don’t have to discount your product. The wind has, in effect, given you a vision of what could be! Everyone with your swan in their lap or on their shoulder or in their pocket! And some of those people buying origami swan t-shirts & coffee mugs.

Luckily origami swans are fragile. They don’t last forever. And they don’t hold people’s attention too long. And, in truth, what got out is actually a pretty crappy version of what the origami swan could, should, & was envisioned to be. They were all pretty poor quality swans, actually. So all is not lost, but how can we get our business back into the black? Moreover, how can we get back into the black when your birds are being illegitimately copied & released into the wind by pirates?

Well, we could start by suing everyone who caught & kept a swan. There’s a lot of bad P.R. in that, though. And that alienates your clients… you kind of need to have a good, friendly disposition to sell origami birds from a cart & lawsuits don’t really project an image that’s particularly friendly. Plus it’s just a dumb idea. You could make the new birds out of lead. But then people wouldn’t be able to take them around… the portability is a big selling point. And why would someone want a to pay for a lead bird when they could catch a paper bird on the wind for free?

Well, maybe if we could just make a higher quality bird… maybe we could make one that’s 100% quality instead of 25% quality? Maybe most people would pay money for a higher quality turkey… maybe they’d even pay for a 100% quality swan, even though they already had a 25% one that they got for free! And maybe if we made more birds, maybe a falcon or a bald eagle! And we could offer consumers info and photos and videos and tour dates & all sorts of things you couldn’t get by just catching a knock-off on the wind. That could attract people. Oh you know what would be awesome? If we could use the wind to deliver the birds! If we could somehow fly the bird directly to the consumer, we wouldn’t have to spend all day pushing our cart through the park. I mean it’s a little inconvenient searching out an origami pirate or waiting for what you want to come along the wind. That would eliminate so much overhead! What if somehow we could make one bird & then have it copy itself practically for free and fly itself straight to the customer also for free!?!? We’d have to drop the price, of course… we already discovered that people want the birds but don’t agree with our valuation, if we eliminate all of the overhead we’d be insulting them to charge them full price. Especially if we were still selling that 25% quality version lol! It makes dropping the price make a lot more sense aside from the volume play, too! There’s way less risk. I mean… we can’t eliminate the overhead without dropping the price, really lol! It’s not even ethical.

I guess it’s just too bad we can’t make copies of our birds for free. And too bad the birds can’t fly themselves to the customers. And too bad flying straight to the customers conflicts with the idea of setting up an attractive store. If only we were trying to sell music online! lol Then we could set up an attractive shop that offers more primary (songs) & secondary (editorial filtering, videos, photos, bios, tour dates, etc) content than the pirates, we could sell the songs at a much higher quality than what is being pirated, we could price the songs competitively since our overhead is all but eliminated by exploiting the same “wind” (the internet) that set the songs free to begin with, we could make the store more convenient than not only our own old fashioned stores, but more convenient than getting the music from pirates by working with hardware & software vendors to create the ideal consumer experience, & we could exploit the growth in volume ushered in by the price drop by tying in other revenue streams like merchandise & concert tickets!

But alas, we’re selling origami birds. So we’re fucked. Those music guys don’t know how good they’ve got it.

Friday night the Bridges & the Modern Skirts performed at the 40 Watt in Athens, Ga, so I made a weekend trip out of it. Good times were had.

The Bridges are, besides the Films, my favorite band. The family band hails from Oxford, AL, but we claim them here in Atlanta. Recently they signed to Verve Records/Universal, & they have a debut LP hitting shelves June 10. These guys are the real deal, and not only wrote and arranged all of the songs on the record, they pull them off flawlessly live. The harmonies are unreal, & the musicianship is always spot on. For such a young band (the youngest just turned 18, and the oldest is 23), the intricacy & complexity of the arrangements are hard to believe but easy to swallow thanks their keen pop sensibilities. In that way they have a lot in common with Fleetwood Mac. One Way has “hit song” written all over it, & Echo boasts one of my favorite bass lines of all-time. Friday night was the usual incredible performance, preceding a long string of dates with Rooney that extends through mid-July.

