Live Music on Television

Broadcast television is in a tenuous place, with more people turning to their computers and the internet for their on-screen entertainment needs. But there's no question that it still holds a commanding role in our cultural landscape, not so much by setting agendas as by ramming previously tenuous ones down our collective throats. TV has become widely dispersed and specialized. There's a food channel, a travel channel, a golf channel, "women's" channels, Black Entertainment Television, etc. etc. There are music channels of course, and MTV can be seen as the granddaddy of this specialization, but there's not actually a whole lot of music there anymore, and almost no live music.

Live music performance can be found on television, of course, regularly on the late night talk shows, which more recently do seem to have expanded their traditionally narrow scope as the major label stranglehold has loosened here, like so many other places. Just last week there was our old friend Andrew Bird, surrounded by those hometown boys Martin Dosh, Michael Lewis and Jeremy Ylvisaker with a great performance on yet another network talk show, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon:


There's also the venerable Austin City Limits for something closer to a full set by a wide range of hipster bands.

However, considering the impact live music seems to be having on the entertainment industry in general these days (just look at how much of an appetite for even poor quality amateur live music clips on YouTube there apparently seems to be), there is a real lack of imagination on the part of television broadcasters to bring this into their programming strategies. You would think that these folks would be motivated... they are pretty much all international entertainment conglomerates with music divisions anyway.

It does not take much to appreciate the impact a special live music event can have on a broadcast. The Ed Sullivan Show was a square, often tedious weekly variety show, but electrifying performances by Elvis Presley and The Beatles on that show are still considered important cultural landmarks.

And few would argue that this television moment in 1983 forever changed modern dance, while catapulting its performer to unprecedented international super-stardom:


But live music performance does not have to be structured as a traditional television variety show to make an impact. One of my favorite live music performance television moments came on Sesame Street, of all places, back when Jim Henson's creative genius was behind everything...


Unfortunately, it's just hard to imagine any television program turning over nearly seven minutes of airtime in this day and age for a creative jam by one of the world's most creative musicians. Yet it's just as compelling to watch this clip today as it was some 35+ years ago.

Why are there not more moments like this on mainstream television now?

I can't think about real music this week

I try, and this is what comes up:

Stevie 99 Part One

"But if there's a rare Charlie Patton recording out there that's worth hearing, I'm perfectly happy to wait until it's available to download from iTunes for 99 cents." -- Main Figurehead

What is the value of a song?

While MF was plying his trade with Rykodisc way back when, I was a desk jockey at Tower Records. One of my chores was to master all things music pricing, specifically from and among suppliers, wholesale-to-retail margin, and between our competitors. I picked up a lot of inside baseball arcana. For instance, Columbia/Epic was aggressive about cutting prices on its older catalog while the Warner/Elektra/Atlantic group never met a fare increase it didn't like. In order to survive, music specialty retailers operating high street and mall shops had to net at least $4.50 on the average $10 wholesale CD while maintaining year-over-year same-store sales increases. And Best Buy was one of the first coffin nails in the packaged music business that they, too, now find unsustainable.

Sentimentality aside, one notable price shift came with the introduction of the CD. At the time, top-tier LPs and cassettes wholesaled for about $5.75. From the start, CDs were priced almost two-thirds higher, and eventually climbed another third after that. At the time, I wondered whether economies of scale would bring the prices back down, and when they didn't I decried the labels' and distributors' avarice. Looking back, though, the shift seems less unreasonable. The CD represented a quantum leap in product quality, and the market was willing to bear this value-added surcharge (if you will), which fueled the last great music boom.

Over time, of course, the much-discussed perfect storm gathered itself together and blew the perceived value of music right out of the water.

So. Turn the scrapbook page to the present day, and what do we see? 99 cents per digital song file as the de facto standard. Now, one could argue that a buck a song is where CD retail pricing ended up, assuming a CD's sweet spot became $10, with album lengths eventually coming back down to the 40-45 minute range, or the equivalent of 10 average-length tracks.

What we have witnessed, however, is another stealth price increase. And this one seems ever-less defensible. While some might argue that Apple is doing the thankless but crucial job of propping up perceived value, I'm here to say that Mr. Jobs has been wrong from the get-go and has been doing a disservice to the indsutry and the music lover for years.

