Added two new subscription options to the Archive of Misheard Lyrics this weekend: A Lyric of the Day listserve, which sends out a featured mondegreen to subscribers daily, and a Fresh Lyrics RSS feed.
YouTube License Fine Print
With more than 100 million videos per day being viewed, YouTube has become an important distribution channel for new musicians. But someone’s got to pay for all those terabytes. If you’ve been wondering what kind of business model was going to keep YouTube afloat, look deeper than AdSense. Try the fine print:
“…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successor’s) business… in any media formats and through any media channels.”
Wired blog: “Among other things, this means they could strip the audio portion of any track and sell it on a CD. Or, they could sell your video to an ad firm looking to get “edgy”; suddenly your indie reggae tune could be the soundtrack to a new ad for SUVs. The sky’s still the limit, when it comes to the rights you surrender to YouTube when you upload your video.”
Not saying the terms are unfair, necessarily. You get what you pay for. But they are extreme, and musicians looking to break the surface of the water through the service should be paying attention.
Via Mal
Mutato Visual
Speaking of Devo, little-known fact about Mark Mothersbaugh: He’s been creating a mixed media postcard every day, for over 30 years. Originally created as personal diaries, they’ve become an obsession, and now go on tour with him. The postcards combine media and styles freely — painting and illustration, found objects, backing materials. Some gorgeous, some insane, but these seem to have very little scent of the kitsch of late-model Devo. Selections from the 2006 set are displayed online; not sure where to find the rest of the archive.
Music: Jonas Hellborg & Shawn Lane & Jeff Sipe :: Time Is The Enemy
Devo at the Paramount
Had no idea Devo were still touring. No, didn’t go, but recently got an earful about a recent show at Oakland’s gorgeous Paramount theater. Saturday, sifting sand through back-stop-sized sieves at the preschool with some other dads (found two gold-painted rocks, a spent pacifier, numerous toy boats, rockets, plastic animals, and mercifully few cat dookies — the dues of belonging to a co-op), learned that one of the dads was a friend of Mark Mothersbaugh, and had been there with camera.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with a band staying together as long as the music holds up — Neil Young and Crazy Horse just keep getting better with years, e.g. — but there is always the risk of looking ridiculous if you hold too tightly to the past as years go by. Even if Devo did create the look to begin with, somehow the flower pot hats and hazmat suits don’t have quite the impact when wrapped around middle-aged paunches. Still, dude said the music sounded tight, and I’m as much a sucker as the next guy when it comes to living in the past.
The shots of bassist Jerry Casales show him apparently trapped in a very Devo-lved looking contraption; as it turns out, the apparatus is there to keep his very bad back aloft and in line.
Music: Jack Johnson :: Wrong Turn
Fluke
After much hemming and hawing and reading and plucking away at home on baald’s ukulele and in stores on others, decided on a wood-top Fluke — a good all-around durable starter uke with a really great tone for the price, and plenty of room to grow with for a while (though the huge variety of ukelele types and sounds has already sparked a small fetish fire – caution!) Best pics I could find are here, though the cheaper version I got does not include a pickup.
Taking a much-needed few days off work, and finally got caught up enough to spend the afternoon on the back porch plucking away at the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song, “Anarchy in the U.K.,” and a few oldies. Out of practice, fingertips sore. Now all I need is the canoe.
Music: Essential Logic :: Collect Dust
While My Uke Gently Weeps
Sudden interest in the grace of the ukulele after seeing a master player rendering Sonny & Cher and Tony Orlando songs at a preschool marshmallow roast the other night. Then baald, who recently lent me his own uke so I can learn a few White Stripes songs to play for Miles, sends me this Jake Shimabukuro piece:
… which makes me weep. Get that idea that the ukulele is an instrument for strumming in the back of a canoe out your head.
WFMU
I’ve listened to plenty of Ketjak, but had never seen the Ramayana Monkey Chant performed (this is a must-watch). Heard plenty of slide guitar, but never seen a dude using a spoon clenched between his teeth as a slide. Watched plenty of Bob Denver, but had never seen him buried in sand with an inverted face painted on his chin, being worshipped by surfers.
All of this and mountains more at the amazing WFMU, a truly incredible archive of strange music and music-related info/media.
Thanks baald
Living With War
“History was a cruel judge of overconfidence / back in the days of shock and awe…” says Neil Young on his new protest album Living With War. The album – which took just three weeks to produce – was released digitally first (as a stream), then released to legal download sites for purchase, and hits record stores soon. New York Times:
“In a song whose title alone has already brought him the fury of right-wing blogs, he urges, “Let’s Impeach the President.” It ends with Mr. Young shouting, “Flip, flop,” amid contradictory sound bites of President Bush. But Mr. Young insists the album is nonpartisan.”
More on partisanship in a CNN interview. Musically and lyrically, this is not Young at his most creative – Living With War is no Greendale. But the honesty is compelling, and it’s a great example of how an artist can use technology to mobilize and distribute a message quickly.
Nihilism
Sony Screws Artists… Again
Bands that signed with Sony between 1962 and 2002 hope to get a less-raw deal than they historically have. Selling songs online means no pressing plants, no distribution costs, no returns due to breakage, and so on. New artists benefit from these factors by making 30 cents on the buck when selling online, but Sony wants their bread-and-butter bands to make the same amt/song selling online as they always have (4 cents). Cheap Trick and The Allman Bros. are suing for their share.