Month: December 2007

I’ve been very interested in the corporate media reaction to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan. The headline in my local paper reads “Conspiracy theories arise in wake of Bhutto’s death.” This is mirrored all over the corporate media, and frankly talk like this burns me up.

“Conspiracy theory” has become a smokescreen phrase; whenever it is applied anywhere — ESPECIALLY in the mass media — it is a cue for people to stop thinking, and consider the person to whom this label has been applied as a crackpot nutjob.

Which of course makes no sense at all. The Bhutto assassination, the 9/11 attacks, the Kennedy assassination, etc etc etc are ALL events that were not carried out only by one person (despite the Warren Commission’s characterization of a “lone gunman”); therefore, any theory about What Really Happened(tm) must by definition be a “conspiracy theory.”

Pretty much anything that happens in politics must also by definition be a conspiracy theory. This obviously included Bhutto’s death, the fact that it was a “conspiracy” goes without saying. There was another attempt on her life in October, and witnesses report both bombs and gunshots going off.

I just wish we could get beyond reactionary ostrich-like putting our heads in the sand at certain trigger words. There are many of these; “conspiracy theory” is one. “Freedom” is another.

But then, as I’ve said many times, there’s a reason they call it “television programming.”

There are a fascinating pair of articles on Wired involving David Byrne. First, and most interesting to me, is David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars. Byrne does a good job of outlining 6 possible business models for musicians becoming apparent now that the Major-Label music industry is dead. Definitely a good read for people interested in music and how to earn income from it.

Secondly is David Byrne and Thom Yorke on the Real Value of Music, which is Byrne interviewing Yorke (of Radiohead), mostly about how they released their most recent album, where they offered it as a free download, giving people the opportunity to pay whatever they think it to be worth.

I find this passage from Byrne’s article interesting:

one of Radiohead’s managers, Bryce Edge, told me, “The industry reacted like the end was nigh. ‘They’ve devalued music, giving it away for nothing.’ Which wasn’t true: We asked people to value it, which is very different semantics to me.”

Different semantics indeed. This way of thinking (“they’ve devalued music”) is representative of the muddled thinking so often present in corporate/capitalist reality. Whitehead would have called it the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness,” which is “mistaking the abstract for the concrete.” In other words, it’s not music that is being devalued, it is an outmoded form of parasitic economic exploitation, known as The Major Label Music Industry, that is being devalued.

I just realized I haven’t posted about this. I have 2 new gigs going on. I’ll still be doing weekends at my old gig, so that’s remains unchanged. I still have no free weekends except on rare special occasions. :-(

The first is that I am in the process of opening up Crafted Recordings: Quality on-location audio recording in Northern New England. I’m surprised I haven’t blogged about this yet, but I’ve had a separate website going for a while. Hop on over and check it out when you can. My recording rig isn’t quite finished, and I’ve hit some (not insurmountable) snags on the portability end of it. I’ll need to get a truck and/or a trailer to haul it around, and I still need to finish building the rack lids so I can safely move them. I have the materials I need, I’m just waiting for the stars to line up with time and good weather so I can do the carpentry. This is very exciting, as it gives me a chance to earn a living doing what I love.

The second is that I’ve entered into a part-time consulting relationship with Realtraps. Realtraps, “the experts in acoustic treatment,” is an acoustics company run by Ethan Winer (and his partner Doug Ferrara, as well has a half-dozen-ish employees). Ethan wrote the single best introduction to listening room acoustics that I know of; this article was my point of departure in developing an understanding of how to make rooms sound good. In addition to this (and other) articles, Ethan is more than generous with his expertise on various forums online that I hang out on. We started communicating a while ago via these forums, and we became friends.

So these are exciting developments for me, as both of these mean I will be starting to earn (at least part of) a living through music.

After all this time, I’ve finally gotten round to reinstalling Linux, both on the laptop and on the desktop. I tried Ubuntu again, but at this point I am of the opinion that PCLinuxOS completely smokes Ubuntu.

Full featured, easy to install. No hassle. It just works, with all the software you will ever need.

If you are contemplating whether or not to run Vista, just don’t. Get PCLinuxOS instead.