NIN have (has?) joined Radiohead in becoming completely independent and free of record labels.

The Sunday Times: The day the music industry died was the day Radiohead released their new album online, without a label, and for whatever anyone wanted to pay. We think they’re right.

We didn’t realize until reading this piece, btw, that Radiohead are currently unsigned; their prior contract expired, and they haven’t bothered signing up with anyone new. Can you say “disintermediation?”

Despite the stupid comments made by the Sony exec, the boneheads in the Duluth jury found in favor of the RIAA in the first-ever filesharing trial. There’s still likely to be an appeal, but the verdict simply defies all logic.

Microsoft is apparently selling DRM-free MP3s in their Zune store.

So, now we have iTunes/EMI doing it, eMusic doing it, Amazon doing it, Microsoft doing it, and Radiohead doing it. Even so, the music industry at large is still completely clueless, to the point that Techdirt just responded to a Viacom speech with a post titled “Viacom wrong on almost every thing”. Their list:

• Viacom sees DRM and watermarking as the solution to piracy;
• Viacom thinks copy protection will encourage innovation and creative output;
• Viacom sees easy copying of data as a problem that needs solving;
• Viacom thinks ISPs should be filtering traffic;
• Viacom is opposed to network neutrality;
• Viacom wants the Feds to fight their copyright battles overseas for them;
• and on and on and on.

With that kind of decision making, it’s hard to see how they’re still in business — well, not really: they stay in business by raping musicians and such, but still.

Another fine represenative of the recording industry showed her wisdom to the world, byt eh way, by telling a bunch of whoppers in her testimony in the RIAA file-sharing trial. Again, it’s Techdirt with the story. Click through on both of these; they’re worth your time.

Apparently, suing their own customers has cost the RIAA an assload of money. Cool.

Copying a single song from a CD to an iPod.

These people are so doomed.

Radiohead‘s much-ballyhooed approach to the release of their upcoming new record is precisely what the RIAA fears most. The bad news for them is that it’s going to happen more and more.

Briefly, as of 10 October, fans will be able to download a digital version of the record from their web site and pay any amount they wish, from nothing on up. A special edition of the album, which comes with two CDs, two heavyweight vinyl records, some extras, and the option to download as well, is on sale for about $80 (priced in pounds, so that’s subject to drift) and will ship in time for Christmas. It’s a one-two combo that the labels can’t match: the music is (nearly) free, but there’s a nice pile of extras that fans will line up to pay a premium for.

(Dear Intarwub: Please buy us the special edition for Christmas. KTHXBI.)

We were wholly unaware that “steampunk” existed as a musical genre, but it pleases us anyway. Via Warren Ellis, we find the amusing site of Abney Park, a steampunk band with an elaborate backstory, and an airship named Ophelia.

We’re certain the shows must involve a great deal of amusing stagework, but, alas, they’re in Seattle.

Some friends of ours saw Bob Dylan in Austin last weekend.

At Stubb’s BBQ, which hold only about 2,100 people. “Stealth” gig, it was, and somehow these guys found out in time. How cool is that?

JWZ points us to the best goddamn Phil Collins video EVER.

Via Majikthise:

A Mississippi town is trying to obtain a posthumous pardon for Johnny Cash. In May 1965, the legendary country singer spent the night in the Starkville drunk tank after getting caught picking flowers in someone’s yard. [BBC]

Excellent.

Mini-Britney bills herselfl as the “littlest Britney Spears tribute performer in the world.” There’s video.

Pitchfork Gives Music 6.8:

Schreiber’s semi-favorable review, which begins in earnest after a six-paragraph preamble comprising a long list of baroquely rendered, seemingly unrelated anecdotes peppered with obscure references, summarizes music as a “solid but uninspired effort.”

“Coming in at an exhausting 7,000 years long, music is weighed down by a few too many mid- tempo tunes, most notably ‘Liebestraume No. 3 in A flat’ by Franz Liszt and ‘Closing Time’ by ’90s alt-rock group Semisonic,” Schreiber wrote. “In the end, though music can be brilliant at times, the whole medium comes off as derivative of Pavement.”

Over the weekend, we had occasion to visit with Chief Real Estate and UFO Analysis Correspondent BC at his satellite office in the wilds of Alagoddambama, where we engaged in more cigar smoking than should be legal, not to mention the barbecue.

Anyhow, ol’ BC has music tastes sometimes more adventurous than ours, and definitely hipper. Consequently, we were exposed for the first time to a band we’d heard of, but never listened to: Rainer Maria, an emo-esque trio from Wisconsin (and eventually Brooklyn) that formed in 1995.

