The Blue Nile’s singer Paul Buchanan had a terse moment with his manager Ed Bicknell who was being hard on him for not working fast enough. The band was famous for taking a while and seven tracks in seven years just wasn’t cutting it. Apart from anything else by 2004 an album was expected to have more material.
Buchanan was about to strop off but thought better of it and instead the two men sat down and discussed what other songs were in the pool. A couple of days later Bicknell got a call to say two new tracks had been completed. He was astonished that it had taken only a day in a studio to finish the new stuff. They could be fast if they had to be.
As I listen to these songs today (Stay Close and Because of Toledo) they’re as definitive as anything The Blue Nile did in their twenty-odd year existence. And you can sense they haven’t been fussed over much. The drum part on one of them is little more than a click track which sits in the middle of a keyboard wash topped off with Buchanan’s exquisite voice.
So how long should it take? As long as it does is the answer. It can take forever or it can take a day. What feels right is all you have to go on and sometimes a manager breathing fire cultivates feeling wonderfully. Left to his typical devices Buchanan would’ve mused and meandered but being under pressure from a tough-talking guy and in a band which was by then coming apart he delivered and delivered well.
If you’re producing work that is meaningful to people you’ll probably be forgiven for being slow. But it doesn’t have to take an age. Sometimes it’s just there in the performance like on these recordings for The Blue Nile’s final album. Stay Close is as beautiful a thing as I’ve heard.
Spotify: http://spo.tl/zZ7ia
How Long Should It Take?
Real Musicians Have Day Jobs
I laughed when somebody told me about a bumper sticker which said “real musicians have day jobs”. So that’s where I’ve being going wrong!
I suppose it alludes to the abject difficulty of depending on your art for a living: you have to make a deal with someone; you have to compromise to get the gig. You do that for long enough and you’re just a sell-out, not authentic.
If you’re successful enough to be able to call the shots then obviously you must’ve done some kind of Faustian thing that disqualifies you from credibility. By this account anyone attached to a major record label would be suspect, not to be patronised in the slightest. Real artists live in poverty or they get day jobs.
Bullshit of course. But then maybe there’s a grain of truth in it.
Audiophiles & Neil Young
I heard complaints from Neil Young recently about the quality of audio files - mp3s and the likes - and wondered does it really matter?
I think that beyond an acceptable level of reproduction nobody cares much about sound quality other than audiophiles and snobs. The extent to which fidelity is a factor in the appreciation of recorded music drops off sharply at a certain point and is of little importance thereafter. Audio technology has long since reached that drop off point. The differences between this sample rate or that one, between higher and lower bit rates, between an mp3 and a wav, are relatively subtle. They are differences that few are fussed about or even notice.
Few care or notice because music is about so much more than sound. It’s about a lot of things not least emotion, identity and shared experience. In other words it’s about a myriad of cultural and personal factors. The sonic content itself is only a part of the broader context in which music operates. The quality of audio reproduction plays an even lesser part. So when Neil Young goes on a mission to improve the common sound file he takes on an unimportant task. So does iTunes when it offers up a service allowing mastering engineers to make allowances for file conversion losses.
We are informed that when you record at a high tech spec, say 24/96 in the jargon, by the time it goes to a CD the sonic content reduces to 16/44.1 which, I read the other day, amounts to only 15% of the original. Further conversion to mp3 or Apple’s AAC and it’s down to 3% apparently. Now, it seems an outrage that a carefully crafted work could be so compromised. One might start to wonder how incredible sounding was the original for it to have been so diminished to a fraction of its former self. Actually it would not have sounded that much different. The 3% figure is misleading. It may be technically true but not true experientially. File conversion is intelligent and is designed to reduce file size while maintaining the integrity of the original. Only the fussiest of audiophiles are bothered by that. It looks worse on paper than it plays out in practice.
Fussiness is fine for the audiophile. It’s his stock and trade. But too much of it can be problematic for the music-maker who has to know when to stop perfecting. Fine-tuning to the nth degree becomes like a seismometer: so sensitive that the slightest movement registers as a tectonic shift. You have to back off from that. Studio people - producers, engineers et al - need to have flexible ears not all of them requiring attention to detail. Having an instinct for the overall aesthetic of a music recording along with a feel for the context within which it is engaged is just as valuable. These other aspects are every bit as crucial, maybe more so, as sample and bit rates.
When music recordings leave their domain - what Neil Young refers to as “further down the donkey” - a different set of values kick in that are both complex and unpredictable. Technical perfection is then less important. Depending on the circumstance there is always a degradation in the fidelity of a production compared to the studio master. Cassette tapes, back when they were ubiquitous, were unfaithful to their pristine originals; the early quality of gramophones would be unlistenable now. Yet neither of these factors prevented previous generations from having full appreciation of the art. The difference between the original and the copy these days is so much less than before and exists to a degree that is inconsequential.
Of course I’m not saying that audio professionals shouldn’t themselves work to the highest technical standards. I’m not suggesting that the meticulous, detailed work done by caring studio folk is irrelevant. I’m one of these people myself and spend an awful lot of time fussing over sound. I am hugely admiring of engineers both technical and musical whose contributions are of the essence. And not to forget the sound designers down the decades who have made audio recording possible, that near miraculous medium through which most music is accessed. These people are salt of the earth and I can’t praise them enough. I’m just arguing here for a proper perspective and I suppose also having a little dig at hi-fi snobs and their air of superiority, a pose which contributes very little either to the art or its appreciation. And while I’m having a dig, I may as well dig some more. If I positioned any average music lover blindfold in front of a pair of high-end monitors and played the same recording in all the various formats used today the person would not be able to tell the difference with any degree of consistency. I’ll stick my neck out further and say that the audiophile probably wouldn’t be able to tell either.
As for Neil Young, I love his music and have done since the golden years of the early 70s. Actually I think his lasting appeal might be partly due to his being a bit rough at the edges. That his great records aren’t exactly works of technical perfection either sonically or any other way is some of their attraction. In that sense, perhaps Neil is more of a 16-bit guy, more lo-fi than hi, more about feel than techy excellence. Personally I wouldn’t care much listening to After The Gold Rush whether with the vinyl crackling, the cassette tape hiss, or the mp3 degradation. It’s not what’s important. The medium is only the carrier, it’s not the work itself. It’s not what matters to the 99% of us outside the elite of audiophilia.
Follow The Tech
It’s clear that studios have closed and producers and engineers are abandoning their careers mostly due to the radical change brought on by technology.
It’s not all bad. The current tech advances are revolutionary and while they close down options they open up a world of new ones. I’ve made a living from producing music recordings for over thirty years. During that time I’ve had to bend and shift and consistently come up with new ways to stay afloat. I’m still doing that and yes it has seldom been less than a struggle. But who said that working in the arts would ever be free of struggle? There are plenty of other vocations where the ride is easier.
Studio work in all its forms is an art and the arts are nothing if they are not about creativity. Be creative. Be imaginative. Find new ways. If you do that to the best of your ability and your ability is true the technology will help you make a mark. Remember that the recording industry was built by technologists inventing things that others were able to run with. Today’s pioneers will be tomorrow’s success stories.
The Producer's Art
My earlier post about Protools not being so easy to master led to another question: does the apocryphal ease of studio apps suggest a more widespread prejudice against music production generally?
I'd say so, yes. It seems something has happened down the years for producer types to have lost credibility. They seem to have been sucked into the trashed reputation of the corporate record business and become tarnished by it’s excesses. After all, the successful ones did share in the vast spoils able to take a percentage chunk of an artist’s income. All the while they are barely considered to be artists themselves. At best they’re catalysts, at worst knob-twiddling parasites who ProTools the life out of otherwise sparky and talented performers.
Of course producers are invariably as much artists as anyone else worthy of the name. A well crafted production is a high value thing. Producers have often been virtual band members whose contribution to a work is essential sometimes definitive. Some write songs, do arrangements and perform on tracks. Others, like me, are in at the inception of a project with a hand at every stage the same way a film director might be.
The exemplary work of greats like Quincy Jones, Trevor Horn and Brian Eno puts them in a category of creative artists as outstanding as in any field. Contrast their production values to those on most contemporary records and the current crop doesn’t come close. Many modern works sound almost amateurish by comparison, like demos. They are so devoid of production that being that way is almost considered a virtue. Obviously I’m not suggesting that high production is a requirement for good work. Just that it shouldn’t be disparaged.
I think that the devaluing of the producer’s art has been compounded by the availability of cheap software tools for music, making it seem as if production is no longer necessary, no longer valid, no longer artful. Surely that’s a nonsense. The assumption that production is easy and irrelevant because the kit is cheap is ignorant. It makes about as much sense as saying that because guitars are affordable anyone can be Hendrix. Plainly ridiculous.
