For the few of you who probably haven't heard, here's some news that really sucks.

Shit.

Sounds like a college football team from Illinois.

Okay. Remember the brilliant mashed-up G.I. Joe P.S.A.s I was talking about last year?

If you need reminding, here's a link to the first one.

Go look at it. Then come back.

Great huh?

Now go check out this.

What do they have in common?

Well, you just saw the Cease and Desist letter Hasbro issued to Fensler, and VW is suing the makers of the faux-spot.

What neither of those companies seem to have grasped is how helpful those copyright infringements are. Most of us know this, although we also recognize and understand why a company would like to distance itself from both Dada, absurdist, polysexual riffs on their wholesome property and suicide bombers respectively. Not good for the image.

But, from an advertising point of view, these spots work. The logic is simple, classic ad-think: Fensler's films implant G.I. Joe in the mind of anyone who watches them. You might think you're impervious to that, but if you've watched 26 P.S.A.s, each of which ends with the branded logo and (slightly warped) jingle, you start thinking about G.I. Joe. You start talking about G.I. Joe. You start showing them to other people and they start thinking and talking about G.I. Joe. And so on. And some day, perhaps in haste to get a gift for your nephew who's in town from Nebraska, you run to your local Toys Super Store atrocity and you think "oh shit, what the hell am I going to buy Little Jimmy, I have no fucking clue what he wants" and you reach for the first thing you think of, and the first thing you think of just might be G.I. Joe.

That's all pretty much Advertising 101 stuff, but it works, and companies that are gifted such rare opportunities would probably do better to just issue a little hollow public huffing and puffing, maybe a statement decrying the bad taste of the artist, and then do nothing.

Hasbro clearly doesn't agree.

The issue is a little more sticky with VW; less easy to dismiss VW's complaint. No matter how funny or shocking the spot, there's no getting away from the association with terrorism. However, you'd have to be an idiot to actually believe that the spot implies that VW endorses suicide bombers.

VW's legal team clearly doesn't agree.

No matter which side you take, the end result is that this spot has done a tremendous amount of work for VW, getting the logo and name out to an incalculable number of people. Even perhaps tens of thousands of people like myself who are largely unreachable by most mainstream media. As I see it, even if VW does find the spot deeply objectionable, and even if a consensus emerges that the spot is tasteless or offensive, it's still performing an advertising service that no media buy could ever perform.

So yes Hasbro and VW: get all indignant, make a stink, even threaten lawsuits. Then, when the public's attention turns to the next great scandal, forget anything happened, and hire those guys to do your marketing.

Anyone that bright and creative is too good to lose.

...

Here is your reward for reading to the end.

Y'all know I don't watch the TV. I don't even have one. If I did, I'd watch three things: cycling, soccer, and that British car show Top Gear I think it's called, with that fascinating character who has the magic touch.

Since the implosion of the Lakers, basketball has dropped off the list, but that's another story for probably never. Yeah, fair-weather fan and all that. Guilty as charged.

Sometimes I miss good stuff though. I was into the Sopranos when I was spending a lot of time in NY and NJ, not because I was in NY and NJ but because it was easy to catch it at Amy and Alex's pad, although being in NJ and watching the Sopranos is a knife-full of icing on the cake.

What I also missed was this little show that came and went in one season called Freaks and Geeks. I watched the last three episodes Sunday night on DVD. My friend urgently suggested that given our common age and background, I needed to see this show.

She was pretty much right. If you came of age somewhere in that transition from the 70s to the 80s, it's a pretty neat show, with crisp, attentive story writing, and characters that will knock you out. It's almost spooky how every single character save Nick's dad reminds me almost precisely of someone I knew or maybe even still know. Precisely. Like I could just substitute names and let the show run its course. It would be that easy.

In those three episodes, scenario after scenario felt dreadfully, beautifully familiar. I even remembered kids I hadn't thought of in twenty years, including this red-headed girl at a friends' illicit "party" that we somehow all talked our parents into driving us to, where the Kinks' "Destroyer" owned us all, and we slow-danced to the slow songs illuminated by those cheap "disco" lights you could buy at Radio Shack, and on the way out I tried to steal a peck on the cheek--or more--from the red-headed girl. Her name was probably Jessica. Or maybe Jane. Or Esmerelda. Who knows?

She sure looked like the evil Cindy on the show though. And that party. Oh god. How real that party was. Spin the Bottle that never ended even remotely like the myth would have you believe it should (although the über geek getting up in the grill of that trendy bitch was SWEET! And he got a kiss for his troubles!). Hell, my buddies Paul and Abby got better results out of Truth or Dare at the end of a humid lunch in 6th grade than any of those sweaty, palpitating shag-carpet Spin the Bottle sessions.

Anyway, good show if you missed it. Check out the DVD. Although I warn you of one thing: the ending--and I mean the ending ending, like last minute of the last episode ever--hits the most sour note imaginable. My theory is that the creators knew they weren't getting renewed, so they wrote in this horrible coda that just hits the most clangingly wrong note.

