In 2007, a whopping 400,000 books were published or distributed in the United States, up from 300,000 in 2006, according to the industry tracker Bowker, which attributed the sharp rise to the number of print-on-demand books and reprints of out-of-print titles. University writing programs are thriving, while writers' conferences abound, offering aspiring authors a chance to network and "workshop" their work. The blog tracker Technorati estimates that 175,000 new blogs are created worldwide each day . . . And the same N.E.A. study found that 7 percent of adults polled, or 15 million people, did creative writing, mostly "for personal fulfillment.". . . IUniverse, a self-publishing company founded in 1999, has grown 30 percent a year in recent years; it now produces 500 titles a month and has 36,000 titles in print, said Susan Driscoll, a vice president of its parent company, Author Solutions. . . Driscoll said that most writers using iUniverse sell fewer than 200 books. Other self-publishing outfits report similar growth. Xlibris, a print-on-demand operation, has 20,000 titles in print, by more than 18,000 authors, said Noel Flowers, a company spokesman. - Rachel Donadio, NY Times MUSIC SALES DOWN 21% THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON AMERICANS DOING LESS READING FOR FUN. . . AND IT SHOWS ROCK ARTISTS TWICE AS LIKELY TO DIE EARLY
ART CTR FOR STUDY OF POLITICAL GRAPHICS LITERATURE MEDIA  MOVIES MUSIC DJANGO REINHARDT FUTURE
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JULY 2008 NO PLANS FOR ANTI-WAR PUBLIC SERVICE ADS ON DVDs BUT. . . . New American Media When Sony releases the DVD of "21," a film about MIT math whizzes who take on the smoke-filled world of Las Vegas casinos, this July 22, it will be the first-ever film to feature an anti-smoking public service ad in its opening minutes. The commercial will contrast glamorous tobacco industry images of smokers-a cowboy, a hip-hop DJ and a twenties-era flapper-with the bleak image of a dying man in a wheelchair who warns, "The reality is, you can end up looking like this." DVD releases of movies
rated G, PG or PG-13 that feature tobacco use will all soon open
with anti-smoking public service announcements because of a new
agreement between the State of California, the Entertainment
Industry Foundation and several major Hollywood studios JUNE 2008 CELL PHONES TAKE OVER ROCK CONCERTS ARE ANTI-DEPRESSANTS KILLING CREATIVITY? IS AMERICAN EDUCATION KILLING CREATIVITY? CELL PHONES TAKE OVER ROCK CONCERTS THOR CHRISTENSEN, DALLAS MORNING NEWS What if you gave a concert and the crowd refused to watch? It's not as far-fetched as it seems. As more and more concertgoers fiddle with cell phone cameras and fidget with Blackberries, some people say mobile technology is ruining the concert experience. "It's extraordinarily irritating," says Roger Waters of Pink Floyd fame. "All these people holding up these horrid little squares of bright light.". . . It's not just a case of cranky baby boomers griping about the young and the restless. Plenty of younger artists and fans are also getting fed up with the tech intrusion. . . Of course, pop concerts were awash in distractions long before the cellphone. In the early '60s, shrieking girls made it impossible to hear the Beatles perform. In the '90s, mosh pits made going to concerts a contact sport. "You never expect 100 percent of people's attention," says rapper Ice Cube. "You learn to take 80 percent." But the levels seem to be rapidly shrinking thanks to "microboredom," a term invented by - who else - a cellphone company to convince people they need to escape reality with their mobile gadgets. At concerts, microboredom usually means fans snapping dozens of photos of the band, the crowd and the stage lights. The ultimate disconnect comes when they take pictures of the pictures on the video screen. . . But not all musicians regard mobile technology as a buzz-kill. When cellphone use exploded in the late '90s, bands had fans wave them in the air to create a million-points-of-light effect. Suddenly, flicking your Bic was passé. Later, as text-messaging flourished, groups asked concertgoers to post messages on video screens. Today, some artists embrace the tech boom as a potential career boost. "My bottom line is communication," says English rocker Billy Bragg. "If they want to capture a photo of me and send it to a friend who can't be at the gig, I don't have a problem with that." Concert videos are the latest rage as fans flood YouTube with clips they shot using their cellphones and digital cameras. The videos are often so fuzzy and muffled they're unwatchable. Still, some bands embrace them as free instant promotion.
THE RETURN OF THE ONE MAN BAND MAY 2008 ARE ANTI-DEPRESSANTS KILLING CREATIVITY? JOHN PITCHER, OMAHA WORLD-HERALD Imagine that just before composing his dark masterpiece, "Nebraska," Bruce Springsteen had come across the writings of Dr. Phil. Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch might never have produced his most famous painting, "The Scream", if he had suppressed his existential angst and - as many people do today - simply put on a happy face. The rocker, in a melancholic mood, might have read about five easy steps to beat his depression or about the antidepressants that would cure it. In that weird parallel universe, would Springsteen have written "Nebraska," his bleak narrative about a rampaging serial killer? Or would he have composed something lighter, happier? Something like "Muskrat Love"? You laugh, but North Carolina writer Eric Wilson thinks America's current addiction to happiness threatens the arts. Wilson writes about it in his new book, "Against Happiness", which paints a disturbing portrait of what happens to art in a world filled with "happy types." Melancholia, a term dating back to the ancient Greeks, is a mood disorder characterized by general sadness. The term "clinical depression" dates back only about 100 years. It refers to a psychiatric disorder of pervasive low mood and loss of interest in life. In recent decades, laypeople have begun to use melancholia and depression interchangeably to refer any kind of depressed mood. He predicts an America of vacant smiles and bland sameness. It's a place where poetry is a Hallmark card and where music is, well, Muzak. "I fear we're creating a country where no one would aspire to write a novel like 'Moby-Dick' again," said Wilson, . . . "No one would even want to read it, because who needs 'Moby-Dick' when you've got Dr. Phil?". . . Dr. Thomas Svolos, an adjunct professor and the vice chairman of the department of psychiatry at the Creighton University School of Medicine, thinks Wilson may be on to something. . . "When you're melancholy, you tend to step back and examine your life," Svolos said. "That kind of questioning is essential for creativity." But for happy types, life's deeper meaning may not be an active question. Wilson makes that point in his book, and Svolos thinks it points to an even broader cultural concern. Before the 1950s, clinical depression was considered an extremely rare mental illness, affecting less than 5 percent of the population. . . Currently, 11 percent of American women and 5 percent of American men take antidepressants, the magazine Scientific American reported in February. The New England Research Institute's recent study of health insurance plans found that 43 percent of those who were prescribed antidepressants had not received a formal psychiatric diagnosis. Their family doctors prescribed the pills, and usually there was no follow-up. . . Wilson and Svolos insist that art and happiness should not be seen as either/or propositions. They believe that serious mental illness should be diagnosed and treated with therapy and, when necessary, medicine. Depression should not be romanticized, they say. But they also believe that ordinary melancholy - a term that dates back to the ancient Greeks - is a natural part of life. It may not be pleasant, but it can be beneficial, because it causes an emotional state of unrest that acts as a spark plug to creative thought. . . MOST STILL LIKE TRADITIONAL BOOKS ZOGBY - The vast majority of readers still like to read the old-fashioned way - 82% said they prefer to curl up with a printed book over using the latest in reading technology, a new Random House/Zogby poll shows. Women (85%) are more likely than men (79%) to say they prefer reading printed books. Reading printed books also has greater appeal among older respondents, although it is by far the preferred method among all age groups. Just 11% of respondents said they are comfortable reading books in other formats, such as online or with an e-book reader or PDA. Men (13%) are more open than women (8%) to reading books in other formats, as are 13% of those younger than age 30, compared to just 6% of those age 65 and older. The survey finds most readers often head to a bookstore knowing exactly what they're looking for - 43% of respondents said they do this somewhat often, while nearly as many (38%) very often head to a bookstore with a particular book in mind. But just because they're focused on a certain book, most admit they're likely to be tempted by other books once at a store - 77% said that when they go into a bookstore for a specific book, they sometimes make additional, unplanned book purchases. For nearly half (48%), the first thing that draws them to a book while browsing in a bookstore is the subject, followed by the author (24%) and the book's title (11%). Most said they typically read just one book at a time, but a sizable 40% said they usually are reading between two and four books at once. Another 3% said they generally read more than four books at one time. While 19% said they borrow most of the books they read from the library, the vast majority of Americans (78%) said they own most of the books they read. 35% admit to folding over the pages, while 13% confess to sneaking a peek at the ending before finishing a book. Just 6% divulged that they have neglected to return a library book. Two in three respondents (68%) said they typically read a book just once, but 18% said they usually go back for a second read and 10% generally read a book three times or more. Once a book has been read, most respondents said it goes back on their shelf at home (57%), but others are more likely part ways once they finish - 20% usually pass books on to a friend or family member, while 14% give them away and just 3% said they typically sell their books once their done reading them. HOW EVERYONE BECAME 'CREATIVE' PRINT ON DEMAND HELPS NEW BOOKS GROW BY ONE THIRD IN ONE YEAR WHY DO MUSICIANS FORGET WHERE THEY LEFT
