Category Archives: Entertainment & Culture

Thomas Dolby in PA, Part II

(almost a week after the fact, and this just getting finished and posted.  oh, well, I get there eventually…)
One of my worst nightmares is gear going wrong on stage. Back in the “good old days” (1990), I was doing a show (high school musical where three of us got to write and perform the music to lyrics written by the head of the English department, who also wrote the musical. But I digress.), and during one performance my Atari 1040ST locked up on me just before one of my cues. I managed to get the thing rebooted, reloaded and the sequence ready to go in time, but my nerves were pretty much shot at that point.

Some 16 years later, I’m sitting in the Sellersville Theater in PA, watching Thomas Dolby, with all that wonderful technology, go through the same thing, as one of his main synths refused to make any noises on a couple of occassions (to the point that after the first song, he had to stop the show to fix it. Which, fortunately, he was able to do). Despite the minor technical difficulties, I don’t think I’ve seen a more brilliant or inspiring show in a long time (if ever). To go on stage night after night and not know if something’s going to work or not, with the attitude he has:

But it’s risky because it can all go horribly wrong. The first few times I attempted this I was terrified I’d trip up and it would all come to a grinding halt. A couple of nights at the beginning of ‘Hyperactive‘, that’s exactly what happened, much to my embarassment. And you know what? Afterwards several people said they thought I made it stop on purpose, because it was funny. Well, that loosened me up a lot, and since then I just adopt an attitude of que sera, sera. We’re all grownups. If I screw up and have to restart, you can wait a few seconds, then you’ll get to hear the intro again!

After the first restart, the musician in me was sitting on the edge of the seat, hoping nothing else would go wrong. Fortunately, the rest of me was able to thoroughly enjoy the show (oh, and much to my relief, I found out I’m not that guy who comes to every gig and shouts “Play Science!”. Whew!). The choice of songs was great, and it was nice to hear familiar sounds in amongst the updated arrangements. I especially enjoyed “One of our Submarines” (loved the intro!) and “I Live in a Suitcase”.

Being a gear-junky myself, I loved the technology and the video. Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you for realizing that some of us *really* want to see what you’re doing! I hate going to a show and not being able to see the keyboardist’s hands! The guy running the video system did an amazing job mixing the two camera views with the other imagery. The “TV” effect was a nice touch, too.

The evening seemed to be over far too soon, and I would love to see the show again: to catch stuff I’d missed the first time, to see how and where the improv bits differ, and just to enjoy the music!  That probably won’t happen, but it sounds like there might be some new material coming, and that hopefully will mean a new tour…

If nothing else, I’ve been inspired to work on expanding my live rig with my laptop, and maybe a new controller or two.

Thomas Dolby has a Blog!

Thanks to Matrixsynth, I’ve learned that Thomas Dolby has a blog. Cool stuff (and if you don’t know his music, find some and listen!), and it’s great to get some behind-the-scenes info. Also nice to know we have similar taste in controllers (I love my UF7!).

Being the geek I am, I loved his description of his live rig, and now that I’m starting to do more gigs (albeit with a much simpler rig), I would love to see him play live. Hmmm…maybe the PA gig in May

Question “Answered”

Well, I didn’t quite expect it like this, but I got an answer to my question: What are you paying for when you buy music? The EFF reported on an RIAA filing that wants to make ripping your own CDs to play on your portable audio device fall outside the fair use definition. In fact, so would just making a backup copy of your CDs.

Thanks, RIAA, for wanting to turn practically everyone who owns a computer into criminals. That should go over very well. Let’s see: I got an iPod so I could carry my entire music collection around with me, which worked out to about 3,800 songs. Re-buying those from the iTunes music store at $0.99/song would cost me $3,762.00. Yeah, I don’t think so. I’m willing to take my chances as a criminal.


What Are You Paying For When You Buy Music?

I have a question. It’s one I’ve been wrestling with for a while now, and don’t have a definitive answer, as you can make arguments for both sides. It’s not the one in the title, we’ll get to that in a minute. The question is this:

If you own a vinyl or cassette version of an album from a record label, does that entitle you to the digital representation of that album, even if it was ripped from a digital source that you didn’t pay for?

The easy answer is “no”, and I would say the argument for that goes something like this (the need to make more money aside): if you only had to pay once for a recording, going from vinyl to cassette to CD would be a simple trade-in, maybe with some compensation for the media itself (which is more substantial with new media formats, but over time goes down dramatically).
The not-so-easy answer, “yes”, opens up more questions. Let’s assume that I’m honest, and all I want to do is to enjoy the music I’ve already purchased on some form of digital playback device (computer, iPod, whatever); I’m not planning on sharing it. Fair use says I can make a backup copy of the media I’ve purchased. Then the solution becomes: well, just rip the original media. Let’s say, however, that I no longer have access to the necessary equipment to do that (which is true: I no longer have a record player). Do I need to invest in obsolete equiment (sorry, DJs/audiophiles!), not to mention the pre-amp I’d need to get the signal into the computer, to get music on my computer, when I can just grab it online somewhere?

I’m not a lawyer, and I haven’t researched this question, so maybe legally it’s a cut-and-dried issue and the answer is “no”. But that then leads to the question in the title: What are you paying for when you buy music? If the answer to the first question is “yes”, then the answer to the second question is easy: the right to listen to that music in any form, anywhere. If, however, the answer to the first question is “no”, then the answer to the second question is along the lines of “the right to borrow the work to listen to it as long as you’ve got the technology to do so in the purchased form”.

Which means it’s not about the music at all, it’s about licensing the right to something. Now I’m not so naive that I think it’s not about licensing, and I’m all for artists being compensated for their work, but when I hear how dismal that compensation can be sometimes, I can’t help wonder who I’m giving money to when I buy a CD of an album I already have the vinyl or cassette of, and why I need to be doing this when the music I thought I had already purchased is a few (questionable) clicks away.

Oh, and before it’s pointed out that $0.99 per song on iTunes isn’t that much to get the digital version of a song, I will agree with you as soon as iTunes gets a comprehensive collection: for the current size of it, I still can’t find most of my older music on it (and I’m not even going to touch the DRM issue).

I could get into analog vs digital copying, and other side issues, but I’m not sure that’s relevant. I just want to know if I really need to pay to have the ability to enjoy all the music I’ve spent money on.
What do you think? Does anyone know the definitive legal answer to this? Have I missed anything obvious?