Actually, my theory is bad because we listened to the commentary afterwards and there wasn't a trace of rancor in their voices. They seemed quite pleased with this little "clever" twist.

Trust me: it's awful. Really, painfully, awful and wrong and bad. Wrong-bad.

But do watch the episodes, especially if you're a pal of mine and you've ever vaguely wondered what it was like growing up in the late 70s and early 80s. I am assured that until that ending, all the other episodes preceding the three I watched are as good as the three I watched. All right notes and good things and two-panel velour shirts with white piping.

The documentary I mentioned a few days ago screens tomorrow, Tuesday, May 4, at 10 p.m. on most PBS affiliates. It's part of the Independent Lens series.

Here's the impressively slick website, with quite a few links to supplementary information and an interview with director and editor Natasha Uppal.

Credits! We like credits! Scroll down just a bit...then scroll down again nearly to the bottom.

On a purely professional level, this was a particularly satisfying project, as I got to contribute both as a crew member and as creative contributor, with five tracks licensed, on top of which I'd been a long-time fan of the Grand Star and the club Firecracker. Oh wait...I forgot that I DJd at Firecracker once too!

Check here for your local PBS affiliate if you're not sure which one it is.

If you're in LA, reminder: the screening party starts tomorrow at 9 at, where else? The Grand Star.

Another slightly interesting tidbit of news regarding my dad's work is that I will be speaking with a film writer who's writing a new biography of Buster Keaton. My dad was close to one of the last people to work professionally with Keaton, hiring him to appear in a commercial he wrote and directed.

It was one of his favorite stories in a long line of good stories from the TV and advertising business starting in the late 50s and extending through the late 80s. He spoke of Keaton with awe: that this old man, a legend, decades past his heights of fame would take the work and execute it with dignity and full concentration, applying all of the trademark effort he was ever known for. This involved scaling a telephone pole in the Arizona desert while dressed in a wool suit...again, and again, and again. Take after take. Didn't complain nor bat an eye. Amazing.

Anyway, I have some wonderful stills from on the set and a 16mm reel of the commercial, and I was chatting with a coworker who happens to be friends with the writer, so she's asked to get in touch and talk about it, which I think is neat. I'm always glad to share this material...as I and my sisters did regarding the Z Channel (for which, coincident with early film stars, my dad conducted one of the last if not the last interview with Groucho Marx...I remember the day he went; I wish I could have gone. He came back, again, awed).

Decidedly better news that I received a couple days ago is that the Z Channel documentary I wrote about in December is an Official Selection in Cannes this May. Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession will be premiering out of competition on May 16 to be followed with a screening here in June and then release, although I don't have details on where and when you can see it yet.

My dad would be absolutely tickled. The thought that he'd somehow, in some way find himself on the screen in Cannes would have made his day! Makes a nice tribute I must say and it feels good...it's just not every day that you see your parents receiving that kind of appreciation for the work they devoted their lives to.

Good news! The documentary movie One Night at the Grand Star will be on KCET (the LA PBS station) Tuesday, May 4, at 9 p.m.

It's a wonderful hour long document of a beautiful night, one that dips and turns into unexpected corners, unearthing moving little portraits of people you don't always pay attention to, as well as documenting the surreal and ebullient clash of DJ culture and old time show business; a night with roots that start in early 20th century China.

Sound improbable? Watch it and find out how it works!

I furnished three or four tunes for the soundtrack and did some location recording of the jazz trio that is a resident in the club the movie depicts. And although I had no official role in editorial, I sat in with editor and director Natasha Uppal on a few sessions, lending some editorial ideas.

Do you remember the old G.I. Joe cartoons? Do you remember the P.S.A.s that would run after them?

Wait...it doesn't matter. These shorts are all you need to know.

(Warning: depending on your personality, there's a good chance you'll watch these and kind of shrug and go whatever. I and my coworker Wade and my buddy Steve who introduced me to these have concluded that a surprisingly high number of people are impervious to the genius of G.I. Joe. All the proof in the world is that I work with another gentleman who actually worked on (and I think wrote some of the episodes of) G.I. Joe. He merely chuckled lightly and shuffled off. Didn't get it).

Also, try to imagine precisely how ridiculously fabulous these are if your job is as an animation editor.

That would be me.

When you're done, check out the home page and watch the other band DVD clips. If you ever drank too much at parties and had big ideas, this is for you.

I've been seeing all this William Hung stuff floating around the net. Because I am dumb, I did not know who William Hung was, but it was clear that he was something of a net sensation...you know, teh kind of fing U C on teh intarweb mEsSaGe bOaRDs.

Then I read this. While I cannot comment on Goldstein's commentary I at least now have some semblance of an idea of who William Hung is and why he is famous. The original article Goldstein savages claims:

You certainly wouldn't see them glorify a black man who couldn't sing and dance on "American Idol." Nor would they prop up a clumsy, tone-deaf white person.

And this, urgently, imperatively, must be corrected by the immortal Mrs. Miller, as cruel a joke as was ever played on a gullible, clumsy, tone-deaf white person.

