Music Tribe Alert!

Music Tribe:

I’ve completed the scene in Facebook/Vivaty integrating the videos, music other materials:

1. Smooth. Easy Drag Drop and Go.

2. Integration: fast dialog building for pulling in YouTube, Facebook, and externally hosted audio

3. Time to setup: about eight hours total. It sets up in minutes, then you customize and I have lot of media assets to put in there. For those of us who have to spread work across pages, this is the BEST way to integrate them as services.

4. Results: Excellent.

Bands on Facebook who don’t build one of these for their act and business quick need cranial exams. This is the way to get it done in social network markets.

As the stagecraft objects improve, this will also be how albums are made, released and navigated. In fact, these become the albums++.

Big juju, musicTribe. Bery big.

Media convergence at long last!!!

Epiphany - The Video

Here's a new video suitable for the season. Short, meditative, peaceful good for early risers who want a moment before they drive.

The music was written for the University of Western Australia's virtual reality campus. Big thanks to Oz and Surak!!

Making Money on The Web

A discussion asks how in the era of the Web As Copy Machine From Hell can the artist use scarcity as a means to increase or preserve the value of art.

First, the medium of distribution has nothing to do with the value of the art as meaningful.

On the other hand, no product no market no sale no pay.

Copy protection simply won't work anymore. It’s of no value to fight the machine/human interface behaviors. It simply won’t work.

The Internet figures values in terms of URLs as coin of the realm. Wealth is created as a scalar applied to the functions such as edit, copy, delete, revise, publish, yadda.

All Internet business models must first describe the process or means for URL production. You don’t want to stop copies; you want to be sure that the right URLs are created during the copying. Essentially, that is what the web services for any business model eventually come down to.

A social network is a URL amplifier.

1. Release the video.
2. Post the video.
3. Watch the download stats for the URLs.
4. Rate, collect, respond to inquiry, invoice or acknowlege, in other words, sell or discuss.

This isn’t hard. Everything I need (now) to create and sell product is managed from a single desktop. While it is not true for any communications industry model, it is essentially true at all scales of application.

Don’t think in terms of scarcity of copy. It is scarcity of talent and ideas that drives the production of significant URLs.

It will always come back to quality, fidelity, novelty, the gig, and the deal.

If I may ramble a little more: the big picture sea change so trivial it’s barely noticed is that web 2.0 is evolving toward a mass notification system where the messages are controls, that is a a message and link to a page for the purpose of task-orienting.

It’s a cosmic merely to the RSS/Atom community of feedfans, but in terms of higher order social norm organization, it is significant in that at one scale it is organizing your acts, at another, it is reorganizing your DNA. Still another cosmic merely to the social theorists.

At the monetization level, it is the very key to the product evolution. There are any number of public services that can avail themselves of Facebook, Twitter, etc., and these are subscription services.

My Son's Time To Go - The Video

If we are to use human memory as our guide, we may only be fair witnesses, but we must reveal all that we see.

This is the video for My Son's Time To Go. I didn't set out to write an anti-war song. It's in the questions.

My Son's Time To Go

Early Morning Light

At every moment in every spot in the world, light is different. If one could see that in aggregate, one would possess the all-seeing eye. If one can feel that in aggregate, one possesses the all-compassionate heart. If one understands all that in aggregate, one has the all-knowing mind. Light is the expression of the universe over it's own preponderant darkness. Light is the soul of life given to the universe as love.

Wise and Clever

Watch the video below. In case like so many of us elders you think the kids aren't thinking hard about the future, some are wiser than we know.

I guess this means I can stop circulating the petition to skip over their generation and pass the power and the money straight to our grandkids.

Dial M for Mayhem

In the beginning was the blank space. The data barrier was void and lo, it was good. Then came the round bracket. It was found to nest and the days of the never-ending cooder were upon us. Then came the curly brackets and all could C the structs before them but verily the semi-colon and the comma could not be banished from the land. Then came the pointy bracket with its faithful companion, the quotation mark to sweep all that came before them away. The data landscape was fruitful and the trees multiplied without number.

There are rumblings in the land of the Elder Edda of the monster, M. With spare incantations and in secrecy, it seeks to resurrect the curly by whose topology it will sweep all the pointy brackets into the bit buckets of the cloud hereafter around and anon.

Lo, the days of darkness have returned.

This Land Is Our Land

Remember when songs meant something? Here is an interview with Pete Seeger, a man who saw the entire span of modern American folk music and who as much as anyone made sure they did.

Little organizations doing what is right right near where it needs doing is the message. We can't count on the government and we sure as hell can't trust the bankers. We spawned a generation of rich sociopaths who believe they can steal right in front of us and there is nothing we can do.

I dunno. I know what we learned from people like Pete: we have to tell the story and maybe we better write some new songs.

Whoever makes the best biopic of Pete Seeger can tell the story about what is best about this country: people who keep doing the right thing.

Change is necessary but it only works if we know what is right. Is that corny? I don't care. It's right.

In Times Like These

In times like these we wonder where old friends are, who friends are and who are just the liars that litter the alleyways of streets where we took a wrong turn and stayed on that path a little too long. Then one day we run out of shoe leather and gasoline, feel that engine winding too shrill and the slide on wet roads from tires without enough tread left to keep up going forward.

Then someone sends a good song from an old friend and I remember how many people are on that road with me. Thanks Joe Cookbook. I thank the big guy for friends.

The Long and Winding Road

The bad news is I start the treatments for leukemia (NHL) today. It's a schedule of two weeks of steroids followed by 18 weeks of chemo in three week cycles. Every third week, they hook me up for four hours while I sit in a chair. It may be time to find something I actually want to read or set up a laptop for midi composition.

The good news is I get out of yard work for most of the summer and I can rent out the top of my head for Google Ad Space. :-)

I'll be fine. Steroids are an emotional roller coaster though so if I write whinier than usual, well, it's coals to newcastle. I'll see if I can compose a blues mass for the church choir. Hey, emotions should not be wasted. Minds should.

And I still have fine music.

THe Watchmen

Don't bother. If you have young children, don't let them see this. In fact, thumbs down. It has it's own audience, no doubt.

Normally I don't diss a film like that, but these guys are running ads that don't tell you the degree to which this movie is soft-sci-fi porn with full frontal of men and women, and some explicit gettin' it on. People who took their kids were dumbfounded.

And the plot sucks. Good CGI.

The Star Trek preview looks excellent.

Amazing Grace

Arlo keeps on the path he has been on since he was thirteen years old, straight down the middle toward a home he can see or just because he likes the road. Wherever he performs, he brings a unique but familiar perspective some might say is old Hippie talk, but others of us know is the gospel truth. At the core of the Hippie thing was peace and love. It's hard to object. Then togetherness. That's tougher. It gets tight in small corners and we start pushing against each other for space and air to breathe. We can push so hard that even while we have reasons good enough to make Officer Obie stop and think twice, we aren't making more room. We're making each other hurt.

The Guthrie family purchased the old church building where much of Alice's Restaurant was filmed. It is called The Guthrie Center. If you order CDs from his label, www.risingsonrecords.com, they come in a US Postal Priority mailer, meaning someone carefully put them in there out of the box and hand-sealed it then dropped it off at the Post Office on the way to shop for groceries. Inside the box with the rightly priced CDs is a form to send a donation to the Guthrie Center. I may send the money but I think I'll keep the form.

Arlo stayed on his path and that path led him straight home, straight to the heart of love and peace and togetherness. In the video below, he describes the Guthrie Center as a "Bring your own God" church. Maybe it gets crowded in there, but maybe in that church there is room for all of the people who bring their God and because they do, no one's getting hurt.

