What can you tell me about a Croatian band called SexA? I heard that you had wanted to work with them at some point in the past. Were you involved with them in any way (friends/collaborations?) Can we expect anything from you and SexA in the future?

i think 18th Dye's 'tribute to a bus' is one of the best and best SOUNDING albums ever.
a. how awesome was it to see those songs coming together?
b. why is that band so slept on?
cheers

Seconded.

I would skip the stuff he wrote for conventional ensembles until you've had a chance to hear the player piano stuff. I don't even recommend hearing any of the human-performed four-handed transcriptions, since there are some amazing whirlwind glissando effects that only really work on the mechanical pianos. There's a terrific annotated 4-disc set of the "complete studies for player piano" that shows up on eBay now and again, and the old vinyl editions are excellent recordings of Nancarrow's own pianos, in his studio, supervised by Nancarrow himself.

This thread is excellent, but I can't help thinking of this onion article (one of my favs), especially with all of the newbie posters:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27870

I missed a hundred posts or so, so forgive me if this has been asked.

What are your favorite "outlaw" country performers besides Willie? Anything obscure you might recommend that most fans of the genre would not know about?

I'd like to add to this, and ask what it is about Willie Nelson that you like so much?

I am unfamiliar with this song. I am actually unfamiliar with Sheryl Crow's music, except for what Bob plays in the van, but every time I see her in videos or what have you, I wonder if she likes it in the can.

I wonder why that is?

all girls do.

Steve: Swingo is my new favorite game and i would like to wager all my moneys on it.

Regarding something you said earlier...my roomate and I (he posts here as G-street) have been in a running argument about something Henry Rollins said on his show... about bands selling out their music to commercials. His claim: Who cares? Let good musician make a few bucks being appreciated now that they are respected instead of dismissed and ignored. Yet you said earlier that you get creeped out and disgusted when you see it happen, and you feel that they've let their fans down. Do artists really have some kinda responsibility to their audiences...even though, as you say, the best records are made without giving a crap what the public thinks?

I want Iggy to be as rich and popular as Justin Timberlake, yet I can't listen to Lust for Life without picturing some douchebag on a Carnival Cruise galavanting in the briny surf with his fat kids. Is this my problem or his or something in between?

Poker question: Would you ever put your tournament life in on a draw? If so, would you kick yourself in the nuts for using the term tournament life?

lol rockaments,
--GA

QFWTKTATTM

(Quoted for wanting to know the answers to this myself)

I saw that Nancarrow piece at Carnegie Hall as well. It was performed by Bang On a Can & was a transcription they did of one of his piano pieces. Really great.

Steve, have you started recording with OM yet? How does that usually work with bands you have not worked with before - they send you a demo of what they want to record or do you have no idea what they want to record until you all get in the studio?

tell me more about milemarker.

Not sure if you answered it but I would love to know about the Rudimentary Peni sessions. As far as I can tell you've never mentioned it on your forum.

Come to Chicago on any Tuesday and look me up.

Precisely the answer you'd expect from the Voice of GM Trucks. It's an argument that holds absolutely no water.

To say that an artist with a legion of devoted fans and a culturally-significant body of work is being "dismissed and ignored" is ridiculous prima facie and doesn't really need further debunking. What he's talking about is money. Whenever anybody starts justifying taking money with language derived from some other consideration, he's actually talking about the money.

I cannot fault anybody for taking money for their work, especially in dire circumstances (people often do degrading things for money, especially in dire circumstances), but it is ludicrous to suggest that as a fan (a participant in the celebration that made the song "Lust for Life" a valuable commodity in the first place) I shouldn't notice that it has happened, and that it shouldn't change the meaning of the song in my estimation. Of course I will, and of course it does. Previously, "Lust for Life" had been an ode to decadence, written and performed in a frenzy of cocaine, heroin bingeing and buggery. It has now become a mormon-worthy family-fun cruise jingle. Of course it has changed.

No, they owe us nothing. That also means that my enthusiasm for artists isn't bulletproof, and I owe them no allegiance either. If they become something I cannot get behind, then they are likely to lose me as a fan.

Rich, okay, but what benefit is it to the world to have douchebags and Justin Timberlake fans listening to Iggy Pop? Not everything is for everybody, and I don't think everything is universally improved if you lay it on with a ladle.

