wampus multimedia news feed independent music and new media

 

December 24, 2007

Okay, everybody is putting out Best of 2007 lists. We'll keep ours simple. Album of the year at Wampus is Joel Plaskett's Ashtray Rock.

Pick it up for an old friend today.

December 21, 2007

From SoundExchange:

"Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Bob Corker (R-TN) joined Representatives Howard Berman (D-CA), Darrell Issa (R-CA), John Conyers (D-MI), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Jane Harman (D-CA) and John Shadegg (R-AZ) in introducing the Performance Rights Act of 2007, which would finally ensure that recording artists and copyright owners are paid for their sound recordings when played by over-the-air radio. For eight decades, recording artists have been fighting to close the loophole in copyright law that allows radio to play any copyrighted sound recordings they choose without compensating performers. Radio pays songwriters; it's only fair they should pay performers too."

Better late than never. Stay tuned.

November 20, 2007

The collapse continues in music distribution, and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe we need a full implosion before reconstruction can begin. Look at the landscape and we see consumers comfortable with P2P, artists who want to appease those consumers, major labels trying to turn back the clock to the physical-distribution model, and artists who don't want to be dictated to by the market. The rhetoric from stakeholders at both poles -- the "music should be free" mob and the "music is infinitely precious" cabal -- is growing more shrill by the hour.

On one end, we have young consumers who grew up with P2P. Increasingly they choose (and it is a choice) to see MP3 files as promotional items -- that's right, "like business cards." At the other end, we have the control freaks -- the established labels -- who want to bypass consumer preferences and deliver music in ways most profitable to them. The sides are further apart than the Israelis and Palestinians.

In the uneasy middle we have the artists. They want to be responsive to the consumer, but what does that mean in this climate? What does that look like in a market where artists are producing work, but no one is paying for it? Maybe it looks like a circus where the seal either balances the ball on its nose or gets the hell out of the tent.

Maybe it's time to take a ride on the Ferris wheel. Grab a funnel cake. Head back to the tent later, when they tire of the ball-balancing trick.

October 31, 2007

We know the way things smell when they go bad. Iffy ground beef, week-old fish, or a wheezing relationship, the odor does not lie. Conversely, a sweet aroma abounds when things are "going good." After watching commercial music swirl torturously down the American Standard, leaving its creators scratching their heads like tellers in a heist, we are seeing (smelling?) signs the worst is over.

The public may have "devalued" music -- in their own eyes, anyway -- by taking it without paying for it, sure. They certainly might have damaged its creators by indulging their zest for convenience. However, by continuing to download music, by continuing to listen to it, they are actually confirming its value. By pursuing recorded music with the same unbridled enthusiasm as ever, they are actually, slowly but surely, restoring its popular esteem.

If it had no value, we would ignore it. We would forget it. Yet something else is happening.

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, reports that sales of music, excluding CDs, are actually up.

How can that be? Well, there has been an earthquake in the music industry. We're talking a disturbance off the Richter scale. The old buildings and bridges are rubble and dust. But people are salvaging bricks from those ruins -- mostly the rare sounds they used to make -- and using them to erect new structures. And the structures look different this time. The gleaming skyscrapers are gone, replaced by thousands of little, one-story mud huts: independent artists, promoters, broadcasters, labels, bloggers. The community is being rebuilt with new plans.

And we can read those blueprints of awareness, advocacy, and pure, rabid fandom anytime:

The Buzz Factor: Wampus Packs a Wallop (don't miss the "comments" at the end)

The Open Road: Love Music, Don't Steal It (if you took it without permission, it ain't yours)

The Mouth of the Mule: A Heartfelt Endorsement of Drop Little Boy (who are we to muzzle this man?)

Update your bookmarks.

October 19, 2007

Heard the new Spoon record, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga? The single, "The Underdog," might send you spinning and scanning the XM/FM dial with something like religious fervor. Produced by ubiquitous maestro Jon Brion, it's flawless rock, delivered with passion, oblique wit, and finesse. It nails this year, this day, this moment:

You got no time for the messenger

Got no regard for the thing that you don't understand

You got no fear of the underdog

That's why you will not survive.

In that, we either recognize the major labels or are unmoored from the obvious.

Spoon has been around a while, of course, including a stint years ago with Elektra Records. But that's over now. And this just might be their moment.

September 21 , 2007

Keeping it short and sweet after our little summer hiatus, we delve into this.