THEIR INSTRUMENT? WHY ARTISTS SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO WRITE ABOUT THEIR WORK EUROPEAN NOISE LAWS AFFECTING ORCHESTRAS LOCAL HEROES: LAW STUDENTS TAKE ON RIAA BOOK SELLERS FACE FINANCIAL LOSSES RECORDING INDUSTRY'S CHICKEN COMES HOME TO ROOST AS MUSICIANS SUE FOR LOST ROYALTIES HOW THE CIA SUBVERTED THE ARTS RIAA STILL CAN'T FIGURE OUT WHY IT'S HATED WHY DON'T ARCHITECTURAL CRITICS CARE ABOUT LEAKS? CANADIAN STUDY BLOWS HOLES IN RIAA ARGUMENTS AUTHORS: IF YOU FEEL REJECTED YOU'RE NOT ALONE JOYCE JOHNSON ON THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF 'ON THE ROAD' APRIL 2008 DRUMMERS TOTALLY RULE - INTELLIGENCE AND RHYTHM LINKED People who score high on intelligence tests are also good at keeping time, new Swedish research shows. The team that carried out the study also suspect that accuracy in timing is important to the brain processes responsible for problem solving and reasoning. JAZZ: COOLER AND CHEAPER THAN WAR Sam Smith  A HALF CENTURY AGO , jazz musician Dave Brubeck became a star in an anomaly: some American foreign policy that actually worked. He recently was in Washington celebrating his participation in the Jazz Ambassadors program of the 1950s,which sent musicians abroad to show a different side of America. Among the other participants: Dizzy Gillespie, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Thelonius Monk, Benny Goodman and Miles Davis. In 1958, Brubeck visited 12 countries, including Poland, Turkey, East and West Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Iran and Iraq. As Brubeck explained it, "We were out 120 days without a day off, and it was rough travel. The water wasn't fit to drink, but you got so thirsty, you drank it. The State Department didn't want us to come home. They wanted us to stay out. They cancelled our concerts here at home." In an interview with National Endowment for the Arts chair Dana Gioia several years ago, Brubeck told how the Voice of America had been his warm-up band: "Most of the people, when they spoke to you in English, sounded like Willis Conover from the Voice of America. His show came on every night worldwide. . . To this day . . . you can hear his voice. In Russia, people sound like Willis. If you listened to my recordings in the Soviet Union during the darkest days of the Cold War, you could be sent to Siberia or worse. They listened to my records, and they called it 'Jazz in Bones.' Using X-ray plates, they could record Willis Conover and get a fairly good recording. If you were caught with that, you were dead. But the doctors and the nurses and the students would very carefully listen to these recordings, and they had underground jazz meetings all the time." Listening to Brubeck recall his tour under the prodding of Hedrick Smith at a Library of Congress event the other evening, it was clear that Brubeck had added his own flair for diplomacy. And not just from the stories. The Brubeck Institute Quintet played tunes between the anecdotes. The musicians were all 18-20 years old but the 87-year old Brubeck treated them with respect and enthusiasm, turning his chair to watch each solo and even at one point signaling to Christopher Smith that he noted the bassist hadn't got his solo. It's one of those things that happens to bass players so they both shrugged and smiled. Brubeck himself only played one number all the way through and when it was time for his "Blue Rondo" he stood behind Javier Santiago and announced, "This piece is so damn hard that I'm going to have him play it." Santiago masterfully tackled the opening, relinquished the piano bench to Brubeck for the solo and then returned for the close. You don't see many legends do that sort of thing, especially when it's their tune.
Brubeck crossed the generations like it was just another national border in the Cold War. Matt Schudel of the Washington Post quotes the NEA's Gioia as saying: "There is no American alive who has done more extensive and effective cultural diplomacy than Dave Brubeck. Dave is not only one of the greatest living American artists, he's also one of the greatest living American diplomats." Just the sort of guy you would have wanted to send to Poland in the midst of the Cold War. Brubeck told Gioa, "When we played in Poland in 1958, I had gone to Chopin's home, and I had seen the statue that the Nazis had almost broken. I had been in his home and seen his pianos. So that night on the train to the last concert in Poland, I composed in my head a song dedicated to Chopin and the Polish people. As an encore, we played it, and there was absolute silence in the auditorium. I thought, now I've ruined all 12 concerts. They're shocked that I would play in a Chopinesque kind of way. And then, the place went insane with applause. . . It's called Dziekuje, which means 'thank you' in Polish. Here it is 2005 - that was 1958 - and they still remember that piece."  [FROM THE BRUBECK COLLECTION, UNIVERSITY OF THE PACIFIC] It hadn't been easy getting to Poland. A Hedrick Smith documentary website notes: "The tour also featured a stop in Poland, which required a journey into communist-controlled East Berlin. Because of a State Department snafu, the group didn't have the necessary visas. A tour official found a way to get papers, but collecting them required a risky illegal journey through Berlin's Brandenburg Gate and into communist territory. 'I was supposed to be in [music promoter] Madame Gunderlach's trunk to go through the gate,' Dave explains, 'And of course, there were plenty of signs telling you not to go through. Many people that had gone through into East Germany disappeared for about six months or longer. So I didn't want to be in that position.' "Brubeck refused to ride in the trunk, but did crouch down in the backseat and was dropped off at a big, non-descript building. 'I sat there for two hours alone in this bare room,' he said. 'And this guy, very shabbily dressed came and sat next to me. He said, 'You Mister Kulu?' And I said, 'No, Mister Brubeck.' And he said, 'No, you Mister Kulu.' And I said, 'No, I'm Mister Brubeck.' So he took out a Polish newspaper and there's a picture of me. And under it, it says, Mister Kulu. So I figured it out - "Mr. Cool Jazz, that's what Kulu means. He thought that [was] my name. But he had the papers for me to continue on through East Berlin into Poland." The problems didn't end there. Reports Schudel: "Later he climbed aboard an East German train bound for Poland with his wife, son, three band mates and a musician's wife. When guards demanded to know why the Americans were carrying so much luggage, Brubeck recalls, he had to pantomime drumming to explain that they were musicians traveling with instruments. His boom, boom' drew suspicious glares, but they eventually made it to Warsaw." In India that Brubeck found only one decent piano - a 12 foot grand in Bombay with gold in its keys. He wondered aloud what he would play at a major event the next day. His hosts answered by gathering 20 men who lifted the piano and carried it to the stadium. In Afghanistan it was tougher. Kabul, recalled Brubeck, "was a hard place to find a piano." They located a terrible one, but Brubeck said it was okay; there were "just certain notes I won't play."  But Brubeck didn't just perform. He learned. In Turkey it was about 9/8 time. In India about a different standard for improvisation that Deepak Ram explained at the Library of Congress event: "We encourage improvisation after you have studied 12 years." Everywhere Brubeck went he not only played, he listened. Out of it came a number of tunes including Blue Rondo a la Turk based on the Turkish zeybek, And he kept at it. Thirty years later, Brubeck had Mikhail Gorbachev tapping his fingers to "Take Five" at a break during a stalled summit meeting. The next day Secretary of State George Shultz gave Brubeck a big hug and credited him with breaking the conference stalemate. But then this was a white musician who had won the first jazz poll ever taken by the black newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier. And Schudel tells the story of Brubeck and William "The Lion" Smith doing a tour in the Netherlands, during which Smith is asked by a journalist, "Isn't it true that no white man can play jazz?" Smith, Brubeck beside him, replied, "I'd like you to meet my son." It was not unlike what Louis Armstrong said to Jack Teagarden on their first meeting: "You're ofay, I'm spade, let's blow." It isn't that jazz musicians are better people; it's just they have better things on their mind than national and cultural anger. Finding these better things is the quickest way out of human conflict: the commonality of appreciation overcomes fear of the uncommon. Jazz has always been a metaphor for this: a place where everyone gets to solo but only if they also back up everyone else - that mystical blend of individual and community that makes some human societies thrive. One day we may even learn how to make it work for countries as well. DAVE BRUBECK VIDEOS
