Coda/Stats/Change

Today marks exactly 12 months of blog entries on this blog. And my final blog entry.

For a wee while.

I started the blog as I was growing weary of Facebook. 12 months on, nothing has changed. It’s like that friend who annoys you, but serves some sort of function that has value. It’s tolerated.

I started the blog for me, to write about the sort of stuff I normally write about on my laptop, but in a new medium. As time went on, I realised people were actually reading the blog (increasing every month, peaking at nearly 200 a week). This is what kept me going, where I wasn’t planning on really doing the whole blog thing full-time.

Anyhow, the move onto a blog environment led me to write about different things in a different way and ultimately inspired creating a new blog: http://www.musicpiracyresearchblog.blogspot.co.uk where I will be spending my spare time, rather than on here. Getting much more traffic on there, which helps keep me going. It’s something I’m enthusiastic about. Finding Twitter to be a more appropriate medium to communicate the sort of content that appears on this chaosintoorder blog.

It’s been a fun run. I like to think I have made the internet a slightly better place, for a year of my life. A mix of the pointless and the poignant. With a picture of Jean Claude Van Hamme.

Will keep the site live, updating every now and again when something comes up that’s worth the effort. Not weekly updates, fo-sho.

Business prevails and it’s the sensible move.

For now..

Twitter live @meltedpigeon

Professional blog @ www.musicpiracyresearchblog.blogspot.co.uk with Twitter @musicpiracyblog

P.S. If anyone wants to help me build a harder, better, faster version of the professional blog above, please get in touch. Not the most tech-savvy chap on the Internet.

Takk

Changing face of the live album*

Another ‘should-be-on-the-musicpiracyresearchblog-website’

Recently learned that about 20% of Pixies fans in 2004 paid for live recordings of the concerts attended, available to download moments after the gig. As many as 50% at times, but about 20% on average.

This is interesting.

Music is an experience good. You need to sample it before you can consider whether or not you want to own it. There’s nothing impulsive about buying music any more, it’s accessible from so many sources.

The buzz after a good gig that makes you buy a t-shirt though..

Interesting revenue stream for bands to capitalise on,  that impulse after a good show in the form of a download.

Question is, why don’t more bands do it?

Low production values presumably? Why not?

I can’t wait for a live bootleg to be made available from the Pearl Jam concert I went to this summer. The longer the wait though, the easier it will be to lose enthusiasm or alternatively source the recording using illegal means. Not that I will. Point being, I could.

Doing it RIGHT AWAY, is definitely the way to go.

Another step closer to focussing on the other blog, archiving the celebrity food puns on this blog..

Twitter feed now live @meltedpigeon where the band Spineshank are ‘friends’ with me (despite me never having heard any of their songs in my life)

*Title from presentation I might upload online at some point (on the musicpiracyresearchblog), if I get around to it.

Bands whose sound can be traced to exactly one song by older, better bands

Now that I have got your attention..

In the interests of not being controversial, I have thus avoided to choose words like ‘rip-off’ or ‘plagiarise’.

In this post, I will introduce a few instances which are not clear rip-offs in any way, but which are interesting in their own right. Songs I thought might have been an inspiration to other bands, compared to other songs which are fairly representative of that band.

It is not my intention to paint any of the bands mentioned below in a bad light. I like all of them. I just thought it would make for an interesting blog entry, to draw attention to some similarities that might or might not be coincidence/entirely my own imagination.

Silversun Pickups sound alot like The Smashing Pumpkins… and specifically ‘Drown’.

Tool don’t sound much like Pink Floyd… aside from ‘One of these days’

System of a Down sound a bit like Faith No More at times… specifically on ‘The gentle art of making enemies’

Marilyn Manson sounds alot like Nine Inch Nails… particularly everything from the Broken ep and The Downward Spiral but never more so than on Faith No More’s ‘Be aggressive’.

Muse sound a bit like Radiohead… mostly when listening to Paranoid Android.

Video comparisons below.

Round one

Silversun Pickups Vs. The Smashing Pumpkins

Vs.

Round two

Tool Vs. Pink Floyd

Vs.

Round three

System of a Down Vs. Faith No More

Vs.

Round four

Marilyn Manson Vs. Faith No More

Vs.

Round five

Muse Vs. Radiohead

Vs.

Something like that.

Twitter feed now live @meltedpigeon

A tribute to The Chemical Brothers (part three of three)

Final part of a three part series.

Chemical Brothers Playlist five – Album closers

Chemical Brothers Playlist six – Best of the rest

Sort of obsessed with album closers.. rate Radiohead as one of the best bands for great album closers. In the dance realm though, The Chemical Brothers are more than competent bringing things full circle.

Best of the rest? Because not everything in life fits into lovely little categories/there’s some songs I was gutted I couldn’t include.

A bit late in the day to note that not all of you will have Spotify, but the links to the playlists will show the songs all the same.

