LA Times features the Ponderosa Stomp - Ronnie Spector

I've been in New Orleans this week with the Ponderosa Stomp for the third year in a row. A photo of Ronnie Spector (who was awesome) was featured in a very positive review in the LA Times

many many many more photos to come...

Be in a Band with none of the Drama

A frendamine came up with an interesting little website where you can create the fictional band you always dreamed of. If you ever found yourself thinking "Some one should start a band of all chicks who do death-metal covers of calypso songs..." this site might be for you.

check out Figment!

The clip above is Mike Nesmith of the fake-band-turned-real Monkees and Frank Zappa impersonating each other and tearing on each other's music!

There's at lease SOME money left in the Music Biz...

This month's issue of SPIN magazine has a curious article profiling the income of music biz folks across the spectrum. The article only sources one professional per category so this is by no means rich statistical data.

At the bottom of the heap:
Ebay CD seller: $32,000
Grungy indie record producer: $25,000
Record Store Geek: $22,000

At the Top:
Superstar DJ - $400,000
Well Known Indie Rapper - $500,000
Big Shot Artist Manager - $ 500,000

The most revealing number was the Major Label A&R guy who is now making 92,000 after a pay cut from 250,000. (Was it ego or a plea for sympathy that led to that disclosure?)

The music photog was pulling in $125,000. Way to hustle!

Barbara Lynn Photo Featured

... on the cover of Lafayette Lousiana's Independent Weekly.


I'm looking forward to seeing her again at the Ponderosa Stomp in New Orleans.

Pimping my friends and the competition

Chris Owyoung is a nice guy that I went to High School with in St. Louis. He is also
here in NY shooting music and has a very nice blog/website going on. What he is doing is smart and ties in to the discussion going on at A Photo Editor about new ways to get your work out there.

Article is here: Where are all the goddam photos?

I am an elite white person

Installation # 93 on the Stuff White People Like Blog talks about the average caucasion's large music collection and the inevitable amount of pirated material within it. The post then goes on to delineate 3 levels of the music collector's social hierarchy.

By having a music collection that is mostly vinyl I am clearly in the 'elite' category, my always felt superiority has been given official status. Go whiteboy go!

quoth:

Because of the availability of music online, a very strict social hierarchy has been created within white culture whereby someone with a large MP3 collection is considered “normal,” a large CD collection is considered to be “better,” and a person with a large vinyl collection is recognized as “elite.”

These elite white people abhor the fact that music piracy has made their B-sides, live performances, and bootlegs available to the masses. Their entire life’s work has been stripped of it’s rarity in terms of both object and sound on the record. The best thing you can say to them is: “vinyl still sounds better.”

Well, vinyl always DOES sound better, and there is still a ton of stuff that you can't get on the iTunes music store. Duh.

The Oldest Record- EVER

As reported in the New York Times, audio specialists have found a way to play back a recording that predates Edison's first cylinder recording by more than 20 years! "Scott’s device had a barrel-shaped horn attached to a stylus, which etched sound waves onto sheets of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp." The inventor was Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, "a Parisian typesetter and tinkerer who went to his grave convinced that credit for his breakthroughs had been improperly bestowed on Edison." A clip of the recording from 1860 is available with the article, it kinda sounds like what happens when a big fuzz ball gets caught on the end of a phono needle. How long before Jay-Z samples it?