MARCH 2008 ARTS EDUCATION AND INTELLIGENCE SCIENTIFIC BLOGGING - Are smart people drawn to the arts or does arts training make people smarter? Or neither? According to research led by Dr. Michael S. Gazzaniga of the University of California at Santa Barbara, children motivated in the arts develop attention skills and strategies for memory retrieval that also apply to other subject areas. . . Participating researchers, using brain imaging studies and behavioral assessment, identified key points relevant to the interests of parents, students, educators, neuroscientists, and policy makers. According to the study: - An interest in a performing art leads to a high state of motivation that produces the sustained attention necessary to improve performance and the training of attention that leads to improvement in other domains of cognition. - Specific links exist between high levels of music training and the ability to manipulate information in both working and long-term memory; these links extend beyond the domain of music training. - In children, there appear to be specific links between the practice of music and skills in geometrical representation, though not in other forms of numerical representation. - Correlations exist between music training and both reading acquisition and sequence learning. One of the central predictors of early literacy, phonological awareness, is correlated with both music training and the development of a specific brain pathway. - Training in acting appears to lead to memory improvement through the learning of general skills for manipulating semantic information. - Adult self-reported interest in aesthetics is related to a temperamental factor of openness, which in turn is influenced by dopamine-related genes. - Learning to dance by effective observation is closely related to learning by physical practice, both in the level of achievement and also the neural substrates that support the organization of complex actions. Effective observational learning may transfer to other cognitive skills. FEBRUARY 2008 WHATEVER HAPPENED TO MASS CULTURE? RANDALL DENLEY, THE OTTAWA CITIZEN - What happened to mass culture? It seems to have died without anyone even noticing. You will no doubt remember when there were songs, television shows, movies and books that most everyone had heard of. These shared cultural reference points helped us communicate by doing things like citing an incident from Seinfeld to illustrate a point. Or Shakespeare, if you are more cultured. . . . Let's start with the lack of talent. The top selling album in the U.S. last year was Josh Groban's Christmas CD. No. 2 was the soundtrack from High School Musical 2, followed by the Eagles album that was released through Wal-Mart. Rock poseur Chris Daughtry and Hannah Montana star Miley Cyrus were close behind. Only Groban's album exceeded three million in sales. . . The music industry has become obsessed with people stealing their products electronically, but the real problem is a lack of compelling talent. We lack major figures such as Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley and the Beatles. Each redefined pop music and drew vast audiences that crossed generations. Literally no one is doing that now. Few new singers today even have a hope of cracking music's second tier. Television was the other medium that touched everyone, but that has changed. The curious thing about the recently resolved writers' strike is how little people talked about it. The sporadic availability of our favorite television didn't seem to bother people. . . . In the most recent BBM Nielsen ratings, the top regular show in Canada was American Idol, with 2.8 million viewers. The only other show to break the two-million mark was House. It happens to be a personal favourite, but when I mention the show to other people, most have no idea what I'm talking about. . . Books and movies aren't having much success in finding mass audiences, either. What few blockbuster movies there have been in recent years, the ones it seems everyone has seen, are filmed versions of the Harry Potter books or the Lord of the Rings. Sales of books are so embarrassingly small that the publishing industry rarely ever talks about them. A book that sells 5,000 copies is considered a bestseller in Canada. At that kind of number, there is a pretty fine line between a bestseller and a secret. . . THE VOICE THAT FADED FAR TOO SOON  ONE OF THE PLEASURES of your editor's life was to have caught a performance by Eva Cassidy before the incredible singer passed away at the age of 33. Reader John Gear has tipped us off to some links to videos of Cassidy singing. JANUARY 2008 HOW THE ARMY FINDS A BAND NOAH SHACTMAN, DANGER ROOM - It's not completely surprising that the Army wants to hire a band to tour its bases jn Afghanistan and Kuwait. The armed services get all kinds of folks, to entertain the troops. . . First, a summary of what the Army is seeking: "Professional Celebrity Rock Music Band, group not to exceed seven people for tour of FOB's [forward operating bases] in Kuwait and Afghanistan for February 4-13 2008. The band should be an active rock band, with a music genre consisting of Southern Rock, Pop Rock, Post-Grunge and Hard Rock. At least one member of the band should be recognizable as a professional celebrity. Protective military equipment, such as kevlar, body armor, eye and ear protection will be provided when the group is traveling on military rotary or fixed wing aircraft." Then, there's the highly-calibrated method the service will use to evaluate these Professional Celebrity Rock Music Band applicants. The contract will be awarded based on "Past Performance, Contractor Capability, Contractor's Experience, Celebrity Status of the Proposed Artists, and Price. Contractor Capability, Experience, and Price. The celebrity status of the proposed artist is slightly more important than these 3 combined, and all 4 combined are slightly more important than Price." Good luck, rockers. And remember: "Any criminal conduct, unexcused tardiness or absence which prevents timely starting of the performance(s) required hereunder, indecency or obscenity, drunkenness, damage to Government property, failure to discharge indebtedness to the Government, influence of narcotics or hallucinatory drugs, threatening breach of national security, violation of the rules and regulations of the Host Nation, Government or TFF MWR are grounds for termination of this contract." No "forced on indentured child labor," and no "live animals," either. http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/01/army-seeks-prof.html DECEMBER 2007 RECORDING INDUSTRY ONCE SANG A DIFFERENT TUNE ON PERSONAL CD COPYING BOING BOING - Dan Gillmor points out that the recording industry used to have a different opinion on personal use. It removed the following statement from its website: "If you choose to take your own CDs and make copies for yourself on your computer or portable music player, that's great. It's your music and we want you to enjoy it at home, at work, in the car and on the jogging trail." Gillmor adds: "Also, from the Supreme Court oral arguments in the Grokster case, Donald Virrelli, on behalf of the entertainment companies: 'The record companies, my clients, have said, for some time now, and it's been on their Website for some time now, that it's perfectly lawful to take a CD that you've purchased, upload it onto your computer, put it onto your iPod. There is a very, very significant lawful commercial use for that device, going forward.'" http://www.boingboing.net/2007/12/31/record-industry-prac.html MUSIC SALES DOWN 21% THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON ARSTECHNICA - To some music lovers, the fact that Josh Groban's Noel was the highest-selling album of 2007 is all the proof they need that major-label music is dying. To shareholders and label execs, though, the numbers are more important, and the numbers are grim: music sales are down 21 percent this Christmas season. . . RIAA companies have seen sales drop by 11.6 percent between 2002 and 2006, even as movies hold steady and games are showing sales increases. The recent news suggests that people are turning away from the CD as a Christmas present, due in large part to the rise of online music services like iTunes, eMusic, and the Amazon MP3 shop. Now that non-DRMed music is widely available from many popular artists, giving the gift of digital downloads can be an attractive option for holiday shoppers. Certainly it's becoming more mainstream; even my local supermarket now stocks iTunes gift cards. RECORDING CORPORADOS CLAIM YOU CAN'T EVEN COPY A CD TO YOUR OWN COMPUTER MARC FISHER, WASH POST - Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing. Still, hardly a month goes by without a news release from the industry's lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America, touting a new wave of letters to college students and others demanding a settlement payment and threatening a legal battle. Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer. The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings. "I couldn't believe it when I read that," says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. "The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation." RIAA's hard-line position seems clear. Its Web site says: "If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings, you're stealing. You're breaking the law and you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages." RECORDING INDUSTRY DESTROYING THE SOUND OF MUSIC ROBERT LEVINE, ROLLING STONE- David Bendeth, a producer who works with rock bands like Hawthorne Heights and Paramore, knows that the albums he makes are often played through tiny computer speakers by fans who are busy surfing the Internet. So he's not surprised when record labels ask the mastering engineers who work on his CDs to crank up the sound levels so high that even the soft parts sound loud. Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse. "They make it loud to get [listeners'] attention," Bendeth says. Engineers do that by applying dynamic range compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and softest sounds in a song. Like many of his peers, Bendeth believes that relying too much on this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue. "I think most everything is mastered a little too loud," Bendeth says. "The industry decided that it's a volume contest." Producers and engineers call this "the loudness war," and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume isn't the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text, make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse," says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But there are no details anymore.". . . It's the same technique used to make television commercials stand out from shows. And it does grab listeners' attention — but at a price. Last year, Bob Dylan told Rolling Stone that modern albums "have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like — static." BRITISH MUSIC CORPORADOS WANT FEES WHEN KIDS SING CHRISTMAS CAROLS TORRENT FREAK - Car maintenance chain Kwik Fit is currently tied up in a bitter legal battle with the UK Performing Rights Society. It's alleged that Kwik Fit's mechanics allowed their radios to be played within earshot of the public - a truly heinous crime for which the PRS are demanding L200,000 in damages. . . The staff at a charity also received a visit from a PRS officer who declared that because a staff radio in the kitchen could be overheard by the public in their tea-room, they would need a license. The charity, Dam House, which was originally set up to save a historic building and offer community and health facilities, had to have a fund-raising event to raise the money for the license. However, having purchased a license, this wasn't the end of the matter. The PRS then started asking more questions, and when they discovered that kids sing in a carol concert there at Christmas, they declared that the premises were under licensed. Yes, of course - the PRS wanted yet more money. "We got really worked up when they told us how much we would have to pay this year" said charity trustee, Margaret Hatton. "They asked us what facilities we had and we think they are charging more because they found out we've got a function room.". . . "They told us the only way to avoid paying to sing the carols is if the kids are told to stick to old songs which are out of copyright." Next thing you know someone will be saying 'Happy Birthday' is copyrighted and you can't sing that to the public in the tea-rooms. Well, unfortunately it is, and legally you can't. NOVEMBER 2007 AMERICANS DOING LESS READING FOR FUN. . . AND IT SHOWS NY TIMES - Americans - particularly young Americans - appear to be reading less for fun, and as that happens, their reading test scores are declining. At the same time, performance in other academic disciplines like math and science is dipping for students whose access to books is limited, and employers are rating workers deficient in basic writing skills. That is the message of a new report by the National Endowment for the Arts, based on an analysis of data from about two dozen studies from the federal Education and Labor Departments and the Census Bureau as well as other academic, foundation and business surveys. . . Among the findings is that although reading scores among elementary school students have been improving, scores are flat among middle school students and slightly declining among high school seniors. These trends are concurrent with a falloff in daily pleasure reading among young people as they progress from elementary to high school, a drop that appears to continue once they enter college. The data also showed that students who read for fun nearly every day performed better on reading tests than those who reported reading never or hardly at all. The study also examined results from reading tests administered to adults and found a similar trend: The percentage of adults who are proficient in reading prose has fallen at the same time that the proportion of people who read regularly for pleasure has declined. . . OCTOBER 2007 WHY DON'T ARCHITECTURAL CRITICS CARE ABOUT LEAKS? BOSTON GLOBE - The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center in Cambridge, one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in years, caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up. The suit says that MIT paid Los Angeles-based Gehry Partners $15 million to design the Stata Center, which was hailed by critics as innovative and eye-catching with its unconventional walls and radical angles. But soon after its completion in spring 2004, the center's outdoor amphitheater began to crack due to drainage problems, the suit says. Snow and ice cascaded dangerously from window boxes and other projecting roof areas, blocking emergency exits and damaging other parts of the building, according to the suit. Mold grew on the center's brick exterior, the suit says, and there were persistent leaks throughout the building. The suit says it cost MIT more than $1.5 million to hire another company to rebuild the amphitheater, with new bricks, seats, and a new drainage system. . . "It really is a disaster," said former Boston University president John Silber, who sharply criticizes the Stata Center's design in a new book, "Architecture of the Absurd: How 'Genius' Disfigured a Practical Art.". . . After learning of the lawsuit yesterday, Silber said Gehry "thinks of himself as an artist, as a sculptor. But the trouble is you don't live in a sculpture and users have to live in this building." Gehry is not the first famous architect to be sued over the design of a local landmark. I.M. Pei and Partners, the architects who designed the 60-story John Hancock Tower, were sued, along with a handful of contractors and engineers, after panes of glass began popping out of the Back Bay building and crashing onto the street below during its construction in the 1970s. It drew worldwide publicity as "The Plywood skyscraper" when its glass was temporarily replaced with wood. The case was settled out of court. . . [And now a word from the Globe's architectural critic] Robert Campbell, an architect who is a critic for the Globe, said it is inevitable that there will be problems in any unconventional building like the Stata Center, which has roofs colliding at different, odd angles. "It looks like something out of a Disney cartoon," Campbell said. "It's really quite pleasurable and people like it, but it does involve some risks in that it's impossible to keep it from leaking.". . . "Because he's so daring, you figure you've got to be daring, too, if you're a client," Campbell said. "You know if you hire Frank Gehry there are going to be new kinds of problems." But he said clients accept the risks because "they'll get a building like no other building." [For a comparison, consider one of Washington's
finest art collections - in the National Air and Space Museum.
With rare exceptions, every flying objet d'art in that gallery
actually did what it was meant to do and many of them managed
to look quite beautiful at the same time. Contrast that with
the absurd arrogance of non-functional architecture.] CANADIAN STUDY BLOWS HOLES IN RIAA ARGUMENTS MICHAEL GEIST, CANADA - A new study commissioned by Industry Canada, which includes some of the most extensive surveying to date of the Canadian population on music purchasing habits, finds what many have long suspected (though CRIA has denied) - there is a positive correlation between peer-to-peer downloading and CD purchasing. . . The authors believe this is the first ever empirical study to employ representative microeconomic data. The two key findings: - There was "a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. . . The study estimates that one additional P2P download per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year. - When viewed in the aggregate (ie. the entire Canadian population), there is no direct relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchases in Canada. . . The study also addresses a number of other frequently discussed issues. It finds that: - there was no statistically significant relationship between P2P downloads and digital download purchases from stores such as iTunes - people who buy digital downloads are not less likely to buy CDs - people who own MP3 players are less likely to buy CDs - people who buy large numbers of DVDs, videogames, cinema and concert tickets also buy a higher number of CDs. In other words, consumers of entertainment consume more entertainment, not less. - household income has no statistically significant effect on CD or digital download purchases http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/2347/125/ THE REPORT HOW CLEAR CHANNEL IS WORSE FOR THE MUSIC BUSINESS THAN DOWNLOADING ROGER FRIEDMAN, FOX NEWS - Bruce Springsteen should be very happy. He has the No. 1 album, a possible Grammy for Best Album of the Year for "Magic," an album full of singles and a sold-out concert tour. Alas, there's a hitch: Radio will not play "Magic." In fact, sources tell me that Clear Channel has sent an edict to its classic rock stations not to play tracks from "Magic." But it's OK to play old Springsteen tracks such as "Dancing in the Dark," "Born to Run" and "Born in the USA." Just no new songs by Springsteen, even though it's likely many radio listeners already own the album and would like to hear it mixed in with the junk offered on radio. Why? One theory, says a longtime rock insider, "is that the audience knows those songs. Of course, they'll never know these songs if no one plays them." "Magic," by the way, has sold more than 500,000 copies since its release on Oct. 2 and likely will hit the million mark. . . But what a situation: The No. 1 album is not being played on any radio stations, according to Radio & Records, which monitors such things. Nothing. . . Clear Channel seems to have sent a clear message to other radio outlets that at age 58, Springsteen simply is too old to be played on rock stations. This completely absurd notion is one of many ways Clear Channel has done more to destroy the music business than downloading over the last 10 years. It's certainly what's helped create satellite radio, where Springsteen is a staple and even has his own channel on Sirius. http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,306164,00.html NEOLOGISMS- THE WAY AROUND CENSORSHIP NY TIMES - It began on Feb. 12, 2006, when viewers of the ABC series "Grey's Anatomy" heard the character Miranda Bailey, a pregnant doctor who had gone into labor, admonish a male intern, "Stop looking at my vajayjay." The line sprang from an executive producer's need to mollify standards and practices executives who wanted the script to include fewer mentions of the word vagina. The scene, however, had the unintended effect of catapulting vajayjay (also written va-jay-jay) into mainstream speech. Fans of "Grey's Anatomy" expressed their approval of the word on message boards and blogs. The show's most noted fan, Oprah Winfrey, began using it on her show, effectively legitimizing it for some 46 million American viewers each week. . . Vajayjay found its way into electronic dictionaries like Urban Dictionary, Word Spy and Merriam-Webster's Open Dictionary. It was uttered on the television series "30 Rock." It was used on the Web site of "The Tyra Banks Show." Jimmy Kimmel said it in a monologue. It has appeared in the Web publications Salon and the Huffington Post and on the blog Wonkette. AUGUST 2007 THE DISAPPEARING ARTS IN AMERICAN CULTURE [Gioa is chair of the National Endowment for the Arts] DANA GIOA, STANFORD UNIVERSITY COMMENCEMENT - At heart I'm still a working-class kid - half Italian, half Mexican - from L.A., or more precisely from Hawthorne, a city that most of this audience knows only as the setting of Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown - two films that capture the ineffable charm of my hometown. . . My dad had a fairly hard life. He never spoke English until he went to school. He barely survived a plane crash in World War II. He worked hard, but never had much success, except with his family. . . I know that there was a bit of controversy when my name was announced as the graduation speaker. A few students were especially concerned that I lacked celebrity status. It seemed I wasn't famous enough. . . There is an experiment I'd love to conduct. I'd like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many active NBA players, Major League Baseball players, and American Idol finalists they can name. Then I'd ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors, and composers they can name. I'd even like to ask how many living American scientists or social thinkers they can name. Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, Arthur Miller, Thornton Wilder, Georgia O'Keeffe, Leonard Bernstein, Leontyne Price, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Not to mention scientists and thinkers like Linus Pauling, Jonas Salk, Rachel Carson, Margaret Mead, and especially Dr. Alfred Kinsey. I don't think that Americans were smarter then, but American culture was. Even the mass media placed a greater emphasis on presenting a broad range of human achievement. I grew up mostly among immigrants, many of whom never learned to speak English. But at night watching TV variety programs like the Ed Sullivan Show or the Perry Como Music Hall, I saw - along with comedians, popular singers, and movie stars - classical musicians like Jascha Heifetz and Arthur Rubinstein, opera singers like Robert Merrill and Anna Moffo, and jazz greats like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong captivate an audience of millions with their art. The same was even true of literature. I first encountered Robert Frost, John Steinbeck, Lillian Hellman, and James Baldwin on general interest TV shows. All of these people were famous to the average American - because the culture considered them important. Today no working-class or immigrant kid would encounter that range of arts and ideas in the popular culture. Almost everything in our national culture, even the news, has been reduced to entertainment, or altogether eliminated. The loss of recognition for artists, thinkers, and scientists has impoverished our culture in innumerable ways, but let me mention one. When virtually all of a culture's celebrated figures are in sports or entertainment, how few possible role models we offer the young. . . I have a reccurring nightmare. I am in Rome visiting the Sistine Chapel. I look up at Michelangelo's incomparable fresco of the "Creation of Man." I see God stretching out his arm to touch the reclining Adam's finger. And then I notice in the other hand Adam is holding a Diet Pepsi. . . Entertainment promises us a predictable pleasure - humor, thrills, emotional titillation, or even the odd delight of being vicariously terrified. It exploits and manipulates who we are rather than challenges us with a vision of who we might become. A child who spends a month mastering Halo or NBA Live on Xbox has not been awakened and transformed the way that child would be spending the time rehearsing a play or learning to draw. If you don't believe me, you should read the statistical studies that are now coming out about American civic participation. Our country is dividing into two distinct behavioral groups. One group spends most of its free time sitting at home as passive consumers of electronic entertainment. Even family communication is breaking down as members increasingly spend their time alone, staring at their individual screens. The other group also uses and enjoys the new technology, but these individuals balance it with a broader range of activities. They go out - to exercise, play sports, volunteer and do charity work at about three times the level of the first group. By every measure they are vastly more active and socially engaged than the first group. What is the defining difference between passive and active citizens? Curiously, it isn't income, geography, or even education. It depends on whether or not they read for pleasure and participate in the arts. These cultural activities seem to awaken a heightened sense of individual awareness and social responsibility. http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/june20/gradtrans-062007.html ECONOMIST CALCULATES OPTIMUM TERM OF COPYRIGHT IS 14 YEARS BOING BOING - Rufus Pollock, a PhD candidate in economics at Cambridge University, has just released "Forever Minus a Day? Some Theory and Empirics of Optimal Copyright," a brilliant new paper on the economically optimal term of copyright. He's presenting it in Berlin this week, but it's already online. Here's the abstract: "The optimal level for copyright has been a matter for extensive debate over the last decade. This paper contributes several new results on this issue divided into two parts. In the first, a parsimonious theoretical model is used to prove several novel propositions about the optimal level of protection. Specifically, we demonstrate that (a) optimal copyright falls as the costs of production go down (for example as a result of digitization) and that (b) the optimal level of copyright will, in general, fall over time. The second part of the paper focuses on the specific case of copyright term. Using a simple model we characterise optimal term as a function of a few key parameters. We estimate this function using a combination of new and existing data on recordings and books and find an optimal term of around fourteen years. This is substantially shorter than any current copyright term and implies that existing copyright terms are too long." http://www.rufuspollock.org/archives/198 JULY 2007  JUNE 2007 MUSIC PUBLISHERS GO AFTER GUITAR TAB SITE PETER J. ALLEN, GUITAR TABS - Today I received a certified letter from Moses & Singer LLP, a law firm in New York City which asserts that they are acting as counsel for the National Music Publishers Association and The Music Publishers Association of America. They have stated that guitar tablature hosted on my site violates the copyrights of several of their clients. I have long been of the understanding that an original, by-ear transcription of a song, which is a duplicate of no copyrighted work and which generally deviates substantially from the work on which it is based is the property of its transcriber, and not the original composer of the song. The NMPA and MPA clearly disagree, and are threatening to send a DMCA letter to my host, as well as pursue other undisclosed legal actions in the event that I were to fall short of full cooperation with their demands. This site has been a part of my life for ten years now, and I honestly believe that what I'm doing is neither illegal nor harmful to the music publishing industry. My site generates interest in playing music, which can only lead to more purchases of licensed sheet music. In addition, I have referred tens of thousands of dollars in licensed sheet music sales to my affiliates over the years. The notion that a musician serious enough to spend $30 on a sheet music book would instead settle for a by-ear tablature interpretation seems unlikely to me. While highly paid lawyers may easily be able to use corrupt, recently-manipulated and poorly-tested copyright law to suggest that I am violating the law, the argument that I have actually damaged their industry in the process seems ludicrous. http://www.guitartabs.com/nmpa.php LICENSE DOWNLOADING INSTEAD OF SUING OVER IT FRED VON LOHMANN, WASHINGTON POST OP ED - The House committees responsible for copyright and education wrote a joint letter May 1 scolding the presidents of 19 major American universities, demanding that each school respond to a six-page questionnaire detailing steps it has taken to curtail illegal music and movie file-sharing on campus. One of the questions -- "Does your institution expel violating students?" -- shows just how out-of-control the futile battle against campus downloading has become. . . History is sure to judge harshly everyone responsible for this absurd state of affairs. Our universities have far better things to spend money on than bullying students. Artists deserve to be fairly compensated, but are we really prepared to sue and expel every college student who has made an illegal copy? . . . It's not an effective solution, either. Short of appointing a copyright hall monitor for every dorm room, there is no way digital copying will be meaningfully reduced. . . Even if students were completely cut off from the Internet, they would continue to copy CDs, swap hard drives and pool their laptops. . . The only solution is a blanket license that permits students to get unrestricted music and movies from sources of their choosing. At its heart, this is a fight about money, not about morality. We should have the universities collect the cash, pay it to the entertainment industry and let the students do what they are going to do anyway [Von Lohmann] is a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. RECORDING COMPANIES HURTING MUSIC, EARS WITH LOUDNESS ADAM SHERWIN, TIMES UK - Rock music really is getting louder and now recording experts have warned that the sound of chart-topping albums is making listeners feel sick. Record companies are using digital technology to turn the volume on CDs up to "11". Artists and record bosses believe that the best album is the loudest one. Sound levels are being artificially enhanced so that the music punches through when it competes against background noise in pubs or cars. Britain's leading studio engineers are starting a campaign against a widespread technique that removes the dynamic range of a