tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22378765374459104662024-03-05T15:29:47.224+00:00ESP - The Mind ReaderJonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-33432590146427333952009-02-12T17:01:00.004+00:002009-02-12T17:10:49.964+00:00CONCENTRATING THE MIND: Thoughts About DistributionHow did you watch <a href="http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php?auth=033ef14483ee899496648c2b4b06233c">the Obama Inauguration</a>?<br /><br />I had intended to find a place with a large screen, preferably full of Americans, and share the audacity of hope. After all it’s been a long time since a politician inspired that emotion. In the end I watched it from my desk. First I went to CNN. Next to the scrolling Facebook list telling me what its members were thinking and doing was a blank space where the screen should be. By 3.30PM EST CNN had served 21.3 million streams and I wasn’t one of them.<br /><br />I jumped over to the BBC. They have one of the world’s most expensive web sites, more of a web city, fuelled from the billions of pounds in annual license fees. Unlike its commercial competitors I’m not begrudging the budget because the Beeb <a href="http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/jan2009/gb20090121_970005.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_global+business">invests in R&D</a> and the News site is the online equivalent of the World Service on radio, a beacon of factual information. But on this day they weren’t serving a video feed of an iconic moment in history, but a text feed. Hello? This is how you don’t spend my license fee? I don’t care that you might be afraid of server meltdown or – worse – protecting your TV platform. You’re not spending my money in ways I want!<br /><br />So I switched to TV. I went to Zattoo, a Swiss based web site that runs a plethora of European TV channels in real time, opened the link and watched BBC1 on my laptop. It was everything I wanted, bar the company of enthusiastic Americans.<br /><br />They say that content is king. Rubbish. Distribution is king. Take “Yesterday” and any other Beatles song. “Yesterday” is the most covered popular song of the last 40 years with hundreds, probably thousands, of cover versions. It’s a goldmine. No other song they wrote or recorded comes close in popularity. Carefully guarded and held back by The Beatles their songs are all equal, nothing more than potential commercial value, unequal only to the songwriters. (I doubt George rated “Savoy Truffle”, listing the contents of a chocolate box, as highly as “Something”, a hymn to his future wife – and that’s creative value, not monetary value.) But distribute them and “Yesterday” is way more valuable than any other song you want to name.<br /><br />Another common metaphor is ‘music like water’, meaning it’s liquid, flowing everywhere. But how does it flow from A to B without pipes? It’s distribution that’s becoming like water. When it encounters a rock or obstruction it flows around it. CNN isn’t working? I’ll go to the BBC. They don’t have the format I want? I’ll go to Zattoo. If that hadn’t worked I would have been really old-fashioned and turned on the TV. The major content owners – music labels, film and TV studios, book publishers – wish that a dam can be built to control distribution, just as an electricity company controls dammed water, but building a dam bigger than the Internet is an impossible task. Not because a system designed to withstand nuclear attack can’t be contained, but because content is both adept at acquiring multiple start points and delivered to an end-user platform that is rapidly becoming a matter of choice.<br /><br />Ask anyone with an iPhone how often they use it for Internet access. The answer, in my scientific study of questioning everyone I see carrying one, is all the time. Access has become a matter of whim, not location. When it’s your plumber pulling his iPhone out to check costs at the local hardware store you know as well it’s become a mass-market item. In its wake the phone and PDA manufacturers are introducing their own versions, giving away mobile music and offering mobile TV packages if you will not bite the Apple but buy theirs instead. The iPhone is just a fancy iPod so using it for music and video is obvious. What hasn’t been obvious is the recent growth in using other brand mobile phones as a music player – not because Sony and Nokia are spending millions trying to convince us that’s how they should be used, but because perception is changing. Radio on Nokia phones is one the brand’s most used apps. Pandora and Shazam hold the same position in iPhone apps. Music and film acquisition will follow – both legal and illegal.<br /><br />You think getting music, films and TV via bit-torrent is a computer-only activity? Try googling “bit-torrent” and “mobile”. It’s also moving to TV. The guys running TV-based VOD services like Lovefilm and Joost are talking about it as an essential technology to distribute films and TV shows because it’s a very efficient way to distribute high-bandwidth content. How long before someone’s using bit-torrent on a TV VOD platform for uses the copyright holders haven’t sanctioned or even thought of?<br /><br />But forget the Internet on TV, how about TV on the Internet? More than 6 million copies of the BBC’s iPlayer downloaded in a year so that people can watch TV on their laptops. Plus copycat players from the other channels. Add in a few million streams an hour from YouTube, Vimeo and all the other video sites. Factor in the growth of TV-on-mobile over the next few years…. We’re filling up the Internet with our penchant, our desire – our right! – to have TV available at whim, when we want it, on a screen that’s 3 inches in our hand, 15 inches on our lap, or 60 inches in the living room. Bit-torrent looks essential to the guys who make all this work. Recently some bright spark trying to protect his copyrights proposed that bit-torrent would soon be shut down. Dream on.<br /><br />Where bit-torrent is weak is in the customer experience. Until Vuze bought Azureus there was no content interface in the app itself – unlike Limewire et al – and what they have is hardly a Wikipedia of content offering. You have to find and go to an appropriate Web site. Then you need the seeders, peers and leechers, without whom bit-torrent doesn’t work. Not a problem if you want Lady Ga-Ga or The Killers, but it could be months before the two guys with “The High Numbers at The Marquee Club 1964” are online at the same time as you. With distributed p2p networks the available content is as wide as the network – just browse through the music made public on another user’s drive and when you see something you want, get it.<br /><br />With more music more often, this is important. Getting music has become a spontaneous activity, whether it’s from seeing something on a person’s hard drive, clicking a link on a bit-torrent Web site, responding to an ad from an e-music retailer, or even heard on the radio. Music is of such quantity and volume that if we don’t acquire that new discovery now it will be forgotten in the next tsunami wave of blogs, promotional emails, radio and last.fm playlists, Dime A Dozen search results, and tantalising hard drives offering more music without which we’re that much emotionally poorer. I have 16 CDs and a gigabyte of music I bought in the last year that I’ve yet to listen to, not to mention unheard concert recordings, some of which the artist actively gave away. It hasn’t slowed the river of new music flowing into my life. Apparently I’m a small fry compared to Generation i; they consume by the gigabyte, scanning it and dumping it so the next drive full can be consumed. And the record labels want to control these acquisition habits?<br /><br />This is one reason music business activists are campaigning for some form of blanket license, what those no-taxation-without-representation Americans named a “music tax”, to get money from all this activity. Not just for all those unpaid copies of the 7 - 8 million official music releases in circulation but also the estimated 25 million unofficial music tracks being passed around. Saying that this is a complicated task is a massive understatement.<br /><br />First of all, there is the huge majority of people online who either aren’t interested in music or whose buying habits are casual. In the olden days, the average UK shopper bought 5 CDs a year. How many are doing the same online? Can we assume that 80% or more of British Internet users don’t care about music, or buy at most 5 albums a year from iTunes? What will they say about a compulsory music license fee, being charged a second time for music they’ve already paid for? Either a system has to be created which targets only those people enjoying free music and to which they will sign up, or the license fee has to be so low that the majority will either not object or do no more than grumble. How could you make it palatable? What if it isn’t sold as a music fee but a fee to support culture?<br /><br />The government on the Isle of Man is planning to do just this: charge £1 a month at ISP level for every online subscriber on the island. But where the music companies are leading, other media giants are sure to follow. German consultancy ipoque <a href="http://www.ipoque.com/resources/internet-studies/internet-study-2007">observed in 2007</a>, from reading 1 million ISP user logs in seven countries, that 80% of illegal p2p traffic was films. It’s naïve to think film studios won’t demand a piece of the action, followed by TV companies, book publishers and anyone whose copyrighted materials are being passed around the Internet. Before you know it, that £1 will be £5 or £10. Good luck selling that as a culture fee, especially when so much film and TV consumption still happens on TV. Isn’t that why I’m paying £40 a month for a pay-TV subscription?<br /><br />(At least the cable and satellite media companies selling bundled packages of pay-TV and Internet access (Sky, Virgin, etc.) are well positioned to incorporate a license fee into their billing structures.)<br /><br />There’s also the perception that music purchasers will be supporting so-called pirates. If I buy my music and films, why am I subsidising Captain Jack Sparrow?<br /><br />Critics say it won’t happen. Most ISPs don’t want it to happen. Government is prevaricating about legislating for it, except France, a country where the State invades so much of one’s life it’s not that surprising; I suppose it’s coincidental that the music label that sells 40% of all new popular music is owned by a French water company. In any case the EU Government has already signalled they think that in present form it’s illegal. But government must be concerned. If the principle of copyright is so widely ignored, what are the implications for patents and other intellectual property? This is an important question. There are now compact, portable machines that can make exact replicas of physical products. The US Army is considering whether to put them in the back of Humvees. When a part breaks while the car is in the field, a soldier just replicates a new part and replaces it. Imagine that in the hands of a few hundred thousand entrepreneurs with a disregard for intellectual property rights.<br /><br />Tracking media files as they flow through the Internet is easy. The infrastructure is already in place. A British company called Detica has their boxes installed within every ISP, tracking files and emails, searching for terrorist activity. They can identify files down to packet level, so mp3s and mpegs pose no problem. The challenge is making sense of all the poor and non-existent metadata. How many different tracks are washing around labelled Track1, Track 3, or nothing at all? All that multiplicity of missing metadata will need to be separated and identified before rights holders can be accurately compensated.<br /><br />That’s simple compared to deciding how the revenue is paid out. There are at least eight stakeholder groups involved: ISPs, mobile operators, music publishers, music labels, rights societies, songwriters, performers, and managers, each with a view of what their income should be. In the words of music consultant Ted Cohen, there are eight people at the table and they all want two-thirds. Dee Hock had the same problem in the Fifties when he created Visa, knowing that all the banks necessary to make the system viable would squabble for years over their commissions. His solution was to set up two companies, one an administration group that could take the necessary time to negotiate the financial outcome and the second to get on with the business. In the meantime, the money was held in an escrow account.<br /><br />Historically, the monetising of music business disruptions – the creation of commercial radio, for example – have been settled with blanket licensing. But with so many challenges to solve this time, the odds on it becoming reality are not good. There may not be one solution. Samuel Johnston, speaking of a condemned man who wrote his autobiography in the two weeks before his execution, quipped that knowledge of one’s impending death “concentrates the mind wonderfully”. Concentration is what’s required, because if current technology doesn’t already offer enough problems, consider the distribution formats that are coming.