What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.
- from “Leisure,” by W.H. Davies
Yesterday’s Play Me, I’m Yours post has inspired me to share my very favorite article with you. It is about an experiment to test people’s capacity for beauty, and it won a Pulitzer prize. It’s a long read…takes me about a half hour, but I highly recommend it if you have the time.
Essentially, The Washington Post wondered what would happen if you placed a world-famous musician playing renowned classical works into the context of DC’s morning subway rush hour. The musician was Joshua Bell and the location was L’Enfant Plaza in the DC Metro. Here are a few excerpts:
In a banal setting at an inconvenient time, would beauty transcend?”
In the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run — for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look.
…the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists.
The song that Calvin Myint [a passerby who did not notice Bell] was listening to [on his iPod] was “Just Like Heaven,” by the British rock band The Cure. It’s a terrific song, actually…It’s about failing to see the beauty of what’s plainly in front of your eyes.
…John Lane writes about the loss of the appreciation for beauty in the modern world. The experiment at L’Enfant Plaza may be symptomatic of that, he said — not because people didn’t have the capacity to understand beauty, but because it was irrelevant to them.
But not everyone was so distracted.
Every single time a child walked past, he or she tried to stop and watch.
“Really. It was that kind of experience. It was a treat, just a brilliant, incredible way to start the day.”
“It was the most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen in Washington,” Furukawa says. “Joshua Bell was standing there playing at rush hour, and people were not stopping, and not even looking, and some were flipping quarters at him! Quarters!”
I wonder how different the situation would have been had they also asked Bell to play the evening rush, where people are theoretically less pressed for time and more receptive to breaking their routine to watch a street musician.
Apparently 60 pianos were scattered all around New York City from 6/21/10 – 7/5/10 as part of a unique art installation brought to the city by the organization Sing for Hope. The installation was a joint venture with a British artist, Luke Jerram, and was named “Play Me, I’m Yours”.
All types of art installations are popping up around cities across the world of late it seems, but to me this one seemed genuine and inspiring. In a sea of cars, trains and hectic, frantic people rushing everywhere, 60 pianos were able to dot the landscape and connect with people in the city in a new/unique way. Whether you sat down to play it, or whether you just saw it and wondered why it was there, there was still some level of connection made. Pretty cool if you ask me.
Spotify is a service wherein you can apparently listen to a library of 8 million songs whenever you like, so far only available in seven countries in Europe. Damn you international Twitter friends for getting all the cool stuff first!
Anyways, so it’s like, mobile access to tons of licensed music all the time, and Spotify reports to “compensate the artists fairly,” which according to this lovely infographic, is a pretty seriously low rate on return, considerably worse than comparable streamers Rhapsody or Last.fm.
BUT it sounds like a pretty good deal for the users, not to mention easy-to-use…seems like Spotify could be the harbinger of that New Digital Music Revolution we’ve been hearing is coming ever since iPods were a thing.
Look at how much fun these young people are having sharing music!
So, in the spirit of our ‘Check Out What We’re Checking Out’ title at the top of our blog, I figured I’d share something not marketing related, not wristwatch related and not food related (all the subject matter usually covered in my posts if you haven’t been able to tell the last 8 months or so). I figured I’d throw a curve ball and literally post about what I’ve been ‘checking out’ with my ears for the last 2 days straight. The new album by The Gaslight Anthem, titled “American Slang”.
The best slang there is
If you like music at all and it doesn’t even matter what kind, you won’t be able to help but be impressed by these Jersey boys. Sure, it’s obvious that they like The Boss (aka Bruce Springsteen) a lot. But there are subtle Motown-ish touches, nods to their punk rock roots and the general feeling of Americana that just pours out of the speakers as you play the record. The guitars almost sound as if they are talking to one another and you can’t help but tell that these guys are the real deal with every word and every note, of every song. This is album number 3 from them and the ride just keeps getting better.
Can you tell I’m a huge fan?
