Currently viewin'
just da "the internet!" posts

Mon. 9/15/08 9:33pm
From: CJ

This 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.

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 A few days passed, and then I received an email forward from Dreamhost, the RIAA has rescinded their notice and the file has been put back up online.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.

full article.

- – -

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.

- – -

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.

- – -

finally, tv on the radio do something that i can relate to:

- – -

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’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

“i love you faux pas”
 

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”

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?