<br /><br />For instance, there’s mesh-WiFi, a citywide integrated wireless network. Emergency services have been using such systems for years and like the Internet, connections work their way around failures to ensure a 100% service. San Francisco has been considering making their current emergency mesh available to the public – after all, they paid for it. Citywide, always on, music and films downloading and streaming to me on desktop, laptop, mobile phone, wi-fi music player, Internet equipped car radio, all of them from different service providers...how do you make sense of that?<br /><br />Or Bluetooth, the tech of choice for cash-strapped high schoolers. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth#Bluetooth_3.0_.28actual_version_number_TBD.29">Bluetooth 3.0</a> will be released this year, reportedly transferring files at speeds between 100 and 480 Mb per second. It’s backwards compatible, allowing old devices to connect with new ones. At those speeds the full lossless FLAC format (which is 400 – 600 Mb an album) becomes a viable commercial format. It also means films traded in a few seconds. It means mass iPod exchanges in under a minute. It means slotting one of the new multi-gigabyte SD cards into my mobile phone and selling the music and films on it to become king of the school playground. It gives unintended meaning to the marketing phrase “Nokia Comes With Music”. What must give nightmares to the media industries is that this isn’t across a network but device to device, visible only to those involved.<br /><br />Distribution is king and its empire keeps growing. Understanding how to make intellectual property and copyrights prosper within it is an urgency that requires cooperation, decisions and looking forward. To borrow a phrase from the new President, it requires audacity.Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-38773229696064039702008-10-04T21:31:00.003+00:002008-10-04T21:37:42.931+00:00Nokia “Comes With Music”Credit to Nokia for walking where others are only talking. We all know that music buying is a broken system. We’ve all heard the solutions on offer: suing the bastards in one country, threatening Internet connection cut-off in another, and claiming that advertising will pick up the slack wherever pundits draw breath. Nokia has decided to fight free with free and “give” the music away. Thursday night, after months of speculation, Comes With Music was unveiled at the glamorous Koko Club in London.<br /><br />Comes With Music is a one year subscription that ties unlimited free music to a variety of Nokia phones. The flagship model is the 5800, a touch-screen model that will be endlessly compared to the iPhone. Subscribers to the service can download music to their heart’s content and at the end of the year keep it. The four majors are licensing their material as well as many of the major indies, so breadth and depth isn’t going to be an issue. But there are limits: the files are WMA not MP3 and have DRM - just as all the labels have dropped it. It will only play on the mobile phone or a PC. To burn tracks to a CD requires buying an additional license. Of course, Apple have a similar walled eco-system but also have the advantage of being a very smart niche manufacturer with one of the world’s best industrial designers and a flawless marketing philosophy. Nokia, on the other hand, is the world’s largest mobile phone manufacturer and doesn’t have either a great designer or marketing. Personally, I don’t buy from iTunes because of the limitations and I won’t be subscribing to Comes With Music for the same reason. But I support the fact that Nokia, with their massive global scale, is attempting a solution that gives the audience what they clearly want while enabling musicians to get paid.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Let’s Talk About Sex</span> </span><br />Have you noticed how iPhone owners like to put their phone on the table? How they like to fondle it? I haven’t seen such phone-envy since the late 80s in Hong Kong, when the background sound in every location was the clunk of mobiles hitting the tabletop so everyone could marvel at the clunkee. But to me the really innovative design is at Sony-Ericsson; some of the Walkman phones are the best industrial design of the last three years. Against this, the Nokia 5800 looks ordinary. I won’t be clunking it on the table.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJToh0Zmy4D0PMvYJF3wJq0FY6g95y13-QQ2q0BPwbgHncaaecL-0ZSCH8JZrwgrYevC7wP7Rrodfyvrsqje_-DeOzTG_57tuYX_l3Z1MK1VGqPJ7G7gOMup1xnoLNPmvia2fB7uED-tI/s1600-h/5800-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJToh0Zmy4D0PMvYJF3wJq0FY6g95y13-QQ2q0BPwbgHncaaecL-0ZSCH8JZrwgrYevC7wP7Rrodfyvrsqje_-DeOzTG_57tuYX_l3Z1MK1VGqPJ7G7gOMup1xnoLNPmvia2fB7uED-tI/s320/5800-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5253415523377680866" border="0" /></a>But as the great scientist Richard Feynman said, “What do you care what other people think?” Because after 15 minutes playing with the 5800 I was in love. Smaller than the iPhone, it was designed to be operated with one hand. Finally, the music system, from download to playing, is simple and intuitive. It can play movies. It supports both keyboard typing and handwriting. It will record video up to the limit of the memory. Like the iPhone, it’s essentially a PDA that makes phone calls – with the added advantage that you can put your four most frequent contacts into a bar on the home page, allowing instant phone calls, texting or email. It also has very good stereo speakers, which I dread having to suffer from chavs on the Underground.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Will.I.Am – Visionary</span></span><br /><br />Although Nokia marketing isn’t flawless, they pulled the excellent stunt of bringing Will.I.Am on stage. Like all music stars, he started talking as though he had nothing planned, stopping in mid-sentence as though words were strangers to his mouth. But consider what he said: that the four minute song is a function of the technology it served, the vinyl disc and the CD. Since the Internet is infinite, what is an album nowadays? “Is a song four minutes any more? I don’t think so.”<br /><br />He threw up his web site for the song “Yes We Can”, written earlier this year for Barack Obama specifically for the Internet. After it was released he invited the world to make and upload their own version. He clicked to the resulting page, two portraits of him and Obama, but made up of everyone’s contributions, so that as the cursor passed over each face individual contributions blew up and became the lead audio version.<br /><br />So, he reasoned. If you can do that, why can’t you treat a song the same way? At a certain point, there might be a link into another piece of music, or when it’s played in a club the dancers could take a photo of themselves and upload it into the track, so their image becomes part of the song. This, he said, was what Black Eyed Peas were grappling with as they record their new album here in London – redefining the song.<br /><br />In parting, he said that the Obama song was given away on the Net because not everything is about money. “You’re supposed to make change with music.” Let’s see if Comes With Music achieves that.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhStWuulbde3ZUwDKHUCg-y5OeoRbBItl0VFZ_Pyklc0c0pjajv_mfzl4o7_YxzV-BRO9E6HPRY39yRzXEkATd43N0HiTyXSrASkKQYE6m9UXa6ygXF-bs69vQH5dQR6PlIQ0buJa8Tsn4/s1600-h/will.i.am.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhStWuulbde3ZUwDKHUCg-y5OeoRbBItl0VFZ_Pyklc0c0pjajv_mfzl4o7_YxzV-BRO9E6HPRY39yRzXEkATd43N0HiTyXSrASkKQYE6m9UXa6ygXF-bs69vQH5dQR6PlIQ0buJa8Tsn4/s320/will.i.am.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5253415825655401058" border="0" /></a>Will.i.am with job description<br /></div>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-35385403531488255032008-10-01T12:30:00.005+00:002008-10-01T12:36:20.667+00:00Saturday Night In SowetoFor the best Indian food in Jo’burg, go to Bismillah. It has bright fluorescent lighting and simple furniture because they’ve put all the finesse and passion into the food. It’s in a typical city street, across from an apartment block and amongst shops and cafes. As we’re walking back to the car [watched by “security” so it won’t be broken into or stolen] our hosts say that during apartheid this was the Indian part of the city, where they were forced to live and where whites came only to buy exotic groceries at the market. The images we used to see were of tin shack settlements in Soweto, but of course the entire city was segregated into go and no-go zones, dependent solely on your genetic heritage.<br /><br />We get into a discussion about the nuances of apartheid. As Indians they were second-class citizens, whereas the blacks were the machinery for production. So they could go into certain parts of town where blacks couldn’t. They could go to the park, but not sit down on the benches or grass, or use the toilet. As I’m listening to these subtle expressions of control I think about the Nazis, who passed laws in the 1930s banning Jews from riding bicycles, from using public spaces, from owning pets. In modern South Africa our hosts have overstretched themselves to move into a desirable, wealthy suburb as a statement of freedom to both their peers and their former rulers.<br /><br />Modern South Africa shows its freedom in some surprising ways. Sophiatown was an early township, until the government realised it was on profitable land and moved the entire population out to Soweto, then razed it for their own use. Now, Sophiatown is the name of a township theme restaurant, with corrugated tin roof and period photos of Miriam Makeba and Nelson Mandela during his trial. At night they burn wood in large tin-drum braziers to warm the patio. The waitresses all have t-shirts saying Shabeen Queen.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXv1WoKCOkwyTnNFvHKVsO5r-4-A19VitWmu0ULl9o6-7Evn7N5ySf16538ClZDJV3Iqh4AqGr62kKGS2ZSlgP5wEMz4fcK8n2qexachk82vOq7pZEI39YPMeMG6-a2gD25bLWN9kzBT4/s1600-h/130920081524.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXv1WoKCOkwyTnNFvHKVsO5r-4-A19VitWmu0ULl9o6-7Evn7N5ySf16538ClZDJV3Iqh4AqGr62kKGS2ZSlgP5wEMz4fcK8n2qexachk82vOq7pZEI39YPMeMG6-a2gD25bLWN9kzBT4/s320/130920081524.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5252162128504481106" border="0" /></a><br />We drive into Soweto past the mansions of millionaires, then turn the corner to see the old tin shacks. Driving through this city of three million, the juxtaposition of nice houses and corrugated tin shanties is continually played out. While social equality has come quickly, economic equality is taking far longer.<br /><br />Some walls have “billboards” painted on them. One brightly says:<br /><br />Dreamlocks Dreadlocks<br />It’s what yo dreadlocks have been dreaming of<br /><br />We drive over to the <a href="http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/hector-pieterson.htm">Hector Pieterson Museum</a>, honouring the first child to be killed in the uprising of 1976. The government had decided that if the machinery was to work smoothly, the cogs needed to understand orders correctly, so they passed a law requiring Sowetan schools to teach Afrikaans. (Since teachers didn’t speak Afrikaans how did they expect this to happen?) It mobilised the students and in the first protest march the police opened fire, killing Henry. By the end of the uprising an estimated 600 school children had been killed and 10,000 injured. But the actions of these courageous children started the end of apartheid.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbM2itP1-Exut3R35k2h7m4gpUSF0VyHwDumilSSWZhG1T122lC0mHi-r3SRvjjFrVg6JqFvHX9KQzIixIyYA2LkompeKdqoEWKh5K-Cj_KOy8cDXbW04RFaKBsTeEAf65uRv9P5MdjlQ/s1600-h/130920081529.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbM2itP1-Exut3R35k2h7m4gpUSF0VyHwDumilSSWZhG1T122lC0mHi-r3SRvjjFrVg6JqFvHX9KQzIixIyYA2LkompeKdqoEWKh5K-Cj_KOy8cDXbW04RFaKBsTeEAf65uRv9P5MdjlQ/s320/130920081529.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5252162542250874770" border="0" /></a><br />Vilakazi Street is the only street in the world to have the homes of two Nobel Prize winners: Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela. We stop at Mandela’s house but it is being renovated, hidden behind plywood panelling. So we walk down the hill to an outdoor restaurant and drink fine Namibean Windhoek beer as night falls. Our driver suggests we go somewhere else and soon we’re in a small, immaculately kept house, where his cousin is getting ready to go out and celebrate her birthday. Meanwhile we will have a party “that will make the roof fall down”. South African and American r’n’b plays as the women get ready and the men mix tumblers of whiskey with passionate political discussion. One says, “South Africa is confused. Of course we all voted for Mandela. Then, of course we all voted for Mbeki. But now we have choice.” Zuma, the heir apparent, has this day gotten off a rape charge and while the men are divided, the hostess is clear. “He raped a woman. What will he do to the country?”