They are something special, something fresh and something sincere in the music industry today. That’s not always an easy thing to find for music fans. So go check out the album. The title track is the song of the week on iTunes and you can grab it here
That interactive music video for the song Neon Bible (on album of same name) was so awesome, remember that? Click that link in the last sentence and watch it again right now.
"I pity the fool who doesn't know the theme to The A-Team!"
What ever did happen to the TV themes we grew up with? I was reminded of this the other day as I was humming the theme to The A-Team with my five year old son. (He has committed most of it to memory now.) In fact, this is such a great theme, when you listen to the new movie trailer, you can pick out the theme from the original TV series. A classic.
It struck me as odd to see only a five second musical chord build and a big letter “V” for the TV series V. In fact, one of the only theme songs I can remember from more modern TV shows is the Law and Order theme. “Who wrote that?”, I thought to myself. Wikipedia credits the theme and most of it’s soundtrack to Mike Post.
I dug deeper into my more formative TV watching years of the 1980s and early 90s:
How about The A-Team?: Mike Post
Hill Street Blues?: Mike Post
Greatest American Hero?: Mike Post
Magnum P.I.?: Mike Post
Prolific Composers Wear Short Shorts
Mike Post, composer of the TV theme song to Magnum, P.I., pictured here with Tom Selleck on a 45 RPM album cover. Permission by R. Masters.
The same goes with LA Law, Quantum Leap, Doogie Howser, MD, NYPD Blue, and just about every successful TV show over the last 30 years. Even if Mike Post didn’t write the opening theme music, he’s scored literally thousands of the soundtracks to many of the TV shows we still watch today. In fact, Mr. Post is also good friends with Stephen J. Cannell, the creator of over 40 TV series.
So my question is this: Without Post and Cannell, would the extinction of the TV theme song have taken place even sooner? Perhaps, but in today’s world where networks forgo the intro theme to fit in another :30 TV commercial for profit, I believe there is still a place for a TV theme song, the kind that you can remember and hum along with your five-year old son. Perhaps TIVO and DVR technology will help, and the true value of the intro theme music will be appreciated once again. Until then…
Today is the start of the 2010 MusicNOW Festival, a world-class set of performances by “…contemporary music and artists that take risks and do not fit neatly into categories.” Organized by The National’s Bryce Dessner, this is a truly exciting event for the city. This year’s offerings include performances by Joanna Newsom, St. Vincent, Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes and the premier of two original pieces composed especially for the festival.
YouTube music video darlings OK Go have done it again, but this time they’ve traded the treadmills for a warehouse in which they have built a wonderful, wonderful Rube Goldberg Machine. Don’t miss this one.
BONUS: The answer to the question, ‘will the band make out with the machine’? Find out below!
Artists giving away their music via free downloads on the internet isn’t anything new: Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have both jumped head first into experimenting with this. On February 14th, 2010, Blink 182 singer/guitarist Tom DeLong’s side project Angels and Airwaves (AVA) released their new album, available for free download. Appropriately enough, it’s entitled ‘LOVE’.
The band funded the whole thing themselves, spending about $500,000, sources say. If you are willing to do that, you are committed to your music no matter how good or bad people may think it is.
The whole concept of the ‘free’ download and releasing the album digitally only is more of a goodwill gesture towards the fans, with the hope of unlocking new revenue streams by enticing fans to pay for new content. In AVA’s case, this comes in the form of fan club membership ($20.85 every 3 months). By joining you get an assortment of early access passes to soundchecks, exclusive video and blog content, etc.
As a guy who still buys CDs and vinyl, I’m amazed to see how the music world is changing. Some bands and labels get it and are diversifying their ‘brands’ to cater to how music fans consume their product now, as well as trying to identify what that product will be in the future. If giving away your stuff for free is any indication, the product certainly may not be music. The reality is, even though listeners can donate after they download albums like this, I think most artists realize this isn’t really going to happen, or if it does, that it won’t amount to much.
Regardless of whether you like music or the bands who are giving stuff away, this is still an interesting situation, and since no one’s quite figured out the ideal model for selling modern music yet, you can bet that fun stuff is ahead.
