Waxy.org: Daily Log: Search the iTunes Music Store: boom, there it is.

Dang, that took, what, nearly a week? Geez, this LazyWeb thing, it’s just, I dunno, lazy!

(ahem. In all seriousness, HATS OFF, Andy!)

Andy’s offering hosted access to the search script on his site “until it gets too popular.” Meantime you can grab it yourself and install it if you should be so inclined.

Since I find myself sporting the silly cat’s-tongue goatee again, and Jake laughed and pointed at the song when he saw it in a tracklisting, and a little bird tells me that a Gizmos/Dow Jones and the Industrials reunion is imminently impending (well, Memorial Day) in Indy, may I present a silly, silly button that John Barge and Eric White (I believe) went to the trouble of making, oncet upon a time.

It features the mug of Indiana’s own Dale Lawrence, as he found himself in what was described to me as “a serious Dennis Wilson phase.” A click will enlarge the image, and you too can sport your own button.

(The Gizmos and Dow Jones were two of Indiana’s earliest punk/new wave outfits, back in the late seventies – and regulars here already know that Dale is the bandleader for Indy’s own Vulgar Boatmen.)

HAIR ON MY FACE
(Gizmos: Lawrence/Nightshade? maybe just Nightshade)

(transcription by ear and very likely contains errors)

I got hair growin’ out of my face I swear
It just started to curl and gave me quite a scare
I can’t do my wash, I can’t go to shows
It’s all over my teeth and all under my nose
I’m a total disgrace – I got hair on my face

I gotta find a good lawyer who can see my case
Hair on my face

Go to www.jasonwebley.com for more information.

See you there – say “hi” if you see me!

NSLog(); – itms:// Links – intrepid persons have sussed out the URLs in use by iTunes under the Music Store, now canonically called ITMS after the URL schema Apple’s using.

I assume, therefore, that someone will be buildng my requested in-browser review interface to the goods available.

It’s worth noting that there’s a discussion on the site concerning the eMusic/iMusic comparison I blogged a day or two ago. Unfortunately, the discussion doesn’t appear to shed much light on anything. It’s more a ‘Apple rox0rs! you suck, indie losers!’ vs. ‘no we don’t!’ kinda thing. Albeit more politely expressed than my summary.

So let’s see, now:

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZSearch.woa/wa/advancedSearchResults?artistTerm=Wolf

Does indeed return an XML doc that incudes the material from Howlin’ Wolf I was wondering about.

So, iTunes to plug holes in the collection takes a step toward viability.

Moon Song from the Veitches of rathergood.com. [via Rebecca of the ever-alarming taxidermy-and-disease blog sweat flavored gummi]

Turn your speakers down, and get ready to tap yer toes.

(hmm-hmm-hmm… not as high as maybe drigibles or zeppelins or maybe lightbulbs… hmmm-hmm-hmmm… we like tha moon… la-la-la…)

Take that, Apple Music!

Why EMusic gets it: side-by-side of the older, subscription-based online music service and Apple’s just-out approach. [via Mark at Boing Boing. Cory also notes today that Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is kicking up some dust in the ring at bookfilter]

I’ve been silent this week on the matter as I’ve become a late adopter on my machines (Apple’s updates have a track record of unfortunate side effects and each system update makes my aging hardware slower). Despite that, because Apple’s chosen to work with the majors (at first, at any rate) I’m profoundly not interested, as the music I like and care about is generally not available via the majors.

I want to browse a listing of Apple’s available material before I update my software. Additionally, I’m profoundly suspicious of any service that attaches a siphon directly to my wallet. Wouldn’t be prudent, as some have said.

(Yeah, yeah, I know: it’s not subscription-based. In my book, application-embedded purchasing opportunities count as siphons, siphons spawned by Satan!)

I’m still not a consumer of tracks based on the EMusic model, though. I am a big user of digital music but my use and consumption pattern appears to be different from that which the industry is gearing up to serve. Nothing new there for me, and I suppose if my needs were met it would make me uneasy and I’d change them to avoid being served.

So, I have three unanswered questions concerning Apple Music:

1. Where can I browse a list of titles offerred outside iTunes, preferably in my browser?

2. To what extent are indie and obscure releases available? Is there any rumbling that Apple may make an API available such that third-party material can be added so that iTunes becomes an open distribution system? Please note, I am not holding my breath on this.

