Category: Music

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The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

One of the few advantages of having lived a few years is that you get actually find out which works of art, tv shows, dramas, movies, and songs really stand up over time. Sometimes you find out that a brilliant piece of music or drama is far more rare than you had ever imagined.

Sometimes something you once thought was brilliant turns out to be pedestrian.

“The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” (first released in September 1969) is simply a terrific song, whether you prefer the raucous version by the Band, or Joan Baez’s cool, crisp, symmetrical rendering. I almost always prefer the versions performed by the composer, and I love the Band, but in this case I like the version by Baez more. For one thing, it’s tight construction prevents Baez from indulging in too much warbling or emoting– makes her sound like she really does have a good voice. For another thing, it’s a damn fine arrangement of guitar, bass, and drums.

The hardest element of music to describe, teach, or duplicate is rhythm. Sometimes people even call it “feel”, as if it was something you can’t see or taste, or even hear in a literal sense. Baez’s version has the same intangible as Dire Straits “Sultans of Swing” and Dylan’s entire “John Wesley Harding” album. At the time of it’s recording, you heard this kind of crisp, tight rhythm more often in Nashville recordings than you did in Los Angeles or New York. These are cracker-jack musicians.

Virgil Caine is the narrator. His rustic “voice” dryly recounts how he worked on the Danville train until the tracks were torn up by Stoneman’s (Union) Calvary. Then he took the train to Richmond just before it fell and the Confederacy surrendered. “It was a time I remembered oh so well”. Robertson’s clever lyric then has the people singing nothing more specific than “na na na na na na, na na na na, na na na na na”, as if life goes on no matter what disasters befall us, and the disaster is too great for words.

Many have commented on the fact that the song takes the voice of a southerner, at a time when many people regarded the South as an embarrassment of bigotry and repressiveness. It’s a brilliant stroke and almost everyone who hears the song immediately realizes how right and true it is. Not a few attribute this unique perspective to the fact that Robbie Robertson was a Canadian, who saw the South without jaundiced eyes, and fell in love with the mystique, the cadences, and the culture of the South.

There is another angle to this song that is a bit disturbing. Levon Helm claims that he “helped” Robertson write the song. Helm is from Arkansas, a Southerner, and some commentators on the Band think that there is some bitterness between him and Robertson over the song. Does the song belittle the South? That would be totally contrary to almost everyone’s impression of the song, which is the opposite. Or is it something to do with the credits? Who knows?

One oddity. Why does “Robert E. Lee” in the Band’s version become “the Robert E. Lee”, a steamboat in the Baez version? Turns out that it could be because Robert E. Lee never passed through Tennessee after the war, but the Robert E. Lee did. Less forgivable is “I took the train to Richmond, it fell” for “On May the 10th, Richmond had fell”. I don’t know what problem Baez had with that– other than the fact that Richmond did not fall on the 10th– the entire confederacy did. Richmond “fell” on April 2. And utterly contemptible is the “so much cavalry came” for “Stoneman’s calvary came”. Joan Baez, do you think your audience is too stupid to accept the name of an obscure Union officer who was responsible for executing Grant’s scorched earth policy instead of “so much”? Geez!

Doesn’t matter. If you read the website at the link above, you will notice two thing: endless, obsessive fussiness over the details of the song, and boundless admiration for it. A typical comment: it is easily the best popular song ever about the Civil War. And that it is.

On The Band

There was a horrible tendency of bands of this era to indulge in long, utterly incomprehensible overtone-laden guitar-solo driven codas, in the mistaken belief that something “deep” would reach out and contact them.  You have to keep that in mind to appreciate just how stunning “Music From the Big Pink” was.

There is a lengthy and somewhat bizarre dissection of the lyrics here.  Is it “mud” below Virgil’s feet or “blood”?  Did Robert E. Lee actually pass through Tennessee after the war? 

Update 2022-05-02

In performances, Joan Baez has corrected the lyrics.  It wasn’t malice: just carelessness.  Now that she knows the right lyrics, she sings the words Robbie Robertson wrote.

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Four Great Songs of the Early 1960’s

The the late 1950’s and early 60’s were generally weak years for popular music– so weak that four merely good songs stand out clearly as “great” amid the rolling surf of mediocrities and manufactured product.