--

Notes, disclaimers, etc.: my father hired Mrs. Miller in the 60s to do a number of commercials. He knew and/or met some of the people responsible for her rise. I've always understood that the joke played on Mrs. Miller was just about as cruel and intentional as you might expect...crueler than the above-linked site would have you believe...but they are fans and they want to be nice, and she deserves it, because by all accounts, she really was a wonderful lady.

I have this record.

Autographed.

The anthropomorphization of conditions, objects, illnesses, and other things that are decidedly not actual human beings is played out, followed closely by editorialists who assume the fictional identity of others (double loser points if you adopt the voice of a deity or the son of a deity, or one and the same), followed soon thereafter by the "what would Jesus/Buddha/Mother Theresa do/drive/eat/etc?" angle.

Yay! I'm a media critic!

I just finished reading another entry on Jeff Jarvis' site regarding some of the latest developments on the FCC/Clear Channel/Howard Stern/free speech clusterfuck.

Michael Copps sounds like a fuckwit.

How right is it that one of the great evils of American Culture--Clear Channel--is up against the ropes, and yet, how terribly wrong is it that it's for all the wrong reasons?

Fuck.

Fuck!

FUCK!!!

How it pains me that I'm somehow stuck on the side of Clear Channel, even as I think it's idiotic and that Howard Stern is unlistenable idiocy, and Clear Channel is guilty of pulling a Sherman's march across radio nationwide, and that virtually all of this crap should be something like common sense and dealt with like adults who have common sense, thereby obviating regulation by a Federal Nanny Manners agent with a big fucking stick threatening people left and right with half million dollar fines (oh god how nice it would be to see Clear Channel drained of every last cent and put out of business, and yet, how fundamentally wrong it is that they should have to pay even a cent to Michael Powell's minions)...and then there are idiots like Ruth Seymour right here in our very own sunny haha it's 90 degrees in March Los Angeles who not only yelp "how high" but do it before the Michael Copps of the world even remotely begin to think about telling some sanctimonious little NPR affiliate broadcasting out of a city college by the beach to jump (full disclosure: this radio station has played my music).

Matt Welch--eminently more composed than I--has lots more on all this, especially the local angle. Start up top and scroll down. Note therein that the spine-eating cancer has spread to my other favorite local NPR affiliate, KPCC.

[sigh] This is all terribly dispiriting. Would that radio be the carefree place of fun and adventure and personality and *sensible* attitude, like back when Jim Ladd was on KMET and Rodney did his thing on KROQ back when Black Flag was new, and you could listen to John Peel--the reigning world heavyweight ultimate ninja master of radio DJs (full disclosure: he has played my music)--on KXLU (which, probably, if I could pick it up here, is the only radio station left in LA worth listening to, outside of maybe KLON except that their programming is much too middle-of-the-road and slightly too-beholden-to-promotion-for-latest-releases-on-labels for my tastes)...

Yay intemperance!

Up with freedumb!

Down with runon sentences and parentheses!

Give "fuck" a chance!

In keeping with the rule of threes, we have a pattern:

Where's the fun? Let's keep some weblogs entertaining, inspiring, and personal. I'm not here to pontificate about how much (and therefore, how little) I know about the world / politics / society - okay, sometimes I am - I'm here to share a little bit of my madness with people I don't know. And if I had a cat, I'd probably photograph it.

Too Personal and Irrelevant for GoogleAds: That's what Amy Langfield is, apparently. Probably most of my favorite weblogs would be, too. Ad traffic will flow heaviest to the most focused, most passion-inducing sites, and perhaps even encourage them to go even more in that direction, but the ones I actually like best tend to meander around and surprise you..

One of the problems I encountered was that I sometimes found/find myself in the throes of punditry, and occasionally I'd become gripped with realization that I'm in no way a qualified pundit on most topics. But then I figured out that that's what blogs are for: holding forth on shit that that you only have the most tenuous grasp of. I still feel guilty occasionally, but I'm trying to stop (Analytic's actual home on the intarweb).

This is for you Andrea.

I'm not one to fixate on the media, and I don't get into the lather others do when this or that medium offends their delicate anti-bias sensibilities.

Maybe because I think the whole business is mostly ridiculous in the first place.

Here is part of the reason.

This speech by Michael Crichton is priceless. Funny, and terribly right I think.

"...they've forgotten what real, reliable information is, and the lengths you have to go to get it. It's so much harder than just speculating. "

It reads as something of an argument for ignoring media...which, for me, is very easy!

Mostly, I'm reminded of H.D. Thoreau's idea that the news is essentially gossip (that's a terribly mangled paraphrase).

I think of that often.

This is all well and good, but can we get some jobs some time soon please, and not just of the $8 an hour variety?

Maybe all this consumer spending means that people will start buying more movies and watching more TV shows which means in a year's time, I'll have an abundance of work again...but the trick is going to be getting there from here without going bankrupt.

I'm reminded of this very relevant post I read a couple days ago on Winds of Change over which the idea of a polarization in the labor market looms like a great, black cloud, as much as a result of outsourcing as other factors (the WoC piece focuses as much on local economic labor market issues, using WalMart as an example of how higher wage local workers are displaced by WalMart's lower wage workforce, and hence, lower cost retail service, with the attendant consequences). It seems to me that depending on the industry one works in, things are only getting more dire, despite the overall optimistic economic indicators.