So he could be right. Maybe we should stay in that log until we outnumber the dogs outside howling. Breeding's got to be better than marching.

The Perfect Folk Song

I know a lot of Dylan fans. I've never been one. It isn't that I don't admire his songs but Bobby always came across to me as a bit mean and so do most of his fans. It's the We Are Too Smart To Care What You Think Brigade and well, I guess I don't follow that trend in folk music.

Then there's Arlo. For my time, Arlo Guthrie was and is the perfect folk singer. He is incredibly gifted as a writer, a wry commentator on the times, a fantastic musician, but through it all, he is funny, he is generous, he is kind, and he sees through the bullshit. He is never mean. Of all my heros in a lifetime of making music, writing songs and listening, he is still the one guy I want to sit down and pick with for an evening somewhere away from the crowd. He simply impresses me as a man who would be a good friend and teacher.

Here is the perfect folk song seen through the eyes of the leader of the first family of American folk music: Arlo.

Give A Damm

They say the times of change are upon us like the Sixties but without the good music and the sex. That only leaves war, drugs and politics which means the worst of the Sixties are back. What to do?

In a 1993 concert just before performing “When A Soldier Makes It Home”, Arlo Guthrie observes that after all the movements of the 60s, he found there are only two kinds of people: those who give a damm and those who don’t and there were always both of those on both sides of an issue. What surprised him was how over the years he found he had more in common with those who do give a damm regardless of which side of the issue they were on.

As we continue on during the times of change and internationalization, maybe that is the best badge to wear.

The Great Gazoo

Someone sent me yet another reference to Facebook's weak defense of their policy that once on Facebook always on Facebook. I tell them to try get rid of their MySpace page and see how that works out.

Relational databases make it difficult to remove related entities once in the system and used by other entities. Given the numbers of friends one befriends, Facebook is possibly a tedious thing to administrate. That said, people seem shocked as they begin to finally realize the Web's existence has a dark side manifesting in everything from intellectual property to keeping one's DNA private. Databases leak and if one is using free services without reading the terms and conditions one is a fool. The world does not protect you. It will let you starve while it buys back a dime on a dollar of your retirement account from the men who stole your water.

If I am in a bad mood, I describe the web as a man-made viral pathogen rewriting our cultural DNA quickly, quietly and without our permission. No one knows how this will turn out for those who turn it on and can't turn off, but if you don't mind being the naked emperor, it should be ok at least until dildonics come with a URI and that is not far away.

In a good mood, I think of the web as the Great Gazoo combined with Fred's two feet. In the first case, a self-admitted "undependable, bit of a kook" alien can raise havoc if you call on him. In the second, a car made of stone, wood and animal skins can take you on a wild ride downhill. If you get in, you may not get out. How good are your own two feet?

Did anyone forsee all of this? Sure. We even warned you. First we were told it wasn't a problem, then it was society's fault, then that we were sick people for wanting to hide information from the commons.

What do I have to say now? "Take heed. Don't ask for more than you can handle You may get it." Toodaloo, Dum-dums!

The Mirror Ball Mosh or Buffy The Umpire Slayer

To assess digital art in these modern times, there are ten critical criticisms:

1. Popularity: How many sites link to it.

2. Citability: How many reviews link to it.

3. Authority: Of the links, how many links link to the sites that link to it.

4. Covetability: how many copies were stolen.

5. Enviability: how many competitors ripped it off and changed the names to claim originality.

6. Originality: huh? Who would link to something they don’t recognize? This one doesn’t matter but I toss it in here to satisfy the need for a ten item list.

7. Authenticity: how many animals were harmed making the thing.

8. Cultability: how many forums are dedicated to proving the artist is wrong about the interpretation of their work.

9. Derivability: how many forums dedicated to proving the artist is wrong are right.

10. Extensibility: how many new pieces of art are created to *honor* the resource at the bottom of all of those links.

The best way to assess art is to find the average size of the pile on top of it that keeps you from finding it times the number of those looking for something like it divided by the number of those who claim to have it for a price they will reveal to you if you give them your social security number.