Mp3: All The Words (2008, Such a Hopeful EP) buy it

The Modern Skirts were in rare form, headlining to a packed, hometown Twilight Criterium crowd. The sing-a-longs began with the opening number and continued through the second encore, the campfire-inspired b-side “Indiana Indian.” The rest of the set featured a mix of tracks from their first record, Catalogue of Generous Men, & their forthcoming record including the acoustic Motorcade, the herky-jerky sing-a-long Hood Ornament (Phillip’s solos in this song absolutely slay me), & the jangly R.E.M.-inspired Everready, all tried-and-true crowd pleasers at this point. The Skirts just finished mixing their new LP, which will be available sometime in the near future.

Mp3: Motorcade (2008, forthcoming album) buy it
Mp3: Indiana Indian (2006, Athfest Compilation) buy it

So I recorded this on April 15. And it’s just now going up. My bad. Trae swore he’d co-host the next one. We’ll see.

1. Gnarls Barkley - Going On
2. Phantom Planet - Do the Panic
3. Blitzen Trapper - Cool Love #1
4. Simple Kid - the Ballad of Elton John
5. David Vandervelde - Can’t See Your Face No More
6. MGMT - Time To Pretend
7. Goat - Sugar We’re Going Down
8. the Tallest Man On Earth - Pistol Dreams
9. Michael Trent - Situations
10. the Films - Thank Heaven For Little Girls
11. 22-20’s - Why Don’t You Do It For Me?
12. Sugarplum Fairy - She
13. Howlin’ Rain - Calling Lightning Pt 2
14. Modern Skirts - Motorcade
15. She & Him - Sweet Darlin’
16. Harrison Hudson - Baby Blues

001 - Tax Day.mp3

I’m convinced that Weezer’s forthcoming Rick Ruben-produced record is going to be incredibly bitchin’, based on the single (Pork and Beans). It crunches like the first two records, but with the sarcastic tone of the more recent records. And someone mentioned Weezer b-sides/rarities, so I decided to put together a mix of my favorite non-lp Weezer cuts. Enjoy.

1. Always (Island In the Sun single, 2001)
2. Lover In the Snow (Rivers home recording, 1997)
3. Starlight (Hash Pipe single, 2001)
4. Teenage Victory Song (I dunno what this is from, 2001)
5. Christmas Song (Christmas EP, 2000)
6. I Was Made For You (Rivers home recording, 2004)
7. Blast Off! (Songs From the Black Hole, 1995)
8. Dude, We’re Finally Landing (Songs From the Black Hole, 1995)
9. Annie’s Song (Rivers home recording, 2004)
10. Tomorrow (Rivers home recording, 2004)
11. I Just Threw Out the Love of my Dreams (Songs From the Black Hole, 1995)
12. Jamie (DGC Rarities, 1994)
13. You Gave Your Love To Me Softly (Angus Soundtrack, 1995)
14. Susanne (Mallrats Soundtrack, 1995)
15. My Evaline (Aus Undone single, 1994)
16. Living Without You (UK Maladroit, 2002)
17. Waiting On You (The Good Life - OZ EP, 1996)
18. Devotion (El Scorcho single, 1996)
19. Too Late To Try (SS2k, live, 2000)
20. O Girl (SS2k, live, 2000)
21. Modern Dukes (Album 5 demo, 2002)
22. She Who Is Militant (Album 5 demo, 2002)
23. Private Message (Album 5 demo, 2002)
24. Hey Domingo (Album 5 demo, 2002)
25. I Do (Hash Pipe single, 2001)

There could be a light at the end of the tunnel and it looks like nothing’s been learned. So disappointing. A lot of things could’ve been addressed by now, but they haven’t. And it looks like they won’t be.

Currently, it looks like the labels are entertaining a “tax” system (adding a surcharge to phone or internet bills), or an iPod-compatible subscription or all-you-can-eat iTunes plan. The latter holds a lot of promise in my eyes, but the former is fundamentally flawed in several ways.

Regarding the tax system, the recording industry first & foremost seems to be so ridiculously self-involved that they believe themselves to be the only industry impacted by the internet. In truth, any media industry, whether it’s recorded music, movies, software, books, recipes, photographs… almost all media can be replicated digitally practically for free with just the click of a mouse. If even a nominal fee is tacked onto phone or internet bills in order to pay the rights holders of music, it would only be fair to collect money for copyright holders across the board. This would send the price of broadband skyrocketting, of course, impeding the growth of broadband, upon which inarguably rests the future of our society. Our ability to maintain our stature in the global economy depends upon the proliferation of broadband internet. But all of the sudden you’ve got to shell out Y x $60/yr (assuming $5/mo per industry, Y being the number of industries who successfully get a copyright surcharge added to bills) on top of standard phone or internet fees before you can check your weather, order Chinese take-out, or look up the closest library. Seems a bit ridiculous to me.

