Pribek

I just want to let you guys know a little about what’s going on here in some general fashion.

First off, I’m feeling good physically; better than I can remember for a long long time.

I have been falling behind on the blog a bit and correspondence as well. This is temporary and a result of me throwing a bunch of irons in the fire simultaneously. I don’t like being vague about this stuff but, I got to. More on all that down the line. I’ll just say it’s in glorious disorganization.

What I really want to point out is where I’m headed musically. I got a big stack of songs waiting to be recorded and am writing more. I have a desire to document where I am at with this stuff in real time.

Without going in to detail about deals I’m in to biz wise-here’s the plan. I am going to record these songs as singles and release for free download here and other places on the web. See, I’m not worried about the $0.99. I’d rather you take the time to stick this stuff on your iPods. Along with that, if anybody would prefer a wav. we’ll figure something out.

Here’s the thing-it still costs me out of pocket to record these things. I’m not going to tell you how much because it involves other people’s business. But, to record the songs the way I feel is right, I got to hire some good players to get it done.

So, this little PayPal donation button over there is really the recording fund. It doesn’t take a big amount coming in through that portal to allow me to book a session and, right now this morning, there’s enough to book the first session, which will happen later this week hopefully depending on the players schedules.

The real beauty is, we can record in the morning, mix in the afternoon, and release for download that night. All of this in a real deal studio and quality cats involved. It’s been my dream to do this for a while…

So, thanks to you who have donated, you are truly allowing my music to move forward. And, you are facilitating my higher purpose which is; allowing anybody to access this new and continuing musical experiment and spread the word so to speak.

Big Buzzzzz about TechCrunch as they announce: We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet For $200. Help Us Build It.

Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone. It will have Wifi, maybe one USB port, a built in battery, half a Gigabyte of RAM, a 4-Gigabyte solid state hard drive. Data input is primarily through an iPhone-like touch screen keyboard. It runs on linux and Firefox. It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.

Wow! Sounds Great! But Wait! How is this going to affect the music biz?

My Google Reader is already thick with it. Bruce Warila at Music Think Tank asks; Could The TechCrunch Tablet Be The Final Nail In The Music Sales Coffin?

Imagine every kid carrying one of these around in his or her backpack. Full screen browsing! Go to any music 2.0 site and interact with the full kit; not the watered down version you experience on a smart phone; you get it all: commenting, friends, music players, blogs, schedules, videos, sharing, streaming, etc. What do you need to buy or own music for?

What to do? What to do!!?? How will a musician be able to make a buck? Bruce has the answer.

Music will not be your primary product; it will be a component of your brand. Imagine your blog filling the screen above. It’s imperative that you build your own brand, or become part of a boutique brand on the Internet.

Thats right, the “B” Word. It’s all about branding from here on out kids. Music will not be your primary product, gotta build your brand. Develop your brand.

Screw that. Fuck a bunch of branding. I’m sick of hearing it.

Everyone is worrying about how everything is going to impact the music business, How everything is going to affect commerce.

I’m worried about how all of this change is going to affect music. If music isn’t going to be the primary product, if it’s just going to be a component of the “brand” then, what we will have is a bunch of entertaining bloggers not, musicians.

All of this stuff is going to wash out one way or the other.

One Way:

Music will be paid for by a monthly tax, imposed by governments, or a monthly fee, imposed by ISP’s. All the music ever released will be available to consumers. All the money will go into a convoluted pool and divvied up by some convoluted system which will give big operators unfair advantages and is subject to be gamed by cheaters. But, musicians who are truly independent and, doing quality work, will be given some incentive to go on.

The Other

Nobody gets paid for music ever again, and creative musicians take their collective ball and go home.

It’s going to go One Way not The Other. But, it’s going to take a while. Musicians need to concentrate on music. All of this branding stuff is overrated. It’s for the Radioheads of the world. I’m not saying musicians shouldn’t blog. They should, it’s fun. And, it may develop a “brand” a little bit. But, the best thing musician can do, is pick up the instrument and play, write a song, create something interesting. That’s the best thing you can do for your brand.

This one is truly bizarre. Remember a while back, there was news about Courtney Love allegedly being a victim of identity theft and taken for millions? Evidently, Courtney, still trying to suss all of this out, was going through the American Express bills and came to the conclusion that $858,000 of her and/or her daughter’s money was spent on the making of Ryan Adams’ record “Rock n Roll”.
Courtney, at one point was involved with James Barber, whom she introduced to Adams. Barber ended up as the producer of Adams’ record.

Love, does a lot of blogging on her MySpace page. Over the weekend, she used her blog as an open letter to Adams concerning the 858 grrrr. Gawker printed some of her rant, which has since been taken down from her MySpace page. Here are some excerpts.

Ryan Adams you fucking weasel. deal with it.858,00$
Current mood: determined

Listen this is another open letter
this to a beyond mediocre piece of shite- maybe its just my moment to fucking get the knives out of my back,
but in any case between 00 and 04 before ….well a dark pit of shit and fake names and insanity follows with lots and lots of people counting on Kookoo cherry not being able to prove things- and thats for another day- those people have not played chess with me.
But i was sitting with some people going thru the 29 american express cards that i didnt know existed that were connected to a few HUNDRED bank accounts,and there were all the bills for Ryan Adams worst record and one of the worst records i can think of in rock and roll history ironically called”Riock and Roll ” and it was paid for by ME and mostly by my child….

….well on my amex atthat time the 858 but also from bank accounts….theres 200,000 thousnad dollar checks written to Barber for “comissions” ididnt even know where the fuck he was ! but here on Amex 28 is the entire invoice for Ryan- your ENTIRE album and meals and drugs and Hotels and outboard gear and wasted fabullous guitars STRAIGHT OUT OF FRANCES”S TRUST FUND….

….This record sucks i mean WOW!
is this what youd like me to tell my kid a fraction of her money was stolen for this shite “Rock N Roll ” cd shall i post the outboard gear and 4 seasons billls and fancy Nobu dinners,……

…”still shooting smack? hows that going for you?”

I’m not real familiar with the Ryan Adams record but, I’ve heard it. I would say there are plenty of worse records in the history of rock and roll but, if what Courtney Love is saying here is true, I don’t know what is more surprising; the fact that Adams is involved or, the fact that he spent 858K making that record.