More on the subject next week.

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Let's hoist a few at the 3-Dot Lounge...

Lately I've been in some discussions about cover songs. What constitutes a great cover? Reinvention? Popularity? The ability to make another's material your own? One thought that has stuck is The Beatles were (and are) the most difficult popular act to cover. I mean, fine for the hired hand with a mike and a guitar to blend 'Yesterday' in with his Eagles and Neil Young set-list. But to record a Beatles cover for posterity? Why bother? And yet, I know of no one who has mangled 'Across the Universe.' That song seems to work no matter who assays it...

One test of a music critic is a willingness to assail the unassailable if necessary (for instance, one day I'll work up the gumption to describe in detail the depth and breadth of the abyss of boredom into which I fall whenever I am subjected to The Band). So, I'll just come out and say it: Rosanne, I love you to death, but your critic-proof release of country standards your daddy loved '(The List)' has so much reverence for its own material as to be an instant museum piece devoid of life, best put straight on the shelf and looked at...

Lest it seem that cranky pants are my only clean garments, I am heartened to see John Gorka in the Cedar lineup for November. I've been a fan for years; he roped me in almost 20 years ago with 'Jack's Crows.' As one who was ticketed for the life of the farmer before it became apparent that small family ag operations were ticketed for oblivion, I have a particular soft spot for this song of his.

Ice sheets, shellac and glass plates

Sometimes a musician tells of story from stage that just really sets off my historical imagination. I'm a history nerd, what can I say? Well, I subscribe to more academic podcasts than music ones. Like years ago at Nordic Roots when Jenny Wilhems from Gjallarhorn explained the strong asymetrical rhythm in Scandinavian polskas by saying the common people in those lands were forbidden to possess drums for hundreds of year. Some say it was the Lutheran church who came down on percussion because it might lead to sin (like dancing the polska?) and some say it was the military, because only soldiers could have drums. Either way, facinating factoid.

So when Warsaw Village Band's Wojtek Krzak spun a tale of a 17th century freeze on the Baltic Sea and Scandinavians walking across to Poland and taking home new dances - like the polska - it got me to wondering. Yeah, OK, I know they could've just gone in a boat, too. The Gulf of Bothnia between Finland and Sweden used to freeze too, and starving peasants from both sides walked that dark crossing, just looking for work and a chance at a better life. And maybe a few new tunes.

Not so far apart.

Not to revisit that familiar topic of complainig about our country's artist visa/security system, but...

I was talking to some of the members of Warsaw Village Band prior to the concert, expressing my disappointment that they hadn't brought along the really cool old-style instruments, like their suka, nyckelharpa, hurdy gurdy and that big hammer dulcimer. Fiddler Krzak said they could only bring one instrument per person this time, then percussionist Maciej Szajkowski told how the security guards didn't believe Krzak he was really a musician so they made take his fiddle out and play for them at the airport. Pretty demeaning. And you wonder why European artists don't really want to come over here. Hey, at least they get in the country...often the African artists are just refused visas.

I really enjoyed the WVB concert, although without the old intruments we got fewer of the quiet, more delicate numbers. It was the driving, rock-out version of the band, which was cool, too. Very percussive use of the fiddles and cello. It was great to see people dancing all over to the band's triple-drummer second encore "Is Anybody in There." As they say in Poland "It kicked."

I have to wonder, however, what does it take to get people to check out a different sort of "world music?" I mean, really. The crowd for that show was Polish expats and U of M students plus the handful of Cedar World music freaks, many of whom were volunteering already to get in free. (Yes, I include myself in that freak group.)

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So just to continue this 78 rpm discussion for one more minute, I SO can't picture owning or even wanting to own that $8k piece of shellac. What does one do with it? Look at it? Put it in a box? You can't play the thing. Sheesh.

I have a few antique little glasses. Cut glass, very nice. They were dated 1910 at the dusty little antique store by the side of some nameless highway near the Illinois border on the way back from a cousin's wedding. They're so pretty, I just like to look at the light shining through the facets. But every time I fill one with wine at a party, I feel compelled to say "Be careful. It's 100 years old," as I hand it to a guest. Sheesh again.

