Jesus Christ, but 2016 was a tough year! The musicians (and people) we lost! The impending doom of a Trump-inspired government! The division of what was in some ways a country, a world even. Ideals crushed beneath the boot heels of hate, news warped beyond any rational thought, a world based upon a semblance of logic now an anarchy of thought and emotion.
Lots going on in music these days— Apple announcing their foray into streaming (I love the headlines such as “Apple May Save the Recording Industry”— I mean, what idiot thought that one up?) and the Brian Wilson biopic (My buddy Stan Twist says that if you are either a Brian Wilson or a Beach Boys fan, you won’t want to miss it) and there are lots of new albums to go over. And, as always, old ones too. But…
Judging by the positive reactions to the various music documentaries being filmed these days, I am assuming that music history is not a bad thing. I mean, we have always had the tomes and films of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and their like to while away our time and before that there had been real movies documenting the different eras, but a large portion of the music public seems to be open to more today, some enough to follow film festivals for early screenings of films about The Wrecking Crew and Big Star, to name two of the most popular.
Barry Diament. Odds are, you’ve never heard of him— or think you haven’t. The truth is, though, that if you have albums or CDs by Bad Company or Hoodoo Gurus or Led Zeppelin or Linda Ronstadt, you could have some of his work in your collection. Diament, you see, has mastered or remastered albums by those and many other musical artists. What is mastering? According to Hoyle (erm, Wikipedia):
If you have never stumbled through the night listening to something you’d never heard before you’re not going to understand what a thrill this is, but I am right now diving through a string of songs by The Green Pajamas‘ Eric Lichter that I don’t think even he knew were posted. Not that long ago, I was searching Facebook for possible inclusions in the Notes section of this column and Eric posted a couple of songs on a site called Broadjams.com.
It’s 3:30 in the morning and I can’t sleep and part of it has to do with Spotify. Not Spotify specifically, but all of the music subscription services that have come along since digitization: Mog and Pandora and Rhapsody and Sony and others. What set me off was a musician who posted on Facebook that maybe you should log on to Spotify and check out a certain artist. Why would that set me off, you ask? Because I have just recently turned my back to such “services”. Because if they are a better way to find music and artists, they are also cutting off the hands that feed them. The hands of musicians and the hands of songwriters ans indeed the hands of all involved in the musical process, for it is a process.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 