Steve’s Internet Stuffs

He's recently made a massive amount of his back catalogue free to download from his site. There's a load of really incredible music in there! (thanks to @philwbass for the tip-off!)

Check it out at http://www.m-base.com/download.html - as well as his essay about why he's making it available for free at http://www.m-base.com/give_away.html 

I hope Steve discovers BandCamp soon - it's perfect for what he's doing here, and would give us the chance to send him something for the music if we want to. Which would be nice. As well as the much higher res files without him carrying the bandwidth costs... (the files on Steve's site are 128K MP3s) 

Anyway, get 'em, they're amazing. 

But I have been documenting some of my experiments along the way, most notably with Audioboo and Vimeo, but also and a Youtube video or two. 

So here are some of the Audioboos, for you and I to both recap as I think about recording a new solo album in the near future. I'll add the Video stuff to a later post. 

I hadn't played it for quite a few months, given that I usually only take one bass to gigs these days and it's the fretless, hence I practice on it too... 

But it was fun to have a play around (despite the bass really needing a set-up). 

Here's a little snippet of what I was playing, recorded to audioboo. 3 loops - the first one a rhythm track, second one some chords, third one gnarly distorted tremolo sound. 

Enjoy :) 

Apart from the slight weirdness of me sitting watching myself on Youtube (I was watching to see what sounds I used in order to answer the question in the comment), I was struck by the really slow build on the loops. Then realised that the reason it sounded unfamiliar is that it's only at house concerts where I can get away with playing that slow, that measured, where I can give each layer and musical idea the room to grow that it deserves. 

The reason is this - for music to work, the silence in the room needs to sound good. If what happens when you're not playing is nasty background noise - whether it's traffic or coffee-machines or people talking, or air-con units... whatever it is, the music can't have holes because it's primary purpose becomes covering up that other noise. After that, you get to be good, interesting or whatever... 

Have a listen, tell me what you think - I love the pacing of this, and it's inspiring me to want to get some new music written, with lots of holes in it. Swiss Cheese music. :) 

Anyway, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Doolittle, they're giving away a free live EP to download - you can get it by clicking below. 

Awesome. If you're on twitter, send @joeysantiago a thanks :) 

[[ EDIT - the whole book is now available at http://leanpub.com/rockandrollisdead ]]

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Been having a REALLY fascinating conversation on twitter this morning about good TV, what makes good TV, the place of violence in the media, all kinds of great stuff. Srsly, thanks so much for the chat. I've learned a lot, and have lots of potentially cool TV to check out. 

It reminded me, though, of the truism that 'most TV is shit'. It is, TV works because people sit in front of it and say' what's on?" assuming that watching *anything* is better than watching nothing. A Dangerous state to be in. 

Which, in turn, prompted me to post this chunk from the book I'm in the middle of writing for NaNoWriMo. (I'm writing a novel in a month, see here and here for context). 

Anyway, this is a conversation between Gem - guitarist and recently disillusioned Rock 'n' Roll dreamer, and Drum Monkey - drummer, sysadmin, geek, seeker of solutions - we join the conversation with Gem asserting that there are 'exceptions' to the rule that women can't rock, but that they prove it to be true, he starts, and the conversation goes on - Drum Monkey's big speech is the key bit for our discussion, methinks [warning, there's a fair bit of swearing here, if that offends, don't read on...] :

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“Bang goes my theory that women can’t rock.” 

“You call that a ‘theory’? Are you serious? Have you never heard Juliana Hatfield, Kristin Hersh, Kim Gordon, Kim Deal...”

“OK, ok, I know. There are some who can, but they’re the exceptions.”

“Gem, you’re a cock. What on earth are you talking about? Just how many exceptions do you need before you realise that most music is crap. Most men can’t ‘rock’ - whatever the fuck ‘rocking’ has got to do with anything. Making great music is really difficult. You choose to look at the things you like as representative of something or other, but actually, all good music is an exception to a rule. The rule is, it’s impossible to make awesome music. Fortunately there are so many people trying to make awesome music that a 0.1 percent suckage fail-rate is enough to produce a thousand life times worth of incredible life-changing music. The numbers still don’t suggest that either ‘men’ or ‘women’ are innately good at rock. The dick-heads that write music magazines are innately good at treating women who write meaningful music as some kind of curiosity, as though having tits and playing guitar are meant to be mutually exclusive, and somehow women doing anything other than just looking ‘hot’ is an act of uber-feminism. So someone like Tori Amos gets labeled a ‘control freak’ because she knows what she wants. She’s not allowed to be artist, writer and producer. She’s treated as a lunatic because she has ideas. How fucked up is that? Women are ‘allowed’ to sing, play piano, and be sexy. Anything else and they’re nuts. It’s utter shit, and you’ve bought into it. You tool.”

Drum Monkey is breathing hard. That was exhilarating. Wow. How long has that been brewing? God knows. But it felt really good. 

Gem is silent. And confused. Way too many sacred cows have been slaughtered in the last week. He opens his mouth to speak, without any idea what’s going to come out. 

“The music industry is like the fucking Truman Show.” 

That’s a start. Sentences fall out like disconnected shards of thought snatched from a conspiracy theory chat-room. 

“It is. This entire world of comfort and promise and myth and legend and bullshit is spun ... And we buy into it ... And the main actors sometimes die defending the myth ... The product placement is insane ... The energy spent perpetuating it is unmeasurable ... almost everyone loses ... “

“Everyone loses.” 

Drum Monkey gets it. He follows the metaphor. It works.  

“Absolutely everyone loses. Because the wins are money and fame. Neither of which are a measure of anything ‘good’. Or ‘useful’. Or even ‘human’. Both are attritious. Destructive...” 

Drum Monkey slows to haiku. Continues. 

“There’s no measure of what anything means ... If it makes money it’s good ... Even if it loses more money than it makes ... Even if the patently ridiculous mythology of it all engulfs the musicians ... look at Amy Winehouse - every time she went into rehab, or court, or was in a fight, her label ran adverts for her album. If she dies they’ve got blood on their hands.” 

Gem hurts. It’s too much. He hits the stop button. 

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If you want to read the rest of the book as it unfolds, feel free to send me a message, and I'll send you the link and the password to download the first 14000 words... it'll be updated as the project goes on... 

Here's my talk - feel free to discuss it here, or embed it on your own blog and discuss it there.