Those who comment on these things and who shape the zeitgeist need to be better informed. They have a responsibility I’d say to be initiated and not allow their lack of knowledge and experience to dictate a prejudice especially when that prejudice is detrimental to the craft. Until then perhaps they might comment less. The producer’s art in its myriad forms is a precious thing and one very much worth preserving.
ProTools
Commentators talk about music production software as if using it was a doddle. Like my remarks about Auto-tune recently such comments belie ignorance.
It took me forever to command ProTools. It was a while before I didn’t have to stop every five minutes to ask why the damn thing wasn’t complying. Constantly the flow was broken. Many hours were lost sometimes just trying to complete one small innocuous task.
And then there were the compatibility issues i.e. getting everything in the system to talk to everything else. Just recently we spent three days trying to hook ProTools up with a digital mixer before giving up. Maybe we’ll come back to it. Maybe not. The will to live soon drains from your soul. At that point I want to kill these people, the designers who didn’t try hard enough, the ones who weren’t Steve Jobs enough to push for a higher resolution in order to arrive at that promised land, the place where stuff “just works”.
It’s true that increasingly there are software tools where first base can be achieved more easily. Apple’s Garageband is one such. But to go to any level of complexity, to be able to use these programmes like musical instruments in a full-spec professional way, is a whole other thing. First base isn’t enough. You need complete command just as you do with any musical instrument. The instrument itself needs to be transparent. Thousands of hours of dedication are required to achieve that no matter how fast you are on the pick-up.
And just to be clear, I’m talking thousands of hours AFTER you’ve struggled with the bullshit from bad design. By that I mean everything from hellish configuration trials to the obtuseness of the operational aspects. ProTools particularly is full of eccentric nonsense that should’ve been long since fixed. The company are also monumentally slow at bringing in crucial features that lesser applications had going a decade ago. I suppose having the biggest market share affords that kind of complacency.
I read some guy the other day telling about the amazing things his four year-old was doing with Garageband. While that is interesting in itself, it creates a false impression. The fact is that studio instruments, traditional and contemporary, are tough to master. The idea that you buy a rig, press a few buttons and like magic have a beautifully produced album is ridiculous. ProTools, once tamed, is an incredible instrument but achieving mastery over it is no mean feat.
Rob Levine's Free Ride
I’ve often wondered why a better case hasn’t been made for the cultural industries in their current plight. These days the coherent voices seem to come from those arguing in favour of the changes brought about by new tech. They come less from those who feel its adverse effects. Rob Levine’s book “Free Ride: How The Internet Is Destroying The Culture Business” explores these adverse effects and suggests how the culture business can fight back.
It was a tough read. Levine knows his stuff and lays it out in exhaustive detail. Impressive though his analysis is, he is light on any radical ideas for how to fight back. Tighter regulation and better licensing of copyrights was about it. In other words: the way things were, but some more. That most of the responses I’ve read so far are unsupportive of the book’s message is hardly surprising. They indicate which way the wind is blowing. Though I respect Levine for his vigorous research when you see his case articulated you understand why it is generally not expressed more often. Not only is it short on innovation, it is clearly the losing argument and who wants to be on the side of the movement that didn’t prevail.
I think there are two crucial facts which pretty much kill off the case made in Free Ride.
The first is that, historically, copyright was only lucrative for a very small number of successful people who walked away with vast fortunes. The majority of us who were party to copyright deals made little if anything from them. Many were bruised from the experience. It should be remembered too that the greater number of artists - poets, musicians, novelists, songwriters, photographers et al - never even got near such a deal. They were effectively off the copyright radar. The upshot was that much so called intellectual property was economically worthless - and invisible.
That’s the first point: copyright was irrelevant for most of us.
The second fact is the more devastating one for team Levine. It is simply that history has overtaken them. It was probably inevitable. A system based on exclusive rights to copy could hardly survive a new technology whereby everyone carries highly efficient copying devices in their pocket, devices which are permanently connected to ever more sophisticated communication networks wired for sharing. All the moral arguments in the world can’t get away from that. Culture moves with technological and social change. The Reformation was a direct descendent of the printing press; symphony orchestras emerged from urban growth and bigger concert halls; the phonograph was progenitor to rock and roll. Many noses are put out of joint with even the most peaceful of revolutions. It is understandable that those heavily invested in the conventions want perpetuity. Their arguments are thus forgivable. But that the old dies to make way for the new is as sure as day arising from night.
So, history is moving on and there is no turning back.
Personally, I welcome the changes and have been anticipating them for a long time. They serve me better than did the old system. I’ve spent over three decades making a living entirely from producing recorded music and only a small fraction of earnings came from copyright contracts. Whenever I was attached to one it was usually loss-making. I survive in a tough industry without having to bother much about rights ownership. People pay me to make music recordings for a variety of reasons not just commercial. Some of them do so for the same reasons they might do other things like play golf, go to the gym, take piano lessons or practice yoga. Whether for art, recreation, life-style, business or pleasure, the list is long. Music is a complex phenomenon and the recording of it has never been only about its commodity value. Indeed its future may well lie in these more prosaic pursuits.
It is likely that music recordings will lose the kind of economic value they had for much of the 20th Century. To repeat: most never had any economic value anyway, so no change there. What will probably be consigned to history is the phenomenon of the global hit, the massive blockbuster which dominated the stage, creating great wealth in its wake and allowing a few privileged people to live like medieval monarchs. These are already days of yore and phenomenal as they were their passing will make little difference to me as an artist or a professional.
How the new landscape will be is anyone’s guess. I think the possibilities have barely started to be discussed. They aren’t discussed because they are still coming to life, still in embryonic form, being created by people who aren’t in the picture yet, the doers rather than the talkers. They are the true creative forces, not technologists necessarily, or business people, or analysts, but initiates from nowhere driven by the base impulse to invent. This is as it always was. With radical change no one imagines the precise outcome, not even the ones who are making it happen. Who in the 18th Century when the industrial era was underway imagined motor cars, aeroplanes, telephones, radio, television, movies, rock music, computers, the Internet? Even the main events of the last ten years alone weren’t predicted by pundits. They never saw a Youtube or a Facebook coming. The next ten are likely to be the same. The next hundred...?
With all of that I think Rob Levine’s battle is a losing one. Short of creating police states throughout the world I can’t see how the culture world as it has existed for past generations can maintain its way of doing business. With its demise will come an entire restructuring of the firmament. Free Ride does nothing to anticipate that and is thus lacking in imagination. It is better read as a history book, an excellent study for students of its subject matter. Beyond that it doesn’t help much being more about where we are and how we got here than where we’re going. It was the author’s first book and I suspect will be his last unless he grasps the nettle of change and embraces the future.
Auto-tune
I wish they would stop saying that using Auto-tune somehow slights your artistry.
The idea is uninformed and only shows the ignorance of those who propound it. There are even some who will choose not to like a singer’s work any longer should they learn the despicable tuning software was used on a recording.
I’m sorry to have to bust their bunny-rabbit world but studio people have been fixing the intonation of performers for decades. The process was called editing. Initially it was done by cutting tape, by choosing from multiple takes and splicing the best of them together. When multi-tracking appeared it was “dropping in” that took care of it - i.e. dubbing over offending lines with improved ones. Sometimes several takes of a vocal were recorded on separate tracks and the best ones chosen from the many to form a composite. This process survived into the digital age and became known as “comping”, easily done with ProTools and the likes.
Tuning software, appropriately used, further assists that rather mundane process of fixing intonation. It is only a different and more effective way of doing what has long since been a common-place procedure. Using software to perform the task means less fussing at the voice recording stage in favour of the more important aspects of performance. Pitch problems can be identified by ear in the time honoured way and the software used simply to make the correction, painlessly and undetectable even by the singer. It is a perfectly legitimate practice with nothing necessarily fake about it, at least no more fake than music recording has ever been.
If there is a contentious issue it is overuse. It is tempting when using the eye rather than the ear - when being able to actually see on the screen that a note is off centre - to correct everything. I think that is to be avoided. A vocal too perfectly pitched feels unnatural. I suppose the worst culprit is “auto” mode when the corrections are quite audible. Of course the artificiality of “auto” may well be the effect that does it for you in which case artistic license presides. At that point the two finger gesture is the appropriate one towards critics.
Yes, there is an awful lot of rubbish talked about how studio tech is used, as if the recording techniques themselves conferred a legitimacy on a work. I don’t agree with that at all. The beginning and end of artistry is connection. It doesn’t matter how music is recorded: using a laptop or an SSL console, one microphone or fifty, digital or analogue, professional or amateur, it is impact that counts, whether listeners are touched or not. The tools and instruments employed to get there are of no consequence to anyone other than the train-spotters.
Auto-tune when used skilfully is transparent and undetectable. It is therefore legitimate. Overused, then like any badly executed technique it can be called out. To condemn its usage absolutely is unhelpful and uninformed. It is time for those who do to shut up and let a useful tool have its place.
