Unmarried

Previous generations seem to have been satisfied with THE HOBBY. That’s no good for us. We’re all about THE ART. We demand to earn our living and make our mark as creators. But we are the Peter Pan Generation that doesn’t really dig business, so we’re crap at useful things like self-promotion and networking.

I have friends who are happy with normal jobs. They tend to be the ones who are also married, because marriage is a sign of GIVING UP ON THE DREAM. It’s OK to be with someone for ever, as long as you don’t get married. Because you couldn’t possibly get married until you’ve figured it all out (ie. next year).

So we’re all floating along. We hoped turning 30 might bring a flash of enlightenment. It didn’t. We’ve created a wonderful and free digital world where everyone can have everything and we’ve turned down every opportunity to do things ‘the old way’, because we knew things were going to change.

Revolutionary trinket

And things have changed. Instead of making a trinket for fun, giving it as a gift, being surprised when people want more trinkets, making a few more, maybe setting up a little stall somewhere (always as a hobby – never seriously), selling more, making more and selling more, we think of an idea for a revolutionary trinket design, we register revolutionarytrinket.com, we make a business plan that has a huge question mark by the word FUNDING, we build revolutionarytrinket.com/shop, we set up a hosted Gmail account to deal with the inevitable flood of orders and to streamline team calendaring (there has to be a team), we post a couple of mysterious tweets and we wait.

Nothing happens. We never even get round to making stuff any more. We ignore the voices of THE DRAGONS that float over from the TV: “Malcolm, the best thing you can do is to LET IT GO. This is NOT A BUSINESS, and it will NEVER BE A BUSINESS.” What do they know? They’re old and successful. They didn’t create stuff. They did it the boring way. Little by little. With ice cream trucks and leisure centres and shrink-wrapped toys. What is this? 1982? We’re MAKING ART HERE, PEOPLE. Did you even hear Duncan Banatyne on Desert Island Discs? Worst. Taste. Ever.

What’s the answer?

Crowdsourcing. Crowdfunding. Fundcrowding. Micropatronage. Begging. It’s the new way! It worked for Coming & Crying and, um… there are others. We don’t even need to think about money any more. There are people out there who will just give. We think of a clever name for the second-from-bottom-price-point package² and throw in a personal appearance (OMG! Seriously? You’ll turn up at my house and actually clamp a trinket to my mantelpiece? For only £599?), and the money will come rolling in.

Or not. I think there’s another way. In fact, I know there is because Xander has already thought of it. He just hasn’t built it yet. And while he’s away directing a play in Edinburgh, Miranda and I had a secret meeting (with tea and Co-op Truly Irresistible Stem Ginger Cookies), and planned it all out. When Xander gets back he’ll tell you all about it. It’s going to be amazing. ;)

I’m going with ArtistData, which promises a solution to exactly this problem, but I have to say it’s not running quite as smoothly as planned. I need to get decent gig listings up onto these sites:

• Myspace
• Facebook
• Last.fm
• littlefishmusic.com

The idea is that I put the gig info into ArtistData once, and it spews it out to the rest. Turns out it’s not so easy…

Facebook

Let’s start with the good news. It works for Facebook. The listing isn’t fancy but it uses the image I uploaded and gets the date right, which is fine for now.

Myspace

Myspace/ArtistData sync is not working at the moment, because Myspace just updated their event system. This is annoying but understandable. What’s more annoying is that Myspace’s new event editing interface is a fucking nightmare. They’ve managed to improve bits of it while making the rest impossible. Imagine having mandatory address and postcode fields and a picky band name autocomplete on a sluggish form and trying to enter data for ten gigs in a row. Not fun. At all. Can’t wait for ArtistData to catch up on this one…

Last.fm

Last.fm syncing died sometime last year and hasn’t been reinstated. A quick glance at the API suggests that it doesn’t support adding events, and it seems that the issue has been dropped on ArtistData’s end.

littlefishmusic.com

ArtistData supplies an <iframe>-based gig calendar widget to embed on your site. You can change some colours, but ultimately the layout is ugly. And it’s an <iframe>. So I’ve stumped up the extra $3.99/month for XML access to the listings (this also includes RSS feeds for gigs, blogs and news but I’m not planning on using them). When I get round to it I’ll be able to pull in the XML and display it on the site how I like. I’ll probably do it in straight Javascript to start with, then implement some sort of cache later so it’s not relying on the ArtistData site being up (they had some serious downtime today).

So far, so mediocre

At the moment, ArtistData is saving me precisely zero keystrokes. I know some of it the crap is temporary, and they do generally seem like nice people. But I do seem to be paying for very little at the moment.

I’m going to stick it out for a few months while the Myspace thing gets sorted and I get the Tumblr site working well. Hopefully I’ll be able to feed into the process at ArtistData and let them know how it feels from the ground. I’ve been signed up since beta, so I guess it’s time I gave them some useful feedback, eh?

