Mon. 9/15/08 9:33pm
From: CJThis is the best radio I’ve ever heard in my life.
three hours of rock band 2, live to air on wfmu in new york city, courtesy of trent and friends on sound and safe.
mp3 stream. trent’s rendition of pearl jam’s “alive” at approx 60:00 is a highlight.
No Comments if you haven’t caught it yet, here’s the film clip for “coach” recently completed by bob jarvis aka zeal, who has now earnt his PhD in photocopying:
coach comes from the changes EP, released last november. buy it or don’t.
also - there are, all of a sudden, a bunch of places online where you can hear new faux pas songs, works in progress, remixes, things like that:
- 3 new songs at myspace.com/iamfauxpas
- a remix of mine now appearing at myspace.com/olloollo (which comes from their recently released remix ep)
- the rad istanbul blog undomondo recently posted an edit i made of 70s kraut stoners agitation free… alongside some footage of them rolling in egyptian dunes. big thanks, considering that its only through undomondo that i found out about the track in the first place.
a few random things…
over at whothehell.net, blink and you would have missed jerry’s post on the digital millenium copyright act or, more accurately, about his blog’s first-hand experience of a takedown notice from the RIAA - they were asked to take down a pnau remix. never mind that they were actually sent the file by pnau’s label:
My post is just one of the many examples how this law is being misused. It’s true that the mp3, being hosted with Dreamhost a US company, falls under US court of law jurisdiction. But hosting companies are so fearful of being sued by labels, movie studios and huge bands like Metallica and U2 that as soon as they received a takedown notice they restrict access to the disputed file without even doing background checks to the validity of the notices…
One of the sites has example of how to write a counter takedown notice, so I did a simple cut and paste, filled in the details and sent it back not to Dreamhost but to antipiracy@riaa.com, letting them know that they are in no position to serve this notice in the first place because they don’t even represent the copyright owner of the song. And then I waited, to see if I’m going to be sued for blogging an mp3 I was given permission to. A few days passed, and then I received an email forward from Dreamhost, the RIAA has rescinded their notice and the file has been put back up online. It is now available again. whothehell.net 1, RIAA 0.
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in the comment boxes for the above post you’ll find dj donna summer - aka jason forrest - weighing in with gusto… this is a great opportunity for me to, first, point you towards the birthday party berlin blog being healthily maintained and furnished with pop-core type stuff by forrest and his homies over in berlin, and second, clue you in on the fact that he’s recently made all the songs on his myspace profile available for download. that includes 3 tracks from what is close to my favourite album of all time “shamelessly exciting.” go over there and do some downloading - i know you’ll do the right thing and buy the album eventually from sonig, cos of its undeniable brilliance.
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i generally only use the street press to wipe my ass with (sorry dudes, for the vitriol and for the visual!) but there’s a great interview with cool hunter sia in this week’s inpress if you are around melbourne town. i love anthony carew’s (rrr broadcaster and international pop evangelist) subtle technique - which often takes the form of a kind of sly character assassination that you don’t catch the first 2 or 3 times you read the article:
The New York-based 32-year-old was born in Adelaide, raised in a new-age, beyond-Bohemian household that seems to have ingrained in her, from the very start, the need to be self-consciously kooky. A conversation with Furler feels like an interaction with someone who’s been told, from when they were very young, how ‘crazy’ they are; like you’re privy to a kind of performance. You’re warned to expect anything, but all you end up with are quirks, smirks, and mid-interview trips to the toilet.
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finally, tv on the radio do something that i can relate to:
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and finally finally - and i fear this is going to become more regular, at least until the novelty of me mentioning it wears off (for me) - but despite evidence to the contrary i won’t be appearing with Never tRuSt Hippie at the wall of the death concert in, um, мурманск russia this coming saturday night. but just remember, as i always say… Значит твоё место в СТЕНЕ СМЕРТИ!!!
i playlisted my brother’s 21st birthday last night, i think it went ok. that fine old tradition of the “21st birthday DJ” - its got me feeling real kitsch. so, here’s some messed-up kitsch to help get you through your working week.
