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| Author |
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| 25 new of 165 responses total. |
krj
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response 50 of 165:
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Apr 24 18:39 UTC 2002 |
Mike in resp:41 on Wilco's move from the Reprise imprint to the
Nonesuch imprint, both within the AOL Time Warner empire:
> ...but in this case it does
> sound like the band benefitted from the fact that the acquired labels
> still retain some degree of independence/individuality
... except that neither Reprise nor Nonesuch were ever independent
labels; both were Warner Bros. divisions since their creation.
Reprise was originally started so Frank Sinatra could have his own
label, IIRC, and for many years it was where Warner stuck many of
its prestige/quirky artists, most notably Neil Young, who I think saved
the label from being killed off when it was floundering some years
back. Nonesuch was founded as Warner's classical division in the
early 1960s and it had a glorious history; in the last ten years or
so the brand has been repositioned as a world music/serious art label,
with a lot of licensing of European issues (artists such as Radio
Tarifa, Oumou Sangare, Ali Farka Toure, Youssou N'Dour).
More recently Nonesuch has picked up Emmylou Harris after the
main Warners label discarded her following the WRECKING BALL album.
Label "branding" is a fascinating concept... but it's really drifting
here, isn't it?
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keesan
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response 51 of 165:
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Apr 24 18:59 UTC 2002 |
I thought Nonesuch was mostly folk, not classical.
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krj
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response 52 of 165:
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Apr 24 20:43 UTC 2002 |
Nonesuch did a lot of folk music of other cultures under their
"Explorer" series -- what would be called World Music today, though
that term was many years in the future -- but classical music
was why they were founded. See the many obituaries for
Teresa Sterne, the record executive who built the label, which
turn up on Google under "nonesuch records teresa sterne".
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mcnally
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response 53 of 165:
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Apr 24 21:03 UTC 2002 |
re #50: Wow.. I simply can't imagine dumping Emmylou right after
"Wrecking Ball." Not only was it a terrific album but it was a
great critical success and has to have been her best seller in years..
Truly the record industry makes no sense to me..
Regarding Wilco, I was listening to NPR on the way back from a very
nice day hike in the Cascades yesterday and they had an interview with
Jeff Tweedy. I was struck by a couple of thoughts on the matter..
a) If I were a really cynical schemer, the kind who no doubt
thrives in the music industry, what could be a better way
to get lots of free publicity and scads of indie cred for
an artist I managed than to arrange for them to be dropped
by the big bad evil oppressive record company and have them
be picked up by the true-to-artistic-vision risk-taking
prestige label, especially when both are exactly the same
company?
I actually doubt that the decision was as calculated as all
that but it does seem to work out well both for Wilco *and*
for Warner. Even if this particular instance wasn't planned
from the get-go, it wouldn't surprise me if someone eventually
pulls a similar trick, especially if sales of "Yankee Hotel
Foxtrot" are at all good..
b) Either Jeff Tweedy has sinister hypnotic control over record
critics or he has the best publicist in the music world.
Every time I read an article or a review about one of his
albums it's filled with comparisons that make me want to rush
out and buy it and every time I actually sit down and listen
to a Wilco or Uncle Tupelo album I wind up losing interest
and turning it off before it's even halfway done. What am I
missing here?
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krj
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response 54 of 165:
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Apr 25 04:12 UTC 2002 |
I can't help with (b); I kinda liked Uncle Tupelo but have never warmed
to Wilco, and after their first collaboration with Billy Bragg I
gave up completely. I sort of liked Son Volt better (the other
descendant band from Uncle Tupelo) but I eventually lost track
of them too.
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gull
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response 55 of 165:
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Apr 25 13:45 UTC 2002 |
Re #53: I know what you mean. The snippets of Wilco's stuff I've heard
remind me a little of Guided By Voices' early albums, but it doesn't
hook me in the same way.
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polygon
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response 56 of 165:
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Apr 25 16:02 UTC 2002 |
Too many "Uncle" bands: Uncle Banzai, Uncle Gizmo, Uncle Tupelo ...
I no longer remember which is which.
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brighn
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response 57 of 165:
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Apr 25 17:06 UTC 2002 |
So you're saying Uncle?
