And the whites and grays give way to the blue, as sunshine returns to Santa Fe.
In case you want to know what our names look like in Japanese:
Here is a video from the Blue Note Tokyo website – they put the whole thing together and selected and edited the music. It’s interesting that they cut off the end – one feels suspended and the suggestion seems to be to come hear the rest at the Blue Note. Nice.
Now, it’s almost all free, instant and infinite. And our relationship with music has changed forever.
Like any revolution (((like anything that happens, really))) the Digital Revolution will only be understood in hindsight. Say, ten years from now, or fifty.
In the meantime we’ll just have to move forward somehow, as if in a dark hallway, slowly feeling our way to the exit, or entrance as it may be. Many will trip, many will fall, and eventually we will be out the door, wondering about what happened, and what took so long (((and why nobody left a light on))). Maybe the solution will be terribly obvious – in hindsight. It usually is.
Played a lot of guitar today. In the late afternoon I recorded myself playing This Spring Release 10,000 Butterflies in the studio, using HD Video and ProTools at 24/88.2. Now I just need to replace the audio recorded on the video with the audio from the ProTools session… You will find the result here soon.
I keep turning to the Guardian for music news.
Pirate Bay’s purchase proves they’re not altruistic | Behind the Music | Helienne Lindvall | Music | guardian.co.uk The Pirate Bay is not the first company (and, yes, whatever image they tried to portray, it was always a business) to have built their entire existence on making copyrighted material available for free, without asking, or compensating, the people who created the material. As far back as 2000, Napster was in the dock for copyright infringement; in 2008, the brand was bought by the American electronics retailer Best Buy for $121m (£74m). As I’ve previously reported, LastFM built their business on unlicensed music only to sell it to CBS for $280m (£171m). And let’s not forget Google’s purchase of YouTube for $1.65bn (£1bn). For supposedly “altruistic” ventures, these companies sure made a lot of money. Some would argue the artists whose music built these businesses should have received some of that money.
Read the whole article. Couldn’t agree more. I didn’t know all of this background stuff about the Pirate Bay.
Upaya Newsletter for 6/22/2009 The trick is to create a society in which the privilege of disposable income is not contingent on the existence of disposable people–to say nothing of the disposable tigers, ice caps, and arable land. – Keizer
Or, our happiness should not be based on other creatures unhappiness.
Neuromancer is 25 years old… William Gibson wrote it on a manual typwriter, model Hermes 2000 (((scroll down to see that Swiss-built beauty)))
William Gibsons book Neuromancer was published on July 1st, 1984. (Via Macworld)
Here is a link to a wonderful essay by Stephen Batchelor:
This article in the Guardian argues that since every person has a finite amount of spending money and since Games and DVD sales have gone upe dramatically – game sales more than tripled and movie sales and rentals nearly doubled – there was simply less money left to buy music.
But, one could also say that it is easier to obtain and download free music than it is to obtain free games and movies – the gaming and movie industries use much more serious DRM than the music biz, which has actually dropped DRM in most cases.
During the Winter I read some of 2666: A Novel by Roberto Bolano. In the book an English artist cuts off his right hand and nails it to a self-portrait. The painting becomes his “last self-portrait”, or at least the last one painted with his right hand, and increases the value of all of his other paintings…
‘Suicide’ sculpture of Damien Hirst causes controversy in Spain | Art and design | guardian.co.uk It is Damien Hirst with a bloody hole in his head – the richest bad boy of British art finally turned into a piece of half-pickled art himself. Spanish artist Eugenio Merino’s sculpture, which shows a Hirst figure pointing a gun at himself and blowing his own brains out, is meant to be a comment on the British artist’s own £50mdiamond-studded skull, For the Love of God. Merino has called his piece “4 the Love of Go(l)d”, suggesting that Hirst’s attempts to increase the value of his own work would only be enhanced by his own death.
“I thought that, given that he thinks so much about money, his next work could be that he shot himself. Like that the value of his work would increase dramatically,” Merino told The Guardian. “Obviously, though, he would not be around to enjoy it.”
Pop Music Is Like The Daily Paper “When I finish something I want it out that day,” says Eno later, in a phone conversation. “Pop music is like the daily paper. Its got to be there then, not six months later. So we decided to release on our websites first, then put it on the commercial websites, then as a CD, then with different packaging. It’s just trying to see what works. The business is an exciting mess at the moment.”
As usual it’s in the air and many musicians are picking up on it.
That’s why I started our subscription service. To share music from the archives as well as live-recordings, but also to introduce new stuff I am working on – immediately. (((like the Tears in the Rain recordings in 2006))). If I am excited about a new solo or band recording I want to share that at once, even though lots might change between that and the official release. It also allows you to witness the process of recording and then honing a piece of music, and note what changes and what does not.