(The first disappointment was that they’re already broken up, but this may not end up being so awful given what followed.)

BC had their second album “Look Now, Look Again” (1999) on his iPod, so it was that that we first pulled off eMusic when we got home. It was as good as we recalled — hey, even Pitchfork liked it — so we went back to the well, so to speak, to see what happened next.

That would be 2001’s “A Better Version of Me,” which was, if not as strong as LNLA, at least as good. We liked it enough that we immediately checked out 2003’s “Long Knives Drawn,” only to find that we’d gone A RECORD TOO FAR. It’s plodding, and not nearly as interesting as the earlier work. As it happens, the mavens at Pitchfork agree with us (like we care) that the tension provided by Kyle Fischer’s occasional backing vocal are a key part of the mix, and that relying exclusively on Caithlin DeMarrais’ voice is a mistake. Sadly, nobody seems to have told Rainer Maria about this, as the final record provides more of the same. We doubt we’ll even bother with it, actually.

So, there you have it: we discovered the band on Saturday, and by last night we’d already decided when they jumped the shark. Someday, perhaps we can manage to compress the entire process of fandom to an afternoon.

Check it out.

Agent Rob points out these guys. (Actually, it’s apparently one dude). The “Night Ripper” album includes an absurd array of samples, from 40+ years of popular music:

• Boston
• James Taylor
• Paula Abdul
• Verve
• Arrested Development
• Chicago (“25 or 6 to 4”)
• Manfred Mann (“Blinded by the Light”)
• Kansas
• Steely Dan (“Black Cow”)
• Paul McCartney and, separately, the Beatles
• Smashing Pumpkins

Plus a million snippits that made us go “oh crap! What was that?” Here’s a sample track; there’s more at their MySpace.

Jazz giant Max Roach died today; he was 83.

Roach‘s list of achievements is long and storied: he played with Duke Ellington Charlie Parker as a teen; he was one of the first jazz musicians to teach college full time; he was the first jazz man to win a MacArthur (1988). He’s on Miles Davis’ “Birth of the Cool,” and about fifty-eleven other seminal jazz recordings. He wrote music for Sam Shepard plays, and won an award for it. He played with Mingus, Sonny Rollins, and Dizzy, too.

We’re running out of giants, dammit.

Today’s a good day to go check out Thomas Sutpen’s vintage fotoblog, as he pays tribute to Elvis on the 30th anniversary of his ignominious passing.

The last post reminded us of this tribute to Strummer.

Tony Wilson, the music promoter, label owner, and club proprietor widely seen as the father of the Manchester music scene (as seen in 24 Hour Party People), has passed away.

The set of people included in the sets of “Former Doobie Brothers,” “Former Members of Steely Dan,” and “Defense Department Counterterrorism Analysts” has at least one member, and it’s Jeff Baxter. (Via MeFi.)

Via BoingBoing:

Universal Music — who are usually the most extreme piracyphobes in the music industry — have announced that they’re going to try selling much of their catalog without DRM from now until January. What caused them to change positions? Fear of an iPod Planet.

The iPod plays two kinds of music: music crippled with Apple’s DRM and MP3s. If you want to cripple your music with Apple’s DRM, you have to give Apple total control over your track-pricing. No other store can carry Apple-crippled music. Every time we buy an Apple-crippled track, it gets that much harder and more expensive to switch away from the iPod and iTunes.

For record companies, there are only two choices: sell Apple-crippled music and increase Apple’s control over the online music business, or sell uncrippled music.

This is huge. HUGE.

Like this one:

Of course, in the Heathen homeland, we didn’t have MTV in 1983; we had to watch Friday Night Videos, which was a weak sister at the time (oh! what we’d give for FNV reruns now!).

This video was one of the ones excitedly discussed in junior high cafeterias that year; Phil Oakey’s gender-bending presentation combined with the baritone was pretty transgressive and weird, and then there were those girls. Their names, like Oakey’s, we didn’t know until today: Susan Ann Gayle and Joanne Catherall, both of whom were apparently underage when they joined the band in 1980. The zoom-in-the-map trick at the head end reminds us now of Google, but back then it was pretty jarring and cool (note how the sidestep some of the special effects — the boy and the ball take on the pinkish red hue when they’re inside the circle, but you never actually see the transition).