I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, I’m thankful for all the downtime in the van. There’s nothing like a bit of rock’n'roll data entry to liven up a 5 hour drive.

What are the choices?

• Facebook events
• Myspace gigs
• Upcoming
• Eventful
• Twitter tools like Twtvite and Schmap
• Hand-rolled (eg. WordPress plugin)

Facebook

Facebook events seems like a good place to start. The way Facebook handles events is great (mostly). It’s tempting to just use Facebook events and embed widgets everywhere else. But it’s not open. Facebook event listings are usually publicly accessible and show up in Google listings, but you need a Facebook account to interact.

Myspace

Unsurprisingly, Myspace gigs gig listings are shit. They look messy, they are annoying to update, you can’t share them easily and they don’t link in with anything useful. Also unsurprisingly, they are the most commonly used gig listings ever.

Upcoming

Upcoming is an event listing site that’s really clever about using hcal, RSS, Flickr machine tags, and other geeky stuff. It’s close to perfect as a solution for the online gig conundrum but non-geeks probably won’t use it, so we would need to feed listings from Upcoming out to other, more familiar, services.

Eventful

Eventful is pretty similar to Upcoming, but maybe not quite as slick. It seems to be a little more US-centric too. On the other hand, it has the “request a band to play in your town” feature, which is what Jonathan Coulton used to plan his early tours.

Twitter tools

Twtvite, Schmap and the rest are great single-use web apps. If your entire audience is on Twitter they are perfect. If not, they will only ever be part of the answer.

In the context of Twitter, I reckon you could do some great stuff with these tools. Something like Schmap is a lightweight layer between the ephemera of Twitter and the static info page. There’s a map built in for instant geographical context, a simple one-click RSVP, a short decsription, a single image and a link to a page with more info. For the Twitter part of the solution you could do a lot worse.

Hand-rolled

There are some good WordPress plugins and modules for other CMSs that let you post gig listings and make them look cool, link to ticket shops and so on. The problem with all of them is that they restrict the listings to your site. Great for fans, but not for everyone else. How many people look at your site to see who’s playing at their local venue?

The secret weapon

There’s a site called ArtistData that lets you update loads of services at once. You enter the gig details once and they get synced to Myspace, Facebook, etc. We still need to figure out where best to put the listings, but ArtistData will come in handy.

How do we put them together?

Let’s get technical. What are the fixed points?

1. We can’t ignore Facebook. People on Facebook will want to use it for events.
2. We only want to update gig details once.
3. A gig needs to be shareable on at least Facebook, Twitter and email.
4. We want people to be able to say they’re coming and ideally comment, but not necessarily all on the same platform.
5. Each gig needs a single canonical URL which acts as the digital address of the physical event.
6. We want to avoid automated or annoying tweets and status updates.

I think the trick is to separate out the functionality:

• Create one master page for each gig with all the details, links, pictures, flyers etc.
• Automate the creation of an entry on each platform you want to support that provides basic information and links back to the master page. This doesn’t include Twitter, unless there’s a very clever non-annoying natural language solution. Better to automate the creation of the Schmap and update Twitter by hand.
• As a bonus, it would be great if the master page could pull in some stats from the satellite pages (eg. how many Facebook RSVPs or Twtvite sign-ups) and reflect the conversation going on around the gig (which might tie in with Steve Lawson’s post about machine tagging gigs) UPDATE: Steve’s post was about machine tagging beta releases of music, but is still worth a read.

What do you reckon?

The question is, what do we use to create the master page? Facebook might be a contender. It’s tricky to feed stuff out from Facebook, but ArtistData could push the content to Facebook and the others.

What do you reckon? Any thoughts? What do you use?

UPDATE: @garrettc, @quitexander, @platform3, @Jazza_UK and @mondoagogo mentioned Last.fm, GigPress, Songkick and friends as good platforms for and/or sources of gig info. Thank you all. I’ll investigate and report back. ;)

What’s the point of a band website?

Most bands want a website that looks cool, in the same way that they want their album art to be cool and their gig posters to be cool. Album art and gig posters have a very simple purpose: the one-way communication of a small amount of information. A website has a complex purpose: it has to be a social object¹ around which people can gather and converse, a point of engagement between fan and band, and a shop (if not more). And it has to look cool.

As with all this internet stuff, there’s no single answer that will suit every band. I rarely find band websites that I think are good, but when I do it’s always because the site completely fits with the band. Pomplamoose‘s main internet presence is their YouTube channel, because they make Videosongs and that’s where their fans go to engage with them. BareNakedLadies have a full-featured website with multi-author blogs, behind-the-scenes videos, and shedloads of content², because their fans are geeks and enjoy getting involved with all that stuff.

What about bands that aren’t geeks?

