Flashback: My First Home Studio

Here's a pic showing me in my first home studio setup. I believe this photo was taken in the summer of 1987.

“The Day the Music Died” Remembered

Long Island Press.com

Today, 51 years ago, was “The Day the Music Died,” the phrase immortalized in American folk singer/songwriter Don McLean’s 1972 hit “American Pie.”

The tune has been called a metaphor for the loss of innocence in America, inspired by, and about, the untimely deaths of rock and rollers Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, Jr. They were killed in a plane crash Feb. 3, 1959 along with the plane’s pilot, Roger Paterson, in a snowy field in the middle of Iowa just a short while after 1 a.m.

Music's lost decade: Sales cut in half

CNN Money

If you watched the Grammy Awards Sunday night, it would appear all is well in the recording industry. But at the end of last year, the music business was worth half of what it was ten years ago and the decline doesn't look like it will be slowing anytime soon.

Total revenue from U.S. music sales and licensing plunged to $6.3 billion in 2009, according to Forrester Research. In 1999, that revenue figure topped $14.6 billion.

Although the Recording Industry Association of America will report its official figures in the early spring, the trend has been very clear: RIAA has reported declining revenue in nine of the past 10 years, with album sales falling an average of 8% each year. Last decade was the first ever in which sales were lower going out than coming in.

Music Piracy Case will Go to Round 3

PC World

The long music piracy fight between the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and Minnesota native Jammie Thomas-Rasset shows no sign of ending anytime soon.

RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth last week said the industry association is beginning preparations for a third trial in the case after Thomas-Rasset rejected a $25,000 settlement offer it made earlier this week.

Canadian producer Pierre Cossette, father of Grammy Awards, dies at 85

Google/AP News

Pierre Cossette, the Canadian father of the modern Grammy Awards show, has died at a Montreal hospital. He was 85.

His death was announced in Santa Monica, Calif., late Friday by the Recording Academy. Academy president and CEO Neil Portnow paid glowing tribute to Cossette.

"It is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our dear friend and father of the Grammy Awards, Pierre Cossette," he said.

The Valleyfield, Que., native was an accomplished television and theatre producer who also managed some of American pop music's most influential early bands.

But he's best known as the visionary who guided the Grammy Awards from its early days as a stuffy, unsuccessful production to the widescreen industry institution it's become.

In its early years, the Grammy show was an hour-long compilation of recorded performances, and it was not a commercial success.

Brian Eno exhibit in Long Beach invites viewers to see the music

Los Angeles Times

Eight time zones ahead of Los Angeles, Brian Eno's cellphone is ringing. He's cycling along the Thames River towpath, savoring the shank of a summer afternoon. "Could you call back in an hour?" he asks politely.

The appointed moment arrives and Eno is ready to chat, having come to a temporary halt in the tranquillity of his London home. Like his fellow harried humanoids, the British multimedia artist intimates that he's constantly trying to carve out a few minutes of quiet, contemplative space for himself within the manic, tech-driven modern world.



Of course, Eno, 61, has been a pioneer of that world and a proponent of new artistic technologies for decades: first as a keyboardist for the definitiveglam-rock ensemble Roxy Music; then as the producer of countless albums by U2, the Talking Heads, Coldplay and other sonically promiscuous bands; and in his prolific audio-visual collaborations, ranging from the Microsoft Windows six-second start-up jingle to the sound design for the Spore(2008_video_game) video game to the soundtrack for Peter Jackson's upcoming feature film adaptation of Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones." Eno's seemingly inexhaustible list of projects and artistic partners has earned him a reputation as a kind of creative perpetual-motion machine. But he confesses that he, too, struggles to keep the 24-7 pace from overwhelming him.

iTunes Sells 24% of All U.S. Music

PC World

Apple's iTunes Music Store now sells 25 percent of all music sales in the U.S., and 69 percent of the entire US digital music market. Relative newcomer AmazonMP3 sells just 8 percent of all U.S. digital music downloads.

Market research company The NPD Group reports that while CDs remain the most popular format for paid music purchases, digital music sales are making up an ever-greater share of US music sales. (See also "Apple iTunes: How to Organize and Manage Your Music Collection.")

CDs comprised 65 percent of all music sold in the first half of 2009 compared to paid digital downloads, which comprised 35 percent of music sales. By comparison, paid digital music downloads comprised just 20 percent of sales in 2007 -- growing to 30 percent of the music market last year.

Click HERE to read more.

878 guitarists are too few to break record

Shreveport Times

A sea of guitarists flooded the lower level of Hirsch Memorial Coliseum on Saturday.

