John Mortell’s blog

Never heard of this guy, and looking at him you wouldn’t think he’s that good (unfair I know but…). Anyway, he’s really good and worth a listen. The two related videos are pretty good as well but this is my favorite of the lot.

This is pretty cool and a really good incentive for somebody to buy the physical album for once:

I’m pretty much a believer that record companies have no moral right (regardless of the law) to charge for music. Especially as I’ve been seeing more artists charge directly (or more often adding ‘value’ beyond the music alone to make a profit) and bypassing record companies altogether. So I was quite interested to see this article about a company called Topsin who have gone the ‘value added’ route. I’d advise you to read the whole article but here is the significant part for me:

In an era of shrinking revenues, Topsin’s success with bundling – offering an affordable digital album, but encouraging the purchase of more expensive packages that might include video, merchandise, other releases, concert access or an artist-specific subscription – should attract the attention of artists, mangers and labels struggling to monetize content. The average Topspin motivated transaction often exceeds $22 vs. 99 cents to $9.99 on iTunes. In one recent campaign, 84% of all purchases were above the basic level offered.

When Amanda Palmer who has been very vocal about hating her record company can make $19,000 off Twitter while earning no money off her solo album, that the system is beyond broken seems obvious.

Like everybody else it seems, I have seen the clip of Susan Boyle singing, and while I do not deny that she has a tremendously impressive voice, frankly I have found it hard to buy into the general ‘ugly duckling / swan story that has been built around her. Even if the story is a good one. But Clive James, over at the BBC, in my opinion hits the nail on the head about the story here. Follow the jump for the full article, but the important part I have attached in block quotes:

The facts, alas, say that in every opera house in the world the chorus contains at least half a dozen people with voices as good as Susan’s, and most of them won’t become stars, so all the hoo-hah about Susan’s sudden stardom was at least partly illusory, based on the dangerous notion that overnight prominence on television will always change reality permanently.

In the opera house, music ought to matter more than anything but it remains true that one of the reasons people flock to hear Anna Netrebko and Elina Garanca singing together is that they look the part almost as well as they sing it.

Things shouldn’t be that way, but strangely enough they have become more and more that way in the last forty years, during the very period when feminism as a train of thought has done so much to educate us about the restrictive nature of expectations based on pulchritude.

When I first started attending Covent Garden in the early 1960s it was still quite common for the soprano to be an unlikely stimulus for the tenor’s cries of passion. Today, most of the sopranos look like film stars. It could be said that the more our primitive male prejudices are broken down, the more we all become free. But one of the consequences of freedom is that ticket buyers are free to choose, and it is likely to remain a fact that ticket buyers of both sexes will choose to see the imported dreamboat.

Susan might very well, after this, get a job in the chorus and even sell a lot of records, but if the press expects more than that it could be adding yet another chapter to a long story in which discoveries have been shoved onto the boards to fulfil a role in a fairy story which is fated not to turn out well.

… Is a rather enjoyable short film by Kyle Higgins. Though a little bit simplistic in its plotting, and even though the ‘villains’ motivations don’t really make sense, it’s a great looking, well designed movie set in 1960′s Chicago about a superhero union. The link for the film is here and just to give you an idea of the ‘style’ of the film, here’s a poster for it:

This is a pretty good cover but also has a really depraved video, I never thought I’d see Kermit giving Rowlf the Dog a blowjob….

I have a feeling I shall be listening to a lot more of this woman. Absolutely class. And any song that has the lines ‘feminists don’t have a sense of humour’ is always good…

This BBC advert for the Olympic games was created by Jamie Hewlett and Damon Alburn of ‘Gorillaz’ fame. I really want to see the opera based on this that they created:

BBC article here. I have a few bits and pieces by him on my iTunes. He certainly was one of the blues greats.

Impressive how it matches reasonably well: