Waist Deep in the Media Swamp

Village Music was an institution & the greatest record store in the UNIVERSE

I’ve lived in Marin County, just north of San Francisco for most of the last 35+ years.

I have been fortunate to live here. Two of my all time favorite music-related venues in the world were both located nearby, in Mill Valley. The legendary Sweetwater Saloon for live music and the ultimate record store, Village Music. I literally spent many hundreds of hours listening to music at the Sweetwater and thousands of dollars purchasing music at Village Music. Unfortunately, both are now closed due mainly to absurdly high rents.

To say Village Music was a record store is like saying Mount Everest is a hill. It was a University of American Music. John Goddard, the owner, was it’s professor and also it’s ringmaster.

I could go on touting its greatness, the in-store shows I experienced, the people I met there, what I learned… but instead there is documentary being made by Gillan & Monroe Grisman, children of the great musician, David Grisman.

They just began a Kickstarter campaign and need to raise $50K.

If you love music, donate what you can...

This is a story that needs to be told – it was a remarkable place and John is a remarkable man.

I am stating the obvious, but I’m still going to say it anyway…  This great article by Bethlehem Shoals about the evolution of the song Try a Little Tenderness reminded me about how amazing and fun the internet is, how it has changed the way we learn & discover history, etc. It would have been impossible to deploy this research in this fashion just a decade ago. And its incredible that YouTube has all these different versions of the song:

How ‘Try A Little Tenderness’ Got Its Soul (And Lost It)

For most of the past year, I have been advising and old friend, Tom McAlevey, as he & his team get ready to launch a revolutionary internet radio startup called Radical.FM in a few days.

That Tom’s led an interesting life is an understatement. Some highlights include riding his motorcycle around the world, starting what may have been the very first internet radio station in Sweden in 1999 – which he had to abandon when the dot.com boom crashed in the early 2000′s – and driving a dune buggy from Stockholm to Cape Town, which he documented in a film  called Adventuress Wanted. He is an innovator and as well as one hellava determined guy.

Radical.FM combines user tailored music radio stations (like Pandora and Slacker) with on-demand playlist functionality (like Rhapsody and Spotify), and adds social networking and personal broadcasting capabilities. For the first time all of these functions will be available in one integrated service. It will initially offer free personal radio services, with full Play-On-Demand functionality for a paid Premium subscription tier.

The player is cool. It’s based on an audio mixing board, so you can  blend as many Genres as you want, and then assign each Genre a value relative to the others. Since blending can be changed instantly, the result is an endless stream of exactly the kind of music you want to hear at any given moment.

In addition, a feature called LiveShare feature permits personal music streams to be shared in real-time and DeeJay allows a user to speak to all who are listening to their LiveShare stream.

There’s also a separate service for Independent artists called Radical Indie.

It’s gonna be interesting to rid along with them…

My good buddy, Jimmy Z, played harmonica on the original Eurythmics hit Missionary Man (read his post about Meeting Eurythmics).

After naggin’ the hell out of him for years to do his own version of the song, I finally got him to agree to do it when I found an old YouTube video of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart doing a stripped down acoustic version.

He wound up doing a Delta Blues take on it. He originally meant for it to be acoustic dobro and harp but one thing led to another and they added drums and bass.

Listen to it here. Play it LOUD.

I hope you enjoy it and you purchase it on iTunes.

Dylan was the first major artist I saw in concert – Winter, 1966, I believe – after Highway 61 Revisited was released. Because I was only 13, my Dad kindly drove me and my buddy Larry Lindsey about 30 miles to see him at the Westchester Community  Center’s 200-300 seat auditorium. Sopworth Camel (a one-hit wonder) opened, followed by the Loving Spoonful. Dylan did an acoustic set, followed by an electric set. I was awed. I will always remember him there – having fun, and ROCKING OUT!

Who knew I’d still be listening to him after all this time, and, more importantly, that he would continue to write amazing songs. Thanks, Bob.

But time goes on and he’s now 70. Damn.

And to keep things in perspective, my buddy Jimmy Z, legendary blue musician,  has blogged about being with Tom Petty at Live Aid and playing a prank on ol’ Bob:

There where we were after our Live Aid show safely done, the pres­sure is off and every­one is con­grat­u­lat­ing us.  The party was just start­ing to heat up as the after­noon wound its way toward evening.  At one point I was stand­ing with some peo­ple, talk­ing and laugh­ing when all of a sud­den every­one went quiet and I looked up and noticed that Bob Dylan was walk­ing by us and every­one just turned so rev­er­ent.  I half expected the heav­ens to part and vio­lins to start play­ing the way some of these peo­ple were behav­ing.  They were say­ing things like “ssshhh…its Bob Dylan…he’s get­ting a drink.”  Or “ooohhh.….its Bob Dylan…he’s going to the toi­let!”  Now don’t get me wrong, Bob Dylan as a writer and inno­va­tor is tops in my book.  But Jeez…come on people…he’s just one of us.…isn’t he?

Well that’s what I thought that day and still do.  There were three porta-potties set up in the back stage area right next to these giant para­chute tents which had been set up to pro­tect us from the heat.  As Dylan is head­ing towards the porta­bles, the peo­ple around me were say­ing, “Bob’s gotta take a leak” So right then I decide to saunter on over to the out­houses myself.  As I got there, Bob was already inside and I could hear him pee­ing.  I looked back over my shoul­der at the expec­tant back­stage crowd and them at me, then back at Bob’s out­house.  I grabbed it with both hands and gave it a good four sec­ond shake.  Every­one else back­stage could hear Bob yelling, “Hey! Hey!! Hey!!!”   I was laugh­ing so hard and when I turned around I was greeted by a sight I won’t soon for­get.  There was Tom Petty, man­age­ment and prob­a­bly at least thirty of the biggest rock stars of the day with their jaws on the ground look­ing utterly aghast at what I had just done.  I walked around back to Tom Petty and he laid into me.  All that slow south­ern drawl and laid back humor was gone.  He said, “I can’t believe you just did that…I can’t believe it …that was Bob, fuckin’, Dylan!  Are you out of your mind?”  To be hon­est I didn’t see what the big deal was.  I was still try­ing not to laugh.

