So Rogue's Gallery - Hal Wilner's star-studded sea shanties thing - at the Sydney festival is getting bagged from all quarters (lots of unhappy commenters there) which I can't say surprises me. The whole event had "underwhelming" written all over it from the start.

I did mildly enjoy the Leonard Cohen tribute a few years back, a Wilner and friends love-in along the same lines, but the concept does lend itself to self-indulgence and complacency. I thought this event offered all the pitfalls of Came So Far for Beauty (acts not learning the songs, lack of rehearsal etc) but with the added variables of uncertainty about outside acoustics, the weather and ambient noise of one of the country's busiest commuter and tourist hubs. The Opera House forecourt should be left to Australian Idol finales and triathlon finishing lines.

Despite Marianne Faithfull being singled out for a shellacking I'm still very excited about her solo show, it's hard to judge whether I would've felt so hostile to her performance. i don't really mind divas getting drunk and slurring out of tune, really, in fact I quite like it. I'll be sure to let you know Wednesday night.

So after the intial bafflement I got over the eMusic plan changes and was going to hang around, and make a conscious effort to channel the higher per track payments to labels/artists I wanted to support. But then a bigger problem came down the pipe: "in the near future" access to eMusic will be blocked entirely for users outside the USA. Canada, UK and EU. Entirely! Certain labels/albums are already unavailable on a country by country basis. This is a familiar message:

But this change would exclude us entirely.

And so eMusic joins Amazon MP3, Rhapsody, Napster, Lala, Spotify and countless other digital download and streaming services off-limits to us. Now, eMusic do say that exisiting customers will be "grandfathered in" (see FAQ) although of course that's what they said about my current subscription plan, which they just changed. And the grandfathering actually annoys me more, because it suggests the geographic restrictions are not enforceable law, but a voluntary policy decision in deference to their new BFFs at Sony, and future majors they hope to land. If you are doing something illegal and are a company, you don't say "oh well, "in the near future" we will stop doing illegal stuff but people already doing illegal stuff can keep on doing it."

I can go to Amazon.com right now and buy any CD I want and ship it here. But I cannot buy the same album in digital form from the Amazon MP3 Store. How does this make any sort of sense?

I have questions about it logged with customer service, i doubt I'll get a decent answer. Googling the issue of geographic distribution doesn't bring much helpful up.

So now I'm thinking I will just quit eMusic altogether because of it even though I would be grandfathered in, the whole thing leaves such a bitter taste in my mouth. It is no different than DRM to me, right now. What was the point of being so visionary and courageous over DRM for so long, only to capitualte in 2009 with rubbish like this? Should've slapped DRM on the tracks back in '02 and you could've had Sony then.

I see that Sony Australia has its own digital download store, called with a rather hilarious lack of irony bandit.fm. There are some positives about it at first glance, I can actually use it on a Mac, no-DRM MP3s and 320kps (although I'm fine with lower bitrates.) The content appears to be more than Sony stuff, the Blue Note label is there and that's owned by EMI. The artist and genre pages are attractively presented and easy to navigate.

However. I put in the last 10 or so albums I dl'd from eMusic and they had none of them. They had a few of the artists, but not the same albums. I conclude they have no independent labels at all. If someone did an album for Chess it's there because the Chess catalogue is now owned by Universal, but later, say, Alligator recordings by same artist are absent. They are more expensive than iTunes on some albums, and iTunes has a much bigger selection. And for a couple of them I know for a fact I can go to JB Hi Fi today and buy the hard copy cheaper.

Is this where Sony is hoping to channel my money by excluding me from eMusic? Tell 'em they're dreaming.

This was supposed to be in my Folkways 8tracks but to my distress I just realised it was not there, must not have uploaded. So here it is.

Peter La Farge, "Drums" Johnny Cash does this on Bitter Tears, which includes numerous other La Farge covers (including "The Ballad of Ira Hayes.")

