Working at Saatchi & Saatchi in London must truly suck. Imagine you are in one of those "idea" meetings trying hard as hell to pitch Doc Martens, which practically sell themselves among the music industry and disaffected youth culture all over the world. But the problem you're having is that your ideas are lame, you got the job at Saatchi because your Dad knows a guy from college who now runs the department. He owes your Dad a huge favor after that time he scored blow just before finals were due his senior year.
So you get this cool job and your first assignment deals with Docs, which you never even owned at any point in your life. You were always more of a K-Swiss kind of guy anyway. You're about to get called on at the meeting, its GO TIME:
"Hey guys, I got it! Let's take some images of a few dead rock stars and throw some Docs on them. How extreme is that bro? Then they'll be like sitting on top of clouds looking tough and durable, just like a Doc Marten boot. Is that kick-ass or what?"
High-five.
When I first heard the news I immediately asked myself a few questions:
1. What's left in L.A.?
2. What are Todd and Sylvia going to do?
3. What's going to happen to new bands if they want some exposure?
I'm not exactly sure what Todd and Sylvia are going to do, I'll bet they're in the process of figuring that out as I type this. As far as music and bands are concerned it looks very bleak. Everyone (consumers and aspiring musicians) will now be forced to compete for a spot at Amoeba, on any rack...anywhere. "Hey bro, I already shop at Amoeba. So what's the big deal?" Pull up a chair young one.
The times have changed my friends. No more mixtapes or even mix-cds these days, everything is heresay and word-of-mouth. Whether it stems from a lack of time, or just plain laziness, it has become difficult to burn a solid batch of tunes for someone wanting to discover some new music.
Mixtapes used to be like a resume for someone you were interested in dating. Nowadays it's nearly impossible to talk to anyone and get a solid opinion about what kind of music they love, like or even despise. People are so uncertain about certainty. These little "mixtapes" contain 10 songs that I can't seem to stop playing. The first installment goes a little something like this:
to Vancouver:
For
the record, Minneapolis to Vancouver = 26hrs of pure little ones
enjoyment! We did this trek months ago during the winter and we must
say it's much more enjoyable sans snowstorms. We finished our first
book on cd together, Chuck Klosterman's Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A
Low Culture Manifesto. At some point we posed the idea of installing a
sensory deprivation tank in the van. Here's a rough schematic...
I'm sure there are many more records from smaller acts that I'm leaving out, but I'm really looking forward to these full-lengths. Time to visit Coinstar.
MAY:
Afghan Whigs: Unbreakable (Retrospctive) - (Rhino)
Battles: Mirrored - (Warp)
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Baby 81 - (RCA)
Bjork: Volta - (One Little Indian)
The Clientele: God Save the Clientele - (Merge)
Dinosaur Jr: Beyond - (Fat Possum)
Dungen: Tio Bitar - (Kemado)
Elliott Smith: New Moon - (Kill Rock Stars)
Feist: The Reminder - (Interscope)
Fields: Everything Last Winter - (Blacklab)
Handsome Furs: Plague Park - (Sub Pop)
Lavender Diamond: Imagine Our Love - (Matador)
Maximo Park: Our Earthly Pleasures - (Warp)
National: Boxer - (Beggars Banquet)
Parts & Labor: Mapmaker - (Jagjaguwar)
The Sea and Cake: Everybody - (Thrill Jockey)
Shapes and Sizes: Split Lips, Winning Hips, A Shiner - (Asthmatic Kitty)
Voxtrot: Voxtrot - (Beggars Banquet)
Wilco: Sky Blue Sky - (Nonesuch)
The Little Ones have set out on a tour with the Walkmen and Kaiser Chiefs. These are the facts, and this is their story. We will have updates from the Little Ones every week.
Chicago, IL - Vic Theatre
En
route and on time, or so we thought. First day of joining the Kaiser
Chiefs tour and we were hit with some mild backluck. At the tale end of
a long haul from Columbia to Chicago we hit a wee bit of traffic
getting into the city. It was one of the those scenarios where you have
to load directly onto stage, do an accelerated sound check, sprint off
stage, clean up a bit, then go back out and start the show. I think we
all would of wished it were that easy. Instead, we were line checking
our equipment while doors opened. Which isn't bad in anyway, it's just
odd when there's a crowed already forming at the front of the stage and
half of us are trying to figure out how to setup the absent band
members'equipment. All the while the attentive eyes at the front of the
stage are growing exponentially. Meanwhile, the missing band members
are attempting to park the van and trailer to no luck at all. 10
minutes till stage time and a call comes in from Lee, "we're still
trying to park aaaaaaaaaaand one of our tires just blew up". I think it
was at that point we asked ourselves what the hell else can go wrong
today.
