NO ALBUMS

A circle jerk in a world where nobody has time for anything but the best. I hope you have fun making your long player, because you’re the only one who cares!

ATTENTION SPANS

Are huge. Assuming people are interested. Just watch someone play “World of Warcraft.” Then again, WOW is better than your music. People have all the time in the world for that which is truly incredible. We live in a world of hits and misses, there’s nothing in between. If you’re not the best at what you do, give up or enjoy your third class ride.

RADIO

Didn’t break PSY and it didn’t break Kendrick Lamar. Sure, we’ve still got CDs, some people still use Windows XP, but XP’s not the future and neither is radio. We live in an on demand world. If you can’t pull it immediately, no one’s gonna sit around waiting for it.

IMMEDIACY

You can cut a track in an hour and have it up online almost instantly. But acts take a year to make an album and wait for the right time to release it and be the beneficiary of one shot of publicity. Music is not like a movie. Music, when done right, plays forever. It builds over time, it doesn’t spike so much as rise and plateau. Release it when it’s ready. There’s little money in recordings anyway. Why are you playing the old game?

DADDY’S MONEY

Take it and you give up control. And in art, control is everything.

STREAMING

22% of  Beggars’ Group’s revenues come from streams, and most of its acts make more money from streaming than track sales. But you refuse to be on Spotify. Then again, you’re probably not as good as Adele, Jack White and… Then again, your label probably doesn’t give you 50% of streaming revenues, like Beggars does.

Streaming already won. YouTube is America’s radio station.

Read this article:

How record labels are learning to make money from YouTube

TIME

Even though you can reach everybody in an instant, it takes longer to make it. And even the biggest stars in the world don’t have the penetration of yore. I bet at least a third of you reading this have never heard “Umbrella,” or any Rihanna song. But you won’t read that statistic in the newspaper, which believes it’s still the arbiter of truth and that everybody is reading it.

TOMORROW

Fleetwood Mac had it right, if you stop thinking about tomorrow I hope you’re happy with today, and knowing this is the best it’s ever gonna get. What’s the end game for the L.A. “Times”? It balanced the books, reducing its staff and news hole, and now you can get the local info in the “New York Times,” and everything else everywhere else. Tribune may have emerged from bankruptcy, but the company ain’t going up.

CABLE

With a bill that high it can’t survive. You’re not gonna pay your wireless bill and your cable bill. And you can see the shows you want online. Cable is the music business in 2000, it just doesn’t know it yet.

SPAM

No one is going to listen to your music because you sent them an e-mail, tweet or Facebook link. Hope this effort makes you feel good, because it’s worthless.

MUSIC

Is the most powerful medium in the world, but the people making it treat it like a second class citizen. They let executives tell them how to change it and die to tie in with companies with different agendas. Want to be a big, powerful success? Make something unique, individual, with something to say, and don’t sell out. What was PSY selling again? HIMSELF!

STYLO

Howard Stern must have been in reruns, because I was pushing the buttons on the satellite and I heard this track on the Spectrum. I was entranced and transported, lifted from the cabin of my car into the stratosphere, I immediately came home and dialed up this Gorillaz track.

I didn’t think I liked Gorillaz or Mos Def, but suddenly I was a huge fan. That’s the power of the filter. With so much music out there, especially with tons of detritus, it’s easy to let it all bounce off you and ignore it. Then someone knowledgeable points the way and you smile and say I LOVE THIS!

We were in Aspen and Philip Blaine gave a ten minute history of electronic music. He whipped through genres and years and was so excited about what he was talking about I immediately wanted to hear every track. So I told him to create a playlist, the history of EDM, so you (and me!) could be clued in.

Here it is.

P.S. I’ve attached a Spotify playlist. Unfortunately every cut is not available, most glaring is the absence of Moby’s breakthrough “Play,” and I’m not sure each track is the definitive one, but it’s a start.

P.P.S. “Stylo” has a troubled history, Eddy Grant says it’s a rip-off, and listening to his “Time Warp,” you kind of agree

Eddy Grant-Time Warp Vs Gorillaz-Stylo

And I’m sure the EDM police will crack down upon me and say “Stylo” doesn’t fit the genre, but listen anyway, have your horizons broadened, discover that what you always listen to is not the only thing you like.
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PHILIP BLAINE’S EDM PLAYLIST

Bob –

As requested here is the list. It’s simply some highlights of artists during my personal journey through the history of Electronic Dance Music (EDM).

