rostasi

Thanks for this! See too: All Your Candy Are Belong To Us

Yeah, it'd be nice if the first three were re-released - officially, that is - with nice sound, etc. Supposedly Ralf and Florian will get around to it someday, but the first two albums had a different feel and maybe a different approach is wanted when it comes to cleaning 'em up. There are some CD boots out there of this stuff, but it'd be nice if some cleaned up versions would surface. Don't know if you have the time to sit down with the DVDs of M-M, but you'll notice an even more laid-back pastoral feel to all of these great songs being performed in concert. The visuals they use now have a smoother feel - less jerky - a gliding feel with lots of old footage of German railway lines, Tour de France visuals, etc. It may be just because they're just older guys now. Of course, Kraftwerk has almost always emphasized beauty in their music - beautiful melodies without being maudlin or cloying. Normally reculsive, here's Ralf Hutter doing an interview with the annoying BBC DJ Gary Crowley back in '03: Hutter interview (24:28 / 23 MB) Rod

Wasn't here when this topic came around the first time. Always've loved these guys - thru the various incarnations - since the Organization days. ALL of the stuff I could get my hands on for the past 35 years: 8-tracks, LPs, cassettes, books, posters, T-shirts, CDs, DVDs, downloads... even a promo cassette of "Techno-Pop" which was never released and various versions (German and American) of the other recordings. I've seen them, I think, 4 times now - starting in the mid 70's. In high school, I used to drive the rednecks CrAzY with this music! Do you have this great Notebook version of Minimum-Maximum? Great stuff! Thanks for bringing them up again, Rod

Congratulations! I'm pretty envious. Are you sure about your comparisons? I played Musser (and studied off and on with Burton) and I always thought that the Deagan sound was actually brighter - usually a bit too bright for my taste actually, but I did all the wrong things to vibes anyway. Rod

...as a "where are they now" kind of topic... Was just watching a documentary in the ol' archives here on Philo T. Farnsworth (the inventor of electronic television) and noticed his son Russell "Skee" Farnsworth playing upright bass. I seem to remember a couple of latin recordings that he's played on and possibly arranged(?), but anyone have any more info on him? Is he still working in music nowadays? Thanks, Rod

New Documentary

The Real Deal

Fucking totally missed the point and it doesn't look like it's gonna change. OK, no more "hundred word essays." but, lastly, concerning this quote: Yes, I DO take this into consideration! ...and I'm eternally grateful to those who turned me on to Chuck's label in that very way (and the BYG, and the ICP labels, and....), because if they hadn't, I wouldn't have gone out and BOUGHT every fucking NESSA recording ever made! and I never would've had the enormous respect for him and his work and shown it by getting others to discover his label too!!! Just amazing....absolutely amazing that this idea just goes ZOOOOOOOOM over so many heads of a group of people who can take apart the solos of various musicians, but can only see this issue as a "ugh, you have my music...ugh, you steal..." simplicity. Damn right, music's hard work - and especially for a non-Pop musician...all the more reason to think very carefully before you plop down those thousands of dollars for your recordings. Damn, if you're concerns are feeding your family and you just can't wait - that you gotta have your return NOW - then maybe you don't have any business spending thousands of bucks you can't afford to spend if you're not willing to let your CD do it's business! I need a place to go where there's not a bunch of paranoid backward thinking grandmas. waste of time... goodnight.

I want to know how many here have original paintings on their walls?