Regarding that polarization, I have noticed a strange recurrence of "help wanted" signs all over LA, and elsewhere in the country for many months; an abundance that has seemed out of whack with the generally discouraging economy. The problem is, these jobs have been, almost without exception, for low-wage retail jobs. My feeling is that there is a substantial number of people in this country who comprise a class of very skilled, fairly-to-highly educated, well-trained and highly experienced workers across a number of indusries whose liabilities and responsibilities utterly preclude them from taking those low(er)-wage retail jobs. When you have children, a mortgage, cars, insurances, property taxes, perhaps even a small side business and/or other liabilities, $8 to $10 an hour is practically useless. You can't meet $2,500 of monthly expenses when you're making $1,280 a month--before tax.

Yet, with the continual permanent elimination of jobs for this diverse class of workers, eventually--short of moving to India, Mexico, Japan or Canada--some of these people might find themselves in the terribly difficult position of having to downgrade; that's the downward mobility the WoC piece speaks of.

Obviously, the big challenge is figuring out where to go other than down. Retraining is an issue of course, but not an easy one for many people, especially veteran workers with highly specialized skills in specialized industries, perhaps like certain engineers who might have worked for Boeing, or animation timers whose jobs are rapidly disappearing across the Pacific Ocean. I myself have some options; my big challenge isn't not knowing where to go; I know exactly where I need to go with my skills--the huge, looming problem is cracking the door open. In the long term, I'm not so worried about my own prospects--although the immediate reality is really scary--but I do worry more about others who might be in a similar situation to my own, but with even fewer obvious paths to pursue. I worry that WoC's characterization of a shrinking of the American dream of upward mobility might prove to be true, at least for certain classes of people. It would be a terrible shame to see the dreams of past Americans prove unrealized for significant chunks of the population; the dream of immigrants (my mother) and the sons and daughters of immigrants (my father) who fled privation and war, anti-semitism, dire economic prospects, and came here and worked their fingers to the bone so that their children could have a better life than they did; and whose children inherited those values and in turn worked to ensure that their children had a better life than they did...only to see the dream come up short.

Ultimately a sentimental argument? Maybe. But then, the American dream is more than just numbers and economic indicators; it is the stuff of feeling and belief; it's the stuff that draws people here year after year. I don't know what the cure is to ensure that the dream remains believable and anchored in truth, but I'm worried that the dream is losing its mooring....unless you're happy remaining a low-wage worker or being wealthy. Lawyers, professors, doctors exempt of course!

Maybe should have followed my parents' advice after all: be a lawyer or a doctor. Two services that can't be exported, outsourced, eliminated, or automated.

Wow...was that overreach or what?

The wonderful quarterly arts and music event Create:Fixate is having its second anniversary party December 6 in Beverly Hills. I wrote a little bit about Create:Fixate a month ago, if that helps give you a better idea of what it's about.

Bonus to sweeten the deal? I'm playing at this one...if sweetener that be. No drum and bass...well, maybe a little, but it'll most likely be a pretty freeform set. You know, no genre rules and all that crap...just good music, the way I most enjoy playing. If you've seen me at Eraser, or opening for Eric Truffaz, or some odd event or other like those, you might have an idea. If you dig going from say Massive Attack to The Art Ensemble of Chicago doing Fela Kuti and Jimi Hendrix covers, to The Pixies, to Tom Waits, and then maybe a sprinkling of house and a touch of Carl Craig, leavened with Lee Perry followed by Photek, then maybe you'll like it.

Anyway, that's hardly the main reason to go. There'll be lots of good art and music of all sorts, high on the authenticity quotient and low on the snob meter. It's too fun a party to get all sniffy and chinstrokey at anyway.

Not precisely connected to all my musings below, but this story claims that CDs "could be history in five years." The story describes a new storage and access hardware technology far more advanced than the CD. These fingertip-sized "memory tabs" will hold over a gig of data and would be write-once and then read-only, like non-rewritable CDs are now.

The implications are fairly clear: if there are no more CDs, then digital distribution of music will be everything. I'm not sure what this will mean for brick and mortar music retailers if they have essentially no product left to sell. That's a can of worms that I'm totally unprepared to open.

As I said, I think the writing is on the wall. We have to adapt or become a tiny niche market.

Glenn Reynolds is talking about outsourcing and permanent job market restructuring.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a friend and former co-worker. She's a production manager, and is finishing up a current series now. She's been hired by the company to manage a new production that starts in January. Being that hiring in this business has so much to do with who you know and who recommends and/or requests you, I have a very good chance of getting a job on this show.

There's one small detail: the entire series is being produced in Japan, except for script-writing and post.

So the rumors were true. If this is any indication, the studios are indeed really serious about trying to export almost all of production. What happens when it's no longer one show overseas, but half of them? Or three quarters of them? That's many hundreds if not even a few (low) thousands permanently out of work, with skills that are not easily transferable.