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orinoco
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response 58 of 165:
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Apr 25 17:20 UTC 2002 |
Uncle Tupelo started out as alt-country and kinda drifted. The other two,
uh, didn't. Unless Uncle Gizmo isn't who I think they are, in which case all
bets are off.
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krj
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response 59 of 165:
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Apr 25 19:26 UTC 2002 |
resp:56 :: You forgot Bob's Your Uncle, a late-1980s band from Vancouver.
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mcnally
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response 60 of 165:
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Apr 25 19:55 UTC 2002 |
Let's not forget U.N.K.L.E.
(Actually, doing an All Music Guide search on artist names starting with
"uncle" reveals more than fifty results, 90% of whom I've never heard of..)
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brighn
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response 61 of 165:
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Apr 25 20:22 UTC 2002 |
Detroit's own Uncle Kracker (Kid Rock's DJ, also has a solo CD)
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oval
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response 62 of 165:
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Apr 25 20:57 UTC 2002 |
U.N.K.L.E. IS GOOD.
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dbratman
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response 63 of 165:
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Apr 29 18:35 UTC 2002 |
Re Nonesuch, uptopic:
Despite its early interest in world music, Nonesuch was a classical
label, and in the 60s and 70s it was a prime source for interesting
stuff out of the mainstream classical labels' lines. I have warm
memories of their recordings of early Haydn symphonies by some group
called "The Little Orchestra of London" - this was long before Antal
Dorati began his massive project to record them systematically for
Decca - and for many other things ranging from Telemann suites, through
Bernard Herrmann's surprisingly graceful version of Raff's Leonore
Symphony (Nonesuch would indeed touch the heavy symphonic repertoire,
if it was obscure enough) to Ives's Concord Sonata, not to forget those
wonderful Morris & Bolcom recordings of late 19th century American
popular songs.
Nonesuch was not originally a Warner subsidiary. It was Elektra's
classical and world music label. Warner later bought it up and killed
it off.
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krj
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response 64 of 165:
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Apr 30 02:56 UTC 2002 |
Oops, I forgot that Nonesuch was originally Elektra's imprint, and that
Warner didn't always own Elektra. But Warner got Elektra early in the
consolidation game -- early 1970s, maybe? By the time I started paying
attention it was the WEA conglomerate, for Warner-Elektra-Atlantic.
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dbratman
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response 65 of 165:
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May 2 00:09 UTC 2002 |
Whenever Warner may have bought Elektra, they didn't start putting
their name on the Nonesuch albums until about 1980 or so, when they
redesigned the label and killed off the distinctive, delightfully
primitivist early Nonesuch cover art, as well as the original logo (the
decorative lower-case n).
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krj
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response 66 of 165:
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May 2 22:17 UTC 2002 |
OK, enough drift.
Did anyone run into the US webcast protest/shutdown on May 1?
According to news reports in many online sources, many US webcasters
shutdown their normal operations: either they were completely silent
or else they ran announcements on how the proposed Internet broadcast
royalties would wipe them out. The protest generated a lot of
news coverage, at least, and there have been some suggestions that
they are getting some traction in Congress with their argument that
the proposed royalty rates would shut down almost the entire industry,
because the royalty rates are vastly in excess of the commercial
webcaster's gross revenues, and way above anything hobbyists can
afford. Not to mention the problems in complying with the
planned rule that *every connection* from *every listener*
be reported to the copyright industry.
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jp2
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response 67 of 165:
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May 2 22:20 UTC 2002 |
This response has been erased.
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krj
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response 68 of 165:
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May 3 06:08 UTC 2002 |
Lots of noise about digital TV issues, and no clarity at all,
except a general sense that the copyright industry appears intent
on stealthily imposing absolute, totalitarian control on viewer's
use of television.
The best summary seems to be the EFF's weblog at
http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/
The Newsbytes imprint of the Washington Post reported a story that
the copyright industry and the hardware industry had reached agreement
on technology to control user's ability to manipulate digital TV
signals, and the two industries were asking Congress to pass
legislation enforcing the agreement. No details were specified.
However, Philips (the electronics firm) seems to be in fairly
serious disagreement with the alleged consensus.
