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Holly Throsby in Katoomba on a Sunday night

Last night I had a lovely evening watching Holly Throsby in concert at the Clarendon in Katoomba. Living in the Blue Mountains and working in Sydney is not exactly easy, but I was glad I was able to see this Sunday night concert and then be home at a reasonable hour.

The venue at the Clarendon was lovely and small. It's basically a normal restaurant room with a stage on one end. If you buy a ticket there with a meal, you're sitting at a table right by the stage. Just a metre or two away from the main microphone. But it's a lot cheaper to just see the concert, and if you book early, you can get a good seat (in such a small venue, they're all good). My group was just behind the tables.

The support act was Stephanie Dosen, originally from Wisconsin. She was great. Very chatty and funny. There was quite a contrast with her banter between songs and the actual songs, many of which were pensive and delicately beautiful. Afterwards there was quite a queue of people buying Stephanie's CD, which she was selling and autographing.

I have seen Holly Throsby in concert only once before, when she appeared as a special guest at a Sarah Blasko concert in the Seymour Theatre in April. She and Sarah sang three songs together, including an amazing cover of Eleanor Rigby. Last night, Holly was accompanied by Jens Birchall on cello, backing vocals and possibly mandolin, as well as Bree van Reyk, on drums, accordion, backing vocals, glockenspiel, bells, casio - quite the multi-tasker she was.

Holly played a few brand new songs from the album she's going to be recording in Nashville in around two months. I really liked them. The rest were a fairly representative spread from Holly's two LPs and most recent EP. She also played a cover of a Bob Dylan song, which was the only thing which didn't do much for me - probably because I'm not really into Bob Dylan.

There were a few moments which seemed a little unpolished, but I don't think anybody minded. I don't think anybody seeing Holly Throsby on a Sunday night in Katoomba expects to see something sickly slick and polished. Last night's performance was authentic and intense, with an undercurrent of poignancy. Holly spoke a little about what prompted her to write the song Under the Town and a Widow's Song, one of the new songs she played.

After the encore, Holly and Bree and Jens sold autographed CDs and these amazing little hand-drawn comic books which Holly has made as companion pieces for Under the Town and One of You for Me.

Photo credit: neil365 on flickr, Creative Commons License

music in sweatshops, music for sweating

An interesting co-incidence just happened. I had just finished reading Naomi Klein's book, No Logo.

"[A] select group of corporations has been attempting to free itself from the corporeal world of commodities, manufacturing and products to exist on another plane. Anyone can manufacture a product, they reason ... Such menial tasks, therefore, can and should be farmed out to contractors and subcontractors whose only concern is filling the order on time ... Headquarters, meanwhile, is free to focus on the real business at hand - creating a corporate mythology powerful enough to infuse meaning into these raw products just by signing its name. [Klein, N. (2000). No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs. London: Flamingo, p. 22]

This is one of the central themes of the book. It looks at how companies like Nike, to name one obvious example, positioned itself not just as a maker of shoes but as a sports company with a mission to "enhance people's lives through sports and fitness."

The book later explored how the inevitable consequence of this ideology was the development of sweatshop factories in developing countries. Naomi Klein describes the brand-name multinationals as:

[V]ery picky customers, with specific instructions about made-to-order designs, materials, delivery dates and, most important, the need for rock-bottom prices. But what they are not interested in is the burdensome logistics of how those prices got so low; building factories, buying machinery and budgeting for labor have all been lobbed squarely into somebody else's court. (p. 202, author's italics)

The book then reviews some of the sweatshop scandals which erupted in the late 1990s.  The strength of corporate brands was also its achilles heel which could be exploited by juxtaposing the brand's image with the conditions in which the product is made. How could a company supposedly dedicated to enhancing people's lives through sports and fitness charge $120 for a pair of shoes which cost them $5 in conditions such as these

Workers fined if they refuse to work overtime; overtime rate not paid; ... humiliation, screaming, some corporal punishment; arbitrary fining of pregnant women and older (25 years old and up) women; fines if talking at work; approximately 10 children in the sewing section; most workers have never heard of Nike's Code of Conduct. (p. 474)

Eventually most companies caught up in these scandals apologized, and enacted voluntary codes of conduct to stamp out these abuses. All along they have wanted to change the topic, to stop us from talking about how their products are made.

