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Amusing:

Are there any more of these for the other candidates?

Comic author Rob Reid unveils Copyright Math (TM), a remarkable new field of study based on actual numbers from entertainment industry lawyers and lobbyists.

hat tip boingboing

They are still rocking and still fighting 40 years later – the legendary American rock band Aerosmith. One reason Aerosmith is selling out stadiums is because its front man, Steven Tyler, has become an American Idol sensation. The other is because they still make great music, for which Tyler takes much credit. He tells Lara Logan: “I think my perfectionism and my busting everyone’s chops is what got this band to where it is today.” It’s amazing the band is anywhere today. Decades of drug addiction, vicious arguments, and serious illness have destroyed many other bands of their generation, but Aerosmith rocks on.

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The lyrics of the Beatles include a number of references to their own previous songs. This diagram explores these connections, noting the exact referencing lyrics and at what point in each song they can be found.

Click to enlarge:

Source:
Charting the Beatles by Michael Deal

In the midst of a discussion trying to explain the differences between data, facts, information and opinion, the T Heads kept popping into my head.

Facts are simple and facts are straight.
Facts are lazy and facts are late.
Facts all come with points of view.
Facts don’t do what I want them to.
Facts just twist the truth around.
Facts are living turned inside out.
Facts are getting the best of them.
Facts are nothing on the face of things.
Facts don’t stain the furniture.
Facts go out and slam the door.
Facts are written all over your face.
Facts continue to change their shape…
I’m still waiting (repeat)

-Talking Heads, Crosseyed and Painless

1980 Live version (including extended slow intro)

(You can see the original MTV video, which is vaguely uncomfortable in an almost but not quite racist way, here)

And a 30 minute cover by Phish (they crush it)

Apple is the Beatles of tech.

Once upon a time, the youth of America looked forward to the new releases of their favorite bands. Now they look forward to the latest from Apple.

Why is this?

1. Apple Surprises Us

A band would make the iPod and give up. Tour incessantly on the fumes of a ten year old device, charging us up the yin-yang for the privilege of reliving our youth.

The iPod is dead. It’s barely advertised. Like a band in the seventies, Apple’s playing its new album live, with only nodding reference to the hits. Why is it tech fans are interested in the new when you can’t get them to sit through anything they don’t know live? Furthermore, we’ve trained them not to want it live, to have it canned, so it’s perfect. Tablets are inherently messy devices. You install apps, you customize them, you get frustrated, you make them your own. Whereas every show of the major act is the same whether you see it in Detroit or San Diego, Tampa or Seattle. In a land where it’s all about having it your way, in music, the customer has no control.

2. Apple Innovates

The Beatles analogy fits because the band never repeated itself. We could not foresee “Sgt. Pepper” after “Revolver”. Great artists take chances. No one takes chances in music anymore, they just repeat what they’ve done successfully, endlessly.

3. Bean Counters Come Last

Tim Cook may be an efficiency expert, but he knows he’s subservient to designer Jonny Ive and the engineers. It’s all about new products and risk. Whereas it’s all about the money in music. Every member of the infrastructure, from label to manager to agent, focuses on cash first. Do that endorsement! Take that sponsorship! Play in the biggest hall you can! Musicians are playing for their handlers as opposed to vice versa. Somehow, Clive Davis and Jimmy Iovine became bigger than the acts. Innovation is scary. Only creative people are willing to make the jump. To believe the suits will endorse your exploits is like believing your mother will be fine with you dropping out of college and hitchhiking to find yourself. But it’s when you’ve got your thumb stuck out, with the wind in your hair, that you learn, that you become inspired.

4. The Money Is Secondary To The Products

What I mean is everyone talks about the value of Apple stock, but it’s AFTER they speak about the products. Most people know about U2′s tour grosses, but they couldn’t care less about the band’s new music. Bruce Springsteen puts out a new album that’s dead on arrival. Our favorites have ceased to amaze us for so long, most of us have stopped paying attention. It’s like being excited over a new HP release, or caring about a new BlackBerry. Our trust has been eroded, we’ve given up on the past, we’re interested in the new.

Sure, everyone uses Apple products, red state and blue, rich and relatively poor, young and old. But once upon a time, everyone knew who the Beatles were, and were aware of both the Stones and Louis Armstrong. And you can credit the Top Forty radio of yore, but still the acts have abdicated their power. They got in bed with MTV, they became beholden to the labels, they bitched about people stealing their music, they completely marginalized themselves.