While I generally share--or try to share--Glenn's optimism, from my point of view in the business I'm in, it's hard to right now. In this business, there are a fair number of workers who have skills that have no relevance at all outside of animation. Some of these people are so highly and specifically trained that their skills don't even transfer to live action TV, let alone other industries. Not all of them are young, adaptable folks either. Some of them are real industry veterans, and not all of them are technologically savvy, which would make retraining even more difficult. Not impossible...but difficult.

I don't know what to think. I've generally had a fairly liberal point of view with regards to a company's right to do what it needs to do in order to lower its bottom line. I don't think intervention in the market by the government is right. But is it right that the majority of an industry that is quintessentially American--an industry that has created one of the towering icons of American pop culture: cartoons--disappear into overseas workshops, permanently displacing American workers?

My jury is out. Let me know if yours is in.

Starting with this, riffing on this, and this, and the idea of serialized novels back in the old days, what do you think of offering either password protected access to a page or just a page whose address is provided--in trust I guess--to those who subscribe in advance? Say for a six dollar subscription, you get six tunes, one per month.

I'm sure someone somewhere's done it already or thought of it. Did it work? Did it suck? Am I still crazy for even bothering to think about this?

Since Analytic doesn't have comments, this'll be a quick(!) note regarding his thoughtful response to my ponderousness...something more lengthy to follow later.

So if there is anything socialist about my approach to intellectual property, it is anarcho-socialist rather than authoritarian-socialist.

I should have clarified that my little flight off into the land of fanciful rhetoric regarding socialism was not at all to suggest you were advancing some socialist ideal of IP or anything like that. I probably should have just cut that out, as it really didn't directly pertain to the discussion. It was more me just being a jackass and not being a good editor. Be glad I didn't go off on some tiresome tangent about the long suffering Shostakovitch (believe me, I was tempted!).

I'm also uncomfortable with content-consumption models of idea propogation...

I was worried about my choice of the word "consume," knowing how frought it can sometimes be. I meant it in the most basal sense; that is, purely to suggest one who, uh, consumes, ingests, absorbs--whatever the best word is--art or music or whatever. I did not intend there to be any connotation of disposability, nor was I alluding to tired old Marxist dialectics. Small 'c' consumer. Just like how I consume The Sound and the Fury, or Pet Sounds, or poor old Shostakovitch's 13th symphony. Nawhamean? It's a dangerous word, and especially radioactive when uttered amongst people who've read way too much boring theory in college (Pieter sheepishly raises hand).

Then again, I can think of quite a number of people around which the word carries no such connotations.

Anyway, thanks for the nice reply. Will try to get back to more of it later. Must eat dinner now.

Oh, and you'll be glad to know that I'm the proud owner of four large panel bass traps...with six more smaller ones to go!

In light of yesterday's trainwreck on music and digital distribution, this article in the NY Times (link via Ken Layne) bolsters my assertion that people really do care about artwork, and that means, to a certain extent, the physicality of a CD or some other object that represents the music contained within; and, it takes as an article of faith that at some point in the future CDs will disappear completely, to be replaced by online distribution (13th paragraph down): "this approach may only be a stopgap until online music distribution completely replaces CD's." No explanation, no qualification.

I dunno...more than yesterday, it feels like the writing is on the wall. People want the pretty pictures that go with the music, but they also don't want to buy overpriced CDs. When it starts becoming received wisdom in the NY Times that all future music distro will be online, you know that things indeed are a changin'.

Given the fork in the road--progress or regress--I'll do my best to hitch my wagon to progress. That's what this whole crazy idea is about.

Part II of my interminable rumination on music in a digital world. Part I is below.

Is it wise to duplicate content between physical and digital distribution routes?

Why not? As long as respective holders of copyright and publishing are respected, I don't see a problem with this.

How much support for downloadable music is there among the community of [drum and bass] producers? How should we talk to skeptical producers about the issue in such a way that they don't feel threatened by the whole process?

I've always been shocked at how seemingly terrified most dnb producers are of downloadable music, most so with the most elite guys. Some seemed nearly on the verge of a nervous breakdown over it (remember Digital Nation?). I think part of this neurosis stems from the internal politics of dnb and dubplate culture, something that will no doubt remain terribly opaque to anyone not already schooled in it. But it may also be due to other factors that I can't identify. It's always been puzzling to me though that a class of people who've always paid excessive lip service to the idea of the future and progressivism--to the point where it's almost become a cartoonish fetish--seem in actual fact scared to death of the real-world implications of the future.

That's why it's very encouraging to know that I'm not in fact completely alone in this idea amongst the dnb (and electronic dance music community at large?) crowd, with EHL, ASC, and yourself contemplating it.

I'm even more shocked and disappointed that the idea, as expressed here, on a board loaded with producers some of whom brazenly promote themselves as tirelessly futuristic and superior to the elite, 'pop' dnb crowd, disappeared like a lump of lead off the back of a ship.