I think that to a certain extent, they succeeded. Sweatshops and abusive labour practices by these companies seems old news now. I wonder, is that because the problem has really been fixed, as I'm sure that the PR departments of these corporations would all claim, or did they eventually succeed in changing the topic of conversation back to why they're such cool companies and why we would want to buy their things.

Tonight's not the night for me to look into whether things really have improved or not, but I am definitely curious to explore more recent works on this topic. Now, to return to my coincidence.

I finished reading No Logo tonight on the train. Shortly after arriving home, I noticed the Nike swoosh logo in the iTunes Music Store~. Nike is making music for sports and exercise now.

Think of this 45-minute continuous electronic music mix as a soundtrack for sport. It follows the arc of a typical distance run, carrying you through an easy warm-up, increasing in pitch as you start to own the road, peaking with a high-energy pay off and then coming back down to earth for a well-deserved cool-down.

The interesting thing is that Nike is using a similar production model for its music as it does with its shoes. Commission somebody else to create the music and use the brand to sell it. In this instance, the artist is known - James Murphy / LCD Soundsystem. If this idea takes off, I'm sure that gradually the identity of the artist will become less important when compared with the brand.

Corporate-created music reminded me of something from my own experience of working in a multinational. During my time at the Vodafone call centre, the company introduced Radio Vodafone (if I recall the name correctly after these two years). It was a selection of upbeat songs intermixed with the occasional Vodafone ad and corporate propaganda. It played at an unusual volume. Not so loud that it would distract from phone conversations or that you would really start listening to it, but not so soft that you couldn't hear it at all. It was always there in the background. Later on I learned that it was designed to increase our productivity and morale.

new Sarah Blasko album

I have just returned from something I have not been to before, an album opening. The occasion was the launch of the new Sarah Blasko* album, What the sea wants, the sea will have. As much as I like music, I have not yet got into the habit of enjoying live music. It’s likely that this will change.

Tonight’s concert was something a little different. It was invitation-only concert in a small venue. How did I manage to get a ticket to something like this? It was nothing to do with blogging. I’m on Sarah Blasko’s email list and there was a competition for members of it, and I entered and got lucky. It also turned out by happy accident that I got a front row seat.

Everybody that I know who’s seen Sarah Blasko live has said that she’s an amazing performer. Despite these high expectations, I was not disappointed. Her stage presence was powerful yet also subtle and understated. It’s hard to explain. And then her mesmerizing voice and music! The time went by very quickly. I enjoyed her first album, but I would only have described myself as a lukewarm fan. After the experience of seeing her live, and also because I think the songs on the new album are stronger and more varied, the lukewarm feelings have disappeared.

 

* One way that Sarah Blasko is known outside of Australian music circles is that her song, Always worth it, was played in the final episode of Six Feet Under – when Claire decided she'd go to New York, despite no longer having a job waiting for her there.

Edit: See the photo gallery of this concert on the triple J website.

Fiona Apple speaks about the making of Extraordinary Machine and the Free Fiona campaign

In her iTunes originals set, Fiona Apple speaks for ten minutes about how Extraordinary Machine came to be. Because of the difference between the spoken and the written word, I've made some edits for clarity ~

She said that she loved the original version which was produced by Jon Brion. "The stuff that we did was beautiful." The problem was that even though she thought the songs were great, they weren't quite what she intended. Fiona felt that she had rushed from writing the songs to recording them, and so she didn't have a clear idea of where she wanted them to go. "And so for lack of intentions and lack of the ability to make any decisions, I just thought, 'well I think I have to kinda start again and try them in a different way.'"

Fiona was adamant that Sony had not shelved the album, because it had never been given to them as a finished product. She did think that they probably didn't like it and couldn't see any hits in it.

She spoke a little about how she knew Mike Elizondo, the person who produced the final version of Extraordinary Machine. After she heard his initial work with the songs, she thought, "Whoa! Ok, I'm awake now, ok I can build meat onto this skeleton, I know what I want with this album now."