Amy Winehouse
It’s not the thing to vilify someone just after they’ve passed. But against that grain I’m going to be critical here of Amy Winehouse who died last week.
It’s not her music I’m condemning but her demeanour which I think undermined her credibility. She was diminished as an artist in my view because she didn’t hack it. She didn’t have the grit to face down her addictions and really push through when it mattered however bad she felt. She didn’t keep the show on the road.
It’s an old ethic in the business that anything less than comatose, the gig goes on. It goes on especially if you’ve been given enormous rewards for little more than cobbling together a small collection of pop tunes. Real artists really do the work. They do it even when the going’s tough - especially when the going’s tough.
Winehouse was too much the waster. Clearly she had a musical spark and could come up with back-of-the-envelope song sketches. But a crafter she was not. She depended on the talents of Mark Ronson types, guys who have the staying power for artistry. Mariah and Britney were constantly marked down for needing substantial input from others. There’s nothing wrong with that and let’s not forget Amy Winehouse was not a self-contained artist either. Like Lily Allen she caught an early break and became part of a successful team. Any talent can have a hit record with some luck but having the mettle to build a career against the trials and pitfalls, to take the knocks and scrapes, to endure the meltdowns and failures, to live with the attendant emotional problems, the difficult relationships, to endure all that and still perform, still produce, still be able to bring the house down, that’s the real deal, that’s the true artist.
Amy fell short. She couldn’t match the moment, couldn’t be bigger than her problems and just do the work. She came apart in a spaced-out haze cancelling a tour and leaving thousands disappointed. That’s not an artist. That’s a casualty. There are creatives whose personal lives are totally shot who will still get up there and give flawless performances and you would never know their troubles. Lennon was depressive throughout much of The Beatles. When he was tripping out at home on the couch indulging a plethora of addictions he still got off his arse when it mattered, even just to save face, to match McCartney song for song. Laurence Olivier went through crippling stage terror, night after night on the brink. But the show went on as it does in the theatre where the ethics of professionalism are deeply hewed like military discipline.
Such is the artist’s integrity. Such is the gallantry at the heart of the performer. You do it despite everything. You do it no matter what even when no one wants it which is the hardest do of all. Winehouse was lucky that way. Early in the game she became very much wanted and had a captive audience, a luxury afforded only to the few. She wasted it. Had she rallied, had she battled through, had she kept her edge, kept doing work that befitted her considerable vocal talent then that would have made her heroic. That would have made her an artist worthy of the title.
Imagine
John Lennon gets criticised for Imagine like it’s some trite little ditty. I don’t think so.
The message of the song is as grounded as it is utopian. It is bluntly existentialist: there is no heaven! Lennon was asking us to imagine no heaven, no hell, no country, no possessions. For him these were abstractions, part of invented belief systems, often bizarre, often corrupt.
Given that people hold their abstractions dear then asking that they be given up is a big ask. Living without illusion can sail perilously close to nihilism. Indeed, Imagine is as much rooted in Lennon’s disillusionment as it is in his being an idealist.
Yet in the face of scepticism there still remains the real possibility that humans might learn to live better together. Actually they might get along better if they discarded the nonsense they believe about their own existence. That’s the spirit in which John Lennon wrote his song.
It’s a tough call though, the idea that you might live absent of belief and its associated fictions. Maybe it’s not possible given the way minds are constructed. But that there is an easy disposition toward belief doesn’t mean gorging on it is free of consequence. Believing stuff that is factually contradicted borders on mental illness. It is reasonable to believe the sun will rise tomorrow but questionable to think the sun god will make it so.
So, the philosophy that informs Imagine is far from trite and lays down a challenge. It demands we deal with the world based on its actuality, that we embrace its facts; and from there we might be able to live peacefully with each other thus maximising potential rather than compromising it as is so often the case.
Rock Gods
For about five minutes when I was a kid I fancied being a rock star. The moment passed.
Much as I loved music and was determined to make it my life somehow, the rock pose always felt a bit dumb. It seemed to take itself over-seriously, hedonistic appearances aside. Rock people were immature, too big on their own importance, not really the way to be I thought. I left band life behind in my early twenties in favour of “the studio” and that is where I remained.
But looking back at the rock era it really was a phenomenon. It was incredible that for a few decades in the 20th Century a young man (a woman less so) could rise to such heights. He could hang with his mates and play music, a fun thing to do anyway. He could hope to be appreciated for it and then some. He could aspire to being famous and idolised, to making big money, to being internationally renowned, to becoming an institution and a historical figure revered by future generations, discussed, analysed and endlessly written about. He might even die young as some kind of cultural hero. Way to be, surely!
In post-war Britain there was a significant number of young men who succeeded in ticking one or two of these coveted boxes. I was one such. Another from Liverpool ticked them all and had an airport named after him. That was after being assassinated by a fan. I’m talking John Lennon of course who qualifies for being possibly the godliest of all rock royalty. I’d probably choose him as my personal favourite.
That this tired old shorn-of-empire country still steeped in its Victorian heritage could produce such as Lennon alongside a raft of imitators like me is a remarkable fact in itself worthy of examination. I suspect there are many my age who still keep their inner Mick alive, who think they could have rivalled Clapton with the right breaks. Yes I might be a tad sniffy about rockers but for all their excesses they seriously left a mark. It was something of a privilege to have lived through their time, a time when youth had a really potent voice.
It’s pretty much over now and rock no longer rules. In the manner of all cultural swings, that was always going to be the way. The attentions of today’s youth are dissipated. Music is effectively free and the record business is on life support. There will be no more stars who act out like medieval monarchs. Tech guys like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are the icons of now.
But even the techs look upward to the gods of rock, to the young men who a few years ago set the tone, who defined the era, who created a youthful excitement previously unimaginable and unlikely in future. To call them rock gods is hardly an exaggeration. Their deportment is well captured in the words of one of their number, one of their highest deities: “excuse me while I kiss the sky”.
Adele's Story
Just another fat lass who can sing was how somebody put it. I don’t much like disparaging remarks like these but I get the point of that one.
Adele is hugely over-rated. I don’t mean I dislike her music. She is perfectly listenable and easy to get just like a ton of other artists. And that’s fine. When I say over-rated I mean by critics and commentators, the ones who create the cultural context in which music is understood. I think of them as storytellers because in many ways that is what they are. They invent stories around music and its makers.
To them Adele is the real deal, authentic and unpretentious, and that is what I take issue with. The other day I dialled up her 19 album and the first thing that struck me was how unnatural it sounded. I noticed DI-ed acoustic guitars (i.e. recorded without microphones). I heard digital pianos where “real” ones might have been used. Moreover, I was surprised just how audible the tuning corrections were.
Now, I have no complaint with any of that especially tuning software per se. It can save a huge amount of time in sessions, time which can be given to things more important than fixing pitch. However, if you’re “authentic” then you probably wouldn’t artificially pitch the vocal. Or if you’re going to do that, you’d make sure it was imperceptible.
This is not to condemn Adele and her people as being fake. As I’ve said many times in these writings I don’t care about authentic whatever that is said to be. All performance is fake. All art is fake. In a way that is what makes it interesting. It is a fabricated version of life that brings perspective to the real thing. Actually I’d say authentic doesn’t mean authentic but its opposite. It means faking it like an actor fakes her part. The measure of her talent is her ability to fake convincingly. And anyway, I doubt it is Adele herself who is claiming to be faithful to any creed. She didn’t set out with an authenticity manual. It is the commentators, the storytellers, who are making the case for her “realness”.
My point here about such stories is that they are fashioned around artists and their work retrospectively and are a thing apart from their source material. They are constructions from the imaginings of commentators and are as much invention as the art itself. I used to find this bemusing as I often couldn’t connect the work with the commentary. Through time I realised that I didn’t have to connect the two. It was possible to engage an artist’s work without much adherence to its context which was as separate as I wanted it to be. It is well possible, and I do it all the time now, to have a good relationship with an artist’s work without any knowledge whatsoever of what is being said about it. Sometimes I know nothing at all about who an artist is but still engage their work meaningfully. And I rather like that relationship of minimal context. It is a much more direct and immediate experience.
Yes I appreciate that many people need help from a tastemaker. They need pictures painted. They want contextual material in order to “get” what the music is about. They want someone to expound on what the music means and answer that question. To me it is rather an unnecessary question because music can mean pretty much what you want it to mean. Perhaps you want it to mean not very much at all beyond the sensual pleasure of listening to it. I think that the requirement for too much context before a connection is made with music is actually detrimental to the art and to one’s relationship with it. It is rather like sugar and salt in food: too much and that is what you are tasting. After a while it’s the sugar fix you’re after before the nourishment.
