A movie about the art form of mash-ups that features mash-ups of the movie within the movie itself? We’re pretty sure we just heard the space/time continuum begin to rip at the prospect. Director Brett Gaylor attempts to make sense of the intellectual property laws that allow some musicians to steal riffs and make millions (Led Zeppelin, the Stones), while other, more cutting-edge musicians are branded as criminals (Girl Talk), and the end result is “Rip! A Remix Manifesto,” a wake-up call to Big Media that, whether they like or not, the rules have changed. Gaylor declares Walt Disney to be the first mash-up artist, and absolutely pummels publishing company Warner-Chappell for refusing to let “Happy Birthday” to enter the public domain (it’s true: if you sing that song, ever, you’re a thief), and for suing Radiohead fans for mash-ups once W-C acquired the rights to In Rainbows. Truth be told, the doc isn’t quite a five-star affair - we were frankly surprised that he didn’t mention when John Fogerty was sued for ripping off one of his own songs - but we’re giving it an extra star because “Rip!” addresses an issue that needs to be sorted out sooner rather than later. Indeed, one could argue that the music industry’s very survival depends on it. (Disinformation 2009)
Mega promoter Live Nation announced today that they will waive service fees for lawn seats at Live Nation-sponsored concert ampitheaters on all tickets purchased this Wednesday, with plans to offer similar deals on Wednesdays throughout the summer:
“We know the fan has been frustrated by the series of successive fees in the purchase process,” Live Nation Ticketing CEO Nathan Hubbard tells Billboard.biz. “There is attrition in the sales flow once you see your third page with some additional fees. The fan told us they just want to know up front how much the cost of the experience is going to be. We didn’t address that problem completely, but the first step was moving from fans paying a service fee — you might pay a shipping and handling fee, maybe a print-at-home fee, delivery fee, etc. — to consolidating it into a single up-front fee that is there as you cart your inventory.”
A noble gesture on the surface, but not quite as magnanimous as it might appear. After all, as you can see in the quote above, this is the company that has the nerve to make ticket buyers pay for the privilege of printing their own tickets. Let’s examine this supposed treat for the fans a little more closely, shall we?
Live Nation is running this promotion on Wednesdays. Most concert tickets go on sale Saturday morning, and if there is any chance of a same-day sellout (take Green Day’s upcoming tour, for example), no fan is going to wait another five days in order to save ten bucks. No one, of course, knows this better than Live Nation.
The only service fees being waived are lawn seats. This means that the diehard fans of an artist or band, who will naturally want to be as close to the stage as possible, will continue to get boned at the usual rate, while the casual fans of that artist - who are presumably on the fence about attending the show, otherwise they would have bought their tickets the day they went on sale - will benefit. While it would stand to reason that the diehards are the ones that deserve to be rewarded, in fairness to Live Nation, this is right in line with record labels’ tendency to market their wares to the people who are least likely to buy them.
Curiously, no one has discussed helping out the cash-strapped music fan by lowering the price of concert tickets. We suspect that the person who brought that up at the company meeting was tossed out the window like the guy in this Bud Light ad. Because that’s just crazy talk, son.
Beginning today, coinciding with the band’s North American tour, Coldplay fans can download LeftRightLeftRightLeft, a nine-song live album, for free on the band’s web site. As you might imagine, the track listing favors their latest album Viva la Vida, however - and the fans will love this - it focuses on album tracks over singles. “Strawberry Swing” and “42″ are here, while “Talk” and “Yellow” are not. Bravo, gentlemen.
Fans have until the end of their US tour to download LeftRightLeftRightLeft, while the band will be giving away CD copies of the album at their concerts. Dig in, kids.
Yusuf Islam (a.k.a. Cat Stevens) says that Coldplay’s “Viva La Vida” sounds an awful lot like one of his songs, “Foreigner Suite.” So much so that he might actually sue the band.
“The song definitely sounds like it,” he said of his song. “It has such logical chords and the melody has to be what it is…”
Asked during a telephone interview from London whether he would pursue the issue legally, Islam, 60, said “it depends on how well Satriani does.”
U.S. guitarist Joe Satriani has sued Coldplay, accusing the British band of copyright infringement. He claims substantial original portions of his song “If I Could Fly” are recycled in “Viva La Vida” and is seeking damages.
I’m not familiar with the song that Islam is referring to. Does anyone think he has a point, or is he reaching at straws?
Posted by Alexzandra Hackford (05/04/2009 @ 7:42 pm)
The other day I heard the Fray’s cover of Kanye West’s “Heartless” on the radio. It’s amazing. Not only is there a completely different rock element to the song, but Issac’s voice is brilliant. With the new, piano-driven arrangement, there’s much more depth, especially when listening to the lyrics.
The track was originally recorded as par of The Fray Live, which is available on iTunes, and was released to radio April 21. While the Fray may have committed a cardinal sin and covered a song that’s currently on the charts, they’ve managed to do so magnificently. There’s not another band I can think of who could have attempted the switch without faltering. It just goes to show that the Fray aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Make sure to check out the new single on iTunes, or you can listen to the song for free on YouTube.