Early rock’n’roll like “Heart Break Hotel” and “Sh-boom” had been supplanted by look-alike drones and novelty tunes issued by the recording industry as after-thoughts to feed a market they thought was sure to disappear shortly. Serious musicians went into folk or classical. The fascists went for country. The teeny-boppers when for Fabian and the Italian studs like… Frankie Avalon and Bobby Whatever or Tony Twister.

So a very small number of outstanding singles made it onto the play lists:

  • Runaway (Del Shannon)
  • I Fought the Law (Bobby Fuller Four)
  • Needles and Pins (Searchers)
  • Suspicion (Terry Stafford)

The last-named is really a rather blatant rip-off of the Presley version– one of the few Presley songs I really like. If you search the internet long and hard, you might find a recording of the song including stops and retakes and comments by the musicians, including Presley.

And I can’t remember what the fourth one was. I’ll think of it eventually. [I did. It was “Needles and Pins”. Not really, but it will do.] It was not “Sherry”, which is a novelty tune. In the meantime, to properly appreciate the achievement of the songs listed above, you have to spend a few hours listening to nothing but all of the 2:30 long singles by the Chiffons and the Shirelles or even the Supremes. Don’t believe the revisionists who will try to tell you that the Chiffons were actually brilliant: they were always mediocre. As for the Supremes… you can’t hurry love.

They got on the radio because the airwaves were not controlled by listener preferences but by the backroom deal, payola, as it pretty well is today.

The best driving song ever, bar none: “Echo Beach” by Martha and the Muffins.

The next best driving song: “July 4th, Asbury Park” (Sandy) Bruce Springsteen.

All right– it’s ridiculous to think there is only one or two best driving song. There are several, including “Satisfaction” and “Thunder Road”.

For some weird reason, not a single Beatles song ever sounded really great in your car at 50 mph with your window open. They just don’t. Well, maybe “Obladi Oblada”.

Bob Seger’: “Night Moves” does pretty well.  So does “Reelin’ in the Years” by Steely Dan.

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The Worst Pop Singles of All Time

Of course these are not really the worst singles of all time. Most people have never heard the worst singles of all time– like “The Times They Are A’Changin'” by Rabbi Abraham Feinberg, or “Clouds” by Leonard Nimoy or “Big Yellow Taxi” by Bob Dylan or “Mr. Tambourine Man” by William Shatner– because they simply have never been played on the radio.

So, actually, these are songs that stink even though they were massively promoted and acquired a certain following.  Note that in a few cases, the song itself, like “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, might be pretty good: it is this specific performance that makes the list.

  • Wonder Wall (Oasis)
  • Seasons in the Sun (Terry Jacks)
  • I Write the Songs (Barry Manilow)
  • The Night Chicago Died (Paper Lace)
  • Honey (Bobby Goldsboro)
  • I am I said (Neil Diamond)
  • Cracklin’ Rosie (Neil Diamond)
  • Candle in the Wind 1997 (Elton John)
  • Popcorn (Hot Butter)
  • Achy Breaky Heart (Billy Ray Cyrus)
  • Smells Like Teen Spirit (Paul Anka)
  • Hanky Panky (Tommy James and the Shondells)

Honorable Mentions (added November 2007)

  • Three Times a Lady (Lionel Richie)
  • Every Thing I Do (Bryan Adams)
  • Puppy Love (Donny Osmond, written by Paul Anka)
  • Glamour Boy (Guess Who)
  • We Will Rock You (Queen)
  • Never Been to Me (Charlene)
  • Feelin’ Groovy (Simon & Garfunkel)
  • Do Yah Think I’m Sexy (Rod Stewart)

Most ill-advised single of all time:

  • Pet Me, Poppa (Rosemary Clooney).

Most horrible earworm (tie):

  • “Mandy” (Barry Manilow),
  • “Sweet City Woman”, (Stampeders)

Note: the writers of “Hanky Panky”, Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich, have no illusions: they wrote the song in the hallway of a recording studio to be on the b-side of a new single.  Both admit it is a terrible piece of work.

Dissent:

Wonder Wall” was recently voted the best pop song ever by a segment of the British public which is probably also responsible for the tabloids and Benny Hill. I don’t get it. I can’t even finish listening to it once. It sounds to me like your older brother, when you are 11, and he is about 13, and he is making fun of a song you like, by singing it in as unpleasant a voice as he can manage, without any noteworthy accompaniment. And it sounds like he is making up the lyrics at the same time, in a kind of sing-song, nasal, whine on the “now”.