Jumping off what Lang Mack was saying in comments. I have never been one to feel too deeply about the "underappreciated" tag. I mean, for my favourite "underappreciated" artists no appreciation is enough. Also it might be intense selfishness, but I care about what I like and do not care so much about what other people do/not like. Folks like Dylan, Springsteen etc are common comparisons because they are such uber A-List.

I've been meaning to post about some of the 2009 releases I've enjoyed in "Q109" so let's start with One to the Head, One to the Heart by Gretchen Peters with Tom Russell. Now obvs TR is one of my faves, hence me getting the record, but of Gretchen Peters I confess to woeful ignorance, other than she had done some singing on previous Russell albums. So turns out, she's a big deal Nashville songwriter for everyone you've ever heard of, including her biggest hit "Independence Day" for Martina McBride. I will return to this. The record itself is singer-songwriter folk/country with but an unmistakable south western flavour. Not only the generous accordian but the songs, lovely originals like "Blue Mountains of Mexico" and "These Cowboys Born out of Time" and covers "Snowin' on Raton" (TVZ, here singing it with Blaze Floey. Love that song.) and a pretty great version of Dylan's "Billy 4." (YouTube, the Gretchen/Tom version. And here is "Prairie in the Sky" from the record.) She has a lovely expressive voice if not distinctive for me yet. When I first had the record it would pop up on my iPhone and I'd think "That is .... NOT Patty Griffin but ... I ... do ... not? Know who it is." But I liked it. As I always say, if you are reading this blog and are not doing so because you are related to me, you will like it too.

The making of the record on YouTube.

So, ALSO. Even I who mostly floats along quarantined by the Pacific Ocean from exposure to the Billboard Hot Country hit parade has heard of Martina's "Independence Day" (Wikipedia Martina entry: "The third single, "Independence Day," a song about domestic abuse nearly reached the Top 10. The song didn't reach the Top 10 particularly because many radio programmers went against the song's subject about a mother fighting back [against abuse] by burning their home to the ground. However, the song has ... sold a million copies in the United States to date.") Heard of it, never paid it any attention. SO anyhow, good for her and half yer luck ka-ching, big deal right? Well, I found out a cool thing about which I will quote from her site:

When Sean Hannity began using Gretchen Peters' song "Independence Day" as the theme song for his Citadel Broadcasting radio talk show, Peters quietly stepped up her donations to causes including the ACLU, PFLAG, and Moveon.org.

But when the GOP used "Independence Day" to usher Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin to the stage after the debate in St. Louis, Peters realized the party was truly perverting the chorus of her composition to suit their agenda and it was high time for Peters to make her feelings known.

"The fact that the McCain/Palin campaign is using a song about an abused woman as a rallying cry for their Vice Presidential candidate, a woman who would ban abortion even in cases of rape and incest, is beyond irony," Peters says. "They are co-opting the song, completely overlooking the context and message, and using it to promote a candidate who would set women's rights back decades. I've decided to donate the royalties from 'Independence Day' during this election cycle to Planned Parenthood, in Sarah Palin's name. I hope with the additional income provided by the McCain/Palin campaign, Planned Parenthood will be able to help many more women in need."

The following is a video of her at a Planned Parenthood event. So, Gretchen rocks.

Shorter Bloke Who Prob Got His Ticket For Free: Eric Clapton should tailor his show much more to people who don't really like him much.

Props to my Twitter peep who suggests George just stick to Blueshammer.

Did I ... hear tell someone tell a lie?

According to Expecting Rain, William Zantzinger died. There was a great couple of episodes of Homicide:Life On The Streets guest starring James Earl Jones that riffed on the story and the song, must try and watch it again.

I beg forgiveness dear reader for having to mention Coldplay on this fine blog, but I would like to do so in correcting some misonceptions of an alleged music journalist.

