Recently in Music Category
Many who read the Fozzolog know I've become a fan of Porcupine Tree -- a progressive rock band based out of England. They've been releasing music steadily since the early 1990s.
I saw them perform live last year in San Francisco and had the time of my life. Performing on stage with them was guitarist and singer John Wesley, an American who has accompanied the band on the road since their In Absentia album tour in 2002.
"Wes" is also featured on the band's most recent album Fear Of A Blank Planet.
Anyway, my buddy Thom alerted me today that Wes posted a blog entry to
his
MySpace site a couple days ago which contained some rather shocking
news. Here it is:
"Sharing the Wes"
For me to continue to create music, I have to know that people are hearing it. Elements of cost and lack of distribution have made most of my catalogue very difficult to acquire. So rather than go into a long diatribe about how the industry is changing, I am just going to post this blog to announce a new "Share the Wes" policy.
My entire catalogue is now available through links on this site as MP3 downloads - at no cost.
The only thing I ask in return is that if you choose to download the music and add it to your collection, you "Share the Wes" with everyone you know that may have an interest in the music that I create.
Point them to the site and encourage them to discover the music I have created over the course of my career, and then encourage them to share it!
If you like the music, go to the "Demand it" button on my site, tell me where you are, and hopefully at some point in the future I can come near to where you are and "Share the Wes" live.
I am driven by a need to create and perform. Sharing my music in this manner will help to remove some of the barriers that I have encountered in exposing the songs to a wider audience.
In regards to income, music is not free to create. There are heavy costs in the time, money and expense it takes to create, record and perform the music. Many people also still enjoy having the CD and artwork... Some like to have it signed to collect, and let¹s face it, CD's are higher quality and sound better than MP3's. So to help defray these costs and still make the music available to the fans that love having the discs, I will still offer the music in CD form online and at gigs, although most of the music I am offering is now out of print, which again, is a major factor in my decision to "Share the Wes" for free.
I've added a Paypal button on the site for donations to go towards covering the expense of creating new music. If you download the music and you love it, and you want to be a part of supporting my quest to create more, click the Paypal button. Any amount helps and will go to covering the cost of creating new music.
When I create new music, there will be an initial period where it will only be available on CD or Snocap, again, to help cover the costs.
The bottom line is, there are now over 50 songs on this site to have, to share, and to help you become a part of the entire history of my journey of creating music.
Please take it all, listen to it, and enjoy... and share it!
John Wesley
This is really cool news and it makes perfect sense. Wes is in a good situation to do something like this -- he's fairly independent and not encumbered by the iron fist of a record company.
I say this is common sense because of my experience with Porcupine Tree. I was introduced to the band by word of mouth and was then prompted to download some of their music from (evil, illegal) music sharing sites/networks on the Internet. Some of the stuff I downloaded is out of print or very difficult to get your hands on otherwise.
Someone (perhaps, someone from the RIAA) might say I'm a bad, bad person for doing this, but consider the outcome: I ended up traveling to San Francisco and attending a concert I otherwise would not have. I bought the band's live DVD Arriving Somewhere (which is excellent, BTW), a DTS DVD-Audio version of Deadwing, and the CDs: Fear Of A Blank Planet and Stars Die - The Delerium Years.
Word-of-mouth and, more importantly, music (illegitimately) obtained from online sources results in money in the bank for artists who make good product.
So, if you're inclined to like progressive or alternative rock, you can do as I will also do: download Wes's stuff. See if you like it. If you do, consider purchasing a CD or two or, better yet, hit that "Demand It" button on his site to indicate that you would likely pay for a ticket to a concert in your area if John Wesley were to perform.
Some (crappy) pictures from the Rush show I went to.
We were only 7 or 8 rows from the stage. I went with my buddy Thom.
I was completely blown away with the technology of the show. I counted over 110 intelligent moving head lamps, 8-10 X-Y scanners, two ~8-port green laser units with mirrors placed around the stage, and 10 manned followspots (6 in the rig above the stage and 4 front-of-house). Lots of use of controlled LED technology. There was plenty of lovely fog and several displays of pyrotechnics.
And here's the second part of that Sons Of Nothing concert I uploaded to Google Video. See previous entry for the others. This is Sons Of Nothing in Spokane, WA July 2006.