<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpAETKay9GQx0FQrmqFn59-PVr5HEg18wQEWscMJ6fRGju-XWGEvbUJHy1IvVwWkMi86oE6pBeQfCC4fLVfGgcDA8UGJvZIKXD-KTV5LZkvGf0BS-dilhdZyOEk5mg74a2m8_4Mrh18Ow/s1600-h/130920081533.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpAETKay9GQx0FQrmqFn59-PVr5HEg18wQEWscMJ6fRGju-XWGEvbUJHy1IvVwWkMi86oE6pBeQfCC4fLVfGgcDA8UGJvZIKXD-KTV5LZkvGf0BS-dilhdZyOEk5mg74a2m8_4Mrh18Ow/s320/130920081533.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5252162890772190754" border="0" /></a>Nelson Mandela's house under renovation. Note the No Guns sign on the bricks.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">We get in the cars and head for a shabeen. Some of the men driving are well past any legal limit. Yesterday the newspaper published a survey: 67% said they drive while drunk, 17% never drive when drinking, and 16% don’t know. Under the full moon the golden chains of city lights glint across the hills in every direction to the horizon.<br /><br />A shabeen is a club that’s inside someone’s home. We pull up to a large, modern two-story house with a generous patio enclosed by clear plastic curtains. Warmly greeted by the doorman, we step through the entrance into a sonic sea of house music pumping through the rooms, not too loud but mixed so that the bass is a pleasant physicalness against my chest. The patio is full of energetic people sitting at tables and dancing to the music. Next to the front door is a sign that says No Gun Zone. Two downstairs rooms are laid out like a restaurant and when people want to dance they just find a space next to their table. On the menu is a pudding called Soweto Uprising, which neatly describes both its history and what we’re enjoying right now.<br /><br />The seamless mix of music stretches time like someone pulling chewing gum wide apart. There is a bubbling energy and everyone is dressed for Saturday night. A series of images float into focus: a lady in large glasses and a pink poor-boy cap making minute adjustments to it until the angle meets satisfaction. People dancing as naturally as they walk. Men in pastel blue, pink and green t-shirts, circling the rooms as they check out the action. A very large lady in tight yellow clothing enters the door and immediately attracts admirers, who touch her, flatter her, dance beside her. Four women drink and dance, working out moves, having a dance competition, ignoring the men who circle and cut between them.<br /><br />At 3.30 we leave. The van turns a corner and in front of us several hundred young men fill the street, moving and socialising to music blasting from a car stereo. They are all under 18, too young to get into the shabeens, so they take their party to the street. Thirty-two years ago, these were the youths who decided they wouldn’t take it anymore.<br /></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-21600145869904457452008-09-30T07:23:00.004+00:002008-09-30T07:29:26.409+00:00Moshito: Festival in The Desert & Comrade FatsoEveryone wants to go to the Festival In The Desert. Mani, the festival producer, glides through our desire to get free tickets with alacrity. The people who have been (mostly journalists) make it clear that this is not a day on the grass before going home to the jacuzzi. "Two months later you’re still getting sand out of your ears," says Daniel from French radio. Somehow that makes it sound more desirable. Mani says that about 10,000 people attend, transported for two hours from the airport across the desert in 4x4s. They stay in tents and use makeshift toilets and rudimentary showers. We’re making plans, people from Berlin, London, Johannesburg, wondering if we can get the kids out of school for a week, whether we have the money. What a global village we’ve become when we can say, and mean it, "See you in Timbuctoo next January".<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_6svt1eu-uYacIXsLHmqrDYhOTB7bl7uFGcDcC1WqptipKyT57iHTzW5zAsx8J5A01PoiWqfhUXLirq0uIv1-L8H_igEbTqp9XZOHwQ3FqezUxEnL47lcFhkHq-j-8pUqkMBQi3C2ZAk/s1600-h/110920081452.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_6svt1eu-uYacIXsLHmqrDYhOTB7bl7uFGcDcC1WqptipKyT57iHTzW5zAsx8J5A01PoiWqfhUXLirq0uIv1-L8H_igEbTqp9XZOHwQ3FqezUxEnL47lcFhkHq-j-8pUqkMBQi3C2ZAk/s320/110920081452.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5251711889696909730" border="0" /></a>Mani at work.<br /></div><br />The musical event of the week is Comrade Fatso and Chabvondoka. Fatso is a white Zimbabwean with dreadlocks to his waist. He bounds on to the stage and immediately wants to hear some noise from the crowd. He’s charismatic, energetic and has no fear. He is not fat. Chabvondoka is a trio: a drummer who plays like a percussionist, a six-string bass player that rumbles like Bootsy and builds complex rhythms that don’t do what basslines are meant to do, and a guitarist who does that Zimbabwean thing of playing guitar like he’s playing an mbira.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSIihzg00ah2zF0Zmg3YoOFG-5WPI_KGTjf_we0DQmuO2bEFKaV2cISTrY826ak2z6sCZyaX9tcWveL-6glYhkDrfs0sv3Mxwj6Nqx7Z_YR8Nb9I571vfPd5K8s7IAYv6P9yxtj0GCrfg/s1600-h/120920081480.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSIihzg00ah2zF0Zmg3YoOFG-5WPI_KGTjf_we0DQmuO2bEFKaV2cISTrY826ak2z6sCZyaX9tcWveL-6glYhkDrfs0sv3Mxwj6Nqx7Z_YR8Nb9I571vfPd5K8s7IAYv6P9yxtj0GCrfg/s320/120920081480.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5251712184757116146" border="0" /></a><br />Fatso raps about hunger, identity, the struggle. As he warns us, even the love song sounds like a political rap. I’ve never before thought about what it’s like to be a white underground agitator in Zimbabwe and I bet you haven’t either. I’m guessing he ducks and dives on a daily basis. He has a great line in hardbitten humour: "We didn’t come here to do a gig. We came to shop for groceries. If you go to the shops tomorrow and the shelves are empty, that’s us!" He looks down at the guy videoing the performance. "I hope your good, because there’s no authorisation." He looks up at us. "In my country if you don’t have authorisation to make videos you’re taken away and beaten up." He looks down at the cameraman again with a hard look. "So. Do you have authorisation?" The band kick off the next song.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr19RiazEDN3z_wTrgvxquPdlmzGV93saVZ7KHjnrGz1DpXg-Lmr1DSQdq_qm4CrDCyrKs_DJkd7NvBnETET3TRm3k4YmBxgjTNM148Axm63n_x8pfwlPc10EVR52ZmCLA6J_lek3IlsI/s1600-h/120920081484.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr19RiazEDN3z_wTrgvxquPdlmzGV93saVZ7KHjnrGz1DpXg-Lmr1DSQdq_qm4CrDCyrKs_DJkd7NvBnETET3TRm3k4YmBxgjTNM148Axm63n_x8pfwlPc10EVR52ZmCLA6J_lek3IlsI/s320/120920081484.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5251712437432935442" border="0" /></a><br />The music is stunning – loud, aggressive, fun, full of delicious beats. As the songs keep pouring off the stage it just gets better and better. At one point I’m thinking, "I’ve never heard this sound before."<br /><br />On the dancefloor the cameraman starts dancing with a delicious woman with a great line in booty bouncing. Another man steps in and in West Side Story choreography fights off the cameraman, who steps away with his hands in the air in defeat. After bumping hips with the woman the victor leaves her and steps across the floor to further threaten the cameraman, who’s back is turned, hands in the air, shaking his head in meekness. But then he turns and struts across the floor, muscles in between the couple and rotates around until the three are shaking and strutting as one unit to the rumbling bass and percussion.<br /><br />When Fatso announces that CDs are for sale at the door I’m straight up there. It doesn’t sound urgent the way it did on stage, but I dig it. There’s a lot of love and attention in it and it deserves your love and attention as well.<br /><br />You can buy it off their Web site. You won’t be disappointed.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.comradefatso.com">http://www.comradefatso.com</a>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-85289309328069598182008-09-26T07:54:00.007+00:002008-09-26T08:04:49.807+00:00Moshito – Faces of AfricaThey’re not cynical here. It takes time to get used to it. People’s faces are open to discovery, to knowing who you are, what you have to say. The other morning three of us were talking and one of the young staff suddenly stood before us, shaking our hands just to say hello. When I wrote before that the handshake is sensuous, I meant that it’s not a crushing macho hold but a soft communication. It says: we’re together in this moment, you and I. They don’t let go immediately, as though some energy needs to flow between us as well as our words.<br /><br />This is Eric, from Benin. He heads a pan-West African organisation that is promoting the area’s music as well as building basic systems in Benin, Togo and other countries so that artists can get royalties for the first time.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgihEycxI1Ci8_4XFu4O3QHhRDoWxJa-JdftzGQggrpEI08cU9dTjGn4a8fLlfEU_Qyqno_5SxrjL131crMFO0iZOwPTqFgjrJykZqY2H7RNSQ2DOCUW-4GZAUKwbd833FyeY0kicMeXv8/s1600-h/120920081476.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgihEycxI1Ci8_4XFu4O3QHhRDoWxJa-JdftzGQggrpEI08cU9dTjGn4a8fLlfEU_Qyqno_5SxrjL131crMFO0iZOwPTqFgjrJykZqY2H7RNSQ2DOCUW-4GZAUKwbd833FyeY0kicMeXv8/s320/120920081476.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250236084140993138" border="0" /></a><br />Anabel is one of the Moshito conference organisers. She’s from Soweto.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiis2nYmjpjFTv3TfZB6g-TWQAIdZynN_wk-s5Qf8g0e7niWVL20nX72KOdTHgS7paF5ji2FGbhdrSB_Ymetbcv9azFgj1PkXazpziWWva_iGZ-v7dHhRBEuGzDMJm2xdRqBsAtMNTpPG8/s1600-h/120920081473.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiis2nYmjpjFTv3TfZB6g-TWQAIdZynN_wk-s5Qf8g0e7niWVL20nX72KOdTHgS7paF5ji2FGbhdrSB_Ymetbcv9azFgj1PkXazpziWWva_iGZ-v7dHhRBEuGzDMJm2xdRqBsAtMNTpPG8/s320/120920081473.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250236317685219602" border="0" /></a><br />Definitely the hairstyle of the day.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmI5tKraQe0bK5y689fXAGceyGQ7COnOv5Pxm4x1AE3gibdbqcnnOe4PpN_P4NNM2iHE2EbtJ0e_pkynw84QKkfLEXbOJFR7zrSjF1yp0UuOlJFOmRK2eszpzJgFGgnK0TOYFW4PivV4A/s1600-h/120920081467.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmI5tKraQe0bK5y689fXAGceyGQ7COnOv5Pxm4x1AE3gibdbqcnnOe4PpN_P4NNM2iHE2EbtJ0e_pkynw84QKkfLEXbOJFR7zrSjF1yp0UuOlJFOmRK2eszpzJgFGgnK0TOYFW4PivV4A/s320/120920081467.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250237059458824418" border="0" /></a><br />There’s a library worth of stories in this mans face.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikxVy0dLfVuS-0s6_PgEZ2CCEm4QhZB9N-xJfx26AUrzIHXyHNQQ2aNB99FWaW-yY4EXiskcXiXQ_wnaP4tx67nzZmtyyjiLy98jNnunaPGm6Z_DNqKKmgnIywFahFzqOWAgbDnCAZDO8/s1600-h/120920081471.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikxVy0dLfVuS-0s6_PgEZ2CCEm4QhZB9N-xJfx26AUrzIHXyHNQQ2aNB99FWaW-yY4EXiskcXiXQ_wnaP4tx67nzZmtyyjiLy98jNnunaPGm6Z_DNqKKmgnIywFahFzqOWAgbDnCAZDO8/s320/120920081471.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250237491844934130" border="0" /></a><br />Gerald Seligman (American) heads Womex, the music festival organisation. Dudu Sarr (Senegalese) manages musicians and organises tours.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8yGf0rWT8sUaCgGNWsBJGe5iUmfCjsjdBRY5cX4jplzpkS0k-1Ky1dzVteXWKASTUFiPocJxcmLd_PY5PpoKOifWD0Gg1X2ZJ_BsVpvphr5BgMVslZFB66PeECo5pw9Yt-oaIiqR8b6c/s1600-h/120920081468.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8yGf0rWT8sUaCgGNWsBJGe5iUmfCjsjdBRY5cX4jplzpkS0k-1Ky1dzVteXWKASTUFiPocJxcmLd_PY5PpoKOifWD0Gg1X2ZJ_BsVpvphr5BgMVslZFB66PeECo5pw9Yt-oaIiqR8b6c/s320/120920081468.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250237732189315666" border="0" /></a><br />Hip hop star? Fashion icon?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWWw1PRyqmCPZu16AUd1SVl-WiNkO3XtpbZ6CEPxxIlbnXkiFo6DKn6iGJpbE0z499A-_wddg1BGXz9slYSXunkkMEwcOYkUEFeBx81y-2hUaJDGCD1_li0wGa0aoolWJRv6wSqZy20qo/s1600-h/120920081474.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWWw1PRyqmCPZu16AUd1SVl-WiNkO3XtpbZ6CEPxxIlbnXkiFo6DKn6iGJpbE0z499A-_wddg1BGXz9slYSXunkkMEwcOYkUEFeBx81y-2hUaJDGCD1_li0wGa0aoolWJRv6wSqZy20qo/s320/120920081474.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5250235696690778434" border="0" /></a>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-66656213468241062742008-09-25T08:08:00.005+00:002008-09-25T08:15:34.606+00:00Moshito Conference – Day 2Today is the 31st anniversary of Steve Biko’s death at the hands of the Police, so an important day in South Africa. It’s also the day that Sout African President Mbeki has brokered a compromise in Zimbabwe between Mugabe and Tsvangerei. To celebrate, ere’s a photo of a Zimbabwean $50,000,000 note. That’s right – the inflation is so astronomical that everyone is a billionaire. The note has an expiry date on it as well! So after June 2008, this note ceased to be legal tender.