The difficulties with Sony started when she was about to begin recording with Mike Elizondo. "So we put a budget together, we were all ready to go and record and at that point a representative of Sony told my manager and I, 'Wait a second, hold on, we're not so sure that you should be doing this.' They said, 'You'll have to do one song at a time, and then, we'll hear the song, and then we'll give you the money to do the next one – oh and you know we'll give you the money to do the next one. We just have to hear it first.'"

Fiona was insulted by this. She was appalled at the possibility that she could finish something which she thought was finished, only to have her record company shelve it. "And then they own a master of something that I’m really satisfied with – which is unthinkable." Fiona was also worried that this would also lead to Sony attempting to write her songs, which would be the beginning of the end for her as an artist.

She decided that she could not work in this way. "So I called up my manager, I just said, really quick, 'Steve, call up Sony tell them I'm not going to record for them anymore. And don't call me back.'" She unplugged her phone.

Fiona did not hear anything on this for months, and she thought that it was over. Then the Free Fiona campaign happened. "I love what they did and I'm really grateful to them, I thanked them in the album and I'm in awe of anyone who can organize to reach a goal – especially something like that for me and my music – that's just incredible. Through what they did and the heat that they created for Sony as well as Steve Barnett coming into Sony made it so that I got the phone call going, 'you can do it with Mike Elizondo, you can record them all, no one's going to ask you to listen to them one by one, no one's going to ask to listen to them at all. Go, be free, be happy, do what you want to do.'"

Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine released in Australia

[12 May 2006: I have followed up on this post here]

I know it's old news that Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine, which was leaked onto the internet in March (here's what I wrote at the time) has been released by Sony-BMG, albeit in a slightly modified form.

It's taken a bit longer for the official version of Extraordinary Machine to be released in Australia, but it's available now. As I promised back in March, I bought it. I haven't listened enough to give any sort of meaningful review, other than to say, I don't hate this version. I still prefer the unofficial O Sailor, but the other one is ok.

It is nice that the album comes with a DVD containing a very amusing video of the Extraordinary Machine single, plus some live performances, as well as some audio-only remixes of tracks from the album. This is one that's not going to be available in the iTunes Music Store for quite some time, seeing that Fiona Apple's record company is Sony-BMG.

It's interesting to hear that apparently it was Fiona Apple, not her record company, who was behind the delay and subsequent reworking of Extraordinary Machine. Well I guess it is possible. It's also interesting that on the liner notes accompanying the CD, "everyone from Free Fiona" is on the list of people being thanked.

no more rumours - the iTunes Music store is finally open in Australia!

I haven't had time to take a really good look at it, but it's definitely open and features Australian artists. But nothing from Sony. There's more information in the Sydney Morning Herald. I know I'm going to waste a lot of money on this, just as I did with the US store while living over there.

still no comment from Apple about the opening of iTMS in Australia

Of course, it would be some consolation if the Kazaa decision might speed things along with the Australian iTunes Music Store, but I think that is extremely wishful thinking.

Apple Australia yesterday refused to comment on a launch date for its iTunes music store, which would allow the legion of Australians who own iPods to legally purchase songs, rather than rip, burn and swap.
[Kristy Needham, Music industry banks on opening of online store, Sydney Morning Herald (7 September 2005)]

still no iTunes Music Store in Australia - a casualty of squabbling between Apple and Sony

[7 September 2005: This post has been followed up]
[15 May 2006: The portion about Australian intellectual property law has been followed up]

An Australian iTunes Music Store (iTMS) was supposed to open in May 2005. This unexpectedly fell through. At the time, there were rumours in Slashdot that one major record company (possibly Sony) was the cause of this delay. Three months later, there is still no iTMS in Australia and there is more confirmation that Sony is the company which has been stone-walling in negotiations with Apple over licensing rates. Joshua Gliddon, "Burning issue", Bulletin (7 June 2005).