Restaurant is a band who are in Los Angeles by way of Victoria, Tx that describing their music only gets more complicated when trying to explain the instruments these boys play.
Take Bobby "State" Penn for instance. At first glance,
he's the drummer in the band. On closer examination, his kick drum is a
cardboard box filled with women's bras, his high-hat is a stack of
Texas license plates, his snare is a sheet of metal and his floor tom
the wheel of a car. Craig, the band's frontman, can be seen pulling
strings on what looks like a cigar box with a guitar neck strapped to
it. Restaurant led the party outside at last years Summer Camp festivities, prompting our only visit ever from the LAPD. Look for a repeat appearance again at Summer Camp this June.
Recently, Bobby "State" Penn, (aka Jonathan) has begun an interesting side project called World Fame Project. Click HERE and give the song 1981 a listen.
As some of you have noticed in the past months many of your favorite artists have recently added a SNOCAP digital storefront to their Myspace page. CD Baby, who also feature about 130,000 indie artists, has announced a partnership with MySpace that will allow all registered users easy access to create a SNOCAP digital storefront, according to cmj.com.
The SNOCAP MyStore is a backed by their very own online content registry. MyStore launched in December as a way for unsigned/indie artists to sell their music on MySpace without a distribution deal, label, or PR team, and can be posted on any site that recognizes HTML code. Now CD Baby artists will be able to sell content directly to fans from any site that allows HTML (websites, blogs, etc.).
I think it's about time you start digging through those old home recordings of you and your buddies electric shaver-meets-drums machine techno project.
According to Billboard.com, The UK's Sanctuary Records Group is closing shop on all operations in the United States and focusing only on catalog releases, just like V2. Operations cease as of June 30th. The first possible casualty could very well be Ex-Cranberries siren, and self-proclaimed zombie, Dolores O'Riordan's first solo album. Are You Listening? is supposedly still coming out on May 15th, what a bad way to start your solo career.
The Sanctuary Records Group also includes several smaller labels such as Morissey's Attack, Castle, Trojan, Vapor, and Fantastic Plastic related labels. Record labels? Sounds like a condom catalog.
EMI Music is the only major label taking the necessary steps to make their entire digital catalog available free of digital rights management (DRM). This means you can burn music without buying an iPod. A pretty serious move for a major label, considering that only a few months ago all the majors were shunning the mere thought of DRM-free music. EMI is also creating "higher quality" DRM-free music by pairing up with Apple's iTunes Music Store for $1.29 a track. Pricey?!? And just to show you that the deal has been approved as "cool" they got EMI popstars the Good, the Bad & the Queen to perform two songs at a conference this morning in London. Ka-Ching! Steve Jobs has been propising that DRM -free music will help difital music downloads and sales in the presently stalled music economy.
So what makes DRM-free music so much better at $1.29 a song? Nothing.
The new "premium" versions of EMI's digital catalog will simply "complement the existing DRM-protected songs that iTunes is already selling." Steve Jobs called the EMI move the "next big step forward in the digital music revolution" but declined to reveal the details and negotiations with other labels
to anyone. Jobs also says that half of iTunes' catalog could be offered
DRM-free by the end of 2007.
EMI Music is the only major label taking the necessary steps to make their entire digital catalog available free of digital rights management (DRM). This means you can burn music without buying an iPod. A pretty serious move for a major label, considering that only a few months ago all the majors were shunning the mere thought of DRM-free music. EMI is also creating "higher quality" DRM-free music by pairing up with Apple's iTunes Music Store for $1.29 a track. Pricey?!? And just to show you that the deal has been approved as "cool" they got EMI popstars the Good, the Bad & the Queen to perform two songs at a conference this morning in London. Ka-Ching! Steve Jobs has been propising that DRM -free music will help difital music downloads and sales in the presently stalled music economy.
So what makes DRM-free music so much better at $1.29 a song? Nothing.
The new "premium" versions of EMI's digital catalog will simply "complement the existing DRM-protected songs that iTunes is already selling." Steve Jobs called the EMI move the "next big step forward in the digital music revolution" but declined to reveal the details and negotiations with other labels
to anyone. Jobs also says that half of iTunes' catalog could be offered
DRM-free by the end of 2007.
Guitarist Benjamin Curtis has left the Secret Machines:
"After
7 and 1/2 years of playing music together," writes Brandon Curtis on
the Machines' message board, "Benjamin has decided to no longer be a
part of the band. It is a sad day but also an exciting one as he
prepares to focus full time on his new creative venture, School of
Seven Bells…Of course Josh [Garza, drummer] and I wish him all the
best." School of Seven Bells includes sisters Claudia and Alejandra Deheza, formerly of OnLibrary!.
The group "expects to be finished with a new record very soon," wrote
Brandon, and "there [are] plans in the works to play some shows here in
New York debuting the band."
Bummer.
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