recording, making everything sound "loud". "Peak limiting" squeezes the sound range to one level, removing the peaks and troughs that would normally separate a quieter verse from a pumping chorus. The process takes place at mastering, the final stage before a track is prepared for release. In the days of vinyl, the needle would jump out of the groove if a track was too loud. But today musical details, including vocals and snare drums, are lost in the blare and many CD players respond to the frequency challenge by adding a buzzing, distorted sound to tracks. . . The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication, branded "unlistenable" by studio experts, is the subject of an online petition calling for it to be "remastered" without its harsh, compressed sound. Peter Mew, senior mastering engineer at Abbey Road studios, said: "Record companies are competing in an arms race to make their album sound the 'loudest'. The quieter parts are becoming louder and the loudest parts are just becoming a buzz." Mr Mew, who joined Abbey Road in 1965 and mastered David Bowie's classic 1970s albums, warned that modern albums now induced nausea. He said: "The brain is not geared to accept buzzing. The CDs induce a sense of fatigue in the listeners. It becomes psychologically tiring and almost impossible to listen to. This could be the reason why CD sales are in a slump." Geoff Emerick, engineer on the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper album, said: "A lot of what is released today is basically a scrunched-up mess. Whole layers of sound are missing. It is because record companies don't trust the listener to decide themselves if they want to turn the volume up." VIDEO: THE LOUDNESS WAR MORT SAHL HITS 80 PAUL KRASSNER - Mort Sahl is now 80 years old. He was a pioneer in stand-up comedy. He broke through the tradition of jokes about airplane food, Asian drivers and frigid wives, instead sharing his wit and insights about political hypocrisy, racism and monogamy. I first met Sahl in 1953 when he was a guest speaker in a course I was taking at the New School for Social Research. I was inspired by his satirical approach to serious issues. "Every word I do is improvised," he once told me. "I don't rehearse anything. I start it on stage." In the beginning, though, he would write key words on a rolled-up newspaper, which became his trademark prop. In 1960 he wrote jokes for presidential candidate John Kennedy, and Sahl's picture graced the cover of Time magazine in August during the conventions. When Kennedy was killed in 1963, Sahl endangered his career and was blacklisted as a result of becoming an associate of New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison in his investigation of the JFK assassination. In 1967, I was a guest on Sahl's TV show, which had been dealing outspokenly with contemporary controversies, so when his option wasn't renewed ostensibly because of a low rating, there was much suspicion. But Sahl also had a nightly radio show and asked his listeners to write in to KTTV. By the time 31,000 letters arrived, the channel's executives had conveniently discovered another rating service and the option was renewed. On the program, Sahl had a blackboard on which he wrote things in chalk like "We Demand Faith in the Future," and the audience applauded faithfully. He wanted to have a mock trial on the show as a preview of the Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal, and he asked me to return and act as defense attorney. He wanted me to actually defend war criminals such as Lyndon Johnson, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara. I agreed to do it, but the mock trial never took place. My plan had been to plead insanity. This September, Sahl will teach a semi-weekly course in critical thinking at Claremont McKenna College. He continues to perform occasionally. At McCabes, he observed that, during the Republican debates, when the candidates were asked who didn't believe in evolution and a few raised their hands, and Sahl pointed out that, "If you watched the debate, you wouldn't believe in evolution either." http://www.paulkrassner.com/ DECLINE OF RECORDING INDUSTRY CONTINUES ROLLING STONE - Overall CD sales have plummeted sixteen percent for the year so far -- and that's after seven years of near-constant erosion. In the face of widespread piracy, consumers' growing preference for low-profit-margin digital singles over albums, and other woes, the record business has plunged into a historic decline. . . In 2000, U.S. consumers bought 785.1 million albums; last year, they bought 588.2 million (a figure that includes both CDs and downloaded albums), according to Nielsen Sound Scan. In 2000, the ten top-selling albums in the U.S. sold a combined 60 million copies; in 2006, the top ten sold just 25 million. Digital sales are growing -- fans bought 582 million digital singles last year, up sixty-five percent from 2005, and purchased $600 million worth of ring tones -- but the new revenue sources aren't making up for the shortfall. . . About 2,700 record stores have closed across the country since 2003, according to the research group Almighty Institute of Music Retail. . . It all could have been different: Seven years ago, the music industry's top executives gathered for secret talks with Napster CEO Hank Barry. At a July 15th, 2000, meeting, the execs -- including the CEO of Universal's parent company, Edgar Bronfman Jr.; Sony Corp. head Nobuyuki Idei; and Bertelsmann chief Thomas Middelhof -- sat in a hotel in Sun Valley, Idaho, with Barry and told him that they wanted to strike licensing deals with Napster. . . The idea was to let Napster's 38 million users keep downloading for a monthly subscription fee -- roughly $10 -- with revenues split between the service and the labels. But ultimately, despite a public offer of $1 billion from Napster, the companies never reached a settlement. . . In the fall of 2003, the RIAA filed its first copyright-infringement lawsuits against file sharers. They've since sued more than 20,000 music fans. The RIAA maintains that the lawsuits are meant to spread the word that unauthorized downloading can have consequences. . . But file-sharing isn't going away -- there was a 4.4 percent increase in the number of peer-to-peer users in 2006 EMI SEES DRM-FREE SALE BOOM INQUIRER, UK - EMI is reporting that the sales results for its DRM-free music are better than those with protection. Since EMI ditched the DRM on I Tunes it has seen sales of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon increase by between 272 and 350 percent. It is too early to tell if this is just a temporary rise as punters replace their old DRM infected tracks with those which are protection free. However it does look like punters have given the record labels the thumbs up for DRM free music. According to Bloomberg, digital sales for other DRM free music increased by between 17 to 24 per cent. OK Go's Oh No increased 77 per cent. Coldplay's A Rush Of Blood To The Head jumped 115 per cent. http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=40443 MAY 2007 THE FALL OF JAZZ [From a great profile of pianist Billy Taylor] WELLS TOWER, WASHINGTON POST MAGAZINE - One of jazz's bestselling albums, Miles Davis's "Kind of Blue," hit the charts in 1959, and the four decades that followed would witness the music's fitful recession from mainstream listenership. With a handful of notable exceptions, instrumental jazz failed to win back audiences that had started to stray at the onset of the bop era. Riven by new categories -- free jazz, Latin, fusion, acid jazz, smooth jazz -- consensus as to what jazz was or wasn't began to disintegrate. Even the music's most commercially successful incarnation in years, smooth jazz, posed an artistic quandary. A heavily pasteurized, atmospheric music that favored listener-friendly melodies over improvisatory prowess, smooth jazz, in the 1980s, revived the music's presence on mainstream radio. But the hard-core jazz establishment largely dismissed the new genre as a commercial abomination. In 1992, saxophonist Kenny G lofted smooth jazz into the Top 40 with "Breathless," which, with sales of more than 15 million copies, is the bestselling instrumental album in recording history. Yet no one has deplored his success more venomously than the jazz community. "You're in a room with Hitler, Stalin and Kenny G, and you've got a gun with only two bullets. What do you do?" asks a bitter joke circulating widely on jazz chat sites. "Shoot Kenny G twice." As the decades passed, jazz's star-making machinery slipped into disrepair. Record companies signed fewer artists, and though New York clubs such as the Village Vanguard, the Blue Note and Iridium still thrive today, jazz clubs in the rest of America have undergone a massive die-off. . . By the early '90s, with the exception of smooth jazz, the music had all but vanished from American commercial radio. But it found new allies in august venues such as the Kennedy Center, which in 1994 brought in [Billy] Taylor as artistic adviser to help launch its fledgling jazz program. . . Though jazz vocalists such as Harry Connick Jr., Cassandra Wilson and Diana Krall still sell records in pop quantities, the market continues to be frosty for instrumental stars. These days, even Marsalis, the only household name to emerge from the jazz world in the last quarter-century, is far from commercial viability as a recording artist. Of the dozen records he recorded in the 1990s, none logged sales over 15,000 units. In 2001, Burns's documentary series "Jazz" inspired a rash of CD releases, with Burns hoping to catch an updraft in sales from this piece of rare publicity. But the documentary, which, to the disappointment of the contemporary jazz scene, chronicled only the music's early history and basically ignored the present, didn't do much to buoy sales of new releases. By 2005, America's classical music would barely register a pulse with the record-buying public. With sales at 1.8 percent of market share, jazz was outstripped not only by traditional classical recordings, which were trickling off the shelves at 2.4 percent, but even by children's music, whose sales beat out jazz by 0.5 percentage points, according to the Recording Industry Association of America.  