Adele’s so called credibility is an additive. She gets spun by critics as the real thing, true and modest, not like your typically hyped pop star. Her record label XL pitches her that way. They happen to be the current hipsters translated into commercial success. I have no qualm with that. Success is the measure of good art. But the bullshit that gets spouted in its name is annoying. One piece I read this morning praised Adele for not using studio trickery. Huh!? The commentator spoke of her like a messiah come to save music. She must be really special because nothing’s good enough for this particular guy. In a world absolutely teeming with music old and new he finds little to please him so addicted is he to the sugar and salt of his own myth-making.
Significantly Adele complained this week about having to pay 50% of her big take to tax. She resented that apparently, having to give £4M to the exchequer. Banking the other £4M is not bad for a young woman singing songs. She was criticised for the remark and now you sense the tide beginning to turn, the story starting to change. Even an ex-boyfriend was said to be suing her for using their relationship as material for her lyrics. (Barking!) She is no longer “just another fat lass who can sing” but now a massively rewarded pop star taking her place among the super-rich. I wonder how long will it be before her music isn’t sounding quite so good? Not long I’m sure.
LATER
A few days after writing this I read Tom Ewing’s piece in The Guardian which also casts a sceptical note on spin. “Music business stories are a cocktail of post-facto rationalisation and wishful thinking,” he said. “A lot of good music gets released all the time: sometimes, some of it gets bought. Beyond these boring facts, the rest is storytelling.” He could’ve taken the words from my mouth. He referenced Adele too, another indication that perhaps her credibility is on its way to being down-graded.
Vashti Bunyan
When I saw Vashti Bunyan as part of a vocal group on a Nick Drake tribute I thought she must have been Nick’s sister or something - there for the token.
Her singing was so unaccomplished. Then I saw her again on The Review Show recently and realised she was a respected artist. Apparently she was part of the London scene in the 60s, first taken up by Andrew Oldham (à la Marianne Faithfull) and later by Joe Boyd. She made a record then which didn’t do much and gave up music only to be brought back 30 years later when her old album became a cult. She has now put out more releases and is enjoying some success.
It’s a nice story and good luck to her. But I can’t help marvelling at just where the bar is set when it comes to conventional musicality. I like to set it low myself. Actually maybe I like for there not to be a bar at all. But sometimes you hear a performance and it is so devoid of technique that you remember there has to be a bar.
Vashti’s singing would be below the line. Yet I rather liked it in the context of the Drake tribute because I assumed she was token. To learn that she is credible in her own right was such a surprise. If I’ve not said it often enough I say it again: it’s all about context.
I’ve since been checking Vashti out online and indeed her attractiveness is clear. She comes over as a lovely person, delicate, beautiful and modest. Able to inject these attributes into her music then she resonates. I am now a convert. I really shouldn’t be such a technique snob.
Elgar’s Nimrod
The first time I heard Nimrod from Elgar’s Enigma Variations I was awestruck. It felt like one of the most beautiful things I’d ever heard.
I learned recently it was the piece of work that set the composer up. A few years later he was knighted and became an establishment figure raised from his lower middle class origins. He seemed to enjoy the elevated status.
All art is relative to perspective. Most art, even the most celebrated, is appreciated only by a minority. But occasionally a work appears to be of such outstanding character to be of universal value. Nimrod might be one such.
Interestingly, I looked at the piano score recently and was surprised to see it was in 3/4 time. It sure doesn’t feel like a waltz. Clever man that Elgar!
Clueless About Music
I listened to a Guardian podcast today with Steve Levine, producer of Culture Club. He was talking about Motown and giving insights while deconstructing some of the musical parts from the big hits.
What struck me was Levine’s intelligence and articulacy. He was knowledgeable and well informed. He was also clearly passionate about these great works. The journalist conducting the talk, Alexis Petridis, came across to me almost clueless by comparison.
That’s the thing: many of those who talk about music bring so little insight to the fore. They are usually all opinion and prejudice. Musicians too: few I’ve known have anything interesting to say about music whatsoever.
I’ve been long enough starved of the company of people like Levine who are knowledgeable about process. He talked about Norman Whitfield (writer of Grapevine) being a process guy, meaning he was steeped in everything to do with the art of making records.
Apparently Whitfield had Grapevine turned down by Gordy several times. Even after Marvin Gaye recorded it, it still wasn’t given priority by Motown. As with What’s Going On in the 70s it would become an iconic hit despite the record company. So often true that. Everyone turned down The Beatles. Clueless!
Two Rock Festivals
I fondly recall the Reading Festival in 1975. It was a huge musical event over three days in August.
I read in Andy Beckett’s book “When The Light’s Went Out” about how the same week another festival was happening at Watchfield. It was linked to the free festival movement which the previous year had its concert stopped by the police who waded in aggressively. There was a feeling that too heavy a hand had been employed and instead of trying to ban “music & sunshine” the government should themselves sponsor a festival the following year and Watchfield was the result.
It was not much of a success up against Readings’s all star cast. Yet Beckett doesn’t mention Reading in his book which is strange given it was a huge event happening less than 100 miles away. I suppose not being political it didn’t merit a mention. Strange too that the organisers of both concerts should go for the same weekend which was surely bound to dissipate numbers.
And strange again that I knew little then, for all my counter-culture credentials, of the free movement with its tilting at windmills agenda. It was trying to bring about what it called the Free Albion State, an alternative society based on a network of independent collectives. The free festivals were part of its expression.
Ubi Dwyer and Sid Rawle were two of the leading figures associated with the movement. I salute their endeavour, particularly Sid, organiser of Watchfield, who died this year. Both men did jail time for their radicalism. Interesting times indeed.
British Jazz
It’s amazing just how accomplished British jazz was in the 1960s.
Tubby Hayes was as good as they come. Yet these guys paled up against the American legends: Armstrong, Davis, Coltrane, Gillespie, Parker, Monk and the rest. It wasn’t that the legends were so much better it’s just that the story of jazz belonged to them, the originals, the ones that blazed the trail.
The spotlight moved to Britain when The Beatles became kings. It must have been tough for the British jazzers then, playing second fiddle to the Americans in their own genre, then seeing home-grown pop, which most of them probably hated, come to dominate the era.
I had the privilege of recording some of these great players thirty years ago and maybe didn’t fully appreciate their high value. In aid of name-dropping I'll list a few: Jimmy Deuchar, Bobby Wellins, Stan Tracey, Tommy Whittle, Mike Westbrook, Keith Tippett, Don Weller, Dick Morrissey, Elton Dean, Roy Babbington, Henry Lowther.
Respect.
Pay What You Want
I contributed this to a blog discussion about letting people pay what they want for music:
I often think that the elephant in the room in discussions like these is a simple fact: that down the decades the great majority of recorded works had zero commercial value. Outside of these works being meaningful to their creators and an immediate circle they were virtually worthless.
The record business then was like a high stakes casino where the big wins were huge. There were few artists who got recorded at all and of those who did, and had their work released, a tiny minority were commercially successful. They were the hens who laid the golden eggs.
With technology and the Internet the age of the golden egg is over. What we have in place is something entirely new in its embryo. The old values and associated metaphors don’t make sense any longer. It doesn’t follow that a piece of recorded music should have a given monetary worth. And as I am pointing out, it never did.
The motive for putting your music out - i.e. letting it go into the electronic ether - has to be that it might be heard. It might be discovered by people in far-flung places it otherwise would not have. This is a great boon. It is an added benefit to any artist in its own right as until fairly recently such a thing was impossible without the patronage of a major player. However, you can’t immediately attach a commercial tag to that with any realistic expectation. Actually if you do, it is likely to have the effect of tying a lead weight to your work. It ain’t gonna fly.
If big numbers catch on to what you’re offering then you’re closer to a negotiating position where money-making deals are possible. Until then, you’re not exactly giving it away, you’re just letting it be heard. Sure, if you can find a way to get folks to part with cash on the way then all power to you.
Asking people to pay what they want is not a begging bowl it is just adding a further dimension to this interesting new scenario. Some might oblige, most will not. Whichever way it’s a harmless option which does not demean your creativity and value. That will be determined by other, much more important factors.
Hip To The Hipster Trip
One of the things I’ve enjoyed about my career is having had so much involvement with a wide variety of music types.
I learned early on that there were distinct systems of value for each type. Classical musicians read from a different rule book to jazzers, and folkies were another world apart. Rock, pop and punk players behaved like they had thrown the book away. They all had their histories, their heroes and mythologies, their pecking order of standards.
There was one type I never had much time for and they were the hipsters. For they seemed to deny the innate virtue of having an eclectic taste. They would tend to take their chosen brand too seriously and peddle it with ruthless exclusivity. They were hell-bent on telling you what to like and deriding you if your own choice didn’t match up.