I'm not spending that kind of money, but I've been doing close to what you said for years now. Friends and business acquaintances both. If making money directly from your first CDs is the goal, then this is sheer folly. This is not the purpose of making CDs. As I said before, your CD is your "business card." When you spend $10,000 on recording CDs, you can't think, "Damn, I better sell a lot of CDs!" If you actually did make money - hell, break even - you'd be considered an overnight success, - it'd be great if that actually happened, but it's quite foolish to expect this. What you should be asking yourself before you spend the money is whether the future benefits will pay for these discs - short term and long term. Jim, if your band was doing some old boring "bar-band" crap, then I'd say that spending $10,000 making a record would be a waste (of course, there's some real crap out there, so, who knows...), but when you get signed (I predict: after your next CD), it's at that time that you say, "Damn! That was money well spent!" ...and not because you got your money back on either This Is the Place or ...Boogaloo Sisters, but that both of those recordings were great enough to perk up the ears of listeners/broadcasters/et al. all over the US (and, soon, elsewhere) thereby getting you the gigs that you might never have gotten. THAT'S where the 10 Grand goes! How many extra paying gigs did you get because of these discs? How much more money did you make as a result of radio stations, magazines, word-of-mouth, etc interest in these discs? Maybe, you've only made a couple grand more from these extra gigs in cities that you've been trying to get in to, but the money comes as word grows. So, in the same way that it's myopic to think only of the one-to-one "cash from CD" benefit, it's equally short-sighted to confine this discussion to the ideas of what's "right and honest" (as if there's a solid ground of meaning) or using the tired "where do we draw the line" cliche. I don't draw lines. I follow curves. It's people in favor of the mass-murdering psychoses and pathological lying of the criminal Bush junta who draw lines and get us in the mess that we're in today. I think that the larger picture is being ignored in favor of easy wrap-up push-button statements about "stealing" and "theft" and words such as "illegal" and "pirating." I think that we owe it to ourselves to look beyond this and, like the above example, see the larger picture - hopefully without the influence of the powerful elite.

Yeah Alexander! Quit breaking bread with your brothers! Next time, tell him to buy his own damn bread! Can't be putting those breadmakers out of business you know!

Could your friend send her over?

Hahahaha. This is hilarious! A very unbiased opinion. eh, hem... yup, they sure do! Yeah, those extra choices are just making it so difficult for the robber barons. I mean, what happened to the good old days when music was one of the main and few chioices of electronic/home entertainment? Yeah, instead of charging less for the crappy ones! Gimme, gimme, gimme... they will continue acting like neanderthals and fight for the right to have more big cars and luxurious soirees... No decrease there eh?

Wow! We're gonna need a pretty big broom for all of those sweeping generalizations!

She was a major R&B artist in the 80's. Something like a half-dozen top 40 records. Nothing I'd ever bought, but you didn't have to because she was all over Urban radio during that time. Then she seemed to disappear when the 90's arrived. Hope she recovers - way too young to be a stroke victim...

I wanted to say too that although I agree with most of your position, I haven't fallen for this oft-repeated line. The majors cry about losing money thru downloading, but what ALL of the "Big Ten" mean is that they didn't reach their expectations - in other words, they made a profit during a quarter, but it wasn't the profit that they had projected. They wanted 10% profit and they got 6% and then they announce that they had a 4% loss and we're all supposed to get out the hankies. When the record companies do have a quarterly loss, it is usually due to expenses incurred by a merger (like Warners and Sony/BMG) or a legal case that often hinges on some stoopid greed-based mistake that was made (Sony's CD copy-protection fiasco, their WaCkY propietary ideas - ATRAC instead of mp3, et al.). So, the concerns really revolve around what the majors want - concerns about not getting an even larger part of the pie that is provided by, for instance, Death Cab for Cutie, Coldplay, and the new Juicebox single by The Strokes. I think that with most of these major record labels being foreign owned - Warners the only American based and, ironically, their parent company owns the Winamp and Gnutella programs that seem to give The Industry the feverish shakes - the US courts will side with the future growing commerce of the country which is Internet commerce. from an article about Napster: "...we live in something called a democracy, and laws, in theory, evolve toward the wishes of the majority. If the law states that hats cannot be worn in the malls, but 95% of the crowd insists on wearing hats when shopping, the hat law will change. If the "people" overwhelmingly feel that Internet song trading is acceptable then laws will eventually move to affirm that, whether the record companies agree or not..." Lastly, I have 10 songs of Mbalax music that I want the naysayers to go out and not only find at your local brick and mortar - no Internet downloads please - but to buy the complete CDs with the hopes that the whole CD will be a gem. I will start with only 3 songs - the first being by the most famous - and you can write me offline for the other 7 if you're curious: Youssou N'Dour: Gandiol Abdou Guité Seck: Dekaalé Ablaye Mbaye: Yaaye Maag Naa Tho not Mbalax, Souad Massi has a beautiful sounding new CD - her third - that I'm picking up to go with the first two I own - discovered not thru any Tower or Virgin listening station - but thru the magic of download.

