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THE INDIE ROCK BLOG
The Indie Rock Blog is a collection of Sugartune Artist News and entries from our friends at the Rock and Roll Report. If sweet, sugartunes are stirring in your soul, keep your soul stirred with a subscription to our news feed. 
According to RIAA could well be suing innocent victims, the R.I.A.A. might have bitten off more than it can chew (technologicaly speaking) when it commenced suing everybody in sight. They need the services of a P2P supergeek immediately! Send in your resumes (by mail only).
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How could you go wrong with a blog that talks about the NHL and Rock and Roll? You can’t, check it out: Chaz Is A Music Snob. Later.
Now this is interesting! Check out Magnatune Records a record label that advertises themselves as being “not evil.” Brilliant idea but they go beyond a catch phrase and allow you to “try before you buy” by applying the shareware principal to music. You download an MP3, if you like what you hear you buy it online or license it for commercial use. The artists get 50% of the purchase price and keep the rights to their music. Is this a preview of the wave of the future or pie in the sky idealism? Only time will tell but I hope it is the former.
UPDATE: Magnatune is featured in a Wired Online story here.
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Another blog, another great read. Click over to the blog Mostly Weird, Some Normal for some really great stuff, especially his take on the Jay Babcock piece in the LA Weekly that I raved about. Do you think this guy wants my ears chopped off? Of course I did write that great post “Sailing the Topographic Oceans” so maybe I’m safe! Great blog though.
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Check out Exiled on Blog Street for some really good, really funny rock and roll writing. This guy also produces and excellent e-zine called Exiled on Main Street which is great as well. These blogs are getting out of control. Can’t sleep, must read….
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Check out this Online Guardian article Talkin’ my language where the question of whether music blogs affect music sales is addressed. I know categorically that this one does not. But there is always time eh!
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It looks like Dell and Musicmatch have released a download service similar to iTunes for the Mac:MusicMatch, Dell to launch music stores | CNET News.com. Things are getting interesting (and legal!). See what a little competition can do?
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I love rock and roll from the seventies. I have allways been fascinated with bands like the Stones, Zeppelin and Deep Purple carreening from town to town in a cocaine haze piling off huge jets into black tinted limos only to run onto some wild lotus shaped stage to play screaming, pulsating and always loud rock and roll (sometimes even playing it well). When you read up on how these huge tours were constructed, the logistics behind the rock and roll excess is mind boggling. And nothing was a bigger and better example of this excess than the coolest private jet to ever grace the skies, the Starship. The starship was a custom Boeing 707 used by the likes of Mick and the boys that was anything but spartan. A huge waterbed, fireplace and bar graced this flying palace with the only plane giving it a run for its money was Hugh Hefner’s Black Bunny. The New York Times article Flying High (registration required) is a great piece on this impressive airplane. Just reading it makes me want to slip on a pair of shades and velour pants, grab my Tequila Sunrise and stagger over to my local Air Canada agent. Nah, it just wouldn’t be the same.
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As I have been pointing out throughout the short and twisted history of this blog, Rock and Roll radio is alive and well, it’s just well hidden sometimes. There are huge syndicated rock and roll radio shows broadcast all over North America and small one hour slices of rock ‘n’ roll madness on community radio stations all over the place there for the taking. The Internet, despite its twisted rules and regulations, has added some amazing rock and roll radio thrills and spills that, technology allowing, make for great listening day and night. At first blush it might seem we are losing the radio diversity wars but a careful peek around shows that there is more radio worth listening to than ever before. A perfect example of great rock and roll radio hails from my hometown of Montréal. “Dodécaphonique Twist” hosted by Montreal radio legend Mimi la twisteuse is a primo slice of rock and roll heaven. Playing anything from British Invasion to glam to Sunshine Pop to r’n'b/soul and to anything else her heart fancies from the ’60s to now, Mimi knows her rock ‘n’ roll. An avid fan and hardcore collector of French ’60s pop, her previous show “Dans le Garage” was at one time one of the only radio shows around to strongly feature a wide variety of obscure French ’60s pop on a weekly basis, bringing in a strong local and even North American cyber following to her show (the show also had a brief syndication run for a few years in a French station overseas), before the Ultra Chicks and other ’60s French pop comps craze was to hit North America. She has compiled volume 10 of the infamous “Girls in the Garage” series, an all French volume of ’60s gogo girls! Mimi’s love of 20th century pop culture as well as her love of comedy, novelties and international rock n roll from then and now make her show’s weekly playlists unique and interesting, as well as continuously rockin’! Broadcast