GENOMICON

This is the coolest thing I have ever seen

(via)

It’s a real hat-wearing thing where you see what the plane sees through goggles, and when you move your head the camera inside moves around as well. K. For. Cool – exactly what I was describing a couple of years back. From the sound of it, it has rockets as well, which means you could set fire to an entire corn field by accident or something. Fucking great. This is the future of something.

But…

Kenny Logins? Are you mad? K’inell.

If you’re going to be playing appalling 80s Anger Dancing music (

) then I think I’d go for… umm… Jeff Beck?

In which you have to wait around for about 4 minutes before the Original Nigel Tufnell gets to the point, which is a massive guitar solo.

Alternatively there’s this

Which strictly speaking isn’t anger-dancing music, and which makes you wait around for even longer for the guitar solo… but it is kindof an epic guitar solo, if you like that sort of thing. Makes me laugh anyway, and that’s generally a good sign. And then there’s John Lydon of course… and say what you like about John, he does sometimes give the impression that he means it.

Crap for anger-dancing though. You’d be completely knackered by the time it got to the guitar-solo bit… it’d be all “not now Steve mate, I’m a bit fucked. I’m off for a lie down, see you tomorrow”.

Or maybe this one because it’s got Jimmy Page in it

It’s all a bit much really. The 80s came to an end for a reason, and it wasn’t just because it ran out of numbers.

The 80s was shite because everything became about “moving units”. I once found an entire skip filled to the top with Thomas Dolby Singles outside Dave Stewart’s studio up in Crouch end – boxes of them, and every single one had had a black-and-decker put through it. Spirit of the age. Units that failed to move. Generation-X was forced into becoming Generation-X by the relentless shiteness of the aspirations that were paraded before us as culture.

Punk was, and still is, the only honest and reasonable reaction to anything. It’s got to hybridise of course (even John Lydon knew that)… but the bottom line has got to be a fundamental rejection of… what?… Inauthenticity? Something like that. A rejection of control. A rejection of needing to be liked.

Anyway, for me, the greatest guitar solo of the 80s was this

Starts 1/2 way through and goes on for ages etc.

via

Mind you, what gets called “robot” these days is getting broader and broader. The only reason a washing-machine isn’t called “robot” is that it was born too early.

I think he’s alright Marilyn actually. Not really into his music, but whenever he opens his mouth to say anything, he’s usually pretty sharp. Bit of a thinker.

Paper Record Player from kellianderson on Vimeo.

Which is pretty cool, although from the look of the little picture of the two people, it’s obviously the same people as this:

From

Can’t help but notice that the new-found hardware memosphere keeps recreating inventions that were never terribly good in the first place. I guess it’s a bit like “Hello World” in programming – a declaration of arrival. Mind you, I was at Camden Market once and someone in one of the shops up near Chalk Farm had a theremin going through an echo played through a relatively massive PA – and it sounded incredible.

I don’t even know what this is

I know exactly what that is – that’s everything that’s wrong with the “pop” industry (is it even an industry any more? I mean what does it actually fucking do?) turned past 11 into some empty virtual guitar-hero void where rather than participating people are relegated to… what? Leek-waving. That’s what is says in the comments… the light-sticks are leeks.

These leeks

that I was going on about in 2009. I suppose it’s a bit like Damon’s thing with the Gorillas, and I’m assuming that at least part of the audience is just as digitised as the thing on the stage – assuming that’s there at all… and the whole thing isn’t just CGI

Once again I’m late to the party – this has been seen about a million times, and there are loads of different songs on youtube.

I don’t know why I’m hostile to this… but you know… I’m not one of those people who’s all neato, neato at every new… you know… “product”. I’ve had enough of fucking products. You can take all your products and stick them up your arse. All your fucking “Brands”. Piss off.

I think it’s because people are being led around like sheep – all baaing in unison… it’s very much a top-down thing… any memetic spin-offs of this from the great unwashed are going to be well and truly shite (I can see them now, and If I had the stomach to try, I could… they’ll already be on youtube), because… well, it’s fanfic art before it’s even started. The only thing good about it is that it’s an extension of the Manga tradition – and even that may be over-rated… now that I think about it.

But… you know… what is real?

Dunno… but it’s something we need to keep stabbing at, because that’s the essence of art. To bear witness.

According to industry sources: Only 3% of artists signed to a major label pre-napster made over $600 a year.

Only 3% of artists signed to a major label made over $600 a year.

