The gist of the article is that ASCAP and BMI are becoming aggressive about collecting licensing fees from small venues to the point where a lot of them are simply opting to no longer offer live music. The minimum yearly licensing fee is $650 in order to “be legal” and ensure that the authors of any cover songs performed in your venue are properly compensated ($650 to each company, mind you). That’s either the deal of the century or a deal-breaker, depending on the number of cover songs performed in your venue over the course of a year.

My knee-jerk instinct is to get raving mad at “the man,” aka the corporate music industry. If the trend mentioned in the article continues, there will be far fewer places for the bands I love to get the exposure they so desperately need. When a venue closes to live music, it affects *all performers* who might use the space including indie bands, open mic participants, local singer-songwriters, etc. Regardless of whether they play cover tunes, or whether they themselves hold licenses for their work, they’re being deprived of performance space and potential revenue. That ain’t good, no matter how you look at it.

However, I have too many unanswered questions to feel comfortable unleashing a rant, which is what I sat down fully intending to do. I was picturing something along the lines of a Snidely Whiplash-type dude cackling and saying, “Muahahahaha! We will crush you, indie bands! One way or the other!” But my gut tells me it just isn’t that simple. What I would love is if my musician friends would take some time to comment and help me better understand this issue.

Because let me tell you, if Snidely really is behind the scenes twirling his moustache, I will unleash hell not only in this space, but in every online space that I occupy. (As a trailer for you fans of creative profanity, the words doucheweasels, assclowns and fucktards will be used in abundance).

It took just 15 hours to raise enough money to replace the fiddle.

Brian has spent a ton of time and effort establishing ETH on the social networks. ETH has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, YouTube and a bunch more sites. He figured out a way to stream the majority of their shows live and generally has achieved a level of accessibility that far surpasses most bands.

Today, he reaped the benefits of that effort. It’s a testament not only to his fans and his music, but to the incredible power of social networking.

Have fun shopping, Brian!

p.s. Brian suggested this morning that those who didn’t get the chance to donate should consider donating to school music programs. The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation does fantastic work in this area, if you wish to donate.

So, yeah…check it out and let me know what you think.

No…what I’m going to write about are the deeper implications of social networking for people with a fan base. My favorite band, Enter the Haggis, has been delving deeper and deeper into social networking the last few months and I’ve been able to observe first-hand some of the results. It’s raised a lot of questions in my mind.

Having strong social networking ties with someone creates this weird grey area even before you add in the musican/fan thing. You friend someone on Facebook, read their Twitter stream, visit their MySpace page. Maybe you exchange a few random emails, Twitter DMs, or FB messages. You might even chat directly via video as Enter the Haggis frequently does. You do all this and you come to know things about people that you don’t know about random strangers. You probably know their relationship status, where they live, their views on certain topics, what they’re doing on a daily basis. You start feeling like you’re friends…sort of.

But when the person in question is a public figure (regardless of the size of their fan base), things get complicated. Trent found that out the hard way. When you put yourself out there and reveal your ‘off-stage’ personality, you chip away at the natural wall that exists between fan and friend, creating a weird headspace I’m starting to call fanship.

It’s a weird headspace because, if I know you well enough online to know your birthday, that you colored your hair last week, your political views, where you ate lunch yesterday. etc. I know you as well as I know a lot of my real-life friends. I would, then, when I saw you, probably treat you the same way as I would any friend I hadn’t seen in awhile.

But, and this is a huge but, my real life friends know those things about me as well. They’re as tuned in to my life as I am to theirs. This is where I think the fanship construct breaks down. When you’re a public figure and you open up via social networking, you’re offering a level of intimacy you can’t possibly reciprocate. How could you, even with a smallish following, keep up with the hundreds (or in Trent’s case thousands) of people who follow you via social media? So what happens is you create a set of expectations you can’t possibly fulfill.

Most people are going to get that. I get it. But a subset of your following is *not* going to get it and they’re going to presume a bond that doesn’t exisit. Then when you do something that doesn’t meet their expectations, they’re going to go off the rails as Trent unfortunately found out.

So what’s an indie musician to do? Take your toys and go home as Trent has, apparently, done? Continue and develop a thicker skin than you might have to otherwise? I suspect the answer lies in finding the balance in the information you reveal. Not too much, so as not to encourage the weirdos, not too little or that would defeat the purpose. Thankfully, it’s not a question I have to answer.

It’s definitely something that I’ve been thinking about, though. What do you think?

It will be all I can do to get up there and get in. But I wish I could afford one of these packages. Trent’s using his formidable marketing skills to help out a fan in need. It’s an interesting contrast to the Britney Spears promo I posted about a while back.

So yeah, not only a great musician and marketing genius, also a class guy.