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj414WLG1ZNNGx-VoZvx2qJq2eJMDSh84Xj6RaVgdbN_YSPaaTinGwXPVQ9QNRD9czxE7bBzix7_h2tua0ylwmzFk-58mYhnynwYcLj2F9WsHMb5MqU4ifDOg5GgWwmjVspzbMQHZRxQ8g/s1600-h/110920081457.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj414WLG1ZNNGx-VoZvx2qJq2eJMDSh84Xj6RaVgdbN_YSPaaTinGwXPVQ9QNRD9czxE7bBzix7_h2tua0ylwmzFk-58mYhnynwYcLj2F9WsHMb5MqU4ifDOg5GgWwmjVspzbMQHZRxQ8g/s320/110920081457.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249868107393155778" border="0" /></a><br />I’m at the conference to speak about new music formats and trends on the Net and mobile phones, as well as a talk on how to do promotion and marketing using these tools. It’s pretty sobering to learn that South Africa has a 9% Internet penetration and only 3% of the nation use it. We take so much for granted. So a good part of the session was spent talking about how mobile phones can be used to spread the word about your music; everyone can get a text message on their phone, so we went from exotic Net apps to very basic stuff pretty quickly! The sessions themselves were really enjoyable but it’s the whole experience that I’m treasuring.<br /><br />The music juice started at lunchtime when a Zimbabwean guitarist gave an acoustic performance. Unfortunately I didn’t get his name, because he was stunning, playing really intense highlife on an acoustic guitar. It’s one thing to hear those riffs on three electric guitars; it’s jaw-dropping when one guy does it all with an acoustic.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj41oQrqDuq9sp4EqMlnyfwPJag-Grqc76TyqGszx3WKZ0AFM1BIKoOyKgrhbhxLjgcvhABo4XRNBIaX9Gnd5VcMyrdO1eLirRjeNqjU7PIfbcDl9k0rkVCqeeKPQ3QNdcQygsiBWpBEB0/s1600-h/110920081456.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj41oQrqDuq9sp4EqMlnyfwPJag-Grqc76TyqGszx3WKZ0AFM1BIKoOyKgrhbhxLjgcvhABo4XRNBIaX9Gnd5VcMyrdO1eLirRjeNqjU7PIfbcDl9k0rkVCqeeKPQ3QNdcQygsiBWpBEB0/s320/110920081456.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249868345466763250" border="0" /></a><br />In the evening a young Soweto group called The Soil gave an outstanding acapella performance. Together five years, they have yet to make a record. Their voices were a fabulous blend, with intricate harmonies that gave the sound real drive and rhythm. One of them told me later that they have nothing against instruments but they want to remain true to the spirit of acapella. I was standing about six feet from them during the first number. The girl was looking and sounding nervous, when they came to a change in the song. Almost involuntarily she moved back slightly, her face changed expression and she leaned into the mic, her voice suddenly intense and deeper, lost in music. The whole group lifted at the same time and it really took off. I started thinking about how I was listening to the oldest music there is, in the continent where it started. They told me their name comes from the fact that God created us from the soil and everything meaningful is made of the earth, so their name is in honour of Him.<br /><br />If this photo of them singing is unseeable, blame my crappy phone camera.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCo215eCTwHGxFaZCs-esxtl-RbKAKEA3i9IdBNHSfMi2l4_dQJ-_7UaVesPT5BuwRRiyP0lXz8xo5NKFvJ-_BXZ2p_Ca2VlASbgxWF66Zzn6AdACcOUq63n5ocfyDRCoSlCxU_XC341I/s1600-h/110920081459.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCo215eCTwHGxFaZCs-esxtl-RbKAKEA3i9IdBNHSfMi2l4_dQJ-_7UaVesPT5BuwRRiyP0lXz8xo5NKFvJ-_BXZ2p_Ca2VlASbgxWF66Zzn6AdACcOUq63n5ocfyDRCoSlCxU_XC341I/s320/110920081459.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249868575852103634" border="0" /></a><br />In the lobby of the restaurant where they sang is this photo of Miriam Makeba, taken in 1958. The dress she’s wearing is burnt orange in colour, made from two-way stretch bathing suit fabric. Just looking at it makes me wish I was there. We’re going to try and get to the place where there’s an archive of this photography from the 50s and 60s.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCqBTt9zepXlh8fwnRMO0xuKHrRUA5qG-otWJnEbL9mWGiNxkIjllHxisqEL3S903LWc-zY9MaBUSpgiPI34KGsrPLFRlcezqbQqNQ0SWg01W9hARJdtx-xrL08uXN9JHT6icmJMnovbw/s1600-h/110920081462.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCqBTt9zepXlh8fwnRMO0xuKHrRUA5qG-otWJnEbL9mWGiNxkIjllHxisqEL3S903LWc-zY9MaBUSpgiPI34KGsrPLFRlcezqbQqNQ0SWg01W9hARJdtx-xrL08uXN9JHT6icmJMnovbw/s320/110920081462.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249868800694776226" border="0" /></a><br />Then it was across the road to Nikki’s Oasis, a longtime home of live music. I’m getting the impression that Jo’Burg doesn’t do clubs the way we do – this was more like a café with some booths and a low stage. The band onstage couldn’t have been more than 20 and launched into a great interpretation of Miles as we entered (blame the Hanepeet wine on my lack of memory). As someone remarked, this was real jazz, not that noodly stuff. The drummer was exceptional, always with his foot on the beat, even in his most Elvin Jones flurries. He was rewarded with some intense dancing by some of the audience. They also gave us all a first – towards the end of the last piece they started packing up their instruments while they were still playing!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzc0_YGLnUZ-x3fRUfO9VuHkJGqEu7EuHcnvbVN357S69O_SavpNcFG0r_7TsxTmpbBSRFaf_p-ySRUJCvanClEmaWTKjlZ1DpV3K-F7rrkNYPKGmT7RyBbRnFZ45j5p4RjHhGdFZB6Xw/s1600-h/110920081463.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzc0_YGLnUZ-x3fRUfO9VuHkJGqEu7EuHcnvbVN357S69O_SavpNcFG0r_7TsxTmpbBSRFaf_p-ySRUJCvanClEmaWTKjlZ1DpV3K-F7rrkNYPKGmT7RyBbRnFZ45j5p4RjHhGdFZB6Xw/s320/110920081463.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249869017579399650" border="0" /></a><br />Jazz fans at work. The man in the white shirt is dancing without spilling the cocktail in his hand.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk-wHLuRSG4pFhdL3M4jR4hUABsopHTyo9FATLXZgjQ0rBEQM5kC2Yn6eR99i37TVNn_JtG3BD3RfMfVJJJDg-84BsIUVcx0TYw2QKE2i8xF3_cbZ0cys_a-noJ7UVL7TrjYRC_k4iCm4/s1600-h/110920081464.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk-wHLuRSG4pFhdL3M4jR4hUABsopHTyo9FATLXZgjQ0rBEQM5kC2Yn6eR99i37TVNn_JtG3BD3RfMfVJJJDg-84BsIUVcx0TYw2QKE2i8xF3_cbZ0cys_a-noJ7UVL7TrjYRC_k4iCm4/s320/110920081464.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249869277761445426" border="0" /></a>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-26058783097570542212008-09-23T11:25:00.003+00:002008-09-23T11:32:03.699+00:00Moshito Music Conference – JohannesburgTen days ago I received a very unexpected invitation to speak at the Moshito Music Conference in Johannesburg. It took about three seconds to say yes. I’ve never been to South Africa – heck, I’ve never been to Africa – and I didn’t know what to expect, but the high points have come from very unexpected places.<br /><br />Moshito is a three day conference investigating all aspects of the music business, not just in South Africa but throughout the continent. So I’m speaking to guys from Benin, Tanzania, Senegal, Nigeria and Mali as well. Two things have stuck out: the musicality of the Zulu language, which people speak in parallel with English, so that conversations drop in and out of both seemingly at random. The other is how men shake hands. It’s sensuous. It lingers. It involves a series of clasps and touches, and it’s soft. It’s a language in itself.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUpPYJl-ajkur1UfvkmSmjeNsN4S3TQvTf3dynyGesS7KjRJAOeSfqK_g8u6QqB3_1DvGy9fjh45o6h-vDcpQ7rHKMOeQgrmSAv8vo5YkDtmS3GmiCUjXuTTYgi14dns7aU89EHqsoKVk/s1600-h/100920081448.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUpPYJl-ajkur1UfvkmSmjeNsN4S3TQvTf3dynyGesS7KjRJAOeSfqK_g8u6QqB3_1DvGy9fjh45o6h-vDcpQ7rHKMOeQgrmSAv8vo5YkDtmS3GmiCUjXuTTYgi14dns7aU89EHqsoKVk/s320/100920081448.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249177131246301858" border="0" /></a><br />This morning we got to the venue about 9am, just as the doors were to open. The staff – mostly students – were singing the same kind of music before they started work. It rocked.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpYcMr1bO8tDYx_EL18Zt0bH86iOhE9ld_sJzwKDEqNlkmlmAQ5AuNR9m4Tf7OGIrT3K6CLF6OtAUHedGdqind5Q8xxBYvJA4YJPE3Na5UETQhueyUkaYiyG1USTBekp9Tx9YQdjn9Gc4/s1600-h/110920081451.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpYcMr1bO8tDYx_EL18Zt0bH86iOhE9ld_sJzwKDEqNlkmlmAQ5AuNR9m4Tf7OGIrT3K6CLF6OtAUHedGdqind5Q8xxBYvJA4YJPE3Na5UETQhueyUkaYiyG1USTBekp9Tx9YQdjn9Gc4/s320/110920081451.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249177551403162530" border="0" /></a>The Conference staff<br /></div>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-2766122571407768042008-07-31T08:21:00.005+00:002008-11-13T04:42:54.875+00:00The Problem With “Music Pirates”Discussions about major music labels are usually vehemently negative, but there are a couple of things they do quite well. One is the ability to market an artist around the world in a very short time and within a few months create a global phenomenon. But in the wake of yesterday’s news that British ISPs have agreed to start monitoring their customers for illegally downloading music, the newspapers typically used a headline that employed the easy phrase “Music Pirates”. And I realised that perhaps I was wrong about music labels and their marketing skills.<br /><br />In deciding to call it piracy the labels have made the theft of music seem cool and perhaps even something to aspire to.<br /><br />This is a music pirate:<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbHptRZX62G679KBw3pZ7zqzQGJ8qtxr3vFF51q7gcWg4eT4JJ8R8JWnfPlvgrKbJa65OLUpBt5pPqgYxRaJjVpjxKB-6sl4mNadFRkH0BhG0NKz-bEDn_M8sPBHhT7FLE6N6u9vkXahQ/s1600-h/keith-richards-pirate.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbHptRZX62G679KBw3pZ7zqzQGJ8qtxr3vFF51q7gcWg4eT4JJ8R8JWnfPlvgrKbJa65OLUpBt5pPqgYxRaJjVpjxKB-6sl4mNadFRkH0BhG0NKz-bEDn_M8sPBHhT7FLE6N6u9vkXahQ/s320/keith-richards-pirate.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229090975030953218" border="0" /></a>Who wouldn’t want to imagine themselves looking roguish and buccaneerish like that? No, you’re right, only the truly demented. But how about his son?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyi7TmvXFUQSKHMNd0jevrj9Ijb5rtjU8VFxkbJUXIJcsYzJDl0fZcbNZ2WQIOREj78jVk_32yCbZ-C74QAlx5hWTTduoxBx-XLZumPN7PSI6gdifU2AA8WARs5-jcl838FGq22ebrkZI/s1600-h/johnny_depp1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyi7TmvXFUQSKHMNd0jevrj9Ijb5rtjU8VFxkbJUXIJcsYzJDl0fZcbNZ2WQIOREj78jVk_32yCbZ-C74QAlx5hWTTduoxBx-XLZumPN7PSI6gdifU2AA8WARs5-jcl838FGq22ebrkZI/s320/johnny_depp1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229090880715526882" border="0" /></a><br />It’s easy to fantasize being a pirate surfing on seas of data in search of elusive treasure like that live show of [insert favourite band here]. If you need assistance to imagine what a sea of data might look like, crack open William Gibson’s <span style="font-style: italic;">Neuromancer</span>. His descriptions are more urban, but the adjectives and metaphors can be easily hijacked. You’re a pirate, after all.<br /><br />The problem is, use the term “pirates” and pretty soon you have this:<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgimPx7gmvSFJzSkAbK-ducbysA2SAGpUoWD48L3g76FIVtQ83-B4E3yWodJi8RXw9gMvjSUxAYIKapX_Lo5YCey0KyqdhqSIL6WSJ_6k0MhLkwxSdkDVCk2mOzZzhXOnJIHyfZvyMSCN0/s1600-h/PirateBay_1_NETT_26916d.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgimPx7gmvSFJzSkAbK-ducbysA2SAGpUoWD48L3g76FIVtQ83-B4E3yWodJi8RXw9gMvjSUxAYIKapX_Lo5YCey0KyqdhqSIL6WSJ_6k0MhLkwxSdkDVCk2mOzZzhXOnJIHyfZvyMSCN0/s320/PirateBay_1_NETT_26916d.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229090773815896370" border="0" /></a><br />Worse, they do this:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAjIqxKFhb7FhVwQiDwRKu3EnXbfUZopmLA07f0b1iLuEJwFs516B2jaUXEsHunsBWL09_MxOV6nzZDbX2aYj7TD5pB39xRHPLzVPAK2FnZT8I8hrJUCJHGBdK5NzOrg7sfik8NVCyqaM/s1600-h/pirate+bay+-+hollywood.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAjIqxKFhb7FhVwQiDwRKu3EnXbfUZopmLA07f0b1iLuEJwFs516B2jaUXEsHunsBWL09_MxOV6nzZDbX2aYj7TD5pB39xRHPLzVPAK2FnZT8I8hrJUCJHGBdK5NzOrg7sfik8NVCyqaM/s320/pirate+bay+-+hollywood.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229090671055239986" border="0" /></a>That’s right, not just someone who wants to mess with you, but someone who wants to mess with your American cultural-imperialistic ways.<br /><br />But call them a music thief and the romance diminishes. Thieves rob convenience stores and mug little old ladies. Where’s the romance in that? A thief looks like this:<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgcjJA_jpdQjRMniW3bOUGIPHeq5BHRmUY9dD0nnF_vFS93g5nBnsxCuXL1mpNuGAKEYRmCuTyIk6ETXRP3I901aZTQmClyIkwmHLRmh3xYZyEk1spiSxAfIhgQk223bGaCzkHrabqO_k/s1600-h/crime-car-thief.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgcjJA_jpdQjRMniW3bOUGIPHeq5BHRmUY9dD0nnF_vFS93g5nBnsxCuXL1mpNuGAKEYRmCuTyIk6ETXRP3I901aZTQmClyIkwmHLRmh3xYZyEk1spiSxAfIhgQk223bGaCzkHrabqO_k/s320/crime-car-thief.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5229090556561337634" border="0" /></a><br />Let’s add ripping off my car stereo to the list of what these losers do.