i got to say, love shack is the most played-out of played-out tunes. but i couldn’t help but fall in love with it all over again when i got distracted with some pitch-shifting while putting together my bro’s playlist. simple pleasures, folks, simple pleasures. here’s what i’m talking about:
its not quite a screw, but you know. i’ve always had a sneaking suspicion love shack was meant to be sung by an all male choir, and this is a step closer. for some reason i can’t get this guy out of my head when i listen to it, brian, hank kingsley’s assistant:
wonder why that is.
but here’s a real screw, and a real heavy-hitter. this is bona fide, knock-it-out-of-the-park amazing type shit! god bless dutty artz for posting this earlier in the year. i’ll admit to having a serious soft spot for alicia keys, but this takes this song to a whole other planet. this is the kind of song that can keep me going when things get tough, know what i mean? this is something i can get behind. i feel better every single damned time i listen to this. i’m posting it here because you can no longer get it from dutty artz.
MP3: Alicia Keys - No One (Mike Watts screw)
screwing is about slowing songs down, but i can’t bear to hear any more of love shack than absolutely necessary so, yeah, original tempo. in fact, recently i’m all about shortening songs. like, for example, did you know that “horses” by daryl braithwaite is waaay more palatable when condensed down to 1 minute and 9 seconds?
MP3: Daryl Braithwaite - Horses (Time Poor edit)
MP3: Hall & Oates - Maneater (Time Poor edit)
this all reminds me of the time i condensed my 60 minute JJJ mix up set down to 7 minutes. imagine if itunes or winamp or whatever just had a button you could press that says “condense music” and it just compacted what you were listening to into a fraction of its running time. we’d get so much more done.
and lastly, i found this great 7 minute megamix of “i wanna dance with somebody.” in fact, on a p2p network that shall remain nameless, i found no less than TEN remixes of this track, all neatly packaged together by some dude. its 70 minutes of i wanna dance with somebody. most of it sounds way to queer eye soundtrack for my liking - this is the pick of the bunch. no trickery here, just seriously intense 80s pop remixing. the best bit is about 5 minutes in, where it just becomes this intense drum machine workout and some dude yelling at me over and over “dance, dance, d-d-d-dance”
MP3: Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Hot Tracks mix)
i’m seriously RIAA-baiting with this post. methinks i’m about to trigger a wide variety of alerts on RIAA automated blog piracy detection bot programs. note to tim’s ISP: prepare to receive correspondence! shit i’ve even said RIAA a couple of times in this paragraph so no doubt they’ll be checking me out.
simple pleasures.
i’ve been engaged in something of a social networking spree over the last couple of days, where time has allowed, going around sprinking fairy dust into the crevices of the various places on the net that say “faux pas” in big bright letters, the places where in my dreams i imagine cool people hang out online, saying “gee what a lovely chap, what fine muzak to enjoy with my nightcap”.
most immediately obvious would be that this blog has had a long overdue makeover - behind the scenes, an upgrade to wordpress 2.6.2 WHAT A NERD and a new theme courtesy of some warhammer gaming dude (seems fitting). but also various other places round the net getting a spit and shine and its making me wonder about how cool (or uncool) it is to be spread so keenly across the informatic superhighway.
i mean, this is something i genuinely, straight up, enjoy doing, updating or maintaining my web presence. providing a little internet playground for the faux pas fans i imagine in my dream-fantasy-land to wander around in. communicating with people who have an interest in the music i make is something i enjoy almost as much as making the music, and the internet facilitates 99% of that, for me anyway.
its a funny thing. i think there is definitely a thing with indie music, where to be inaccessible is quite fashionable, quite cool. its one thing to be a myspace featured band, but its WAY cooler if you don’t even have a myspace profile. shit, you mean you don’t even have a gmail account? you don’t even know what gmail is? woah, so cool! i suppose with this medium its so easy to over-promote yourself, even when you have the best of intentions; put everyone on the back foot about what you are doing by emailing them too often, spamming them with myspace fliers, hounding them on facebook et cetera. it makes sense that people who remain distant from the internet are in many ways taking the safer route in terms of not alienating dudes.
its cool to be ‘mysterious’ but its uncool to let too much yourself out there. people lost their shit about burial, for example, and it always bugged me that so much of a fuss was made about the fact that no one knew who he was. staying behind the curtain like the wizard of oz is so much more fashionable i guess than putting yourself out there.
