As I mentioned earlier, I was interviewed by CD Baby’s Kevin Breuner for the CD Baby DIY Podcast. After a bit of tactful delay (read: time to promote the episode), it’s finally online and available for listening! It’s all about UStream and how indie musicians (like me) can spread the word via live video.

Update: If you like the podcast, btw, PLEASE go to iTunes and leave a comment!

You can subscribe to the show or get more info at www.cdbabypodcast.com or listen to the episode here:
Download MP3

I give Nickelback a lot of crap, I know. I also know that 3.7 gazillion people love that band. I hold up acts like Nickelback and Miley Cyrus as shining examples of boring, tepid major label waste product (which they are). Is it because they’re not edgy enough for me? No, there are plenty of bands that are edgy to the point where I can’t listen to them. The entire punk genre, for example, or some of Ben Folds‘ earlier work. Just because something is too misshapen to fit in the focus-group approval box doesn’t mean it’s good either.

I propose that music is like any other recipe; there are main ingredients and there are accents. A plain lump of chicken breast (Nickelback) is not, by itself, a meal. If all you ate were plain chicken breasts your taste buds would most likely atrophy and fall off your tongue. On the other hand, a diet consisting entirely of black peppercorns (punk) would burn your mouth and leave you starving to death.

This, I believe, is an oversight on the part of most major labels and some indie artists. So that mellow, 90-bpm rock song sold 20 million round discs. It’s a good cut of meat, sure, but it’s only one part of the meal. You don’t want the entire album (or the band’s entire catalog) to sound like that one market-ready radio-friendly überhit ’cause the fans will get bored.

Here’s a secret: The artists will too. Most artists (songwriters at least) have a diverse range of output. This is what drives guys like Garth Brooks to become Chris Gaines or George Carlin to be Mr. Conductor. An artist’s output should reflect their humanity as a whole, not just the radio-friendly side or the dirty underground side. An album, especially, should sound like a well-balanced meal tastes.

If you don’t believe me, open up a restaurant that serves only unflavored pasta and chicken. Let me know how that goes for you.

First things first, I must re-blog and disseminate the words of Moby:

the riaa have sued Jammie Thomas-Rasset of minnesota for $2,000,000 for illegally downloading music.

argh. what utter nonsense. this is how the record companies want to protect themselves? suing suburban moms for listening to music? charging $80,000 per song?

punishing people for listening to music is exactly the wrong way to protect the music business. maybe the record companies have adopted the ‘it’s better to be feared than respected’ approach to dealing with music fans. i don’t know, but ‘it’s better to be feared than respected’ doesn’t seem like such a sustainable business model when it comes to consumer choice. how about a new model of ‘it’s better to be loved for helping artists make good records and giving consumers great records at reasonable prices’?

i’m so sorry that any music fan anywhere is ever made to feel bad for making the effort to listen to music.

the riaa needs to be disbanded.

moby

I’m not a huge fan of Moby’s music, but I agree with him 100% in this case. You see, I’m a Christian artist. No, I’m not making CCM albums anymore, but I believe in a Christian philosophy which can be summed up as this: I believe that people will try to steal from me whether I am a tyrant or a beggar. What defines me and my nature is how I treat other people, even if they’re not concerned with how they’re treating me.

The RIAA believes that huge fines will deter people from file sharing, much in the way that capital punishment seems to be deterring people from killing each other. Those of us in the reality-based community understand that you will never keep people from stealing, all you can do is treat your legitimate customers like kings and make their experience worth more than the 99¢ track they’re paying for.

Update: And now Richard Marx, an artist actually “damaged” by this file sharing, has released a public statement decrying the verdict and siding with Ms. Thomas-Rasset, calling it “farcical”.

With all due respect to Scott Bourne, birds do indeed dream. No, not of fish… at least, not all the time. Some of them dream of music, lights, smoke, and Robot Bass Players.

Wait, what?

A fan of my weekly UStream shows sent me this fabulous piece of original art a couple days ago and, with permission, I’m posting it here. This is one of the single most impressive chunks of awesome anyone’s ever thrown at me. Not only did Stampy catch my fascination with osprey, my laptop with red case and sticker, my M-Audio keyboard, and even the ugly-ass Exit sign that lived behind me at my New Hampshire gigs, but check out the robot playing bass behind me.

Yup, that’s Prodo-1, my faithful co-host from High Orbit and snarky sidekick from Goodbye Planet Earth.

It’s stuff like this that reminds me why I do what I do. Thank you, Stampy, and all the others that have been sending in photos and art! Birds dream of having fans like you.

If I wanted to make a music video of all you people lip-syncing to one of my songs, would you do it? Which Song?