Protest Songs and The Punctured Pretension

A friend of mine is letting his freak flag fly with political protest songs on mySpace. I sang on some of those including Sly Stone's "Stand" and "Vicious Love Affair". Ground Level Sound still covertly records when no one is looking. Well... no one is but... we have a good time together.

Everything I know about protest I learned from Doug Kenney, Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman although it was Christopher Guest who finally nailed it to the masthead.

That song is A Mighty Wind years ahead of the time but somehow these days, it's even more relevant. We should stop to deflate our shoes occasionally.

Schadenfreude is for Losers

What an incredibly beautiful day!

I am amazed how far some will run to hide a truth everyone knows. Life in a golden cage isn't life at all.

The Perfect Sportscar

In the photo, I'm the whelp in the middle. My sister, Beverly, is standing and my younger brother, Michael, is front. He now looks much older than me proving it really is the mileage.

The car was called "The Shingle" by the men who built it. In the Fifties, we lived on Monte Sano Mountain, a hill on the edge of town that once had a resort for the northern wealthy to escape the heat but enjoy the charms of the South. We lived across the street from the site of the hotel long since burned to the ground and then only a chimney remained. The photo was taken down the street a few blocks and the house is still there. We lived in an old rock house that is also still there. The car is in a museum somewhere up north. I don't know where. I was away at college when Dad finally sold his proudest work to make bills.

The Shingle was infamous. It was the second car of two my Dad built with his neighbor and friends who were exceptional ex-Army Missile Command and when the photo was taken, NASA scientists. Dad had customized cars to run 'shine, and these guys got on like a house on fire. They wrapped the engine in special thermal blankets developed for heat shielding. The instructions to the driver was simple: put the pedal to the metal and leave it there. The car was a rolling wing and the air over it held it on the track even in curves. At the experimental track in Courtland, they would infuriate the Europeans who could not believe this 6'5" hillbilly was beating them with a piece of tin junk and a Crosley engine. The secret sauce was the two smiling men at every race wearing coveralls like my Dad and drinking coffee from his special thermos, both of whom would also help send man to the Moon in the next decade. Boys with toys.

Life as a kid was fascinating.

Follow Your Leader! NOT!

Obama makes a speech. Geitner makes a speech. The markets tumble.

Surprise! Why?

Where Ali Baba once had only 40 thieves, now he has 40000 and they are too old to learn new tricks. They want the money. They don't want conditions.

It was the wrong speech. Obama was selling fear and when it gets right down to it, people will be angrier with the man who took their hope than the men who took their money. He is still, when off teleprompter, a bit too much the minority professor who did well and feels entitled to respect because he won. Washington doesn't work that way. Heck, the world doesn't work that way. The big guns in the financial world and the Republican Party are looking at him and saying "Whatcha got? Whatcha gonna do about it?" and they mean in terms of real consequences. Otherwise, they stand back and let him posture.

Did we think this was going to be a Beach Party with Moondoggie making up with Annette and then everyone boogaloos to Dick and The Dervishes? Or does Erick Von Zipper dress in a suit and suddenly his gang becomes civilized? This is the scene in Gone With the Wind where the young men have parties with young women all gaily dressed thinking they are going to a summer lark called The Civil War. This is the beginning. It won't be civil.

Welcome to the reality of what the Kennedy Administration was like, not the rose-colored view in the rearview mirror through the fog of generational wish fulfillment. He was young, brash, occasionally out to lunch and all the world wondered if the kid had any moxie or plans. Enemies moved on us, the markets were a roller coaster, and the social agendas were all pushed at one time. It was scary. Then he was killed and the Beatles came to America to distract us and Johnson dulled us into self-medicating a generation.

By contrast, this isn't that bad. Feel better now?