One of the EFF entries discusses the copyright industry's proposal
for forcing technologies and devices off the market if they are
found, after they have been widely distributed, to be insufficiently
protective of copyright.
http://bpdg.blogs.eff.org/archives/000061.html
Also, sending any high quality video to a computer is to be
strictly forbidden.
-----
Meanwhile, Slashdot passes along this one, from the San Jose
Mercury News:
http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/3186191.htm
In the copyright suit by the TV industry against the Replay TV 4000
digital video recorder, well, I'll just quote it:
> A federal magistrate in Los Angeles has ordered SonicBlue to spy
> on thousands of digital video recorder users -- monitoring every
> show they record, every commercial they skip and every program they
> send electronically to a friend.
>
> Central District Court Magistrate Charles F. Eick told SonicBlue to
> gather ``all available information'' about how consumers use the
> Santa Clara company's latest generation ReplayTV 4000 video
> recorders, and turn the information over to the film studios and
> television networks suing it for contributing to copyright
> infringement.
...
> The plaintiffs asked SonicBlue to turn over information on how
> individuals use the recording devices. SonicBlue said it does not
> track that information. The magistrate, who is supervising discovery,
> ordered the company to write software in the next 60 days that
> would record every ``click'' from every customer's remote control.
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mcnally
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response 69 of 165:
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May 3 11:28 UTC 2002 |
!
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gull
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response 70 of 165:
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May 3 12:43 UTC 2002 |
Well, that's it. I'm definately not buying a PVR.
I think the *worst* thing they could do to digital TV is impose DRM on it.
Think about it. One of the big problems HDTV is facing is a lack of
consumer interest. People just aren't buying into it in large numbers. If
you start telling people they can't record their favorite shows, they're
going to stay away in droves and it will become the next DIVX, except with a
whole lot more development money down the drain.
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remmers
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response 71 of 165:
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May 3 13:42 UTC 2002 |
Yep.
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dbratman
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response 72 of 165:
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May 4 00:32 UTC 2002 |
I heard about the webcast protest/shutdown. Consequently I did not
attempt to listen to any webcasting that day.
I'm pretty much off listening to web music anyway. It's most handy
when I'm doing boring stuff at work, but the boring stuff I'm doing
eats my processing power, or something, and the web music is constantly
stopping to rebuffer. This is particularly true if the boring stuff I
have to do involves web searching, and yet we've got a huge pipeline
here. Thinking of bringing in my CD-Walkman instead.
That SonicBlue item is just stunningly awful. Insert rant here; and
yes, I think this is part of the same privacy invasion that's leading
to useless intrusive security measures.
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keesan
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response 73 of 165:
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May 4 15:34 UTC 2002 |
Was this webcasting strike US only?
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krj
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response 74 of 165:
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May 4 19:12 UTC 2002 |
Yes, because the proposed copyright royalty only affects US webcasters.
(At least, I have not heard about any proposals to try and levy it
on, say, the BBC.)
-----
Slashdot has a roundup of a couple of stories.
First, Vivendi Universal is talking about trying to make the upcoming
Eminem CD copy-prevented on all editions worldwide; previous
copy-prevention efforts have been limited to one geographic region,
mostly to test consumer response. Reuters story from May 1 is at:
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-896391.html
And a followup on the band Wilco and their new album
"Yankee Hotel Foxtrot," which was discussed above in resp:39 for about
ten responses. Their old label Reprise cut Wilco loose rather than
release an album Reprise saw as uncommercial; Wilco also, according
to an article in The New Republic, made the album available for
online downloads while they were between record deals:
http://thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=online&s=edlund041502
Anyway, first week sales figures are in, and Reprise looks clueless
for dumping Wilco, and the band looks like a genius for offering the
album on the net:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/trib/20020502/lo/wilco_defies_experts_as_fo
xtrot_gallops_1.html
In tabular form:
title first week sales billboard chart #
1999 SUMMERTEETH 19,000 around #80
2002 YANKEE HOTEL FOXTROT 55,573 #13
First week sales almost three times as great as the previous album,
despite the tracks having been available for Internet download for weeks
or months.
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