There’s a problem when a band doesn’t use the internet in the same way as its fans. If a band only wants to use MySpace I’m never going to notice them. If a potential fan isn’t on Twitter they are unlikely to hear about me. If a band wants to communicate by post (I’m looking at you, Islet ;) they are going to have trouble engaging with the digital geeks who want to be involved.

There’s a part of me (the wannabe rock star) that sides with the stubborn bands. I stopped playing live gigs completely last year and just played online in various weird and wonderful ways. I love the two issues of The Isness that Islet have posted to me (in the actual post – on paper). I understand that as a band you want to define the rules of engagement and make your artistic statement. I understand that a lot of bands don’t spend all their time online. I understand that maintaining an element of mystery and theatre can make for an amazing magical live show.

But there’s another part of me (the music fan) that’s only ever had really deep positive experiences with bands when I’ve been able to get past the show and find out about the people and the story behind the music. At first it was from my Dad telling stories about records in his collection. As a teenager it was through books and films about rock stars and music scenes that I’d missed by decades, and endless conversations in record shops and issues of Record Collector. Then people started posting MP3 bootlegs on forums³ and making websites about otherwise mysterious legends. Now people recommend music on Posterous, tweet Spotify playlists and the conversations about music are easier to tap into than ever before.

Why not let the fans make all the content?

The old music industry model created social objects (records, magazine interviews, press releases, tabloid stories) to feed the conversation, so the artists didn’t have to. Now people want to engage with bands outside the mainstream press, and either the band creates the social objects or the fans do. A lot of bands are building websites that allow fans to create stuff, but it’s not that easy.

Jonathan Coulton fans make loads of videos, cover versions and remixes of his music, but he gave them loads of stuff first: he posted a song a week and blogged the whole thing. He also spent half his time answering email.

So why not let the fans make all the content? Because in almost all cases they won’t. Not unless the bands make way more first.

Why do fans go to band websites?

This may be the wrong question to ask, because I’m not sure they do. I certainly don’t (well, almost never), and in my straw poll of random people in pubs over the last few months nobody else did either. Let’s figure out the reasons why I very occasionally visit band websites:

• I visit Steve Lawson’s site for the blog. But only occasionally, because I read it in RSS and only ever click through to the site if there’s a funky embed that doesn’t show up in Google Reader.
• I went to Pomplamoose’s site after I’d watched all their YouTube videos to see whether they had anything else to offer. They don’t. Their site is just music players, the latest video, iTunes links and an about page.
• I follow links from Twitter to blog posts on bands’ or artists’ websites sometimes. If it’s an amazing blog post and I’m absolutely overwhelmed with respect for the author I might listen to a track or two.
• That’s it. I may not be a representative music fan, but I’ll bet that if you asked random music-liking people⁴ which band websites they visit regularly (or ever) you’d be met with blank stares. So…

Where do fans go to engage with music online?

Me first. Here’s what I’ve used recently to discover, share, research, listen to and talk about music (not counting my own music):

• @solobasssteve just recommended a band to me on Twitter, after I mentioned liking Pomplamoose.
• Earlier today I checked out Chris TT‘s tour schedule after seeing him talk about his upcoming gigs on Twitter. He doesn’t pimp his gigs often – I follow him because I enjoy reading his tweets – so when he does I’m interested.
• Also today I saw Richard Walters tweet about Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue, and sent him a link to the fan website where I originally read about it years ago (before it was reissued⁵).
• A few days ago I listened to some tunes by The Monroe Transfer on their Bandcamp page, after I had a conversation over Google Chat with Nick about releasing music online.
• I’ve watched a load of songs on YouTube that people have recommended, embedded, tweeted, Facebooked or emailed recently – maybe 30 this year.
• I’ve listened to Miriam Jones’ Solitary Songs on Bandcamp because I keep meaning to buy them but haven’t got round to it yet.
• I’ve embedded an occasional YouTube video of a song on my Tumblr blog.
• I’ve listened to maybe a dozen tracks that people I follow have posted on Tumblr, but only when there’s a story or at least a hearty recommendation to go with it. There’s nothing less appealing than a lonely Flash audio player.
• As I was editing this post I listened to three tracks by a band called Physical Education because they flattered me on Twitter.

I don’t really know what other people get up to, but off the top of my head:

• People still seem to be using Spotify quite a lot. This year I’ve only opened it to get a couple of invites to send to people, but then I don’t listen to music radio either so let’s not read too much into that.
• I see quite a few links fly by on Twitter to blip.fm, last.fm and the like.
• Andrew Dubber is making Dubber’s Weekly Jazz (“Like a weekly specialist radio show – but on Spotify”), a weekly Spotify playlist posted to a Posterous blog.
• Steve Lawson is embedding Bandcamp players on a Posterous blog to recommend new music (he even recommended my album!)

Any conclusions?