I confess to feeling superior to them never much needing their approval in order to develop my ear. Beyond the school-playground I never had to be hip to their trip. In some ways I was their opposite, their nemesis perhaps. I inclined to having a broad mind musically, interested and open to all sorts. The hipster by contrast is narrowly defined. If there are a million things to like he will seek just the one. He is the equivalent of an audio snob in a hi-fi shop. He is the guy in High Fidelity who hates people who like the wrong music.
I think that hipsters are characterised by immaturity. Almost nothing pleases them as if they never quite got beyond being that picky fifteen year-old in high school. Perhaps they weren’t hip enough then and spend the rest of their lives trying to rectify the injustice.
Often what hipsters like they’re not going to like soon. Shortly they will have moved on to the next hip thing that nobody else knows. Actually a lot of them don’t like music that much. They often end up not liking anything at all given their confused motives: they are trying to influence the pack they are never quite a part of.
It is unfortunate that these types have historically played quite an important role in the breaking of new music. Some became gatekeepers and tastemakers, the ones artists had to impress to get a gig, the ones who told the uninitiated what they should be listening to.
I think their role is becoming obsolete. There are now so many new modes of discovery, some even created by computers which will throw a thing at you based on what you’ve just heard. “If you like that you might also like this” is one of the finest features of the online music experience. The algorithm has a minimal agenda and isn’t fussed about coolness.
Music means so many different things to different people. It features in just about every human cause from peace to love to war. There are few contexts that don’t have some appropriate music application. Allowing people to like what they like for whatever reason without having to consult a pre-determined set of values about quality laid down by someone with a dubious agenda is surely a good thing.
Fantasy World
Which world was it where musicians were able to make reasonable income from recorded works? I ask the question because after a long career in the recording industry it’s not a world I recognise.
To make serious money from recordings you had to be party to a major deal. That deal then had to convert to a hit record which very few ever did. And most musicians were never party to major deals anyway.
Outside of the big league and its casino culture, records were absolutely not wealth generators. Ask most indie label owners or independent artists. These activities were labours of love and not financially viable initiatives.
So I ask again, and not just rhetorically, where was this world where the average artist thrived from recorded works, a world that according to conventional thinking is being decimated by the new tech?
Dabblers & Virtuosos
Jeremy, I appreciate the spirit in which you say what you say. There are many of us who want to find ways that artists can be kept solvent. No easy task though, and never was. Revenue from records was historically one way that could be done. It wasn’t that great however as it tended to reward a tiny minority of successful artists and their commercial overlords.
Technology having eroded the economic value of the recorded copy seems to be a brutal fact of the current age. Fighting against it using moral arguments is like arguing at the weather. Whatever new ways there might be to finance musicians I imagine income from copies of our recorded works will not be one of them. And just to repeat myself: it never was. So no change there.
Arguments from quality makes no sense either. There is no such thing as quality. It is a metaphor, a linguistic device for expressing preferences. You learn after a while working in music that tastes are hugely diverse. Some really do prefer a dabbler to a virtuoso. You also learn that 99% of people are indifferent to 99% of music. What any given person likes is a drop in the ocean of what’s available. And their likes are more determined by cultural cues than any “ghost in the machine” that is quality.
Before a work goes into the world it exists in a kind of quantum state, neither good nor bad. It is the culture that gives it its cred. Or not, as the case may be. If it were possible to run music up a measuring stick of quality, art would be a science. That there is no such thing as quality is the beauty of it.
Why File-Sharing Is Okay
In a Guardian article yesterday the writer said this: “In none of the arguments have I come across anyone who has properly explained why illegal file-sharing is OK. And if it's not OK, why should its effect on the market be welcomed with a wink?”
The argument be this: that art works are ultimately public goods. Copyright originally granted a short term arrangement whereby a work was protected allowing money to be made from it. It thereafter returned to the public to be enjoyed, altered, improved, copied, distributed et al. That is still the case but the protected periods are being extended into virtual perpetuity and as such go against the public spirit.
Why is file-sharing ok? Because it harks back to the original idea of art works as shared entities within an ethos of cultural progress. They were never intended to be commodities designed to make very small numbers of individuals massively wealthy.
Assuming copyright to be synonymous with ownership is misleading. You own your car until such times as you choose to dispose of it. Less so your copyable art. After it’s out there it’s in the shared space. Having it restricted by copyright was only ever supposed to be interim measure, one that is being increasingly rendered irrelevant by technology.
This is not of course to say that us artists should't be able to earn. It is to say that we will no longer be able to do so from selling distinct copies of our work. We are finding other ways as we always have.
Fans & Fanatics
The notion is facile that diehards are sophisticated purveyors of taste and casual fans have opinions of no consequence. Thankfully the truth is more complex. There are fanatics who are narrowly interested in one thing, blind to the beauty in everything else. There are many ordinary appreciators who value music highly but have a casual relationship to it. These are just two examples of appreciator types. There are many more.
Jeremey Schlosberg’s point in Farewell to the Casual Music Fan about something essential being lost with the fragmentation of the platform is a valid one. Music is as much defined by context as content. Change the context and everything changes with it.
The forward developments continue to bring positive changes. But there will be losses too and the great artist who bestrides the globe appreciated by millions will probably be one of them. The casual fan as cash-cow for the music industry might be another.
I understand that Scott Andrew was having a wee bit of a polemicist’s moment there and no one grudges him that. But Schlosberg’s piece is well thought out and points to some uneasy realities about the consensus value of music to come.
The Gravy Train
There is a misleading premise in the perennial question: what are musicians to do now that the Internet is destroying the music industry.
It is misleading because the Internet is not destroying the music industry. It is the record business that is screwed. The music business is in rude health. So to answer the question what are musicians to do: they are to do what they have always done. If they are driven and ambitious enough they are to find ways of turning their talents into a career. That is not an easy call but it’s a possibility.
When I started out, the options available were similar to the ones that still exist today. Here are some: get a qualification and teach, get a qualification and join a professional orchestra or choir, get accomplished and become a session player, become a live performer, become a producer or engineer, open a recording facility, join or form a function band, compose music for visuals, advertising and broadcast. Or a concoction thereof.
Granted, some of these are not very sexy. But we’re talking jobs here. A careers councillor might advise caution and rightly so. The arts in all its forms is a precarious endeavour. But he wouldn’t shoo a student from the room who suggested any of the above. They are tangible. He might shoo If the student suggested becoming an artist or a songwriter and pursuing a record deal. Why? Because that would be the equivalent of buying lottery tickets as a career choice. It’s not an impossible prospect just an unlikely one. It always was. Nothing has changed in that regard except it is even more unlikely now.
Of all musicians, a very small fraction got on the record business gravy train. All but a small fraction of them were thrown off again. Of the remainder another small fraction got to drink from the cup. Being an artist in the record business is not and never was a viable career option. So why do so many discussions seem to assume that it is?
The new networks and associated technology add something extra to the business of making music whether one is involved professionally or recreationally. They take something away from the traditional business of making records. And that loss hampers virtually no one other than the gravy train people. So to ask what are musicians to do is a legitimate question with a simple answer: find work! To ask what are the folks on the train to do is like asking what will kings and queens do when the world is a republic. Why would anyone care?
A Santa Claus Deal
The major music labels behave like royalty. They stand aloof. They rarely come out and defend themselves convincingly against attacks even when they might make a reasonable case.
So in the interests of fairness, and given I often rubbish the record biz for its useless career value, here is a point it could make more often in its own defence. It might argue that a major recording contract was a much sought-after proposition. Still is. Think about it: you’re a talented teenager with nothing and someone is offering to spend a seven-figure sum developing your music. There’s a 5% chance you will make money and be internationally renowned. That person will lend you the funds for you to keep your side of the bargain, i.e. produce a master recording. If things don’t work out you don’t have to repay the loan. If they do work out you will repay it from your slice of the proceeds. Santa Claus or what?
In a phrase deal-makers savoured as it fell from their lips: the loan (advance) will be non-returnable but fully recoupable. Who is going to say no to that? Even today with young artists being much more savvy and realising there’s a lot of devil in the detail it is still going to be hard to refuse that kind of patronage.
The End of Great
When an art-form becomes something that many people can do, when the skills and qualities associated with it have been resolutely identified, analysed and perfected, it no longer retains one of its essential qualities: uniqueness.
This is not of course to proclaim the end of music itself, only new music with broad appeal. More significantly it means an end to the idea of greatness. To be great an artist had to be approved by the mass with its singular platform and its tendency to a singular view, a view which pretty much everyone recognised. With mass culture becoming infinitely fragmented then no artist can rise onto the platform because the platform itself is effectively being taken down. Without that platform there is no widely shared recognition of what is approved. That means no consensus and so I think it fair to say that the Age of Great is over. It is over at least for a while to be reinvented perhaps in another era.
