Andy on the Road

Roommate, friend, and hot shot movie extra Oscar and I got into a lively discussion a couple days ago about the world and our role in it. Our discussion mainly consisted of me posing hypothetical acting roles for organizations that Oscar may not like, and seeing if he would accept them (e.g. “would you appear in a Blockbuster commercial?” “Would you take a part in a McCain Campaign ad?” and so forth). His answers, as I’m sure he well knows, frustrated me by their neutrality towards all moral compass. He’d either take the gig or take the gig “as a joke.” My pleas of “Wouldn’t you be helping the enemy here?!” were met with “Wouldn’t it be hysterical?” There was no making a stand or sticking to your personal guns in light of monetary gain.

This speaks to how he and I view the world quite differently. At heart, I always feel like a feisty little world-changer, and I consider my actions important signals of my feelings. I’ll pay a little extra to buy something at a local store instead of going to Wal*Mart, as if my dollar is going to make the Walton family turn their heads. I boycott. I protest. I write letters. I get a little outspoken at times. I try to lead to the world as an example, knowing that if everyone did the same we’d be in a much better place. I know full well the world isn’t watching me, but I don’t care. Oscar, on the other hand, laughs at the world as it goes by. He takes the discount where he can get it, jokes and ridicules political absurdity rather than getting up-in-arms about it, and lives mainly for his own gain. I wouldn’t ever say he is any less of a world participant than I, or he is “wrong” while I am “right.” He’s a brilliant man and a wonderful influence on me and the world around him. At heart, he and I just play a different game. He threw a Horace Walpole line at me in our debate that’s been sticking with me since: “Life is a comedy for those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”

I think Oscar could learn a lot from me, but I probably could learn even more from him. I’ve been snarking more at the world recently, though I still try and stay the feisty advocate. It’s been a complicated balance, but I think it is working. This morning I found a piece on Crooks and Liars that the advocate in me would be all upset about, but I’m beginning to appreciate as an observer. The Washington Post ran this piece by Dana Milbank, which is pretty good as a read, but really captures its alma as a video. Enjoy.

(Edit: For some reason the player is being a little finicky. See the original post here.)

Now, from an economic standpoint, we’re hurting. This has been a terrible year for many of us, in our industry and in our lives. There’s an active role we can take in considering the economics of the candidates and lobbying for better care taken in the assessment and treatment of our economy.

But it does feel kinda good to laugh about the situation, doesn’t it?

I’m beginning to think so.

(photo from Flickr user maubrowncow)

(Update: See post here and gripping conclusion here)

“I get so tired of listening to the way everyone treats music. I keep feeling they’re selling out.”
~Johnny Mercer, songwriter, on his founding of Capitol records

And you thought that we were faking
That we were all just money making
You do not believe we’re for real
Or you would lose your cheap appeal?
~Johnny Rotten, songwriter, on Capitol’s owner, EMI

As I mentioned in my previous post, I recently touched base with old friend Brian Bergeron, who brought this story to my attention via the blog post of fellow artist The Everyday Visuals. The story also made grumblings on LemmingTrail today.

Capitol Records has decided to hold a contest to select openers for Coldplay’s latest tour for shows in San Jose, Philadelphia, Chicago, Hartford, DC, and Boston. Bands may submit a video to YouTube of their best song, and the winner gets a chance to take the stage before the headliner and play to no-doubt sold out audiences of tens of thousands, assuredly launching them into superstardom and earning the love and respect of one of the largest rock bands of our time.

Below the cut is the terms and services of this agreement, outlining the very worst contest rules and conditions I have ever seen. Seriously, Faust would be loving this.

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(image from Flickr user midorionna)

I’m writing this today from a small bagel shop in Kenmore Square, waiting for Oscar to arrive so we can hit up one of the last relics from this square’s glory days: Nuggets. Struck with this square’s history, well known in the area of sports but seemingly forgotten in music, I’m pondering the words of a very influential man I met in New York two days ago.

“Artists aren’t suffering anymore,” he noted in a moment of candor amidst our business presentation, “that’s why there aren’t any great songs.”

