Lizard In Toronto

All in all, a great show. Yow was not as drunk as I’ve seen him & he got dropped which cut the set a little short. Denison was, as always, impeccable. Watching and listening to Mac McNeilly was eye-wateringly great. That dude is nuts. Even the lady enjoyed herself. Good company, good sound and good times all around. Not the best video but here’s a taste.

Can’t Hack It

Sufjan Stevens: “I’m starting to get sick of my conceptual ideas. I’m tired of these grand, epic endeavours and wanting to just make music for the joy of making music and having it be immediate and nothing to do with the industry itself, which, y’know is suffering right now of course.” Minus all the academics, this reads: “There is no possible way that I could write 48 more albums about States. It was kind of a stupid idea to begin with. You know how it is, you shoot your mouth off once about this “50 States” thing, the press rolls with it, I encourage it and then realize it’s well beyond what I could ever do. It was a little “art school” to begin with so I’m making up an excuse so I can just move on. It’s about the industry. Yep, the industry. Let’s go with that.”

Double Dipping

John Gruber links to an article about ASCAP and BMI looking for more money from iTunes and other online retailers. As someone who has some experience dealing with music publishers all I can say is “you are already getting paid.” Nothing about this is an issue of “public performance” payments. That argument is total bunk. iTunes ain’t radio and of the radio that’s on there, the stations are already paying the royalties. For television and film, I’m assuming that the payments are made in the same schedule as the DVD release. Public Performance is exactly what it sounds like. If I arrange to show an episode of 30 Rock on the wall of a building in town, I would have to pay the royalty for that. If I own a club and I play music all night, that’s public performance and I have to pay a certain amount to BMI, ASCAP or SOCAN for that.  I’m not trying to argue musicians out of any money but at this point BMI and ASCAP are just grasping at straws. And kind of lying.