August 7, 2007

Americana-music iconoclast Lee Hazlewood died yesterday of renal cancer. He was 78. Hazlewood was a pioneer of rock and country, an early producer of Duane Eddy, a maverick in an industry that rewarded conformity even more enthusiastically than it does today. He was an eccentric songwriter, a brilliant producer, and a performer of great spontaneity and warmth. When he tired, in the late 1960s, of the machinations of Nashville, he reinvented himself by moving to Sweden and issuing a series of unique "Euro-country" albums. They were landmarks of both his artistic immortality and commercial suicide.

In late 2006, true to form, he issued the album Cake or Death. He was ready, even if we were not.

August 3, 2007

As the News Feed ponders the value of the musical lint in its navel, an activist group in the Washington, D.C. area, Hear Hope, is hosting its first annual benefit concert for the victims of the war and genocide in Sudan/Darfur. All proceeds from the August 9 show, which includes Jazzmatazz featuring Guru, Superproducer Solar, The Grand 7 Band and others, go to benefit Direct Change. If you're near the State Theatre next Thursday night, stop in and show your support.

Doors open at 7 p.m., show starts at 8:30 p.m. State Theatre, 220 N. Washington St., Falls Church, VA 22046. (703) 237-0300.

July 27, 2007

What exactly is the "value of music"? Is it the revenue it generates? The feet it moves? The satisfaction it brings? Or is the value of music measured by some other indicator?

Economically speaking, when something is free, it has no value. And recorded music has been swirling down that tidybowl for years now. Most people prefer not to pay for something they can have for free, and who can blame them? Once a commodity becomes free, it has no value to the public -- and therefore it can have no price.

So where does that leave artists? Paying rent by the barter system?

An industry pundit recently said, "Don't talk to me about the value of music. The value of music that no one hears is zilch." Really? Why? Because the value of music is the revenue it generates? If nobody had ever heard Pet Sounds, would its value be "zilch"? Is "evanescent crap" (to pilfer a term) worth more once it goes platinum? We can talk about stratospheric sales numbers, and we can talk about great art, but they rarely intersect. The value of art isn't tied to the public's inclination to applaud. It is determined by the talent and effort of the artist.

Quality lasts. Just ask Nick Drake.

If quality = value (and it does), why not talk about the value of music? Who else on the planet but recording artists are expected to devalue their work for some amorphous promise of deferred compensation? Doctors? Lawyers? Plumbers? The reigning nonsense about giving away music now so you can fill stadiums later is little more than "trickle-down" economics -- a Reaganesque delusion that "a rising tide floats all boats." Does anyone really believe Salvador Dali would have stood on a street corner giving away paintings to people who didn't care enough to pay for them, just so people would like him and talk about him? Would Apple do that? Would Target? Would Barack Obama? No great artist is going to do that -- unless, of course, money is no object.

Notice it was a multi-platinum superstar -- Prince -- who gave away his CD with the Daily Mail.

A doctor can volunteer at a free clinic if he wants. A lawyer can try a case pro bono if he wants. And artists can sell, give away, hide, or flush their music as they see fit.

It's their call.

July 13, 2007

It all keeps coming back to the value of music.

Thanks to the culturally accepted subversion of P2P, we want to pay three cents for an album. Or less.

We might also want to pay two bucks for a plasma TV and ten bucks for a Lexus. Yet we can't. Because the value of those things is recognized, accepted.

Let's take a look at our iPod. It holds all that music, which is fantastic, but the sheer volume of its storage capacity makes the music seem worthless. We want to "fill our iPod" for cheap, with all that music. It's like saying, "I've got a 100-room house, I need cheap TVs for every room! I've got a 50-car garage, I need to fill 'er up cheap!" If that worked, we would all get a plasma for two bucks, a Lexus for ten. But the people who make those items would be history. Nobody looks the other way if you steal a plasma or a Lexus, do they.

No.

But if we don't want to pay for music, we don't have to. We just snag it like a ripe tomato from a vegetable stand. And whose fault is that? The artists'? The labels'? When we saw we could get music for free, a lot of us took that deal.

The question is: are we comfortable, as fans, driving recording artists into that margin -- where their work is worth less and less? This isn't about the major labels. It is about artists and their survival. It's about whether or not people who love music, who pay attention, stand up for those who create the work we all enjoy.

The same effort and inspiration go into making records that go into making movies or iPhones or anything else. It's work. Yet...

Yet.

We love the music, but...

But.

But what? We decide.

July 12, 2007

What is a "hit record," anyway?

A record is presumably a hit if it goes platinum -- that is, if it sells a million units. Sound like a lot? It means one in three hundred Americans bought it. One in three hundred.

There are more people buying garden rakes at Home Depot every day than snapping up the latest CD from Gwen Stefani.

One in three Americans watches the Super Bowl every year. One in 25 saw the finale of The Sopranos on a subscription channel. Yet just one in three hundred rabid fans bothered to get the latest CD from Norah Jones. You know the one -- that one, the one that's such a Big Hit, the one nobody has.

Once upon a time, one in 10 Americans bought Michael Jackson's Thriller. One in 12 bought the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever.

"Popular" music? "Hits"? Ancient history. We are programming our own radio stations now, dialing up playlists in our own little worlds. Whether that's good is hard to say. But your next-door neighbor is listening to something on his iPod today, something you have never heard before. And unless you take off your iPod, you might not hear it anytime soon.

June 21, 2007

Just got off the phone with a rep from SaveNetRadio.org. If you follow the lobbying wars in the media industry, you've heard lately about this single-issue coalition. With the expressed support of thousands of artists, they are leading the charge to overturn the recent ruling by the Copyright Royalty Board that increases the royalties paid by Webcasters to artists and labels. The Board ruling, if it stands, will be a burden to the most creative and accessible players in the online-media sphere. It could kill them.

So what's the problem with SaveNetRadio? Why not join them? Well, the major players in the online broadcasting industry -- Yahoo, AOL, Clear Channel -- have joined them, but for different reasons. While independent Webcasters are fighting for their lives, the corporate interests are guarding their future profits and market share. Why make consumers and advertisers pay the freight, they reason, when you can just bleed the artists per usual?

Just as the major players in terrestrial radio succeeded through their lobbies in making the United States the only nation in the industrialized world not to pay royalties on the broadcast of sound recordings -- run 80 years of that through your calculator -- the major players in Internet radio are looking to translate the terrestrial model to the Web. And they're doing it in league with their prospective snookerees -- small Webcasters and independent artists.

Sound cynical? It really isn't. As artists, we are better off fighting the enemy we know than pretending corporate interests are putting social responsibility in their strategic plans. Fact is, history suggests as soon as online radio becomes profitable, these "populist" behemoths will go the way of Microsoft, or Standard Oil, and consolidate their gains.

And we know how that played out for Mom and Pop, don't we.

June 6, 2007

Sent this morning to music-biz gadfly Bob Lefsetz:

*****

We teach people how to treat us.

Loved your piece on "saving the labels."

It is not unreasonable, of course, for recording artists to expect to be compensated -- the way plumbers and fry cooks and doctors and lawyers are compensated -- for their work. I mean, in what other "business" are the principals expected, by anyone, to work for free? It doesn't matter whether or not we think our plumber is brilliant. We pay him to do what he does. If he doesn't do it to our liking, we can call another plumber. But we don't stiff him.

You're right, the old distribution model is broken, obsolete, irrelevant. The major labels are greedy, clueless, dead, etc. But to suggest the audience is demanding quality, as utopian and lovely as that is, is a bit of a stretch. Sure, Paul McCartney is fair game in 2007, but do you really think it's all his fault nobody cares? It's beyond that.

Music is perceived increasingly as a disposable commodity. There is little public distinction between the inspired and insipid, the timeless and the ephemeral. There is little acknowledgment of the value. Quality music -- and all that goes into creating it -- is mostly water over the bow.

So... blaming the artist? I don't think so.

You can make the greatest hamburger in the world, the most delectable creation ever, and if nobody cares about hamburgers priced over a dollar... you won't sell any. If they only grab a cheap hamburger when they're hungry, they don't really care what it tastes like, do they? They just want it for less. And if they can get it for free, all the better. But let's not suggest anyone values the hamburger.

Blaming the cook? Nah.

It's not just about the music business. It's about what the market demands, and the market demands Big Macs on the barrelhead. Compensating recording artists is about fairness and respect. And just as plumbers set the price of fixing a leaky pipe, recording artists teach the audience the value of recorded music. We teach them how to treat us.

May 13, 2007

Independent Webcasters shouldn't pay corporate-level royalties. It would bankrupt most of them. But the multi-tentacled behemoths? They should pay the going rate.

