Volcano Boy

Seth Godin on the Music Industry Again

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:00:00 -0500

Sure there are a lot of posts about Seth Godin on this site, but I really like his writing.

Seth has just posted a transcript of a talk he did about the music industry. It's full of good insight and good advice.

link

Jeff Buckley Tribute Show

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 15:05:14 -0500

The excellent man and excellent drummer Derek Kerswill has put together a tribute to the late Jeff Buckley this weekend at The Lucky Dog.

Scott at the Telegram has a excellent article on the show and Derek.

telegram.com

8 p.m. Saturday (2/9) Lucky Dog Music Hall, 89 Green St., Worcester

ps. Why is the photo of Scott McLennan so gigantic?

click here to read a review of the night

Wormtown Blog

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 09:55:36 -0500

LB Worm is keeping a great blog called the "Wormtown Punk". The blog has tons of old photos and scans of zines from the '70s. Reading about the The Great Clark Swindle, regarding The Clash at Clark University is real interesting.

wormtownpunk.blogspot.com

Build Your Own Stylophone-style synth controller

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:43:44 -0500

This is just too cool looking, Make has instructions on how to make your very own Stylophone synth controller

fire up your soldering irons

link (via Engadget)

Joe Perry on Worcester

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 13:30:40 -0500

The Pulse has a interview with Joe Perry where he talks a little bit about gigging in Worcester. I could read this kind of stuff all day.

"Well, it was pretty much like it was in a lot of the smaller towns that we played back then. I would liken it to the Detroit area or Ohio. Worcester was a lot more like those cities than say Boston or Chicago. Those cities were pretty much the same back in those days. They had more character as individual cities. Nowadays with Starbucks and such, everything is the same, all these chains are all the same, it�?s starting to get pretty bland. Back then Worcester had its own kind of vibe and culture and when I say it was kind of like Ohio, I mean some of the towns in the outskirts of Ohio like Columbus. It had it�?s own thing going on, bands had a different kind of a sound than say now. Things are generic now, whereas then, Worcester had the culture, the restaurants, I miss that. I miss that feeling of things having their own vibe. It�?s the same with a lot of other places where it�?s become an �?If it works in this town it should work in that town�? kind of a feeling. Worcester was a great place to play, I remember Sir Morgan�?s Cove [now the Lucky Dog], there�?s some history out there."

Read the whole interview here

Looking for Changes - McCarntey tribute - Worcester Animal Rescue Benefit

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 17:01:29 -0500

�?Looking for Changes�? will be released Saturday at the Lucky Dog Music Hall, 89 Green St., Worcester. The show begins at 8 p.m. and proceeds from the $10 admission will go to the rescue league. A raffle for CDs and T-shirts by bands performing that night will also bring in some money for the dogs and cats cared for at the animal rescue league�?s Holden Street shelter.

Read more at telegram.com

Carry On Wayward Son

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 15:20:08 -0500

I prefer a real full band actually, however, this may be interesting to some.

Who needs a band?

link

Seth Godin - Music Lessons

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 15:36:53 -0500

I have mentioned Seth Godin here before, I liked this article he wrote on the lessons to learn from the music business (as it falls apart).

2. Copy protection in a digital age is a pipe dream
If the product you make becomes digital, expect that the product you make will be copied.

There�?s a paradox in the music business that is mirrored in many industries: you want ubiquity, not obscurity, yet digital distribution devalues your core product.

Remember, the music business is the one that got in trouble for bribing disk jockeys to play their music on the radio. They are the ones that spent millions to make (free) videos for MTV. And yet once the transmission became digital, they understood that there�?s not a lot of reason to buy a digital version (via a cumbersome expensive process) when the digital version is free (and easier).

Most items of value derive that value from scarcity. Digital changes that, and you can derive value from ubiquity now.

The solution isn�?t to somehow try to become obscure, to get your song off the (digital) radio. The solution is to change your business.