In Today's Australian Financial Review there was another article about this, "Apple's turn to bite the download bullet" (9 August 2005). I'm not linking to it, because the AFR has a nasty pay-per-view system. The gist of this article was that the Australian iTMS store has become collateral damage in the larger competition between Sony and Apple. Although Sony did not block the original iTMS in North America, or its other expansions, this time it is putting its foot down and insisting that Apple give some ground over licensing rates and access to Apple's FairPlay DRM system. The Australian market isn't that vital to Apple, and it's not going to make these concessions to Sony, and if that holds up the Australian iTMS, so be it. At this rate, it's possible New Zealand will have its iTMS before Australia. Good on them too (my Mum's from NZ, so I have major respect for the country and its people).

Meanwhile, because of an absurdity in Australian copyright law, there is still no legal way of using an iPod in Australia - unless your iPod is filled with music which you have yourself created. So I'm a law-breaker if I buy a CD and format-shift by ripping the music onto my iPod. So are two other Australian bloggers whom I know (I promise not to turn you in, F & S), so are the dozens of people I see everyday in Sydney with some sort of iPod, whether it's a big one or a mini or a shuffle. We're all law-breakers on this issue, even the lawyers. I'm waiting for the day when police will stop me in Martin Place, "Oi, you with those white earphones, what do you think you're up to?"

i <3 atomized texts

Time to put into practice what I was writing about a couple of posts ago.

Michael Gorman has just annoyed me again (via Librarian in Black), but I’m not going to write about him. Instead I want to write about why I think that atomized information is mostly a good thing.

As a blogger, I am used to having my writing atomized. Blogs are designed to be atomized. Some posts are more popular than others. Some sections of posts are more popular and are atomized when quoted in isolation from the rest of the post.

If I cared to study the matter more systematically I could probably see some ideas and themes developing since I started this blog almost 3 years ago. But it’s not really that important. Otherwise, I would demand that all my new readers begin with my very first post and read every one in chronological order before they were ready for the stuff I’m writing now. The very thought is ludicrous.

Of course there is a huge difference between unfinished and unfixed blogs and books that were written as a single unit. It would be an understatement to say that authors go to a great deal of trouble in arranging the content of their books. Atomization – ripping a few relevant paragraphs or sentences or words from these finished edifices – undoes all of that work. It wouldn’t surprise me if some authors aren’t comfortable with this. To that I say, the intentions of the author are irrelevant. I don’t want to go any more post-modern than this, but a text gains its meaning from how it is interpreted and read, not from the intentions of its author.

screenshots

I just added some screenshots to my last iPod post. Better late than never. It wasn't that painful, so I expect to do more of this in the future.

an iPod playlist to imprint the present and remember the past

[28/7/05 update: I've just added some screenshots of these playlists]

Maybe it's the librarian in me, but I find something enjoyable about organizing iTunes playlists for my iPod.

I have playlists for all sorts of things: driving (some music just does not work in the car), doing the dishes on a mellow evening, cleaning, exercising, good mood music for company (pleasant, but not too demanding or intrusive) and music that usually helps me get to sleep.

But nothing is perfect and there are few things about the iPod which can create a less than perfect music experience.

Firstly, if I am always listening to music for particular moods or circumstances, when I am going to listen and new music and how is that music going to imprint on my present circumstances? By imprinting, I mean when a particular piece of music becomes associated with a particular time/place/event/person in one's life. This isn't always a pleasant thing. Björk's Medúlla makes me recall my time working at Vodafone (not exactly pleasant for me) and reading Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (which is just plain weird). That said, I still think the association of songs in this way provides a helpful musical map to our lives, and that using an iPod can severely dilute this efffect.

The other problem, kind of touched on in my previous iPod playlist post, that it is so easy for good music to buried and lost in an iPod.

Naturally, I have found one answer to these two problems by creating a new kind of playlist. This is a hybrid smart list, containing two other smart playlists. The best thing is that it's self-updating and requires very little maintenance.

Ingredient 1: Smart playlist of recently added tracks. This is simple, choose "Date Added" in the last 3 months - or whichever period you like, it could also be a number of days or weeks. Make sure that the Live Updating box is checked, so that new things are automatically captured and the old ones will drop off.