Internet broadcasting corporations are lobbying Congress to reduce their "burden" under the auspices they are like indie Webcasters. They want to cut payments to artists by 70 percent.

That's right. They need the money.

As Sound Exchange put it, "enriching the pockets of big corporations... does nothing to foster the development of new artists, help small Webcasters, advance the growth of developing platforms like Internet radio, or benefit the livelihoods of those who work hard to create the music for all to enjoy."

Don't blink or you'll miss it. Thanks to the devaluation of recorded music through duplicability, piracy, and P2P, corporations are trying to pay artists even less than they are paying them now. And why? Because they saw the sympathy music fans felt for Webcasters and decided they would like some of that.

So save Clear Channel.

What is up with not wanting to pay artists for their work? The plumber gets paid just to knock on your door. But the artist gets robbed coming up the walk.

April 27, 2007

Don't think, just move your feet. Wampus is sponsoring the FUZE Battle of the Bands tomorrow night, Saturday, April 28, at the Sportsplex in Winchester, Virginia. It's a lovefest for up-and-coming independent bands from the American east.

Competing bands include The Season (Nashville, Tennessee), Vinny Vegas (Baltimore, Maryland), Somber (Hegins, Pennsylvania), Dice Fly High (Asheville, North Carolina), and Ajar (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania). The show is being headlined by Winchester's own Parade the Day, recently signed by Walking City Records.

Visit: www.wampus.com/fuze

Compelled? Get your tickets here or at the door.

See you there.

April 25, 2007

A few coolies have emailed recently asking if we read Bob Lefsetz. We do. Sure, he writes too many words, sends too many emails, and sometimes rants as if no one is listening, but he also rings the bell of truth. He gets our respect and slack.

If you haven't read him, here is why he matters. He reminds us, repeatedly:

He has some odd sacred cows (I mean, The Eagles?), but we can overlook the post-hippie hangover. His core axe -- that today's radio music is increasingly lazy, cynical junk -- is relevant to every artist. People aren't buying the new stuff because it blows.

Instead they're looking for something that moves them. They're looking for somebody who cares, who knows a great record can matter whether it moves millions or not.

Because that record is everything.

Go tell it on the mountain, Bob. We're reading.

April 18, 2007

Today we've whipped up a playful little "parable" to ponder, debate, and discard. Read it and see if you can guess who is "playing" whom. Answers at the end....

Once upon a time there was an oppressive city-bus company that controlled every aspect of a bus driver's career. This was bad, but it was also logical, as most bus drivers didn't know much about "the business side" of city transportation and didn't care to. They were happy as clams to let others crunch the numbers while they drove the buses.

After a while, though, the drivers figured out not everyone in the transportation game had their best interests at heart. They learned this when their benefits and bonuses dried up. They learned it when their bosses took their pensions to Mexico.

Wised up, they took matters into their own hands. They bought old buses, fixed them up, painted them, and started driving them around town. Woo-hoo! But there was a catch. Most of the drivers were not supervisors or dispatchers or mechanics. They were not certified public accountants. Heck, if a passenger on their bus suffered a seizure, the driver simply performed brain surgery -- cracked the skull, grabbed the tumor -- even if the result was less than artful. Sometimes the result was amateurish, and the patient bled out on the bus seat.

After this sort of thing happened a couple hundred times, one of the drivers had a thought: Is there a doctor in the house?

And there was a doctor in the house, back from Mexico, tanned and fit, and he had reinvented himself as a "cool" doctor, one who could assist with "the last stop" on the driver's route. The doctor boarded the bus, performed some procedures, prescribed some drugs. The driver returned to the wheel. The caravan rolled down the highway, picking up specialists as needed and buying deli trays.

Meanwhile, for some strange reason, the public had stopped buying bus tickets. Turns out the riders were hot-wiring buses and driving them around and about, to and fro. The bus drivers were showing up at their storage lot every morning and going, "where's my bus?"

Afraid for their jobs, the drivers didn't want to make the riders mad. They didn't even ask for their buses back.

Then the drivers had a brilliant idea: they would give away their buses. They would simply stand on a street corner, smiling, and wait for someone to pull up in their old bus and ask them to drive it. The person in the bus would throw open the doors and say, "hey, I've seen you, you're a bus driver, how about you drive my bus?" And the driver would board his old bus, slide behind the wheel, and chauffeur his rider to McDonald's or The Gap. Then the rider would simply eject the driver on to a nearby sidewalk, where the driver could wait for his next fare.