Dwell on that for a bit. That’s 3% of the lucky .001% who managed to get a deal.

The RIAA hand-wrings about “saving the artists”. That’s their track record. Go make a cup of coffee. Think about it.

These are the people who want to cripple the internet.

The system’s set up so almost nobody gets paid

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The old model means that artists have to beg for permission to do anything, every step of the way – this is played out in the grotesque accidental parody on the “talent quest” shows that are played by the dying TV industry every single night. American Idol. America’s Got Talent…

…emotionally damaged “models” singing other people’s songs, pushed to the point of emotional/psychological collapse. If that doesn’t perfectly describe the legacy-music-industry, I don’t know what does.

3% of .001% get paid. This is the industry that’s trying to cripple the internet.

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I can remember a Sonic Youth interview where they said they had an album of radio-ready songs. The optimism was tragic… pathetic. There was no way they were going to get on the radio. It simply wasn’t going to happen.

I have seen the best talent of my generation wasted and marginalised because they couldn’t get on the radio.

That video above was some guys from Scotland… friends of mine managed by my great friend Rich,

…and every time they brought out a record, he’d sit around nervously for a couple of weeks waiting to see if it was going to get radio play… they never did. It was fucking heartbreaking to watch.

This is the old model… the legacy industries. The whole thing is predicated on the “tastes” and the bribability of self-appointed gate-keepers, resulting in a structure where 3% of those .001% that “succeed” make enough money to live.

It’s all based on a series of scarcities that were once structural, but are now artificial. We no longer need them.

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So. Artists now have 2 choices -

1) go via the old industry in which they’re “owned” and have a very tiny chance of being paid

2) go via the internet… via Peer to Peer recommendation by having videos on youtube, tracks that they encourage people to share. Probably won’t get paid much (artists never do (chart of methods here)), but at least it’s your show. At least when the day comes to license your track to some advertising company, YOU get the money.

#2 is the new radio. This is how people find out about things now.

Here’s that song from the top again

You’d never have heard it without a person to person network. Because it didn’t get on the radio.

If you didn’t know them from back in the day, and the internet wasn’t here, you’d never have heard it at all. It would be out of print… dead.

Oh – and that’s a fan video by the way. That’s an advert that someone has made for the for free because they love them.

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Now, the golumn-oid legacy industries want to keep tight control over everything – to prevent, to restrict… they will often stop their own artists trying to be alive in the network, for example:

Bat For Lashes got their own video pulled from their blog, MGMT are thwarted at every turn, The Treadmill Guys left EMI because EMI wouldn’t let them participate on youtube, and Sony, have blocked embedding of the original of the video above, because they’re idiots, who don’t understand the medium, and I bet half the people that work for Sony spend their lives in a state of frustration, KNOWING how anachronistic and meaningless their own company is.

Which places me in a bit of a quandary because… my new fav band

They’re great, I’d like to support them but I can’t because it says “sony music”.

I am digital couch-hezbollah. I am morally bound to:

1) support independent artists
2) pirate / reclaim legacy-industry culture – and do whatever it takes to destroy the old industry.

So this is my act of civil disobedience – which is what participating members in a democracy are morally bound to do when they become disenfranchised.

Unfortunately, I’m kindof stuck over what to do when I find an artist that’s signed to the evil-empire. What I am willing to pay is more than the price of a CD… but I’m not going to give it to fucking Sony.

Major labels aren’t music companies, they’re fucking banks.

And they’re lobbying risibly corrupt political systems to attack the ONLY means by which all but a tiny fraction of artists can be heard – to try to turn an abundant resource into a gate-keeper-controlled one. Controlled by them.

This should be a crime. There should be a word for it. A nasty one: “attempting to create fake scarcity”. It’s morally bankrupt, and culturally bankrupting.

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Peer to Peer is the new radio. It’s where all the vitality is. Without it, your band won’t get heard. Without it you won’t hear the next thing you love.

We don’t need the major record companies… we don’t need the legacy industries – and if they’re going to try to damage the web, we should delete them.

So earlier on the twitters, I said

and then

and

Only I won’t

Jeremy Taylor The Terrible works in this great big record shop in Cuba St, Wgtn. I’d lost touch with him for years, then wandered into this shop… and the top 100 albums were lined up in order, in a great big display around the walls… and I could tell by the order that I’d found him again. Went over to the counter and said “I don’t suppose Jeremy works here does he?”