3. Given what we know about the chosen compression media and DRM (downloaded 3-machine-use AAC’s that can be burned to disc), does the DRM end-run that immediately springs to mind (download, burn to CD, rip to MP3, dump the AAC) actually work? It’s such an obvious end-run I have a hard time imagining that Apple would design it to work that way.

Finally, as I was talking about this with Eric, I conceded that the service might be a useful tool for certain specific kinds of music, primarily releases that are dirt-common but for whatever reason I don’t have, such as any Beatles record.

To which Eric pointed out that the Fab Four are AWOL from Apple, which, honestly, may tell us all that we need to know about this service.

A couple of weeks ago, Dale Lawrence and Jake Smith (of, respectively, each other’s bands: Dale’s The Vulgar Boatmen and Jake’s Mysteries of Life – got that? There will be a test.) were here in Seattle for the EMP‘s second annual pop conference. Jake was presenting on the advent of video games as a central pop concern of the kiddies, displacing pop music, to the concerned clucking of old fogeys like me. I’m far from being in a position to discuss that perspective, though – I never spend time around young people anymore, so I have no idea.

Dale’s presentation, though, was on mashups, presumably based on his mashups piece on the No Nostalgia website. Viv and I had dinner with Jake and Dale while they were here, and really enjoyed the too-brief time spent discussing home and music and friends and so forth.

As I’ve noted before, Dale’s music – from his very earliest record, recorded live at CBGB’s Max’s Kansas City in 1978 to current bootlegs of live dates in the Midwest – is the most important material to me personally of all American pop. I grew up with it, I learned about song structure and playing techniques by listening to it, and decoded the antecedents and relationships with other musicians that helped form it. I came to Buddy Holly and the Velvet Underground through listening to Dale’s reactions to these artists.

So, when Dale takes the time to write about other people’s music for publication, I’m going to pay attention to what he has to say.

While here, Dale had intended to drop off a mix CD of mashups for me to check out so I could have some context for his piece. After this delay and that delay, I’m listening to it right now.

Dale’s arguing that the intersection of blanderized pop vocal performances and often less polished backing musical tracks (but frequently also from a well-known source) creates something new and better than the initial work. “They might be the freshest, most exciting records being made right now,” he says in the piece.

On the disc there’s a mix that employs The Stooges “No Fun” backing the vocals from Salt-n-Pepa’s “Push It”, which immediately stood out. Other tracks that have had an impact include, well, basically anything with Eminiem’s infuriatingly amusing razor-sharp wordbombs (“Without Me” atop Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag”, for example) and a track called “Superbike Party” that places Pink’s “Let’s Get This Party Started” atop the music from one of the Superbike video games from Electronic Arts.

So are these mixes better? Do they define a new direction for pop music? I think I have a difference of opinion with Dale on this. The Stooges/Salt-n-Pepa thing is a rawer, better version of Run DMC’s fifteen-year-old collision with Aerosmith. So what am I actually getting out of the material that’s new or resonant?

I think the answer is not much: I’m bathed in the warm glow of being a lifetime listener to the Stooges and an early appreciator of Salt-n-Pepa’s brainy, self-assured pulchritude: good for me, I’m a music geek! I think the same is true when I listen to “Without Me Rag” (actually titled “Marshall Gets Snookered”, as the rag concludes with the telltale sound of the click of billiard balls, cueing us to the The Sting, situating Eminiem as a winking, grinning scam artist). However, in this case, the reflective material available to the listener is greater than the simple pleasure of the absurdity of the mash, which leaves one chuckling in shock.

The real content of the piece is in the reiteration of the history of American pop music the track represents, something Eminiem actually directly addresses in the lyrics for “Without Me:”

And though I’m not the first king of controversy
I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley
do black music so selfishly
and used it to get myself wealthy
Here’s a concept that works

Scott Joplin, of course, was among the first popularizers of black music, being a black man himself. Yet he did it by presenting his material in the context of a system that had previously been largely restricted to white artists: as an author of sheet music, rather than as a performer.

Hearing this dialog between black music and white performers and interpreters presented with such a sense of sly wit – only appropriate to Eminem’s undeniably funny writing – elevates the piece.

Chuck D steps up to the plate next with “Rebel in His Own Mind” over the top of Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Chuck and the other members of Public Enemy helped to define the potential of layered sampling, a creative approach that Chuck, as well as numerous other commentators, now claim is impossible without recourse to violations of copyright. Which, of course, brings us to the encore.

Dale hears this dialog as a call to current guitar rockers to bring the black back and to bring the punk back to the funk:

“Listening to Freelance Hellraiser’s ‘A Stroke of Genius’ or McSleazy’s ‘Don’t Call Me Blur,’ one realizes how much more that bands like the Hives or the Strokes could be doing — particularly if they didn’t so consistently turn a deaf ear to black music. The cross-pollination of black and white sounds has virtually defined American pop, but in today’s indie-rock scene, funk (or its first cousin, rap) is about the only trace of R&B you’re likely to hear. That strict musical segregation is the key subtext of Best Bootlegs. Many of the tracks are textbook examples of how exciting the collision of black and white rock can be.”

He concludes that the music is “punk that likes to dance as much as it likes to fight,” a precise, accidental description of Dale’s early work with the Gizmos, no question about it. Additionally, it may sum up some things about what Dale finds worthwhile in music. Listening to the live Boatmen show I recently cut up for MP3 hosting, it also applies to his current performances.

Mashups and remix culture present opportunities for new kinds of creativity and comment that are as valid and challenging and could be as resonant as other kinds of more traditional music creation strategies. Can mashups present the individual-to-universal emotional landscapes that have traditionally been the purview of pop and singer-songwriter musicmaking?

With the possible exception of the U2-Missy Elliot (? I think)-Whitney Houston mashup “I Wanna Dance with Some Bono”, by Go Home Productions, which injects a cellophane party song with a desperate longing that transcends both source songs, the answer appears to be no. Why? I believe it’s the symbolic freight of the material that is employed to create the tunes. Instead of just grooving to “No Fun,” I was thinking about the tension between Iggy’s angular white-boy fear and repulsion toward his own body and Salt-n-Pepa’s round and bodacious sex-positive embrace. My experience of these songs was in my mind, not in my heart or in my body. My appreciation of them depended on my scholastic appreciation of the source material, of my ability to contextualize it.

Does that mean that the basic technique – layering two independent melody lines together – is irretrievable or can’t be used to create work with the vigor that the juice of two melodies can promise? The answer to that is clearly no.

Interestingly there’s at least one major pioneer in that technique in post 1960’s pop – The Grateful Dead. However (and whaetever your opinion of their material is), in their application it’s actually two independent rhythm lines, under improvised melodies, as opposed to the single beat, two-melody approach. Other big names in pop have worked with the technique (specifically, Brian Wilson and the Beatles in their grand studio manners) but because they were emulating classical models rather than pop ones the use of it is unheard, subsumed into the orchestral projects they were pursuing.

Dale himself could put his money where is mouth is – making vocal-only tracks to some of his songs available, to see what might come of it. For that matter, I could construct some myself on Dale’s music, employing the material of persons whose influences are so clear to my ear in his music.

Another possibility – the one I’m most interested in, in fact – is for an accomplished songwriter such as Dale to mash his own songs up – just sit down with an acoustic and ProTools, record fifteen two-track songs with fully separated vocals and guitar, and start mashing.

I’m thinking “Katy’s Heartbeat” might be interesting. Of course, to really do it up right, I should be looking at running Dale’s high sweet tenor on top of George Clinton. Don’t touch that dial!

(Corrections via Dale, updated – ha! look at the posting date – 04/26 7a)

One last thing to squeeze in here before I get going on the special. My friend Jason Webley recently announced his first concert of the season here in Seattle on May 3. He won’t be playing in Seatle again until July, so you’d better grab tix if you’re interested in seeing whether or not he lost any fingers or toes to frostbite at the last show.

If you’re not sure who Jason is or what is music sounds like, there are links to all of his recordings as RealAudio files on his site.

I have a pre-blog account of his final show of the year at Halloween, 2001 up (lots of pictures: towers, giant human hands, a torchlit parade, fire, and La Belle Dame Sans Merci all play a part), and Karen has a description of last year’s final show up (hours of silent freezing in the midnight cold with one crazy accordion player tied to a tree in subfreezing temperatures wearin’ his skivvies, among other mind-bending peculiarities).

So, to summarize: go to this show!