In other news, I have a huge list of bands that I’m slowly checking out. I started with an old band that’s new to me, The Tragically Hip. I vaguely knew they were Canadian and folk-rock esque, but that was about it. I mentioned to my husband that I’d heard a Hip song that I liked and his answer was to produce everything the band had done up to the year 2000 from his CD collection! He was a big fan growing up, apparently. The things you learn about your spouse… So I’ve been working my way through their older catalog and have plans to get the seven (!) CDs we need to complete our collection.

One thing I love about the Haggis Head community is the widely varying musical tastes of the folks who hang out there. Here’s my list so far of bands to check out: Tegan and Sara, Metric, Eisley, Missy Higgins, Jump Little Children, Dar Williams, the Abrams Brothers, the Decemberists and I have a whole other list somewhere that I can’t lay my hands on at the moment. I’m going to be a busy girl…

So what’s in your MP3 player today?

Of the four songs available on their website, two are instrumental and two are vocal. The lead singer, Peter Wallace, has a pleasant, raspy tenor and though the lyrics are simplistic, he delivers them with conviction. The two vocal tracks have a light, poppy feel that would be right at home on any pop or perhaps country radio station, but retain a pleasant Celtic flavour.

The group’s real strength is in their instrumentals, both of which have an airiness about them yet stop short of Clannad-style new aginess. It’s here that McPeake’s piper, Francis McPeake IV, really gets to stretch out and shine. His skill on the uilleann pipes (an instrument I once heard described as a cross between a hot water bottle, a bassoon, and a brassiere) provided my primary motivation to check out more of their music and perhaps buy a CD.

Unfortunately, it seems that’s not possible at this time. The store page on their website is empty and a search of iTunes came up empty as well. Were this group to produce a CD (or if they already had), it would be at worst pleasant background music and at best a real showcase for a talented Uilleann piper. I, for one, will admit to being curious.

What I found laughable (besides the ridiculous headline…when have concert promoters ever been interested in ‘helping’ fans with anything besides emptying their wallets?) was the excuse that the bad economy is affecting concert ticket sales. Excuse me, but except for the top tier acts like Springsteen, U2, etc., sales for most large-scale concerts have been declining for years (the article even cites a figure that 40% of seats go unsold). It ain’t the money, people. It’s the utterly lame, canned experience that most stadium shows have become combined with the ridiculously exorbitant prices these self-indulgent promoters and acts think they’re entitled to command.

Which is why it made me snort Diet Coke up my nose when I read that Britney Spears expects people to pony up $500 for the privilege of sitting on couches *on* the stage to watch her perform on her upcoming tour. For $500, I’d expect a private show complete with a pole-dance and happy ending (oh, come on…we all know Brit isn’t gender picky…). I mean, everyone’s got their thing. If I had the cash, I might pay that much for the same privilege at the upcoming NIN/JA tour but honest to god? Britney? $500 would get me into anywhere between 25-50 shows by some damned fine indie bands.

Joseph Campbell :

“The Deadheads are doing the dance of life and this I would say, is the answer to the atom bomb.”

“I had a marvelous experience two nights ago. I was invited to a rock concert. (laughter in the audience) I’d never seen one. This was a big hall in Berkeley and the rock group were the Grateful Dead, whose name, by the way, is from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. And these are very sophisticated boys. This was news to me.

Rock music has never seemed that interesting to me. It’s very simple and the beat is the same old thing. But when you see a room with 8000 young people for five hours going through it to the beat of these boys … The genius of these musicians- these three guitars and two wild drummers in the back… The central guitar, Bob Weir, just controls this crowd and when you see 8000 kids all going up in the air together… Listen, this is powerful stuff ! And what is it ? The first thing I thought of was the Dionysian festivals, of course. This energy and these terrific instruments with electric things that zoom in… This is more than music. It turns something on in here (the heart?). And what it turns on is life energy. This is Dionysus talking through these kids. Now I’ve seen similar manifestations, but nothing as innocent as what I saw with this bunch. This was sheer innocence. And when the great beam of light would go over the crowd you’ d see these marvelous young faces in sheer rapture- for five hours ! Packed together like sardines! Eight thousand of them ! Then there was an opening in the back with a series of panel windows and you look out and there’s a whole bunch in another hall, dancing crazy. This is a wonderful fervent loss of self in the larger self of a homogeneous community. This is what it is all about!

It reminded me of Russian Easter. Down in New York we have a big Russian Cathedral. You go there on Russian Easter at midnight and you hear Kristos anesti! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen! It’s almost as good as a rock concert. (laughter) It has the same kind of life feel. When I was in Mexico City at the Cathedral of the Virgin of Guadeloupe, there it was again. In India, in Puri, at the temple of the Jagannath- that means the lord of the Moving World- the same damn thing again. It doesn’t matter what the name of the God is, or whether its a rock group or a clergy. It’s somehow hitting that chord of realization of the unity of God in you all, that’s a terrific thing and it just blows the rest away.”