Last week, David Byrne interviewed Thom Yorke of Radiohead for Wired, about their battle with record companies and their ultimate decision to produce and distribute their own music. This was punctuated a few months ago by releasing their latest album, In Rainbows, through their own site, and allowed fans to name their own price for the album. In the interview I am particularly happy with Thom Yorke’s invocation of the book No Logo by Naomi Klein.

At the same time, David Byrne wrote an amazing piece about being a musician in the digital world. As someone who has owned his own label and been a musician himself under different levels of label control, he has perspective to see the good and bad from all the types of musical situations available. This piece is the most concise and informative I’ve seen on the music business. If you are a musician it is a great read. The only option I think he leaves out are services like TuneCore, who allow you to place music on iTunes and other digital services with no withholding whatsoever. You just pay the hosting fee per year and per song (not very much) and they get you on the music stores.

Read: The music industry article for musicians by David Byrne or
David Byrne’s interview with Thom Yorke

Buy work by Radiohead, Thom Yorke or David Byrne (and Talking Heads).

Get No Logo by Naomi Klein.

Related posts:

1. David Byrne’s Perfect City
2. Plastic Records, Italy
3. David Hockney’s Advice for iPhone Painting

On The Muppet Show, Animal battles Buddy Rich. Until I saw this clip, I didn’t know the musician who performed Animal’s drumming was Ronnie Verrell. This is some amazing drumming.

Get The Muppets.

Negativland is a group that creates mash-ups of existing music, sound and video. They have been sued for this, but believe firmly that art belongs to society. They are releasing a compilation of their work, Our Favorite Things, which properly has been mashed up yet again by other artists. They started doing this pre-YouTube and pre-filesharing lawsuits. Adding to yesterday’s post, this is more to show what can be done once work hits the public domain and can be mixed, used and cut up to make something new. (Though Negativland doesn’t wait for the public domain to kick in.)

Read about Our Favorite Things in Wired.

Buy work by Negativland.

Related posts:

1. Japan Ink – Inside the Manga-Industrial Complex

I was born after the 1960s. What I know is only from stories and grainy video, comprised of many heroic and striking moments, modern stories not unlike King Arthur’s Court or Hamlet. The difference is, these are modern stories from not that long ago, and you can see their effects clearly all around us.

When I think of the ’60s, I see beaded curtains opening onto a California beach. William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan play to smoky, turtle-necked fans creaking in wooden chairs. I hear Janis Joplin and Odetta. And I see violence, bombs off our shores, great leaders slain one after another, causing uprising until the Golden Gate summer, where before it ends, the environmental movement, the peace movement, the civil rights movement and much more are finally planted to take slow root.

The problem is, that’s not how it happened. It’s no more what happened than Shakespeare’s Richard II. There is some element of truth to it, but the characters and plots were refined to tell a story and teach great lessons. Joseph Campbell said that we don’t have modern myths to hold onto. The myth of 1967 tells otherwise.

The biggest cultural reflection of this budding myth bloomed as The Beatles. They obviously influenced lots of people, and helped carry the message right into now.

Across the Universe attempts to bring the totality of this starry eyed story into one place and tell it in the language of the myth itself — as a multicolored, trippy, musical journey about love and war from Liverpool to the East Village. It attempts to bring all these different people and places into one archetypal legend.

Julie Taymor has a long and respected history of creating experimental, very original works of art in many disciplines. She gained greater notoriety directing The Lion King on Broadway, and later the films Titus and Frida. You can see hints of some daring and beautiful ideas in Across the Universe, and I can only imagine what would have happened if the film took an even more experimental direction (not that it looks at all like a typical Hollywood film). But this ever pressing need to compromise between experimental daring and loosely knit clichéd myth ends up making a pretty bad movie. I can also only imagine the endless boardroom, film executive and Beatles meetings that destined it to compromise from the beginning.

Despite that, I’m very glad she made it.

I would rather an artist strive for something spectacular and fail than simply try something mediocre and succeed with no lasting affect.

Beyond the movie itself, there is a larger current – building art that looks at this hugely influential time beyond the bounds of history, in the language of archetypes and legend. The Beatles are beginning to appear frequently in strange places they would have never appeared before, like Cirque Du Soleil’s Love. It hints at what inventive combinations and new stories will be created as modern music reaches the end of its copyright, moves out of heavily controlled, money-motivated restrictions and into the culture’s hands, into the public domain. It’s one step of a giant cultural mash up that’s only just starting.