His name isn’t important - suffices to say he was a very major player in the 60s and 70s in music, and decades of success have placed him in a prominent office with walls of gold and platinum records. His is a voice I treasured to hear from, overwhelmed at times with the opportunity to sit across the desk from a man I had read about for half a decade. His insight took me aback; I instantly agreed with him, but upon further reflection I realize I was mistaken to do so. This isn’t the case, at least not on a worldwide scope. Artists are creating good songs, and artists are suffering, and many times those two are correlated.The industry just doesn’t find them anymore.

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(image from bubblecup.etsy.com)

Imagine a road in your town that serves as a convenient workaround from normal traffic. It’s the kind of road that only the locals usually know about; perhaps it links two major thruways, or is a way around a toll booth, or the fastest route between the high school and the local pizza joint. I suspect many of you already have a road or two in mind. This road is narrow and winding but well paved, providing ample support for the residents on the road and most of the neighbors. Maybe you live on a road like this, maybe even purchasing a home here for this very convenience. My parent’s house could certainly be such a road, linking main street in their Massachusetts town with a sizable New Hampshire highway, saving a few minutes and miles.

Let’s say your road has a problem. Your excellent shortcut has been found by the many of the public (as they often are). Many who do not respect the road as a resident might have been speeding on it in order to take advantage of this workaround. Naturally, this creates an unsafe and unpleasant environment for those living there and others who drive. What’s more, they show total disregard for the local neighborhood, cranking their music late at night or throwing trash out the window, or damaging the road. The speeders are a rampant problem, and need addressing right away.

One particularly angry resident, let’s call her Rita, is threatening to sue every speeder she sees. She herself has attempted to pull over people, and seeks assistance from a private company to solve the problem. In walks said company, let’s call it StreetDefender, offering to solve the speeding problem. In addition to giving Rita a radar detector to help her catch any and all speeder StreetDefender offers three other potential solutions:

1. They offer to jam the road with as many cars as possible, highly inconveniencing the culprit speeders and forcing them to slow down or seek an alternate route.
2. They offer to conduct an espionage mission where they block anyone who they deem a speeder from getting into their car in the first place, killing off the problem at its source, in theory.
3. They post up billboards along the road every ten feet at a premium (since so many people see them as they zip by), and then share the revenue of those billboards with the neighbors.

Allow me to make a generalization and assume that you, dear reader, are a sensible human being. You, having sense, determine all of these to be foolish solutions to the problem. You are also somewhat uneasy with the fact that StreetDefender is using radar guns on the street, figuring that role to be better served by the police, though perhaps the police, quite frankly, have better fish to fry. And while two of the three solutions above would most likely work, and the third would give you cash, they come at a great inconvenience to you. After all, you too would like to use the road for your totally legitimate, non-speeding purposes. Still, Rita accepts all three proposals and proceeds to sue speeder after speeder, with little success but much damage.

What would you do about it?

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(Photo from Flickr user Makent)

Being an Obama supporter has been a dynamic experience.

I can hear his speeches and I see what he’s written, and I want to believe. For the most part, I do believe. Somehow I can see beyond the political history of my short life and still trust the senator from Illinois.

And this has been no picnic of a political life. There’s been much to hate about politics: the disgusting process, the love-turned-sour moments I’ve had with Dean in ‘04 and Bradley in ‘00, the myriad of occasions when politics has interfered with principle at a most basic level and in all areas of government. And that’s just the process. The actions of our country for the past decade, mostly done for political gain, may forever tarnish us. And even if it doesn’t, I feel a great sense of shame, a deep internal shame that is usually reserved for the samurai. I want to think Obama is going to be the refreshing face - the Kennedy or Lincoln or Han Solo to my trench run. I think of the power of his influence, and the countless people that I trust - in music, in law, and in life - unanimously coming out for Obama.

Either he’s either not a politician or he’s the greatest politician we have ever known.

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As a followup to yesterday’s ponderings over Tuesday new releases, very heady website Music Think Tank posted the following question a couple days ago: How much is a digital download worth when you resell it? We have yet to see the secondary market develop around digital music, as we see with used CDs and Records. What would that look like? What would that feel like?