One would think that if any label would realize this, it would be Warner, with their ties to so many other media industries, but Bronfman & Co. seem to be the main (if not single) proponents.

Furthermore, as more industries move pro-actively to the web (news, television, sports, movies, etc) & broadband becomes more & more common, the idea that the impossibly passive recording industry would receive a proportional increase in revenue strikes me as incredibly unjust. What you end up with is guaranteed revenue. The labels have a set income no matter how many albums they release, no matter the quality of or interest in the releases, so long as a general interest in the internet as a whole is maintained (fueled, of course, by facebook.com, myspace.com, youtube.com, weather.com, wikipedia.com, espn.com, perezhilton.com, etc). Who’s to say that the general public won’t eventually lose interest altogether in the music the labels are shilling? Not unlikely, actually. And yet the labels would still get this huge lump of cash based on market share regardless of interest level.

The alternative to this warped idea actually holds a lot of promise. As it’s been reported thus far, the plan could manifest as a plan option for iPhone users, an extra $5 or so a month, for access to iTunes’ entire catalog. Alternatively, premium iPods would come with the same access for the lifetime of the device. Presumably, this would come out to 1-2 years worth, between $60-$120 above the price of the iPod itself. Universal chief Doug Morris, the jackass that he is, has countered Steve Jobs’ $20 per device offer with an $80 per device demand, the same as he gets with the Universal-exclusive Verizon deal. Reflecting their 25% or so market share, that’s a $320 premium over the price of the already pricey iPod. Doug obviously wants to run the music industry into the ground.

The fact that non-percentage pricing is being discussed definitely raises some flags, I don’t think any label should be guaranteed anything, but I could be expecting too much from such a black-hearted, self-involved industry.

Of course the best case scenario & what probably should’ve happened at least 4 years ago would be that the labels get in touch with changing consumer habits. The value of a digital song is now just a fraction of what a physical song was worth in 2000. Part of this is inherent to the media form. The costs of production, distribution, & storage are at best nominal, the sound quality comes in at just a fraction of it’s physical counterpart, & the flexibility of the product is crippled by label-demanded Digital Rights Management software. On the end of the consumer, this has manifest itself as enormous music collections which are largely acquired illegally.

To illustrate how out of touch the labels are, we must compare a music collection from 2000 with a music collection from 2008. A large music collection at the turn of the century would be a cd book of 350 albums. At a little more than 1 cd per week for 4 years, this collection would weigh in at approximately $5,250 (at $15 per disc) & approximately 4,200 songs (at 12 songs per disc). A large collection in 2008 would be a full 160gb iPod. This is 40,000 songs sold at $.99 each, which lands at $39,600 - a 650% increase & a sum few in my social circle can afford. To find the value of a digital song today, we divide $5,250 (the traditional price of a large music collection) by 40,000 (the number of songs that fit on a 160gb iPod) and we get $.13125 (predictably 2/15ths of the current $.99 price tag).

Dropping the price to reflect a digital song’s true value to the consumer and providing a system of acquisition that bests the p2p systems (not a difficult task, especially with Apple willing to cooperate) could easily get the industry back on it’s feet, allowing it to grow with storage capacity (as portable storage nears 1tb, file format would switch to wav or an equivalent & then expand indefinitely in terms of the amount of songs that could be stored), as opposed to the ceiling offered by the tax system, subscriptions, & the all-you-can-eat plan. Moreover, the artist’s cut is guaranteed. I have a feeling artists are going to get squeezed out when things are being pulled from a pot.

This per-song or per-album pricing structure also forces the labels to satisfy customers in the way that p2p systems do, emphasizing more heavily career & niche artists with solid deep cuts, as opposed to the of-the-moment acts with just one hit single that the industry loves to cater to. It’s not always an immediate return, but that’s where the money is.

But it looks like things will just continue as they were, only divvying cash from a pool. Still, $5 per month or around a $100 premium on an iPod seems very fair to me. It’s a step in the right direction, even if bullshit pseudo-pop stars will continue to drown genuine artists in their marketing dollars.

But as Fall Out Boy mimmick Unskinny Bop & Nickelback put their spin on When I Look Into Your Eyes, I can’t help but feel like there’s a Nirvana approaching the horizon. Maybe there’s still something to look forward to after all.