I’ll let this lot compost for a while and see if I can come up with anything useful, but here are my initial thoughts:

1. I’m an edge case in the big picture of listening habits. But now that the homogenous glob of “audience” is fragmented into a whole load of individuals, I guess we’re dealing with an entire dataset of edge cases. I know that can’t exist (except maybe on a circular graph – anyone?), but you know what I mean.
2. Maybe a band website just needs to link to all the other stuff (sort of like flavors.me, which I used to set up benwalkersongwriter.com yesterday).
3. Maybe a band website needs to be a blog to be interesting. That’s certainly what draws me in to a band (and what I’m leaning towards with my own site).
4. Maybe a band doesn’t need a website at all.
5. Bands need to create shareable stuff. For me as a music fan that means blog posts, YouTube videos, music on Bandcamp or Spotify and MP3s for Tumblr.
6. Mysterious bands never appear on my radar. They may be getting great reviews or appearing in Sunday supplements or being on TV or making the best album ever, but I won’t know about it. And if I don’t know about it I won’t miss it.

I need to have at least half a dozen more pub conversations about this before it will start to make sense. If you can help clarify any of it, or just add an example to my painfully narrow data, please comment. I’m intrigued to know what you think. ;)

The fiasco prompted some interesting, thoughtful and occasionally inspirational blog posts from Twitter sympathisers, the best of which was a post by @glinner called The Conversation. It is in fact a direct response to yet another badly-researched Twitter piece in the broadsheets, but it presents a good answer to the ‘babble’ accusation:

…we are communicating with each other on a platform that encourages good manners, that rewards us when we’re interesting and lightly smacks our hand when we’re not. For the first time in history, the human race is having a global conversation, and despite all our differences, we actually seem to be getting on quite well.

Twitter is all about context, and that’s what you can’t see from the outside. Let’s take the classic ‘what I had for breakfast’ tweet:

Avocado on toast. Breakfast of champions. @aliteralgirl

This tweet is not:

• newsworthy;
• literary genius;
• life-changing;
• hilarious;
• sponsored by the Avocado Board with support from the Olympic Committee;
• inciting hatred;
• illegal.

Neither is it:

• boring;
• pointless;
• narcissistic;
• laughable;
• ridiculous;
• a sign that society is doomed.

But it is:

• cute;
• positive;
• polite;
• pithy.

I know @aliteralgirl.

If I didn’t know @aliteralgirl, and I were browsing the Twitter public timeline trying to classify tweets for some shonky PR research assignment, and one of the categories available was ‘Babble’, I would probably class this tweet as ‘Babble’.

But I happen to know @aliteralgirl. And she knows me. We talk in real life once or twice a week, and the rest of the time we’re part of The Conversation on Twitter. So when I saw this tweet I read it as shorthand for something like this:

I’m eating avocado. It’s after 11, so I probably overslept and might be late for my teaching job. I’ll probably have to cycle like a demon to get there, but once I’m there nobody will really care that I was late and I’ll sit staring out of the window as usual. So for now I’m quite amused that I’ve made myself a slightly quirky breakfast, and I’m glad to be able to share it with a handful of people who might be reading Twitter at the moment.

Rather than just reporting my breakfast, which is acceptable but mediocre I’m adding a comment. Staking a claim. Not only am I eating avocado on toast, I’m telling you, the world, that it’s a great thing. Breakfast of champions. If you want to be a champion, you should really be eating this. If I were publishing this in a newspaper, or standing on a street corner shouting it, I would probably choose different words. Something more straightforward, maybe. ‘I love avocado on toast’ or ‘Eat avocado on toast’. But given that my boyfriend (who will definitely read this) and most of the other people who regularly spot my tweets generally have a certain quirky, British sense of humour, I’ve written it as a deadpan advertising slogan knowing full well that everyone will understand the spirit in which it was written. Except maybe the girl who’s watching the public timeline and classifying tweets. She’ll probably put it in the ‘Babble’ box.

You see, this tiny bit of babble is part of a huge conversation. My interpretation is only one of many, and the conversation carries over seamlessly into real life. You might even say that, in this case, the online part of the conversation is an extension of the real life part.

A justimanifestification for the Tweet Suite

I get a bit antsy and embarrassed when artists start to justify and explain their work, or produce manifestos, or make claims about the effects their work has on the world. But sometimes art does have a relevance beyond the aesthetic. Feel free to slap me round the face with a trout if I’m disappearing up my own arse, but I think the Tweet Suite has a message, albeit a simple one:

Babble is valuable in context.

In the context of a conversation, babble has value. With the Tweet Suite I’m setting babble to music, and that gives it context and therefore value. By making the avocado on toast tweet into an annoyingly catchy jingle, I’ve given it an unexpected life beyond its fleeting appearance on a handful of screens.

[The track isn\'t included in the RSS feed. Visit the blog to listen. ;o]

Don’t get me wrong. I’m writing the Tweet Suite (50 movements in 90 days) because it’s fun, it’s something interesting to talk about, and I work better to a deadline. But whenever Twitter gets accused of being babble, I’m going to jump on a chair and give an impromptu performance of Movement 7 of the Tweet Suite. So if you see a 9-foot fop singing about avocado on toast, you’ll know what’s going on. And I’d appreciate it if you could join in with the harmonies at the end.