<br /><br />So to diminish music thievery, music labels need to get wise with the marketing. Stop associating the illegal acquisition of music with guys who swagger around galleon decks wearing beads in their hair and recraft it in the image of that thieving little hoodie hanging around the street corner outside. The only person who thinks he’s cool is another thickhead. Achieve that connection and artists everywhere will rest easier, knowing that the music labels have once more protected their works and can concentrate on the business of selling to customers, not suing them.Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-51146557751182239882008-07-09T17:46:00.001+00:002008-07-09T17:48:01.704+00:00ASCAP Wants to Charge the Government Royalties for Music Played at Guantanamo BayAccording to <span style="font-style: italic;">Wired</span>, the American rights organisation ASCAP wants to collect royalties from the US Government for music played over and over to wear down detainees at the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison. The song of choice has been David Gray’s “Babylon”, a choice about which Gray has been very upset.<br /><br />There is a precedent in that some collection agencies deem nursing homes, hospitals and prisons to be “public places” and therefore liable to pay royalties on any music played on those spaces. Whether the Government would even consider paying is not known.<br /><br />Read the full story <a href="http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/07/does-us-governm.html">here</a>.Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-12239051339188268002008-07-01T20:48:00.007+00:002008-11-13T04:42:55.308+00:00Scarcity Part 2: Gang of Four & The Tom Tom Club<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpvgeIF8TnKzza8shVHGYfvvc3dKhVVctycjvRE_Xi0lqhRie-VsS01m1rp2H4Me8Owqv7atO1cchqslxN-yFZKIsV7FUe3Aqqpr0CubVgATFXb9KkYt5tIPnQuaJENFVRbC01P0mTS_M/s1600-h/250620081428.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpvgeIF8TnKzza8shVHGYfvvc3dKhVVctycjvRE_Xi0lqhRie-VsS01m1rp2H4Me8Owqv7atO1cchqslxN-yFZKIsV7FUe3Aqqpr0CubVgATFXb9KkYt5tIPnQuaJENFVRbC01P0mTS_M/s320/250620081428.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218152832781768034" border="0" /></a>The Gang of Four are belting out a funky tune called “Love Like Anthrax” – whose chorus goes<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">“Love will get you like a dose of anthrax/<br />And that is something I don’t want to catch”<br /></div><br />and I start thinking that perhaps this isn’t an appropriate message for the two teenage girls standing next to me. Another chorus goes<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">“I’m thinking that I love you/<br />But I know it’s only lust”,<br /></div><br />and it dawns on me, since the girls are wearing Access All Areas passes, that maybe they’re watching their parents on stage. Now that must be weird, especially if Dad is happily married.<br /><br />When Dave Allen left Gang of Four back in the early 80s in the middle of a US tour, the band found an incredible bassist called Busta Cherry Jones to help carry on. When Dave and drummer Hugo Burnham left this time, a few weeks before their Meltdown Festival appearance, it made me wonder what rabbit would be pulled from the hat. The sight of a female skinhead entering the darkened stage and I knew it was okay – Bowie bassist Gayle Ann Dorsey was on hand. New drummer Mark Heaney matched her in elegant intensity.<br /><br />As singer Jon King said, Gang of Four don’t play very often, so the crowd was immediately on its feet and cheering from the get-go. When they first appeared almost 30 years ago their sound was unique, yet another fresh route careening away from the main road of punk, a compelling drive of funk rhythm, keening chords and feedback sandpapering against desolate lyrics. Not a combination to conquer the charts; even at their peak of popularity it felt like a special club. Only in the past few years have we learned that those funky rhythms have inspired many a modern Ferdinand.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcyKV8yBxoj_K2vG4Tzc7A73qhqA2M5HLCykCIpTBXPBe-Ffk9OZmDrX38rKsYNN7C-dN41langj5rLvJAUKVWlLixWeOUY1mRoyLIWxRXTDFZEw6myR-Uc5-V8v2C0RrjjSGP-j1V7tM/s1600-h/200620081406.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcyKV8yBxoj_K2vG4Tzc7A73qhqA2M5HLCykCIpTBXPBe-Ffk9OZmDrX38rKsYNN7C-dN41langj5rLvJAUKVWlLixWeOUY1mRoyLIWxRXTDFZEw6myR-Uc5-V8v2C0RrjjSGP-j1V7tM/s320/200620081406.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218153556824295138" border="0" /></a>The band mostly played from their first album, ‘Entertainment’. Maybe it was a subtle message. The later highlight was “I Love A Man In A Uniform”, Jon revealing that the US Air Force had wanted to use it in a recruitment ad, showing that the military is, as expected, free of irony. The rhythm section was finely tuned and powerful – perhaps it helps to dive in at the very deep end. Jon and Andy played only as people who’ve been together a long time can. It probably helps that they haven’t played the songs to death.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3iRM3zWnoJNHlP3yLfDhnCyNbDoUXEBG8aBrND8P3sRWvKF-ixcTRF376hrvOt9s8FChBKmj_vlUOleGfGsPnLqKD5KlhoH3tkun5zEuXUk8nS820aatYBaHNomluSZZNMHeq6H4Y-9g/s1600-h/200620081404.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3iRM3zWnoJNHlP3yLfDhnCyNbDoUXEBG8aBrND8P3sRWvKF-ixcTRF376hrvOt9s8FChBKmj_vlUOleGfGsPnLqKD5KlhoH3tkun5zEuXUk8nS820aatYBaHNomluSZZNMHeq6H4Y-9g/s320/200620081404.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5218150489712412146" border="0" /></a>Over 25 years you can forget the details of what a band can be like on stage. I remembered Andy Gill staring at the crowd as he Fendered huge chunking chords and painful feedback attack, but I’d forgotten what a lunatic Jon King is. In the course of the night he used three different mic stands, jerked in a floor-clearing dance, and lost the buttons on his shirt. No surprise then when he got out a baseball bat and demolished a microwave oven to the beat.<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span>The Tom Tom Club was a rhythm section spin-off from Talking Heads, popular at the same time as Gof4. Their take on bootylicious rhythms, however, had a very different effect. “Genius Of Love” immediately spawned a number of 12” spinoffs, including the equally cool “Genius Of Rap”. Mariah Carey built one of her biggest hits around a sample of its hook. Tonight, they dropped it halfway through the set. It has one of my favourite lyrical hooks: “He’s the genius of love/He’s so neat.” (Bet Mariah couldn’t write that innocently.) The place went mental because it still sounded so damn fresh. They followed it with their first hit, “Wordy Rappinghood”, a paen to their favourite dance artists and another trove of clever words. From there on it was a big party. They encored with “Take Me To The River”, and while Tina Weymouth would hate to hear it, Talking Heads used to do it much better.Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-16079197635056089172008-06-26T12:28:00.003+00:002008-11-13T04:42:55.435+00:00Scarcity Part 1: Yellow Magic Orchestra Live In London<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Sometimes I stay awake at night worrying about the important stuff in life, things like: do the Japanese have heritage acts? I’ll sleep easily tonight; they do! </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Exhibit A: The Sadistic Mika Band. In the mid-70s they moulded an obsession with Roxy Music, David Bowie and shopping on the King’s Road into a delightful output of songs that often included “boogie” in the title. They went through seven variations before calling it a day. But a quick search on YouTube shows them back at it in 2003 and again in 2006. Is this relevant to my story? It is for their drummer Yukihiro Takahashi. He was – is – also a member of…</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: lucida grande;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Exhibit B: Yellow Magic Orchestra. Yes, Yukihiro drums in <i>two</i> heritage acts, plus he’s a solo artist – that’s one better than Phil Collins! YMO don’t have song titles with “boogie” in them; their most obvious influence is Deutsche knob twiddlers Kraftwerk. Except for one album. By 1983 it was plain that being arty and singing in English wasn’t going to make them a major act, so they did a cool album of cheeky J-pop and cleaned up. They called it ‘Bad Boys’. Then film directors knocked on poster boy Ryuichi Sakamoto’s door and a few high-profile film soundtracks later YMO was just an entry in their musical resumes. But after twenty years to temper their mutual dislike they played at Live Earth and again last year. Did they complete their ascendancy to heritage godocracy? Check the global library that is YouTube and, yes they did; they made a Kirin Beer commercial.</span><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/pZ8tK3iFTpw&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/pZ8tK3iFTpw&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Just look at this photo. Do this look like a heritage act to you?</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyeQeEwtvi9ZaUA1uJZZVZw2kWYnay7HnitMrHwkfupHxRJIrMzWLLZa24MneWCyZePn1LW5MFlSiw7Bh9XNC92kNoifUN7wyW9d0kVrJj6GnBCSavEuKDTG0XnxzWdyv-a4nsgi-WVPU/s1600-h/yellowmagic3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyeQeEwtvi9ZaUA1uJZZVZw2kWYnay7HnitMrHwkfupHxRJIrMzWLLZa24MneWCyZePn1LW5MFlSiw7Bh9XNC92kNoifUN7wyW9d0kVrJj6GnBCSavEuKDTG0XnxzWdyv-a4nsgi-WVPU/s320/yellowmagic3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5216166168542162962" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Of course it does! Three grumpy old men having to stand next to each other for publicity.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">They’re not topping up the pension fund by actually touring though. Asked by Massive Attack to play at the Meltdown Festival at Royal Festival Hall, they’re managing one other gig in Spain. That’s it for Europe.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The three of them spanned the stage, standing behind small instrument arrays. Behind them were three supplementary musicians working laptops, downing them to play heavily treated guitar and mandolin, and flugelhorn. They didn’t talk. To each other or the audience. Black clothes and silver hair, black synths and silver MacBooks….it looked cool.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">In a situation like this, there’s always the possibility that the evening will be a wallow in nostalgia. Not here. The songs were from all over the back catalogue, run through a blender of what’s tickling their current artistic itch. Basically, they’re into static and pre-Cambrian sounding electronic music sounds, layering them into and over the music. At times it clashed and at times it flowed, at times you wanted them to stop (now!) and at times it sounded very special. Where some of the music pieces originally were quite repetitious, now the rich texture of sound often progressed in micro-variations that made me think someone has Terry Riley’s ‘Rainbow In Curved Air’ in Most-Played on the i-Pod.</span></span><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/FMAVup9EiHI&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/FMAVup9EiHI&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Playing “Riot In Lagos” in 2007<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Each of the trio had moments of musical bravura, but for me the starlight of the night was Yukihiro. Halfway through he moved from his electronics to a drum kit, proving to be a snapping funk drummer. But on one of the dancier numbers, besides the bootylicious beat, throughout the song he kept moving the snare beat around so that by song’s end he’d put a pattern on every beat in the bar. Phil Collins would be jealous.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Check out Yukihiro’s chops on this cultural collision: YMO on ‘Soul Train’ in 1980 doing a unique interpretation of “Tighten Up”.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7nACfvMh8TY&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7nACfvMh8TY&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /></span></span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-22209438285795784872008-06-06T16:29:00.000+00:002008-06-06T16:30:29.237+00:00Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – Live In LondonYou want to know why Zeppelin isn’t touring this year? Because Robert Plant has a hit album! He’s always been one to experiment, but winning platinum for an album of country music made with Alison Krauss and T-Bone Burnett is pretty leftfield. Defining this work as ‘country’ is, of course, relative. It’s probably more accurate to call it American music; not rock and roll American music, but what was there before, a much older expression of the country’s inner soul.<br /><br />The band started low-key, sounding a lot like the album, then three songs in came an intro full of chords strange though familiar; only when Robert parted his smiling lips did we know which Zeppelin song had been hot-rodded. You haven’t heard “Black Dog” until you’ve heard it done psycho-country. One of my few problems with Zep is that the lyrics often sound like irrelevant add-ons, but in this haunted musical setting of banjo, fiddle and stalking bass Robert’s young man lament had found its home.