music


Living With War

Neil Young has a new album coming out next week titled Living with War. This a classic anti-war protest album. One song in particular is drawing a lot of attention, “Let’s Impeach the President”. The Faux News guys are all over this one proclaiming how can anyone dare to criticize King George? Here are the lyrics

Let’s impeach the president for lying
And leading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

He’s the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
And bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let’s impeach the president for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones

What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government’s protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

Let’s impeach the president
For hijacking our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected

Thank god he’s cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There’s lot of people looking at big trouble
But of course the president is clean

Thank God

Living with War
I’ll definitely be getting this one when it comes out. Another really good anti-war album to check out if you haven’t already heard it is Steve Earle’s “The Revolution Starts… Now” which he released in 2004. I’ve long been a fan of both Steve and Neil. It would interesting to hear a collaboration between the two of them. Go give both of these records a listen and then call you congressional representatives and urge them to move for the impeachment of this criminal in the white house.


Munk Interview

Last week on Accident Hash, C.C Chapman did a very interesting interview with Munk. Munk had some very interesting things to say about the music industry. Basically, he is making a good living as a full time musician, with no big label record deal, and no real physical distribution. He said that he may well never release another physical CD. He records all his music at home with a laptop computer, simple mixer, his guitars, bass and keyboards. He also has someone play drums sometimes. Take a listen to Munk’s music, you can hear it at emusic. It sounds as good as anything ever recorded in a big studio. The big music companies sign bands then take them into an expensive studio to record. Once the CD is released the costs of recording, promotion and distribution get deducted from the band’s royalties. The dirty secret of the music industry is that the vast majority of bands with recording contracts with labels never actually make a dime from record sales and often end up owing the label money. If they make any money at all it is from ticket and merchandise sales. Today with digital recording and downloads of music, a musician or band can record their own stuff and then distribute it on-line for a tiny fraction of the cost of actually pressing cds and getting them into stores, where many of them may sit unsold. There is also the issue of payola (money that record labels pay to radio stations for airplay). Munk

Munk has bypassed this system completely. He sells his music directly through sites like emusic, itunes, and cdbaby. He has also had his music played on commercials and TV shows like The Sopranos. His songs have gotten lots of play on podcasts, and he doesn’t have to pay podcasters to play them. Go listen to the interview and you can hear what he has to say and also hear some of his music.


Coverville

Brian Ibbott was one of the earliest music podcasters back in the fall in 2004. Brian had a distinct twist to his show though. His show is called Coverville and he plays covers exclusively. He found a way to legally play licensed music by playing the ASCAP/BMI fees because the songs are all cover versions. He does his show three times a week and typically plays 5-6 songs per show. Some shows have a special theme and he also does “cover story” shows where he plays covers of songs originally done by one artist. Some recent cover story shows included one where he played covers of Nick Lowe songs and another of covers of Johnny Cash songs. Brian manages to find some incredibly obscure covers of well known songs. A lot of the songs are really good, but some of them are really atrocious. Some of the more interesting songs I have heard on the show include Don Ho doing his rendition of the Peter Gabriel hit Shock the Monkey and Phyllis Diller covering (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.

Brian’s two most recent shows were truly good for a laugh. Last Saturday on April 1, he released his first episode of Originalville which includes a marvelous rendition of the Men without Hats classic Safety Dance. You really need to listen to this one all the way through to get the full impact. Check it out, it’s worth it. Then yesterday Brian did an interview with Richard Cheese. Richard does lounge renditions of hit songs, including a peppy mambo version of Sunday, Bloody Sunday by U2. Richard is a very funny guy. Go over to Coverville and peruse the archives. I’m sure you’ll find some fun surprises in there.