I was just stunned to learn, recently, that “I’ve Never Been to Me” was first released in 1977!  1977!  Was it written by a man?  I knew it!  Written by Ron Miller, Kenneth Hirsch!  How did I know?  Because almost all bad songs written about women’s roles are authored by men:  “Having My Baby”, “I am Woman”.

And a good one:  “You Don’t Own Me” performed by Leslie Gore.

A British Worst
Singles of All Time List.

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Poppy Family – Susan Jacks

This bus is awful cold,
We’ve gone so many miles…

“That’s Where I Went Wrong” by The Poppy Family was already a throw-back when it hit the charts in 1969. A cute girl– you can tell by her voice that she’s cute– is riding on a cold bus to some unknown place, boring a stranger with the details of how her boyfriend cheated on her. She says

I know it’s not his fault
I’ve known it all along
I was the one who trusted him
That’s where I went wrong.

That’s where she went wrong!

Someone — probably her husband (at the time), Terry Jacks– had the horrible idea of adding some kind of weird percussive slapping noises to the song, that I don’t remember noticing in the era in which we heard all songs on car radios.

I’m kidding about the “cute girl” comment, though one can safely assume that any woman in the business of performing pop songs is photogenic, at least. But the voice is compelling. It has this clear, crystalline sheen to it– it sounds young and innocent, and insistent. Madonna used to have a bit of this quality to her voice, in “La Isle Bonita”, for example. So did Jackie Ralph of “The Bells”. Stevie Nicks had it.

But the coolest of the cool was Jennifer Warnes – her voice on “First We Take Manhattan”– I don’t have a name for that quality.

“Stay Awhile” by Jackie Ralph with “The Bells” was quite possibly the hottest song on AM radio in its day. Yes, because the romantic couple in the song actually, delicately, go to bed together. We were all shocked and titillated. Some radio stations, so we heard, banned the song. Did they really? That’s really bizarre, when you think about it.

It’s hard to describe that voice. I’ve always liked it, though I also always found the Poppy Family’s music to be a bit cheesy, calculated, and coy. Often, Susan’s voice is doubled for effect with a pleasing result

You are my whole day
My heart and my soul babe..

and sounds like she means it.

The Poppy Family featured a drummer called Satwan Singh– I’ll bet there’s an interesting story behind that. He played the tabla initially, but there’s a full drum set on most later Poppy Family recordings.

Terry Jacks did not like touring or performing live, and that’s why he became a producer. Apparently, he even worked with the Beach Boys. He became aware of a song called “Seasons in the Sun” which the Beach Boys heard but decided to pass on. Jacks recorded it himself and it became one of the biggest hits of the decade and makes my list of the worst 10 singles of all time.

Goodbye Michelle, it’s hard to die
When all the birds are singing in the sky.

Yes, Terry– it’s easier to die when all the birds are singing on the ground. Or maybe singing on the hills that were just “seasons out of time”, whatever the hell that means.

I’m adding to this. I just reread some old newsgroup posts and there is some acquaintances on the Leonard Cohen newsgroup insisting that “Seasons in the Sun” is a deep song.

Goodbye Michelle, my little one,
You gave me love and helped me find the sun.

Okay. “Find the sun” isn’t the most shockingly original metaphor I’ve heard– not great, but not too bad yet. Well, yes it is. But wait for it:

And every time that I was down
You would always come around
And get my feet back on the ground

Now, is that or is that not the lamest description of friendship you’ve ever heard? And don’t forget:

but the stars that we could reach
were just starfish on the beach

So the starfish join the birds, imaginatively located right where Dr. Seuss said you would find them.

“Which Way you Going Billy” has a few strange twists in it. Billy’s leaving and she wants to go with him, but Billy doesn’t want to tell her which way he’s going. She could get lost and would have to get onto a bus and become the character in “That’s Where I Went Wrong”. She admits that now he’s “free” at last, though you would think she’d prefer to convince him he could be just as free if he stayed with her. No, she admits it: she’s a ball and chain.

It’s only in the third verse that we find out

I won’t forget you, Billy
For all my life
I’ll always love you, Billy,
I’ll stay your wife.