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/_D2-YsxHcag&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/_D2-YsxHcag&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />“Black Dog” in Cardiff.<br /><br /><br />Now the band was awake. There were three guitarists and they played in that peculiar southern-American style of looking half asleep on their feet while regularly dropping startling interpolations and lead runs into the rhythms. The drummer had an ancient looking wooden kit with a snare sound like no other. If drummers can play a drone he did it, beating repetitive patterns on the kit while the stand-up bassist happily watched the tom foolery.<br /><br />It got louder and louder and the guitars started to drone in a manner and intensity unlike anything on the album. I kept thinking that if the Velvet Underground had been formed in Texas or Tennessee, this is what it would have sounded like. It was that weird. T-Bone Burnett directed proceedings from the side of the stage, his high-necked grey waistcoat and black frock coat making him look like a preacher – a preacher of sin. During the solos Robert walked into the centre of the band, listening with contentment to the intricate volume-dealing around him, a man who feels happiest with the wind of a speaker cone against his back.<br /><br />Alison Krauss had her share of the spotlight, playing both songs from their album and her own work. Notable was a haunting version of “Sister Rosetta Goes Before Us” and a spectacular “Down To The River” from <i>Oh Brother Where Art Thou</i>. Then T-Bone got up to play “Bon Temps Roulez” as though heavy metal had been invented in New Orleans.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/tIFYluugWl0&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/tIFYluugWl0&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />“Down To The River” in Amsterdam<br /><br /><br />Robert has said in interviews that he had always thought that white American music was a poorer version of black music. Then T-Bone showed up with an armful of records. “How wrong I was.” It seems to have inspired him, a deep music that’s new but recognisable from the English folk music from which it grew, a connection made clear by dropping Sandy Denny’s “Maddy Grove” into the middle of “In The Mood” and in how some other Zeppelin songs were rearranged. But in the end he’s a Wolverhampton lad so even c&w needs some volume and edge. Think of it as two galaxies colliding. One is bluegrass and American earth music, the other is a city-size sound of factory-made riffs and earthquake drums. In the centre are “Black Country Woman” (banjo and fiddle), “When The Levee Breaks” (drone plantation moan and a verse from “Girl From The North Country”) and (a given when you have Alison Krauss to your right) a blinding country-metal version of “The Battle Of Evermore”, on which Sandy Denny originally sang.<br /><br />For encores they raided the oldies cupboard, first with a rollicking “One Woman Man” with Robert sounding like a male Wanda Jackson, then sending us into the night with Alison and Robert in perfect harmony on a near-accapella “Your Long Journey”.<br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/lbW8vLKT6S8&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lbW8vLKT6S8&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />“Gone Gone Gone” in BergenJonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-1452788302881896172008-06-03T14:50:00.004+00:002008-11-13T04:42:55.527+00:00Bo Diddley – Called to HeavenOne of the true originals has died at 79. Let us pause and remember him with the beat that defined him:<br /><br />bomp ba-bomp bomp, bomp bomp<br /><br />It’s a beat and a riff so essential that it helped fuel the careers of both Buddy Holly and The Rolling Stones. Quicksilver Messenger Service practically built an entire career on it. Bo was also instrumental in inventing the use of tremelo and vibrato. A Rock God in other words. For a good obituary, go <a href="http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9121TB80&show_article=1">here</a>.<br /><br />Along with Chuck Berry’s signature intro, rock and roll was built on this beat. Show any musician of a certain age this album cover and they’ll get all misty-eyed. They all learned to play from hearing it.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4dtfNfYFpCWym306CRCf2VWUuptie1u_kLtLpzS8R0hyxoY6pjdGMkwok0a3mpOdtFtZmH_Cwg60gcNmJmMBjFgbqvFqAium9vHNprNYl2v7tq8200I6ER5nTwzjC42GFvGc8EB5spVA/s1600-h/diddle_bo~~_bodiddley_102b.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 295px; height: 290px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4dtfNfYFpCWym306CRCf2VWUuptie1u_kLtLpzS8R0hyxoY6pjdGMkwok0a3mpOdtFtZmH_Cwg60gcNmJmMBjFgbqvFqAium9vHNprNYl2v7tq8200I6ER5nTwzjC42GFvGc8EB5spVA/s320/diddle_bo~~_bodiddley_102b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5207668035451692354" border="0" /></a><br />His influence was so deep that even actors wanted to pay their respects; Dan Ackroyd put Bo in both ‘The Blues Brothers’ and ‘Trading Places’, where Bo memorably lorded it over the pawn shop.<br /><br />Bo’s live show was centred around Jerome Green his maraccas player and The Duchess on bass. Want to see how good they were? Here’s Bo doing “Road Runner”:<br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/qs8FJergjas&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/qs8FJergjas&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />Why was that riff so damn good? Because it was made for dancing:<br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/fyOWZY_8XkM&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/fyOWZY_8XkM&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />Buddy Holly lifted The Beat for “Not Fade Away”, but he was cool enough to give props by recording “Bo Diddley”.<br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2vLCewzg2ns&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2vLCewzg2ns&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />Of course, Buddy wasn’t so cool that he wrote the song – Bo wrote it as his first single. (Nothing like advertising your own brilliance.)<br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/SKoP8pRtVAc&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/SKoP8pRtVAc&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />The Animals weren’t content just to cover a song about Bo Diddley – they wrote one of their own. “The Story Of Bo Diddley” is the kind of history lesson they should teach in school.<br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xhuEV17YZes&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xhuEV17YZes&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />Bo Diddley aka Ellis McDaniel – born Dec. 30, 1928, died June 2, 2008<object height="355" width="425"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xhuEV17YZes&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/xhuEV17YZes&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/xhuEV17YZes&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-80283287082615734352008-03-28T13:45:00.004+00:002008-11-13T04:42:55.613+00:00Baby Scratch My Back<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8xS1s_zbqGspHcPm5Slc4O6owHr0-mKhuLbjz9C4mYHWe5hoco9ah0wF6KTjDfom0TP4LrWrbcOaaW21mgFA7zJOHchKcQVgoaz91rZPQPJ4EMya24LAMqRXuVm0G3gUVa1dZumhAJD0/s1600-h/slimharpo03.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8xS1s_zbqGspHcPm5Slc4O6owHr0-mKhuLbjz9C4mYHWe5hoco9ah0wF6KTjDfom0TP4LrWrbcOaaW21mgFA7zJOHchKcQVgoaz91rZPQPJ4EMya24LAMqRXuVm0G3gUVa1dZumhAJD0/s320/slimharpo03.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5182788413897851538" border="0" /></a>As cool rocking names go, Slim Harpo is in the freezer. His sonic stylings are just as frigid. A narrow minded man would say he sounds too much like Jimmy Reed. An eloquent man would talk about his lazy-sounding vocal style, the sinewy guitar, the backbeat you can drive a Cadillac through, how less is most deliciously more. But I’m neither of those.<br /><br />Instead I’ll mention some titles: ‘I Need Money’, ‘Shake Your Hips’, ‘Baby Scratch My Back’….What economy and directness. The lyrics are just as straightforward, stories of simple pleasure that often contain well-observed truth.<br /><br />Did he make this up right before the tape rolled? --<br /><br /><i>Ohhh, I dig those crazy clothes<br />Let me feel those fishnet hose<br />Cut low at the top<br />And high at the bottom<br />In fact, I don't see<br />How we ever did without 'em</i><br /><br />Slim is from Louisiana. Maybe that explains his magic.<br /><br />“Baby Scratch My Back”<br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7yoGAtKc7wI&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7yoGAtKc7wI&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />The British beat guys dug his sound. Slim recorded this song as “Shake Your Hips”.<br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/QmmDk1rYjds&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/QmmDk1rYjds&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />On ‘Exiles On Main Street’, the Rolling Stones did it as “Hipshake”. I like the version on record because about halfway through they noticeably speed up.<br /><br />The Stones on Beat Club in Germany<br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/06yT7OiMn6g&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/06yT7OiMn6g&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object><br /><br />Slim’s most famous song is “King Bee’. The Stones did it of course, but let’s hear Pink Floyd’s version. Syd Barrett’s solo is a perfect filter of Slim Harpo through Wind In The Willows.<br /><br />Pink Floyd – (I’m A) King Bee<br /><br /><object height="355" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vlIisoo-FHM&hl=en"><param name="wmode" value="transparent"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vlIisoo-FHM&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" height="355" width="425"></embed></object>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-37882165774284058022008-03-04T17:01:00.002+00:002008-03-04T17:06:19.304+00:00Channel 4 Executives Split Over Future Of Digital Radio<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">When I wrote on <a href="http://jonh-ingham.blogspot.com/2008/02/we-have-seen-future-of-rock-and-rolland_5674.html">the future of the music business</a> for The Word, I wasn’t expecting how fast some of the predictions would become reality. It was clear that digital radio was in for a rough ride, but events are snowballing. Since January Virgin Radio and GCap Media have both pulled the plug on some or all of their digital stations. In today’s <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/mar/04/channel4.radio">Guardian</a> it is announced that Channel 4 executives are effectively split over the broadcaster's digital radio venture and whether to invest further.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The UK government is committed to switching off analogue radio within a few years, but the public isn’t buying into it. Nor, it seems, are private investors.<br /><br />The Guardian, 4 March: </span><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/mar/04/channel4.radio"><span style="font-size:100%;">Digital radio rift at Channel 4</span></a>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-62937416513726999912008-03-03T06:57:00.004+00:002008-03-04T16:33:21.822+00:00We Have Seen The Future Of Rock And Roll…And It’s Complicated<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">At the end of last year I was asked by The Word magazine to write a feature on what the future of music and its experiences are likely to be. Specifically, to look at emerging trends and extrapolate 2 – 3 years forward. What's emerging is best summed up by the title the editor chose: “We Have Seen The Future Of Rock And Roll…And It’s Complicated”.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">We all know that revolt and disorder are rocking the business. What’s fascinating is the breadth of imagination being applied to the problems. Whether they can be applied fast enough, we'll soon know. In the short time since publication, my predictions are becoming fact with growing frequency.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The full article can be read <a href="http://jonh-ingham.blogspot.com/2008/02/we-have-seen-future-of-rock-and-rolland_5674.html">here</a>.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Here is a summary:</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Introduction</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Who’s going to pay for free music? Canadian musicians are proposing a $5 monthly levy on every Internet and wireless account. Many companies are relying on advertisers: We 7 gives away music with an ad attached. iMeem and Last.fm try to build audiences of millions so that advertising volume will pay the bills.