Article 19

The Royal Court Theatre (of which, until recently, I was completely unaware) commissions work from talented and underappreciated playwrights, and is therefore brilliant. This particular play was called Article 19, and was written by Juan Mayorga (one of Spain’s most celebrated writers, of whom I was also completely unaware). From the programme:

We asked four leading contemporary playwrights to write a 10 minute play in response to Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

Mayorga’s play is a single 15-minute scene in which a mapmaker is being interrogated by a pair of authority figures. He has been making maps of Madrid on commission, each one illustrating a dataset of the patron’s choosing. Some are seemingly innocent, with titles like “the places I’ve kissed my girlfriend” and some are suspicious, most notably the map that shows where all the judges live.

Online mapping is nothing without human interpretation

My mind was racing trying to think of the real-life equivalents of the mapmakers fantastic creations: the mashup that mapped all the BNP members’ addresses, The Guardian’s Open Platform that lets people map the news, Dopplr and the rest. People now have the power to create and publish visualisations of almost anything, and visual representations can communicate a dry dataset to us in a more understandable, even emotional way.

But there was something more about this mapmaker that was making his interrogators scared, and I felt it too. I didn’t imagine his hand-drawn maps as glorified Google Maps with little info bubbles. The way they were described, these maps could simply and quickly communicate everything you need to know about the data. He was interpreting the data and picking out high-level patterns. And it’s the human interpretation that makes them so valuable and dangerous.

I’ve come across some great examples of personal data visualization and mapping recently, and since Mayorga’s play I’ve been bookmarking them:

• Nicholas Felton created The Feltron Annual Report 2008, which shows exactly how far he travelled and how, and anything else he can attach a number to (sporting activities, temperature, birthday parties). It’s amazing how much I feel like I know Felton having read this 8-page report.
• Strange Maps is a blog that collects strange maps. Obviously. It’s incredible. The first one at the moment is What’s On Earth Tonight, a hand-drawn map of the galaxy that shows what alien life at different distances would see on TV signals from Earth (given the speed at which radio waves travel). It’s strange to think that the little green dudes on Mu Arae are intercepting episodes of Rawhide.
• This visualization of the total volume of water on Earth and of air in the Earth’s atmosphere shown as spheres (from the Science Photo Library) made me fall off my chair and realize the fragility of life. The numbers alone would never have had that effect.

Why I’m not allowed to talk about Article 19

I only have one complaint about this play. Why can’t I access it online? Am I crazy to think that publishing the script online would encourage more people to engage with it? I don’t mind if it’s only the Spanish version (assuming it was written originally in Spanish). I would love to be able to read the play again, and explore some of Mayorga’s other work. I would also have liked to use a couple of quotes, and included full attribution with a link so you could read it too. I tried to take a photo of the set before the actors arrived to give you an idea of how it looked. A member of the theatre staff blocked my view and told me photos weren’t allowed.

The Royal Court commissioned a play about the ‘freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers’. The play was a wonderful interpretation of this idea that not only entertained but also provoked discussion, thought and argument in the theatre bar. But frontiers were regarded, and media filtered. Presumably if I had a badge of some sort I would be allowed, even encouraged, to write a review of the play and publish it in a newspaper or magazine. But as a member of the audience note- and picture-taking was frowned upon, and I have no access to the script.

I love what the Royal Court is doing to support and encourage new writing. I think they could do so much more by supporting and encouraging online conversation about their work. Sometimes the artists are already engaged in this way (like Nick blogging about the writing process for Thrown) and just need to be amplified. For those that aren’t (and I realize that there is a generation of playwrights who are loath to use a computer, never mind a blog), there’s a lot the theatre could do on their behalf.

For the conversation to happen, the audience needs a social object around which to gather. For the short time they are in the theatre the performance fulfils that role. But you can’t hyperlink to a performance, so there needs to be something online: a recording of the performance, a script, photos, even a blog post. And better still, why not let the audience create some of that. Let me take a picture. I’ll be happy to tag it #royalcourt, release it under a Creative Commons license and let the theatre use it as part of the online performance.

It’s amazing how containers can make us lazy about content. The assumptions we make about the nature of music, collections of music, what constitutes a ‘complete work’ etc.

I absolutely agree, and I’ve come across a wonderful example of a post-Album project that not only breaks the boundaries by being 185 songs long, but is delivered as a podcast, features 185 different artists and provides better sleeve notes than I ever saw on a CD.

I’m not going to miss the album that much.

Seriously. I never thought the day would come when I would be happy to leave my record collection (and my 1983 direct drive turntable) languishing in a barn. But that’s where they are. If I feel sentimental about my dog-eared 12″ of Deep Purple’s Burn (like I did last week), I grab the torrent and ten minutes later it’s on my iPod as I stroll down the street grinning and brandishing the air guitar.