In retrospect, we figure the Human League was one of the first examples of what we now know as 80s synth pop that we heard down in Mississippi. (Captain Telescope may have other ideas, which we encourage him to share; certainly we’d probably heard Flock of Seagulls by then, and Devo, but they’re all of a piece.) The whole look is there in the video: very 80s clothing, hair, makeup, and sounds, all of which served to remind us that well, we lived in a backwater, since there was essentially zero local music there at the time. (Not counting these guys, since they came later.)

The earlier iconic Human League video is also on YouTube, of course. Amusingly, collateral Googling for this post revealed that the band is actually still active and touring, 30 years on. Neat.

The Foo Fighters record The Color and the Shape has been reissued in a 10th anniversary edition; the original came out in May of 1997.

Fortunately, it’s on EMusic, so we can just snag the new tracks. Also fortunately, the “Everlong” video is on YouTube:

Via TechDirt: The RIAA hates webcasters, and doesn’t mind if they die, because webcasters don’t play much RIAA music at all. The RIAA would much rather this distribution channel, containing as it does mostly music created outside its cabal, simply vanish. They have no interest in its continued existence.

Traditional radio, of course, is dominated by a few similarly formated stations that all play RIAA-backed music. 87% of the music you hear on the radio is from an RIAA-member record label. However, when it comes to music on webcasts, the story is quite different. Jon Healy, at the LA Times, points out that only 44% of music on webcasts are from RIAA labels. This, at least, based on the findings of Live365, one of the larger webcasting services out there. So, with more than half the songs coming from non-RIAA labels, no wonder they’re less interested in keeping webcasts alive. And, of course, the situation really is a win-win for the RIAA (in the short-term). It either kills off those webcasters who don’t contribute to the homogenization of music, or it forces them to pay large sums even if they only play non-RIAA music. Of course, this is a strategy guaranteed to backfire in the long run, as it simply pisses off even more music fans who will simply look elsewhere for music.

Harptallica, a harp duet that plays Metallica songs.

No, really.

(Via Mike.)

30 years after dropping out of grad school to become a rock and roll star, he’s completing his doctorate in astrophysics at Imperial College London.

LONDON (AP) — Brian May is completing his doctorate in astrophysics, more than 30 years after he abandoned his studies to form the rock group Queen.

The 60-year-old guitarist and songwriter said he plans to submit his thesis, ”Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud,” to supervisors at Imperial College London within the next two weeks.

May was an astrophysics student at Imperial College when Queen, which included Freddie Mercury and Roger Taylor, was formed in 1970. He dropped his doctorate as the glam rock band became successful.

Queen were one of Britain’s biggest music groups in the 1970s, with hits including ”Bohemian Rhapsody” and ”We Will Rock You.”

After Mercury’s death in 1991, May recorded several solo albums, including 1998’s ”Another World.” But his interest in astronomy continued, and he co-wrote ”Bang! The Complete History of the Universe,” which was published last year.

He was due to finish carrying out astronomical observations at an observatory on the island of La Palma, in Spain’s Canary Islands, on Tuesday, the observatory said.

May told the British Broadcasting Corp. that he had always wanted to complete his degree.

”It was unfinished business,” he said. ”I didn’t want an honorary Ph.D. I wanted the real thing that I worked for.”

(NYT link, but the full text of the wire story is above.)

No, we are not being sarcastic. Watch this video.

Also, why British pop starlets are better.

Probably not SFW, but more for dialog than anything else. Clip from Brit game show featuring Lily Allen. Enjoy.

So we were reading our morning feed of stuff, and ran across this video over at JWZ’s blog (watch all 3 when you go over, but the 1st and 3rd are the best):

The video pointed out to us a frankly unacceptable gap in Heathen Central’s musical archives, so now we’re downloading the best of Earth, Wind & Fire from Steve. Dammit.

(Incidentally, there’s apparently a whole series of videos with the boogie-down stormtrooper. The Japanese are very, very different from us.)

As it happens, Rachmaninov had very large hands.

Bullz-eye’s roundup of Bands that should Reunite includes Creed:

We’ll just go out and say it: we want Creed to get back together because…we miss having them to kick around.

Music lovers hated Creed. It didn’t matter what color your musical stripes were; if you loved music, you hated Creed. What people overlook is how incredibly rare it is for one band to rub so many people the wrong way. This actually makes them special. Look at the music scene today. Is there anyone that is universally loathed like Creed was? Not even close. Yes, there is a strong anti-emo movement taking shape, but since there are so damn many emo bands, fans are torn between hating Panic! at the Disco more than Fall Out Boy or Taking Back Sunday. Kevin Federline was just a punch line; no one cared enough to hate him. But people did care enough to hate Creed, and their decision to call it quits in 2004, frankly, has thrown the rock & roll universe out of whack. Not only did their breakup create a void at the bottom of the rock food chain, it also created a void at the top. Quick, who’s the biggest band in the world? It’s a trick question: there isn’t one, and that is not a coincidence but merely the result of the rock & roll universe balancing itself out.

