I’ve been thinking more about this “Bum Rush the Charts” thing. Just trying to figure out why I should spend my 99¢ on a band whose music doesn’t do much for me.

Who stands to benefit? Well, Podshow, certainly, to the extent there’s any publicity wash from this campaign. Black Lab, no doubt: lots of people who really don’t know or like them buying their track. But “amateur media”? Come on, give me a break!

Black Lab is a band whose music I don’t really love; it’s just not my style. Even Podshow’s number one satellite repairman P.W. Fenton said the same thing on his most recent Digital Flotsam podcast. I’d never listen to them on my own.

So my participating in this campaign is like putting 99¢ into some Salvation Army kettle somewhere, Read the rest of this entry »

A group of (Podshow-affiliated) podcasters have mounted a campaign to “Bum Rush the Charts” on March 22. In the spirit of “bringing the Media Man to his knees,” these podcasters want to show the Big Media how powerful we “little” podcasters are, by pushing an independent-label band, Black Lab, to the top of the iTunes charts for one day, March 22.

Thinking back to the rah-rah spirit with which I undertook podcasting in 2005, I’m inclined to shout “Yeah!” and hold my right fist in the air, thumb and pinky finger extended in a “rock-on” posture. We’ll show them who the powerful people are in the music biz. This is the quaint world-view I held about 9-12 months ago.

Then I reflect on it, and start to wonder: just exactly who is going to be impressed by this? Read the rest of this entry »

So I haven’t really been all that political in this blog, but I was home yesterday and had President Bush’s press conference on the television for a bit. Wow, what an inarticulate human being.

Geezer that I am, I’ve lived through ten U.S. presidents. Every one of them, plus the two prior to my birth (FDR and Truman) spoke in front of radio and television microphones. They represented a lot of speaking styles, several different areas of the country, and a wide spectrum of political views.

In my entire life, there has never been a president who came across as a bigger babbling idiot than George W. Bush. When he speaks, he just seems to have trouble thinking up things to say. Read the rest of this entry »

My 17-year-old daughter, who is herself a Beatles fan, gave me the new CD/DVD set Love, the mashup of Beatles music produced by Giles and George Martin for Cirque du Soleil, as a Christmas gift.

I am the original Beatlemaniac, yet for some reason the CD sat on my desk for three or four weeks before I imported it into iTunes. (Maybe it’s a sign of the times that I had to wait until I had a few minutes to import it to my iPod before I got around to listening. Does this serve the Beatles right for waiting so long to join the digital music revolution?)

The album is fantastic. Beatles purists (mostly on discussion forums) who complain that it’s “messing around” with the originals must not remember what the Beatles did during their recording careers. They messed around all the time. John Lennon was one of the earliest proponents of reverse-tracking and using found sound.

On the other hand, many people criticized the CD for not being bold enough. And many reviewers seem to share my fascination with the combination of brilliant re-mastering and wild creativity from an authoritative source, the Martins. (Mercifully, the producers did not try to include any of “Revolution #9″ on this soundtrack. Wild creativity does have its limits.)

As a Baby Boomer, I will probably always have the feeling that the Beatles are somehow “cutting edge.” However, listening to and looking at the interviews with surviving Beatles and spouses reminds me that their music is now the music of really rather old people. Classic it may be, but cutting edge it’s not anymore.

But it is great music. I will go to my grave (hopefully several decades from now) maintaining that modern rock-and-roll owes an enormous debt of gratitude to the Fab Four and George Martin, for essentially inventing such things as massive multitracking and stadium rock shows. And the music remains fresh and strong. Why else would kids born in the 1990s be so into it?

I’ve been a performing artist for money ever since I was about 13 years old. Throughout high school and university I thought of myself as a performer. (I’m using the term “performer” because I have called myself a professional musician and a professional actor at several stages in my life.)

Particularly when I was trying to get started as an actor in New York, I used to expend a lot of energy and stress trying to figure out “who I was,” by which I mean what kind of performing persona was most likely to get me hired. Was I a young leading man? A character actor? A comedian? A musical actor? Something else? I never exactly zeroed in on any of those, which might have something to do with my not “making it” big as an actor. (That and my desire to stay married.)

Last night at my church, we had our once-a-year “Open Mike Night,” which is just what it sounds like. Anybody who wants to sing or play something can get on the program. A few dozen people from the congregation come to listen. A handful of folks, some of whom really don’t otherwise get up in front of an audience too much, present their musical tidbits. It’s a lot of fun, and yet we would never dream of putting out a CD of the result. We just do it for fun.

Or, actually, why do we do it?

I was thinking about this this morning. Why does a performing artist perform? For some people it was pretty scary getting up in front of friends and casual acquaintances to sing. You expose a lot about yourself when you do that. It’s not only about one’s singing voice; it’s also about one’s taste in music, one’s confidence in one’s presentation of self to others, even one’s ideology and point of view.

People who perform are famously driven by ego, but this Latin word for “I” can be applied to anyone. Everybody has an ego, and everybody wants his/her ego fed by approval. One of our first urges is for approval from Mom. When our friends approve of our song (recitation, magic trick, etc.), it’s even better. Mom pretty much has to approve, but friends don’t, necessarily. And when strangers approve, well, then you are somebody.

I guess I’ve been looking for approval from strangers all my life. When casting directors and talent agents gave me approval in my New York years, it put me on top of the world. And when I got nothing from them but indifference, it put me into a deep, funky depression.

It’s taken a long time to get a good perspective on this. And I’m still working on it.

Categories: performing, acting, music

I don’t want to get into a lot of “podcast-proselytizing” in this blog, but this piece from today’s Washington Post caught my eye:

“Internet Illiterate” Mom Sued Over Music Downloads

The RIAA has given Patricia Santangelo, a 43-year-old divorced mother of two, a lovely Christmas gift: a lawsuit for music piracy because some kid (not her own kid) got on her computer and downloaded a couple songs. Are they serious? Twelve-year-old kids? Deceased grandmothers who don’t own computers? Divorced moms?

I actually am not a fan of KaZaa (or however you spell/capitalize it) downloading. I think if rights are owned, you really shouldn’t download music tracks for free. It just seems a bit tacky not to pay anybody anything at all for a song.

But this is really beyond the pale. Between Sony’s installing secret quasi-spyware on your computer whenever you buy one of their CDs and the RIAA’s suing computer-illiterate soccer moms for illegal downloading, it seems clear to me that the end is near for Big Music. (And the end’s been on the horizon for a couple years now.)

It’s a shame there’s not yet a great publicity machine for “independent” artists, because there are some genius musicians out there that haven’t made it into Big Media yet (if they ever will). The difference, though, between the music biz now and that of 15 years ago is that now those artists can actually sell their work on places like CDBaby and other web sites, and actually get much of the money that results from the transaction.

Here’s hoping that more “major artists” will see their way clear to jump off the Big Music bandwagon and shift the way we look at popular music.

Categories: music, riaa