Outside of drum and bass, thankfully, other artists have been refreshingly willing to experiment and share their music online. Two excellent examples are Dr. Frank and Ken Layne, as well as Fat Possum above. There are many more like them. I suppose I'm taking my cues from these corners of the music world, as, if it's not already obvious by this long post, the drum and bass world has ceased to be a place of very great inspiration for me, as much in terms of attitude and ideas as music.

How do you think Creative Commons licensing schemes impact physical distribution? If a label were looking into both forms of distribution, would creative licensing be an obstacle in securing physical distribution via a third party? Are download friendly labels automatically faced with the prospect of having to manage thier own distribution rather than going through traditional channels?

I am concerned that once something has been officially released online that no physical distributor would touch it thereafter. Would labels balk at releasing vinyl if they knew these tunes were officially online? I don't know. If the track record of dnb is anything to go by, the answer would be a resounding yes.

I also wonder about the basic question of whether, in the light of progress, musicians ought not to rethink the whole notion of entitlement that goes along with the intellectual property concept.

Resounding no! On this at least I have a very firm opinion. The rights that reside in the ownership of property that an artist creates are in no way shape or form entitlements or privileges. They are what I'll call inherent rights; self-evident even, solely the creator's unless the creator willingly surrenders or reassigns those rights of ownership. I think the creator has every right to claim ownership on a legal basis, and law and common practice should dictate as much. Should those rights extend in perpetuity? No...but that's veering off topic.

Do we still have a "right" to get payed for cultural production?

Yes. Absolutely.

In what sense is my own intellectual property really mine...?

In every sense except one, and that one exception has to do with meaning, interpretation, communication, and has nothing to do with legal rights as they pertain to property.

A piece of music is created and listeners consume it. Listeners are free to read that piece of music however they wish; the meaning of that piece of music is as much a function of what listeners attach to it as what you the creator put into it. Much could be written on this subject, and much has been written on it, far better than I can do; it's a huge, terribly important facet of the relationship between creator and consumer; in fact it's the most important thing there is in that relationship...but it has probably nothing to do with legal rights of ownership. Personally, I'd much rather reside exclusively in the world of ideas of that relationship than the world of legal ideas, but, alas, I also want to eat and pay my mortgage, and I don't want my work stolen outright. I'm trying to find a fair compromise, and hopefully everyone else is too. I reject the methods of the RIAA and its invasions of privacy, and I reject the neanderthal attitudes of the interests the RIAA represent, but I also reject those who seem perfectly happy to take everything they can get with impunity, seemingly as if artists exist solely as functionaries whose wish to make their art their work is somehow contemptible, and that we should all be doing this for the cultural welfare of the state and simultaneously hold down "real" jobs.

Sorry, I'm not on the state payroll to write Socialist Realist anthems to gird the flagging spirits of the workers. I've seen that gray, dirty world with my own eyes and I want nothing to do with it.

...is it really helpful to think of a creative work in terms of property?

Well, inasmuch as we're talking about legal rights and the right to financially exploit one's own work for one's own benefit, yes. As above, personally, I'd rather not have to deal with this shit at all. I'm mostly like an ostrich when it comes to this stuff...I just want to sit in my stupid little ivory tower and make pretty things, but sometimes life gets in the way, and while I want to stay engaged with progress and the world--indeed, it's necessary--I also don't want people stealing my shit. I'm willing to give some, but I also don't want to give it all away.

I think that's fairly fair.

And that is way more than enough from me on this subject. Somebody else take over please...I've got a tune to finish.

Okay...morning...more alert; let's try this.

If you're not keenly interested in the intellectual property/digital distro free music thing, move right along, as this will bore you to tears. Even if you're keenly interested, bring your machete. You'll need it to get through the following thicket.

Analytic's got an interesting follow-up to to my half-baked idea.

Before addressing some of his points, I'll note that I've attempted to come to grips with some of these issues before (in the dead blog, so no links), but never really managed to arrive at any steadfast position. Since then, a few things have become more clear, and a few things remain as foggy as ever. Part of the idea of my experiment in Radio PK is to test some of my ideas; to see what empirical kernels of knowledge and truth might get teased out of the process.

In other words, I can sit on my ass all day and theorize, but until I've actually done something practical, it's all just ideas.

Anyway, thank you to Analytic for picking up the baton; anyone else with an opinion and expertise on one side or the other is welcome to join in the discussion.

I was wondering about...the question of what the relationship between physical (i.e., records and cds) and downloadable digital media should be, and how that relationship affects the commercial viability of music sold in underground/enthusiast markets?

My sense is that people still retain a desire to own a physical object that corresponds to the medium it houses, a medium that is itself immaterial: music. The hitch is that in a world where artists now have to compete with free, it takes music that excites a real sense of committment and passion in the would-be buyer for that threshhold to buy to be crossed. It's very easy to acquire untold numbers of mp3s of stuff you think is cool but doesn't necessarily move you in any heavy way. I think most people still identify with the stuff that really speaks to them, and that they are willing to spend money on it.

What are the considerations generally in starting an online label?

Don't really know, but I'm trying to work it out. That's partly what this experiment is all about.

