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Armenian/Jazz Fusion
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December 2006

Air Guitar T-shirt - Can't play a note? Jump around your bedroom windmilling your air guitar like there was no tomorrow? Well, tomorrow is here. Scientists in Australia announced in November the creation of a wearable T-shirt with wireless motion sensors that turn air guitar motions into real music. The motion data is radioed to a computer which interprets them in real-time and puts out guitar licks and strums. Works for us lefties, too. Just in time for the holidays. Bet there aren't any wrong notes, either. :)

Actually, the technology is expected to have serious applications in sports. Also, in my 1999 article "Imagineering the Future of the Internet: Sketches from the Year 2010" (April/May ASIS Bulletin), I wrote about a company developing feedback-generating 'smart clothing' to help rehabilitate stroke victims and others whose mobility is impaired from injury or disease. Such 'data suits' could eventually send signals in reverse, from computer to wearer, and thus act as prosthetic devices. Now, there's how to win the Air Guitar World Championships, with a perfect imitation of Pete Townshend!

November 2006

Tower Records Bites the Dust - A bankruptcy court approved the sale of the chain to a liquidator. All stores will be closed.

The chain fell victim to the prolonged industry-wide slump in music sales, online downloading, and stiff competition from Virgin as well as big-box stores like Wal-Mart and Circuit City.

Tower, which drew famous customers like Carlos Santana and Ornette Coleman, was known for its great selection and knowledgeable employees who were often musicians themselves. Fans were quoted saying they will miss Tower's deep catalogue, which was friendly to independent artists. There were reports of Indie labels feeling left in the lurch.

August 2006

I stopped subscribing to Performing Songwriter magazine. The singer-songwriter thing may have displaced Tin Pan Alley professionalism at the commanding heights of pop music, but that was 40 years ago. Now it's long in the tooth and all the artists sound derivative. So I'm off in search of a new adventure.

July 2006

SAMPLE the music on Amazon

The Refugee All Stars are a global phenom. Hundreds of thousands fled Sierra Leone's 1991-2002 civil war for refugee camps in neighboring Guinea. The band first formed as a duo, then picked up more members as they entertained residents in various camps.

The band sings of hunger, conflict, and the privations of camp life. One band member witnessed the murder of his parents; another's father was killed in the war and doesn't know what happened to his mother.

A documentary about the band premiered in November 2005 and has won numerous awards. Today, the band tours the globe putting in appearances at big music festivals like Bonnaroo, the Montreal Jazz Festival, and Japan’s Fuji Rock Festival.

View the documentary trailer.

June 2006

[n.b.- Apple bought LaLa.com and shut it down at the end of May 2010] The battle against illegal downloading is over and the record companies won, at least on the legal front. Now comes La La Media (lala.com), a venture capital-backed company, with an unassailably legal plan to allow music fans to swap CDs through the regular mail. Members build 'have' and 'want' lists online and mail their CDs in postage-prepaid envelopes the service provides. Recipients pay La La $1 plus 49 cents postage. Senders get a credit for future swaps. La La will make personalized recommendations based on prior swaps. The first sale doctrine under US copyright law allows consumers to sell or give away their old books and CDs. Get this: La La will distribute 20 percent of its revenue to artists, compensating them on the sale of used CDs for the first time ever. La La is set to open July 4, 2006.

 April 2006

It could not have happened during the composer's lifetime. The notorious Ballet mécanique was performed by an all-computer-driven ensemble in March at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. George Antheil, the 'bad boy of music', wrote the work in 1924 for 16 synchronized player-pianos plus xylophones, bass drums, electric bells, siren, airplane propellers (large electric fans in Washington, digital samples in other performances), and a gong.

The work could not be performed as intended during Antheil's lifetime because the individual parts are very difficult to play and the technology to synchronize instruments electronically did not exist until relatively recently. The piece premiered in Paris in 1926 with human players. The American debut at Carnegie Hall soon followed, a flop that damaged Antheil's career. The first all-mechanical version was performed in Massachusetts in 1999.

The work has been called, variously, 'noise', 'cacophony', 'brutalistic', and 'the most innovative work of music ever conceived.' Highly percussive and rhythmic, it combines elements of atonality, jazz, and industrial sound. It was originally written for a Dadaist film, but composer and filmmaker worked separately causing insurmountable problems, starting with the fact that the music was twice as long as the movie! The Dada art movement was in part a protest against mechanization and partly a reaction to World War I, a gruesome conflict that killed millions. Dada might be the first 'the world has gone to hell in a handbasket' art movement, beating grunge rock to the punch by several decades. The siren in the Ballet is unnerving, harkening back as it does to the sounds of war.

The award-winning documentary about Antheil - Bad Boy Made Good -  has its US broadcast premiere in April 2006 on the PBS channel in Washington, D.C. (WETA-TV channel 26).

For more information, visit http://antheil.org/

March 2006

Sign of the Times - Aron's, an independent record store in Los Angeles, went out of business after 40 years. Stiff competition from other retailers (including big-box chains Target and Best Buy) and customers defections to the Internet were cited as reasons. Independent competitor Amoeba bowed to reality and laid plans to launch an online music download service.

February 2006

Sign of the Times - I was with my nieces and nephews over Christmas. I took them out to buy CDs, which must have seemed hopelessly old-fashioned since they were all sporting iPods (generational change - mobility is now more important than sound quality). Anyway, the biggest CD selection in town was at a big-box electronics chainstore (bye-bye record stores). My college-age nephews also gave me their current picks. All the names follow, but what amazes me is that there is no overlap! They all like something different. When I was a kid, everybody listened to Top 40 radio and songs became hits because everybody heard the same thing. It was a shared experience. Not any more. It's like Max Morath says, pop music is very fragmented now. The names:

11-year old niece - Kenny Chesney (country artist)
17-year old niece - Nickel Creek
22-year old niece - Kelly Clarkson
19-year old nephew - Keller Williams, Robert Randolph, Flaming Lips, Sigur Ros, Belle & Sebastian, Wilco, Benevento Russo Duo, They Might Be Giants
19-year old nephew - John Butler Trio, O.A.R., Donavon Frankenreiter, 'A Bernstein Century'  CD with Candide and West Side Story, Arturo Sandoval, Ben Folds, Dispatch, The Faint, Secret Machines, Jack Johnson, Jets to Brazil, Kasabian, Madeleine Peyroux, Pepper, Slackstring, The Von Bondies

 © 2006 Christopher M. Wright
  All Rights Reserved

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