I don’t want Jeremy’s shop to go out of business. I want there to be a Jeremy’s shop in every town. A Jeremy in every town. I’m not sure how his business is affected by the fact that people (who presumably have finite disposable income (which has been stagnant since the 80s)) are now spending:

- more on their monthly phone bill than they ever did on records or
- more on computer games than they ever did on records or
- more of big-ticket live gigs than they ever did on records or
- more on ISP connections than they ever did on records

or that people are now using shared files to find out about new music, rather than radio. But… but…

Half the people I know are musicians, or work in the music biz in some capacity. If I was going to go nuclear on the music industry, there would come a time when I would find myself downloading and burning one of Sprouts‘ records… and I couldn’t do it. It would feel like I was being cruel to a small furry animal. And Sprouts is just one. I couldn’t even do it to people I don’t know. I could never mass-pirate a Grant Lee Buffalo record. A dEUS record. I’ll evangelise (which means sharing) but I won’t… (how you say?) “hurt sales”.

Someone is going to put the entire history of recorded music onto a single disc, but it ain’t going to be me.

However.

The entertainment/copyright industries are visiting their own version of a nuclear option onto the Internet in the shape of 3rd-party liability… the current incarnation of which is the entirely repugnant, and secretly-negotiated-trade agreement ACTA. It obliges ISPs to spy on you. Next time you send an email, next time you visit a porn site, next time you do a search for some embarrassing ailment, next time you do a search for something that is quite innocent, but the combination of words is a bit weird….

… the entertainment industry has created a situation where you’re going to be spied on. All the time. By law. Everything you do must be monitored.

In addition to this, there’s the incredibly chilling/stagnating effect – the fact (for example) that you can’t make a movie without ‘errors and omissions insurance‘ – which similar to a lot of other regulation, pretends to be about “protections” but has the side effect that only big corporations can afford to innovate in the open market. IP law needs to be reformed… taken down a peg or 12, and IP lawyers need to be put in the stocks and pelted with shit-filled crisp-packets.

The Internet is more important than the entertainment industry – I mean fuck, the telephone system is more important than the entertainment industry… and the Internet is that multiplied by about 12 entirely new dimensions. The Internet is definitely more important.

The entertainment industry does not have a god-given right not to have to adapt.

So.

A nuke option is required… or more accurately, a response to the entertainment industry’s attack on us is required… or more accurately, we need to get rid of any corporation that is big enough to change government policy to the detriment of the society that hosts it. We need to get rid of the copyright cartels.

I think it needs to be a supply-side change. I think we need to render the copyright-cartels irrelevant not for the consumers, but for the producers. For the musicians, writers, film-makers – and I don’t think many of them will be too sorry about this, because “The Industry” with very few exceptions was always a bunch of total cunts to start with. Andy Ross is an example of someone who isn’t – if the music biz was entirely populated by people like Andy, the entire terrain would be different I think. I can think of a handful of others… they do exist, but right now the majors are a machine owned by financiers, and mega-corporations who fund all sorts of dubious shit.

Look it up sometime. The last time I looked, the same people who put out Jimi Hendrix’s records were also building a massively polluting and outdated incinerator in East Sussex UK. Vivendi are attempting to do to water, what the 20th century did to oil. These people are greedy rapacious scum.

And they’re attempting to force top-down control of the internet.

So. Supply-side change. What do we do?

Damned if I know. Set up systems where people can be paid directly by their fans rather than going through a risk-aggregater (who no longer risks)(and who pays them back a pittance, after they’ve recouped) That would do it.

The way through it is to cut out the supply-side middlemen.

But I still haven’t figured it out. The other day Adam was going on about this: http://stillcorners.bandcamp.com/

Great song. For sale for 1 quid.

Sorry, that’s pathetic. That’s sad on so many levels – not least of which, it’s a pathetically low amount – nominal… pitched at such because it’s what the market will stand… only the market isn’t bothering with it. It’s so low that all it represents is the symbolic reluctance to get out a credit-card. The Reflexive-Stinge-Hump.

Do people pay that? I guess they might.

I’m feeling kindof torn on this one though. The last (and possibly only) digital track that I bought was this

And that was AFTER I’d pulled an MP3 from youtube (yea, you can do that).