I know that I have - big time! and nearly all of my friends and acquaintances have too. If I (or they) step inside a Tower Records or Virgin, for instance, it's usually either for an impulsive-must-have-now purchase or a let's-see-what's-come-out outing. I checked my Amazon orders for 2005 and saw that I placed 360 orders (multiply 1 to about 6 discs per order...) and that's just with Amazon! All of us here know the dangers of Mosaic, Dusty Groove, et. al. and so it is extremely easy to buy away from the brick and mortar stores. I shake my head all the time at these "list prices" - many of which are higher than actual list price which of itself is artificially inflated by the poor downtrodden <<snif, snif>> SuperLabels. I've mentioned it before on this forum that I cringe when I see so-called "sale" prices and prices of $18.99 on independent label discs that if I bought them directly from the label would cost only $14 and if I bought them from online dealers would often cost anywhere from $10 - $12. Concerning the used market: In the mid to late 80's, it was incredibly frowned upon (by, guess who?) to be a store selling used discs - first, it was presented by the major record label hoodlums as a losing financial situation - that it was a foolish undertaking that any "serious" store owner wouldn't commit to. After it was discovered that people did indeed enjoy the savings and the stores were actually going to stick around and prosper (the "key" word here), then - around the early 90's - the labels began complaining and even tried, unsucessfully, to sue stores for selling the promotional copies that were sent out by the labels. Major retailers were screaming bloody murder and were getting lots of ink in the papers about their ever dwindling profits. Artists would even sometimes show up in stores to protest that they were losing money (I had a particularly unpleasant experience with the guitarist Jonathan Butler who was thereafter known as Jonathan Butthole in our store). (Gosh, anybody notice a pattern here? Yesterday's "no downloading"?). Soon afterwards - beginning in the mid 90's - the major store chains saw the light (as some are in the industry today - re: Universal) and decided to take their "Hey, we can make money on this too!" ideals and began not only offering used CDs for sale in the major outlets like Sound Warehouse/Blockbuster Music/Warehouse Music to name just one, but started to flood the market with these smaller stores that became as ubiquitous as 7-11's. The problem was that these stores were expected to buy nearly every and anything that came thru their door. No buying discretion was practiced for two main reasons: 1) the appearance of volume was important and 2) the majority of the employees had very little musical knowledge and couldn't be expected to sift and buy. It was easy to go into one of these places only every 6 months because the stock would still be sitting there - often not even moved from it's original location in the rack. If the promos that I got from the majors were of any indication coupled with keeping a keen eye on these businesses, much less than 5% of the discs would be anything close to a regular selling item. Many of the prices would stay the same as well. Well, they could only sit in their own rot-gut for sooo long and the stores began disappearing when it was pretty clear that the companies spread themselves way too thin...with product that was also spread too thin. People have spoken. Sales doesn't just refer to brick and mortar anymore, so it is easy to have lots of selling going on without them... and it will continue until there's another breakthrough and the majors (if there are any) will continue right on fighting that development too - until, of course, they find that the people have spoken once again.

VERY kool Honda Commercial Honda

Depending on keyboard, etc...try the F14 and F15 keys for brightness control.

How do I do it? Well, often I don't do it! and that just pisses me off 'cause it's usually due to distractions. I do use a strange method that caters to my love of randomness (it involves timers, random functions and lights, but I won't get into that...) The other distraction (I dare say) is this forum...I'm sitting here typing this when I should be finishing up this compilation I've been working on. I've promised that this was going to be done for the beginning of the year - each disc and cover individually handmade - but if I get right back to it, I'll still be getting it out next week at the earliest. Let's not talk about the slew of other professional projects and the personal filing (getting audio, visuals, and text on discs) that has to be done. I agree with the other's here...we just have to learn to say "No" sometimes.

Bofill

No, he didn't die after his first collapse - you are correct and you're probably referring to the Ukulele Hall of Fame gig two months before, but he did die on stage at the Minneapolis gig for the Women's Club. He was just introduced to the nearly empty hall (that being a result of the arrogance of the bandleader's actions) with his wife by his side and he collapsed and died right there.