The 78s that interest me are the stuff that will never ever show up for 99 cents on ITunes, like those Turkish discs I mentioned last week. DJ Pepper Patriot (who still hasn't answered my emails for an interview...) was trying to get some sound out of a disc he'd brought back from Istanbul that had a big chunk out of one edge. It was crackly, but we got part of the tune. LO-FI!

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So has anybody noticed that you don't need to put the .org on to Google this blog any more? It's another milestone. First it stopped asking if one meant "cedarbog.org" then it stopped sending us to "Cedar's blog" if we left off the .org. We win. It's all us now, no matter how you search it.

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And in a non-music note, Sergei's back in town! As in more of those amazing 100+ year old color photos from "Photographer to the Tsar" Sergei M. Prokuden-Gorskii at the Russian Museum of Art. If you missed the initial showing of his work last summer, drop the five bucks and get yourself over to this. The new exhibit "revealing the Silk Road" focuses on what is now Central Asia, you know, "the 'Stans." Many of the photos are from legendary cities like Samakan and Bukhara, in what is now Uzbekistan, and what was then the legacy of Tamerlane and Genghis Khan.

There's something about seeing people from so long ago in color...details you would never notice in black and white. Little things like creases in a rabbi's boots, stains on a peasant's apron, or the verdigris patina on an Orthodox church's downspouts. You can even get free passes from the Minneapolis Public Library's Museum Adventure Pass program, so no excuses.

Check out the tile work.

To Geem or Not To Geem

Staying on topic here, and the subject of collectors. I think there must be a collectors' gene, and I feel fortunate that I was spared (although I'd consider trading it for the one that predisposed me to eczema and migraines). Back in those old record company days, some of us at Rykodisc made up a word for compulsive collectors- "geemers," and a corresponding verb, "to geem." Back then one of our public slogans was "large enough to matter, small enough to care." Internally this was twisted to "large enough to spiff, small enough to geem."

Of course, not only did geemers make up a sizable number of our staff, they were also quite a critical consumer base for us. I have to acknowledge that I'm sure that a portion of my IRA can be attributed to geemers, and their willingness to shell out big bucks for things like the Yoko Ono limited edition boxed set in an Anvil case with a glass key and signed certificate from Ms. Ono herself. That's right, a six-disc boxed set collection of Yoko Ono's complete solo work from 1968 to 1985 housed in a white Anvil case. As though the $100+ retail boxed set by itself was not enough. Apparently it wasn't, because we sold all 500 of the special editions quite rapidly, as I recall.

So this fascination with 78's, Victrolas, rare vinyl LPs and singles? It's the same as stamp collecting to me. Sure, I'm often impressed by demonstrations of archaic technology in its effectiveness for reproducing sound. But if there's a rare Charlie Patton recording out there that's worth hearing, I'm perfectly happy to wait until it's available to download from iTunes for 99 cents. If it's the music he cared about, think about how much $8,000 could have bought that dude who spent it on the rare Charlie Patton 78. This isn't really a music discussion, is it?

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We are now in the throws of an unprecedented 20 events in 20 days at The Cedar. We've already had one sold-out show, our co-present of múm at Walker Art Center last Thursday. And I'm really looking forward to tonight's sold-out double-bill of Chris Smither and Loudon Wainwright III. We've already got another sell-out coming, another double-bill with The Mountain Goats and Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett) on February 7. And just a few tickets remain for the much-anticipated Dirty Projectors show on 11/11.

But here's one I don't want to slip through the cracks for y'all... a singer/songwriter I saw this past summer at the Winnipeg Folk Festival that blew me away with his lyrics and delivery, Joe Pug.

So I leave you with this... no collectable, just a simple video from YouTube that I suspect could bring you as much if not more happiness than an $8,000 Charlie Patton 78:

Echo Chamber

Great post from M.E. Dub the other day. If you haven't read it, have a go and then peruse this July New York Times article about 78s collectors.

The picture here is what my 1923 Victrola VV-105 would look like with a tassel and a much better finish. As for the player's software...there but for the grace of the angels go I. The idea of chasing down and procuring desirable 78 titles and labels is so seductive, and the reality so expensive. I am quite happy employing my O/C gene with the procurement and cataloging of music I discover and enjoy. If I dived into the 78s and cylinders hobby my familiarity with the sun would rival that of a St. Paul resident in February.