Until then, I had thought they were simply going together. Didn’t know they were actually man and wife. The song is deeper for it. Thank god Rod McKuen didn’t write this lyric, or she would stay “your wife in your house”, in the “dark, where the sun it never shines”.

 

“Where Evil Grows” is easily the best song the Poppy Family released. Like some of their earlier efforts, it’s not quite a textbook pop song. Pop songs don’t call people “evil” (except if it’s about a woman and she’s a vamp). “Evil grows in the dark/where the sun it, never shines” is redundant, but passable. And it would be interesting to hear what evil things, exactly, this evil person has done, but you know we won’t.

It’s a distinctive, appealing harmony, a decent hook, and an unusual lyric. It was a hit in 1972.

The Poppy Family broke up in 1973. Terry Jacks went on to record the worst single of all time (Seasons in the Sun).

Susan Jacks plunged into obscurity. Where is she now? I have no idea, and neither does Google.

Added Nov 2007:

Thank God for Youtube.

Listen to this: how can you not fall in love with that voice!

In her day, Linda Ronstadt was the much bigger star. Why? Was she a better singer? Prettier? Or better promoted? Compare Susan Jack’s version of “Different Drum” to Ronstadt’s. It’s the difference between singing and wailing.

I just listened to the two right after each other. I frankly had never realized what a lame singer Ronstadt was at this stage of her career– all elbows and eyelashes and emoting. Susan Jacks is about as I remember her– a superb singer who never really got the opportunity to reach her potential, and one of the two or three really, really magical female voices I have ever heard. (The other: Jennifer Warnes).

Listen to her take on “Different Drum”– it’s exquisite, tasteful, beautiful.  There is more heartbreak — and nuance–  Susan Jacks singing  one word — “goodbye” — than in the entire performance by Ronstadt. 

Ronstadt shouts and wails; Jacks sings and evokes that sense of disillusionment central to the lyric.

 

Please, oh please don’t steal from the Music Industry: Read This.

Update August 2006: Guess who finally has a website? There is a posting from Susan dated in 2003, four album covers, and that’s about it.  [Sorry: the website is gone.]

You won’t find very much about Susan Jacks, or Jackie Ralph, (or Four Jacks and Jill, or the Buoys, etc.) on the internet. In the future, no one will be able to hide, but for bands that were famous in the 1960’s or 70’s, it is still possible to fade into a small measure of obscurity. Do a search on any current pop star and look for images and find thousands of them. Do a search for images of Susan Jacks and you’ll be lucky to see five or six.

I saw a movie recently in which a woman who had not seen a former lover in ten years, spies him in the grocery store, before he sees her. Her first thought is that she doesn’t want to talk to him– because she’s not dressed very well, and doesn’t have her make-up on just right, and she’s very pregnant. She makes a gesture of fixing her hair and face, and looks hopeless for a moment.

It felt authentic to me. I’m sure some of these pop stars from the 60’s and 70’s might have the same feeling about people who go searching for them over the internet, perhaps still nursing an enduring fantasy about them– do you want these “fans” to see what you look like now? Maybe not.

And I know I don’t really want to hear Susan Jacks perform the same song now. It wouldn’t make sense. A 50-year-old woman is not going to go, “I know it’s not his fault, I’ve known it all along, I was the one who trusted him…”

If you have ever read about Frances Farmer, it’s hard not to be moved by the fact that after years of scandal and conflict and sojourns in mental hospitals and so on, Frances Farmer disappeared completely. She ended up working, for several years, in a photo shop somewhere.

And incidentally– she did not have a frontal lobotomy. The movie “Frances” was playing fast and loose with the facts. If you check around and go with the most trustworthy sources, it seems quite unlikely.

 

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Master Jack

It’s a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack
You taught me all I know and I’ll never look back

And it’s a very strange song that you recorded, Four Jacks and a Jill. I’ll bet you didn’t know they were from South Africa, did you? The song “Master Jack” was released in 1968 and reached #1 in Canada and New Zealand, among other localities.

On the the face of it, “Master Jack” is about a mentor relationship, between a young acolyte and her older, perhaps wiser friend, a teacher or an uncle, or some other worldly-wise adult, who teaches her to take “coloured ribbon” from the sky and tie up your problems with it and then “sell it to the people in the street”. I can’t for the life of me figure out what that means exactly. My guess is that it’s something to do with tie-dye t-shirts or incense.