Michael Trent - Keep Movement

I have friends who say Colour Revolt is the best band in the southeast right now. And to be honest I have a hard time disagreeing. Especially after listening to Naked and Red, the lead track on their new record. The guitars are absolutely gorgeous… the just the right mixture of buzz, hum, crunch, & drone, and the song has this perfect balance of tension & release. It’s a pop symphony in 3:49. On the whole, the sound lands somewhere between Nirvana & Radiohead, interjecting fits of rage between super tight grooves & the most tasteful soundscapes. It’s not often that a band comes along that matches this much urgency with equal sonic & musical maturity. This is one for the ages.

Mp3: Naked and Red (2008) buy it

Limbeck is what a rock & roll band should be. A bunch of dudes riding around & having a damn good time. And making some kickass music. And releasing material whenever they can. They just might be the most fun a band could be. In fact, what really hooked me on the band a good 4 years ago now was Hey, Everything’s Fine, the live acoustic bonus disc to Hi, Everything’s Great. The record really is just one big party. And Tuesday night wasn’t much different. Loads of banter, lots of back & forth between the crowd & the band. Lots of fun-ass rock & roll. They’re selling a new live record at their shows called The Delicacy of Living Modestly. I recommend it.

Mp3: I Wrote This Down (2004, Hey, Everything’s Fine) buy it
Mp3: Albatross & Ivy (2008, The Delicacy of Living Modestly) buy it
Mp3: So Lonely (Policia, 2005) buy it

Notes: Hey, Everything’s Fine is not easy to track down online, apparently, but is the bonus disc if you can find the second pressing of Hi, Everything’s Great. The Delicacy of Living Modestly is available only at their live shows. Policia is a Police tribute record released by The Militia Group.

1. Eels - My Beloved Mad Monster Party (2008)
2. Phantom Planet - Leader (2007)
3. Blitzen Trapper - Murder Babe (2007)
4. Del Shannon - Runaway (1961)
5. Ben Kweller - Lollipop (2005)
6. The Strangeloves - I Want Candy (1965)
7. The Beatles - I Saw Her Standing There (1963)
8. The Marvelettes - Please, Mr Postman (1961)
9. Mary Weiss - A Certain Guy (2007)
10. Four Tops - It’s the Same Old Song (1965)
11. Stevie Wonder - Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours (DJ Smash Essential Funk Mix) (2005)
12. Cody ChesnuTT - The Seed (2002)
13. The Everly Brothers - Wake Up Little Susie (1957)
14. Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers - Why Do Fools Fall In Love (1956)
15. Al Green - Tired Of Being Alone (1971)
16. Apollo Sunshine - Sign On the Window (2006)
17. David Vandervelde - Murder In Michigan (2007)
18. T Rex - Raw Ramp (1972)
19. MGMT - Kids (2007)

Notes: Track 1 is an alternate take of 1996’s My Beloved Monster that appears on the Useless Trinkets rarities collection. Track 5 is a cover of a The Chordettes’ 1958 hit. Track 6 is the original performance of the song, which was later re-visted by Bow Wow Wow in 1982. Track 8 was the first #1 hit for Motown & was later covered by the Beatles, among others. Track 9 is a recent b-side by the former lead singer of the Shangri-Las. Track 11 is a remix of the 1970 hit (obviously). Track 12 was reprised by The Roots on their 2002 record, Phrenology. Track 16 is a cover of the 1970 Bob Dylan track.

My introduction to T Rex came when Cary Ann Hearst performed Beltane Walk during an acoustic set a while back. In the short time since, T Rex has become one of the cornerstones of my musical taste. Curiously, Marc Bolan’s simple but certain songs have endured remarkably and the first great star of glam rock has become a cult icon in recent years. 1971’s T Rex album acts as the perfect introduction to T Rex, dividing the two greatest eras of the band - the later folk years (driven by mythological folklore) & the gradiose, sexed-up full band glam rock years. Though sales were driven by two singles not contained on the album (Ride A White Swan & Hot Love), the record did quite well and launched the band into superstardom. Beltane Walk, arguably the record’s signature track, could be considered a minimalist affair, with a synchopated snare drum pattern punctuating a bouncy bass line mimmicked by heavily distorted electric guitar–a formula that would set the stage for T Rex’s signature “boogie” sound.

Mp3: Beltane Walk (T Rex, 1971) buy it