There are earlier artists, and artists that have done just as much to influence EDM at large, but here is a selection from the talk I presented briefly at the Aspen Live Conference. Again, this is just a sampling…

KRAFTWERK

Interestingly in the ’70s during the time of disco – and although their pure electronic sound was a different dynamic – Kraftwerk’s music was also played in some disco clubs and became a crossover option for DJs. Their sound is still relevant today, and they garner the utmost respect from other musicians and fans alike. Check out the songs “Trans-Europe Express” and “Tour de France.”

NEW ORDER

Released Blue Monday in 1983, maintains as a timeless song before its time. New Order led to many influences (In some ways everyone in EDM) and they co-owned the club Hacienda (Manchester, UK) with Factory Records. As you will see on this list, many of the artists came from this club scene.

FRANKIE KNUCKLES

In the early 80’s Knuckles played a club called the Warehouse in Chicago. I never went but heard the lore for years to come. This “House” music deemed him the godfather of House. Check out “Your Love” and “Whistle Song.”

DERRICK MAY

Derrick’s “Strings of Life” took me on a journey of my mind, career, and the dance floor. Although unleashed in 1987, it made strong influences for years to come. One has to mention names Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson and then Detroit Techno was born…

Rhythim Is Rhythim – Strings of Life (Original Mix)

KEVIN SAUNDERSON

His project Inner City released two hit singles: “Good Life” and “Big Fun,” which dominated the dance floors for years after their release in 1988.

A GUY CALLED GERALD

Also from Manchester, England, in 1989 with his underground acid-house track “Voodoo Ray.” Just listen to this song… It makes the list. Period. Acid House stormed the underground… And helped birth the first rave scene in the USA… Los Angeles. A place of great weather and deserts perfect for raving.

THE KLF

A punk rock mentality gone pop. Two UK industry veterans, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, came together and left a huge mark on the music scene from 87-92. They were also known for their publicity stunts. One was a press trip to an island off of Scotland where they had to wear hooded robes and partake in a ceremony where they burned a wicker man. Also, in later years they burned million British Pounds in public. Check out “What Time is Love,” “3am Eternal” and “Last Train to Transcentral.”

ORBITAL

In 1990, two brothers, Phil and Paul Hartnoll, came to my house with their manager Rob and blew my mind with Chime and the entire album. They are also noted as being the first EDM act to dominate a proper festival. The most proper of them all… The British institution of Glastonbury in 1994. Also listen to “Halcyon.”

808 STATE

A part of other artists from the influential club Hacienda, 808 State truly hit America with “Cubik” in 1991. Which was added to radio stations like KROQ in many major markets. Their name refers to the 808 drum machine. Also check out “Pacific State” and “Ooops.”

MASSIVE ATTACK

In 1991, “Unfinished Sympathy” introduced the world to the genre Trip Hop. Also from their hometown of Bristol were their associates Tricky and Portishead. Other early classic songs are “Safe From Harm,” “Blue Lines” and “Protection.”

2 BAD MICE

“Bombscare” released in 1992. When founding member Rob Playford came on the scene and then eventually started the record label Moving Shadow they became synonymous with a variety of sounds… Breakbeat of course, then sounds that led to Jungle and Drum ‘n’ Bass. These Moving Shadow sounds also influenced many current Dubstep artists. Also, listen to the wicked “Hold it Down.”

JAM AND SPOON

Their ambient techno sound was not consistently popular when it hit the scene in 1992, although it stood apart from everything else. “Stella” helped defined this new genre.

PAUL OAKENFOLD

He popularized the art of DJing like no other. He opened for U2 in 1993 and started Perfecto Recordings. Mostly a DJ and a producer he didn’t release a full studio album until 2002 when he had a big his with “Ready Steady Go.”

MOBY

After the Chicago and Detroit pioneers, Moby (NYC) was one of the first US artists with his song “Go” in 1992 to get international acclaim. He is also the one of the first EDM artists to become so commercially loved and accepted that every track from his 1999 album “Play” was licensed for use in TV shows, commercials, and films. Every song is a gem, listen to the whole thing start to finish.