You used to sell plastic and vinyl. Now, you can sell interactivity and souvenirs.

link

Podcast Studio

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 09:27:42 -0500

This is a fantastic little device that attaches to your iPod and uses all that space for recording via dual XRL and 1/4" inputs and a built in mic and it runs on 2 AA batteries. Comes out in June and will cost about $100.

link

Drum Buddy

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 13:30:06 -0500

Analog drum machine controlled by light. Sadly it is sold out, but you can still get on the list for the next ones. $999 for the privilege.

read on:

Imagine a plastic rope (which does not conduct electricity) morphing into a braided metal wire (which will be an excellent conductor of electricity) right before your very eyes. Imagine further that you can control this transformation by dimming the lights - in the dark you have a plastic rope; turn the lights halfway up and the rope is transforming into metal wire; lights all the way bright and you have 100% braided German silver. The Cadmium Sulfide photo resistors are located inside of the bent colored tubes around the can of the

DRUM BUDDY and are like little bits of this special rope within each oscillator circuit, morphing from conductor to nonconductor and back again as the light from the holes passes them by. Strange and amazing but actually not very complicated.

link (via bb)

Thom Yorke and David Byrne music articles on Wired

Wed, 19 Dec 2007 12:45:22 -0500

These two Wired articles are an excellent read.
Byrne: Previously there'd be a release date, and advance copies would get sent to reviewers months ahead of that.

Yorke: Yeah, and then you'd ring up and say, "Did you like it? What did you think?" And it's three months in advance. And then it'd be, "Would you go do this for this magazine," and maybe this journalist has heard it. All these silly games.

Byrne: That's mainly about the charts, right? About gearing marketing and prerelease to the moment a record comes out so that �? boom! �? it goes into the charts.

Yorke: That's what major labels do, yeah. But it does us no good, because we don't cross over [to other fan bases]. The main thing was, there's all this bollocks [with the media]. We were trying to avoid that whole game of who gets in first with the reviews. These days there's so much paper to fill, or digital paper to fill, that whoever writes the first few things gets cut and pasted. Whoever gets their opinion in first has all that power. Especially for a band like ours, it's totally the luck of the draw whether that person is into us or not. It just seems wildly unfair, I think.

David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music

David Byrne's Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists �? and Megastars

Best Rock Movies of All Time

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 16:17:27 -0500

Volcano Boy users in the Forum started a fantastic list of their favorite music movies. The list is long so I went through and added all the movies to this amazon.com slide show. It's a fantastic list and it's still growing, so click here to read the forum and read more to see what movies are mentioned so far.

Brain Controlled Synthesizer

Thu, 06 Dec 2007 17:25:23 -0500

Soon with the help of a special helmet and some electrodes, a person can play a tune on synth by just the power of thought. So forget about those pesky fingers. No more fingering exercises. See See brain controlled synth and imagine the possibilities.

So, perhaps someday, anyone will be able to put this technology on their head, think about a tune, and boom, there it is. No longer will we need cds, music halls, TV, Radio, desktops, bands, everyone will be their own musician. All you will need to do is think music, where ever you are and the hills come alive with the sound of your thought. A truly democratic music industry. No wait, actually it could lead to having no industry at all, just consumers of the technology. Kinda like what is happening the the video world. Web sites will download brain waves and sell ads based on this new content produced by the masses. At first many will revel in joy over this new technology until musicians everywhere all realize, no one will be ale to make a living off of it outside of the owners of the technology and web sites that can exploit the silliest stuff with their million hits a day web sites. But heck, its all about the music. Just think, the end of music as we know it just like what is kind of happening in other modes of art and communication (like video, print, etc.). Then, I predict, thoughts can also be turned into visual images and text displayed on clothing or body signs. We will soon be reading each others minds. Yeah Baby! Imagine. Think only good thoughts now.

It raises the question: Will all art and culture be reduced to a function that is simply to be selling something?

Hail the new frontier.

no more tuning your guitar

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 10:32:33 -0500

I always hated reaching ALL the way up to the head stock, then turning those pegs...risking Carpal tunnel. Not to mention the mind numbing experience of trying to get the little light in the middle to light up. Hey for $900, if I don't have to buy that extra guitar cable and tuner...thats worth it...right?

link

Stephin Merritt: a song in 2 days

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:51:08 -0500

NPR Project Song has a fantastic video of Stephin Merritt (Magnetic Fields/Future Bible Heroes/etc.) creating a song from concept to final mix in two days.

link