Learn more:
The Beats, Summer of Love, Joseph Campbell, Julie Taymor, NYT – Film Has Two Versions; Only One Is Julie Taymor’s

Buy something related:
work by Julie Taymor, Joseph Campbell, The Beatles, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Odetta or This Book is Free (Beneath the Diamond Sky)

Related posts:

1. The Rare Director’s Cut – Alan Smithee, Across the Universe, Blade Runner
2. Endurance Art – Six Hours is Too Long
3. Thank you Richard Florida for giving The Bohemians so much power. Now please tell us – when will we ever benefit from it?

I went to an afternoon of flat track roller derby, and even though it’s a sport, I could care less who won or lost. A lot of us were there to be entertained. Roller derby is dramatic and theatrical. Lots of players and whole teams have strong characters (whether real or mythical), and the opening and half time shows are fun and over the top. You could see a lot of artistic types in the audience who don’t go to many other games. There’s something creative and entertaining drawing them in.

But when the main purpose behind a performance is to get points and be the winner, is it art?

Figure skating, ballroom dancing and DanceSport, color guard and some forms of gymnastics are all artistic performances where the main goal is to get points and win. In most cases, performers are required to play certain types of music, wear certain clothes, and use certain prescribed moves.

Most of the performers are clearly exceptional athletes, are very dedicated, and have great artistic skill. But many people, especially the “real artists,” look down on all this. For me the problem has always been the limits put on the work — why would you limit yourself to only certain moves or, for instance, being required to twirl a fake wooden rifle?

A lot of people have trouble with the motivation. If you’re there to get points, based on how well you perform predefined and accepted moves, where is your artistic voice, your unique viewpoint of the world? Another motivation is money. Money motivation also brings the artistic merits of TV shows, films and albums into question, even beyond TV art sports like American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, and On the Lot. Artistic authenticity and innovation are often the measures of success for modern artwork. Motivations for money, points and winning are contrary to real art.

You might say authenticity and innovation are the point system for modern art. But who are the hidden judges? What are the secret rules?

When artists apply for grants, panelists often look for predefined forms that, to them, define great art. When ballet dancers come on stage, the audience looks for a limited set of predefined moves that add up to what they think of as ballet. When donors give money to a theatre or opera, they vote with dollars for work that most fits what they think art should be. Curators, promoters, producers, executives, politicians, grantors, donors, boards of directors, ticket buyers, book and music lovers and others are all doling out points. Many artists don’t like to admit we’re influenced by these points. We are trying to win money or notoriety.

The perfect modern artist is someone whose work pops out like flower buds, for no other reason and purpose than the artist wants it to. Money or status have no influence whatsoever. These are people like Henry Darger, who painted in secret his whole life. He was pure, untainted by desire for money or fame.

But if you are authentic, and you aren’t influenced by your audience or worldly temptations, how do you know your art is doing what you intended? Are puppies and shaving creme really disturbing and life changing, or only to you? Do dinosaurs make everyone think of birds, or just paleontologists? Maybe your art is just boring, confused and badly made. How will you know if you don’t listen? How will you make better work if you aren’t willing to change and learn?

In modern art, forming a fake rock band or standing on a street corner and shouting curse words at drivers can both be art. Dressing like your grandmother while impersonating Nixon might be your authentic voice. Maybe in this confusing open ended anything-goes arena, the points we get are the only barometer we have for whether our work is to other people what it is to us. Once we get those points, we can decide to change, to work for more points at the possible smogging of our clear intents. Or we can decide to remain steadfast, and risk pulling a Van Gogh – dying penniless with no recognition. It seems Van Gogh was right. I think the key is that, after collecting the points, Success or Winning is just ultimately affecting the world as you wanted to, regardless of what other rewards that might come your way.

Maybe the art athletes have it all figured out. Get the rules in writing. By the end of the night, be called the winner in front of a cheering crowd, and get paid decently for all your skill and effort.