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">But why pay for a banner ad if you can be a patron of the arts? That’s Nokia’s approach (they invented the ringtone after all) with their new Comes With Music service.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Are these the new ways to do business? Nobody really knows because this is a brand new game. But when even the squares on Wall Street have figured it out and publicly downgrade a music label’s share value, the problem is very serious.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">If the music labels can embrace convenience and customer behaviour and learn to capitalise on the new ways people experience music, then the next few years could be an open frontier seldom seen since the late ‘60s. Screw it up, though, and it’s possible that within two or three years the multinational owners of the major labels will break them up and parcel them off to anyone with a taste for adventure. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Music Labels</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The 360 deal, as executed by Madonna: many executives think it’s the way forward for the business, though Jessica Koravas, European Manager for AEG, owners of The O2, says, “I expect there will be some spectacular failures as some players discover that the other guy's job is harder than it looks.” It’s not even a new model. Motown was a prime example of an independent record company aligned with Jobete publishing and organizing the Motown Revue tours. But the 360 Deal <i>looks</i> modern and sexy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">To those not seduced by big advances and the myths in rap videos, it’s possible to conduct a career outside the music label system. The artist-as-business-unit tends to favour intelligent, arty “legacy bands” such as Gang of Four. Their bassist Dave Allen blogs regularly and in November published an intriguing manifesto which can be summed up as: make it cheap, make it quick, post MP3s as music gets rehearsed and recorded, enrol the most rabid fans as marketing agents, partner only with an indie label. Gang of Four’s activities invoke the experimental punk spirit that created them.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In 2008, expect to see music labels be simultaneously quite pig-headed and embrace the new reality. Though the shouting will continue over the necessity of DRM it will probably disappear. How to monetise the anarchy of p2p has been an ongoing backroom exploration for most of last year and it’s highly possible that a license service will become reality this year, with music downloaders paying a monthly subscription to legalise their ongoing file sharing activities.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Live Performance</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">While Prince got the publicity for selling his album to The Mail On Sunday (who chose to give it away) the real innovation was doing a 21-night tour in one location.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The appetite to see famous bands that quit before you were born just can’t be sated. CD reissue programmes have made everyone contemporary and there is no such thing as a forgotten group – even Shed Seven can reform for a tour. To keep things lively, one of the band members will dissect the tour on his blog.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">As managers learn there is money to be made from controlling their band’s online and mobile concert activities, the activity increases between fan, band and show. At the recent O2 Keane show, ticket holders were asked beforehand to sign up for band content and could then stream or download videos from the show afterwards. There were 30,000 downloads.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In 2008, it’s a certainty that other major artists will announce a residency at places like The O2. If all the greedy parts in the payment chain can agree, you will be able to buy the tickets via mobile phone.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">As artists finally accept that there is an unending appetite for live recordings that audience members are happy to provide, there will be a growth in “official” concert recordings. <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">(</span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Do you want your live experience enshrined as a shaky mobile phone video on YouTube when you can easily provide an HD version with stereo sound?)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Mobile and Internet</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">After years of promises, the Internet is finally moving to the mobile phone and that will mean big changes for music. By 2010 it’s estimated there will be 4 billion mobiles in the world, dwarfing the number of computers. There’s no official news, but rumours continue that Google is developing a gPhone, betting their business can grow just as big.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Phones like the gPhone, iPhone and some Nokias use wi-fi for Internet connection. It means music and videos can download faster than on 3G and the evangelists say that soon not just mobile music and video downloads will be common, but Internet radio, live concert TV and on-demand videos. The only downside is the cost of all that data. Mobile operators hate low charges.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">2008 is a transition year. The iPhone’s functionality and originality has made a big impact. By year-end expect to see more mobiles being sold as media players that also make phone calls. Nokia will try to become your indispensable mobile assistant, storing Facebook profile, interactive contact list, photo books, maps and music in one place for easy access. Comes With Music won’t be a big success but Tesco Music might. The country’s biggest supermarket has quietly become a very successful mobile network. They dominate physical music sales, so why not move it online and onto your mobile?</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;font-family:trebuchet ms;" >Radio</span></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The UK government wants us to switch from FM to digital radio. We don’t care. Even the biggest digital-only station has only 3% of the nation listening and the City boys bankrolling the digital radio expansion are starting to pull the plugs, with Virgin already slashing its digital-only stations. Instead, we’re listening to radio on the Net. Six of the Top Ten iTunes podcasts are regular BBC shows.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">A further problem is commercial radio’s seeming inability to compete or collaborate with companies building Internet broadcast empires. They’re fixated on competing with the BBC, beholden to shareholders who want them to consolidate into two or three consortiums. There’s even the launch this year of C4 radio, a public broadcast competitor to the BBC.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The big issue for radio is to work out whether it’s in the content business or the delivery business. Radio needs to concentrate on reaching audiences in the ways they want to be reached, not in the ways it wants to reach them.<br /><br />Digital radio will continue to suffer and the government may have to review and revise their digital radio strategy. Meanwhile, Internet radio keeps growing.<br /></span>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-73484738378838801952007-07-20T14:22:00.000+00:002007-07-20T14:25:03.178+00:00Music Top 25<!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Irreverent music zine <a href="http://www.blender.com/">Blender</a> has published its list of the 25 Most Important People in the music business. Unsurprisingly, Steve Jobs is Number One. What is striking is how few ‘traditional’ music business people are included. Only Universal Music head Doug Morris (Number 4) and Mitch Bainwol of the RIAA (Number 12) qualify. Everyone else is either a Tech or Web person. You could argue that diatribist/music critic Bob Lefsetz is traditional, but his reputation rests on an acerbic blog.</span> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">It could also be argued that other names should be in there, but running through a mental list of movers and shakers keeps bringing up people like Rob Wells of Universal or Pete Downton of Warner Music, both heavily involved in digital strategies and execution. It’s hard to think of a non-digital person – perhaps John Kennedy, Chairman of IFPI, and a small number of people at indie labels and organisations.</p><p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">It’s a sign of how fast the industry is moving into being a new business.</p><p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">The list in full:</p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">25. Pete Wentz: net-obsessed star of Fall Out Boy<br />24. Bob Leftsetz: The Leftsetz Letter (music business blog)<br />23. Eric Garland: BigChampagne (online music research firm)<br />22. Brett Woitunski: PureVolume (indie-punk community site)<br />21. Matthew Perpetua: Fluxblog (mp3 blog)<br />20. David Pakman: EMusic (online music retailer)<br />19. Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin: BitTorrent (file-sharing service)<br />18. Jason Tate: AbsolutePunk (indie-punk news and community)<br />17. “Oinkylicious” Alan: Oink’s Pink Palace (invite-only file sharing site)<br />16. Vadim Mamotin: AllOfMp3 (discount retailer)<br />15. Tim Quirk: Rhapsody (subscription music service)<br />14. Anthony Volodkin: The Hype Machine (mp3 blog aggregation)<br />13. Perez Hilton: PerezHilton (gossip blog)<br />12. Mitch Bainwol: RIAA (music business trade group)<br />11. Scott Lapatine: Stereogum (indie-rock blog)<br />10. Coran Capshaw: MusicToday (online ticketer and merchandiser)<br />9. Christian Schmid: RapidShare (file-hosting service)<br />8. Greg Bildson: LimeWire (file-sharing program)<br />7. Martin Stinksel and Felix Miller: Last.FM (music community site)<br />6. Ian Rogers: Yahoo! Music (music portal)<br />5. Ryan Schreiber: Pitchfork (indie-rock magazine)<br />4. Doug Morris: Universal Music Group (recording company)<br />3. Chad Hurley and Steve Chen: YouTube (video-sharing site)<br />2. Tom Anderson and Chris Dewolfe: MySpace (social-networking site)<br />1. Steve Jobs: Apple (Technology corporation)</p>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-75881178869534247862007-07-17T13:44:00.000+00:002007-07-17T13:54:35.434+00:00The Music Industry's Next Nightmare<p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">The RIAA continue to sue a few grains of sand in the file-sharing beach. The Russians behind Allofmp3.com play cat and mouse with the music industry by wrapping the site in new skins and brand names. Limewire has 18.7% share of all music services on the Net. If that’s not enough for the music industry, it’s about to get worse.</p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">In the near future, it’s alleged, is WireFrost, a p2p system that includes the best of BitTorrent with the best of p2p. But right now there’s Pownce.<br /><!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.pownce.com/">Pownce.com</a> is a file sharing site with a difference. It’s a closed system. If I’m a member, I only share with friends that I choose – friends who are also members. No-one else gets sight of my or our activity. Since it’s effectively an invisible closed system, tracking activity and curtailing it will be that much harder.</p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">Presently, you have to be invited to be a member of Pownce. But this is just an extension of an idea that’s already active within established p2p groups. How long before a Pirate Bay style group push this out? </p>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-83364405980206096562007-07-17T13:31:00.000+00:002007-07-17T13:44:40.301+00:00MSN - 0, Live Earth Fan – 1<p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">Previously, I <a href="http://jonh-tnk.blogspot.com/2007/07/microsofts-live-earth-disaster.html">blogged about MSN’s total failure</a> in taking advantage of opportunities surrounding their online coverage of LiveEarth. Among them were the significant lack of performance videos available for viewing and their horror that people would post their own LiveEarth videos on YouTube. Any that got posted were soon taken down.</p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">A day later, a small force of nature had posted his own LiveEarth site on YouTube. Find it and you are presented with a professionally presented mini-site of six pages, with every performance by every artist around the world. It puts MSN to shame.</p><p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">I emailed the owner and asked him about it. Simple, he replied. After MSN took them down the first time, he simply reposted with all LiveEarth tags taken out.