We proles can’t possibly fathom the kind of pressure that Green Day must have felt when they were putting the finishing touches on 21st Century Breakdown, their first album since the multi-platinum - and game-changing - American Idiot. Perhaps that is why they played around with side projects like the Foxboro Hot Tubs (which was a damn good record, by the way), because it enabled them to get their yeah yeahs out without having to worry about commercial expectations.
Ah, but they could only put the world on hold for so long, and at last, they give us “Know Your Enemy,” the debut single from Breakdown. Does it raise the stakes of American Idiot? No, but that appears to be the point. There was no sense in even trying, so instead, they deliver something more akin to their “unplugged” album Warning, which is one of my favorites of theirs. Big choruses, hand clap-ready snare drums, and a no-nonsense performance video to promote it. It’s as if they’re asking us to forget that American Idiot ever happened, and while that makes sense, it’s just not gonna happen. Still, this definitely has me excited to hear the rest of the album. Only a couple more weeks…
Better than the 2003 collection that bears his name, this michelgondry.com-exclusive set of music videos is simply staggering. The beauty of Gondry’s work is that his methods are surprisingly low-tech (Beck’s “Cellphone’s Dead” being this set’s exception). He uses reflective glass to create the ghosts that haunt Paul McCartney’s house in “Dance Tonight,” and Steriogram’s “Walkie Talkie Man” is a brilliant stop-motion clip, using both real people and their string equivalents. Gondry assembles a couple of clever yet completely unique one-take videos with Michael Andrews and Gary Jules’ cover of “Mad World” and the White Stripes’ “The Denial Twist,” and his videos from the pre-CGI early ’90s, namely Thomas Dolby’s “Close but No Cigar” and Sananda Maitreya’s “She Kissed Me” (otherwise known as Terence Trend D’Arby to your older brothers and sisters), look as good as any video made today. The set comes with a bunch of behind-the-scenes footage, a couple films featuring Gondry solving a Rubik’s Cube with various parts of his body (feet and nose, to be precise), and they also added the parody of Gondry’s video of the White Stripes’ “The Hardest Button to Button” that appeared on a 2006 episode of “The Simpsons.” Genius stuff, across the board. If only he could replicate this consistency in the feature film arena.(ElektroFilm)
Here’s the official word on the band from their MySpace page: “Hailing from South Africa, contemporary rock outfit Just Jinjer is fiercely blazing a trail on the international radio and online download charts. The California based band comprised of Ard Mattews (Vocals, Acoustic Guitar), Brent Harris (Drums, Vocals), Denholm Harding (Bass, Vocals), and Sandy Chila (Guitar, Keyboards) is launching their first US tour in 2009. Just Jinjer is the biggest selling rock band in South African history, with over a quarter million units sold. Over the last decade, the band has performed and toured with U2, Counting Crows and Def Leppard among many others, performing for hundreds of thousands of fans in venues all around the world from the UK to Dubai.”
Intrigued? What luck, then, that we’ve been gifted a free MP3 from the band that we’re passing on to you:
If you like what you hear, head over to the band’s MySpace page to check out a few more tracks, and be aware that the band’s EP for “Can I Have More” - which features two additional songs, including the highly enjoyable “Time of Your Life” - is available through iTunes on April 7th.
Let us guess: your reaction was the same as ours when you saw the above headline. “Neil Young still makes videos?” Yes he does and, knowing the commercial prospects that a Neil Young video would have in today’s market, he made sure to keep things simple. No sense in throwing good money after bad on an elaborate video that the video channels will never play anyway, right?
Young actually shot two videos for “Johnny Magic,” the first single from his upcoming album Fork in the Road, both of which feature Young lip syncing the song in one take while driving his car. We’ve chosen the “Magic Sun” version, where Young brings his dog along for the ride. It’s a bit harder to watch since the sun literally washes out all images on the screen on more than one occasion, but come on, it has a dog. Gotta use the video with the dog.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am as far out of the hip hop window as any 40-year-old white man can be, but when this clip of P.O.S. covering Pearl Jam’s “Why Go” landed in my inbox, I just had to hear it for myself. He did the cover on the fly in his studio, with one pre-programmed beat and what looks like a one-octave keyboard. It isn’t perfect by any means, but it ain’t bad. He actually sings the track (smart), and even tries to add a guitar solo on that tiny keyboard of his (bonus points for trying). Try it — you might be surprised by the results.
To coincide with Black History Month, our friends at Red Music have launched Red Urban Music, a new site that covers exactly what you think it covers: their urban artists. They just rolled the site out, meaning it’s not exactly swarming with content yet (a temporary problem, we assure you), so they did what all awesome web sites do in order to attract attention: they’re giving away cool stuff.
What kind of cool stuff, you ask? How does a digital camera, an iPod and a USB turntable grab you? If we weren’t forbidden from entering the contest, you can bet that we’d be going for that USB turntable so we can convert all of our old wax. Entering the contest will also net you some new tunes, so whatcha, whatcha, whatcha waiting for? Go here and get yourself a USB turntable.