every Saturday night from 10 to 11 pm, on CIBL, 101.5 FM, in Montréal you can listen live with Real Audio at www.cibl.cam.org. Not only does she play great rock and roll but her show is broadcast in French! Woah you cry, I don’t speak French! Well think of it this way. The majority of the show is music right? In between the music are the poetic sounds of French spoken in such a warm and wonderful manner that you will be as mesmerized by the spoken word breaks as you will be by the great rock and roll tunes she spins! How can you go wrong? Or how about this: Remember that funky, hip French teacher from high school? Imagine if she invited you over to her place and you discovered that not only does she have the most incredible rock and roll record collection that you have ever seen but that she can chat intelligently about French ’60s pop and The Ramones while at the same time showing you how to conjegate your verbs! How cool is that? If you want to soak up the global aspect of rock and roll you have to seek out the sources that might not be immediately apparent, like The Rock and Roll Report has done in the past with South African and Thai rock and roll. Listen globally, check out gigs locally I allways say. Think of it as part of The Rock and Roll Report’s global rock and roll curriculum. French rock and roll language lessons. Just another service brought to you by your humble scribe here at The Rock and Roll Report. Now hurry off and get your records and books. And listen to Mimi on Saturday nights. I know that after just one hour in this French class you’ll be e-mailing the station asking for more.
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Further to my post on the possible closing of the Bottom Line club, there is a petition you can sign if you are so inclined. It can be found here: Save The Bottom Line! Sign the online petition to let NYU know how you feel!
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Today I introduce to you The Right Side Of Weird. The Right Side Of Weird will highlight something that is, well weird, that I thinks is cool. Now, the relationship between weird and rock and roll is well established (listened to any Captain Beefheart lately?) but this is one segment that might veer from the rock and roll path every once in awhile because it’s not just about rock and roll but relax! I’ll try to keep it connected to rock ‘n’ roll in some tangential way as much as I can. Today I introduce to you a really cool magazine called Cool and Strange Music Magazine. Bizarre, funny and certainly strange, this is a very cool, very weird read. A quarterly magazine that features “’Incredibly Strange Music,’ Exotica, Space Age Bachelor Pad, Lounge, Swing, Surf, Comedy, Electronic, and offbeat LP covers” this is one of those magazines that might turn you into a raving lunatic record collector who insists on collecting only ‘50s era jazz records with pictures of fish on them. If you see it on the magazine racks grab a copy. If not you can order it from their web site. This is a really cool way to spend some time when you’re not listening to rock and roll and need to fire up your synapses with a jolt of musical madness. And I thought Frank Zappa was weird! Have a great weekend everybody.
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Finding good mainstream rock and roll magazines can be a real chore. The Rock and Roll Report has highlighted some really cool web based and print magazines that are amazing but definitely outside the realm of the typical shopping mall magazine buying public but there some good ones that you can find at places like Barnes and Nobles or Chapters. One such magazine is Bang. Based in the UK, Bang is a pretty cool print magazine that has its moments. With the motto “It’s only rock ‘n’ roll” Bang has the typical UK attitude and covers all of today’s rock and roll with aplomb and their website features a pretty cool message board/blog that you can vent on if you wish. The issue this month features a story on the rise of Christian rock! I love those kinds of articles. At least it doesn’t feature a fashion spread, yet.
UPDATE! It looks like Bang has gone poof! Too bad.
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Remember the days when you could buy pet food on the Internet, or watch a short movie for free online, or be inundated by a bunch of “dot com” commercials from companies you never heard of run by computer obsessed geeks barely out of university with no business knowledge but loads of stock options? That’s right I’m talking about Y2K when all things Internet related seemed so …..hyper. Well Coolfer has given me the heads up on an excellent article from the Atlantic Monthly written during that momentous year on the MP3 “phenomena.” Titled “The Heavenly Jukebox” this piece is most definitely the best introduction to the issues of technology, music and copyright that I have read and it is still relevant today. What should happen and what can happen are still evolving but as this article points out “Allowing the travails of a single industry — no matter how legitimate its concerns — to decide the architecture of that arena would be a folly that could take a long time to undo.” This to me is still the fundamental point. Allowing the recording industry to determine how technology evolves will erode the Internet to the point where not only will it be useless to the average music fan, it will also be useless as a legitimate forum for self expression and the dissemination of ideas. And that would be not only a sad thing but a potentially disastrous thing for all of us. Thanks Coolfer. Check out his site right now. Good stuff from someone who cares. And check out that pledge! We all thank you for that.
