Zounds, Sounds

One of the unanticipated side effects of trying to steep myself in Web 2.0 technology — my experiential dive into the world of digital media, of social networking, of Tags, and Blogs, and other fun stuff — is that I accidently rediscovered music. Rest assured, I’m not ready, yet, to turn myself into a Glyph, or go totally 2.0 and drop the ending vowel in my name (a la Flickr, et al. I guess I’d be Gavn.) I bought the iPod for audio books, but have been gradually seduced by sultry jazz singers, and music both old and new.

Suddenly, I realized I’ve not only discovered music (again), but I’ve discovered I like whole genres of music I used to know nothing about.

What’s noticeable about it — to me — is the new voyage of discovery. It’s different. The last voyage was in 197…err, yeah, well a while ago. Then the journey was through Kay-A-A-Why, the big 10.90, blasting from Canada to Brazil, Duluth to Key West; 50,000 watts of nighttime AM radio from Little Rock Arkansas. Radio. AM Radio! In Kansas, it was either KAAY, or Pastor Flash-like preachers playing the sounds of hellfire and brimstone from just over the border in Del Rio, Texas. (They were the first pirate radio stations, btw.) I went with KAAY.

Then, then it was a Clyde Clifford and the underground sounds of Bleaker Street. It was after 11:00 pm, and it wasn’t top forty. Kasey Kasem would have frowned. Bleaker Street was phenomenal, playing …”[c]uts by Arlo Guthrie, the Grateful Dead, It’s A beautiful Day, pre-pop-fame Heart, pre-pop-fame Pink Floyd… In fact, pre-pop-fame Eric Clapton, Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, John Prine, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Brown, Van Morrison…….the list could go on for a while……. And this was at a time when “Tie A Yellow Ribbon” was the standard of the industry…” That was then. Today’s musical journey of discovery has been quite different.

First, with minor exceptions, radio is a wasteland. Despite a two-hour commute, I don’t listen to the radio unless it’s the news (and sometimes the weather). My car radio has two stations pre-tuned: NPR and the local campus radio (which only covers about two square miles). Now that I think about it, I can understand why the various media companies are scared and confused by digital media – all their old models are toast. Radio is almost irrelevant. Music is viral, personal, and word of mouth, and viral runs smack-dab into DRM. DRM will lose. Toast. More on things that are toast in a later post.

What’s changed and what’s interesting, at least to me, is how this music has wandered into my life. Aside from a few recommendations from friends (and a whole series of albums by Paolo Conte that came from me hearing something in a café in Toulouse and subsequently having my wife sing it to a store clerk) the number one source has been “Customers who bought this item also bought…”

Amazon. Amazing. I feel so predictable. But, they’re usually right too. Those damn “customers” are pretty damn smart. ..

Nevertheless, if you’re looking for the sultry sounds of a smoky piano bar, the heartbreak of the saxophone, or just a beautiful voice, these ladies are worth listening too.

• Madeleine Peyroux — Particularly “Careless Love”
  
• Beth Orton – Just about anything, but particularly “The Comfort of Strangers”
  
• Diana Krall — Again, just about anything, but particularly “The Girl in the Other Room” (and her cover of Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You” on “Live in Paris” is to die for.
  
• Holly Cole — Particularly her Tom Waits tribute, “Temptation“.
  

Here’s one more, wholly different — found not on Amazon but on a 6:00 am Sunday morning show that squeaks out of the local low-powered campus radio; a show called the Dromedary Express. (It’s moved up in the world and is now on at 10:00 am.)

• Stellamara — Star of the Sea and The Seven Valleys. It’s hard to describe. Something like: 16^th century Spanish chants meets the Balkans. It’s described as “original, Balkan-near Eastern-Medieval Ambient.” It incorporates medieval European, Persian, Arabic, Indian, Turkish and Balkan with subtle electronic textures. The result is a sublime. Sonja Drakulich, the lead vocalist is astounding.
  

That’s my contribution to viral music marketing.

This brings me around to radio again. Much of the innovative role of radio has, of course, moved to the Internet. Internet radio is vibrant, amazing and dynamic; and global. Its where I find and listen first. Then I buy.

[If you're buying, by the way, I highly recommend CDBaby. Their customer service is not only good, but funny. I got the best follow-up letter from them I had ever seen in my life. It was so good I had to read it to half a dozen people. Everyone agreed. And, Amazon had "The Seven Valleys" on order for over 5 months — CDBaby got it to me in three days, with free shipping no less. ]

The vibrancy of Internet Radio is illustrated by one small show, a show where Bob Dylan plays disc jockey, spinning the music he loves for an hour a week on XM Online (who knew?). It’s called Theme Time Radio Hour. Amazing; Bob Dylan as disc jockey. (Just to give you a sense of the global-ness of it all, I heard about this first from an Italian-Ethiopian friend who lives in Brussels.)

But, we are cursed with living in exquisitely interesting times, a time when rules change, when rules are being written, and re-written. Unfortunately, the pressure to turn that vibrant world of Internet radio into an homogenized wasteland of “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” remixes is just as strong as ever. Just last week the U.S. Copyright Royalty Board proposed upping the royalty payments required by Internet broadcasters. This will start the homogenizers running, forcing consolidation and “clear channeling” everything back into a boring box.