Rob the Fiddler

Another great read from John Nova Lomax(Music Editor) in the Houston Press.

KIKK fm was a country station that recently switched formats to smooth Jazz (Kenny G, Tesh and the like). Its now called the wave. John
had previously tore into this genre with not much regard for its fans.

I hate to see that station go. It was one of my favorites in Houston.

This is the same writer who Im told coined the phrase “Texas (Bowel) Movement” for all the Johnny come lately Texas Artists following Pat Green’s success.

He likes Beaver Nelson…so he can’t be all that bad.

Came across this gem on the old 97s site (actually…I was trying to find out about a band called “free whiskey”….google…the cause and solution to all my problems….anyhoo ). This is a review of a Whiskeytown show I saw with Danny several years back. Yes…there was a guitar smashed…and yes…I cheered wildly. I think I held up a lighter too.

Reckless Behavior

Rumors are flying around town about what was flying through the air at Whiskeytown’s raucous, unwieldy performance at Trees on Jan. 23. Aside from the cups and ice, lead singer Ryan Adams fired some cheap shots at Old 97’s, kicked a mike stand over, threatened to beat up a couple of loud frat boys and smashed his acoustic guitar and distributed the shards.

He (Adams) risks alienating potential new fans (most of whom left when the band took an intermission at 1 a.m.) and even die-hards (most of whom stared open-mouthed at Mr. Adams as he capped the evening with a feedback-fueled, patience-testing cover of Sonic Youth’s “Expressway to Your Skull”).

I forgot to tell you all a story from Halloween night last month. After we had the practice for the gram band, I hung out a bit at Muddy Waters. (Gram fest is tonight at Barley House by the way….I have no idea who is playing….I sure if Snider has anything to do with it…it was only an after thought).

Anyway, I saw this one cute blonde girl dressed as what appeared to be little Red Riding Hood. She seemed nice looking so I figured I would just walkup and introduce myself. (I still working on the cold introductions…this seemed like a good place to start).

She seemed really receptive when I said Hello and told her I wanted to introduce myself to her. (Im told the best pickup line is “hi”) Not fifteen seconds later…she touched her finger to her nose and said “Hey you like to party?”.

Me : (blank stare)

I thinking…maybe she is not Red Riding Hood..but Tabitha from bewitched….recall that she could not twitch her nose to cast spells..so she had to use her finger to twitch it manually. Besides, this girl did not have the physical attibutes of a snow queen, (They are usually rail-thin…this girl was not) and I always have an optimistic view of people.

Me: “Hey thats funny…are you Tabitha from Bewitched?”

RRH: “huh? Im Little Red Riding Hood……you like to party?”

Me: “Hmm…guess not”

So I left to Bar of Soap where the freaks are a little more easily marked. (Literally)

Here is an OLD review of the drunk bus trip when I got to meet Waylon. I was playing with Mark, so I did not go on the bus…but I sure wish I did.

WM smith just posted a review for Cuba from the silos. This was one of the first bands that I heard about when I got into that whole twang/americana rock thing. Napster did a lot of the distribution work involved in getting that sound to my head. Local bands too. Check out the website. Loads of Mp3s. They also have distribution with Two Big Toes. Neat site. You pretty much pay for the entire album and burn it or can select the tracks you would like.
Do you remember those machines that allowed you to create a CD on the spot of all your favorite tunes? Ok, so it really didn’t last, despite the fact that is WAS a good idea. I have a sneaky feeling that this is the way things might work in the future. The days of free range MP3s are probibly numbered in the future (several years out). Im not sure how yet. I’m all for copyright protection. I also like the wide range of music availible on the web and there probibly is a nice medium in the future where both parties can get along. Here is my ideal plan:

Physical Media: You by an album….it can play it. Sure, there is a chance of hacked hardware, but take the sony playstation. You really got to whack at it to get it to play burned CDs.

Downloading/Copy to a personal player: No problem, but it should require an ultimate server. Either it requires to see my physical media every once in a while, or check in with key server. Sure, you lose some privacy, but technically, you need permission to reproduce a copyright anyway. Allowing your registration over the web or with the actual physical media give you some choice in how this works.

Distribution of Music: Metallica: Ok, these guys have taken the stand of “you guys are stealing our music….burn in hell”. They are probibly right. There licences are strong. If I want to hang out at my buddys house and bring a Metallica CD along. It should work. If I burn a copy…it shouldn’t….unless I leave the physical media (key). Over the net just would not work.

Distribution of Music: Dixie Chicks: Im pretty sure these gals dont really care as much if their songs get swapped. They are not making as much money as you think on CDs. Since the rights belong to the music company, it their game…not the Chicks. You could make the media capable of playing only the first minute, or heck, even making certain tracks availible selectively or at a certain time. At times of heavy rotation, a pirated version of a charting song might work because you log into the server to request it. Might even count as a spin. After a while, it could

Bands like ME:

This is actually better for bands like mine because we would have more control over our music on the web than there is now. Now you just release an MP3 and set it free. It gets out there. MP3.com does a nice job of being a server for too. If, however, the MP3s required registration of some kind, you would know the distribution much better. It would put you in a much better bargining position if you wanted to licence the song. If you wanted to sell it, you could even cancel the song. Just outright retract the ability for it to be played at all. Ok,your thinking…hey thats harsh…but not really.

Heres a fun band called Bonepony. Actually, my friend Greg recommended them a ways back.
Load up on MP3s here.