January 2012
10 posts
7 tags
I gave an interview to a nice chap called Sean for...
6 tags
Will Cameron's call for popular films mean more... →
A great article about commercialism and art, but this bit (where David Cameron meets the magical Traum Gnaums who weave our dreams) killed me:
David suggested that, instead of dreaming of being dancers or spacemen or clowns, children should be encouraged to dream of, for example, studying economics while being financed by corporate sponsors with a view towards structured apprenticeships within...
2 tags
Leonard Cohen: 'All I've got to put in a song is... →
A good little write-up and interview with Leonard for the release of his new album.
1 tag
Coding for success – Andy Young – The Kernel →
Learning to code is learning to use logic and reason, and express your intent in a consistent, understandable, repeatable way. Learning to code is learning to get under the skin of a problem and reduce it to it’s simplest form. Learning to code is learning to harness power external to yourself and provide instructions to realise your ideas – whether that be directly to a computer, to delegate...
SOPA, Internet regulation, and the economics of... →
As a rough analogy, since antipiracy crusaders are fond of equating filesharing with shoplifting: suppose the CEO of Wal-Mart came to Congress demanding a $50 million program to deploy FBI agents to frisk suspicious-looking teens in towns near Wal-Marts. A lawmaker might, without for one instant doubting that shoplifiting is a bad thing, question whether this is really the optimal use of...
How Copyright Industries Con Congress | Cato @... →
If you’re concerned about the overall jobs picture, as opposed to the fortunes of a specific industry, there is no good reason to think eliminating piracy by U.S. users would yield any jobs on net, though it might help boost employment in copyright-intensive sectors.
Turns out all of the numbers bandied about by the pro-SOPA crew are complete bollocks. What a satisfying article. It’s...
4 tags
“The sweeping waves of fake autism that we call youth culture now”
– John Roderick, Roderick on the Line S01E17, “Antisocially promoted”
How Doctors Die →
Not full of tubes, apparently. Via neilhimself.
schlock-corridor-poltergeist-1982-part-i →
(via Instapaper)
3 tags
“Independent publishing poses a trade-off: in exchange for editorial integrity...”
– Nice copy from the thank you email I got after buying Cadence & Slang
December 2011
22 posts
how to make a living playing music | Ol' Danny... →
(via Instapaper)
3 tags
“No matter how much you shout “Challenge me!” at your stereo, it’s not going to...”
– Music journalism is the new boring | Andrew Dubber
Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist (Paul... →
Great essay.
We are not environmentalists now because we have an emotional reaction to the wild world. Most of us wouldn’t even know where to find it. We are environmentalists now in order to promote something called “sustainability.”
I like Kingsnorth. He writes a lot of sense.
1 tag
“The best cure for bad internet is making your own thing that is not a response...”
– Fight with knives: Lessons Learned in 2011
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On the Art of Staying in Touch →
I worry about this too. Then I fail even harder to do anything about it. It’s Christmas soon, so I’m guaranteed to spend at least a couple of hours in the next week writing lists of people I should really keep in touch with more. Like most years, I’ll probably rewrite it in columns of weekly, monthly and biannual contact. Then I’ll ignore it entirely. I don’t have the...
2 tags
Fishy Paper Square #6: The Fox →
Made a vid, blogged a blog.
3 tags
TWELVE PRINCIPLES UPON WHICH 12K WAS FOUNDED
jameswelch:
1. Don’t tell listeners what they want to hear, let them discover that for themselves.
2. Treat your audience as they are: intelligent, passionate lovers of art and sound.
3. Evolve constantly, but slowly.
4. Stay quiet, stay small.
5. Strive for timelessness.
6. Never try to be perfect. Soul is in imperfection.
7. Simplicity. Anti-Design.
8. Never try to innovate, be true to...
2 tags
Wood burning stove
loopcam:
Wood burning stove Posted by @ihatemornings
This is making me seriously happy today.
4 tags
“We need to have everyone feel the vulnerability that public criticism creates,...”
– Frank Chimero: The Wall
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We're gonna need a better myth.
I used to have a problem with the rock’n’roll myth. We all grew up believing it and I didn’t like that the music industry used that belief to dupe us into doing anything to get signed.
Now I have a bigger problem with it. My problem now is that we’re still using it. The rock’n’roll myth was the story our parents told around music. It was a great story and we...
4 tags
Unsigned Melody →
louisbarabbas:
The sad thing is that practically everyone I know (outside musician circles) would respect me far more if I was on the books of a major label. Even if my records flopped and I was playing to empty rooms, even if my management was taking every penny I earned, even if I was in thousands or even millions of pounds of debt to the company, my family and friends would probably think...
2 tags
Endgame: Eight Principles of Uncivilization →
cultureofresistance:
We live in a time of social, economic and ecological unravelling. All around us are signs that our whole way of living is already passing into history. We will face this reality honestly and learn how to live with it.