Get In the Realms of the Unreal, the fascinating documentary about Henry Darger; or From Ballroom To Dancesport: Aesthetics, Athletics, And Body Culture

Related posts:

1. No Art, Only Entertainment
2. 5 Points, Queens NYC
3. The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein

Some of the best funk and psychedelic music ever written was created for Italian B-movies in the 1960s and 70s. This music was compiled and released by Plastic Records in Italy. I discovered them through Tower Records (of all places) who carried a single album from their catalogue – Vroommm: Funk Cinematique. I visited the Plastic Records website often, but I was a poor artist and couldn’t get them yet. I heard samples from other titles like Phase 6 Superstereo, Stroboscopica, Harlem Shuffle: The Sound of Blaxploitation, and the one I wanted most, Space Mood & Electric Soul, funk mod Italian sci-fi.

Then when I could finally afford to order CDs shipped from Italy, Plastic Records Italy vanished without a trace. I have searched high and low but it doesn’t appear their catalogue was acquired by another company, the music vanished with them.

Dancers love using this in their work, it’s fresh, exciting and new even though some of it’s 40 years old.

I have continued searching for years in used CD bins of any new city I visit. I hit pay dirt only once, a Plastic Records compilation of Film Noir Detectives. I hate to write about this little secret, fearing that if I tell anyone else, people will scoop up the few used copies still floating around. But I do love it and want to share — and maybe someone will read this and tell me all this great music is still in print, from a new living label.

Related posts:

1. David Byrne’s Perfect City
2. Getting a $4500 Paraglider vs. Making One Out of Plastic Bags

The Producers and Hairspray both began as movies, became musicals, and then turned into movie musicals. I have little doubt the new musical Young Frankenstein will follow the same footsteps.

It’s still in previews and has its flaws, but mostly it’s a lot of fun. From some really funny moments to a giant Frankenstein lab with lightning, Romanian and swing dancing, and Megan Mullally, Roger Bart, Christopher Fitzgerald, Sutton Foster and Andrea Martin, it’s a good time. Unfortunately my dormant memories of Haunted Honeymoon and Transylvania 6-5000 kept popping up. Thankfully few people have seen these movies.

Regional theatres all over the US have had financial difficulties for over a decade. One of the problems is getting audiences interested in new work which wasn’t written by someone they already know, and doesn’t star someone they’ve already seen (preferably a star). The musical blockbusters on Broadway, based on films, with big name stars, is a way to attract enough audiences to pay for such big productions. But is this theatre a living artform if it continually recycles ideas? Certainly every idea is a combination of new and old, but when the producers only want to risk already proven plots and characters, less new work gets a chance on stage. Instead you get Carrie the Musical and Clueless.

All that said, I’m so happy I got to see Andrea Martin as Frau Blucher. (Even I fell for the well loved stars and characters.)

Related: Why are there so many Broadway musicals based on movies?

Get Young Frankenstein, The Producers, stuff with Megan Mullally, stuff with Andrea Martin, Haunted Honeymoon, Transylvania 6-5000, or the book Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops

Related posts:

1. Truce of Press and Theatre Previews
2. Across the Universe, The Power of Myth, 1967
3. If You Get Points, Is It Art?

Any decent rockstar by nature is sexual and rebellious in one way or another. By nature this flies in the face of people who, for example, own tv or internet companies, or are heads of government big and small, and want to keep things nice and normal and non-rebellious. There is a history of censorship in all parts of the world. In some places it’s considered typical. Whatever you think of this in other cultures, the people and government of the United States pronounce boldly that Freedom of Speech is one of the things that sets it apart. But here too there is a long history of censorship that stretches up to this week, with AT&T’s censorship of a live Pearl Jam concert webcast. Censorship happens for all kinds of reasons — sexual, political, religious, financial. Here are a wide swath of examples.

One of the first was Elvis, filmed from the waist up by the Ed Sullivan show because we certainly couldn’t handle his gyrating hips.

Ed Sullivan strikes again, having The Rolling Stones sing “Let’s Spend Some Time Together”.

Which was much later parodied on The Simpsons with the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

A lot of time passes with other incidents of censorship of many kinds, through The Summer of Love, the Vietnam War, the punk movement of the 70’s, and we hit upon Madonna, who has made a career of doing things to push people’s buttons. The Pepsi commercial she films is shown only once because of the controversy surrounding the catholic overtones in the video for Like A Prayer.

Years after this, Erotica is banned by MTV because it is too, well, erotic. Or maybe just odd.

and we come to the start of the Iraq War and the Dixie Chicks, who received death threats from their comments at a concert, and later turned this into a feature film documentary.