Ingredient 2: Smart playlist containing good songs which aren't played very often. The first step here is to specify "My rating" as greater than 2 or 3 stars (depending on how picky you want to be). Of course you need to have most of your music rated for this to work effectively. One easy way of doing this is to make an Unrated playlist, containing only the unrated songs - so that you can rate them when you're ever in the mood. The second step is that this must be a limited playlist. For me it's limited to the 25 least often played songs. You might need to tinker with this number at some point to capture the ratio between old and new music which works best for you. Make sure that this list is also live updating.

Ingredient 3: Another smart playlist which combines the contents of the first two lists. At the top of the window, if you'll need to make sure that you choose "Match any of the following conditions", which is basically a boolean OR. Then for those conditions, choose "Playlist" is - and select the other two playlists, i.e. new stuff and good but less played.

At the moment at least, this is my new favourite list. It's not going to replace the others, because there'll always be times when I'll prefer a mood/situation specific playlist. But this hybrid list is a good one to play when I'm not too sure what I want.

my IOU to Fiona Apple

[This post was followed up on 2 November 2005]

Dear Fiona,

I owe you approximately $US 10 for downloading your album “Extraordinary Machine” which has been suppressed by your record company Sony. I will pay for this as soon as Sony decides to respect your artistic ability and release this record. If you haven’t done so already, I would suggest that you speak with Aimee Mann, who also suffered at the hands of tyrannical record companies. Aimee Mann seems a lot happier since she decided to go it alone and ditch her record company which had such a fundamentally different vision of what makes good music.

On the off-chance that Extraordinary Machine has been leaked deliberately as part of an unconventional marketing campaign, I would be extremely surprised and slightly disappointed, but I would forgive you, because it is a very good album.

the iPod zombie trance

I am an iPod zombie too. This Times of London article points out some of the disadvantages of people wearing iPods – both on an individual level and on a group level.

I concede these. There are days when I’ve forgotten to bring it along or recharge the batteries, and I am amazed sometimes by how much interesting background noise there is to hear. Birds, leaves rustling, snatches of conversation on the footpath, bus or train.

On the other hand, sometimes there aren’t any interesting or appealing ambient sounds. Sometimes it’s just the white noise of traffic.

I definitely use the iPod more in Sydney than I ever did in Hobart. Why is it more of a big city thing? Is it peer pressure, being more reliant on public transport, the busier and more stressful lifestyle?

Listening to music is an escape from the drudgery of the world. After a long busy day in the office, and faced with a grueling commute – it is nice to simply tune out and almost be somewhere else.

Yes, I can see why it isn’t a good thing to have a society where everybody is enclosed in their own personal musical cocoon. On the other hand, this is also a reaction to other things going on in society. If the people who are soliciting donations for charities, selling credit cards or just begging are going to be more upfront about interrupting me – when this isn’t welcome – then I am grateful for anything which makes this more difficult. Acting as if I am in an iPod trance is one way of shielding myself from this.

It’s possible that iPods and other mp3 players are creating a world where people are unaccustomed to silence and where abundance of music is taken for granted as just a background.

It doesn’t have to be like this. It’s also possible that the option of having constant music will help us appreciate deliberate silence.

Zen and the art of creating iTunes playlists

Please excuse this frivolous post and the slightly misleading title.

I have found that it is very easy to get into a rut with what I’m listening to on iTunes. When it is so easy to play only my most favourite songs or my most played songs, that’s often what I listen to. It’s not a good idea to listen to only favourites for a lengthy period of time – it means that I get bored of these great songs and take them for granted

One solution is to sometimes play only the songs that I’ve rated 3 or 4. The problem is that I haven’t rated systematically rated my entire collection. I do this more on a ad hoc basis, otherwise it would be a huge chore. I never rate a new CD until I’ve had it for at least a month, except for those tracks which really leap out as being particularly good or bad.

Here’s one solution which cures this sort of ennui. Morgan’s eclectic sampler playlist.

I use the word sampler in its traditional sense, that this playlist will give a reminder of the breadth of your collection, remind you of the sorts of things which you have.

This playlist has two main guidelines:
1. The idea is to choose only one track from each album. Each album’s representative should ideally be your second or third favourite track from that album.
2. Never choose your favourite tracks – then this playlist would become a just another favourites variation.