As for the newbies yelling loudly without talent… We see that game in tech all the time. We’ve started to tune the pronouncements out. Just like we won’t give your music a listen. We only have time for great, do you sell great?

And we want cool. Features we could not foresee. Like the ability to find your lost iPhone, iPad and Mac online. Apple didn’t need to include this feature, nor did they need to provide free iCloud services, but the company wanted to blow our minds, keep us paying attention and in the fold. Whereas all we hear from musicians is who they slept with and where they went on vacation.

The acts have to give up on the money. They lost that battle. Until America realigns, no musician can make the kind of money Tim Cook does, never mind Lloyd Blankfein. But instead of complaining about this, musicians should realize that power is not merely money based. Music has more power than any amount of cash. But it must be honest and true and new.

Lady Gaga marketed her second album better than she made it. Imagine if it had been an improvement upon what came before. If we didn’t hear Madonna’s “Express Yourself” in the single, but something that was completely unfamiliar.

But Gaga didn’t do this. And despite all the hoopla, most of America just doesn’t care about her. She’s the biggest of the marginal. Like the endlessly repeating himself Jay-Z. Kanye takes a few risks, but he’s such a narcissist, we’re turned off.

As for the rock acts… They’re repeating a formula, growing their hair to look the part. Huh? We’ve seen that movie before, we don’t care.

As for country… It’s just bad rock and roll. Country music sales dropped precipitously when the audience got computers and the sphere will be hugely impacted when terrestrial country radio tanks, which it will.

The Apple iPad announcement is bigger than any album this year. Bigger than Van Halen, Springsteen or… People were waiting for it, salivating. They talked about it. Anticipation was palpable.

This is the way it used to be in music.

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The story behind the song: Each time we write/arrange a tune we take a journey. We have to admit—this journey took us a lot further than we expected. Retracing our steps reveals several factors that made this a reality. As we started arranging it we had serious writer’s block. Perhaps some of the worst we’ve ever had. In fact, one day instead of writing we went around the entire studio with a can of WD-40 and coated every piece of metal to ensure that we were a squeak-free studio. Then on a whim we decided to back away and take an entirely new approach to the song—an African approach. It may seem random in retrospect, but at the time it was an exciting way to restart the arrangement. It was working, but our journey still was on foot until we called in Alex Boye, one of the most talented people we’ve ever met. Alex has this contagious energy that gave new life to the song and to us. He sings the tune in 4 different languages: Swahili, English, Yoruba (his mother’s native language), and Alex’s own African “scat” (we’ll call it…Scafrican) =) Most of the words you hear are translated from the lyrics in the original Coldplay Tune. We’re huge fans of Alex — We bet you are now too! Follow Alex on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/alexboye.music?ref=ts

When we had finished the arrangement we all agreed that listening to it was like taking a journey to somewhere remote and ruggedly beautiful. How were we to depict this with a cello, African percussion and, most difficult of all, a grand piano? We took a risky, but oh-so-valuable turn when we called in helicopters to air-lift us and our instruments where none had gone before! (Please excuse the Trek reference). Since no one had ever done this before where were we to go for advice? Well, we can tell you that Home Depot didn’t have a lot of answers (how disappointing) but we did clean them out of their strongest cable they had. We don’t mind telling you that when that helicopter began lifting our brand new-never-before-played grand piano into the air we couldn’t help close our eyes and cross our fingers. We consider a blessing of Heaven that it worked. I guess we figured that if it didn’t, maybe it could still be a viral video — “PIANO MOVE FAIL” =)

We’d like to thank from the bottom of our hearts, Duane Fielding who offered the helicopters and SkyHawk http://www.skyhawkhelicopters.com for not dropping the piano…:-) Half-way through the first day of shooting we discovered that, as typical guys, we had forgotten to bring ANY food or water to this remote location. We had two options: one, wrestle a mountain rodent and harvest cacti or two, starve. Duane, our head pilot, took pity on us. He took off (literally) and moments later landed in a Wendy’s parking lot, ordered 5 of everything (sadly, he couldn’t use the drive through)…took off again and brought us chicken sandwiches and hamburgers via airmail. Thank you Duane! Flying in your helicopter was a dream come true for us despite the lack of doors. =)

Filming location:
http://g.co/maps/mker7 (Southern Utah)

All the instruments you hear are REAL instruments. We wanted to be authentic about this. The following percussion instruments were used:

Djembe (drum)
Agogo bell (like a cow bell)
Udu (the porcelain vase-looking drum)
Guiro (gourd scraper)
Djabarra (shaker)
Rain stick
Pangi seed shaker (“goat toenails” or Unas)

Credits:
Paradise (Mylo Xyloto) by Coldplay written by Guy Berryman, Jonny Buckland, Will Champion, And Chris Martin; Copyright Universal Music Mgb Songs And Upala Music, Inc.