i suppose more generally this relates to the idea that, particularly with some forms of music, it makes sense to try and abstract it as much as possible. not just taking it easy on the internet presence, but more than that - give your songs names that mean nothing so that people can attach their own meanings to them; make your album cover just a splatch of blue lines and a red dot; give yourself a non-committal band name or whatever. perhaps this train of thought applies to instrumental music the most - once you put words in the mix, you are (unless you are ranting a sort of inane drivel in your lyrics, heaven knows how rare that is) committing yourself to meaning… something… but its the same reason why songwriters whinge about explaining their lyrics to people, they don’t really want to commit to something because they don’t want to take anything away from the listener. whether you say thats because they genuinely value the listener’s experience of subjectivity that highly, or because they just don’t want to alienate potential customers, that depends on how cynical you are.
listening to music is so much about escapism, and people like to embue music with their own dreams and feelings. finding out too much about the person behind the music - and learning, perhaps, that they might be the kind of person or personality that might grate with you in the ‘real world’ - even something as simple as “oh what? you mean, this guy doesn’t even use capital letters when he blogs? what a douchebag” - can sometimes really taint that escapist experience of letting music carry you away. like when i realised daedelus dresses up like he’s going to a bad fancy dress party in every press shot (its ok, i got over it). its like meeting that hot dude at the party, and making out with him, and next day finding out he’s a family first voter. you don’t look at him the same after that.
when you make music largely without words, you really are leaving it open for people to attach their own emotional or intellectual or whatever type of symbolism to your music - sometimes i wonder whether blogging (in so much that me posting youtube clips of robert palmer and whinging about negative ratatat reviews constitutes ‘blogging’) might taint the experience of my music for some people.
ahh this is simply more thinly veiled narcissism here from me i guess, but yeah, i’m a web coder and a social networker myself, so i quite like wandering around myspace, facebook, youtube, changing the colors of things, redrafting bits of copy, all the general maintenance. i’d like to think its not just pure ego, but primarily to do with wanting my music to get heard, and also providing a little faux pas sandbox for people to play in, alongside whatever they might get out of the music. but sometimes i catch myself thinking “would faux pas seem ‘cooler’ if i just shut it all down and left an empty black page where everything else was?”
in related news, here is jens lekman’s myspace profile.
faux pas is now on facebook. become a fan or whatever it is you do over there. my super ego extends further into the information superhighway. it strings out like spaghetti! woooooooooooOOOO O O O O
there has also been a few sneaky updates elsewhere… in the meantime, time trumpet catches up with an increasingly odd tom cruise:
watch the entire first series of time trumpet here. lasair will throw you a chocolate jesus. lastly, in case i don’t get a chance to mention it before it happens - melbourne beat-dude AOI joins me on 3rrr on tuesday night for a live on-air performance, and also what promises to be a good chat about stuff like for example his recent mixtape (feat. a capellas from ghostface, mf doom, beastie boys et al over his bubbly proto-wonky productions - downloadable at http://datarook.net/aoi/).
and lastly, if you call my phone and lionel richie answers, don’t be alarmed. as confucious once said “if level two calls melbourne independent musician, but lionel richie answers phone, somewhere an angel dies”
following on from my recent revelation that i’d accidentally become some kind of hub for moody blues internet piracy - with 40,000 downloads in 6 weeks of a recent edit i uploaded (lets just say between you and me that none of the mp3s i post here ever generate close to that traffic) - i thought i’d redress the balance by posting a few of my favourite moody blues youtube clips. they are more than just “nights in white satin” and they are more than just a daggy not-quite-psychedelic 60s band that became a horrendous 80s dinosaur band. that said, it is true that “nights in white satin” is their best song, and that they are a daggy not-quite-psychedelic 60s band that became a horrendous 80s dinosaur band.
i listened to the moody blues a lot when i was a kid because of my dad. i think actually that we were both exposed to the moody blues at the same time in our childhoods - he, an impressionable kid when “nights in white satin” was on the airwaves the first time, me about the same age when he started to bring home the remastered CDs in the late 80s.
lets start with the obvious, in case you’re drawing blanks on the moody blues completely. after a flop debut album, the moody blues recruited a symphony orchestra to make a rock version of dvorak’s new world symphony (their label’s idea). the dvorak connection was lost, they ended up making orchestral psychedelic pop songs, and the album “days of future passed” spawned the mega-hit “nights in white satin.” here’s a promo clip for the original 1967 single edit, shot at least partially in paris. i get chills.