Musicians get quite precious about The Album as an artistic form, and there are loads of albums that are so much more than a simple playlist of songs. Sleeve notes and artwork also help to create a listening experience around the music. That’s great, and there’s nothing to stop musicians creating 45-minute collections of songs for download if that’s what they want to do. They can even separate them into Side A and Side B if they like. Two ZIP files instead of one. And sleeve notes work really well online – check out David Jennings’ wonderful 69 Love Songs companion piece.

When you think about it, the album was good for a few things:

• It gave musicians a form within which to create music.
• It gave the audience an easy and understandable way of supporting an artist.
• It gave the record company a product.
• It was a carrier for sleeve notes and artwork (aka. context).

Now the record industry is concerning itself with collapse, profits and Britain’s Got Talent. The audience has a new easy, understandable way of supporting an artist (iTunes etc.). The musicians are starting to realise that it’s not very difficult to replace the creative limitations of the album format with limitations of their own devising. Being creative is, after all, what they are supposed to be good at.

So now we can create whatever musical projects we like to catch people’s attention, it’s the really creative artists who are making waves. Roger and Dave are a pair of musicians, artists and producers who work in New York. They have come up with the best idea I have heard in, well, ever.

The Beatles Complete On Ukulele

It sounds like the kind of project I would find scrawled in my Moleskine the morning after a party. On finding this message from my enlightened self, I would chuckle and cross it neatly out. Because I’m not as brilliant and visionary as Roger and Dave.

The concept is simple (and it’s all about the concept):

Roger and Dave will….

1. Record & perform on ukulele all 185 original compositions by The Beatles with 185 guest artists.
2. Write essays to coincide with each release.
3. Make available for download one new recording and essay every Tuesday for 185 weeks, beginning January 20, 2009 (Inauguration Day) and climaxing July 24, 2012 (The eve of the London Olympics).

Each song is posted on a simple Blogger website, and there’s an iTunes feed so you can subscribe to the project as a podcast in iTunes. And that’s where it becomes really interesting, and where Roger and Dave have created something new and beautiful.

It’s all about the experience

When you listen to the latest Beatles cover on your iPod, the accompanying essay (aka. sleeve notes) is displayed on your iPod screen. So you read it as you’re listening. They give you an amusing but incredibly well researched insight into the writing and recording of the original, including anecdotes and rambles about what John and Paul were up to at that point in their songwriting career. They critique the song and the recording as songwriters, producers, curators and archivists. Then they introduce you to whoever is covering the song (a different musician sings each week, and they provide the ukulele and produce the rest of the track).

By the time you’re half way through reading the sleeve notes the song has finished, so you put it on again to get the rest of the essay. And maybe again. You listen to the song two or three times through while reading about it and immersing yourself in the details and the stories. Does this sound familiar? Isn’t this the mythical value of The Album? Didn’t you used to sit on your bed listening to the album all the way through two or three times while scouring the sleeve notes and the artwork for context, reassurance and trivia?

That’s how I felt when I sat on the train listening to Emily Zuzik singing Hold Me Tight (one of the most exhiliratingly cool tracks I’ve heard for years) and reading the essay. Try it. Right now. Press play and read the quote:

[The track isn\'t included in the RSS feed. Visit the blog to listen. ;o]

The tune features an incredibly precocious vocal melody over a swinging American Rhythm and Blues form. Fabulous harmony. But critically, Hold Me Tight is marred by insipid innocuous non-threatening male expressions of affection, designed to elicit the slightest of squeals from a twittering Tween. Lyrically typical of the songs Lennon and McCartney were writing at the time, our Hero is not even getting to first base. Hold Me Tight. I Wanna Hold Your Hand. I’m Happy Just To Dance With You. Young girls like to be liked. But not too much. Don’t go too far. Musically this song is a success. Lyrically, embarrassing. What’s going on here? The contrast between the Beatles STD-riddled, licentious and voluptuous pill popping real lives, and the lyrics of their early teenage puppy love songs, was vast. I believe this cognitive dissonance was a central facet of their initial appeal.

I don’t know about you, but that’s what I’m looking for in a listening experience. An experience. I want my music to arrive with this much context built in. We’ve been doing it with video, with live shows and with websites of vaguely interesting writing. And now Roger and Dave are doing it with a podcast. And a ukulele.

It Won’t Be Long

When you come across a project like this, you would be insane not to get involved. So when Roger and Dave asked me to record a song for TBCOU, I dug out my old Beatles records and searched for a song to cover. I didn’t have to look far. It Won’t Be Long is the first track on With The Beatles, which is the first Beatles album I ever heard while digging through my dad’s collection back in the late eighties. The song is fun, cheesy, and energetic. Ideal.