Of course, rules are made to be broken. Maybe you’d like to slightly over-represent newer albums, so you can get to know them better. Sometimes you might choose not to represent one-track wonders at all, if you really regret that one track you purchased from that album and don’t view it as representative at all.

The downside is that this playlist takes a bit of work, especially for selecting the second and third-best tracks of albums you haven’t listened to in a while. But that work can itself be enjoyable and illuminating about your collection and how you yourself have changed since adding particular albums.

The other thing is that this playlist is meant to help you escape from your iTunes ruts, don’t let it become a new rut in itself. If it’s a short list, don’t listen to it for more than a few days at once. Even if it’s a really long list, it will have definitely served its purpose after a week. Then leave it for a while and move on, hopefully to some tracks which the eclectic sampler playlist inspired you to rediscover.

using the shift key to rip certain copy-protected CDs

Today I had my first experience of a seriously copy-protected CD, Radiohead's Hail to the Thief, released by EMI. I didn't have much luck ripping it onto my Mac - I ended up having to force quit out of iTunes. Apparently there are a number of different copy-protection methods. One method can be circumvented with a magic marker. I didn't think that this method would work on this particular CD, so I looked for other methods. Then I saw this reference to hold down the shift key on a Windows computer for 5 seconds after inserting the CD. This stopped the CD from automatically launching the program which would interfere with the copy protection. I then copied the CD with iTunes, and soon I'll have it in my iPod.

As I've written before, I believe that creators should be fairly compensated for their work, but that copy-protection technology goes way too far, and I have no moral qualms about circumventing it. I've never been interested in downloading music from file-sharing sites. The only thing which would tempt me would be if I wasn't able to rip a CD which I had lawfully purchased. Then I would feel entitled to download an illicit copy.

When will the record companies realize that people like to listen to music on their computers and mp3 players, and it is manifestly unfair to prevent this from happening? It is simply such a stupid thing to do - piss off your paying customers and drive them into supporting your real target, the file-traders.

I'm about to really start ranting, so instead I'll link this detailed explanation of how the shift method works.

iPod not being recognized after the iTunes 4.5 update

I am one of the many people who has experienced this problem after upgrading to iTunes 4.5. I have a 20 GB iPod which I bought at the Apple store in the Mall of America in January. There is a fix to this solution and it has worked for me. Go to Apple's web site, choose the Support tab, then choose the Discussions sub-tab, select the iPod product forum, then select the [regular] iPod, and then the Usage folder. The posting is currently second from the top and is called "iPod doesn't appear in Updater or iTunes in Mac OS X". The instructions were fairly straightforward, at least for Panther users.

technology meanderings

The good news is that I have a dsl connection at home. This is will make it a lot easier for me to work on this blog – and keep up with other blogs. Tying up the phone line has been a bit of an issue and impediment lately, and now I won’t need to worry about that. The bad news is that this is broadband connection is on an IBM (literally), not my iBook. Later on, I should be able to get the iBook on the dsl connection, but for the time being, I am content to use the web on this IBM.

This means that I’ll be taking a break from Net NewsWire as my news reader and will be giving Bloglines a shot. It was very easy to get started – just importing my OPML file (exported from Net News Wire). So far I’m impressed and I’m only just beginning to explore it. If you're curious, you can see the feeds which I'm reading.

Now I need a spam filter for my email. I had been using SpamSieve on my Mac, which had been working very nicely with Entourage. Well, I’ll worry about that another day.

I’ve been trying to break into the iTune Music Store – no, not to steal anything. I just want to be able to waste my money on them from Australia. The key is an US address and credit card. I still have an American credit card, but it’s now associated with an Australian address and so won’t work for iTunes. Amazon is more than happy to mail me an audio CD over the Pacific so that I can rip it into mp3 format, so why is it such a controversial thing for a non-American to buy DRM-protected music from the iTunes Music Store? I’ve just tried the BigPond downloading service. As much as I like to support things Australian, its interface doesn’t hold a candle to iTunes. Its collection has a few more Australian artists, which is welcome, but overall it doesn't compare with iTMS. BigPond only supports WMA. I guess I’ll be able to burn a playlist to a CD and then rip them into iTunes. I'll lose some sound quality, but I’m not an audiophile.