Video: The Moody Blues - Nights in White Satin (1967)
they scaled back the orchestral overtones for the following album “in search of the lost chord” and instead upped the hippie factor. yes, its a concept album about trying to find the ‘lost chord’ - i don’t want to ruin the ending but, they do find it, and it turns out to be ‘om.’ despite this vomit-inducing revelation there’s much pop greatness on this record. here they are on the bbc show colour me pop, miming the opening track on the record “ride my see-saw.” its introduced here, as on the record, with a poem.
Video: The Moody Blues - Ride My See-Saw (1968)
gosh they are a handsome bunch. in particular, check out the smooth dance moves of the moustachioed ray thomas, the band’s flutist. and justin hayward busts out a mean guitar solo. the moody blues shared around the songwriting duties in a fairly democratic fashion. never mind the fact that its generally the honey-eyed sickly-sweet ballads of justin hayward that pull focus, its the esoteric contributions from the less pop-idol members of the band that make their records intriguing. check this tribute to timothy leary, also from “in search of the lost chord”, which incidentally is my favourite song featuring my own name in the lyrics:
Video: The Moody Blues - Legend of a Mind (1968)
“a question of balance”, the fourth record, opens with an absolute belter. thats what craig huggins would probably refer to it as. i find this track really curious actually, because its possibly the most forthright and commanding pop song that they’d written to this point - its the moody blues equivalent of ball-tearing, frenzied acoustic strumming, intense orchestral flourishes, and justin hayward getting, like, totally in your face about the world, like:
Why do we never get an answer
When were knocking at the door?
With a thousand million questions
About hate and death and war.Its where we stop and look around us
There is nothing that we need.
In a world of persecution
That is burning in its greed.
fuck yeah! but the song just dies about half way through, basically they cut and paste a syrupy ballad into its middle. its like taking the heart of a puppy and transplanting it into a dragon - the dragon is weakened, and a perfectly good puppy (that if left alone would probably have been very cute and been doted on by many handsome ladies) is left for dead. you’ll know what i’m talking about - feel free to skip the middle bit:
Video: The Moody Blues - Question (1970)
i could really go on forever here, but go forth and enjoy yourself with the moodies, there’s plenty more surprises for you to uncover in the first four or five albums from the moody catalogue. plenty more stuff on youtube. there are drum breaks to be had for those who are that way inclined. also, one of the moody’s was one of the first mellotron reps and pioneered the use of the instrument live and on these records.
but i leave you with a part of their legacy that unfortunately can’t be denied, and its that they just went off in the 80s, not like pat benatar going off or metallica going off, but like milk going off. innumerable lineup changes and an unhealthy obsession with 80s synths and production techniques led the moodies down a dark path i’m afraid. like jethro tull, basically everything they released in the late 70s and through the 80s sounds like it was written by a team of trained monkeys and recorded in a septic tank. there is one exception to this - an album called “long distance voyager” released in 1981 (the year of my birth - coincidence? i think not) thats probably best described as a guilty pleasure. its a rarity though in that its an early 80s album that doesn’t sound like dick.
but look, the descent into 80s pop balladry and 90s dinosaur band mentality is their true history and i’ll share a bit of it now - the rather hideous “i know you’re out there somewhere” from 1988:
Video: The Moody Blues - I Know You’re Out There Somewhere (1988)
moody blues i love you.
i hinted before i went down to venus bay that i had a lot of stuff to share with you guys. i’ll get to that soon enough but in the mean time… its been really cold in melbourne this winter, and i wanted to share with you something thats been keeping me warm.
left: stevie nicks
right: lindsay buckingham
they’re so pretty. i can’t stop looking at her.. and then when i do, i start looking at him… and then it repeats… i texted my sister the other day and she messaged back “hey whats with all the dots, are you pausing or something? LOL”
web stats. they tell me what pages refer to this one, they tell me what google searches lead people to come here, and also what files are the most downloaded. i’ve always had an unhealthy affection for statistics, and when the statistics are about myself, well its that perfect blend of market research and narcissism that i find so irresistible.