It was on ABC's PM radio show on Wednesday night. SMH journo Bruce Elder had this to say about the Joe Satriani/Coldplay plagiarism case:

"It is almost that it is almost impossible to define what constitutes plagiarism in music, particularly in popular music because there are so many songs that are very similar. I mean all you have to do is listen to a very old classic which is the Archies' Sugar, Sugar and I believe that the chord progression in Sugar, Sugar has been used in something like 20 or 30 other pop songs."

The 12 bar blues is one of the most widely used chord progressions in music history. Yet no-one bothers fighting a plagiarism case over using it (and not just because establishing the origins of the progression would be almost impossible) because it is not the chord progression that gets people into trouble for music plagiarism cases. It is the melody. Elder would known that if he would have done some simple research. UK guitarist Garry Moore recently was busted because a guitar solo of his was very similar to a German pop song. And then there is the case of George Harrison and My Sweet Lord.

Of course, bands do copy their influences. But that is a different kettle of fish. The copying of influence tends to relate to more intagible elements such as style and sound.

So Elder has it wrong but that does not mean Satriani has a case. But to my ears, there is a definite similarity in the melody and it will be an interesting case to follow if it gets to the courts.

Amanda's note: There is a audio-visual comparison of the two songs here.

Leonard Cohen ticket buying expedition FAIL.

Iris DeMent was my entree into Tom Russell. I loved her and her first three albums. This is was the late 90s. I then read she was featured on this album "The Man From God Knows Where" by Tom Russell, so I bought that, never having heard of him. Iris toured Australia in 1998, I was living on the empty fumes of Austudy but I went and saw her live at the Basement, but to do so I had to skip Steve Earle that same week. To even afford to see her I lived on the $1.90 hot dog and slurpee deal at the servo on Alison Rd in Randwick for weeks and walked to Bondi and back to pay my rent to my slumlord landlady who lived in a mansion on Edgecliff Rd, because I couldn't afford the $5 bus fare. A second $50 gig was out of the question, sorry Steve.

I think all my problems with the term "world music" -- I use it as a category left because it is annoyingly convenient, but note the scare quotes -- can be summed up with the fact Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu won "Best World Music Album" at the ARIA's last night.

But he's ...? Um, but it's ... ! So, why ... ? Er, what? (Archie Roach was also nominated.) He was also nom'd for Best Album so it was a safe sop to give him something else which everyone thinks he deserves for it, but O RLY WTF.

I'm also annoyed because I bought a ticket to see Gurrumul at the Opera House and thought it was late October, but I stumbled over the ticket on the weekend and it was ... last Friday. I then proceeded to an anguished Mendoza! moment. Fug.

So my beloved Muxtape is off line, whether by RIAA fiat or money troubles or both or whatever, I know not. That news kinda sucked although it was not unexpected, being and how the illegality of it was more or less blindingly obvious.

But a great idea and great for the music industry whether it knows it or not. But hark! In the dust of Muxtape, a new service launched called 8tracks which claims to do the same thing but -- gasp! -- legally. I've seen it called "Stracks" too, but I think the squiggly thing is offically an 8. I've signed up but haven't made a mux-er, a ... mix yet. There seem to be more restrictions that with muxtape -- you can't see the whole list before listening for instance -- which are presumably to keep it within the legal requirements. It does look like you can officially create multiple mixes and have them all up at the same time. Which is good, although I was kinda digging the zen-like process of destroying your mux before you could create a new one.

I'm encouraged that it looks uncluttered and simple, but also adds some functions muxtapes lacked -- I like the simplicity of "following" a user and also the ability to add comments to mixes. Will try and maybe get one up tonight.

Update: Did my first 8tracks mix. Painless process and one improvement on Muxtape is you can queue up all your songs to upload rather than have to do them one by one.

Muxtape, World Youth Day edn.

Further: How awesome is it that Mick/Proddy doctrinal stoushes are back in the papers? Party like its 1953!