THE
PHOTOSTHE DECLINE OF HIP HOP THE SEMINAL - Hip hop sales are down. According to Nielsen Sound Scan, sales in the Rap category dropped 20.7% compared with sales in 2005. That is the second largest drop behind the New Age category, which fell 22.7%. Right behind in this dismal race is R&B with a drop of 18.4%. Of course record sales are down across the industry, but the average change is only -2.4% with some genres, such as Classical, gaining as many percentage points as Rap lost. Clearly hip hop, which has been the darling of the record industry these last few years, is in trouble. Countless articles, including a recent high profile story from the AP, have said the problems with hip hop stem solely from its content. . . But here's the real deal: If you go out there and just replace all the negatives in rap lyrics with positives, replace every Young Jeezy-type MC with a Common and every call to murder with an exhortation to love your fellow man, hip hop sales would still be down. Why? Because people fail to realize that hip hop first and foremost is a musical art-form. Right now, hip hop just isn't living up to musical standards. It's just plain bad. . . Really, all you have to do is make good music. You can write your lyrics about whatever you want as long as you put some thought into it. And you can derive your musical influences and samples from whatever corner of the world you choose as long as they all come together in a cohesive and interesting way. Now, making art is by no means easy, but it is the only way to ensure hip hop will continue to be relevant in the future. It takes a lot to "kill" a genre of music. People have been writing about the end of rock and rap since the day they were created. I'm not saying hip hop is dying or dead. But I am saying that if hip hop wants to be more than top 40 fluff, if it wants to mean something to people like it did in the 80's and early 90's, if it wants to speak for a generation, then it needs to get out of the money game and start getting back into making real music for real people. It is the only way. http://www.theseminal.com/2007/03/27/hip-hop-isnt-dying-it-just-sucks/ 6,000 PHOTOS THE SMITHSONIAN DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW ARE IN THE PUBLIC DOMAIN AP - Grabbing pictures of iconic Smithsonian Institution artifacts just got a whole lot easier. Before, if you wanted to get a picture of the Wright Brothers' plane, you could go to the Smithsonian Images Web site and pay for a print or high-resolution image after clicking through several warnings about copyrights and other restrictions -- and only if you were a student, teacher or someone pledging not to use it to make money. Now, you can just go to the free photo-sharing Web site flickr.com. A nonprofit group is challenging the copyrights and restrictions on images being sold by the Smithsonian. But instead of going to court, the group downloaded all 6,288 photos online and posted them Wednesday night on the free Internet site. "I don't care if they sell the photos, but then once they sell it, they can't say you can't reuse this photo," said Carl Malamud, co-founder of the group Public.Resource.Org, advocates for posting more government information online. You're not allowed to chill debate by telling people they can't use something because it's under copyright when that's not true." Most images the Smithsonian is selling, including photos of artifacts and historic figures, are not protected by copyright, Malamud said. But the Smithsonian site carries copyright notices and other warnings that would discourage most people from using historic images that should be publicly available, he said. Malamud testified last year in Congress against the Smithsonian's long-term television deal with Showtime Networks because he said it could restrict public access to the national museums' archives. He is also critical of other Smithsonian business deals, calling them "privatizing of the archives." http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07139/787225-42.stm  CONGRESS ALLOWED RECORDING INDUSTRY TO RIP OFF INDEPENDENT ARTISTS, LABELS DAILY KOS - There has been an understandable public outcry against the RIAA's attempts to more than triple the sound recording copyright royalties on Internet radio. One solution proposed by Webcasters is to just not play RIAA-member songs under the assumption that then they don't have to pay the royalty to the RIAA's collection body, Sound Exchange. Webcasters would then just pay the independent artist the royalty. This sounds fair and just because it is. However, the RIAA is not about being fair and just. The game is rigged and the RIAA has rigged it in their favor. The strategy of playing only non-RIAA songs won't work though because the RIAA has secured the right to collect royalties on all songs regardless of who controls the copyright. RIAA operates under the assumption that they will collect the royalties for the "sound recording copyright" and that the artists who own their own copyright will go to Sound Exchange to collect at a later date. The RIAA has secured legal authority to administer a compulsory license that covers all recorded music: "The recent U.S. Copyright Office
ruling regarding webcasting designated Sound Exchange to collect
and distribute to all nonmembers as well as its members. The
Librarian of Congress issued his decision with rates and terms
to govern the compulsory license for webcasters. . . Sound Exchange (the RIAA) considers any digital performance of a song as falling under their compulsory license. If any artist records a song, Sound Exchange has the right to collect royalties for its performance on Internet radio. Artists can offer to download their music for free, but they cannot offer their songs to Internet radio for free. So how it works is that Sound Exchange collects money through compulsory royalties from Webcasters and holds onto the money. If a label or artist wants their share of the money, they must become a member of Sound Exchange and pay a fee to collect their royalties. . . And what exactly is Sound Exchange doing with the money they have collected for those hundreds of labels that must have thousands of songs??? http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/24/141326/870 COLLAPSE OF THE BOOK REVIEW ART WINSLOW, HUFFINGTON POST - In the new book burning we don't burn books, we burn discussion of them instead. I am referring to the ongoing collapse of book review sections at American newspapers, which has accelerated in recent months, an intellectual brownout in progress that is beginning to look like a rolling blackout instead. Among the most recent examples is the mid-April decision by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution to eliminate its book editor position, leaving the fate of book reviews there in doubt, as well as the future employment of its book editor, Teresa Weaver. . . On April 22, the Chicago Tribune announced that beginning May 19, its book section will be switched to Saturdays rather than being continued as a Sunday section -- a move that will cut circulation of the section roughly in half. Editor Elizabeth Taylor, putting the best face on the situation, wrote in an editorial note that there will in fact be "expanded" coverage of books throughout the newspaper during the week, a redesigned Web presence, and the introduction of a book blog. The upcoming Tribune move in many ways parallels what has just occurred at the Los Angeles Times, which in mid-April folded its three-decades-old freestanding book section into a combined section with its opinion pages. Book editor David Ulin concedes that the Sunday book review has "shrunk," but the addition of Web-based columns and coverage both on the Web and in weekday editions of the paper are intended to compensate for that shrinkage. Elsewhere, at the The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., book editor Peder Zane's position was recently cut. At the San Francisco Chronicle, which folded its book section in with other pages in 2001 only to restore it as a freestanding section after reader outcry, editor Oscar Villalon is left with a four-page broadsheet rather than the six pages his section once had, with the average number of weekly reviews down by one-third. At the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, book editor Bob Hoover observed that 250 words is getting to be the standard length for reviews at his paper. In the fall, book critic Jerome Weeks of The Dallas Morning News left the paper rather than face the dramatic cuts in arts coverage that were imposed. Nearly everywhere, assigned, original coverage of books has been cut back in favor of wire-service features (if anything http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-winslow/the-new-book-burning_b_46820.html  the MacDowell Colony APRIL 2007 RIAA, MPAA WANT RIGHT TO LIE LA TIMES - The music and movie industries are lobbying state legislators for permission to deceive when pursuing suspected pirates. The California Senate is considering a bill that would strengthen state privacy laws by banning the use of false statements and other misleading practices to get personal information. The tactic, known as pretexting, created a firestorm of criticism when detectives hired by Hewlett-Packard Co. used it last year to obtain phone records of board members, journalists and critics. But the Recording Industry Assn. of America and the Motion Picture Assn. of America say they sometimes need to use subterfuge as they pursue bootleggers in flea markets and on the Internet. . . "I don't see why the recording industry shouldn't have to follow the same laws that everyone else follows," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group in San Francisco. "It appears they want to make the loophole so big that nobody else has to follow the law, either." Hollywood succeeded in killing a similar bill last year. Other opponents of the bill included the California Chamber of Commerce and the Direct Marketing Assn.  ZOOT SIMS PLAYS SWEET LORRAINE MARCH 2007  HOW TO RESPOND TO RIAA HARASSMENT [Just a bit from a classic legal letter to RIAA's attorneys composed by Attoprney Merl Ledford III of Visalia CA] MERL LEDFORD III - It is not too late to correct your clients' (and your law firm's) mistakes. Mr. and Mrs. Merchant's emotional condition puts a premium on immediate case resolution. Thus, although I generally do not make opening legitimate offers as defense counsel, the clients' non-monetary interests and their probability of recovering their fees and costs in this matter (at a minimum) suggest that a defense settlement offer would not be inappropriate. Therefore: My clients are willing to accept dismissal of the litigation in exchange for 1. Payment of Mr. Merchant's reasonable fees and costs including retainer of $6,880.25. The payment represents good value considering what your own firm's billings will have been to date and use of those billing records as the loadstar rate for Mr. Merchant's award. . . 2. Apology on your firm's letterhead by your supervising partner for inappropriately filing and maintaining an action against Mr. Merchant without probable cause and for the emotional hardship that such litigation caused; and 3. Execution of a mutual general release of all claims in my office's usual form. The RIAA form of release I have seen will not be used. It is my practice in these kinds of cases to require that the plaintiffs indemnity my clients against claims by third parties as part of my general release language. (E.g., your clients sue a site for posting guitar tabs to copyrighted music; my client visits the site, read the tabs, plays them on his guitar, and get sued by way of cross-claim by the guitar tab site. . . 