But recording legend James Burton and 877 fellow pickers were not enough to break the Guinness World Record for largest guitar ensemble. That remains with a German band that had 1,802 guitarists playing "Smoke on the Water" in 2007.

The attempt, part of the James Burton International Guitar Festival, gave many a reason to dust off their guitars.

But 11-year-old Chase Rogers was able to participate because of Burton. The classical guitar the Summerfield Elementary student played Saturday was donated to his school by the James Burton Foundation.

The festival is a fundraiser for foundation, which provides technical training, music lessons and free guitars to young musicians, according to its Web site. The foundation has donated more than 1,800 guitars to Bossier and Caddo schools since it was began in 2003.

Continue reading.

August 21st

He's on the road to somewhere

IrishTimes.com

Musician David Byrne never goes on tour without his fold-up bicycle. His latest project is a book about his experiences on two wheels

‘I’M CHECKING it out – I got it figured out,” sang David Byrne on the Talking Heads song Cities . “There’re good points and bad points – but it all works out.” A gentle description of a city if ever there was one, but back in 1979 Byrne would deliver it with the bug-eyed zeal of a man who is never more freaked out than when confronted with the normal. Thirty years on, the manic streak has gone, replaced by a gentle laugh and shock of white hair, but those lyrics serve well as a template for his latest endeavour, Bicycle Diaries : a series of accounts of Byrne’s experiences travelling to cities around the world.

The Bicycle Diaries title isn’t there to fool you; while the 57-year-old has spent much of the last few decades touring the globe, first with Talking Heads and then as a solo artist, there have been two constants by his side: a diary, which he has kept, if not religiously then frequently, and a fold-up bicycle. The first chapter begins with Byrne cycling aimlessly around Niagra Falls, Buffalo, relaying his casual thoughts on sub-standard town planning and the life of local hero and Kodak founder George Eastman. Later on he examines Detroit, citing it as an example of what an unhealthy reliance on oil does to the average American city.

Digital music sales catching up to CDs

San Jose Mercury News

In this all-things digital era, CDs still dominate the U.S. music market — but not for long.

While CDs made up 65 percent of all music sold in the first half of 2009, digital downloads are quickly catching up, according to a report released Tuesday by researcher The NPD Group. With digital music sales increasing 15 percent to 20 percent a year — and CD sales dropping at an equal pace — purchasing tunes on discs is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Next year will be a tipping point, said Russ Crupnick, NPD vice president of entertainment industry analysis. "It will be a dead heat" between digital and CD sales, he said.

The speed with which digital sales have grown — they made up just 20 percent of music sales two years ago — have many people assuming CDs died long ago. "The assumption is that happened five years ago," Crupnick said. "In fact, at least in the United States, there are still 2½ times as many people who buy CDs as those who buy digital downloads."

Les Paul: 1915 - 2009

There can be no question that the musician of today owes a debt to Les Paul much greater than they may be able to imagine. When you consider the contribution made by one man and how he changed the direction of music, it boggles the mind. I doubt that one could name any legendary artist whose success would not have been possible without the innovations of Les Paul. A genius for the ages and we are fortunate to have lived to witness even a small part of his contribution. Thank you.

New York Times

Les Paul, the virtuoso guitarist and inventor whose solid-body electric guitar and recording studio innovations changed the course of 20th-century popular music, died Thursday in White Plains, N.Y. . He was 94.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, the Gibson Guitar Corporation and his family announced. .

Mr. Paul was a remarkable musician as well as a tireless tinkerer. He played guitar alongside leading prewar jazz and pop musicians from Louis Armstrong to Bing Crosby. In the 1930s he began experimenting with guitar amplification, and by 1941 he had built what was probably the first solid-body electric guitar, although there are other claimants. With his guitar and the vocals of his wife, Mary Ford, he used overdubbing, multitrack recording and new electronic effects to create a string of hits in the 1950s.

Mr. Paul’s style encompassed the twang of country music, the harmonic richness of jazz and, later, the bite of rock ’n’ roll. For all his technological impact, though, he remained a down-home performer whose main goal, he often said, was to make people happy.

Read more about Les Paul.

Founder of punk's Mink DeVille dies at 58

iWon News

Willy DeVille, who founded the punk group Mink DeVille and was known for his blend of R&B, blues, Dixieland and traditional French Cajun ballads, has died, his publicist said Friday. He was 58.

The Oscar-nominated songwriter died at New York's Cabrini Hospital on Thursday of pancreatic cancer, said Carol Kaye at Kayos Productions.

"The rock world has lost another one of its influential pioneers," Kaye said.

Mink DeVille, for which DeVille was the principal songwriter, was billed as one of the most original groups on the New York punk scene after an appearance at the legendary CBGB club in Greenwich Village in the 1970s.