Hell, even as recently as last month, one of them shrugged off discussions of a possible reunion, saying that “it has to be emotionally, spiritually and financially the right thing, and when all those planets come into line, then we will be there. At the time being, I can’t see it on the horizon…but I’ve been wrong before.”
Hey, guess what?
THIS is supposed to be a list of the 200 definitive albums of all time…?
Please.
THIS is nothing more than a collaborative effort between a bunch of suits at the various major labels who want to sell some more copies of their back catalog titles rather than spend money on promoting new, up-and-coming artists, so they’ve teamed up with all the big music retailers and said, “If you stock them, they will buy them.”
Disgusting.
There’s a show airing on PBS stations around the country right about now that every music fan should check out, particularly if you enjoy history as well. It’s called “Soundies,” and its topic is stated outright in its title.
Soundies were, as the title of this post indicates, the precursor of the music video. The Mills Novelty Company created a refrigerator-sized machine called the Panoram, which was essentially a video jukebox, and these soundies – three-minute films of various musical artists performing their hit songs – could be watched on the Panoram in groups of three. (It was early technology, of course, so you couldn’t fast-forward or rewind; if you wanted to see the last soundie on the reel, you were stuck watching the first two as well, whether you wanted to or not.) The soundies began in 1940 and started off as a roaring success, but World War II caused the Panoram business to stumble – the war effort necessitated a slowing in the manufacturing of new machines – and by the time the armistice had been signed, it was too late; the era of the soundies was over by 1946.
But, wow, who knew how many video artifacts from those six years were still out there…?
Fans of jazz, country, pop vocalists of the ’40s, and even early R&B will find their jaws dropping at some of this footage. You’ll see performances from Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, Count Basie, Les Paul, Kay Starr, Fats Waller, Spike Jones, the Mills Brothers, Merle Travis, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Doris Day, and even a young Liberace. The stock line about soundies is that while the most popular white artists tended to be under contract to other studios and were therefore unavailable to make soundies (there’s an interesting story about how Mel Torme’s group, the Meltones, did a soundie with another member lip-synching Mel’s vocals because Torme himself wasn’t contractually permitted to appear on camera), there were plenty of black artists who were more than willing to get in front of the camera in order maximize their exposure…and it’s so awesome that they did. Actually being able to see Fats Waller kick out the jams on the piano is pretty damned sweet.
There are also some interesting choices of talking heads brought onboard to discuss the soundies; in addition to new interviews with some of the folks who actually made them, like Les Paul and Kay Starr, we get commentary from Joe Franklin, Hugh Hefner, jazzmen George Duke and Wynton Marsalis, and…Stan Ridgway? Oh, it’s not so strange; didn’t you know that he recorded an album of standards a few years back? (If not, you will soon…when we discuss The Best Albums You’ve Never, Ever Heard. Check back at Bullz-Eye in early April!)
You can check out the official website for “Soundies,” but I’m led to understand that in addition to future airings, there’s talk of releasing it on DVD. Fingers crossed that that’s true; there’s a lot of stuff here that’s worth watching over and over again.
…but I think that if you sit down to write up your own “Top 10 Corporate Moments in Rock,” it’ll look a lot like the one compiled by the folks at Earvolution.com.
First off, go read this article, which has a parenthetical subtitle – “It ain’t good news” – that’s likely to win the award for Biggest Understatement of 2007.
If you’re too lazy to click on the link…well, first off, that’s embarrassingly lazy. But since I’m nothing if not an enabler, I’ll summarize for you, anyway: the Copyright Royalty Board has made its decree on the royalty rates that are to be paid by internet radio stations.
Per Orbitcast.com, the ruling is on a “per play” basis – so Internet radio stations will have to pay the cost of one song to one listener – effective retroactively for 2006, plus an additional fee of $500 per channel per year.
The rates to be paid are:
2006 – $.0008 per performance
2007 – $.0011 per performance
2008 – $.0014 per performance
2009 – $.0018 per performance
2010 – $.0019 per performance
Can anyone explain to me how one of the largest music-related organizations in the country can be run by people who are apparently not diehard music fans? Internet radio is such an awesome tool for people to discover new music…and this royalty schedule is likely to kill it stone dead, or – at the very least – knock out those participants who tend to offer the widest variety in their playlists. This strikes me as a move no less damaging than removing the limit of radio stations any one company can own in an area; it immediately blows the little guy out of the water, which inevitably results in less choice and more stations interested in business over an actual interest in music.
Disgusting.
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