Interview with Bob Ohlsson

Link: http://www.prosoundweb.com/recording/tapeop/olmo/olmo3.php

..in which he offers some interesting observations and thoughts about the recording industry in general. On some of the evolution in the 1960's and 70's:

...in the ‘50s, the songwriters had an absolute stranglehold on the record business. Basically, the songwriters would come up with a hit song, shop it around the labels and it would go to the highest bidder. Labels did not like that, and that’s a lot of what allowed the self contained group thing to come in, because the labels said, okay we’re only going to sign people that write their own material.

On the current state of the record industry:

For some reason or another, people like to blame the record company on not being profitable and I’m not even sure the record companies are profitable at this point, because when you start adding up the math, I mean the record store is getting at least half of the price of a compact disc and right now we’re in an interesting situation, in that the record stores are calling all of the shots!
So basically you have to pay for placement in a record store, you have to pay for a listening station, I mean on space music releases, I’ve had deadlines like you would have on an Elvis Presley single in the 60s! (laughs). Because they had scheduled thousand of dollars worth of listening stations in some chain, and you gotta have the CDs there or those listening stations are gonna be empty but they’ve still paid for it.
It’s kind of a bizarre situation right now where I think a lot of the whole industry is gonna have to reinvent itself. But it has a number of times in the past and there’s no reason to believe that it won’t again, so I’m actually feeling kind of upbeat as the whole thing comes crumbling down, cause in some ways it’s a mess that needs to be straightened out, needs to start being run by people inside the music business rather than outside accountants.
I think we’re gonna see some very interesting stuff happening in the next three or four years because everybody that I’ve talked to think that these major label consolidations and acquisitions have made no financial sense at all and, you know, I root for the independent, I mean I will never in my life forget that at one point we at Motown were selling more records than RCA and Columbia! You know, it CAN be done.

03.27.2008 • Music Industry • PermalinkPermalink

Another band sues it's record label...

Link: http://music.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,,2268037,00.html

The Smashing Pumpkins, who have been a band for nearly 20 years now, are suing Virgin Records for allegedly licensing their songs without their permission. As this article in The Guardian shows, record labels are turning to new sources of revenue, with existing CD and DVD revenue streams declining. It seems that the Smashing Pumpkins believe that Virgin acted outside of its commercial and contractual remit by licensing recorded material.
These sorts of disputes are going to become increasingly common in the future, as record labels desperately try to augment "pure music" revenue streams with money from any source that they can find. Artists will need to be very vigilant and aggressive in ensuring that their works and image are not used in a haphazard and clumsy way that will dilute their brand. In some ways it is a return to the 60's and 70's, when artists were treated as drones by the recording industry, their likenesses and songs were routinely exploited with little of their input, and they were poorly rewarded for the exploitation. Artists may have to fight those kinds of battles all over again.

03.26.2008 • Music Industry • PermalinkPermalink

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome - Interview with Keith Jarrett

Link: http://www.immunesupport.com/library/showarticle.cfm?ID=2811

While researching other subjects, I stumbled across this 2000 interview with Keith Jarrett, who at the time had been suffering from CFS and was trying to recover. It is an interesting insight into both Jarrett himself and the challenges of trying to work through CFS, particularly if you are a musician.

03.6.2008 • In Their Own Words • PermalinkPermalink

Audiophile humor

While researching an issue with my borrowed Technics record deck, I came across this nice example of wit on a turntable support forum:

y'know, IF you haven't recently chugged three grande cappuchinos AND if you don't have a hyper-high compliance cartridge with a nude diamond mounted on a cantilever fashioned from the fossilized pubic hair of a (redheaded!) Roman virgin... you can actually cue by hand, without using the little cueing lever dealie. :-)

03.4.2008 • Re-mastering from LP to CD • PermalinkPermalink

Music Listening - March 2008

1. Bill Bruford's Earthworks Live in Philadelphia
Another excellent radio concert, courtesy of the Dime treasure trove. This is from the tour to support the group's first album. Some of the tunes are differently structured live because of the limitations of on-the-road sequencer technology at the time (Django Bates would set up a sequencer pattern on keyboards so that he could play his tenor horn, and some of the sequencer limitations worked against reproducing entire tunes live e.g. "Up North", which comes to a rather sudden end). However, you get the sense that this was a true jazz ensemble, with plenty of improvisation going on.

2. Don Ellis Live in Columbus OH 1977
Recorded for radio use at a local university only a few months before his untimely death at the age of 44, this concert shows Ellis and his big band in full flight.
Ellis was a true innovator - he pioneered the use of (among other things) the quarter-tone trumpet, the echoplex and a whole raft of unusual combinations of time signatures. After his death the following year, he became a forgotten figure for many years, which is unfortunate because, as this concert shows, he had a great combination of compositional and arrangement sense, breathing life into what can become a very stale and somewhat boring musical format. Big bands tend to suffer from the "not enough space" issue, as the arrangers fill in all of the silence with often-cliched arrangements, and often all of the tunes start to sound like each other. Neither accusation could be levelled at this band. The concert ends with the entire "French Connection" suite - a piece of music that still sounds powerful and fresh over 35 years after it was written.

02.29.2008 • Music I'm Currently Listening To • PermalinkPermalink