like, for example, did you know that aside from “faux pas”, the most popular google search term that led people here in 2006 was “daniel vettori.” here is daniel vettori, he is appealing:
very appealing.
looking at my web stats is also how i found out that in 6 weeks there have been 40,000 downloads of a moody blues edit i posted in july. whoops. sorry moodies - i never intended to become some major kind of hub for moodies piracy but it looks like i temporarily did (i just removed the track). funny thing is i can’t figure out where any of that traffic has come from, but thats another matter. suffice to say, if you’re here reading this because you came here to download that moody blues track, dude, get in touch and tell me how you got here.
the main thing i wanted to do here, however, (aside from reiterating my attraction to daniel vettori) was reflect briefly on the number of downloads of faux pas tracks since this site started almost 3 years ago. giving music away as mp3s, its something i’ve always wanted to do and something that i support. you often hear debate about the merit of it but you don’t often see the stats. anyway, i was pretty surprised when i did some quick sums, and i wouldn’t say that its changed my opinion on giving stuff away for free… but its food for thought.
MEGA DOWNLOAD CHART (aka faux pas narcissism index #274) November 2005 - August 2008:
For the Trees - 20679 downloads
White Light - 10166 downloads
Tim as a Brim - 8532 downloads
Hermann’s Hermans - 8429 downloads
Barry - 6203 downloads
TOTAL - 54009 downloads
now lets take into account the fact that there is a fairly high percentage of false downloads - from googlebots and other automated spiders corrupting the data, and also people who maybe get half way through downloading a song and then think better of it (understandable) - lets be conservative and say that 50% of the downloads are false. thats still about 25,000 songs i’ve given away for free in close to 3 years. its about 25 a day. if each of those songs had been a paid download, lets say 50c each, i’d have about $12,500. not necessarily enough to quit my day job and move to the bahamas with robert palmer (weekend at bernies style, of course) but… that’d be more than enough for someone like me (someone who isn’t necessarily beholden to exorbatant studio hire costs, giant promotion budgets, or extravagant coke habits) to make another record or two.
but thats not how it works any more and we all know it. the idea that you could sell a song to someone was invented by record labels when they figured out a way to mechanically reproduce (and mass produce) sound - technology invented the idea that recordings had economic value and now technology is turning it around. the framework that underpinned this whole idea of reproducing and selling recordings is an industrial one (one of factories, machines, plastic and vinyl) and its being completely undermined by the internet like so many other outdated mechanical ideas. one day we’ll all be giving it all away for free - and most artists of a certain profile already are giving it all away for free, whether they want to or not, as most of you freeloading mp3-aggregator-loving torrent-seeding hippies are more than aware. selling music, whether it be on shiny discs or in ones and zeroes, is a 20th century idea thats simply taking a long time to die.
i, for one, look forward to the time when i can give all of my music away completely for free to anyone who wants it, and thats exactly what i’ll do if i can figure out another way (patronage, licensing, bank robbery, selling fake watches on ebay) to sustain the little cottage industry that is faux pas. in the meantime, did i mention i sell t-shirts?
i’m sorry to say that i won’t be able to make it to ROCK 4 ROOTS in nauen, germany tonight, despite being listed at last.fm as part of the line-up:
my apologies also to the german band faux pas, who have to see my face plasted around last.fm while they are trying to promote their own gigs. i love that you can listen to a little playlist at last.fm, sampling the various metal bands playing at rock 4 roots, and in the middle of all that you’ve got “for the trees” wedged in there. if i ever go to nauen, someone in a dark trenchcoat with long hair is gonna recognise my face and bash it in.
but hey, looks like its gonna be a good show. germany’s number one exponents of folk-metal, XIV Dark Centuries, are going to be there:
meanwhile, if you are in melbourne and are looking for somewhere to go tonight, i highly recommend checking out pikelet at the tote in collingwood. also playing are extreme wheeze, charge group, the twerps, and you’ll also see me and dave from to and fro there making between-band song selections.
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September 29, 2008 