Might do something similar for some other bands, but I have another music-related post brewing which is not as specific I hope you will like.

For now.. the amazing Michel Gondry directed video for one of the ‘best of the rest’ tracks, The Beatles-inspired ‘Let Forever Be’ with Noel Gallagher on vocal duties. Look no further than ‘Setting Sun’ for confirmation that The Beatles can inspire dance music. It’s also no coincidence that the tracks featuring Noel Gallagher are the most Beatles-esque (hint: this observation nicely introduces the next blog post..)

Twitter feed now live @meltedpigeon

My first… Digital album

Further to my recent blog post on CD’s Vs. Digital music, I recently made a startling discovery.

I have never bought a digital album or song in my life.

I sort of guessed I had at some point, given I listen to so much digital music, but I definitely haven’t. It’s all streaming services or ripped albums from my own CD collection.

Now, I have kept a keen eye on the bootlegs for the recent Pearl Jam Euro Tour where I seen them live for the first time in Manchester. I am super keen to source the bootleg for the performance I was at. This is a rare artefact.

Looking up the prices though.. I have worked my way through my decision making process and decided to purchase the digital version of the recording.

Why? It’s cheaper. Markedly cheaper, as the delivery from the United States elevates the cost considerably. I would no doubt rip the CD immediately and rarely listen to the CD version of the performance anyhow, merely enjoying the physicality of the CD itself. Money is tight just now, and I’m moving flat so I have more room (presently small flat plus clutter, mainly DVD’s and CD’s really).

I think this is a ration decision making process, as reluctant as I am to ‘shift’ to digital music. This is not a major studio album release, it’s an official bootleg. I can live with that.

Additionally, I could burn the digital copy and make a funky personalised sleeve with increased value.

I’m still sort of amazed I’ve went so long without buying a digital song. That it has come down to this, a live official bootleg.. I find amusing.

As mentioned previously, I am warming to the concept of a clutter-free flat. This is the only real advantage I can settle on for digital music over CD.

For now, a great live performance of the Riot Act cut ‘Thumbing my way’

Tweets that don’t land me in jail @meltedpigeon

Why go to live concerts?

File this entry in the ‘should-really-be-in-the-musicpiracyresearchblog-website’.

In a previous blog entry over on livemusicexchange, I commented on the sort of decision making behind purchasing concert tickets.

I’ve since done some reading on this, where the paper mentioned (Earl, P.E. (2001). Simon’s travel theorem and the demand for live music. Journal of Economic Psychology, 22(3), 335-358)  has been cited quite alot in different literature on the topic.

Since found some other great articles including: Black, G.C., Fox, M.A. and Kochanowski, P. (2007). Concert Tour Success in North America: An Examination of the Top 100 Tours from 1997 to 2005. Popular Music and Society, 30(2), 149-172 which is worthy of attention, for those of you with access.

For now, consider the volume of annoyances at live concerts.

Too busy. Too warm. Why is that guy on his phone and not watching the band!? It smells. I can’t see. The sound is awful. I bought a pint, and now I have no money left for winter. I am stuck to the floor. I’ve missed the last train and need to get a taxi. Who just slapped my arse. That guy is singing over the top of the band. I can’t hear them. How come I always get searched when I go to a gig? Why did I wear my nice shoes? They are getting wrecked. I’ve lost my friends.

None of these include the principal annoyance: they can be really expensive.

Why then, with so many negatives that are beyond your control, and at such a great financial cost, do music fans continue to go to the live concerts?

Not going to speculate on this here, working on that elsewhere. Would rather aim for that elusive thing that is poignancy by merely posing the question to you.

Note: spelling out your intention to be poignant minimises the intended effect by up to 80%.

Comprehensive entry on live music to follow on the musicpiracyresearchblog.

P.S. I am inadvertently working my way one entry at a time to solely working on the musicpiracyresearchblog instead of this one.

Busy boy.

Twitter and all that @meltedpigeon..

A tribute to The Chemical Brothers (part two of three)

Second part of a three part series.

Chemical Brothers Playlist three – Vocal collaborations

Chemical Brothers Playlist four – Non-album tracks

For my money, it is one of the big sells of Tom and Ed’s music, the vocal collaborations.

Noel Gallagher. Beth Orton. Tim Burgess. Jonathon Donahue. The Magic Numbers. Richard Ashcroft. The Flaming Lips. The Klaxons. Midlake. Willie Mason, and a whole host of amazing hip-hop artists too.

Regarding non-album tracks, it’s worth raising awareness of their amazing soundtrack to the film Hanna. Just as worthy of attention as Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’ award-winning soundtrack to The Social Network, in my mind.

Two more to follow, but for now..

A shit video for a good song, Don’t Think, as featured in Black Swan (ie, another non-album track).

Twitter feed now live @meltedpigeon