UNDERWORLD

When “Dubnobasswithmyheadman” was released in 1994, I was hit like I was when I first heard Nirvana. They played their first USA show at my Organic festival in 1996. Along with Danny Boyle, Underworld was a producer and did the soundtrack for the Olympics in 2012. Noted songs are: “Dirty Epic,” “Born Slippy,” and “King of Snake.”

CHEMICAL BROTHERS

Yet another from Manchester! They were first known in 1993 as The Dust Brothers (not the US artist) and their remixes they did for prominent EDM artists of the time. In 1995, with the name change came the album “Exit Plant Dust.” Their sampling of live drum sounds made them one of the first EDM artists with popularity in the indie rock circles. Check out “Leave Home,” “Setting Sun,” and “Block Rockin’ Beats.”

DJ SHADOW

1996 the album “Endtroducing” was made entirely of sampled sounds… This album defined the diversity of EDM. Its wide range of truly cultured chill out/trip hop type sounds are a delight! Must listen to whole album. Once you are a few minutes in you’ll hear why.

GOLDIE

He became the first commercially prolific Drum n’ Bass artist. He played breakbeats with a new technique, and is credited with inventing the production technique of “time stretching.” His song that got me was “Inner City Life.”

KRUDER AND DORFMEISTER

1998, The K & D Sessions – both original work and a compilation of other artists mixed in. An evening with this album is for EDM which for others might be Barry White or Miles Davis. Another case where one must listen to whole album but if to pick one song check out “Lexicon.” They are most associated with the genre of Trip Hop.

FATBOY SLIM

Became so popular that he was asked to perform at Mick Jagger’s birthday party. He turned down the gig. Noted for sampling many popular songs and many pseudonyms. He released the projects first album “Better Living through Chemistry” in 1996. Check out “The Rockafeller Skank,” “Praise You” and the video for “Weapon of Choice.”

ARMAND VAN HELDEN

The Godfather of Re-mixes, he popularized the mixing of known artists into dance tracks. His first smash hit, “Professional Widow,” was a remix of a Tori Amos song, and became a club sensation, eclipsing sales of the original track. His work reinvented the way we experienced music, with his new sound called “speed garage.” His mixes of songs including Sneaker Pimps’ “Spin Spin Sugar” were highly influential from his start in 1996.

DAFT PUNK

Their first album “Homework” was in 1997. Unlike many of the other EDM artist who were single oriented, they were able to do their EDM-mastery via the traditional multi-song album format as a complete work of art. Each song was made into a music video, and was elaborately art-directed to create visually stunning works. Their distinct sound was highly sampled by many artists including Kanye West. To be noted: One of the members of Daft Punk, Thomas Bangalter, had project called Stardust which released one song in 1998 called “Music Sound Better With You” and is legendry EDM anthem. Other songs to check out are: “Da Funk,” “Around the World,” and “One More Time.”

Stardust Music Sounds Better With You (High Quality)

CAFE DEL MAR

Unlike the rest of this list… Cafe del Mar was the influence of a notable sound… It defined “Chill-out Music,” and was widely played in cafes, bars, and even spas world wide. Not an artist but a club… then as an album (from many collaborators). The club is on the island of Ibiza – it was EDM as travel and leisure. They are now on the 18th compilation album release.

This is a simple stab at history… Meat Beat Manifesto, Leftfield, The Orb, Groove Armada, The Prodigy and later of course Skrillex, Deadmau5 and literally hundreds of artists are not mentioned here. Holy shit, Roni Size and Adam F… EDM is vast and here to stay… What a long strange trip it’s been…

Please join in…listen, hit the dance floor and sample this culture!

Philip Blaine’s EDM Playlist – Spotify

My mother had a two-tone Maxima, light and dark blue. It replaced the five cylinder Audi which was a great car when it ran right, which was rarely. Only buy Japanese cars. Unless you’re rich, or leasing, or both. And it was in this car I found myself driving on Route 7 from Middlebury to Rutland on one of those days when it’s not sure whether it wants to rain or snow. When the temperature is hovering around thirty two degrees and God can’t decide whether to add to the snowpack or deplete it. And on the radio I heard “My Hometown.”

It used to be a boonie ritual. Driving with one hand on the steering wheel and the other on the radio knob, trying to pull in a station. You’d get the farm report, some country music, the real, twangy stuff, not the faux rock and roll of today, and if you were lucky something you wanted to hear on a Top Forty station.