The acolyte has grown old enough now to want to see and experience the world for herself, so she bids farewell to her wise teacher. It’s clear that she no longer trusts his judgment.

“Master Jack” is one of those odd songs that seem untouched by the hands of a music industry professional, who surely would have polished the vocals and added a hammy flourish in there somewhere, and would certainly have removed one of the strangest and most acute lines in the song:

I saw right through the way you started teachin’ me now
So some day soon you could get to use me somehow
I thank you very much and though you’ve been very kind
But I’d better move along before you change my mind

Rather edgy, don’t you think, for a lilting guitar ballad with a reticent female lead? It’s almost as if there is something sinister at work here, so you think of Jimmy Jones or Charles Manson. But the song sounds so innocent– maybe it’s Tiny Tim instead.

I never liked the song very much when I was in my teens– it sounded a bit saccharine to me. But like “I’ve Never Been to Me”, it has a little bite.

Yeah, they’re still around. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I recently read a comment from an anonymous poster claiming that the “jack” in the song is the Union Jack, and the song is a comment on Britain’s legacy of Apartheid in South Africa. That’s an interesting idea. [2011-11-29]

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The Rolling Stones at the Superbowl

Let me get this straight:  the NFL wants to provide a half-time show that will attract the coveted 18-25 demographic– free-spending young adults who like geriatric rock stars, apparently. Would these people like to watch the Olsen Twins? No. Jessica Simpson? Well, all right– the meaning of “wholesome” has changed a bit. I know– we’ll get The Rolling Stones. Hey, aren’t they a bunch of perverts? Of course they are.

While simultaneously announcing that they have booked a filthy, disgusting, perverted band for the half-time show (by their standards, not mine), the promoters, the NFL, assures viewers that the entertainment will be quite wholesome. Suitable for the entire family. You won’t be embarrassed if your kids are watching. But your kids will want to watch.

Is this belated recognition of the fact that any interesting culture in our society seems to come from rebels and outsiders? Why on earth didn’t they book Garth Brooks or Tammy Wynette, if they wanted something wholesome?

How will the promoters ensure that the audience is spared anything shocking or inappropriate? They will have a five-second delay on the broadcast.

And it worked. During “Start Me Up” (the real obscenity here is that “Start Me Up” was sold to Microsoft as the theme for Windows 98 for millions of dollars), Mick Jagger alluded to the fact that this woman of whom he was singing was so sexy that she could cause a dead man to become aroused. But not in so many words. So the microphone went dead and Mick’s lips moved alone and silently.

All right. Everybody’s happy. The kids get to be entertained by the world’s greatest rock’n’roll band, and the adults get to sleep easy knowing that their children are still infused with good, wholesome, Calvinist virtues.

But the Rolling Stones, worried about their credibility with the in crowd, announce that they are disgusted with the censorship. But the NFL announces that if they were so disgusted with the censorship, why did they agree to play in the first place? The Rolling Stones respond, just because we knew about it in advance and agreed to it doesn’t mean we don’t think it’s stupid. Pay us first, then we’ll tell you how stupid it is.

The answer is: all of the above.

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Yousef Cat

I just watched a documentary on the man formerly known as Cat Stevens, also formerly known as Steven Demetre Georgiou, now known as Yousef Islam, the man who renounced his gift.

Well, he does have musical talent. But at a very raw level, all of his music stopped being interesting the moment he embraced religion in 1977. Quick, name one song Stevens wrote after his “crisis”. Okay– not totally fair. For most of the religious portion of his life, Yousef did not write music, because his God did not care for it very much.

The documentary itself is one of those disagreeable, fawning tributes that almost always is the result of some kind of deal between the subject and the “journalist”. No reporter is identified. No one asks Yousef any questions or follow-up questions. There is no independent critical appraisal of the information presented on the screen. It’s a puff peace. I doubt the makers of it care much if it ultimately damages their cause. It’s possible most people don’t care.

On the most contentious issue, Stevens alleged endorsement of the fatwa imposed on Salmon Rushdie by Ayatollah Khomeini, Stevens claims he was misquoted and that his views were distorted. But then he asserts that the punishment for blaspheme is, indeed, death. “My only crime was, I suppose, in being honest. I stood up and expressed my belief and I am in no way apologizing for it.”