Friend and fan John Wall brought his camera to my recent show at All Asia in Boston… here’s what happened!

[flickr]set:72157619866049834[(small)][/flickr]

rev⋅o⋅lu⋅tion [rev-uh-LOO-shuhn] –noun

2. Sociology. a radical and pervasive change in society and the social structure
3. a sudden, complete or marked change in something

dictionary.reference.com

Back in the days when High Orbit was a weekly show, I named the spaceship the UTF Revolution. In those days there was an air of excitement, even fanaticism, about podcasting and downloads and new technology. The discovery that people could make and deliver content beyond the confines of TV, radio, and newspapers electrified the internet crowd. We called it a revolution. If the revolution started in 2004, it’s only beginning to come to a head now.

Revolutionary Communication

[flickr align='left' class='alignleft' hspace='5']photo:2602427250(thumbnail)[/flickr]If you’re reading this, chances are good you’re a fan of my music. You didn’t hear me on the radio, you didn’t see me on some prime-time contest show. You heard me on a podcast, in a virtual world, or on live video. I am doing nothing special; I am merely putting my music out there wherever I can. It is you who drive the revolution every time you use these channels. You make the choice to spend your time outside the pre-fab information streams set up by Rupert Murdoch and Robert Iger.

The past five years may have made this revolution seem… well, less revolutionary. After all, we’re not as jazzed up about the miracle of flight now that we can hop a shuttle from NY to Boston for less than a hundred bucks. Make no mistake about it, however, you are committing an act of rebellion with every new channel you support. The record labels and major networks are starting to realize they cannot make money anymore. Soon they will realize the nagging truth that some of us have been shouting from the town square for years: The artists and the fans no longer need them.

Revolutionary Thinking

Is that true? Are record labels obsolete? The answer isn’t a matter of sales figures or Billboard charts. The future of the revolution is in your mind. You must understand that as long as the old-media channels still claim a foothold in your brain, they are controlling you.

Here’s a revolutionary question:

If you’re a fan of my music, are you wondering when I’m going to get “discovered” by a record label?

If so, those record labels still control your brain. You are still chained down by a world where big companies decide what music is legitimate and what music is “just indie”. As the mon once said, “emancipate yourself from mental slavery.” Good videos don’t need a TV network, good news doesn’t need radio towers, and good music does not need a record label.

YOU are my record label. Yes, you. Do you like my music? Then my music is legitimate. I don’t need some guy in a crisp suit to own 80% of my artwork to make it good. All I need is for you to understand that as soon as you become a fan, you become part of my record label.

Revolutionary Action

[flickr align='left' class='alignleft' hspace='5']photo:2287769640(thumbnail)[/flickr]That’s right, you’re part of my record label. You are also your own TV and radio network. You are working for the best media conglomerate ever created; you contribute only what time and effort you see fit, you cannot be fired, and you are part of something truly revolutionary. In fact, depending on your iTunes playlist, you probably work for so many different record labels right now that your resumé should be 40 pages long. This revolution, however, cannot survive without action.

If you want to keep the revolution fueled, you have a few responsibilities (I’m not going to call them a manifesto, that’d be beating a dead analogy at this point).

• Evict the corporations from your mind.
  They aren’t the ones buying the music, YOU are. You are in control.
• Small sacrifices must be made.
  Have you bought an album? Picked up your favorite show’s official shirt/mug/chia pet? Congratulations, you are now a shareholder in the revolution.
• Grab your bullhorn.
  The #1 thing you can do to support your favorite artists and shows is spread the word about them. Whether they’re on a major label or not, all musicians need that key action from their fans.
• Show up for the battles.
  For musicians, it’s about live concerts and release parties. For podcasters, it’s the live recording events. Whatever division of the revolution you’re fighting with, they need warm bodies to man the barricades.
• Communicate, communicate, communicate!
  The artists, producers, and revolutionaries are only as good as their supporters make them. Talk to them. Comment on their blog posts, post your photos/videos in their Flickr group or Facebook page. Tell them what you like, what you don’t like, and most importantly where you want this revolution to go.

The Revolution Grows

Some of us have been a part of this revolution for years. Some of us just discovered yesterday that you can turn a Mac Mini into an entertainment center (yes, that’s a link to a how-to video). However long you’ve been a part of the revolution, make no mistake: the battle rages on. Until we’ve completely killed the notion that a show, artist, or band needs a major corporate partner to be considered “legitimate”, we are still subject to an oppressive regime.

Make the change happen. Take action, and long live the revolution!

I’ve got this whole two-species vibe going ever since I was 14. I’ve had an unnatural fascination with birds that has spilled over from my personal life into my professional life.