I went on a video-uploading rampage last night and uploaded a whole DVD's worth of video from a Sons Of Nothing show from last summer. We played at The Big Easy in Spokane, Washington. It was one of the nicest venues we ever played at and the whole experience was great fun. I really regret we didn't have two or three cameras capturing the event for posterity.
The audio comes off the soundboard and sounds great.
So, sit back. relax, slip yourself something if that's your thing. Envelope yourself in the music of Sons Of Nothing as they pay tribute to Pink Floyd (and play a couple of their own tunes.)
- 1 - Speak To Me/Breathe
- 2 - On The Run
- 3 - Time
- 4 - In The Flesh
- 5 - What Do You Want From Me
- 6 - Welcome To The Machine
- 7 - Mother
- 8 - Mr. Serious
- 9 - Wish You Were Here
- 10 - Echoes
That's the first set from the show. I'll put putting up the second set as well in the next day or so.
[From the episode blurb on solitaryworld.net].
This is the very first Solitary World episode. Many weeks went into creating this and it's not the greatest piece of work, but it's not the worst either.
Originally, I was going to do a piece dispelling common misconceptions about the First Ammendment's Establishment Clause and I was going to call the segment "A Moment Of Truth." In the end, I decided this was too broad of a subject with way too many facets for the time we had. It really surprised me how ambitious such a seemingly simple topic could be to cover.
This episode starts with an introductory preview of what is to come. I hope this will remain a staple of the program.
Next is the production support section. Production would not be possible without the support of the dryer and people like you.
Finally, we reach the beginning titles. These are a wee long. I think we'll trim them and make it tighter for future episodes.
The first actual segment of the episode: a segment we call Mandatory Media. This features a review of Porcupine Tree's latest CD. This obviously took up most of the time spent to produce. Consult-o-bot Thom was a tremendous help in writing and recording this piece. Maybe someday I'll post some outtakes. They'd be a riot.
After the Mandatory Media segment, I threw in the Amaze-O-Cut parody. This is nearly 10 years old now, but is still funny. The star is the lovely and talented Marie... Well, it was Marie Barry at the time, but she's going by a different last name now.
Finally, we end with me talking about the vague and nebulous nature of this project.
Finally! It's done!
You can watch it on YouTube or on the Solitary World website.
Hey.
I wonder if anyone remembers me and when I used to post to my blog quite often.
The truth is I've been busy... and reluctant to post because I'm just not satisfied with the blogging software I wrote. Due to the first (the busy thing), I haven't had time to overhaul the Fozzolog code (again) to do it "right." It'll happen, though.
Today is my 35th birthday. Woo.
Five years ago, I concocted a goal for myself that by the time I was 35, I would be doing a lot more with media and not be solely a programmer/sysadmin. Unfortunately, I haven't really made a lot of progress toward that goal. I was producing video content for the Sons Of Nothing band and their live Pink Floyd tribute show, but that's either dead or in the freezer.
There is something coming, though. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but here's a website: <http://www.solitaryworld.net/>.
And now for some completely useless banter: I bought tickets for Christine and I to see Glenn Beck's stage show in Boise, ID on 2 June. We're both excited about that (more me than her, of course). Beck is coming to Salt Lake City in May to give the keynote address at an LDS Single Adult conference. Not sure what that's about. He's not single and he's only barely adult. Heh.
The new Porcupine Tree CD is out as of 24 April. I don't have it. I'm hoping Christine got it for me for my birthday. From what I've heard and seen on the band's MySpace site, it's going to be another great CD. Fear Of A Blank Planet is the title and it seems to include messages about Internet addiction, information overload, videogaming, prescription drugs, NTV, pornography... basically everything that's bad for kids. :-)
I'll see about writing up an indepth review after I've listened to it a few times.
How's that for a record amount of time of not posting anything to my weblog/journal/rantpage?
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving came and went. Christine and I went to her parents' house this year. Adam and Melissa switched their schedule so they'd be going there this year too. Seemed like almost everyone else was there this year too, so next year it will be crickets.
The Colorado tour
The week before Thanksgiving, I accompanied Sons Of Nothing on a four-date tour across the mountain region of Colorado. Stops included Steamboat Springs, Edwards, and Breckenridge.
We were excited about Edwards and Breckendridge because it was the start of the ski season. While the performances were "on," the audiences were thin -- probably due to lackluster promotion.