Okay. So you’re sorry you’re right.

Surely his recent pronouncement, in song, that he never wanted to be a star must also be taken as some kind of joke and reflects another attempt to have it both ways. Like St. Augustine in his “Confessions”, Stevens enjoys the luxury of the well-rested virtue that awakes refreshed.

Cat has kittens: 4 girls and 1 boy.

Having it both ways: Cat has renounced his music many times, and even proclaimed that many of his early songs– “Lady D’Arbinville”?– were immoral. But he sells boxed sets out of his own offices in London and helps his record company promote sales of his entire catalog. But… he also has stated that profits from the “immoral” songs go to charities, as if this somehow preserves his personal purity and absolves him of any responsibility for how his songs might affect someone.

Stevens donates considerable time and money to charities that benefit Islamic children and families. He supports four Islamic schools in London. He’s obviously a generous man, to the needy in his community. More recently, it is reported that he donated half the royalties from a boxed set of his music to the families of the victims of 9/11. The U.S. still denied him entry in September 2005 over rather spurious allegations that he had terrorist links. Holy Soviet Union!

The Flaming Lips had to pay Cat some cash, and co-credit, for a song “Fight Test” that appeared to be unduly similar to “Father and Son”. In fact, give it a listen– it’s not just a phrase that’s been “borrowed”.

How peace-loving is Cat today? Some suspect that this Peace Train might be off the rails. But the best comment on his sudden deportation might be this one: “… the theatricality with which the incident was handled should inform us as to the motivation behind it.”

Beard vs Beard: in the latest round of earnest bearded singer-songwriters from the 1960’s and 70’s, current standings:

1. Cat Stevens – best musician.
2. Kris Kristofferson – best imitation of “just folks” by a very shrewd, very market-savvy Rhodes Scholar (yes he is).
3. Donovan – performer most likely to drive you into swallowing an entire furby.

Okay, okay– I know Donovan didn’t have a beard, but he wrote “Catch the Wind”, which is almost as bad and still feels like a hairy face to me.

Cat Stevens actually had a string of some very good albums back there in the early 1970’s, from Mona Bone Jakon to Catch Bull at Four. He could be a tad precious at times, but there more than a few great songs in there, including “18th Avenue” and “Sitting”. Then all of his good taste evaporated and he released several utterly dismal, programmed albums like “Foreigner” and “Buddha and the Chocolate Box”.

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Copyable Media

From the online forums….

“One key fact is that the copyright holder still *does* have the right to decide to expose and sell their product efficiently, inefficiently, or not at all. You, on the other hand, have NO rights to that product or that decision. You have NO right to decide how the product should be exposed or distributed. “

Not quite that simple. I absolutely agree, though, that any musical artist has every right to NOT distribute their music on CD. Go for it, Ashlee! No problem there.

But… the general public, the consumer, made the choices (from among competing technologies) that established vinyl, then cassette, then CD as the format of choice for musical recordings.

The public also has a right to expect that providers of content compete fairly in the market place. If Ashlee wants to issue her recordings on vinyl, she can. That way nobody will steal her work. Some other artists might conclude that they could compete successfully against Ashlee by issuing their work on more popular mediums, but who am I to second guess them! So if you want Ashlee’s work, buy her vinyl album. That’s your choice and you’re free to make it.

But she should not have the right to collude with other recording artists to force Pioneer and Toshiba and Sony to hijack the CD format and impose changes on it that the public didn’t ask for and does not  want.

She and the other artists are absolutely, totally, completely free to go to Toshiba and Sony and Pioneer and offer to pay them to develop a new uncopyable technology that will only be used to distribute her music on.

The public, I’m sure, will adopt it in droves, especially once they understand that they can’t use it to make their own recordings or assemble their own music collections, or play it on the portable players they already own.

Go for it Ashlee! Please!

(Incidentally, I don’t mean to pick on Ashlee. I really don’t know anything about her other than the Saturday Night Live gaffe.)

Bottom line. I have no problem with artists switching to a new medium that prevents copying. As long as other artists have the right to continue using copyable mediums like the CD or Radio or television with a stereo signal if they want to.