And the drivers liked this system, as it allowed them to be seen driving a bus. And the more times they were acknowledged behind the wheel, wearing their uniform, greeting riders, the more likely it would be that everyone would validate them as a bus driver.

But weren't they already bus drivers? With their own buses? How could the riders just take the buses and park them in their own driveways like that?

No sweat. The drivers let 'em.

Sound familiar?

The Cast

... and introducing...

April 12, 2007

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. died yesterday at 84. So it goes. He was a humanist and an iconoclast and an incomparable literary artist. His prose was as clear and musical as a church bell.

The first Wampus Multimedia band, Wampeters, lifted its name from a term Vonnegut coined in Cat's Cradle. The Wampus fiction magazine, Friction Quasi-Quarterly, counted Vonnegut as a regular subscriber. Wampus' Arms of Kismet eulogized Vonnegut in "Cuckold of Titan," a song about artists and their place in the world.

From Vonnegut's Bluebeard (1987):

Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

Kurt Vonnegut: he never stopped.

RIP, KV.

April 8, 2007

A nice buzz hit this week for SNOCAP, a music-retailing interface that makes it easy to sell an artist's music from any Web site. No iTunes needed.

How does this affect you? We want you to try SNOCAP:

tvfordogs | cafebar 401 | arms of kismet | casey abrams | johnny j blair | alice despard | neil luckett | the crowd scene | kowtow popof | wampeters | amateur god

You can even feature the tracks of a Wampus artist you want to recommend at your personal home page or blog. Just email us and we'll send you the code to paste into your page. Easy as pie.

Thank you for your support!

April 4, 2007

In case you didn't get the early word, the Wampus Multimedia Songwriters' Showcase is happening Saturday, April 14, 9:00 p.m., at the Galaxy Hut in Arlington, Virginia. It'll feature our Washington, D.C. artists -- Alice Despard, Kowtow Popof, Grahame Davies, and Arms of Kismet, with Evan Pollack making some extended cameos on the drums.

If you haven't hung out at the Hut before, it's an inviting little bar with a tricked-out-living-room vibe. Food, drink, music -- the essentials. Clear your calendar (or at least drop by), and we'll be very into you.

Galaxy Hut, 2711 Wilson Blvd., Arlington, VA 22201 / 703.525.8646

April 1, 2007

Wampus is sponsoring the FUZE Battle of the Bands on Saturday, April 28 at the Sportsplex in Winchester, Virginia. This event is a lovefest for up-and-coming independent artists from the American east. The show will be headlined by Winchester's own Parade the Day, recently signed by Walking City Records.

Competing bands include The Season (Nashville, Tennessee), American Deluxe (Syracuse, New York), Somber (Hegins, Pennsylvania), Dice Fly High (Asheville, North Carolina), and Ajar (Bethlehem, Pennsylvania).

Along with Wampus, FUZE is sponsored by the Children's National Medical Center, C&C Studios, Blind Faith Enterprises, First Bank, The Guitar Studio, Grand Home Furnishings, Virginia National Bank, Gold's Gym, and the Shenandoah Valley Music Festival.

Judges for the competition include singer-songwriter Janna Audey and producer/engineer Eamon Loftus (C&C Studios).

Get your tickets here.

March 25, 2007

Wampus denizens The Crowd Scene spent the balance of yesterday afternoon in C&C Studios, working on foundation tracks for their forthcoming CD, With Complete Glossary for Squares. Evan Pollack manned the drums, bringing his precision and improvisational skills to four new Grahame Davies originals. Keepers.

March 22, 2007

Check out The Anatomy of Buzz by Emanuel Rosen. Why? Because nobody cares much anymore what a company has to say about their product. All we really want to know is what our friend thinks about it, what our neighbor thinks, what the woman in the upstairs apartment thinks. And everyone is more objective about a product than the company making and marketing it.

This is especially true for recording artists, who rely on the viral, "check this out" recommendation as much as anyone. Music only exists, really, when it is heard by someone, when it is acknowledged. An unheard recording is like an unexpressed thought.

Everyone's favorite social networking site, MySpace, runs on a big tank full of buzz. Music is a big part of that. The site runs on ruthless democratization, an almost violent disregard for elitist concepts of quality. Genius and garbage share the same space. As Lou Reed once put it, "I'm just your average guy." The brightest and dimmest bulbs among us all participate, all comment, and all do our thing in the same 10-point black font. What we learn isn't necessarily what will nourish us, or what will stand the test of time, but what people really think about things. And the truth isn't always pretty.