I do think having some name recognition before really helps. Everyone loves to cite the examples of online darlings Aimee Mann, Janice Ian, and others, but forgets to mention that these people are already famous! They've got instant PR and credibility built in. It's easy to draw 10,000 visitors a week to your site when you're famous.

How about online music sellers like iTunes music store or Napster? Can we expect people to pay for music that they can just as easily get for free? Should we?

As I suggested above, I think people will pay for music, but the bar has been raised a lot higher in terms of what they'll spend their money on, and when, and why. The music must excite listeners. And I mean really speak to them. It's no wonder RIAA reports declines in sales. Much of what those reports reflect are major label fare, and most of that stuff is irredeemable, tarted-up shit that panders to the lower common denominators of music fandom. Of course you're not going to buy Christina Aguilera if you can have her for free! And god knows there are enough free pictures of her to compliment the free music, thereby obviating most of the other half of the reason to own a CD.

Of course I overstate the case; she does sell records, but the point is, if what charted was more substantial, and touched people--I mean, you know, really touched people, the way many of you reading this are touched and moved by the music you really care about--then I'd be willing to bet that we'd see less of a decline in sales on the top end, because yes, given an equal or inferior product, you can't compete with free.

In an interesting side note, indie labels like Fat Possum are supposedly turning a handy little profit. Surprise, surprise, you can listen to full length mp3s of some music on the site, all CDs are $13, and their music excites an almost wild passion among its fans. I own several Fat Possum CDs.

I suppose what this is leading to is a theory that says that consumers are becoming much more selective, even as the pool of candidate songs for consumption is increasing. Competition is increasing, and increases in competition are incentives for markets to refine and improve the products in that market. We may see a temporary decline in the overall market, but perhaps if the quality of products increases on average, sales will rise again in the future even as the ever-growing pool of free music remains intact. In that sense, that pool really does become the radio, and listeners/consumers can choose to tune out what they don't like, and tune in to what they do like, and then buy what they really like.

Or maybe I'm just full of shit.

Because this got so long, I'm dividing it in two. Second part in a new post above.

In my vague and incoherent struggle with the idea of digital distribution, I once had the idea of offering downloads of otherwise unreleased tunes. Tunes that never got signed, or that did get signed only to see the labels die or reorganize, with said tunes getting dropped along the way, etc.

I've started thinking more about this again, and have more or less resolved to try an experiment. Assuming I manage to follow through on the idea, what I'm going to do is offer a tune a month to download as an mp3. I'm not sure yet what bit rate I'll settle on, as a balance needs to be struck between efficiency/bandwidth and sound quality. For the moment, I'm thinking mainly of tunes that might or might not have some appeal to DJs who are playing out, so it sort of matters that they not be too squirrely sounding. I may decide to expand the palette later and start including things that have nothing to do with DJing at all. Last night, when I was going to sleep, I even started thinking about really embarrassing myself and digitizing some really, really old tracks by old bands I was in; maybe even as far back as like 1983 or something. Probably won't do that. I'm just not sure how many people will care to listen to my badly recorded not so very great punk bands, but, I'm shameless and more than willing to expose myself to ridicule! But, the option is there of course. There's also nothing stopping me from uploading any other random piece of weirdness I might have been responsible for; sketches, unfinished ideas, alt mixes of tunes that did get released, etc.

I think 128kbs is probably enough for the non-DJ oriented stuff, since it's not intended for anything other than home listening (and laughing). But, I know I've got a few tunes kicking around that generated some interest among the DJ classes, and I'd like for them to be playable. Burn them to CD, take them to the club with you, whatever. Like everyone does now. CDJs and maybe Final Scratch and Traktor and all that are the future of DJing I think, so nobody has to go through the trouble anymore of cutting dubs and all that nonsense.

So, it's a way for me to release things that never got released, maybe some people will like them, and they can play and have them. The option to donate whatever amount of money you like will be available, through Paypal and Amazon, but there are ultimately no strings attached. It's up to the downloader: do you want to help support and pay for music that comes to you directly from the artist? Do you like the idea of bypassing all corrupt institutions of mediation? Do you want to poke the RIAA in the eye?

It's a test; an experiment. It could suck, but I'm already half way done with the page, so let's see what happens. Any constructive criticism or opinions on how to make this idea work better would be appreciated. I'm not a good businessman, and don't stay terribly apprised of all the debates that circulate around the inherent issues, but I know I've got a lot of old music that was always meant to come out in some way shape or form, and better that a few people get it and hear it and hopefully like it than let it disappear forever on a DAT in a drawer.

Matt Welch links to this piece by Jay Rosen, who makes some penetrating observations on the comportment of John Carroll of the LA Times and Terry Gross of NPR's Fresh Air.

If you've got the time, it's worth listening to the archive of Gross' interview with Bill O'Reilly. It's as fascinating as radio interview train wrecks can ever be.