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Democracy has always existed in the west as an idealized form of governance that promotes individual liberty and happiness. That is the theory. Realistically we know that censorship has reared its ugly head continuously and the trend seems to be accelerating in recent years. The only way to battle censorship in all its forms is to confront it head on as complacency is the enemy of any true democracy. Now what does this have to do with rock and roll you ask? Don’t ask me, ask the gang at Rock Out Censorship, an excellent website that deals with this very issue. According to the ROC website “We are a grass roots anti-censorship organization seeking to counteract efforts being made across the political spectrum to deprive us of our First Amendment rights… and we are
NOT HAPPY!
To put it bluntly, we are fed up, disgusted, offended, and pissed off about having our First Amendment rights trampled, ignored, desecrated, and pissed on by spineless politicians that have sold out this country to corporate interests, religious zealots that seek to turn this once free nation into an intolerant theocracy where we all MUST worship THEIR God, THEIR way, or burn in Hell for all eternity, and the so-called liberal sentries of political correctness in which nobody can dare utter a single word that might be construed as something that might offend someone.” They’re not shy are they? Not only are these guys hard core in their defense of First Amendment rights (they are U.S. based but are slowly spreading around the world), they put together an excellent rock and roll e-zine and resource site. Check them out. At the very least you will get some cool rock and roll stuff to read, at the very best you might come away from reading the site just a little bit more concerned about what is happening to your rights and maybe you will even do something about it. Either way you’re a winner. Who said you don’t learn anything in rock and roll?
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This is a shocker. According to Sky News Robert Palmer has died. He was only 54. R.I.P.
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Pitchfork has an excellent article called Pitchfork: Castoffs and Cutouts: The Top 50 Most Common Used CDs which lists the top 50 used CDs with hilarious commentary. Argue at will.
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Looks like the Bottom Line has been granted a lifeline (RollingStone.com: News: Bottom Line Granted Reprieve). Excellent.
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Power Pop is a sweet and delicious rock and roll confection that is fun to listen to and tastes just right. And nobody does it better than the gang at Not Lame Records. I briefly mentioned them in a post last July but you should really head on over to their site and check them out. If you are new to the world of Power Pop, pick up one of their fine compilations and relax with the old headphones on. I am sure that you will like what you hear and be ready for more. With the simple philosophy that Not Lame “exists to provide good music for good people” Not Lame Records is yet another example of a great record label that will perk up the ears of any jaded rock ‘n’ roll fan. Give ‘em a try. As Ned Flanders would say “Ummmmm, satisfyin’.”
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I have always admired Peter Buck. He belongs right up there with some of my own personal rock and roll inspirations such as Greg Shaw, Keith Richards and Little Steven (and this from a guy who is not much of a Springsteen fan), people that live and breath rock ‘n’ roll. When I first started getting into R.E.M. during their “Document” period, I would read about Peter Buck recording with Nicky Sudden or producing someone like The Replacements and to this rock and roll fan bred on Zeppelin, Rush and Van Halen I could only scratch my head and think “who are these guys”? He would list a bunch of cool rock and roll that he was listening to at the time from bands that I had never heard of like they were in heavy rotation in some bizarre parallel rock and roll universe to my own. The curiosity over who and what he was listening to led directly to an expansion of my rock and roll tastes into music that was not only not on my usual rock and roll listening path but was way out there in the unknown, slightly prickly indie rock bushes. This is exactly the same way that Keith Richards and Jimmy Page yammering on about Chess Records and Robert Johnson introduced me to the blues. Any rock and roll band worth listening to should lead you to explore new branches on the rock and roll tree. Whether it stems from their stated influences, choice of opening acts or covers recorded, part of the fun of being a rock and roll fan is discovering the unknown, the forgotten and the rock and roll flotsam and jetsam that is the living legacy of rock and roll and guys like Peter Buck, Greg Shaw, Keith Richards and Little Steven are the perfect tour guides. Jim Derogatis recently interviewed Buck and his thoughts on rock and roll life, aging and R.E.M. are interesting and insightful. If you ever wanted to change rock and roll paths and check out some cool, and not so cool rock and roll, all you have to do is follow the career path of Peter Buck. To say that it is a rock and roll education is an understatement. Any man who owns a house in Hawaii but spends most of his time listening to his (at last count) 10,000 records in the music room when he isn’t gigging with his approximately 50 other rock and roll side projects is a man that knows and loves his stuff. Now if only I could get him to put together a compilation for The Rock and Roll Report……
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Look, I have a legal background so this kind of stuff happens (Recording industry withdraws suit) but it’s funny none the less. The law and technology are never, ever in sync with each other. Did I say ever? Never.