There's this new show, see, on Ch.7 tomorrow night at 7.30pm The One: Search for Australia's Top Cold Reader Psychic. I've attended a few of the studio tapings on account of a good friend of mine, Richard Saunders, is one of the judges. I met Richard through the Australian Skeptics and he has taken on the daunting task of being commercial TV token skeptical whipping boy for low rent reality show. Go, Richard! Join our Richard Saunders Fans Facebook page! So I am in the audience for episodes 2 and 4 and watched episode 5 filming from the green room and back of the studio yesterday.

Richard has done an excellent job with a very tough gig, and has managed to institute a few extra controls on the "tests" although even with that they barely rise above parlour game level (except for one which is just deeply full of FAIL on the crass test.) And yes there's a legitimate discussion to be had about doing more harm than good in legitimising the mystery-monging but these shows are going to happen anyway and in Richard they actually had someone capable of, under pressure, quickly breaking down what was happening and really revealing the workings of cold reading on the spot. Of course he only gets a few lines and the vast bulk of logical fallacies, utter non-sequiturs, post-hoc rationalisations and face-palm moments have to go unchallenged. But the lines he gets are good, although its all in the editing, I guess. I took lots of notes in the last two sessions I was at so I might make further comment once I see the edited version. Podblack blog has made a loose comment about live blooging the first show. I hope she does, that should be fun.

I didn't take any of Skeptico's Cold Reading Bingo cards but perhaps you can print out some to play along at home. I guarantee you odds vastly better than the local Lions club version. You can't lose, in fact.

In my time there I saw lots of readings and "challenges" but not a single inexplicable or even particularly impressive thing, I did see a lot of the standard psychological techniques done to varying degrees of inexpertness and the glorious laws of probability at work. Which doesn't mean it won't "make good TV." It was interesting although LONG to sit through an entire day of faffing about for a few minutes of film. That's the glamour of showbiz I guess.

On the other end of the scale of seriousness I've been reading Ray Hyman's The Elusive Quarry: A Scientific Appraisal of Psychical Research and it comes highly recommended.

Here in full is the 2/5 stars "review" by Bernard Zuel of Hayes Carll's "Trouble in Mind" from the Metro this morning:

You can see the attraction for the label. Here's someone who can be a lightweight-but-far-less-troublemaking cross between Ryan Adams and Steve Earle, with alcohol-soaked ballads and punchy mid-tempo country rock. It's easy to digest and has more grit than the Nashville-Tamworth axis but the trouble is when you take away the "troublesome" parts of Adams and Earle, you get by-the-numbers-alt.country.

The SMH reviewers, including BZ, generally do a good job in giving coverage to Music I Like and props to them for it, but I have a serious pet hate about their some of their critical MO. Namely: The constant and utterly unnecessary relating of everything slightly rootys to top 40 country and taking up space with irrelevant comparisons instead of talking about the music. In his excellent jazz reviews, John Shand never feels moved to mention that Mike Nock is not like Kenny G, but the blokes on the country/folk beat can't resist but shoehorn a reference to Keith Urban into damn near everything. Long time readers know I have ranted about this before. End the country critical cultural cringe!

I like this record (review coming this weekend) and he doesn't: fine, I'm not talking about that. The Adams/Earle comparisons while on the surface more appropos than Urban are misplaced too. Firstly, talk about the damn record. You've got about 50 words, why waste two of them on "Ryan" and "Adams", especially if you're not going to provide a meaningful comparison for potential purchasers? Hayes Carll is really very little like Ryan Adams musically, even when Ryan was at his most country. It seems Ryan is only mentioned because he provides a drug abusing songwriter bookend to the Earle reference which is more fitting, but still a waste of precious words. Why are we even mentioning drug abuse again? Ugh, who the hell knows.

Secondly, I strongly doubt the stated motivations apply to Lost Highway. It's just another the imposition of a random narrative that suits a lazy journo. (cf. the political op-ed columns every day of the week.) The easy-too-see attraction for the label is not that he isn't an vainglorious junkie, it is that he had already released a couple of critically acclaimed, award winning and successful Americana records and something of a reputation for being a genuine heir to the Texas country/folk songwriter tradition of Townes Van Zandt. These are the qualities that drew me to Hayes Carll three years ago.