Danko Jones

Sometime last summer I first stumbled across a band called Danko Jones. They are trio from Toronto. I don’t remember which podcast I first heard them on, but it was probably The Rock and Roll Geek Show. At any rate I loved what I heard, and I checked out their site at Dankojones.com. I downloaded a couple of tracks directly off their site, and then found more of their music at emusic.com. These guys have kind of garage-rock punk sound and they have a new album coming out in May. This week I heard the first new track from Sleep is the Enemy on Accident Hash and also on the Daily Source Code. First Date is hot. It’s got a great hook and just rocks. I already bought this and the other 2 non-album tracks that emusic has up. One these b-sides is a pumped-up cover of the Elvis Costello song Pump It Up. If you like good rock, go check these guys out.


More Free Music

The 2006 South by Southwest Festival has been going on in Austin, TX this week. Over 1300 bands have been playing at clubs around the sity all week, along with various conference sessions. For the second year the organizers have mad available free songs from many of the bands including all kinds of styles. There are over 900 mp3 files included all absolutely free of charge. The downloads are available via bittorrent (an amazing technology). If you don’t already have a bittorrent client, go grab a copy of azureus, and then grab the 2 torrent files here and here. Just a warning, these two downloads will get you over 3.5 GB of music, so make sure you have some space available before you start. Azureus is great because it is written in java so it works great on windows, macs and linux.


Free Music

I was listening to Insomnia Radio #69 the other day heard something really amazing. Lorenzo’s Music is a band I’ve heard on quite a few music podcasts over the past year. The band has really latched on to podcasting, and have come to the realization that the more people hear their music, the more they can make money by getting people ot shows, selling merchandise, and selling cds. They have realized that people sharing music is actually a good promotional vehicle. Because of this they have decided to make all three of their cd’s available for free download under a creative commons non-commercial share-alike license. This means that anyone is free to download, burn and share the music and use it for any non-commercial purpose. This band has a really unique sound that they describe like this:

Lorenzo’s Music is Tom Ray (vocals), Mark Whitcomb (guitar), Scott Beardsley (drums), Bryan Elliott (saxophone), and Chris Boeger (bass). They are not a punk band experimenting with 30’s-style swing, an indie rock band trying their hands at Chicago-style blues, or a hardcore band exploring their love of latin rhythms. They are simply a group of talented guys who obviously see no reason why they can’t just do all of the above.

Their sound is a really unique blend with almost Tom Waits like vocals. Here is a sample from their latest album Solamente Tres Palabras. If you like it go over and download them all. Then tell your friends.


WHO HASN’T DREAMED ABOUT PERFECT HEAD?

P.W. Fenton, the wonderful guy behind the digital flotsam podcast has a new music podcast out that is definitely worth a listen. P-Dub plays a bunch of podsafe music of various styles. I don’t even know how to describe it, you just need to listen to it. You can find it at perfecthead.com I love the podcasts that P-Dub creates. He is a musician, and I think a former radio guy, and always a pleasure to listen to.


New stuff I’m listening to.

I’ve bought a some great new music in the past couple of weeks. I picked up Severed by Munk. Munk has kind of Nine Inch Nails feels to it. I heard Munk on Accident Hash and a few other podcasts. Earlier this week I also heard Edison Rocket Train on The Rock and Roll Geek Indiecast. Their sound is mix of delta blues and garage rock. You can get both of them from emusic.com. I love finding all this great new music from podcasts.


I do buy music 10

For anyone who has been reading my recent rants on sony and drm, I just want to clarify something. I don’t have a problem with paying for music. I think musicians should be compensated for their work. I just don’t believe in supporting overpaid executives and lawyers for big media companies. In fact in recent months (coinciding with listening to podcasts) I have purchased more music than I have in a long time. It’s just that I now get it either directly from artists through their websites or from online stores like emusic.com that sell mp3 files with no drm and give a much bigger share of the proceeds back to the musicians. I have purchased music from Brother Love, Brad Sucks, the Arts and Sciences, the Black Furies, Jukebox Zeros and others. Demonstrate to the world that we don’t need drm. Buy non-drm music and boycott anything that is copy-protected.