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From the album Wrecking Ball.

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No cannonballs did fly
No rifles cut us down
No bombs fell from the sky
No blood soaked the ground
No powder flash blinded the eye
No deafening thunder sounded
But just as sure as the hand of god
They brought death to my hometown
They brought death to my hometown

No shells ripped the evening sky
No cities burning down
No armies stormed the shores for which we’d die
No dictators were crowned
High off on a quiet night
I never heard a sound
The marauders raided in the dark and brought death to my hometown, boys
Death to my hometown

They destroyed our families’ factories and they took our homes
They left our bodies on the plains
The vultures picked our bones

So listen up, my Sonny boy
Be ready for when they come
For they’ll be returning sure as the rising sun

Now get yourself a song to sing and sing it ’til you’re done
Yeah, sing it hard and sing it well
Send the robber baron’s straight to hell
The greedy thieves that came around
And ate the flesh of everything they’ve found
Whose crimes have gone unpunished now
Walk the streets as free men now

And they brought death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown, boys
Death to our hometown

Story behind the song: Jon Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson were booked for a Piano Guys show in Hawaii. How could we resist filming our next video in the land of Aloha — beautiful beaches, green mountains, and fresh pineapple?? We went to our Founders and Facebook fans to ask what song they wanted us to play there. “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” was the nearly-unanimous response. But you know how we are … we couldn’t “just” do this tune by itself…so in the studio we found a made-in-heaven matchup in the timeless melody from the Shaker Hymn “Simple Gifts” written in the 1800′s (also used by Aaron Copland in his Ballet “Appalachian Spring”). We feel it’s an especially appropriate mash-up because of our profound love and respect for the Hawaiian culture — a people who are so good at finding happiness in simplicity. As you probably could hear we borrowed a lot of ideas from Iz’s version which has become the stuff of legend. This arrangement is, in part, a tribute to him.

Getting a piano onto a sandy beach and then onto a big hill in a famous ranch within the SAME day (we only had 8 hours to film) was no small feat. The only thing harder would be to be predict Hawaiian weather, which ended up being our biggest challenge.

“We had a little extra help on this one. My mother, Lynne Sanders Nelson — a main source of my inspiration for pursuing music — passed away early in life from the effects of a brain tumor. She was an incredibly-gifted musician and taught me to play music passionately rather than just playing ‘notes’ on a page. ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ was one of her favorite songs. We finished this arrangement on what would have been her 70th birthday. Somehow she helped. I miss her so very much, but when I play songs like this I feel like I get to be with her again. This song is dedicated to her.”
-Steven Sharp Nelson

Thank you so much to the Kualoa Ranch who bent over backwards last-minute for us and provided us such a beautiful place to shoot. Visit their site at http://www.kualoa.com — when you visit Hawaii be sure to stop by and take a tour — its where dozens of huge blockbluster movies/tv shows have been filmed.

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So Joe Perry walks in…

I met Jack Douglas at the Hollywood Bowl. I never figure people remember me. And I never ever heard from him until a couple of days ago, when he e-mailed to ask if I wanted to come down to the studio, to hear the new Aerosmith.

Come on, WHO WOULDN’T?

I used to connect with Tyler on an irregular basis. But we drifted apart when the band left Geffen and got a new manager. But I will tell you, he’s one of the few rock stars who don’t disappoint in real life. He’s funny, charming…and smart.

He is that cartoon character on TV. But in real life, he’s three-dimensional.

So I drive east… Into Hollywood.

And I’m not gonna tell you where they’re recording, except to tell you this nondescript concrete building is more famous as a rehearsal space than a recording studio. But Jack liked the work of the proprietor. And after cutting in Pandora’s Box in Boston, the band’s studio within a warehouse, they decamped to this new location.

And the control room’s a mashup of analog and digital equipment. Pro Tools and tape. And the studio is one giant space. With baffles. It’s funky, not sterile. It breathes, it’s not a museum. It’s dirty, not sterile.