Like it or not, the music world needs Creed. They sell millions of records to the people who are least likely to buy music, which is good for the industry. More importantly, their existence makes every other band try a little bit harder, so they won’t be compared to Creed. And Lord, could we use a few musicians that are willing to try a little bit harder. Look at the tossers that pass for rock stars now. Pete Wentz is dating Ashlee Simpson? That’s like Robert Smith dating Taylor Dayne. James Blunt, meanwhile, will sleep with anything with a pulse. Pete Doherty is such a loser that he made the world stop caring about Kate Moss.

These guys are child’s play compared to Scott Stapp.

Stapp will perform songs about God while unapologetically drunk (or, if his recent arrest report is accurate, stoned); shoot sex tapes with Kid Rock; throw glass bottles at his wife; and start bar fights with 311. All the while he’s shirtless, holding his arms in a Christ pose, and meaning every single word of nonsense that comes out of his mouth. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a rock star acting like a rock star, and there are few rock stars who are more fun to hate than Scott Stapp and Creed. Admit it: you sort of miss them, too.

(Via TBogg.)

Twenty years later, we still don’t understand why there are cows in this video, but it’s still cool.

Following Emusic and Apple’s iTunes Music Store, Amazon announced today that they will open a DRM-free online store. EMI is on board, along with literally thousands of other, presumably small, labels. (No other majors are listed in the release.)

Watch the RIAA cringe!

Axe found Lone Justice on YouTube:

OddFact we used to know: Tom Petty wrote it. We also didn’t realize that LJ had an entirely different lineup for “Shelter” except for Maria McKee (thanks, Wikipedia!).

If you’re as smart as Aphex Twin, you can put pictures in your music that only geeks will ever see. Awesome.

From the Onion back in March: Unreleased Jimmy Page Guitar Riff To Be Retrieved From Secret Vault To Save Rock And Roll:

The Guardians said recent developments in the music world, such as the unaccountable popularity of the Dixie Chicks and Sufjan Stevens, have created a “perfect storm of lameness” from which rock might never recover. While Iommi refused to say when the vault would be opened, hard rock sources believe it will take place just prior to next month’s Fall Out Boy-Honda Civic tour, which many fear will suck the remaining lifeblood from all that still rocks.

“Citizens of Rock, we refuse to stand idly by any longer,” ZZ Top founder and Protectorate High Elder Billy Gibbons said. “When a puss like James Blunt is allowed to rule the airwaves, we must respond by exposing this monster riff, and blowing minds into the stratosphere.”

[…]

Members of the Protectorate were each given only partial information about the location of the vault, which they were instructed to open in unison only in the event of a total Rockopalypse. While some believed the vault was buried in Boston, Chicago, Kansas, Europe, or Asia, others claimed it could be found in the Court of the Crimson King.

However, after piecing together clues hidden in Yes album covers and Pink Floyd liner notes, rock historians now believe the riff is locked away deep beneath the Welsh countryside house known as Bron-Yr-Aur, at rock-grid coordinates SH735026. British weather satellites have also photographed an enormous cloud, shaped like a hybrid of an upside-down question mark and cross, forming above these exact coordinates.

The vault’s Key, regarded as too staggering a burden for any one man to bear, was divided in two parts, with half entrusted to Eddie Van Halen and half to David Lee Roth, shortly after Roth left the rock supergroup Van Halen. The two men, who have refused to work together for 20 years, recently announced plans for a historic reunion tour.

“Before we shake Heaven and Earth with the vicious power of this riff, we of the High Council of Elders of the Guardians of the Protectorate of Rock ask you: Are you about to rock?” AC/DC guitarist Angus Young said. “If so, we salute you.”

15 Reasons David Bowie Is The Man. Did you know about Nat Tate?

They’re checking out Herbie’s new toy, a Fairlight:

Fuck.

A panel of judges at the Copyright Royalty Board has denied a request from the NPR and a number of other webcasters to reconsider a March ruling that would force Internet radio services to pay crippling royalties. The panel’s ruling reaffirmed the original CRB decision in every respect, with the exception of how the royalties will be calculated. Instead of charging a royalty for each time a song is heard by a listener online, Internet broadcasters will be able pay royalties based on average listening hours through the end of 2008. Related Stories

The ruling is a huge blow to online broadcasters, and the new royalty structure could knock a large number of them off the ‘Net entirely. Under the previous setup, radio stations would have to pay an annual fee plus 12 percent of their profits to the music industry’s royalty collection organization, SoundExchange. It was a good setup for the webcasters, most of whom are either nonprofits or very small organizations.

National Public Radio spearheaded the appeal, arguing that the CRB’s decision was an “abuse of discretion” and saying that the judges did not consider the ramifications of a new royalty structure. Under the new royalty schedule, NPR will see its costs skyrocket.

This is, of course, exactly what SoundExchange and the RIAA wanted, in collusion no doubt with the National Association of Broadcasters. Can’t compete with a new format? Don’t bother innovating! Just legislate it out of existence!

When stuff like this happens there, we are in no position to disagree. (Via MeFi)

If you’re wandering through the DC metro any time soon, pay careful attention to the busking musicians; one of them might be Joshua Bell, gamely playing along with a WaPo writer to see if people would notice a world-class violinist in the subway.

Sadly, the answer was mostly “no.”

In preparing for this event, editors at The Post Magazine discussed how to deal with likely outcomes. The most widely held assumption was that there could well be a problem with crowd control: In a demographic as sophisticated as Washington, the thinking went, several people would surely recognize Bell. Nervous “what-if” scenarios abounded. As people gathered, what if others stopped just to see what the attraction was? Word would spread through the crowd. Cameras would flash. More people flock to the scene; rush-hour pedestrian traffic backs up; tempers flare; the National Guard is called; tear gas, rubber bullets, etc.

As it happens, exactly one person recognized Bell, and she didn’t arrive until near the very end. For Stacy Furukawa, a demographer at the Commerce Department, there was no doubt. She doesn’t know much about classical music, but she had been in the audience three weeks earlier, at Bell’s free concert at the Library of Congress. And here he was, the international virtuoso, sawing away, begging for money. She had no idea what the heck was going on, but whatever it was, she wasn’t about to miss it.

There was another guy who clearly knew from classical music, but he didn’t know what Bell looked like, so he didn’t realize he was listening to a guy whose CDs he owned.

In the end, Bell collected $32.17 in bills and change, all tossed into the case for his $4MM Stradivarius. (Bell plays this one.)

Who knew Alanis knew from parody?

Under-appreciated country music great Billy Joe Shaver will shoot you in the face if you fuck with him.

On an episode of Good Eats featuring Alton’s sister and nephew creating a superfancy sandwich, the nephew (Elton) is consistently referred to as “Kid A” (as opposed to “Grownup B”).

Heh. Alton digs Radiohead.

The Heartless Bastards are opening up for Lucinda Williams at both Radio City Music Hall and in Nashville’s storied Ryman in the coming weeks. Dang.

There is no greater enemy of the music business than the music industry itself. Never before in the history of mass entertainment have we witnessed an industry who worked harder to destroy itself. Maybe once upon a time, music companies tried to expand their business and reach wider audiences, but those days ended long ago…and if the RIAA has its way, they’ll be gone for good.

Let us count some the major mistakes the industry has made in our lifetimes: cheering on ownership consolidation that squeezes out diversity on local radio; standing on the sidelines while the Internet revolutionized the way listeners access music…and then trying to close the barn door after the horse had galloped to the next continent; applauding the Copyright Royalty Board’s decision to raise royalty rates on Internet Radio.

Go read the whole thing: NPR Starts a War

Is it any surprise that the RIAA beat out Halliburton for Worst Company in America over at Consumerist.com?

If you only read one piece about the Arcade Fire this year, make it this one. Here’s a great sample:

There were church organ pipes along the wall behind the pulpit, but they did not use the church organ for the church organ parts. Disappointing. Also, no one playfully ripped out Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor, which should be the very first thing you do when fucking around with music in a church.

Rock on. We gotta hurry back to H-town so’s we can snag Neon Bible. Who the hell knows if they have Montreal weird-art-rock in Maryland?

(Via BrainWidth, who is also responsible for us knowing about the MP3 of their 17 Feb show at NPR. He’s awful cool for a lawyer.)

Tom dares us to play along with these scores, but we think we’ll just take the zero.

Don’t miss the textual directions. We think our favorite is “release the penguins.”

Vladimir Horowitz was a GOD, and David Helfgott is a punk. That is all.