There seems to be this weird idea that when people make copies of things for other folks that that's always the end of the line and in my experience, it's been totally the opposite. People usually go buy the real thing afterwards - if it's available...and that's the crux. I can't tell you how many times people have said to me something like, "Man, this is great! Do they have this at Tower?" ...and then the discussion moves on to how they can get it (even tho, in some ways, they already have it). I have overseas friends that tell me to buy and bring (or send) stuff after they've heard something I've made for them. I'm actually helping CD sales. One CD made can provide years of musical explorations - either of the same artist's work or a boost to whole genres of music that heretofore didn't exist in that person's musical vocabulary. Is the introduction of music only supposed to be the purview of a few A&R guys at the major labels? Are we supposed to rely on the big corporate owned radio networks to tell us what's really good for us? How about critics at the identically-owned newspapers? So, that leaves out label dirtbags, radio, TV, and newspapers...so, what else is there? The obvious: I think it's up to us - the people who love and understand the music - to spread the word (and sound!) I would much rather have someone that I know and/or respect come up to me with a burned disc and introduce me to something new. It has and will always continue to be my favorite entryway into new artist territory. (I also favor the idea of everyone having their own little mini radio station, so as to share what you're not getting from the hot-shot media barons). Q: How many people here now have the Cellar Door sessions after they made or had perfectly good pre-release copies? (and we're not even talking about an up-and-coming artist!) If you're a performer, your CD is your audio business card - it makes an impression as well as encourages people to come see you perform. If they can't see you live they try to find out more about you and they spread word after they have. I can tell you stories! In an era when the "thing" is more important than the "event," it's pretty hard to shake this attachment. For myself, I try to use these "things" - CDs, scores, visuals, texts - as a way to encourage performance and the spreading of interest. I have full pieces making the rounds "out there" and've had instances where someone would like to incorporate a work of mine into their's - no prob...a mention that it was derived from a work of mine would be nice... ...and so if I can introduce someone in Sweden to my work and, in turn, he makes a copy for someone else who writes me and says, "Hey, I heard some of your work. Would you be willing to...", then I'm not only helping my career, but I'm adding something to the creative community itself (and the guy wasn't out money on someone he hadn't previously heard). When it comes to other people's work: would I buy something that I haven't heard? Would I buy something of which I've only heard a 30 second snippet? In most cases, no. This idea that artists should have exclusive rights to the distribution of their work is actually a career hampering idea that has not only financial drawbacks, but sociological ones as well - especially if you're not well-known. Arguably, one of the most important composers of our generation - Karlheinz Stockhausen - has an incredibly tight control over his CD output and because of that close-to-the-chest control, one of the most often heard complaints from potential new listeners is that they can't find any of his music except for a few second-rate recordings (which is an artistic disservice itself). So, some people are making copies and sharing the "approved" recordings. If they like what they hear, they order it from the Verlag in Kürten, but if they don't like it, they haven't felt that they've pissed their money away (and, in turn, scaring away any chances of purchasing anything else by him in the future). People who speak of the "illegality" (of which there's some grey areas that cause disagreements and uncertainties) of something as amorphous and benign as music "piracy" (gotta hand it to those corporate spinmeisters!) strike me as a gullible bunch - as if the illegality of something came from outer space or is some genetic inheritance that we, as a culture, are born with. It may be shocking to some, but we're not and as soon as we stop sniffin' RIAA butt (amongst others) and demand from our leaders (new ones that'll actually listen) forward thinking ideas that are in service of the people and not the Thuglicans that they're so wedded - ideas that can include sensible commerce - then we can kiss those slowly eroding ideals away. ...and this statement about if every owner of 10,000 copies making 10,000 copies to share is sheer lunacy - might as well ask what would happen if all of the air molecules started moving into one corner of the room - BUT if thru some cosmic warp this did happen: yes, there would be 20,000 copies in existence AND more knowledge of your work! I think smart performers who see the future of the arts already recognize this and I think that our current discussion will become pretty quaint in the years to come. The silver lining is that more artists are recognizing this (Creative Commons initiatives taking hold in over 50 countries are one alternative). Just recently, Gilberto Gil (famous singer/songwriter and Brazilian Minister of Culture) wanted to freely share some of his songs online and was promptly rebuked by his "owners" - Warner Music - so much for artistic freedom when you have corporate greed dictating your pathway. So, he (and, increasingly, others) are taking their music "back" and learning that education thru freely accessible worldwide distribution is the best method. Again, the compact disc should not to be seen as the career maker or breaker - it is a vehicle of promotion - no matter what the media conglomerates want you to believe.

Gosh, even if it helps sell more copies? (which 9 times out of 10 it does).