And that’s when Jack and Warren, the engineer, started speaking about CLASP. I’ll make it simple. You record to tape, but you’re using Pro Tools. Maybe that’s too simple. But the bottom line is you get the warmth of tape with the flexibility of digital.

But what difference does it make if you’re gonna squash it all down at the end anyway?

Ah!

They’ll go to Sterling, and then they’ll call in Shelly Yakus to do AFTER MASTERING! Sure, they’ll compress the music a bit, but then Shelley’s gonna protect its life.

Wanna hear something?

So we sit in front of a pair of Genelecs and this sound comes roaring out of the speakers that reminds me of nothing so much as Camaros and beer, going to the arena show back in the seventies…

HOW DID THEY GET THAT SOUND?

Tyler’s the front man. But listening to this track, you’re reminded Aerosmith is a BAND! Underneath the vocals, the guitars are whooshing by, the bass and drums are kicking me in the gut…WHEW! You could not sit still. It was like being jetted back to the seventies.

And that’s when I heard the backstory. Jack wanted to recreate the sound of “Rocks”. Which was cut in a warehouse in Waltham, Mass. They’d just been rehearsing, but then Jack realized the room had become part of the sound, so he called the Record Plant and they pulled up their truck.

And there’s only one finished cut, which hasn’t even been finally mixed. So they play me some more cuts with scratch vocals, by Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton. I wanna hear the riffs.

And when the third or fourth track is done, I turn away from the speakers and who’s sitting behind me in this cramped space but…

Joe Perry.

He’s wearing gloves, he’s got a scarf around his neck, he’s radiating charisma without even trying and my heart skips a beat.

He remarks how we haven’t seen each other for a long time. And that we’ve never really had a conversation.

And then we do.

Joe had no problem talking. It was like we were in a pizza place in Boston, catching up.

He insisted they pull up a ballad. It was his vocal, and the acoustic guitar sound was INCREDIBLE!

And we talk about Tyler and “Idol” and this crazy, mixed-up, shook-up music world and Joe tells me he’s just dying to have new music to play live. It’s been nine years between albums. The fans deserve new tracks. Not that they’re gonna overload ‘em, they’re gonna drop in two or three in the summer, maybe more in the fall. They’re still gonna play the ten tracks everyone needs to hear, as well as some rare gems they haven’t played in eons, like “Woman Of The World”…

WOMAN OF THE WORLD??? I LOVE THAT TRACK!

And the conversation switches to new music, Joe tells me he’s got a son who’s a deejay and another who’s got a band and Jack tells me his son is a musician too, even playing Latin stuff, and we’re all taking note of what’s going on, but that does not deny that what Aerosmith does is ROCK!

Joe knew exactly who his audience was, what they expected…and what he wanted to do.

And then we start talking Memphis. Joe detours the bus there whenever he’s near.

And then Jack tells the story of bonding with John Lennon…who was thrilled to meet the alien who invaded Liverpool in ’65 without a passport and got tons of ink before he was deported, John knew the story, and we could have gone on all night, but…

They had to go back to work.

And after talking cars, me wondering who owned the R8 out back, Tom Hamilton, who came in in the middle, said he was soon to get his Ferrari Dino back, and we were all sitting in the dark in Hollywood in 2012 but there was a direct line back to 1975 and we were not yet encased in amber.

You see this rock and roll life is just that, life itself. It goes on forever. Just ask the fans.

And some of the bands are so talented and successful that they get to play until they drop.

Even the Stones have changed members. Zeppelin can’t reunite because Bonham’s six feet under. But every original Aerosmith member is still here. And together, they make a wondrous sound.

Which cannot be made by any one of them individually.

But together, IT’S A RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE!

P.S. The tape machine is a Studer A880, which Jack bought from a chap in Beverly Hills for $2500. But now, with CLASP, the price of hardware is going up. As for tape, they got some reels of 456 from the Record Plant, which they baked at Capitol and it’s as good as new.

P.P.S. They told me the story of “Walk This Way”. All they had was the riff. And every day they’d walk around Manhattan looking for inspiration, by the pimps and the prostitutes, their interaction fueled the songwriting. But this was Sunday afternoon, and the denizens of the night were nowhere to be found, so they ducked into a movie theatre to see “Young Frankenstein”, and when Marty Feldman opened the door and said “walk this way”…EUREKA!

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