This was back when our relationship was teetering. A year and a half after we got married. And when things are going south you know it because of the silence. Suddenly there’s nothing to say. And if you venture a few words you get no response, except maybe a guttural “um” or “mm.” And the song keeps playing on the radio and you keep listening and your whole life plays out in your brain as you stare at the highway.

I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
I’d sit on his lap in that big old Buick and steer as we drove through town
He’d tousle my hair and say son take a good look around this is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown

My father loved his hometown. He took pride in the location of our domicile, just a block from the main drag, where we could get a quart of milk or a loaf of bread whenever we wanted. The upwardly mobile moved to Skytop Drive, but things were good down on Black Rock Turnpike, where we had Richelsoph’s Bakery. Where they sliced the rye after you bought it and it was still warm and if your mother didn’t restrict your grabbing you could eat half of the loaf before you got home.

But my dad never put me on his lap to drive. He was a safety bug. Nothing untoward was ever done. But the cancer got him anyway. He died five years after the purchase of that Maxima. I told my mother to give it to my little sister when he passed. They trucked it to Minnesota where it never died, but was replaced when my brother-in-law’s career floated upwards in the boom of the last decade.

In ’65 tension was running high at my high school
There was a lot of fights between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a Saturday night in the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come to my hometown
My hometown
My hometown
My hometown

Big Al struck it rich and bought a barn in Newtown. He died in a hotel in New York, his Parkinson’s felled him while he was waiting for the elevator. But back in the seventies, we used to drive over and play tennis, badly, during the boom, when it caught the national mood. This was after the sixties, when every year someone got assassinated and everybody was fighting for his rights, when the youth took the country from the old men, when we were all in it together. Before greed and income inequality created a gap so wide in my hometown the poor don’t interact with the rich unless they’re bused in to clean.

Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores
Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more
They’re closing down the textile mill across the railroad tracks
Foreman says these jobs are going boys and they ain’t coming back to your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown
Your hometown

They never made much in my hometown, but I know too many people who lost their job and their house and are struggling. As we get older every day. We assumed our kids would do better than us. We no longer believe that.

Last night me and Kate we laid in bed
Talking about getting out
Packing up our bags maybe heading south
I’m thirty five we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said son take a good look around
This is your hometown

I got out. I saw Los Angeles on television, I listened to the Beach Boys & Jan and Dean sing about a happy, carefree life and when I graduated from college I moved. And it is better. But now I’m approaching sixty and I’ve got no kids and instead of worrying about finding a station on the radio I’m overwhelmed with input. I’ve got AM, FM, XM, iPod, iPhone, Internet…and we’re all closer together, just an e-mail or a text away, but we’ve all retreated into our niches, we’ve lost our cohesiveness. We’re no longer all in it together, we’re doing our own thing. And when you take a break and look up and realize no one’s around you wonder…are we better off?

“My Hometown“

1. The Wheels Of Progress Move Quickly

The e-reader is being killed by the tablet. And the initial Kindle was only introduced five years ago.

The first Kindle Fire was a disaster. It sold prodigiously upon release but its lack of functionality was evidenced in the little web-surfing purchasers did with it. But credit Jeff Bezos, he realized he not busy being born is busy dying. Kind of like the classic rock acts. Convinced no one is listening, they’ve stopped making new music. They’ve put the stake in their own hearts.

Then again, I was at Christmas dinner with David Glenn and he told me he was a fan of Cal Newport. So I sent myself an e-mail and looked him up on the web and found this page. It’s important.

 

Does Luck Matter More Than Skill?

“a. For activities with clear fixed rules – such as sports, chess and music – the only way to succeed is to put in more deliberate practice than your peers.

b. For activities with rapidly evolving rules – such as business start-ups or book writing – success comes when you CHANGE the rules to a new configuration that catches the zeitgeist just right. Johansson uses Stephanie Meyer, author of the Twilight series, as a key example. Meyer, in Johansson’s estimation, is not a good writer. Her first Twilight book reads more like fan fiction than a professionally-scribed genre novel. She had not, in other words, spent much time in a state of deliberate practice. But this didn’t matter. Something about her new take on vampire tales hit the cultural moment just right and earned her extraordinary renown. The lesson, according to Johansson, is that luck plays the central role in success for these activities. If you want to do something remarkable, therefore, you have to keep trying new things – placing, what he calls, purposeful bets – hoping to stumble into an idea that catches on.”

