Personally I think this song is as weak as piss (and I love the band), songs such as "Passenger" and even the just-a-fast-pop-song "Don't Wanna Be Left Out" beat it hands down. Their previous release from the "Two Hands" soundtrack (and on the "Passenger" single) may have be voted number one in Triple J's Hotest 100 but it also was fairly weak IMHO. Feel free to disagree with me. Here's to hoping they can capture the brilliance of Internationalist and Double Alergic on the new album.
Bootlegging
Pete Townshend likes it!
Pete Townshend from The Who has this to say about bootlegging, "I'd like to see it proliferate unchecked... If we don't, we may allow something wonderful to be nipped in the bud... As an artist, what I think is important is that people listen to your work, and if you are properly rewarded for it, that's the bonus." (stolen from Townshend Tells All On Lost Who Album at the New York Post)
After many years of following the live concert recording / bootlegging community, Pete's opinion follows mine fairly closely. Fans record concerts because they want to hear a band live as many times as is humanly possibly. They want to capture that moment when their favourite band member stuffs up their lyrics and replaces all the words with "chicken". They want to hear that song the band only ever plays live. The cover they're never officially release. They don't do it as a replacement to the CDs.
99% of people who trade and record gigs already have all the band's albums, and maybe even all their singles too. They'll purchase/trade/download bootlegs in order to get the material they can't buy. They'll accept the terrible quality, the tape hiss, the two girls talking through the whole gig just to hear what they can't buy.
I can see the side of some bands though. Mr Bungle does not want their first four demos released. And as any fan who has bootlegged these demos knows, it's because they suck. On one hand the band has to see the music spread through their fan base via horrible quality tapes being purchased by fans for stupid amounts of money... or they have to see them released from the masters on CD for all to buy and have them reviewed by the media and branded as crap.
Other bands have seen how much fans desperately want to hear their gigs live so they release live CDs, usually crap live "greatest hits" albums. They don't get it. Fans get live gigs for the covers, the unreleased songs, not what they can hear on their CDs. But again, what band would deliberately release the cover of the Playschool theme they did once back in 1983? But it's what the fans want.
Live CDs of a whole gig, or videos, are closer to the point, but again many bands go into the studio and remove mistakes, they over produce, they cut out the songs they don't want (see You Fat Bastards, Faith No More live at Brixton) when what the fans really want is the whole gig, mistakes and all.
Nothing will stop fans bootlegging. But a lot of bands could reduce the damange by releasing their old demos via the web. Heck, sell them for 90c cents each to cover the bandwidth. Allow fans to mirror the songs for free.
A band who recorded every one of their gigs and put those gigs online for a few weeks each would have one damn happy fan base who would reward the band with fan websites, gig sales, merchandise sales and heck, maybe even CD sales.
As usual, I've lost my point. Email me with your rant and I'll post it.
The creation of a band
Too many cooks...
I am a muscian. I've been writing music and releasing crappy home-made demos under the name Approximate since 1996. Over these years my music has evolved into something that sounds good by itself as I did not have a band to jam with.
In comes Heath and the creation of the Heath/Bowie Project. A couple of guys playing music together. Heath writes his stuff, I write mine. We play it together. Sometimes Heath will write some lyrics to my music, sometimes I'll rearrange the chords to one of his. We work fairly well together... but we're both guitarists, we've both singers. Heath plays keyboards sometimes. End of story.
Heath and I decide we need a band, or at the very least, a drummer. On Saturday we went and watched a friends band (drums, bass, guitar/vocals) play and jammed. It was a very very big mess.
I'm not sure what exactly is required to be able to jam randomly with a bunch of unknowns but we don't have it. Five people all doing their own thing while trying so hard to fit it into what the other four are doing... it just doesn't work.
I know, with practice it'll begin to work, but we'll all have to stretch, to compromise to make it work and our original visions of music will be lost. Do we accept and grow or stick with the ultimately fully controllable drum machine?
Playing in a band is a completely new level. Practice practice practice.