We reject the faith which holds that the converging crises of our times can…
Might paint these on my wall.
2 tags
Paul Kingsnorth: This collapse is a 'crisis of... →
(via Instapaper)
1 tag
“Fuck ‘significance’ if it always has to mean impactful on a large scale. Give me...”
– Hannah Nicklin
Dear Editor: LAPD arrests - the truth at OccupyLA →
(via Instapaper)
http://torrentfreak.com/canadian-songwriters-want-t... →
(via Instapaper)
"Music and theatre should belong to nobody,... →
THIS! This is how we should be talking about music, art, theatre, everything.
It might be the jetlag, but this made me cry a little bit in G&D’s.
1 tag
wikistream →
A real-time stream of edits to Wikipedia. Stunning and fascinating.
1 tag
Income Inequality Killed The Music Business -... →
November 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Gig pizza
loopcam:
Timbre pizza is goooood… Posted by @ihatemornings
Possibly the most annoying app on earth, but this *is* Tumblr, home of the animated GIF, right? Right?!
7 tags
Blogging by voicemail using Soundcloud, Tumblr and...
I’ve set up a group Tumblr for GENE, which is what we’ve called our little group of artists and creative folk. We haven’t figured out exactly what we’re going to post there yet, but every group of arty types needs a publication and these days a group Tumblr is de rigeur.
Most of us are plugged into the internet all day and night, but George lives on a boat with no wifi...
OWS's Beef: Wall Street Isn't Winning - It's... →
A great article, and one I’m going to have to read again to understand and believe.
4 tags
SoundCloud » We Say HTML5, You Say High Five! →
Thank Christ. I’ve been craving this for at least a couple of years.
3 tags
A round-up of stuff I've been reading about music...
My mind’s spinning with interesting thoughts, so I’m going to spew them out here in case they make more sense when I see them. Fingers crossed…
Approaching stardom
From the good ol’ Lefsetz Letter:
Social networking is for fans.
Twitter and Facebook are irrelevant until you get traction. They’re rallying points for those who already believe. Once you’ve got...
A phone call on friday | ihatemornings Just...
David Graeber studied 5,000 years of debt: real... →
Just as the King can never repay his debt to the Bank of England, or else the British currency system would collapse, the US has to maintain a national debt – as indeed, it always has, we’ve always been in arrears since independence – or there’d be no money.
When you think about how the world works it’s actually pretty scary.
October 2011
15 posts
distributed-creativity →
(via Instapaper)
3 tags
Record company debt
Record company debt isn’t like normal debt. They lend you money to make your album. If you sell loads of copies, they make loads of money and you don’t owe them anything. If you don’t sell loads of copies, they make quite a lot of money and you get dropped so you don’t owe them anything.
Record company debt is what enables people to make business plans that involve large...
2 tags
Lessons learned from crowdfunding #1
Selling access to someone only works if they’re not already very accessible. I was excited to get access to Terry Jones’s shed on the Unbound site because he doesn’t spend his days blogging and tweeting and answering my questions. But if people want access to Little Fish or Miranda they just say hi. Paywalls only work if you can’t just walk round them.
4 tags
Watchputthison:
This video features many of my favorite things, such as my friend and colleague John Hodgman, Dick Cavett and DERANGED MILLIONAIRE STYLE.
It is tremendously important that you purchase John’s final book in his trilogy of all world knowledge, THAT IS ALL.
Hodgman has made possibly the best ever trailer ever made for anything ever. What a dude.
4 tags
“All it takes is £10 to support the book and get your name in the back. To stand...”
– Ok, so maybe I got a bit carried away…
1 tag
4 tags
How not to write a newsletter →
I may just have sent a terrible newsletter. It breaks most of the rules of good newsletter writing. I basically blame everyone for the downfall of modern culture.
1 tag
“With a strong ecosystem, one also doesn’t need to worry about gatekeepers...”
– I can’t remember if I linked to The Answer Is The Ecosystem before. It’s a university thesis on the music industry, and well worth bookmarking for a rainy afternoon…
2 tags
DIY vs. "DIY"
I’m having trouble getting my head around the business side of the music business. And not just the Old Music Industry part of it – the new independent DIY bit too.
I’ve long been a card-carrying subscriber to the DIY, independent, sustainable way of being a musician. It makes sense – you control everything about how your music is made, packaged, shared, sold and appreciated. In...
2 tags
Whiny band
Someone said to us after the Truck Store gig on Saturday, “I hope Little Fish doesn’t become a whiny band” (or something like that). Juju had been talking on stage about Wonderful’s lamentable lack of radio play. And it’s true, we do talk a lot about how the music industry is idiotic, unfair, ridiculous, self-destructive and laughably inept. It is all those things,...