Oh, and here's a fun little bar-bet tidbit: the number of grooves on one side of a 78 and an LP is exactly the same.

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More echo-chamber stuff: Mr. Fig's point about live music being the last commonly-found concentrated listening experience is right on the money. While I contend that as much (or more) good new music can be found now as ever before, extended situating between the speakers and zeroing in to the exclusion of all other external stimuli seems an ever-more bygone experience. And this is not merely a lament about the wacky ambiences bedeveling the upper demos...college kids have so many more distractions these days too. Not the least of which is constantly moving on to the next torrent before absorbing the last one.

Give me good acoustics, sound system, and seating, and I can be rapt. Last night for instance: Mondavi Center, Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra, and a first half that included a Mozart overture and a Haydn Cello Concerto. Bliss. OK, so I nodded off a bit during the Schubert 9th, but come ON! The thing sprawls and meanders.

One suggestion for all live venues: in addition to the usual admonitions about cell phones, illicit recording, and brown acid, stage announcements could be amended to include a request that 'all overpowering perfumes and after-shaves must be neutralized at this time.' Last night's heady mix was omnipresent. Hardly anyone noticed my Vitalis.

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If I could be granted one wish in this blogging enterprise, it would be to offer up a single playlist of, say, a half-dozen songs and have them all be playable on a single site. I wanted to do this with Rhapsody (to which I am subscribed), but in order to hear 'em you gotta sign up for the 14-day free trial. I love the service, but I'm no shill.

But I like the idea of an occasional 'Thursday Random 6-Pak' thing, so let's do it the old-fashioned way: with MySpace and YouTube. The only common factor with all six is that I like each of 'em a lot. Please keep in mind that your host is a deep-middle-aged 3-minute-pop-tune-lover. I hope at least one of these brings you the inspiration to dig deeper...

Let's start with Robert Gomez. His indie pop is all understated charm and would appeal to Musee Mecanique fans. When you get to his MySpace page, try 'Hunting Song.'

Wovenhand, anyone? This has been David Eugene Edwards's project since 16 Horsepower disbanded. Edwards is at once scary and entrancing. Try 'Winter Shaker' to start.

And...oh, let's see: how 'bout some ska? Here is Andy & Joey, doing the 1966 Studio One original of 'You're Wondering Now,' since covered by The Specials and Amy Winehouse.

Spinnerette: This is a Queens of the Stone Age-related group fronted by Brody Daille, formerly of The Distillers. This is 'Impaler' on YouTube, with only the album's cover art as a visual.

Time for another journey with Mr. Peabody & Sherman. Here is Be Bop Deluxe from 1976, with 'Crying to the Sky,' as posted on YouTube, also without motion visuals.

Finally, Celestial. They are a Swedish jangle-pop outfit. Just good, clean, throwaway fun. Try 'Dream On.'

Spinning Fast in the Slow Lane

Maybe it was the lure of the old gear, when I heard there were a bunch of ancient turntables set up. Certainly it was the fact that I had not yet missed the set of vintage Turkish music. It probably didn't hurt that I knew a couple of the djs. Well, I just thank the powers that be for whatever serendipitous combination of factors dragged me over to North East Mpls in the wee hours Saturday night to the First Annual 78 RPM Summit.

Featuring "six nonstop hours" of 78s played by "eight different shellac jockeys" the Summit got together people who like old records and old gear. The man behind the Summit is DJ Pepper Patriot. Hopefully we'll have an interview with him in an upcoming blog. The guys behind the gear are the Vintage Music Company team. The djs that I saw were all very much in love with the old time gear.

I must confess I just like antiques. I was raised in the '70s by people who were constantly refinishing old furniture, so I headed right over to the wax cylinder player. ( Another confession, I also really wanted to check out the cylinder player because on the liner notes for Karelia Visa, Hedningarna talked about learning old tunes from wax cylinder recordings.)

