Meet the new boss, David Lowery tackles the internet and the past while Ted Lucas gets past around

i'm sick of all these people. that's my grumpy dude on the internet endgame.

i was talking about a band i like on facebook and this band only put out two hard to find/obscure 7 inch EPs and within a day someone who wasn't even facebook friends with me sent me a dropbox link or whatever on my facebook with files of the two EPs that they had remastered(!) and files of the cover art. things move fast these days. i had to pretend to be thankful. but i never listen to music files on a computer so it was kinda lost on me.

That reminds me of the time someone emailled me the lyrics of "Do the Standing Still" by The Table, the day after I had played it in the car stereo, and despite my not actually talking (or posting) about it at all!

im sure this has been said elsewhere on ilx and the internet so forgive me cause i have been off the net but lowerys letter to an lost intern makes a p good if obvious ethical point in a comically ott sloppy manner, like yeah the internet did not kill yr friends and is there any evidence that downloadin caused all of the industry decline etc, but really the worst part is that he assumes that because this problem is a moral one the solution must be moral too when obvs just like taxing iphones is a thing that could actually produce irl $$$

ho wait the dismemberment plan guy is 'Director of Commercial Production, The Huffington Post'

http://www.north.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/npr_emily_white_dave_allen.jpeg

this is the most morally indefensible thing thats appeared itt tho

what
barriers?
do WE
encounter

NORTH is a compass pointed forward. Part ad agency, part creative boutique, part crash-pad for artists, designers, film makers, bloggers, bands and big-thought thinkers. Unlike older paradigms, we not only strategize and conceive stuff, we usually draw it, film it, score it, tweet it and construct it too. In the vernacular: We eliminate the middle man and pass the passion on to you. Peruse this site and glimpse what this more collaborative, agile, streamlined approach can yield.

no thank you

Lol yea. "You can download all the free music your hard drive can store but first you have to read through two years' worth of blog posts about audience synergy and the magic of 'branding'."

NORTH is a compass pointed forward.

no, actually it is a compass pointed....north

lol @ "know your competition" [drawing of guy with 'hello my name is competitor' nametag]

Lol yea. "You can download all the free music your hard drive can store but first you have to read through two years' worth of blog posts about audience synergy and the magic of 'branding'."

― robert mcnamara in reverse (loves laboured breathing), Monday, June 25, 2012 10:05 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

makes mid-90s sam goody prices seem like a str8-up bargain

Weak when people continually call out the record industry as the only group that sues its own customers, as much as I find the practice unseemly. I wouldn't call people downloading music for free "customers," just consumers in the most general sense. And for sure they're not the only people getting in trouble for taking something without paying for it.

Again, not wanting to defend the RIAA or whatever, but it's sort of to our benefit that they have no other real recourse. A 7/11 clerk can just call the police. Record industry forced to burn-bridges and make a mockery of itself by playing whack-a-mole. It's like an abused blind dog that now snaps at everything within reach.

This actually surprised me, even though it's as bogus an indicator as anything else that's been trotted out (multiple editions of things, etc.):

Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,582 in Music

Entertainment
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,980 in Music

Is it the term "branding" you lot find offensive or just the idea that selling music is a business and therefore impure?

i find allen's new-agey adspeak offensively vapid and hollow

But his point about your band needing an identity is valid.

i don't really know what that means

This actually surprised me, even though it's as bogus an indicator as anything else that's been trotted out (multiple editions of things, etc.):

Our Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart:
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #54,582 in Music

Entertainment
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #64,980 in Music

― dlp9001, Monday, June 25, 2012 10:51 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

Kerosene Hat
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,778 in Music

Oddly he doesn’t mention that the music industry is most likely the only industry to ever, ever, sue its own customers. An inconvenient truth.

pretty sure this 100% not true

To summarize the summary of the summary, people are a problem:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2012/06/digital_music_arguments.php

Right, that's sorted.

Looking at Dave Allen's North website, I feel totally disconnected from the real world. I feel dumb but I had no idea what any of the articles where about. What does he do all day at work?

download music probably

at work he's an essayist.

everyone go download every single gang of four song ever released. illegally. for free. do it for stalin and trotsky.

only if i don't have to listen to it

this whole comp is great. listen to it here for free!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ic62ty_2D4

past couple of years i've really enjoyed listening to first 3 GO4 records after not listening to them in ages. production is killer.

How does one go from being a situationist-marxist punk to branding? From my understanding of situationist-marxist ideology aren't the two oppose? Maybe I don't understand what branding means these days. I have the feeling David allen and co. at North have just created a need and employment where one didn't exist before.

lol @ "David allen and co."

weren't UK punk very aesthetics-oriented? like they spent a lot of time making the cool ZZ thing in the buzzcocks logo.

gang of four's lyrics were always kind of shitty. a bunch of psuedo-literate sloganeering. nothing worth thinking about unless you're greil marcus. the music was kind of interesting i guess.

also david allens leads w/ "you can't litigate human behavior."

this is one of those asinine statements that seems really righteous for about half a second.

you can certainly change somebody's behavior by suing them.

you can also pass laws that change people's behavior en masse.

duh.

its what litigation is for iirc

gang of four were awesome. despite the lyrics. i don't really pay attention the lyrics though. my spine is the bassline.

officially licensed crass tote bags kinda makes me cry a little.

http://www.punkandpissed.com/crass-classic-circle-logo-tote-bag.html

lmao

is this
looooooove

no, just a confusion.

there wasn't/isn't one single retro-80's band/artist from the 90's or 2000's that came up with anything as cool as any one of a dozen gang of four songs. and i'm not even a superfan or anything. just stating a fact.

who was i reading an interview with....someone from gang of four was producing their album...red hot chili peppers! anyway the gang of four dude kept telling them that they HAD to make the album more commercial and slicker the whole time they were in the studio with him. and that was all they way back in like 1983.

The recording of the album was not a smooth process. Andy Gill and the band fought over creative issues, with Gill directing them towards a more "radio-friendly" sound. This caused a lot of tension between the band and Gill which made the recording process particularly difficult. The band pulled many pranks on Gill, in spite of him, throughout the recording process, one being Flea giving a pizza box filled with crap to Gill, and one of the mixers running away screaming from the studio.[1] In Kiedis' autobiography Scar Tissue, he says that he was devastated when he saw that Gill had written the word "shit" next to the title of the song "Police Helicopter" on a notepad, as it was one of the first songs they had written and in Kiedis' words "It embodied the spirit of the band which was the kinetic, stabbing, angular, shocking assault force of sound and energy". The band were said to not be pleased with the production on the album, preferring the demo versions they had recorded earlier with Slovak and Irons.

officially licensed crass tote bags kinda makes me cry a little.

http://www.punkandpissed.com/crass-classic-circle-logo-tote-bag.html

― scott seward, Monday, June 25, 2012 5:50 PM (10 minutes ago)

I feel your pain

crass commercialism

if G04's one experiment with recording a commercial breakthrough is any indication, then, heh, Andy Gill had no business telling the Chili Peppers how to record a commercial record.

How does one go from being a situationist-marxist punk to branding?

I've always wondered how Gang of Four went from Marxists to crossing a picket line in order to play a show (which they did in British Columbia in 1982).

Well they were basically a bunch of full of shit students dudes in a rock band that ultimately didn't care that much

Good band though

most punks from the past have sold their souls a little bit at least. and in most cases a lot. no big deal. its called survival.

Yeah I mean, listen it was a bunch of jive that sounded cool when they were 20, anyway ppl that are really trying to do something usually become activists or get into politics instead of rock bands

Maybe joan baez is the exception, she seems pretty punk in terms of keeping it real

I guess fugazi never sold out but at the same time most of their politics seemed like they were about being fugazi