Greatness has gone only in the sense that it is no longer possible to be currently great. The celebrated artists of the past aren’t going anywhere. They are preserved for posterity in recorded works. Their cachet will increase with time as their value gets passed down and rediscovered by each coming generation. And these are the defining characteristics of greatness I think: consensus then posterity. With no consensus there can be no posterity, so greatness in the arts with its need for mass acceptance might turn out only to have been a passing phenomenon specifically of the industrial age.
All the popular music forms as they have been fashioned so far are now exhausted. The music of the folk traditions, of classical, of jazz, of the multiple genres of the rock era, are now only revisited and homage paid to the masters of antiquity. There are no new movements on the horizon, and even if there were, with the dismantling of the mass platform they would have a problem being heard above the noise of self-expression brought about by the Internet, a platform which allows everything to be in the public domain. To achieve consensus in any large degree is becoming impossible.
It was truly exciting to be born into a great age as I was in 1956 when Miles Davis was on the cusp of producing his greatest work, Elvis had just happened and The Beatles were around the corner. The following three decades produced an explosion of musical imagination which rivalled anything that had come before it. Significantly this impressive flowering was cultivated in an elite environment. Only the chosen few from any pool of talent were given a voice. Their exclusive status made their appeal all the more alluring. While others were relegated to obscurity the “stars” shone all the more brightly, as much a consequence of their privileged status as their abilities. The rarified world of such elite players in the arts is passing being replaced by something much more devolved.
I don’t say any of this with foreboding. Music will always have its place. But for a while it is going to be defined by its posterity rather than its currency. This will be difficult for my generation to grasp, a generation brought up to consider greatness in contemporary music a part of the natural order. It was not always so. There were few to match Beethoven and Mozart in classical music throughout the 19th Century and no new towering greats in jazz since Davis and Coltrane. The Beatles are still the benchmark for pop and will probably remain so.
Music might now return to its traditional roots, to a participation activity in which anyone can be involved. Your community is just as likely to be a virtual one, connected through online networks. Artists who chose to follow the muse as a way of life may earn a modest income this way supported by those who want to hear their voice. But wiser counsel should probably discourage people from pursuing music as vocation because opportunities for success will be fewer in future. Obscurity is far more typical than ubiquity. It always was despite appearances to the contrary. And maybe it is no bad thing having greatness diminished over coming decades. For the preservation of art’s integrity there needs to be less of it in any case.
Recordings & Copies
There is a clear distinction to be made between a recording and a copy of a recording.
The pure recording itself is a work of art embodying a set of creative inputs such as composition, arrangement, performance, production, engineering, programming, editing, and mastering. The copy is a copy of the art. The art is the work itself and the processes involved in creating it.
Historically the record business grew up around selling distinct copies of the art. That way of doing business is no longer viable.
The idea that artists might find ways of funding the work in its purest form and forgetting about the copies is not only a good idea and one worth looking at, it might also be necessary as the new technology continues to diminish the price value of the copy.
Cars & Horses
The arrival of the printing press changed history beyond imagining. At the time most would not have appreciated the full implications of the changes they were living through. With innovation it is subsequent generations who really ring the changes and reap the rewards. In the twentieth century the printing press equivalent might have been the invention of the transistor and later the integrated circuit leading to the information age and the Internet. These technologies are still in their relative infancy and the reverberations are still to be realised.
I use that perspective to underline the point that during times of radical change most don’t get it. The old habits die hard and people do what they have always done albeit a bit differently. Word processors replace typewriters; emails replace letter post, even if some don’t get it immediately. I did actually know guys who had their secretaries print out their emails for them to read. I never saw a car being drawn by a horse but the message of that image was clear enough too. People’s minds are the slowest things to change.
The digital revolution has only just began to impact on the society that has seen its inception. We are to a large extent still thinking horsepower rather than internal combustion. This is nowhere more prevalent than in attitudes within the cultural industries especially those which have built massive wealth mountains on ownership of copyrights. Technology has rocked the foundation on which these agreements are made.
You can’t have powerful copying devices on every desk, on every lap and in every pocket, then have these devices link to highly efficient networks allowing information to be passed back and forward in an infinite way; you can’t provide such innovation when hitherto nothing like it had been remotely possible then expect existing agreements around what can be copied and what can’t to stand good. You could only expect such agreements to require serious revising. If they were agreements dubious in the first place, that tended to make only a very small number of privileged people very wealthy, then you might only rejoice at their demise and relish the opportunity to formulate new ones.
Welcome to the present. Those who made fortunes from the copy boom should be pleased they did. They won’t be able to do that again. That is not to say that something created which is culturally valuable won’t produce earnings. It is to say that the earnings will not be determined by how many unit copies get notched up. Because of the ubiquity of the copying devices, that particular practice has no scarcity value anymore. Anyone can copy. Anyone can distribute. Artists of all kinds will now need to use their creative powers to fashion new ways of generating wealth, ways that specifically don’t depend on copies of their work being bought and sold.
So the message is clear to those who would prematurely shackle the emergent technology in service to their conventions: unhook your new cars from your old horses and take a drive. The frontier is an exciting place to be if you have the imagination for it. If you don’t, go do something else that better suits your mindset. Conservatism always has its place.
Major To Minor
Apparently there are more people involved in music-making now than ever before.
Of those involved, a minority do it as a way of life. Of those who do it as a way of life another minority are contracted to the major league. They are the elite.
It is the major-leaguers who are currently most affected by copyright issues and the changes brought about by the new tech. It is not too much of an exaggeration to speculate that the elite's days are numbered. The future is likely to be fashioned from the values and experiences of the mass of professionals and amateurs in the minor leagues.
Whether or not this is a good thing is arguable. The majors are having their world torn apart just now and I have a feeling that when that world finally disappears something valuable will have been lost.
But that is the reality. The minors are in the ascendency. They have a stake in an alternative future and are well placed to embrace it with a happy heart.
How I Earn A Living
During a blog exchange Billy Bragg asked me how I financed my recordings. This was my reply:
Billy, Here’s a bit of my story. I’m a musician who’s been making music recordings a long time. I’ve made thousands of them while providing a mix of services which include producing, engineering, programming, composing, arranging, performing and offering studio facilities. I have made a career of this. I’m not wealthy but I survive by being fully committed to the medium I love which is the recorded work.
My clients are virtually anyone who wants a recording – i.e. other musicians, writers, composers, record companies, publishers, radio, television and film companies et al. Most of what I do I get paid for but I also do speculative work (a label currently), some pro-bono jobs, and some just for the love of it. Modesty aside for a second, I’m sufficiently good at what I do to have a problem accommodating all the work that comes my way.
In my world copyright is a non-issue. No one ever discusses it because it has zero bearing. It may as well not exist for any difference it makes to me and those in my circle. If people copy what I do my first reaction is to be pleased. It might be tempting to peer into their lives and see how much money they’ve made from my creations. But frankly I can’t be bothered with the negativity of that. I’d rather work on music, develop new projects, doing what I do, than become a royalty chaser.
Most projects over the years which involved record deals earned me little beyond small token advances. If I ever get a royalty cheque I will frame it as a historical document. The same goes for all of us where I am. The idea of receiving royalties from our hypothetical copyrights belongs in another place. We have always had to do things differently. It now happens that these differences seem to be running in sympathy with the sweeping changes in the creative industries. That pleases me.
I welcome the new possibilities because they offer the prospect of something genuinely new and something one can make a contribution towards shaping. From a self-interested view if copyright were abolished tomorrow it would make no material difference to me. What would do would be new structures which have an imaginative eye on the future and ones that stay fixed on the possibilities for musicians to earn a living commensurate with their worth.
This is a huge up-hill and requires a cultural mind-shift. It means getting away from the old ideas of unit commodities, statutory licensing, big deal contracts and the rest which were mainly structures around trying to find an artist who would lay a golden egg. It means people like us going into the community and asking those with money (there is no shortage of them) to invest in us. Doing this is, of course, only for the entrepreneurial few. But they are the trailblazers who will shape the future. It will be a future with a different spirit where artists are financed by their communities because their communities want what they’ve got.
I understand that I am an odd beast and no model necessarily. I use studio technology to express myself in recorded works. But my particular experience gives me an unusual perspective and some insight into possible ways forward. The emerging options through which creative people can engage the world feel natural to me. They open doors to a great untapped potential.
I have a label in the making which is being financed cooperatively by me and the other artists I work with. I have five new products waiting to go. It is a daunting prospect but an exciting one. I have no idea if our initiative will earn a penny. Given most recorded works earn nothing for anybody then the odds are against it. I remind myself that the vast majority of those party to a traditional copyright agreement never received anything from it anyway. It was never a good system for helping musicians make a living other than the privileged few. Most of us have always had to find other ways of earning from our talents.
I am confident my project will do something. I can be sure now with the distribution door being wide open that people will get to hear the work. Even in the worst event, with no financial return, the recordings will remain in existence as a form of expression. And that is what artists do – express themselves and hope to resonate. At one level the art is its own reward.