As recording artists, we learn plenty from our reception on MySpace -- be it enthusiastic, dismissive, or apathetic. We find how our music translates. If it doesn't translate as we would like, we make adjustments to it, or we simply disregard the mass market. But the world is not necessarily who we imagine it to be, or who we would like it to be. It is who we find in the corridors.

Let's put our ears to the ground for a sec. Hear that buzzing sound? It's the sound of Hamlet as performed by, say, Carlos Mencia.

Did I mention The Anatomy of Buzz?

March 18, 2007

Josh du Lac writes about pop-punk band Good Charlotte in today's Washington Post Magazine. Why? Good Charlotte has a new record in the works. They've been seen with Hilary Duff and Nicole Richie. They're from the Washington area. So... in a world of great, unheralded music, where truth and beauty and brilliance fall out of every tree, our scribe hand-picks a potboiler from his whuh-the-fuh file.

He tells the story of the Madden brothers: growing up in the wilds of Southern Maryland, their father walked out on them, leaving them with abandonment issues. This presumably drove their successful bid for popular acceptance. And the brothers might be intriguing characters, talented artists, but you wouldn't know it from the article, which reads like a treatment for a TV movie. Our critic notes that while the band's second album sold more than three million units, their third sold "only" 1.1 million -- fomenting consternation, presumably, among soda-pop manufacturers worldwide. Now: Can our heroes come back from their platinum bitchslap? Can they return to the heady form that gave one of them access to Hilary Duff's pants?

Beneath this, du Lac suggests insight into a great joke -- that the meteoric rise from humble origins to fame and fortune is actually just a lateral move. The only real difference between the two stations is the distance of the awaiting drop. Yet he would have us believe the crass manipulations of the band's deep-pocketed sponsors and publicity machine -- nothing special -- have some sociological significance, some pop-culture relevance, some interest beyond the prurient.

Y' think?

March 14, 2007

So -- who is this great new Dutch indie band we defied you to name? After a little mystery, the illustrious Martijn de Vries, his hand on the buzzer, his nose in the encyclopedia, hit the jackpot: the band is The May Bees. Stay tuned for more on that in the very near future.

And yes, yes, Martijn wins a prize. Just for caring. Just for beating you.

March 10, 2007

The well-meaning but out-of-touch U.S. Copyright Office is trying again to bring Internet broadcasters into the performance-royalty collection stream. This would be a nice idea if the outlets in question were making any money, but they're not. They aren't making diddly-squat. Yet the government would like them to pay fees steep enough to shut them down.

These broadcasters are a lifeline for independent artists. There is an understanding in independent music that, in appreciation for playing the music, broadcasters don't pay for it. It's a symbiotic relationship. It works.

What can you do about it? Sign a petition, of course. Stop the madness.

March 7, 2007

Be still our pounding drums: Mary McCann at RadioioUnlimited just added Kowtow Popof's End of Greatness (along with, natch, new platters from Fountains of Wayne and Robyn Hitchcock) to her rotation. EoG is eating bandwidth on a station near you, courtesy of our pals at Notorious Radio. Score it, don't ignore it.

It's true, we're adding a new Dutch indie band to the ranks. Their spirited guitar-and-drums onslaught is more like a battalion than a duo. Be the first to guess who it is, and you'll win a nice copy of Neil Luckett's acoustic disc, Radio for Cats.

March 5, 2007

Today we ponder the sad, strange demise of Dependent Records. The respected German indie announced recently, seemingly out of the blue, that it will close its doors this summer. And why? Not because they found more lucrative work as computer programmers. Not because anybody died. No, Dependent is disappearing because it can't co-exist with customers who pump gas and drive off without paying. A record label is no different from any other business -- steal enough gas from your local Texaco dealer and he will pack it in, too.

It was Dependent's customers who sank the ship while dancing on its deck. Evidently they liked free stuff.

Some say P2P downloading isn't the same as cribbing a Snickers. Follow that logic and you'll end up in a big bed of thorns. To quote Dependent, "this is not about money, and it never was." Hats off. Even idealists have to eat.

March 4, 2007

Look around the next corner, down that back alley, and you'll find great music. Check your rearview and you'll find more. Get out of the car and you'll stumble over something amazing, much of it jaw-dropping in its obscurity, all of it deserving of your attention. In a perfect world, that music would simply reveal itself to you. In this one, though, where we have our time pressed and squeezed like a Florida orange, we miss more music than we will ever hear.