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This story: Think Debate on Music Property Rights Began With Napster? Hardly is an excellent survey of the clash between music production and distribution and technology. Click on the chart for a very revealing history lesson. Class dismissed. (this is from the New York Times so free site registration is required).
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In the belief that only a reasonable, rational debate on file sharing will allow us to come to reasonable and rational conclusions, I bring to you the President of the RIAA (no catcalls pleas! Quiet in the peanut gallery!)File-sharing is illegal. Period. The debate continues.
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Check this out: Kazaa sues music, movie companies. “As The Record Spins” continues next week with the RIAA admiting that they slept with the Webcaster Alliance. Stay tuned.
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While “researching” some sites for my Bubblegum Pop post, I came across an excellent article on the ‘Net detailing a history of what was for a lot of people of a certain “vintage” their first introduction to rock and roll. Check this out.
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Rock and roll is littered with the detritus of long gone record labels. Whether they were hip young independents taking on the might of the big record labels or the vanity imprints of rock and roll stars, it seemed that everyone and their brother at one point or another was starting a record label in the sixties. But some stood out more than others and Immediate Records was one that quickly rose to the top of the rock and roll heap only to crash and burn a scant five years after its founding. Born in England in 1965 from the heads of Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham and PR man extraordinaire Tony Calder, Immediate Records was intended to be something special. With help from producers Mick Jagger and Keith Richard as well as Eric Burdon and Glyn Johns and arrangements from future Zepmeister Jimmy Page, Immediate Records began at a time when rock and roll was dominated by pop grounds and ended at a time when “real” rock and roll was all about rock bands. Started in 1965 and folding in 1970, Immediate was relatively successful but as soften happened in the acid drenched love generation of the mid-sixties they often sold the sizzle and not the steak. The idea behind Immediate was of a loose, hip label catering to discriminating rock and roll fans. Oldham and Calder structured Immediate as a reaction to the staid, formal atmosphere that existed at the big record labels of the time. Starting off with a hit in “Hang on Sloopy” by The McCoys, artists on the Immediate roster included The Nice, The Small Faces (who released one of my personal favourite titles ever for a record “Ogden Nut Gone Flake), Rod Stewart, Chris Farlowe, Humble Pie, John Mayall and a host of others. Since the label folded, the fate of Immediate Records resembled something out of “Bleak House” by Dickens. Countless lawsuits and sales of the original material makes tracing the ownership of the Immediate masters very difficult, especially since Oldham has only now awoken from his drug addled sleep to lead the charge and reclaim his rightful legacy. Immediate was certainly an interesting label that put out some really good stuff in its prime and it’s a shame that it didn’t survive to build on the foundation laid in the sixties. If anything, Immediate paved the way for the other hip independent labels to come. It certainly inspired the likes of The Beatles in creating their ill-fated Apple Records empire. By far the best website dedicated to Immediate Records has to be The Unofficial Immediate Records Homepage. Everything and anything you need to know about the rock and roll legacy left by Immediate Records is there for the taking. Some quick facts:
Started Aug 20, 1965.
Folded Feb 1970
Released 84 singles
24 UK Top 50 hits of which 9 went UK top 10
“Out of Time” by Chris Farlowe and “(If Paradise is) Half as Nice” by Amen Corner went to UK No.1.
Immediate Records were a vital part of rock and roll history that though they may be gone they are certainly not forgotten.
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Creature
Moonshine Orchestra
The Snitches