A significant portion of you are familiar with this little dichotomy. I’ve been featured at a few Furry conventions over the years and my popularity among the animal-savvy seems to be growing. The fact that some of my Second Life fans still haven’t seen me in person as a human makes for a unique image to uphold. There are a lot of people, however, who just want to hear the music.

For the “normal” people out there, I’m just your average piano rocker trying to eke out a living in the music business. I can’t exactly hide my fascination with the Pandion Haliaetus, but fortunately most of you don’t seem to be weirded out by it. I’m not the guy with the ears and tail at the shopping mall, nor am I anything you’ve read about in Vanity Fair or seen on TV. If you’d like to compare me to those freak shows, I will happily find the choicest representatives of your hobbies or religions and write about them for you.

No, I’ve just had the usual fascination with animals and, in particular, Osprey. When I was younger (up to and including last week) I spoke to an imaginary friend- a 6-foot tall humanoid osprey. I even wrote a musical incorporating a friend of his as my senior project in college. I spent over a decade writing a 400-page novel about the world my avian friend comes from… I’m hoping that someday I can share it with you, but it needs some serious revisions that I just can’t focus on right now.

When you consider that anthropomorphism has played a major role in everything from religions to sporting events for thousands of years, it should surprise no one that some of us feel drawn to an animal that represents something we admire or covet. If you think this is odd, you haven’t taken a look at your favorite sports teams recently- chances are good they’re represented by an animal. So is your local gas station. Jesus Christ was called both a lion and a lamb, depending on the verse. We name our attack helicopters and fighter jets after birds of prey and Indian tribes. For that matter, those Indian tribes believe in spirits personified by the animals from their surrounding territory.

It honestly makes me sad when I encounter people who don’t entertain these kinds of concepts. If all you’ve thought about are things you’ve seen in this world, you are living in a very limited space. You’re trapped in a studio apartment with no windows- you may be content with your surroundings and your life, but I believe you suffer from an imaginative agoraphobia. Once you’ve seen what’s outside the walls of normality, you might wonder how you existed before.

Do I write songs about birds? Not a whole lot. I’ve written about cows more often than I’ve written about birds, to be honest. I write about what I experience, and I haven’t experienced birdness yet. The bird thing is more of a constant fascination- something that I feel drawn to in a way that I just can’t quantify. I wish I could be a bird, that’s for certain, but until I disappear in a cloud of feathers I want my fans to understand one of my long-term fixations. It’s a fun world to immerse myself in from time to time, and it affects my daily life in tiny ways I’m not aware of.

What are you drawn to? What’s the little non-sequitir that exists in your daily life, making things a bit more interesting? How are you using that?

Update: I love hearing from all of my friends who already get this stuff, but if you’re a “normal” person and are a bit shy about commenting, please respond to this anyway!

Dear President Obama,

If you haven’t already enlisted Jon Stewart and P.J. O’Rourke to become cabinet-level advisers, please consider it. P.J. just made a hell of a lot more sense on a comedy show than you did explaining why I now own 60% of General Motors.

The reason we’ve always had a love affair with big, strong, powerful cars is simple: They represent a fantasy, a virility, that mortal men simply do not possess. It’s the same reason idiots buy tigers as pets.

So please, Mr. President, instead of purchasing a company that has ignored common sense and built bigger, more gas-sucking (and generally sucking) scrap heaps, can we purchase something that will reinstate our vicarious virility? To belabor the sex-appeal analogy, buying GM is like getting a boob job for an 80-year-old woman.

Why can’t we make Tesla Motors our new girlfriend? They’re not just an American car company, they’re making electric vehicles sexy. Like 0-60 in under 4 seconds sexy. Like fast enough to tear your clothes off but quiet enough not to scare the neighborhood sexy. In fact, I have only one question:

Which would cost the taxpayers more?

1. Paying for GM to design better cars, retool all of its factories to make better cars, wait while they take the time to make a new fleet of cars, and then hope they can actually sell enough of those cars to become profitable again.
2. Pay for Tesla to hire most of the old GM employees and subsidize battery costs for cars they’re already making and selling right now.

I await your answer, Mr. President. Whether or not we’d see any short-term profit from owning most of Tesla, I can guarantee we’d redefine what American car enthusiasts see as “sex appeal”. This is the new girlfriend we need, and she smells a lot prettier than her predecessor.

Sincerely,
Matthew Ebel
Taxpayer

Update: Apparently Tesla IS getting some money from the bailout.

Once again, I’m doing a concert live via UStream. Tonight I’ll be asking my viewers about the future of the show, so if you’re interested in helping me plot a course towards the future then join me at 6pm Eastern US time!

You can find the show, as always, at http://matthewebel.com/ustream