4. Confidentiality: It is my general practice to disfavor confidential settlements. Under the circumstances, and so long as your clients are prompt and candid in dealing with their mistaken, misplaced lawsuit, I would consider a reasonable confidentiality provision. Again, quick response, full payment, and immediate dismissal will allow confidentiality as an option. . . The authorized settlement offer expressed in the preceding paragraphs of this email . . . may be accepted by signing a copy of this email and returning it to my office by fax no later than the close of business on Friday, March 30, 2007. . . It is the best offer that will be made in this litigation based on the facts and circumstances as they are known at this time. Substantial discovery, investigation, and exchange of information remains that could substantially alter the settlement position of the parties to the betterment of either side in ways that cannot now be responsibly predicted. The case settlement value will, however, trend upward the longer I have to work on it. And the emotional distress damages for willfully filing and thereafter maintaining claims for relief without probable cause will only increase as the matter drags on. . . Procedurally, we need to address how best to move the case to the Fresno Branch so you can enjoy our new Courthouse and avoid Judge Levi's wrath for filing in the wrong court. . . Once the case is moved to the Fresno Branch, your clients should consider cleaning up their complaint. The FRCP and collateral estoppel from other RIAA law and motion matters require much greater specificity in pleading than your clients provided in the complaint I reviewed. Dates of the alleged downloads, which plaintiff (or affiliate) holds which copyright to which track, etc. must be specifically pleaded and proven. You are as familiar as I am with the results in other cases where RIAA's general allegations have been challenged. Let's get over that hurdle without unnecessary law and motion practice. . . http://p2pnet.net/story/11785 GREAT BOOK TITLE SHORT LIST [An annual service of the British site, Bookseller] People Who Don't Know They're Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It How Green Were the Nazis The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence PREVIOUS WINNERS Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Nude Mice (1978) Natural Bust Enlargement with Total Power: How to Increase the other 90 per cent of your Mind to Increase the Size of your Breasts (1985) Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality (1986) Lesbian Sadomasochism Safety Manual (1990) Living with Crazy Buttocks (2002) Bombproof your Horse (2004) www.thebookseller.com FEBRUARY 2007 GROUCHO MARX'S APPROACH TO COPYRIGHT LAW [Written by Groucho Marx after Warner Brothers threatened to sue if the Marx brothers went ahead with a moving called "A Night in Casabanca" Dear Warner Brothers, Apparently there is more than one way of conquering a city and holding it as your own. For example, up to the time that we contemplated making this picture, I had no idea that the city of Casablanca belonged exclusively to Warner Brothers. However, it was only a few days after our announcement appeared that we received your long, ominous legal document warning us not to use the name Casablanca. It seems that in 1471, Ferdinand Balboa Warner, your great-great-grandfather, while looking for a shortcut to the city of Burbank, had stumbled on the shores of Africa and, raising his alpenstock (which he later turned in for a hundred shares of common), named it Casablanca. I just don't understand your attitude. Even if you plan or releasing your picture, I am sure that the average movie fan could learn in time to distinguish between Ingrid Bergman and Harpo. I don't know whether I could, but I certainly would like to try. You claim that you own Casablanca and that no one else can use that name without permission. What about "Warner Brothers"? Do you own that too? You probably have the right to use the name Warner, but what about the name Brothers? Professionally, we were brothers long before you were. We were touring the sticks as the Marx Brothers when Vitaphone was still a gleam in the inventor's eye, and even before there had been other brothers - the Smith Brothers; the Brothers Karamazov; Dan Brothers, an outfielder with Detroit; and "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?" . . . Now Jack, how about you? Do you maintain that yours is an original name? Well it's not. It was used long before you were born. Offhand, I can think of two Jacks - Jack of "Jack and the Beanstalk," and Jack the Ripper, who cut quite a figure in his day. As for you, Harry, you probably sign your checks sure in the belief that you are the first Harry of all time and that all other Harrys are impostors. I can think of two Harrys that preceded you. There was Lighthouse Harry of Revolutionary fame and a Harry Appelbaum who lived on the corner of 93rd Street and Lexington Avenue. Unfortunately, Appelbaum wasn't too well-known. The last I heard of him, he was selling neckties at Weber and Heilbroner. . . This all seems to add up to a pretty bitter tirade, but I assure you it's not meant to. I love Warners. Some of my best friends are Warner Brothers. It is even possible that I am doing you an injustice and that you, yourselves, know nothing about this dog-in-the-Wanger attitude. It wouldn't surprise me at all to discover that the heads of your legal department are unaware of this absurd dispute, for I am acquainted with many of them and they are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits and a love of their fellow man that out-Saroyans Saroyan. I have a hunch that his attempt to prevent us from using the title is the brainchild of some ferret-faced shyster, serving a brief apprenticeship in your legal department. I know the type well-hot out of law school, hungry for success, and too ambitious to follow the natural laws of promotion. This bar sinister probably needled your attorneys, most of whom are fine fellows with curly black hair, double-breasted suits, etc., into attempting to enjoin us. Well, he won't get away with it! We'll fight him to the highest court! No pasty-faced legal adventurer is going to cause bad blood between the Warners and the Marxes. We are all brothers under the skin, and we'll remain friends till the last reel of "A Night in Casablanca" goes tumbling over the spool. Sincerely, Groucho Marx MOVEMENT TO BOYCOTT RECORDING CORPORADOS GIZMODO - We've been following the RIAA's increasingly frequent affronts to privacy and free speech lately, and it's about time we stopped merely bitching and moaning and did something about it. The RIAA has the power to shift public policy and to alter the direction of technology and the Internet for one reason and one reason alone: it's totally loaded. Without their millions of dollars to throw at lawyers, the RIAA is toothless. They get their money from us, the consumers, and if we don't like the way they're behaving, we can let them know with our wallets. With that in mind, Gizmodo is declaring the month of March Boycott the RIAA month. . . Firstly, I encourage everyone to purchase music from unsigned bands and bands on independent record labels. . . Secondly, you can still support RIAA-signed bands without buying their music. Go see them live and buy their merchandise; they get a hell of a lot more money from that then they do from album sales. . . Let me just reiterate that we are not saying you should stop buying music and start pirating everything. We need to send a message with our wallets to the RIAA, and that message will only be stronger if we show support for musicians without your money making its way to the lawyer fund. So come on, make next month one to remember. Let's stand together and let the RIAA know that yes, we are paying attention and no, we aren't going to put up with their unethical practices any longer. -Adam Frucci DIXIE CHICKS FAR FROM ALONE IN COUNTRY MUSIC HISTORY ASHLEY SAYEAU, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER - Despite the [Dixie Chicks'] successes, the grudge has held, particularly among the Nashville music establishment. The Country Music Association completely snubbed the Chicks at its awards ceremony in May. Such an affront on the part of country music is not only cowardly, but also quite antithetical to the genre's history. . . Take Johnny Cash, for instance. Not only did many of his most famous lyrics center on "the poor and the beaten down," including a poignant attack on this country's treatment of American Indians, but also Cash was a vocal critic of the Vietnam War, as in his famous song Man in Black: "I wear the black in mourning for the lives that could have been/ Each week we lose a hundred fine young men." And then there is Willie Nelson, who on Valentine's Day 2006 released a love song about gay cowboys, titled, "Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)." Perhaps more seriously, he has been an avid supporter of presidential hopeful Dennis Kucinich, who, while arguing for universal health care and a swift withdrawal from Iraq, is probably the furthest left of any Democratic candidate. Women in country music - like the Dixie Chicks - have a long tradition of being particularly bold in speaking out against some of the very conventions their record labels and conservative fan base celebrate. Back in 1933, the Carter Family. . . sang about a young woman who chose to commit suicide rather than marry. . . Perhaps most memorable are some of Loretta Lynn's lyrics, particularly from the 1960s and 1970s. Released in 1966, her song "Dear Uncle Sam" was an early anti- Vietnam protest song. . . As daring as some outlaw artists have been, the country music establishment has often proved even more dogged in its conservative views. Lynn has purportedly had more songs banned than any other country music singer. And Cash, never completely at home in the country music world, once said that "the very idea of unconventional or even original ideas ending up on 'country' radio" was "absurd." http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/16709871.htm SANDY CARTER, Z MAGAZINE, SEPT 1994 - In my 20s, as I began living and working in other parts of the country, I came to realize that people outside the South, particularly politically progressive people outside the South, judged white Southerners and nearly all aspects of their cultural heritage as backward. And this snobbery often found its most candid expression in mocking and ridiculing country music. The elitist views that define popular prejudices about the country tradition greeted the music at its commercial birth. In the 1920s, when country music first felt the pressures of commercialization, rural traditions of all kinds were experiencing tensions and challenges brought on by industrialization. Country sounds suggesting older and more settled ways seemed inherently at odds with rapid social and technological change. . . Conflicted feelings also derived from the Southerness of the music. While the music of Stephen Foster and the writings of Mark Twain fueled romantic notions of the South as an exotic land of enchantment, the region also evoked images of slavery and the Civil War, the Scopes monkey trial, and the Klan. . . Like other music forms of our culture, country music is an amalgam of influences. Its sound, song structure, and lyrical text reveal a heavy debt to African American musical styles, particularly blues and gospel. Rhythmically, country draws most on the dance meters of English and European country dance tunes. As to lyrics and narrative style, country storytelling has |
As I watched Brubeck and the young musicians under
his influence, I recalled being an 18-20 something drummer and
buying a ten inch LP called "Jazz at Oberlin," which
I would play repeatedly in my room and on my college radio station
show, "Jam With Sam." Maybe I even played it while
Brubeck was on his tour in 1958, my junior year. One thing is
certain, for young college musicians and jazz fans of my vintage,
trapped behind the Iron Curtain of 1950s values and culture,
there was no doubt that Dave Brubeck revealed the meaning of
life better than your parents or your professors. And if you
were a young white musician, it was a sign that there was room
for you, too.