</p> <span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:12;" >I’d tell you how to find it, but why help MSN as well? <span style=""><br /></span></span>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-65645326849539007722007-07-13T05:32:00.001+00:002007-07-13T05:35:31.672+00:00Microsoft’s Live Earth Disaster<p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">The disaster that was Live Earth has been well-covered. But for a graphic example of how Microsoft still fail to understand the 21<sup>st</sup> century take a look at their Live Earth <a href="http://liveearth.msn.com/">web site</a>.</p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> </p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">It’s bland and faceless, crammed with information and colours but no clear path of navigation. Weirdly, all the ads are the first thing you really notice, especially those for Chevrolet. Given the perfect chance to change perception about their less-than-green credentials, does Chevy take the chance? Of course not. Then there are the banners and video ads for Zune, the Microsoft music player. Message to Mr. Gates: this is not the place to flog your product. We all know it’s a commercial failure and this smacks of desperation and cynicism – not traits to associate with saving the planet.</p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">My interest in being here is because the innovative ‘80s band Yellow Magic Orchestra reformed for one of the Japanese concerts. But I can’t see a video of their performance. Someone had it up on YouTube pretty quick, but MSN forced its removal. Aren’t we trying to spread the word here? About saving the planet? Instead we have a mindset that’s still thinking about rights fees and “ownership”. Which is bizarre and stupid when it’s impossible to see the video on the MSN site.</p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]-->I can watch Madonna and the bits THEY want me to watch, but there's no freedom of choice, no assumption that, maybe, Japanese people will log in. And no, I don't want to watch a video of Leo Di Caprio telling me how to get green. It’s like network TV before we had the freedom of 200 channels and a Sky + box. They don’t seem to understand that in today’s world you spread the word by opening up the toybox. You let people imbed videos in their profile pages and share videos on YouTube. You create mindshare by pushing, not pulling.</p><p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">It’s funny to watch the computing establishment colliding with the new world. There’s a generation gap in understanding that’s quite breathtaking. <a href="http://battellemedia.com/archives/003809.php">Rumours abound</a> that Microsoft wants to pay $6billion to buy Facebook. So they can get back in the game. But Ballmer and his crew would want to play with it. Like Fox has with MySpace, making it more controlled, limited in its options, full of corporate deals. Which is why Facebook is the fast growing environment it is. Because it’s none of those things – it gives us the tools and puts choice in our hands.</p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p> <p style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" class="MsoNormal">If the Live Earth site is the best Microsoft can do it's no wonder they’re slipping away into the La Brea tar pits.</p>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-16215318768795987632007-07-04T11:24:00.000+00:002007-07-04T11:25:40.919+00:00Universal Music vs. iTunes<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Just when you think the game of old vs. new has been played out, one othe dinosaurs raises its head for another roar at the mammals running around its feet.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Universal Music Group (UMG) is refusing to renew its long-term contract with Apple for its product on iTunes, opting instead for a month-to-month sales agreement. Universal (like other labels) is unhappy with the 99 cents price point and has tried to negotiate a tiered system, with premium prices for new material (rumoured to be above 99c) and less for back catalogue. It makes sense (at least the back catalogue part) because that's how it works in a physical retailer.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Cut to the basics and its all about power. Music labels are used to controlling the marketplace. Doug Morris, CEO of UMG, must alternate between frustration and despair that the consumer and technology are riding roughshod all over him. The visible face, Steve Jobs, has been in the driving seat for years now. With UMG controlling almost 30% of the legal music market, it must seem like a perfect time to reassert control.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Recent stats show iTunes as the 3rd largest music retailer in the United States at 9.8%. They control almost 80% of online retail business. If it were a bricks-and-mortar operation Universal would never consider the move; cutting off a leading retailer in a market that is experiencing declining sales is pure stupidity.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">There are legitimate concerns about the near monopoly status Apple enjoys in selling online music, the closed nature of iTunes, and a pricing policy that treats all music as equally valuable. But there's little doubt that in popularizing legal music downloads, Apple has provided a challenge to music piracy. Music labels are profiting where they would perhaps have not profited before.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">This is never going to work in UMG's favour. There aren't enough alternatives to iTunes to make up the lost revenue if they pull out. While it will be inconvenient for the buyer if he can't find the track he wants on iTunes, he's more likely to fire up Limewire than start the search for the legal alternative. After all, it's almost a certainty LimeWire will have it, while I know from experience the search for legal alternatives can be time consuming. A lot of people already think 99c is too expesnive, pointing to the lack of physical cost involved; to raise prices above $1 for so-called premium acts is to introduce scarcity of sales, again driving customers to other alternatives. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">The public perception of greedy music companies is already well-established; what kind of PR spin could a master publicist like Steve Jobs put on this? He's already considered the coolest guy in the music business. You think he'll come out of it looking like a bad guy?</span></span>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-22641807119855937752007-05-22T11:43:00.000+00:002007-05-22T11:51:53.988+00:00EMI – Sold!<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">The EMI Group has agreed to an offer by private equity firm Terra Firma for £3.2billion, subject to approval by the firm's shareholders. The deal valued shares at £2.65, while EMI had been asking for £3.00. The EMI board of directors intend to recommend unanimously that shareholders should accept the offer. Terra Firma is run by Guy Hands and is a leading European financier. It owns several companies including Odeon and UCI cinemas, and recently failed to acquire high-street chemist chain Boots.<br /><br />Three US private equity firms - Cerberus, Fortress and One Equity - also recently expressed an interest in bidding for it. According to the <a href="http://www.nypost.com/seven/05182007/business/dance_moves_business_peter_lauria_and_zachery_kouwe.htm">New York Post</a>, One Equity and Cerberus wanted to keep EMI intact. Fortress, however, intended to sell off the music publishing assets to strategic buyers before “flipping” the recorded music business to Warner Music.<br /><br />What Terra Firma intend to do with the company is unknown. Will they have the patience for the record company to turn reverse their decline? Perhaps they have some radical ideas of their own. Or, as any astute music man will admit, they know the real money is in publishing and sell the record company to Warners.<br /><br />Of course, the other private equity firms or Warners could counter-offer.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana;font-size:85%;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c9c54098-079e-11dc-9541-000b5df10621,_i_rssPage=cbad994c-3017-11da-ba9f-00000e2511c8.html">Financial Times story</a></span>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-14372563643768671632007-05-10T16:20:00.000+00:002007-05-10T16:22:35.452+00:00TV: Bringing Sexy Back<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">Have you tried to buy good, well-designed hi-fi equipment lately? If you’re not in a B&O salesroom you’re in a discount shop trying to rationalise a less-than-best price for the least awful-looking. Actually, you’re probably in the Apple temple rationalising the £150 price tag for good sounding iPod earbuds. What’s sexy about hi-fi?<br /><br />But TV…it’s on a roll. Flat screen TVs look like the future: big, sleek, thin, <i>modern</i>. Go into the TV section of a department store and it’s like standing in a multiplex cinema with the walls down – who doesn’t want some of that? And with prices tumbling and easy credit, that 40-inch Sony becomes a ‘when’ item, not an ‘if’.<br /><br />And you want it because the programming demands it. No, not ‘Casualty’ and ‘Coronation Street’ – storytelling that’s as old as your grandparents black and white set – but sports and the new-style shows like ‘Lost’, ‘Sopranos’, and ‘Heroes’.<br /><br />It’s interesting that while our attention span is supposed to be diminishing to mere minutes, the coolest, most interesting shows on TV are the densest, longest, most complex. Shows that take several hour-long episodes just to introduce the characters, never mind their back-story. Shows that move backwards and forwards in time at will and if you can’t keep up – tough. A recent edition of ‘Lost’ moved through three different time zones – are you paying attention? The central character of ‘Heroes’ also moves through time and space. He’s Japanese, named Hiro (ba-boom), and half his dialogue is in Japanese. <i>Are you paying attention?</i> Like sports, this is storytelling with an end you can’t predict.<br /><br />I want a modern TV to watch these modern shows. But that’s just the beginning….</span>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-10625863231032105622007-05-09T05:59:00.000+00:002007-05-09T06:00:43.721+00:00The Revolution In TV<span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;">Musician Gil Scott Heron was right. The revolution won’t be televised – TV itself is the revolution. Everywhere you look a sea-change: flat screen TVs, distribution over the Internet, distribution on the Internet, video on demand, TV on mobile phones…<br /><br />When I was at O2 people within the company got excited by mobile TV because they saw a huge revenue stream in the offing. Unfortunately for them, few people think TV is a premium medium. Given the choice between paying to see the news or a soap while on the train home and waiting until they get home (where news is on a 24hr channel and the soap can be recorded on the PVR), where it’s perceived as free, and the option is almost always going to be the latter.<br /><br />But as the TV revolution gathers pace, a recent survey of American attitudes towards mobile TV shows a classic early-adopter curve: forty-six percent of those who currently subscribe to Mobile TV are below the age of 35 and 65 percent are male. Overall, they are almost evenly split on watching general TV content vs. traditional mobile content and on seeing the whole show vs. a condensed version.<br /><br />And what really focuses their minds? Price. Approximately 71 percent said “cost of service” was a top consideration in selecting mobile TV.</span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:85%;"><br />Go to the <a href="http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1399">Comscore site</a> for more data and information.</span>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2237876537445910466.post-23196945169923724462007-05-01T14:30:00.000+00:002007-05-01T14:31:35.851+00:00'Distrust causes illegal downloads'As unpaid downloads hit 1 billion per month – equal to $970 million at iTunes prices – The Guardian has published the research findings of PR group Edelman. According to the survey, more than a quarter of young people in the UK are prepared to illegally download music and films because they distrust the entertainment industry.<br /><br />41% of 18- to 34-year-olds do not trust the entertainment industry to provide value for money. 34% do not trust companies to respect the rights of those who do pay for digital content. 27% have already downloaded illegal content or would do so.<br /><br />Resenting the perceived high cost of digital services and usability problems, such as incompatible formats, 49% are more likely to criticise an entertainment company to their friends, 37% are more likely to share their negative opinions online and 43% said they would be more likely to boycott products or services.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,,2065254,00.html">The Guardian story</a>Jonh Inghamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16229656271750136802noreply@blogger.com1