If the new album doesn't live up to the promise, by all means say so. Don't just make shit up.

A further pet hate is the insidious definition creep of the term "alt.country." I see not the slightest reason to call Hayes Carll that, unless "alt.country" now simply means anything that doesn't chart on CMT and if that is what it now means then: over my dead body it does.

Subject line stolen from Phineas. It is too good not to be mine. Mux had a meltdown and my most recent one was lost. But it only nuked the last three weeks of stuff which means my last second account mux is still there. Second accounts breach the TOS, so hush. IMHO, it's rather a tasty collection of country, soul, funk -- old skool, yo.

In addition to Richard Shindell, another muso with his thinking cap on is David Byrne. It has pie charts!

I've made money, and I've been ripped off. I've had creative freedom, and I've been pressured to make hits. I have dealt with diva behavior from crazy musicians, and I have seen genius records by wonderful artists get completely ignored. I love music. I always will. It saved my life, and I bet I'm not the only one who can say that.

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that's not bad news for music, and it's certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.

I don't require musicians I like to be rational, sane, compassionate, intelligent, thought provoking and in general good people. But it's awfully nice when one of them turns out to be so. The superb singer/songwriter Richard Shindell has some thoughts here and more here on being an artist in the age of illegal downloading. He speaks sense.

While I think a lot of anti-piracy measures and attitudes have been hamfisted, insulting and obnoxious (and I don't use P2P myself), I don't make my living from music so I can't begrudge those who do their strong feelings on the matter. Still, when he talks about the "better angels" attitude, and respect between consumer and artist, that makes sense to me. I think there are lots of things that can be done to turn pirates into people who support artists -- not least of which is "the passage of time" and "embiggening of musical tastes" since (IIRC) it's teens/uni-aged kids who do it on the grandest and most unthinking scale, and it's mostly directed towards the more top 100 end of things. eMusic's corporate line has long been that it pitches the long tail and independent acts to "mature" music fans who are vastly less likely to fileshare. This was actually borne out when Random House tracked piracy of it's eMusic DRM-free audiobook files and found ... none. (can't dig up the thing I read about this, will add link later.)

Richard still thinks it's important the artist gets paid (in this case, him) but he's actually doing some constructive, realistic things about it. Go, Richard!

Time for a new muxtape. Since Laura alerted me to this particularly witless example of crushingly unfunny and pointless op-ed busy work and since I got a few Google hits in the last week looking for a "jazz muxtape", I thought I'd do a jazz muxtape. And they say bloggers are undisciplined, narcasscistic jerks -- Schembri (practically everytime I read him) more than proves you don't need to be 13 and writing in your PJs in your mother's basement to write like you're 13 and writing in your PJs in your mother's basement.

Hear my muxtape here.

Anyhow. I'm very much a "don't know much about jazz, but I know what I like" and this is pretty much the first 12 things I came to, with some exceptions because a lot of tracks (ie. everything I have by Charles Mingus) is over the Muxtape limit of 10MB in size. Also kept it to instrumentals. Jazz vocals is a mux for another week.

These are the albums the tracks are from:
Robert Mazurek- Playground. This was recommended on a message board thread about "heroiny jazz."
Sonny Rollins-Way Out West "I'm an Old Cowhand" is my fave but I put that on a mux before.
Art Pepper-Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section
Irving Fields Trio-Bagels and Bongos
Getatchew Mekurya-Negus of Ethiopian Sax. African jazz is a whole topic by itself.
John Coltrane-Plays for Lovers
Dizzy Gillespie and Machito-Afro-Cuban Jazz Moods
Andre Previn- West Side Story
Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins
Thelonious Monk - Blue Monk
Buddy Rich with Dizzy Gillespie-Monterey Jazz Festival 1958-1980
Cannonball Adderley and Bill Evans-Know What I Mean?