Strangely, just earlier today I was thinking about the segment in which Gross interviewed Gene Simmons of KISS; a segment which NPR itself refers to as "infamous." What struck me most about that interview was not Simmons' boorishness, but Gross' reaction to that. It was almost as if all pretense of objectivity was jettisoned; it became open season on Simmons. Indeed, he was hardly what I would call kind, sensitive, or considered, but he was damned funny. More than that, he was starkly honest. In fact, in his own way, he adopted the unspeakable language Rosen writes about, albeit as a subject and not as a journalist. He spoke candidly of the thrill of being a rock star, the power that gives him, his pride in having bedded untold hundreds of women. He made no excuses for himself and didn't try to soften the coarseness of his behavior. You may not approve of his behavior--I don't so much disapprove as I just don't comprehend the will to live like that--but if you could separate yourself from the deeds he spoke of and the affirmation with which he told them, you had to hand it to him for speaking the unvarnished truth in plain language.

Gross was just flabbergasted; you could almost hear the bottom of her jaw scraping the floor. At times, her follow-up questions felt more like naked criticism than follow-ups. I was stunned most of all by her conduct. Nobody expects journalists to not have opinions, but in her capacity as a journalist, I expect that all guests should be handled equally, and should that fail to happen, then I would at least hope that the fissure that opens up at that point be filled with the admission that there is an agenda, not a poorly rationalized pretense that it's okay for guests to be held accountable to different standards depending on who they are.

So I'm wondering how this relates to the O'Reilly story. Certainly, as Rosen says, Gross plays a sure hand through most of the interview, but it comes badly apart at the end, and it's through that shattering of pretense that I think Gross is revealed to be--or representing the interests of an organization that is--taking an activist, biased stance towards subjects it somehow deems contemptible.

One of the hard lessons of this trip was learning just how bad radio actually has become. I've always loathed Clear Channel. Now I'm praying for some sort of Enron-like conflagration to engulf it so that it will die quickly and spare us any further horror.

One of their tricks is cross-promoting vacation sites by broadcasting from the vacation site location to the target market. Hence, while driving through far western Nebraska and eastern Wyoming en route to Cheyenne, we heard "Captain Dan [blah, blah, blah, something like that] and his raft of classic rock goodness" from St. Croix in the Virgin Islands, complete with commercials for Chez Margarita Lobster Bar and Grill with the best Lobster this side of Angola, weather reports, and constant references to the Virgin Islands and time share condos, all kind-of infused with this vaguely Jimmy Buffettish air of good times on the water under the gentle tropical sun. Nevermind that we were at 5,000 feet elevation surrounded by an endless expanse of the hard, austere beauty of the high plains and low mountains, with narry a palm tree in sight--no trees at all for that matter--a large, gathering thunder storm, the odd sheep and cow here and there, a far off Union Pacific train loaded with oil, coal, and cattle, and air dry enough to crack the lips of even the hardiest cowboy. Oh, and the nearest large body of water is a modest 1,000 miles away.

It makes no sense. It's wrong. It's vile. They should be run out of town.

Nevermind that they played Bon Jovi, George Thoroughgood, ELO, Genesis (with Phil Collins), Billy Squire, Skid Row, Warrant, and other luminaries of a bygone era.

By now you've probably heard the complaint that because of behemoths like Clear Channel, radio sounds the same no matter where you go. I'd always been a bit suspicious of that claim, wanting to believe that it was the hysterical exaggeration of NPR fanatics.

Wrong. It's true. Literally, completely true. We heard "Classic rock" stations in Wyoming, Nevada, Missouri, Nebraska, Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. They were identical. Absolutely identical. From the tone and style of DJing to the programming, to set lengths, all virtually carbon copies of each other. It was horrifying. I mean, we actually heard more than one Jethro Tull song in three days. Five--FIVE!--Bad Company songs, one of them twice. Three ELO songs. Bon Jovi was uncountable. It never ended.

Three exceptions: somewhere in Georgia--Macon I think--there was a good rock station. Oldies format mostly, but with some very interesting selections and a DJ who didn't seem computer generated. Kansas City had another. The guy we heard is apparently a local legend dating back to the pre-Cambrian era. I can't remember his name. Weird guy, but at least he had a personality. Finally, Lincoln, Nebraska had an indie station whose broadcast we flitted through all too quickly.

Outside of the dismal world of classic rock, there was as sad a lack of almost everything else except bad country of the power ballad and Shania Twain 'feeling like a woman' variety. Hardly any blues, no jazz, almost no good newer (or older) rock, no classical until we hit Palmdale, no nothing basically. It wasn't until we hit Salt Lake City that I actually heard a blues lick worth listening to: it was a fabulous, otherworldly song with Buddy Guy on acoustic guitar and vocals and Junior Wells on harp, going back to pure Delta roots.

Aside from music, Christian radio was number one. In remote areas, if there was one station at all, it was Christian. Mostly we didn't linger over them, but one day I tortured Robert with a few contemporary gospel songs. They weren't much but at least there was some conviction in the songs, even if I was repeatedly reminded that faith is the raft that will bear you 'cross the river. A highlight was hearing an archival recording of someone who sounded like John Barrymore as Hamlet reading from the Bible, with added contemporary commentary from a very dry, very cramped sounding man.

If the current state of radio is any indication of where it's going, consider it a dead art. I mourn its passing.