Eureka! That’s it!

Johansson has got it half right. If you want to be a classical musician, playing in an orchestra, you need to practice and be better than almost everyone else.

But if you want to be a popular musician, it’s more about capturing the zeitgeist than practiced skill. It’s more about innovation and thinking than musical building blocks.

Instead of lamenting that your time has passed, question whether you’ve become calcified. Once upon a time classic rock musicians were cutting edge, they were challenging old norms and defining new ones. They expected that once they made it, people would continue to be interested in their creations.

This is untrue.

Sure, people like to visit the museum. But if it’s in the hallowed halls, it’s already happened. The new stuff is out on the street.

2. The Wheels Of Progress Move Slowly

Digital outlets just sold more albums than brick and mortar/physical for the very first time:

Download Me Maybe: U.S. Music Market Up By 3.1%, Fuelled By 1.3B Digital Track Sales In 2012, Says Nielsen

The iTunes Store opened in 2003, almost a decade ago.

Recently, there’s been all this hogwash that the slowdown in sales of e-readers means physical books are here to stay.

Wrong!

It just takes a long time for the old to give up their ways.

So, you shouldn’t jump ship from the past too fast. Then again, Apple became the world’s most valuable company by doing this. Don’t you remember when people were horrified the iMac didn’t come with a floppy drive? And today’s new MacBooks come sans disk drives.

Used a floppy recently? I don’t ever remember putting a CD in my MacBook Pro, except for the Microsoft Word install disk, and now you download all your programs, even the operating system, wirelessly.

There is a business in being the last person to sell a typewriter. But there’s more money on the leading edge.

The music industry has done itself a disservice by focusing on the CD. It’s not only hampered the development of hi-res digital files online, it’s skewed the entire structure and perception of the business. The CD is the tool of the major label. The days of the major label are dead. They’re like ribbon salesmen in the era of software development. And most of the early software companies of the computer revolution are carcasses on the side of the road. Use WordStar recently? How about a Borland product?

You see the record business is run by old men with no vision.

Technology is run by young people challenging all the rules.

Music is old school. Selling overpriced albums to people who only want one track. You wonder why people laugh at it.

Furthermore, the old people have control of old media, where they spin their spurious ideas. When technology boomed in the eighties, the mainstream press barely covered it. Think about it… Congress held a hearing on Napster? That’s like nursery schools holding a hearing on NASA.

3. “The closing years of life are like the end of a masquerade party, when masks are dropped.”

—Schopenhauer

At least they used to be. Before everybody got plastic surgery in order to appear young.

But you’re old on the inside.

You can’t deny death. You can’t stop aging.

Have contempt for those trying to cheat. Aging is a natural process with benefits. It’s good to allow the masquerade to end. To see the photo beauty come back to earth. To see the rich man with the same health problems as the poor. To realize being good is better than being rich.

4. “No matter how she pleaded, she couldn’t climb in someone’s head and start steering. People did what they would do.”

My shrink said this a different way yesterday. He said people have to want to change.

Most people do not.

You can know what’s best for someone all day long, you can even tell them, but it seems they have to find out for themselves.

5. “She was grateful life could be long.”

This is a secret you never see in the mainstream press. Where youth is glorified.

Being young is frequently being unhappy. You worry if you’re beautiful enough, popular enough, you’re clueless as to your career, you’re scared.

But when you get older you become comfortable in your own skin. What you thought was important is not.

6. “I’m not intimidated by anyone. Everyone is made with two arms, two legs, a stomach and a head. Just think about that.”

—Josephine Baker

This is when entertainers were trailblazers, artists who made you think. Now they’re nitwits like Kim Kardashian and Jessica Simpson, uneducated idiots who are followed around, their every activity plastered in magazines and online, who’ve got nothing to say, they’re not leaders, they’re not even three-dimensional. As for musicians, they’re just as bad. Followers the lot. Usually too young to even know what life’s about.

I’ve never heard this put better.

You can win.

But you’ve got to believe you can play.

Note: Numbers 3-6 are quotes from the book “The Chaperone,” by Laura Moriarty. One of the main characters is Louise Brooks, the silent film star. She was done in her early thirties. She had to reinvent herself, she ultimately became a writer. Today’s young stars don’t reinvent themselves, they just rob 7-11’s and die prematurely.