And this week, Pearl Jam makes similarly hot political lyric swaps during a live webcast, which is censored in the live feed by AT&T (or one of their contractors). I’m honestly not a big fan of Pearl Jam’s music (they are one of the first to popularize the Yarling vocal style, which to me sounds pretty terrible). As people though they seem to stand up for what they feel is right, such as their long fight with Ticketmaster (a topic for another post).

It’s probably no surprise that I believe in freedom of expression. But there is a long history of this kind of censorship, throughout the history of rock, and even before it with Swing, or Kurt Weill in pre-WWII Germany. Each time it happens, people seem to react with shock and surprise, like it’s the first time all over again. Then again I also think it’s strange that people in power (whether corporate, media, family or government) are still shocked by what rockstars do on stage. Elvis’s hips, Madonna’s religion, Janet Jackson’s breast, Pearl Jam’s two changed lyrics. Somehow with all that’s going on in the world, these simple acts are still taboo.

Get Pearl Jam, Elvis, The Ed Sullivan Show, The Simpsons, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Madonna, The Dixie Chicks or Kurt Weill.

Related posts:

1. Kurt Vonnegut’s Letters Home After Release from Nazi Prison

Sarolta Zalatnay, sometimes known as Cini, is a Hungarian singer who sounds like Stereolab, Joan Jett, Janis Joplin, Abba or Blondie, depending on what song you’re listening to and what mood you’re in. Her fashions changed as much as her musical style, but both are always energetic and daring. All totaled, her best work is aggressive and gruff.

Today in Hungary, she is less known for her music than for her personal life. She is married to a porn director, had her own tv channel – CiNN TV, and a reality TV show was aired showing her last days of freedom before serving a three year prison sentence for fraud.

But you can avoid all that, and just enjoy the music.

Get Sarolta Zalatnay

Japanese artist Cornelius often performs in stadiums back in Japan. So I felt lucky to see him in a venue with only about 50 other people. When I first saw the show advertised, I thought it was a mistake because it was in such a small space. Cornelius has been called “The Japanese Beck” because he has many musical influences and sometimes uses collages and samples to weave tracks together.

The show was moving, energetic and hysterical.
It was also filled with chimes (as is his latest album.)

The music and performance were fantastic, but what really made it stand out was the video. Many bands these days project video behind them as they play. Most of the time this comes off as nothing more than a dynamic light cue, or worse, the content of the video distracts or opposes what’s in the music.

Cornelius says the video is a part of the band, like any other instrument. It’s often created right along with a song, in conjunction with the sound and meaning. The result is one of the best I’ve seen combining performance and video. The shape and motion mix with the performers and sound to make something much greater than the sum of its parts. Sometimes we were all in the sky flying with birds, other times mixing with words and color. Each song had it’s own film, and each added meaning, feeling and great visual beauty to the show.

An Interview with Cornelius.

Get Cornelius or Beck.

Related posts:

1. YouTube Play: Guggenheim Biennial of Creative Video
2. Monkeys Like Monkey Music, Apathetic to Human Music
3. Hungarian Punk Star Sarolta Zalatnay

Throwing stuffed animals at each other while jumping on second hand furniture in between stripteases doesn’t count as art most of the time, even though it’s a helluva lot of fun. But Berlin choreographer Constanza Macras and company Dorky Park weave together an enticing performance that’s both fun and sexy while technically challenging. The company flips easily from dance to string quartet to stripping to punk band to honest monologue.

As an artist, this hint of run down apartment with used furniture, other artists hanging around all day doing strange things, getting sexy and then too introspective feels all very familiar. The monologues each performer gives hit right at the heart of being artists.

Several friends of mine have moved to Berlin in the past year. It’s felt like Berlin is the current Bohemia, in the tradition of Bloomsbury, Montmartre and The East Village. Cheap rent in former East Berlin housing, a bustling metropolis, ways for artists to make a living at their work, and a big artist population make it a great place to be.

Far more than fun, sexy, and talented, what hit me watching this was how much fun it must be to live in Berlin right now. The members of Dorky Park are from all over the world, but are based out of Berlin. I’ve lived in some great places with solid artist communities, but I’ve never been at the center of Bohemia. Having such a powerful, collective creativity all around you pushes you to do more and better, and makes you feel anything is possible.

I’m jealous of artists in Berlin.

Related posts:

1. How Long Does a Bohemian Flower Bloom?