Odds & Ends

Legal / Odds & Ends — No Comments
8
Apr 11

Rebecca Black’s Song Friday, $, and You

The saga of junior high school girl Rebecca Black and her inadvertent YouTube smash “Friday” is a lesson in both vanity production deals and how behaviors can change when income appears. Spinme.com details it very nicely here.

The performance royalties from the recent (and hilarious) national broadcast of Stephen Colbert’s version of Friday, accompanied by The Roots generated thousands of dollars in income. The question now apparently is, “for whom?”

Lesson in short: never sign something you don’t understand.

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5
Apr 11

With 14million MySpace bands, can you create a unique band name that you like?

stand-out-in-the-crowd-300x300

I spoke recently with Mark Caro, a writer for The Chicago Tribune and friend, for an article he wrote about the challenges of coming up with a unique band name these days. He also noted that MySpace now has over 14 million bands! Read it here.

Was it easy to come up with a name for your band? Were you able to go with your first choice or was it already taken? Any tips for new bands?

Btw, if you are looking for good summer read, check out Mark’s engaging book “The Foie Gras Wars: How a 5,000-Year-Old Delicacy Inspired the World’s Fiercest Food Fight” (Simon & Schuster)

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9
Feb 11

Music Website Heat Map

Where is your music heard on the net? Make sure you have your digital exposure covered:

http://virtualmusic.tv/2011/02/2010-music-website-heat-map/

(courtesy of virtualmusic.tv)

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27
Jan 11

A 2010 Fave: Sharon Van Etten’s “Epic”

If the lemon and cigarette breakfast plan yields songs like Sharon's, I'm in.

If a lemon and smokes breakfast yields songs like hers, I'm in.

Happy New Year!  I’ve been in Colombia hearing some remarkable music that I’ll be writing about soon.  I mention it now as an excuse for the delay in mentioning a favorite album of 2010, Sharon Van Etten’s, “Epic.”

The singer/songwriter genre is particularly tricky one.   The lyrically gifted ones can detail a personal struggle for insight from  anguish that summons us to reflect on our own lives .   Those less talented confuse earnestness with relevance or self-absorption with awareness.   On “Epic”, Sharon Van Etten hits an artistic grand slam.  Listen and learn, kids.

On each track of Epic, Von Etten’s vocals are front and center, her evocative lyrical tales supplanted occasionally by echo-laden ambient vocal sounds and a smattering of drums, reed sounds, pedal steel, and bass.  Every element frames the songs beautifully. The entire album is testament to the powerful reach of sonic simplicity and outstanding songwriting.

Can’t wait to hear her music live when she plays Lincoln Hall in Chicago.

Check out:   Sister Don’t Mind

Record label:  Badabing Records

Interview:  Sharon Van Etten Village Voice

Sharon Van Etten Tour Dates (courtesy of Brooklyn Vegan)

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18
Nov 10

AC/DC’s Highway to Hell

I may not be able to recall the numeric combination on the lock I use four times a week, but I can tell you exactly where I was when I first heard the AC/DC track “Highway to Hell.” June 1978, alone, listening to WLUP, driving my parents silver ford Fairmont wagon with red pleather interior, on Molitor Road, heading south of I-88, Aurora, IL. (Yep the Aurora of Wayne’s World. A bit which was as remarkably accurate as it was funny, imo.) The late afternoon summer sun was bright on the windshield as the drums kicked in behind the opening D chord of the title track.

Producer Mutt LangeAcdc_Highway_to_Hell was in full maestro-mode on that album, fleshing out the very best elements of a great hard rock band and distilling them to their most potent punch. When Bon Scott’s voice kicked in, I nearly drove off the road as I cranked the volume to “11″ and my foot hit the accelerator.

If you want a lesson in doing things right in the studio, listen closely to this recording. The line-up is basic: vocals, two guitars, bass, drums. Each track’s arrangement and mix is tightly constructed and meticulously straightforward. There are no accidents on the album. Every note, every swelling chord, every accented beat, sounds like it could exist in no better space other than that precise moment. As with all great music, on Highway to Hell, God is in the Details.

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