This is a long and complex illustration, so reader beware.

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(image of the joint for my Tuesday fix, Newbies, care of Flickr user spi516)

For all my Boston readers - yikes! Have you looked outside recently? I haven’t seen this much rain since my trip to Honduras. Stay dry.

I owe many props to Largehearted Boy’s consistently great coverage of what’s coming out each Tuesday both with the CD and DVD previews, and the “try before you buy” series.

Something was bugging me earlier today while I was pondering the glory days in Cyndi Lauper: why do we release albums on Tuesdays in the US? I know each country is different - UK usually does it Monday, but that follows the day after the charts, so to some degree that makes sense. Japan I’m pretty sure does this on Wednesdays, but that’s only based on my quick spot assessment. What brought us to do it on Tuesdays?

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I spent most of yesterday away from my computer, with good reason. Thursday and Friday’s conference saw me wired in a way I usually reserve for the web prowling I’ll do in some of the more heady market research projects at Hobnox. In addition to the lectures held in Harvard Law’s beautifully equipped facilities (all rooms had outlets at each seat, and many had microphones wired into a room PA, so discussions in a room fit for 100 people were conducted comfortably), we were conversing on IRC, posting questions for discussion on a dynamic question tool, twittering with an agreed set of tags which were aggregated through sites like twemes, and editing the details of the conference, Wiki-style, on a conference wiki. For a center dedicated to understanding the web in a powerful way, they certainly practice what they preach. As my roommate Oscar noted, “it sounded like you were put in the Matrix.”

I met some amazing people, had a chance to put faces to names I’ve been reading about (and reading the works of) for my entire college career. I met amazing people my age and younger working on fantastic projects at MIT, Harvard, and BU (see my YouTomb post from last night), and was left wanting much more. One small piece of that: I really wish I could have heard more from Wendy Seltzer of The Berkman Center, NU Law, Tor, and creator of Chilling Effects, a site working along many of the same lines as YouTomb for years now.

The substance of my reactions can be found on the various liveblogs and reactions I’ve written (and probably will continue to write) tagged with “Berkman@10.” My overall conclusion is as follows:

I don’t know enough yet.

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(image courtesy Flickr user CursedThing)

Let me start this by saying that I love the state of Oregon. They seem to get it on a lot of ways. I love the way they vote (from a procedural angle); I love Portland, and its fantastic used bookstore that occupies a city block; and one of my best friends is graduating this year from Reed, which is pretty neat school I had a chance to visit while on tour two Septembers ago.

It’s almost surpising that the “Chillest State in the Union” would find itself embroiled in a copyright scandal that has strong roots in the pockets of big publishing. And yet, here we are. Read the rest of this entry »

Copyright is certainly in the forefront of many minds across the world these days. This very day the House passed a the PRO IP act, a rather controversial intellectual property bill which “clarifies” that registration is not required for criminal enforcement (”clarify” is a funny term for this, as to receive statutory damages a formal registration is required), and creates a copyright enforcement agent that works directly with the President. This is still some time off, as the Senate has yet to introduce a bill on the subject. See Public Knowledge for further detail on this one. Elsewhere, old concepts like “orphaned works” are coming back into light, and the world of public domain is creeping up on the first Beatles recordings in the UK.

When people think of the absurdity in the length modern copyright a few great examples come to mind. A. A. Milne’s “Winnie the Pooh,” works of Y.B. Yeats, and Franz Kafka, and Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” are all still under copyright. The song “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” The damned mouse that many credit with these extensions.

And then there’s this song. There’s the reason all the chain restaurants sing their own horrible, horrible renditions of songs for birthdays. “Happy Birthday To You” is still protected by copyright law, and still makes a ton of money for its owner, a subsidiary of AOL Time Warner (I wish I were kidding). Up to $2 million a year. The work maintains its “temporary exclusive monopoly,” even though the two school teachers (and sisters) who supposedly wrote it have been dead for years…

…or does it? Is that story even true? What should we make of the old “Happy Birthday” anecdote?

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