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Re: OT: music biz article


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Douglas Baldwin" <coyotelk@optonline.net>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Friday, May 13, 2005 15:18 PM
Subject: Re: OT: music biz article


> Interesting article. Before the rise of Beatles-related popular music,
> recorded music was seen as a bit of a "loss leader." You made records to
> promote your live performances or to promote your career in movies, not 
>to
> make a living at recording. Artists were whisked in aod out of recording
> studios because it was too expensive to spend days re-recording the same
> thing. It could be argued that the technology didn't exist to warrant 
> extra
> time in the studio, but then what were Les Paul and Stockhausen doing? 
>The
> era of creating "studio masterpieces" may well be seen as a blip in the
> history of the performing arts.

Unless one considers that for some the studio itself is a canvas, just as 
the orchestra was for Beethoven and other composers.  Jimi Hendrix for 
example, who wasn't noticed by the big studios until he'd been on the 
chitlin circuit for years, and basically discovered via performance (I 
think 
of a story by Les Paul where he and his son were driving through NY State 
on 
the way home to Mahwah NJ (just over the border), and stopped at a 
club-bar 
for something to eat-drink, whereupon Les' son came back out saying 
something like "You've gotta hear this guy!").  After all that time on 
tour, 
Jimi learned to produce in-studio, developing recording tricks never 
really 
exploited before, and working on arrangements that you'd need much more 
than 
a few people to play if done live.  And they wonder why Steely Dan didn't 
play live much...!

> Recorded music is predisposed towards a demonstration, a freezing of 
>time.
> It is also a fetish object in and of itself that the recording industry
> seeks to alter on a regular basis. IMHO.

The established recording industry wouldn't know what to do with Jimi 
Hendrix if they encountered him for the first time in 2005, beyond buying 
him out and shelving him so to not make their existing acts look as 
lifeless, anti-creative and boring as they truly are.

Stephen Goodman
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