Billy, I applaud you and your colleagues for putting energy into getting a dialogue going here. I suspect it could easily be a full-time job. I imagine that you inhabit a different world from me, one that still has substantial interests in how copyright pans out. Although I agree with Crosbie Fitch that it is time copyright left the stage, it hasn’t yet and still exerts a powerful influence on motivations within the business. My experience in contrast is more in-keeping with the invisible majority of music-makers who have never been heard. I think I am easily tuned to how values and events will develop in future.
So the short answer to your question: I finance my recordings from the pockets of the people I work with. Sometimes one of them has written the song and they pay me, sometimes I have and sometimes I pay them. I just finished a session there today with a pedal-steel player who travelled fifty miles to come and play on a track. He had only recorded professionally once before and that was with me. He played beautifully and I paid him for his good work. Just as often people forgo payment happy to participate in a happy enterprise. And there is the crux: music shows no signs of losing its vitality and its importance in the lives of everyone.
Shaping The Future
You hear it said all the time that artists should be paid absolutely.
It is a fairly empty statement to make. Anybody who wants to be paid for anything has to make a deal of some kind. You don’t turn up uninvited, start digging somebody’s garden then demand payment. You make an arrangement.
Likewise, us musicians can’t expect payment simply because we created the work. We need to do a deal first. If you’re a recording artist and your deal is dependent on unit sales then it’s a bad one because the market for units is fast disappearing.
Seek payment for your work from those who would have you make it. Create it, let it go, then start over. With such an outlook we have a better chance of shaping the future rather than complaining about the demise of the old system.
Side Issue
What to do about free downloading is such a yawn issue now.
Recorded music currently is making a transition to a future where it will not be paid for by the unit. That doesn't mean it will necessarily be free. Nothing is. In the UK health care is free only in that if you have major surgery costing tens of thousands you don't actually get a bill. It's not really free of course it is just paid for differently.
This is what is happening with recorded music. It is re-structuring to be paid for differently, possibly by subscription or license like radio and television, or better still by return to old fashioned patronage where the public pays the artist for creating art. At that point sharing files won't matter. What matters is that artists can get paid consistent with their worth. That was always what mattered and most of us never got paid anyway. Perhaps a new system with new people running it will be fairer.
So get over the peer-to-peer paranoia. It doesn't matter. It is a side issue at most. A non issue eventually.
Authenticity & The Recorded Work
As an artist my medium is music as recorded work.
By that I mean the recorded work as an end in itself outside of music's historical attachment to performance and the old traditions of musicianship. This piece makes the case for the creative value of recorded music as an art-form in it own right.
The greater part of my personal experience of music has come through the joy of listening to records. I've seen my fair share of live shows and have indeed spent much of my adult life working venues but these experiences pale in number compared to the hours spent steeped in recordings. If most people analysed their behaviour they would find pretty much the same thing: that their relationship to music was almost entirely cultivated by recordings. It has been music's defining medium for a century now and continues to be.
I remain loyal to the recorded work despite its recent commercial meltdown and despite attempts by fundamentalists to demean its value in favour of the supposed real deal: live performance. I don't subscribe to that. Nor do I subscribe to the artist as some kind of shamanistic being who has a mainline to authenticity. I couldn't care less about authenticity. I think it is a nonsense concept when applied to music suggesting that some kinds of sounds are somehow more real or more credible than others. All music is simply organised noise whether live or recorded. Value is conferred upon it by imagination not by what it is or how it gets into the air. I'm not fussed whether an album is made in a day with one mic in a room or in five years using every kind of studio trickery. All I care about is whether I can get into it. And that is as much down to me and my own taste capacities as it is anything in the work itself.
Nowhere is there more bullshit spouted than in music criticism. I'm not talking here about professional critics who do a worthy job. They are creative and they take real risks. I'm talking about criticism in general, particularly the snobbish brand which takes itself too seriously and think's itself an authority. I have zero regard for that and every regard for liking what you like whether you are knowledgeable or not. That is why I am able with no irony, embarrassment or shame to appreciate the Mariahs and the Britneys. With the help of talented producers and writers they have made outstanding, state-of-the-art music which enriched the lives of many millions, particularly young women. Most authenticists (usually male) are contemptuous of these hugely successful women and their followers (usually female). They use the less than admirable personal lives of the pop divas as ammunition for taking down their contribution to the art.
The same authorities also choose to ignore that recorded works generally have a reality unto themselves. Somewhere they hold to the idea that a music recording is like a facsimile of an otherwise performance ideally captured live without any fussing. This kind of thing harks back to music's arcane mythology. The snobs would almost take delight in finding out that some recently discovered blues singer was a wasted alcoholic with broken teeth and a broken life. If he was black with a history of racist abuse against him even better.
The recorded work as a thing in itself has fallen outside the standard mythology as advanced by the authenticists. Yet recordings for long enough have been entities in their own right. Sergeant Pepper was a product of the recording studio used as musical instrument. Since the invention of magnetic tape performances had always been edited from the many into the one. At least from that point on authenticity had taken a knock. Editing has been the singular aspect that has contributed to recorded performances being made up and in that sense to be synthetic products. Multi-track recording allowed for an even more sophisticated form of editing to be done and then digital technology even more so. Even the much maligned tuning software allows producers to do more quickly something they have always done which is pay close attention to intonation. Previously, tuning a vocal was done by editing, simply re-doing out of tune lines. Much time and concentration was taken up by attending to that. The technology now renders that rather tedious part of the job easy. From tape editing to auto-tuning (it doesn't have to be "auto") these technologies are at root instruments for the manipulation of sound. A piano is an instrument for the manipulation of sound. So is a violin. So is a studio mixing console.
Recordings brought a massive benefaction of music to ears all over the world in the space of a few decades. Those who delivered it (the recording companies and their producers) created value and meaning for many and did so in a way that could never have been achieved through live performance. Actually it is live performance which has become an exotic species of the bigger beast that is the recorded work which for most people is more real. A live concert is something done for its treat value like going out for a meal. Live is the gourmet restaurant while recordings are the meat and potatoes of real life. In this sense music as appreciated through recordings has more authenticity than does its less patronised counter-part. Listening to recorded music is what we do as a culture. It is how we engage with the creative output of millions of musicians the world over. Occasionally we go to a gig. Every day we hear recorded works whether we want to or not.
Those who rail against the new tech and cleave to their need for so called authenticity are themselves the myth-makers. Looking backwards to a primitive past where music was only ever experienced on location is little more than a romantic attachment to history. The recorded work changed the musical experience opening it out to be much richer and diverse. There is no going back.
The beneficiaries of such well curated music archives are all of us who today can tap a screen and within seconds have access to anything that takes our fancy. In uncertainty, randomised playlists will churn out infinite possibilities without recourse to a radio loud-mouth full of opinion and prejudice. Old musical attachments can be remade and new ones discovered. That it can be done for something approaching free seems unusually good for this world. So good it is almost suspect. Music is the great gift of mankind to itself. The recorded work amplifies its sharing potential a million-fold. Arguments over authenticity are facile and degrade music's dignity. They should be ignored. The majesty of the gift is better served without them.
Lily & The Complainers
I was surprised to see Lily Allen complain about file-sharing.
I had imagined she might have been cleverer than that. Seems not. And all these others in support of her. What planet are they on? Really, the train has left the station with this argument. Technology has destroyed the old way of doing things in the record business. That is never coming back for good or for bad. These artists should show some insight and embrace the future in an imaginative way and not make themselves seem so spectacularly self-interested or just simply ill-informed by supporting a system that is being consigned to history.
It is almost a cliche now to hear people say that we musicians are entitled to be paid for our recordings. If that is so then history has done us a terrible injustice. I've been in the biz a long time and have worked with thousands. The number I have come across who actually earned significantly from their recorded works is virtually zero. Why? Because the record business has always been about the golden egg - i.e. all its focus was on the million seller. Most of the wealth generated from recordings went into the coffers of a relatively small group. They were among the most privileged people in history. Those who bitch about the demise of the old record business make an argument in favour of the future being like the past. It won't be.
If the riches in music had historically been more evenly spread allowing recording artists in general to finance their careers from royalties, and if the new tech was genuinely putting such artists in jeopardy, then Lily and her complainers would have a case. As this is not even close to being true they should be silent and go enjoy their multi-millions. The rest of us can forge the future without them. The age of the golden egg is over.
Copyright
When considering the future of copyright (if indeed copyright has a future) it should be remembered that its perceived purpose was to allow artists to get paid. Historically it never did that job very well as most people party to a recording or publishing deal will testify.