What I do remem­ber is the sight of Bob Dylan com­ing out of that portable out­house with a piss stain trail right down the left leg of his Levi’s, look­ing to see who did this to him, like any other mor­tal would.  And in my mind look­ing pissed off and humored all at the same time.  Any way Bob, I’d just like to say I think you’re a good sport and you han­dled your­self with grace and aplomb in an awk­ward situation…I wish you could have seen it from where I was because it was fuckin’ funny…

Read the whole post on Confessions of of a Glorified Sideman.

My favorite Dylan song? Hard to say. Though many of his words and songs changed me and helped me grow intellectually and politically  in ways I still can’t completely grasp, probably his one of his shortest is one my favorites – All The Tired Horses, from his much-maligned Self Portrait. It’s not sung by Bob, it has female singers and overly-lush orchestrated, mawkishly sentimental strings. I first heard it while I was on the road and it drowns me in nostalgia, for whatever reason. Kinda like his You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.

For the first time, on a birthday tribute today, I heard him reading Last Thoughts on Woody Guthrie – could be the best thing he ever wrote.

It’s many years after Katrina and the wounds in New Orleans are still not healed. As a reminder, my buddy & legendary musician Jimmy Z, is giving a free download of his song The Big Easy’s Gone Cold that he recorded a few years ago.

If you enjoy it, I’d appreciate it if you send some love (and money) to Tipitina’s Foundation, which was created to support Louisiana and New Orleans’ irreplaceable music community and to preserve their unique musical cultures. Read more & donate.

Credits for the song:

Jimmy Z- bass, keyboards, harp, sax, vocals
Zac Harmon – guitar, background vocals
Lee Thornburg – trumpet, trombones
Christina Viera – background vocals
Bob Boykin – guitar, mix, production

Ya gotta love where this is going:

Read the whole story at Dr Dre Started Burning Man.

These great videos celebrate the basic fact that rhythm is everywhere. Life is constantly moving vibrations.

We’re just a biological speculation, sittin’ here vibratin’ ~ Funkmaster George Clinton

Keep bangin’!

Freedom is no fear. ~ Singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist, Nina Simone

When the great jazz pianist and composer Billy Taylor died last week, I went on YouTube to find a video of him playing his signature tune I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free.

In the sidebar there were many links to Nina Simone’s version of his song. One of the links was to this great interview, where I heard the quote:

Picture courtesy Jazz Icons.

Over the last few months, I have been blogging about my adventure in getting my buddy & independent musician Jimmy Z on iTunes Ping.

I was asked to condense all my tribulations into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

BTW – Michael’s site has lots of great resources & suggestions for independent musicians.

The business and tech blog, Silicon Alley Insider, has sited Ping as being the sixth biggest tech flop of the year and site it for utterly failing to gain traction.

As my previous posts have indicated, post-launch communications to independent musicians was mishandled, the integration with Twitter is lame, no one can really use it other than to promote music sales as is is not truly social and open, etc.

It isn’t like Apple to continue to support lame initiatives and products, so my hope is still that they might get it all together. But the clock is ticking. Loudly. I still hold out some hope they will pull it together on 2011.

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

It is always tremendous fun to see George Clinton & P-Funk. Over the years, I’ve probably experienced at least a dozen shows going back to the ’80s.

This show was in Yoshi’s Jazz Club – a medium sized venue in the Fillmore District of San Francisco. We went to the late show. As the early show was letting out, the building’s fire alarm went off – but the club staff indicated nothing was amiss, so we did not evacuate.

The fire crew arrived and as they left they were laughing… as you may have guessed -  too much smoke backstage triggered the aarm. LOL. My friend & P-Funk guitarist Shaunna Hall wrote,  When the fire dept arrived at the club, the first man in called it a “Code 4 – there’s… a SKUNK LOOSE IN THE BUILDING!! Nice!”

As the song says, “Ain’t no party like a P-Funk party…” and this show did not disappoint. Superb musicianship + outrageous costumes = one of the finest musical grooves in the universe.

It took a bit getting used to to see George without long hair (he’s got the Panama boater hat on). I apologize for not getting any close shots of him myself – as I was having too much fun dancing. But I did shoot a few segments from our perch in the back to the club:

Here’s Shaunna, RonKat and some of the band jamming after the show:

So you can see some closeups, here’s a video shot by RatedFFF, who apparently had total access, including getting a live audio mix:

Read Write Web analyzed recent Twitter data regarding the new Ping integration.

In brief, so far there is low volume and no retweets. Here is their graph of English language results, yellow being the 1.41% Ping retweets:

They compare that to a 6% retweet rate for the Instagram photo-sharing program over the same period.

Though not discussed in the report, maybe its because when you click the link in Twitter it takes you to iTunes. What if you don’t have iTunes installed? And most people do not. Fail.

Read the complete post here.

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself. ~ Trumpeter, bandleader, composer, artist, and so much more, Miles Davis

Today, Twitter and Apple announced that iTunes Ping can now be integrated in Twitter.

I’m not convinced it will help independent musicians, but it will surely generate more revenue for Apple.

It will be interesting to see how deeply this is adopted. We’ll be watching this closely over the next few months.

Update December 13, 2010 – I was  asked to condense all my tribulations with Apple and Ping into one long article that is now posted on Michael Brandvold’s great Music Marketing site, here.