If you're not willing to move-in with 21 outs on the flop, you're not really playing poker. If you mean calling-off with a bare eight-out draw, then I'd need to be somewhat desperate.
You used the term, dipstick, not me.

Have you lost the drive to be a great sound engineer? Ive found some people lose their enthusiasm when it is a full time job.

There are a lot of under-appreciated roots/country guys out there. I would suggest Johnny Dowd and Buddy Miller, and for crazy playing, nobody beats Junior Brown. In the Waylon/Willie/Merle triumvirate, I always liked Willie's personality more, and he wrote better songs.

The man wrote "Crazy," and for that alone, there ought to be a statue of him someplace.

During a period when Rudimentary Peni were on hiatus, Grant and Jon made a multitrack recording of themselves playing a few songs, and I added guitar at my studio in Chicago. I asked Jay Tiller (of Couch Flambeau) to be the vocalist, and the tapes were eventually finished. There was never a release made of this Rudimentary Tiller-bini master, and eventually Rudimentary Peni came back into activity with their own records.

I honestly can't say why we never bothered releasing it, except that it wasn't a real band, and so nobody had any strong ambition with it.

Do you have any tips on capturing a good rock snare? I don't have decent dynamic mic's (only sm57 and 58)and seem to always overload any condesor that I put near it.

Looks like it's time to buy a microphone or two.

Readily-available modestly-priced mics that work well on snare: Sennheiser 421, Beyer M201, Shure KSM141. Start there.

Any thoughts on the aspect of capturing a performance as opposed to isolated, overdubbed style of many recordings today.

It's easier to apologize afterwards than get permission first.

Another pair of shoes, someone to call a whore and a reason to cry.

I am uncomfortable putting a band on the spot, so I virtually never approach bands about wanting to work for them. If a band is interested in having me work on a record, they probably know how to find me (FT medium stakes stud tables).

Stooges Fun House

Saw Flipper in the fall of 1981, and they finished their set with a song called "the Wheel," inviting everybody on stage to sing along. My buddy John Bohnen and I did likewise, and since the vocal mics had crowds around them, he started singing into the mic on the guitar amp. Not to be outdone, I stuck my head in the bass drum and sang into the bass drum microphone. That was pretty loud.

A guy who doesn't want to be associated with the theft of intellectual property sent me a question privately, and I am posting it here on his behalf.

And don't ask me who it is. He's already got sand in his vagina about copyright and I don't want him further irritated.

My long experience with bands and musicians has taught me that they understand their place in the world pretty well. They also understand that music is (always has been) free to consume. If you play your radio, it costs nothing to listen. If you walk by an open window while someone is playing an album, it costs nothing. If you stand outside a club and listen, it costs nothing. Music is free. Musicians often sing and play informally (get this!) just for fun.

Records, concert tickets and the use of music in commerce -- those things cost money.

The primary relationship that drives all parts of the music business is the relationship between a band and its audience. Record retailers, labels, producers, managers, lawyers, promoters and other parasitic professionals all subsist on whatever money they can siphon off of this fundamental relationship. Mechanical and broadcast royalties (the royalties supposedly "lost" through file sharing) are the part of this transaction that is least efficient in getting money to the artist because most of it is siphoned-off by the rest of the music industry. Of a $15 sale, the average band stuck on a major label may not receive a single penny, and amortized over the life of a release may receive (after all the other players take their rake) a buck or so.

I should note that entrepreneurial independent labels that operate on a profit-sharing model can be an order of magnitude more efficient, and that one of the efficiencies is the lack of promotional outlay required because fan file sharing does the promotion for free

In short, these "lost" royalties are a huge part of the revenue stream of the institutional part of the mainstream music business, but a miniscule part of the income of a band.

Almost universally, bands and musicians are happy anyone is interested in their music enough to become a fan, and they know there are many opportunities to do some business with such a person that may or may not involve selling him a particular record.

They also recognize that a download by someone unwilling to buy a record is not a "lost sale," because that person has made it clear that he is unwilling to buy a record. You haven't lost a sale, you've made a fan for free. Fans eventually want to buy records, concert tickets and other things.

A single sale = a small bet.
A lifetime fan = a huge pot.

I had two excellent Sexa records, a single, "Pussy In the Sky With Diamonds" and the album No Sleep Till Pussy. At some point in the 90s they moved to Rotterdam, I believe, but stayed together, although I don't know of any more recordings.