Now you’re a young artist. You want to become famous and have people hear your music and sell a few CD’s and tickets to your shows. You gonna join the proprietary, protected gang, or offer your stuff to the public on their medium of choice?

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Copyright and Copywrong

(From a discussion on usenet)

Skip this if you don’t want to be bored. But if you think the CD as the medium of distribution for music might soon be obsolete…

Actually, your point is well taken. I have often thought and said that I wish some days that the copyright-holders get exactly what they wish for. Because it would kill them off more quickly. What I believe is happening is that copyright holders want it both ways. They want to benefit from widespread exposure. Then they want to assert the right to not expose their work.

I firmly believe that if the government had required Microsoft to put effective copy protection on all of their products, we wouldn’t have the monopoly we have now. And I firmly believe Microsoft knew that, and that is why, when Word Perfect, for example, removed copy protection from their product, Microsoft almost immediately did the same. It is therefore hypocritical of Microsoft to demand protection from competition, by asserting their copyright. Compete!

And, in fact, you can easily see that Microsoft has been very circumspect on this issue. They know dimly what Google understands completely: there’s a lot of money to be made in giving away your product.

As for music, copyright holders want their music exposed, on radio and tv, in promotional tie-ins, scandalous newspapers, etc., etc. If you truly believe that Ashley Simpson gets her face on my local entertainment section because even a Kitchener, Ontario newspaper believes she is so talented she deserves it, God bless you, but I don’t. She is there because her corporate Svengalis want her “exposed”. They want you to see her face. They have established a very sophisticated and effective system of promotion that ensures that her face will be on magazine covers. They will also want you to hear her music– why else would you buy her CD? Most commercial radio stations only play music by artists they believe will obtain wide exposure through tv and magazines. One hand washing the other. They all profit by selling advertising, not music.

Since I have no intention of spending one red cent on Ashley Simpson products, I would have no problem with her corporate Svengalis being absolutely, totally successful in preventing me from being exposed to her music, her face, or her tantrums, without having paid for permission. Go to it! Please– be absolutely successful. Prevent her music from ever being downloaded to my computer, or played on my radio station, or her face from being on my tv, or in my local newspaper, unless I actually offer you money for it.

I have absolutely no problem with finding my music by reading reviews or hearing personal recommendations from people I know instead. I also like to support local talent.

But that, of course, does not happen. And up until recently, this system worked to the advantage of the big corporations, who could control access to the actual product, the CD. Now the corporations have lost control over the actual product, so the system is becoming unbalanced. But only if you believe that for the rest of all time, we must all consume music by purchasing a discrete material product, and music companies must only profit through the sale of that physical product.

That model has been made obsolete by technology and the music industry (and Hollywood and television) are crying the blues and they refuse to accept it. They are the carriage-makers of our era. They deserve to go out of business because they have failed to adjust to changing market realities. In retrospect, does anybody doubt that if the music companies had moved aggressively to make their entire catalogues available as paid downloads in a high quality format that they would not have made a killing? It took Apple to show them it could be done. But it might well be too late. As with prohibition, individual transgression has been replaced with a transgressive infrastructure that will not be easily suppressed.

Google, iTunes, eBay, and Amazon, and even Microsoft, are the new emblems of astute corporations that understand where the market is going and what it wants. All this wailing and gnashing of teeth is misplaced. The music industry should sit down together, face the fact that the old model of business practice is now obsolete, and move on to something new, or join the other dinosaurs in the museum.

Congress, despicably, in exchange for ready election campaign cash, is doing everything it can to keep an obsolete business model afloat– this from alleged believers in a “free market” (“free” for everyone else). It’s like requiring train companies to keep stokers employed. Or more like when a city in Bolivia tried to make it illegal to save rain water in order to help a private American company make a bigger profit with it’s monopoly on the water supply.

The museum is full of creatures that failed to adapt.

Finally, I absolutely believe that a very profitable music business model can survive downloading. How does Google make money?

The difference is, the Recording industry will have to work hard and use their brains. That might be asking too much….

A recent documentary film producer was asked to pay $10,000 for the rights to use a six-second cell-phone ring tone that was derived from the theme from ROCKY (Gonna Fly Now). Tragically, he couldn’t afford a team of lawyers, so he had to pay a negotiated amount less than that, even though he was not convinced that he had to pay, legally, for it’s use in a documentary.