It didn’t feel good doing it – paying for an MP3 I mean. There is something clangingly wrong about that deal. I like Trixie Whitley so much that I’d donate money to the cause… I’d pay money (proper money… you know, like $100) in advance for her next record – if she kickstartered it or something… but paying for an MP3 is like paying for an echo. It’s already out there… and I don’t want to ‘tip’ her a single quid. That’s taking the piss.

Maybe I’m hung up on cult of artifact… because I would pay for… a pebble off her local beach or something. Something of symbolic exchange – though if she sold a million records, she’d run out of beach… and it’s kindof ridiculous making someone go down the beach and post pebbles about the place anyway… but you get the idea. That scary Amanda Palmer

seems to do a roaring trade in indirect sales of stuff as well. Trent Reznor does as well I think. Monetising fame (that to a degree was paid for by their record companies before they split). Maybe that’s the way through – monetising fame. Not exactly meritocratic I know… but then it is more or less exactly what we have today anyway… only the terrain has shifted so what was once the product is now the advertising. And it’s really fucking good advertising, but you can’t really expect people to buy advertising. They want artifacts damnit. Like the ones Jeremy sells.

This has turned into a massive ramble… sorry.

Something else though… when I was a kid I was addicted to space-invaders. I must have spent thousands… 20c a go… would spend about $1 a time. I loved it. Every once in a while though I’d come across a broken machine that you could play for free… and it wasn’t 1/2 as enjoyable. I’d actually spend less time playing machines where nothing was at stake. I’ve noticed a similar thing with movies. If I’ve made some investment, I enjoy them a whole lot more. The value that I give to something is an inner-thing… and it gives back.

There must be a way through this… and I’m about to cast myself head-long into it because this year I’m shooting a movie based entirely on these principles.

So anyway… to boil it down to one memorable phrase: “I think we can destroy the legacy entertainment industry, by supporting artists directly”

Or… “The nuclear option is to water the grass-roots”

edit:
Unless of course they break the internet, in which case all bets are off.

Art grows best in the cracks of what you’re not allowed to do. Always has.

But never mind about that, this turned up last night…

Which is the funniest thing I’ve seen in my life and I literally asphyxiated with hilarity and passed out and died etc.

Fucking genius.

A Finnish guy taking the piss – and he’s quite famous, has been on mainstream US TV… So I’m pretty
late on the uptake. There must be more people than just him doing this now. There are loads and loads of them.

See, you don’t have to pay people to take the piss out of them…

… and it makes it even funnier that Led Zepplin’s Record company in an entirely predictable fit of idiocy decided that they were going to use the DMCA (a bogus piece of legislation) or Youtube’s “censor at corporate whim, ask questions later” policy (a bogus policy) to remove not only their artist’s material, but all material that used similar melodies, including Led Zep’s, who’s melodies weren’t actually theirs in the first place a lot of the time, a fact to which they’re happy to attest, being resonable human beings…

… and not the fucking bent lawyers that their record company decides to hire.

There are loads of them – and a lot of them are pretty clever. Like that last one does actually manage to get Stevie Ray Vaugn’s guitar sound kindof right.

Clever as fuck. Funny as fuck – a lot of them seem to have been seen more than the original tracks as well. LOL.

Forget about Favela Chic, try some Favela Punk.

Both appalling and riveting, as any good punk should be – this lot appear to have become quite famous… largely to do with an infamous dick-swinging bit in another video. A whole lot more here.

Die Antwoord

Cos for all your beautifully designed… “stuff”, and for all your earnest, striving, well-meaning, TED-headed (standing ovation-earning) world-savingness… the future doesn’t belong to you, or even people like you. The only vitality that “Chic” has is from money… and if you don’t have that, where do you go? You sit around in your bubble of refined niceness, group-thinking contentedly away with other bubbles – and then one day you wake up to find that the world outside has gone on without you, and a new generation has arrived.

Anyway, this video/act could have come from anywhere – if I didn’t know it was Afrikaans I would have said somewhere in the Wild East of Europe… where the wave of the property boom finally broke (and rolled back), beyond it an eternity of Soviet Era housing blocks with fucked pipes and playgrounds with weeds growing through the concrete.

Reminds me of this thing that came courtesy of one Brian Limmond a while back.

As the devil once said, “what gives me the edge, is that they never see me coming”.

Or maybe they do. We’ve had Favela Punk in Scotland forever.

Look on my works ye Mighty, and despair

Ramona Falls – Clover (9:16 edition) from blair neal on Vimeo.

Via the eternally marvelous notcot.org