Author: Jeff Albert

Legal Jams

Forensic musicologist is now a job description. I am seeing a mashup of Quincy and my old music history professor…yikes.

Inside Higher Ed :: Legal Jams

Now lawyers hover over new records, listening for any legally actionable borrowing. Such cases are usually settled out of court — for undisclosed, but often enormous, sums. The most remarkable thing about the “Ready to Die” case is that it ever got to trial.

More interesting than the legal-sideshow aspect, I think, is the question of how artists deal with the situation. Imitation, allusion, parody, borrowing stray bits of melody or texture — all of this is fundamental to creativity. The line between mimicry and transformation is not absolute. And the range of electronic tools now available to musicians makes it blurrier all the time.

Yockamo All-Stars

Through a happy accident tonight, I am sitting here listening to a great album that I haven’t heard in a few years.

Yockamo All stars cover

Yockamo All-Stars – Dew Drop Out is an all star collection of New Orleans musicians. It was recorded in 1998, and is full of good old New Orleans groove and joy. Many of my favorite musicians, like Tim Green, Clarence Johnson III, and Herlin Riley are on it, and I’m especially digging Leroy Jones and Craig Klein.

BBC NEWS | Technology | French MPs vote to open up iTunes

BBC NEWS | Technology | French MPs vote to open up iTunes

The French parliament has backed plans to give consumers more choice over music downloads from the internet.

MPs backed a draft law to force Apple, Sony and Microsoft to share their proprietary copy-protection systems by 296 to 193 votes.

The aim is to ensure that digital music can be played on any player, regardless of its format or source.

I don’t know how this will affect the French market, but I know how it would affect me. It wouldn’t get me to use a player other than my iPod, but it would get me to look at other download services besides iTunes Music Store, especially for stuff that ITMS doesn’t have.

Buy a share in your favorite band

Sell shares in your band or label to fund your next CD. Personalized artistic venture capital.

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Fans splash cash for hot new band

When Four Day Hombre were offered a string of record deals two-and-a-half years ago, the financial clout and creative control the band wanted were missing.

“We came close to a couple of (major) deals and then we were going to go through an independent label, but then it just fell through,” singer Simon Wainwright says.

“We decided that it was either carry on and get the money one way or another and set up a label and do it ourselves – or it was just throw the towel in and say enough’s enough.

“And none of us were really ready to do that.”

So the band sent an email to fans asking them to buy shares in their own label.

Alamo Music was born and the band promptly gave themselves a three-album deal.

Creative financing is the way of the future. Let’s hope creative financing skips the creative accounting.

Is Jazz chamber music?

This NewMusicBox article by Joel Harrison addresses the discussion of whether or not Chamber Music America should fund jazz. I like his take on it.

Does jazz fit into CMA’s mandate? Does the jazz world need CMA? Must we define chamber music? Would that tell CMA what to fund and not to fund? Do we then have to define jazz?

Allow me to grab my megaphone and shout this as loudly as I can. WE SHOULD NOT EVEN BE HAVING THIS DISCUSSION. The partisans of style over substance are fighting a lonely, pointless battle when they attempt to value one kind of music over another.

Another favorite line…

Rigid stylistic fault lines are the refuge of scoundrels. Defining chamber music, jazz, or any other style of music is a dreary, pointless undertaking. It’s the job of undertakers, not life-givers.

Tomorrow night I am playing a concert with the New Orleans New Music Ensemble (no-nme). The groups is essentially a chamber orchestra. The focus is really on the compositions, all of which were written this year or last, but one piece is totally guided improvisation. Does that make it a jazz show? Does it matter?

As I have said before, music, like the human race, is better off when it isn’t segregated.