I recorded a quirky but authentic version with a simple guitar track, the main riff on piano and sixteen tracks of harmonies, and emailed it to New York. Having heard the spotless production and impeccable wit of the first 21 tracks of the project, I have a feeling this is going to be incredible.

If you want my musical recommendation for 2009 (and a podcast that will keep delivering amazing versions of songs you already love until 2012!) I suggest you subscribe to TBCOU right now. And in case you need any more persuasion, here’s the latest episode. A dub reggae version of Blackbird. Un. Fucking. Believeable. ;)

[The track isn\'t included in the RSS feed. Visit the blog to listen. ;o]

UPDATE: My cover of It Won’t Be Long is up on the TBCOU site, and it’s better than I could have imagined!

In case you haven’t come across it, AudioBoo is an iPhone app that lets you record a short podcast (5 minutes max), title it, tag it, attach a photo and upload it straight to the AudioBoo website, which is set up like Twitter (you follow people, they follow you, everyone has a party, etc.).

Idea 1: An insight into the songwriting process

My first inclination was to record song fragments or ideas as I write them. It’s a romantic idea, that listeners could have a direct line into the songwriter’s head as he toys with fully-orchestrated sections of potential song. But that doesn’t really fit my way of writing. I tend to have an almost complete lyric before I start strumming, and a podcast of me reciting half-written lyrics doesn’t sound great. It’s not that I’m precious about my unfinished works (I tend to publish first, rewrite later), but a photo of a notebook or a Tumblr post would be more useful than AudioBoo.

Idea 2: Bootlegging and reviews

Secondly I tried AudioBooing gigs. I recorded one on the way to see Little Feat, with the intention of using AudioBoo to capture the atmosphere of the gig later. But I was having too much fun to bother fiddling with technology, and there was zero signal in the Academy anyway. And if I can’t upload straight away, I lose the motivation pretty quickly.

I had more luck at an acoustic Stornoway gig at the Rusty Bicycle, where I embarrassed my brother by sliding my iPod Touch across the floor (Ghostbusters style) to record a song before videoing it with the N95 in one hand and taking stills with the ES400D in the other. Because the gig was completely acoustic and I was two feet from the band I could get decent recordings of Fuel Up and We Are The Battery Human. But I don’t think AudioBoo is going to be the next killer bootlegging app.

Idea 3: Covers and quick demos

I was working on a cover of The Beatles’ It Won’t Be Long for Roger and Dave‘s Complete Beatles On Ukulele project, and my third AudioBoo strategy was to record a quick version of that mid-rehearsal. That worked pretty well, helped by Colt Seavers‘ AudioBooTH project, which gives context to musical and art-related boos (and happened to be in the middle of a “covers” week). A few days later I recorded a Sunday morning cover of a Little Feat song. I think using AudioBoo to record quick and dirty versions of songs (covers or not) is something that I’ll be playing with more.

Idea 4: New life for unsung classics

I had an idea a while ago that I could use AudioBoo as a dumping ground for the best of the old, unfinished songs that don’t make it onto albums and websites. I occasionally listen back my archives of demos and experiments, and I always come across something brilliant. It might not be a polished recording. It might not even be much of a song. But it’s a snapshot of a particular interesting moment.

I guess it’s like the “outtakes and B-sides” you get on albums and DVDs. There’s something very immediate and personal about them. Thinking about it now, some of my favourite albums are made up of tracks that didn’t make the cut. Hoy Hoy is a wonderful Little Feat double gatefold album of live tracks, demos, alternate takes and b-sides. Naked Baby Photos is the same for Ben Folds Five. In the post-album digital chaos of ihatemornings.com, maybe AudioBoo can be my outlet for outtakes and B-sides.

On the train home from work my iPod shuffled me up a song I wrote for the 50/90 challenge last year, and which never made it onto my website. It’s called Putting Your Hand In The Blender Again, named after a phrase my girlfriend uses to describe somebody revisiting a bad relationship. In a fit of excitement I recorded a quick intro, then rummaged around for some jack-to-phono leads, plugged my laptop into my stereo, plugged my stereo into my iPod and recorded the song into AudioBoo in glorious hi-fi stereo:

Getting a line input into AudioBoo

If you’re an AudioBoo user, you might be wondering how I managed to get a line in to AudioBoo. It just records from the mic, doesn’t it? Not if you have a 1st Generation iPod Touch and a MicroMemo mic. This random combination gives you a stereo mic or line level input into which you can plug just about anything. I’ve bookmarked a couple of useful links to get you going.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch you can get AudioBoo from the App Store (for free!), and if you don’t you can still check out my boos on the website.

When you play live, you enter into a negotiation with the audience. You start by putting in the effort to promote the gig and get them to turn up. In return for that, they arrive. And they promise you their attention for about 3 minutes.

So what do you do when the spotlight is shining in your face, when you have one chance to transform a moment of fleeting attention into a long and beautiful relationship between your art and its audience?