Mike from Vintage Music Company in south Minneapolis graciously answered all my questions about the 1904 Edison cylinder player they'd brought over for the event. The guy is the mother load of information about old turntables and music systems and really explains them well. I must confess, I have often walked by the Vintage Music Company shop (it's right there in my neighborhood) and imagined it being run by some seventy year old guy with Einstein hair in a ratty cardigan. Well, Mike is slender 30-something with hipster glasses and short dark hair, so he is certainly not that guy. Maybe the owner is? I never met him...anyway, I hope to do a future post on Vintage Music Company and walk over there and take a few photos. Thousands and thousands of 78s in stock?! One of the "shellac jockeys" Saturday says the Vintage guys are so good with their inventory of disc that they can pretty much just point you to the right section of the right shelf.

KFAI's Greg Carr ("Dig Up the Roots") was pretty much jumping up and down as he showed me his double turntable 78 rig from about 1950. It's even portable (sort of - like a big suitcase), but the best part was the typewritten note from the manufacturer taped inside the cover with yellowing cellophane tape. The unit has three tone arms and with a bit of knob twisting; one can do some primitive mixing on it.

Drew Miller (long ago KFAI alum, now usually thought of in conjunction with his bands Boiled in Lead and Felonious Bosch) whooped and hollered as he put on a 78 of "Cigarettes, Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women," then got even more excited as he explained the Pathe' set up there. More on the Pathe' label later.

Between Drew and Mike, I think I got the 78 thing down. It's wider grooves, thus not as many of them on a disc equals one tune per. OK. While the old discs did have a certain percentage of shellac in them, they were mostly a thermoplastic blended with lots of of other ingredients in formulas that were closely guarded, according to the very informational page at the Wolverine Antique Music Society. You had to replace the needle after every play because they were very soft steel and the discs were fairly hard plastic. One or the other had to take the wear, and needles were a lot cheaper, was how Mike explained it to me. He also talked about all the different needles available, from novelty ones made of natural materials to specialized weights that gave you the ability to vary the sound in a primitive way, sort of an eq effect.

The needle moves back and forth within the groove on most 78s, just like it does on 33 lps and 45 singles. The unique thing about the Pathe' discs mentioned earlier is that the needle moves up and down in the groove on their discs. Obviously, you can only play Pathe' discs on a Pathe' player. Perhaps more uniquely, many of their early discs started playing at the center hole and went toward the outside. The Pathe's also used a different type of needle, sapphire tipped, (I think) which could be reused hundreds of times.

I love this kind of nerdy trivia stuff. I love that people came through all evening and were singing along to the wax cylinder recording at 12:30 in the morning. (And they all stopped talking so we could hear the thing!) I think it's totally cool that people are into 78 RPMs all over the internet and all over the world.

It's the anti-MP3.

The anti-instant download.

It's a bit like the Slow Food Movement, only at 78 RPM, everything's spinning faster.

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I would urge anyone who missed it to check out the link to the New York Times article on Pandora's Music Genome Project in Veronica Fever's post last week. An interesting discussion of that, as well as one of the lyrics vs. music debate made for a great post. Thanks, Fever!

Of course I come down on the side of the music. As I once explained to a younger co-worker who was trying to sell me on some really great emotional lyrics, "I could give a #%&* about some youngster singing about his relationship. Give a grizzled 65 year old who's being playing his instrument since he was twelve any day!"

And on the Pandora thing, while I ordinarily would cheer anything that gave employment to a roomful of musicologists, I do find the system a little creepy.

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I'm very psyched for Warsaw Village Band Thursday night at the Cedar. Hope I'm not the only one who finds the combination of dark fiddles and close vocal harmonies alluring. Also hope I remember how to say "Dobry wieczor, panstwu!" (good evening, ladies and gentlemen)

They rocked Glastonbury this summer, they made the cover of the August/September issue of Folk Roots and they're opening their first North American tour in four years at our place tomorrow. (OK, I thought my son was a little bitty kid the first time we saw them together...sheesh, four years...)

Anyway, the band says "After almost 4 years of silence at last we will back to Unites States and Canada! Hope that You will support WVB during the tour (Maja and Wojtek will have to leave Lena for so long for this first time...) and this 8 gigs will be great adventure for all of us! Come people come and be a part of this whole!"