Paying creative individuals for their work makes sense. Society wants their output and creatives want to give it. In order to allow them to work professionally and follow the dictates of the muse then funding needs to come from some source. The copyright system was supposed to perform this task but it tended to succeed only in rendering wealthy a small coterie of the fortunate. These were the hit-makers and the agencies and corporate moguls that supported them. In this sense the old system was quasi-medieval in its structures: the few amassed wealth while the many lived in poverty.
In recent years copyright has been blown apart by the internet and revision is underway. Whatever form that revision takes it should be about focussing on the objective of financing art. If a work is sufficiently successful then the creator needs to be rewarded commensurate with that success and be able to keep on working. Artists can then do what they do as a career choice.
The immediate question is how do we compensate creative people and allow them to remain solvent. Not how do we ensure multi-national corporations, the people who run them, and a handful of fabulously affluent artists maintain themselves in medieval lavish.
Access v Ownership
I wrote earlier about the music-streaming website Spotify. I resisted the temptation there to comment on the deeper issues of access versus ownership. I'll do that now.
I think there are legitimate concerns about relying completely on online servers for everything. If a company like Spotify goes down and you don't have hard-copies of your music collection stored locally then you effectively lose everything. Suddenly your lovingly assembled playlists disappear. With CDs, hard-discs and iPods, short of a fire or burglary, they remain intact. This concern applies to cloud-computing generally where information is stored online as opposed to on the personal media in your room. It is a risk certainly but I suspect it is a risk people will become more at ease with. The Cloud will become pretty much as secure as anything else is. Money in the bank is not 100% safe as recent times testify but it is still preferred to a stash under the bed. The same goes for online storage and file streaming. It will become a commonplace feature.
Those who fixate on ownership for its own sake will find this transformation more difficult to adopt. Although I understand their concerns I have less sympathy with them. I think ownership is given too much importance generally. It boils down to issues of violation and having a right to recourse should possessions be stolen. If somebody takes my stuff I would like always to have a right to process and have the crime redressed. Beyond that right to process I've always been mystified why anyone needs to own anything. All you really need is legitimate access to what you need as you need it. Whatever systems that can be implemented to allow that to happen is for me sufficient.
That being so I think that favouring access over ownership is a big ethical leap. Ownership is something of a primal instinct. It underlines acquisitiveness. Access requires trust and some faith that agreements made will be honoured. If I pay Spotify a monthly prescription then I expect them to uphold their commitment just as I would a bank for keeping promise. Trust is an aspiration. It is something that should be encouraged and taken seriously. Its breach takes a heavy toll. The contemporary financial meltdown has left much cynicism in its wake and damages the spiritual fabric that binds a society's relationships. It may be something of a stretch to uncover such issues from a deliberation on whether to embrace Spotify and music streaming. But for me it opens up an interesting philosophical divide. I am on the side of the more evolved ideas that are bound up in access. I would prefer a world where ownership is diminished in favour of trust. Access versus ownership exposes a deeper divide between those who are comfortable with higher levels of trust and those who want to covet possessions.
I think that divide is one of temperament. Those big on ownership are likely to be more hardline in their dealings. Those who are happy with access are more inclined to sharing. The internet has a huge capacity for sharing and it would be hopeful to think that such capacity is ripe for exploration in the years to come and can make a pivotal contribution to how humans interact. I say think about these matters and think about whether you are a sharer or coveter. Ask yourself which side are you on. It is a big issue, a big issue with an opportunity attached.
Spotify
Apple has just given Spotify the green light for its player application to be available for download at the App Store. Very shortly your iPhone will be able to act like a gigantic iPod. You will have ready access there to a vast library of recorded music. You won't own the music (did you ever?) in the way you owned a CD or a download. But you will have full access to Spotify's music servers. What is more astonishing is that Spotify playlists will be able to be synced to an iPhone or iPod Touch and played offline. You may not be playing actual downloaded music but it sure will feel like it.
Spotify is free to use currently with some fairly unobtrusive advertising endured. Alternatively for £10 per month the ads are gone. Either way it is a high quality user experience. Just about any recorded work can be accessed on demand within a couple of seconds. Some are surprised that Apple sanctioned this iPhone application as it may well be sounding the death knell for its own iTunes and the iPod. iTunes with its buy-per-track method requires an actual sound-file be downloaded. You climb the pay-wall, then do the download. It's not cumbersome. Apple has it streamlined to be quick and easy. Yet with Spotify - bang! There it is. The music is coming at you in few seconds with no negotiating to be done. Since I started using it a few months ago it has never been off my computer desktop.
Streaming is not universally liked. Many prefer to have some kind of tangible hard copy in their possession. It then feels more like ownership. Some don't even like downloads for that reason. They prefer to have the CD or the vinyl or whatever actually there on the shelf, something they can see, touch, feel and smell as well as listen to, something that engages all the senses. I get that. Way back when it was being predicted that computer files would come to dominate how music was consumed I really did not imagine that. I thought that there was too much historical attachment to that full sensory experience of a physical music album. I included myself as one unlikely to be converted. From the browsing of racks of records in a store, to the reading of liner notes, to the rolling of joints on LP covers, there was just too much emotion tied up in the physical for all that to be swept away in favour of an unsexy mp3 file. I was turned around with indecent haste. When I saw what downloading offered I was off on a new journey. What was so seductive about it was accessibility. I could find everything and anything quickly. At the mere mention of an artist I could go find that music, sample it and have it right there in my collection. iTunes overnight became my de facto music player. My CD collection receded into the background and has remained there. I rarely buy one now.
As if in sync with my consumer choice record shops began to disappear from the high street and the music business went into implosion. As these stores had become pretty uncool places to go into and the record biz had done me no favours as a musician myself then did I care? Not a bit. I now listen to more music than I ever have both as a consumer and as a professional. I listen to a wider variety of artists from the obscure to the high profile. I get as much and more from that experience as I ever did. That I can throw thousands of tracks on to a tiny player the size of a fag packet and go off in the car with it seems miraculous. It is a true wonder of the modern age for anyone into music.
So I am a total convert to this development in every way. If I can now substitute the downloaded iPod tracks for their streamed equivalents alongside everything else that is catalogued on servers then better still. The listening experience is exactly the same. It is access that has been so much further enhanced. Once the music is in the air it doesn't much matter much what the carrier is unless you are a picky audiophile who likes to fuss about sound quality. I fuss about sound enough in my work as a producer. I'm only too happy to let all that go when it comes to leisure. Then it's all about the emotion. The technical niceties are immaterial.
If you've not tried Spotify already I highly recommend it (it will be available in the US soon). If the iPhone app due in a few days is as user-friendly as the desktop version then I will feel justified in proclaiming that the future has truly arrived.
Radio Bullshit
Apart from the excellent new online radio services like Last FM which take you off on a journey of your choosing, the only radio I listen to now is BBC Radio Four.
Music radio is so appallingly bad that not only do I get nothing of value from it, but I get a sharp prod of annoyance from the experience of it. It's not the music itself - I'm good with that, even the chart - it's the utterly inane drivel that pours from the mouths of presenters that jars me. Listening to these people is nails-on-the-blackboard time. They have to be gone immediately, the dial turned to something more civilised before they pollute my airspace.
It is a source of great satisfaction that radio is becoming increasingly redundant in being the conduit for how popular music is passed into the public domain. The new tech is so efficient that everything and anything you want to hear is at your fingertips. It is your choice, where and when, without recourse to some idiot programmer's agenda while a drivelling nonentity passes worthless comment.
Now I should say: Russell Brand is genius and Chris Evans was unique in his day as were John Peel and Kenny Everett in theirs. But these guys are rare breed. The average radio jock or television presenter is an empty-headed moron with nothing useful to say on anything.
Long Live The King
Although no doubt self-inflicted, to see this man reduced to a circus freak was depressing. To have his talents ritually ignored in favour of a prurient gawping around his weirdness says more about our culture than it ever did about Michael Jackson. Still, for those with interests more decent the music was always there, important and preserved for posterity.
Better away, Jackson. You can be back on the throne now where you belong.
Commercial Death
I shouldn’t really be discouraging people who come to my studio to make music recordings with a view to commercialising them. Providing services is what we do here. What folks do with their work is their choice. And who the hell am I to advise against having a go at something. Any shot at success in the arts is a long shot. Always was.
But I have to say: being an unknown and releasing a music album these days makes about as much commercial sense as releasing your personal photograph album. If you proposed to do that everyone would look at you incredulously. Many think that any given music recording has a commercial value. It hardly ever did and does so even less now. The commercial recording has become an economically devalued entity.
It used to be only the elite musicians that got to record at all. The process had a fairly high bar attached which only the select few were able to reach. They were generally chosen by industry professionals, the so called gatekeepers who controlled entry to the market.
In recent years the high bar has been abolished. Anyone can record. Everyone has easy access to distribution. And although these changes are slowly becoming clear, many in the music biz still haven’t fully grasped the implications.