The Cradle of Recorded Jazz – Gennett and The Starr Piano Company provides a detailed overview of what was at one time one of the the largest audio recording and disc production facilities in the United States.

Growing up in Southern Indiana, I often wondered how it was possible that the state had contributed such large numbers of musicians and composers to American popular music early in the century. Hoagy Charmichael is the best known example, but there were more.

It was a minor mystery, one that grew in prominence as a young adult when it became clear that the relative isolation of the state made it difficult for the cultural ferment in places like Bloomington to bloom into economic opportunity in that location for creators, musical or otherwise.

Looking back, it appeared that was not always the case; that while artists might still emigrate to the coasts in search of more opportunity, once, there had been more, back home in Indiana.

I filed that away as I split town myself.

As the years have rolled on here, I’ve increasingly come to believe that there is a distinct Hoosier sound, a sensibility that unites and underlies even the disparate work of the Indiana punk bands of my youth with both Carmichael’s elegant melodies and the frenetic oldtime music of Bill Monroe (partly from Bean Blossom, near to Bloomington), among other threads.

The links, however, were missing. As a child and youth, I felt truly isolated and disconnected from both the local culture and the larger one – the American suburban isolation, I suppose. The blank past still rankles, frankly.

This past September, I think, I heard a feature on the radio about Starr Recordings and Gennet Records, in which the Starr-Gennett Foundation and mission were described and the history of the company discussed.

(Part One of Rick Karr’s six-part “Secret History of Technology and Pop Music” for Morning Edition. Scroll down a bit to the part one link and bend an ear, it’s neat.)

I felt like I’d been cheated. This crucial part of both American and Hoosier history wasn’t forgotten, exactly – it had basically never been recognized.

At any rate, the story of the Starr and Gennett facilities helps explain several things about Indiana music history to me, at least.

First, because of Richmond’s location at the eastern edge of the state, touring artists would have had several routes to pursue on their way up from St. Louis or Cincy to Chicago, and Richmond would have been a reasonably important stop.

Second, the presence of musicians crossing the state, east to west or west to east, would have attracted the interest of people like Hoagy, and certainly others. It’s clear that that’s where “Stardust” came from, for example.

These two things provide a basis for what now to me looks like a very fertile musical soil. I just happened to grow up at a time when it was unfashionable to see, seek, or support regional diversity in music, creating the artifically depressed and oppressive conditions for working musicians that were so prevalent at the time.

Finally, I think that this sudden historical perspective allows me to understand how a regionally distinctive set of sounds could have developed – without economic evidence of practice, commerce, and cross-pollination, my hypothesis was stillborn.

Now I have a potential mechanism that might – just maybe – connect Hoagy to Bill and these folks to all the other Indiana musicians I still listen to, carefully, attentively. The Starr-Gennett Foundation has chosen to emphsize the jazz heritage of the material recorded there, but I recall hearing that all kinds of music was recorded there.

How much of Harry Smith’s Anthology might have stemmed from there, I wonder?

Now I have another reason to listen, and another thing to think about. Maybe you will too.

The Next Big Thing has just been slotted locally on KUOW at 8pm Fridays, following the irresistable undertow of This American Life.

The host of The Next Big Thing is Dean Olsher. The show comes from the “new school” public radio tradition that kicked off just before the last Gulf War with the late lamented Heat, a long-format variety show that featured unpredictable and rotating guest hosts, such as Billy Bragg. (Last time I went looking for this show’s traces on the web, I got a goose egg – I’m happy to see it here!)

The wars over NEA funding prompted an on-air farewell from that show, (as I recall, mandatory content guidance was being called for in Congress or something), and then the war happened, which led to the improvised special programming that became Talk of the Nation. One aspect of that early incarnation of the show was that callers were often patched through direct to reporters in the field, truly compelling radio.

Finally, on these themes, I was pretty fascinated by some of the material at Transom, an umbrella site for this kind of documentary radio (as I recall, I heard about it on TAL). Oh look! I’ll be spending part of next week EQ-ing a redlined live tape of a rock band in performance: here’s a handy guide to EQ!

Anyway, I’ve been staying the hell away from the desktop box today, defragging the disks, getting the gear ready for the remastering thing, so I’ve been listening to the radio instead of websurfing and writing.

You know what would be cool? If the CBC would post all the Glenn Gould radio documentaries. But alas.