That is not really farce anymore: it’s tragedy.

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Flight 93: The Movie

Am I supposed to feel good about the fact that the makers of the upcoming film, “Flight 93”, have received “cooperation” from all of the families of the passengers?

Some of these families were concerned that earlier accounts of the flight only paid attention to the “heroes”. They want to ensure that their family member gets some exposure as well. This smells of political correctness. Maybe some of the people on this plane were assholes? We’ll never know, because that is not the kind of “exposure” the families want.

I don’t hesitate to acknowledge the terrible sufferings of the families and victims of 9/11. It was a traumatic event, unprecedented in scope, certainly deserving of respectful acknowledgement and a certain degree of sensitivity from the media and film-makers.

But they are not the only ones who have died in the world in the last five years, and not the only ones who have died tragically. And I am sure the the families of all victims, whether of violence, inflicted by misguided governments or fanatic organizations, or the random violence of criminals and psychotics, or the horror of illnesses that strike without reason or logic, all feel that their sufferings are unique and unparalleled and deserving of deferential respect.

But nobody seems willing to publicly challenge the families of the 9/11 victims, whether on the issue of the preposterously excessive compensation they receive (why on earth are they and they alone entitled to millions of dollars in pay-outs when even the families of soldiers are not?) or, in this case, on how history looks at the event.

“Flight 93” is being directed by Paul Greengrass, who directed “Bloody Sunday”, about the 1972 riots in Ireland that resulted in the deaths of 13 unarmed demonstrators. He is a good director, and the film seems promising.

But, is Mr. Greengrass making a home movie? Is Mr. Greengrass making a movie that these family members will be proud to show at family gatherings in the future? Or is he making a movie that strives for accuracy and truth?

It all fits with a trend. We are now inundated with biographical films that are approved by the families or friends of the subject. Not one of these films would admit that they are dishonest in any way– the people who approve of them (and sell the rights to the stories) love to tell Oprah or David or Conan that the movie will show “warts and all”. But they usually only show the warts you don’t mind people seeing, or the warts everyone already knows about. Ray Charles didn’t mind that you knew how many women wanted to sleep with him or that he did drugs and Johnny Cash doesn’t mind if you know that he did pills and alcohol and chased June Carter. But if either of these guys, or Mohammed Ali or Patsy Cline or Buddy Holly or Loretta Lynn or even Jerry Lee Lewis did anything really reprehensible (that you don’t already know about), it aint going to come out in the film.

It is partly due to the onerous provisions of current copyright laws. It has become nearly impossible to make a biographical movie without getting permission from the various stakeholders, whether it is the copyright owners (of the music or images), or families. When the “Buddy Holly Story” was filmed, they actually had to use fictitious names for the Crickets because they had sold the rights separately from the Holly family. That is bizarre. If that is really the result of current legislation on copyright, the legislation needs to be changed. As his highness said in “Amadeus” (a movie without the problem because all of it’s principals were long deceased), “this is stupid”.

Can it be done otherwise? Check out “Backbeat” about the Beatles’ early career. It’s a great film.

On the other hand, I just realized that I hadn’t applied my own theory: who is shown most flatteringly in the movie? Without a doubt, Astrid Kirchherr, depicted as a fascinating, sophisticated, clever, sexy fan-savant.

I just checked a few web-sites. According to this one, Astrid was indeed involved in the production. How about that.

I do not look forward to the inevitable biopic of Bob Dylan, even though the story of one of the most compelling artists of our age should be an important and significant film. Bob Dylan controls the rights to his music. Nobody will be able to make a film without the music, thus, without the approval of Bob Dylan or his estate. I have no doubt that when it comes, the owners of the rights will proclaim, loudly and insistently, that the biography will be “warts and all”. And I have no doubt that it will really be a highly selective and probably distorted picture. [2008-05: I was wrong. The Dylan film, “I’m Not There”, was brilliant. Dylan, after seeing “I Walk the Line”, let it be known to director Todd Haynes that he could have all the rights he wanted and make the film he wanted because Dylan was not going to demand approval of the script or the film. He didn’t want a typical “biopic”. He wanted to leave the judgement of how the film was made to the director. Hallelujah!]

A fair question is– is that any better or worse than the type of biography we get from Albert Goldman,