Fortunately we don't miss all of it. And when we hear a raging two-headed monster of an indie band, calling to mind Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, Guided By Voices, Sonic Youth, Grandaddy, and Pedro the Lion, delivering apocalyptic rock-club thrash with a maple-syrup coating, we stand up and take notice.

We think you will, too. Stay tuned.

March 3, 2007

A couple of popular misconceptions about the Internet: a) it is "devaluing" music; and b) it has "put control back in the hands of the artist."

The Internet can't "do" anything. It's a tool. It isn't to blame for people stealing music any more than it's to blame for people stealing cars. It doesn't force anyone to distribute bad music by inexpensive means. It hasn't granted "control" to anyone over anything, least of all over the marketplace. What people have done is undermine the influence of traditional "filters" (the established media and music business) and replace them with a massive "commons" of content no one has time to wade through. We need new-media filters (podcasts, blogs, aggregators) to make sense of the avalanche. Otherwise stuff we don't need to hear makes it all the way to our virtual doorstep, instead of being routed into a bright, silver receptacle 600 miles before it gets to us. That ain't progress.

Only a person can "devalue." Only a person can "control." The Internet makes it easier for us to travel, to be loud, to express, to expose. It doesn't steal from or enslave us. It is a bullhorn, and we can use it to broadcast whatever we want.

Music still has value; it's just easier to disregard. We all have the same control we always had; it's just easier to lose.

March 2, 2007

The Wampus Multimedia Songwriters' Showcase is happening Saturday, April 14 at the Galaxy Hut in Arlington, Virginia. It'll feature our Washington, D.C. artists -- Alice Despard, Kowtow Popof, Grahame Davies, and Arms of Kismet, with Evan Pollack making some extended cameos on the drums. If you haven't hung out at the Hut before, it's an inviting little bar with a tricked-out-living-room vibe. Food, drink, music -- the essentials. Clear your calendar (or at least drop by), and we'll be very into you.

March 1, 2007

We're getting deeper into music licensing. In April we're releasing a new compilation, Wampus Multimedia: Modern Rock & Modern Folk. We're launching it at indie directors -- the growing ranks -- and other film producers who need "scene" music, backing tracks, and the like. We're also stocking it at retail at a discount price, which is lovely, no? It features at least one track from every artist on the label.

Unlike those major labels -- maybe you've heard of them -- we're not pricing ourselves out of the independent market. Music has value, naturally, so we don't want to treat it like air (i.e., free, except when packaged), but good exposure has value, too. We're thinking major-label quality at a sweet indie price. Sound reasonable? Give us a gold star.

Think something by a Wampus artist might be right for your project? Drop us a line.

February 28, 2007

We are excited to announce the imminent publication of our first eBook titles -- that's right, funky little digital books you can read on your smartphone or PDA. What is the world coming to? Answer: good times.

Sharing your zeal for essays, how-to's, fiction, creative nonfiction, and travelogues, we would like to whet your appetite for...

We'll make all these available to you next month. Join the "virtual book" revolution -- and take us with you on your next long commute.

February 27, 2007

Wampus is "in discussions" with a great new Dutch indie band, but we can't tell you who they are yet. Let's just say they're as explosive and tuneful as the White Stripes, and at least as much fun. Stay tuned.

February 25, 2007

Wampus has a great new intern -- Stephanie Pahutski, an arts management major at Shenandoah University. Stephanie is spreading our tireless agenda to the world of new media, making friends with bloggers and podcasters and crazed indie-music fanatics the world over.

Says Stephanie, "I like to dig into the underground to find new music. I use the Internet a lot, and have a lot of friends who are in bands and constantly learning. I have studied music for quite a while, and have really come to appreciate the independent scene, because it's where the most passionate musicians put out some of the best work." Damn straight.

Want to be a Wampus MySpace "friend"? Sure, you do. Visit Stephanie here.

February 21, 2007

Do you have the new Kowtow Popof record yet? We're hardly objective, but we love it. Check it.

February 19, 2007

We're working on the 2007 reissues, which are going to come out on our little sublabel, Foldback Records. Expect some tasty stuff from stalwart Johnny J Blair, as well as a pair of killer discs from "across the pond" that we can't talk about yet.

 

press room| home

©2008 Wampus Multimedia.  all rights reserved.