I know I said I wasn't going to post, but when Jeff Mangum calls, you must answer. Pitchfork is showing a live performance by Mangum (of the band Neutral Milk Hotel, of course) which took place in a coffee shop in Athens. The show happened in March of '97, which was a little less than a year before In The Aeroplane Over The Sea was released -- so these are probably some of the first live performances of these songs, ever (only about three songs performed here are from that album, the others are from On Avery Island). Not that there were many live performances of these songs after that -- it was shortly after touring in support of Aeroplane's release that Mangum effectively disappeared. The sound quality is good enough, so this is pretty much the best full length show you'll ever see of him performing NMH songs.
His between-song banter is priceless -- he describes that "Two-Headed Boy Pt. Two" is about a family in the 1940's in Europe and a certain member of that family that he sometimes has dreams about (we now know that he was referring to Anne Frank, but the audience didn't know that at the time). Also, the little story he gives about why he wrote the song "Engine" is so sincere and up-front, that I am pretty glad that he stopped appearing publicly -- where ever he is, I am sure that his authenticity is still totally intact.
I think its safe to say at this point, that In The Aeroplane Over the Sea is the single most important indie-rock album ever made. I say this, not only because of the unquestionable merit of the album's music, but also because the face of indie forever changed post-Napster, and really, anything after that is simply from a wholly different era. This video is special because it was recorded in the waning hours of the analog age and features songs from an album that possibly acts as that age's swan song.
You might remember the touching little video Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich put together for the MTV Video Music Awards (or was it the Movie Awards?) a couple of years ago. You know, the one where he went into some kid's room and started stealing crap while the kid on a computer sat there dumbfounded.
It may be the case because of the negative spin piracy has gotten. When Napster shut down, you told yourself, well maybe it was wrong to download MP3s.
I have two words for that kind of sentiment-F*** that!
It disgusts me when I see Dr. Dre looking into a camera with a sad, puppy-dog face and saying, 'yo dawg, it ain't right to be pirating my @#$%!'
The guy who really gets me, however, is Ulrich. Metallica is a band that worked its ass off to get where it is, and now the members of the group are biting the hand that fed them.
I read this incredible column (yes I can read) by a guy named Mark Jenkins, a film and music reviewer for The Washington Post.
Apparently, (and almost all of us are too young to remember this) in 1978 the Recording Industry began to slump in sales.
They began to blame "a larcenous new technology" called cassette tapes. The international music industry even had an outraged official slogan, "home taping is killing music." Sound familiar?
It's obvious why the big labels want to blame their current lagging sales on the Internet.
My question is, why are the artists getting involved too? Why do I have to lose all respect for a Metallica, a band I once considered the greatest in the world?
The answer should be on the tips of all of your lips; it's plain and simple, and it's called greed.
"Oh! We musicians put our heart and soul into or work. We deserve to get our money!" they say. True, musicians do deserve to get paid. But, millions upon millions?
Does Metallica really deserve millions of dollars for their latest and worst album, "Re-Load"?
Maybe they deserved it for "Master Of Puppets," because at least the album influenced every single hard rocker that has ever palm muted an open low E string.
But, unfortunately, that's not how it works. There are bands out there that work just as hard, if not harder than Metallica does now.
The Microphones for instance. The group consists of one guy, Phil Elvrum, recording all of his music on lo- fi equipment, then mixing it together and creating a sound that is so beautiful it doesn't register in your head the first time you hear it.
Let's not even go into his mind-blowing songwriting. If the lyrics are not read in the context of liner notes, they could easily be confused with an upper level lit text.
Have you ever heard of the Microphones? No. Have you ever bought the man's CD? No. Does Elvrum work as hard as Metallica?
Well, his CD took almost a year to complete, and if you've heard it, you know that it is a seminal piece of production work-on lo-fi equipment (which means he isn't recording on the fancy boards that you see on TV, instead he is recording on not much more than a Tascam cassette player) to boot.
So hell yeah he works as hard as Metallica. Do you think Metallica does its own production?
No way, the group has a team of sound guys to do it for them. And you know Elrum doesn't make the big bucks like Metallica does. Hell, I probably have a bigger apartment then he does.
The only reason I know of The Microphones is because of the Internet.
The only way that I could get any of the music was through MP3 swapping. And because of that swapping, I am able to create something that the big label execs fear worse than baldness, word of mouth.
That's how they control the music that you listen to.
They have control over the word-of-mouth advertising. They use their mouthpieces -- commercial radio, MTV and commercial rock magazines.
You see The Vines in Rolling Stone and then hear their single on the radio. To top it off, you see they have a new buzz worthy video on MTV. So you think to yourself "this band must be good."
That's how they get you. The Vines as it turns out, blow pretty hard (Nirvana knock-offs should at least sound like Nirvana).
But I bet you would have never guessed considering all the exposure they get. It didn't work like that before, or at least it wasn't this efficient.
What Napster created was a new forum for word of mouth.
That scares the hell out of the recording industry. What the industry doesn't want is competition from good music. They'd prefer to churn out so-so music and maximize their profits by not having to promote a great new band. It's easier to make a band look great, than it is to make a great band sell.
Competition, as we all learned in high school economics, breeds a better product. And better music betters us.
Lars Ulrich, Dr. Dre and the Industry are trying to tell us that by creating competition for them, we are killing their music.
Well, that's the best argument for piracy that I've ever heard.
(C) 2002 University Daily
I HATE lars ulrich! that a-hole kicked me off of napster in college. for that lars i will never buy a metallica cd or go to a metallica concert in my life. the sad part is i only had 1 metallica song downloaded from napster on my computer. rocky- study for the bar or blog, guess i see what is winning ;)
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