The two shows in Steamboat Springs were well-attended. The last show of the tour was at Mahogany Ridge in Steamboat Springs. We had never been there before, so we had no idea what to expect. It was, essentially, a bar/restaurant with a raised, carpeted platform at one end of the dining room. They had a faiirly decent sound system, but no lights. Apparently, they expected us to bring our own lights with us, which we didn't understand. Wal-Mart saved the day and we hung three clip-on lights with colored party bulbs in them -- just to get by.
This tour also marked the return of Derek "Goozbach" Carter to the roadie crew. Derek was, as always, great fun to have along and was a hard worker. When we arrived in Breckenridge, we had some extra time, so he hit the slopes to do some snowboarding. It seemed like he had a lot of fun, except for when he hit a patch of ice and caught himself with his left temple. After that, he just looked like an abused, unappreciated roadie.
During this trip, I finally got around to writing some automation for the visual aspect of the show. Up until this trip, I was typing commands into an SSH session by hand to start and stop each visual presentation on the screen(s). For example:
% /usr/libexec/xscreensaver/glslideshow -root -pan 8 -duration 8 &
% killall glslideshow; vid ~/video/FloydShow/evil0_2.mpg
The most automation I'd had prior to this was creating macros for running mplayer and xine (like that vid macro shown above, which runs mplayer fullscreen).
My ultimate goal has always been a system with a database backend that stores cues for each song and a CLI frontend for triggering cues. I figured I could make it extensible enough it could be used for visuals, audio effects, and lighting (via a DMX controller). Because of this grandiose goal, I didn't really make any progress toward it.
On this trip, I got fed up with having to remember all the parameters to the screensavers I was using. So, I whipped up a couple shell and Perl scripts to macro-ize the screen savers so I could sstart them up and stop them with a single command. I also created a shell interface for the system as well. It made things so much easier. The audience at the last show at Mahogany Ridge were privy to the best visuals to ever accompany Sons Of Nothing. It helped there wasn't much light to distract them from the screen. :-)
It is somewhat ironic I also decided I'm removing myself from touring with Sons Of Nothing after this trip to Colorado. It's for a million reasons, it seems, I came to this decision. Some of it has to do with my family missing me when I'm gone. Some of it has to do with my growing tired of being around really drunk people. In the end, I've had a great time doing it and I'm ready to start up a new hobby, probably with my family, to try. Maybe paintball (/me winks at Jayce^). Maybe experimental rocketry. Maybe agility trials with our new dog.
I'm still going to be involved with the band and might still show up to do visuals and effects at a show if they need me, but I plan on concentrating on the band's website and the marketing/promotion side of things. Who knows?! I might continue to record my unique style of spoken word on future SoN recordings. :-D
"RRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrrip!"
Recently, a close friend of mine wasqdivorced from his wife of ~15 years. Learning of this and helping my friend deal with the thick stew of emotional upheaval he's found himself in has been a difficult experience. Honestly, I really dislike seeing people -- especially people I care about -- go through something like this. I've been through a handful of divorces as a close bystander and I know it takes time, more than anything else, for someone to get through it and get back to being a stable, productive individual.
It was an experience I'll not forget for a good, long time.
That sums up my thoughts after going to San Francisco with fellow SoN-ers Thom and Matt to see the final U.S. show of Porcupine Tree's Arriving Somewhere... live DVD release tour.
Read on for details of the show, pictures, and the associated adventures.
I'm giddy as a schoolgirl right now. Last night, I was browsing around the Porcupine Tree website reading up on all the band's albums and recent remastered CD releases and what not and ran across some information about where and when the band is currently touring. They're playing a special show in Los Angeles on 11 Oct in conjuction with the release of their new live DVD Arriving Somewhere.... then they're playing in San Francisco on 13 Oct.
So, I got thinking it would be cool if I could go. It's been forever since I've been to a concert by a band I liked this much -- Probably not since I saw Rush in the early 90s.
I talked to Thom about it today and he said he'd be interested in going. We brought it up with other members of the band and Matt chimed in and said he'd be interested too.
So, I got Christine's approval and tonight I booked the flight and got a ticket to the show. Thom and Matt are coming too. I'm really excited. It's still two weeks away and I'm anxious to pack my backpack for it.
Needless to say, I think I'm about to start yet-another binge of Porcupine Tree consumption.