You have to entertain people

That’s your half of the deal. You entertain people in return for their attention. Like it or not, you’re an entertainer. All musicians like it on some level: there’s no way people would put that much effort into playing music if they didn’t want some other people to hear it. But a lot of musicians persuade themselves that they don’t like it at all. They want to hang on stage like a masterpiece on a museum wall and be appreciated.

For reference, the following are not in themselves entertaining:

• Virtuosic playing
• Baring your soul
• Beautifully poetic lyrics
• Playing in time
• Singing in tune
• Dressing cleverly
• Being loud
• Tuning up
• Having a funny band name

If you’re not convinced, remember this: people aren’t choosing which gig to go to. They are choosing how to be entertained. Your competition isn’t other bands. It’s widescreen TV, pubs, clubs, dinner with friends or a good book. I’ve seen gigs by very good bands that were less entertaining than reading a chapter of Titus Groan with a cup of tea. And those bands have now lost my attention. I know they’re good, I know I enjoy their music. But I’m not engaged any more. I don’t have time for bands that aren’t going to entertain me.

Let me be clear about what I mean by “entertain”. I’m not talking about cheese, I’m not talking about audience interaction or variety shows. And I don’t mean “funny”. You can be entertaining and moody. You can be entertaining and quiet. You can be entertaining and serious. You can be entertaining without talking. You can be entertaining without moving. But like my old friend Nick used to say, “Funny is always better than good.”

To entertain an audience is to hold their attention and give them enjoyment. The word “entertain” can also mean to receive someone as a guest, and that’s a good way of thinking about it. By making music and putting it out there, you have invited a bunch of people into your musical home. It’s now your responsibility to make it a good party. If people sit in silence listening to you tell six or seven stories then leave, it probably wasn’t a good party.

Ben’s Big Gig was all about entertainment

We made sure Ben’s Big Gig was entertaining. Whenever there was a decision to be made there was one final criterion: “Will it be entertaining?” I dropped some of my favourite songs from the set list. I put the band together. I had the Funky Llamas play an interval set instead of being a support band. I gave the audience the Twitter screen so they could heckle. I booked George Chopping to compère. I booked Tom Greeves to do a whole stand-up set in the middle of the gig. I put two shrubs on stage. I got Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall to endorse the gig. All in the name of entertainment.

I knew the music would be good. But I also knew that if I just walked on stage and played sixteen songs back to back people would be bored out of their skulls.

Music has a universal appeal. Most people will enjoy most music given the right context. If you entertain the audience, they will like you and your music. They will abandon all preconceptions about your musical style and your character. They will have a favourite song. They will tell their friends about how great a time they had and how great the music was.

Steve Lawson knows this. He plays solo bass guitar. Nobody in their right mind hears the phrase “solo bass guitar” and rushes to buy tickets. It’s a hard act to sell, if that’s the way you try to sell it. Luckily, Steve doesn’t do that. He has interesting conversations with people. He talks about how great house concerts are. He tells people about the exciting stuff he does with social media. He earns their attention. Then when he mentions months later that he’s putting on a house concert tour, or playing a gig somewhere, people turn up. And they enjoy the music. A lot. Steve’s a brilliant musician, but in a way that’s a bonus. The audience turn up for him and for the event.

Sell it on the story

The bonus of having an entertaining show is that you can sell it on its entertainment factor, not on the quality of the music. When the audience arrives and hears how great the music is they will want to buy CDs, sign up to mailing lists and tell their friends about you. But that’s not what gets them in the door.

You can’t get people excited about a show by telling them how in tune the singer is, how perfectly the band replicates the sound of the album or how efficiently the band can set up and soundcheck. People get excited by the prospect of entertainment. That’s why circus posters say things like “Death-defying leaps!”, “A woman with the head of a chicken!” or “Monkeys!” instead of “A really well-rehearsed band accompanying an seemingly dangerous acrobatic performance for two hours with a short interval”.

That would be boring.

And speaking of funny…

I just finished editing the video of Dressing Up from the Big Gig. Nothing makes me happier than the sound of 200 people singing “on a t-shirt, yeah, yeah”. ;)

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was getting carried away with the enchanting world of Social Media and reading a little too much into the Twitter song’s meteoric rise to Youtube’s bargain bin. I needed to find out what I was supposed to be doing in the real world. So I asked. My wonderful newsletter readers took time out of their busy days to fill out a survey for me, and I present the results to you here, as a reminder that most of the world doesn’t give a fig that you have just signed up to twenty three more websites and figured out how to watch yourself recording demos in the future live on your phone.

You’re smart people, and you can read your own interpretations into the data. I will only point out that the top answers feature words like CD, shop, radio, and friends. So let’s not get carried away with our web-savvy muso selves.

UPDATE: The best way to look at this is to view the full screen slideshow on Flickr. Or just click on a graph below.