Why, yes, they are still around…although to be fair, they hadn’t been around for a very long time until recently.
The Blow Monkeys are generally remembered for their 1986 single, “Digging Your Scene,” which was their lone entry into the Billboard Top 100. That it was a one-off was a little surprising, given that it made it into the top 20, but Americans just weren’t buying what the Blow Monkeys were selling. Their ‘86 album, Animal Magic, made it into the top 40, but the follow-up, 1987’s She Was Only A Grocer’s Daughter, only made it into the Top 140 (at #134), and by the time Whoops! There Goes The Neighbourhood emerged in 1989, the band no longer had a record deal in the States. After one final release (1990’s Springtime for the World), they gave up the ghost, and the band’s lead singer, Doctor Robert, dived headlong into a very enjoyable - if not necessarily all that commercially successful - solo career. (Seriously, you should check out his stuff. Just start with his debut, Realms of Gold, and if you like that one, you can’t go wrong with any of the subsequent releases.)
In November of 2007, however, it was announced that the band would be getting back together…and, in an interesting move, declared that they would record and release a new album if the fans were willing to purchase copies in advance to pay for the cost; in turn, they would not only get an autographed copy of the album but, indeed, a thank-you in the liner notes. I admit: I signed up immediately, and I reaped the benefits, just as the Blow Monkeys promised. And the album, Devil’s Tavern, finds the band offering up a more mature version of their old sound, with the good Doctor still in fine voice…as you can clearly hear when you watch the video for “Travelin’ Soul,” which is one of the album’s eleven tracks.
Most men hate Valentine’s Day, but we at Bullz-Eye actually love it, though for different reasons than you might suspect. The majority of us are either happily married or in long-term relationships (except for our fearless, terminally single leader), so Valentine’s Day is a sweet reminder of how happy we are that we’re no longer playing the dating game. (It’s fun when you’re young, guys, but trust us, you won’t miss it.) But the real reason we love Valentine’s Day is because it gives us an opportunity to make fun of songs that pretend to be heartfelt, but are really just sad. And we don’t mean “Brian’s Song” sad. We mean Milhouse Van Houten sad.
It all started with a Coldplay song. As we’re tapping along with the drums, we put the lyrics under a microscope and thought, “Did he really just say that? That’s pathetic!” From there, we began analyzing other songs that appeared to be sweet, honest confessions of love on the surface, but were just sorry cries for help in disguise or, worse, disturbing preludes to what a defense attorney would call “crimes of passion.”
We have broken our subjects down into three categories: stalker anthems, love songs for the spineless, and murder ballads, the last of which are mostly minus the ballad. Our research uncovered dozens upon dozens of songs that fit one bill or another, but for the sake of time and space, we’re whittling the list down to our favorites (all apologies to Elton John’s “Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word”). And, as a public service, we have provided musical antidotes for every song we dissect, in case anyone is overwhelmed with a case of the willies. Perhaps the most disturbing thing we uncovered is that one of the more sinister repeat offenders was…Barenaked Ladies? You better believe it.
Now I’m following you: Songs that profess a more “dedicated” kind of love
There are certain songs that love you. Like, really, really love you. Wait for you at the elevator love you. Watch through your window as you sleep love you. Whether you love them back is irrelevant – you were made for them, and it’s only a matter of time before you accept this to be true.
Song/Artist: “It’s No Good,” Depeche Mode Incriminating Lyric:“The gods decree, you’ll be right here by my side / Right next to me / You can run but you cannot hide.” Creep Factor: Low. Dave Gahan ranks just behind Jarvis Cocker on the list of least intimidating rock stars. Musical Antidote: “You’re No Good,” Linda Ronstadt
Song/Artist: “Number One Crush,” Garbage Incriminating Lyric:“You will believe in me / And I will never be ignored.” Creep Factor: Admittedly, the lyric sheet reads like a diary entry written by Glenn Close in “Fatal Attraction,” but if you have a thing for sulky redheads in raccoon eye makeup – as many of us clearly did in the ’90s – the song is really sort of adorable. Musical Antidote: “Puppy Love,” Paul Anka
Song/Artist: “Obsession,” Animotion Incriminating Lyric:“I will have you, yes I will have you / I will find a way, and I will have you / Like a butterfly, a wild butterfly / I will collect you and capture you.” Creep Factor: Too turned on to be creeped out. Keep in mind that one of the next lines is “Who do you want me to be to make you sleep with me?” so if we’re just talking about casual sex, wouldn’t you rather it be with someone who’s a little nuts and willing to role play? You bet your ass you would. Musical Antidote: “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off,” Jermaine Stewart
Song/Artist: “I Will Possess Your Heart,” Death Cab for Cutie Incriminating Lyric:“You reject my advances and desperate pleas / I won’t let you let me down so easily.” Creep Factor: Holy shit. Most of the time, Ben Gibbard sounds like a harmless nerd, but with this song, he let us know that he’s just as capable of making us wonder if we should call the cops. Musical Antidote: “Let’s Be Friends,” New Edition
