Well, I’m back. Largely due to the generosity, skill, and patience of Tim at The Blue Walrus, who helped me moved this site to this spankin’ new location, and even added some design features to make it look kick more ass. Thank you, Tim. Without your efforts I truly would not be doing this any more.

Thank you also to the select few who threw a couple bucks at me to defray costs. Much appreciated.

So, the climate for bloggers is far from warm right now. It’s downright frigid. Why am I back, then?

Mostly, because this is the only road I’ve ever known.

When I was a young lad, I performed as lead singer and lyricist in a little band called The Not So Hots. We lived up to our name, but we had a blast. In college, I was known to perform Newcleus’ Jamonit over a live band’s rendition of Rapper’s Delight. Again, I had a blast. I grew up in a home where my mom worked for a major label, and I was surrounded by music all the time. My sheep dog’s nose was one of the many hundreds of noses that found its way into Mick Jagger’s crotch. I’ve also always been a pop culture writer, in some form of another, as a hobby. A break from the monotony.

In 2004, around the time of Arcade Fire’s “Funeral,” a friend turned me on to a few music blogs. I wanted in. And I’ve been in ever since.

In the beginning, I was unsure what my purpose was. I had my first RIAA run-in when a PR team sent me an advance of MIKA’s debut record. I posted a song from it, “Grace Kelly,” and was served with a harsh and threatening notice that I was about to be thrown in jail and then boiled in a vat with living cats. I got the hell out of dodge, deleted my Blogger account, and moved to Wordpress with a newfound purpose: To help small artists reach ears.

But there was temptation. I wanted a bigger audience. I saw lots of bloggers getting lots of hits for posting leaked Guns N Roses tracks, or uploading entire Kanye West albums, or even just posting a song or two from the latest Brian Wilson release. I knew I didn’t want to do that, but competition drove me to skirt the edge of the major labels. Then, last year, Web Sheriff started hanging around my site. He attacked me for posting a live song by a Jack White side project. I became further resolved to avoid RIAA material, and never mentioned The Raconteurs again.

About a half year later, I moved back to Blogger, the corporate shill of Google, because Wordpress.com could not support a few technical features I wanted to introduce. Then, about a month ago, my posts started disappearing without warning. So, I’m done with Blogger. I’m done with major corporate music. I’m here, on an independent host, and here is my pledge to you and to the RIAA/IFPI:

I will do my best to discuss and promote only independent labels who have made it clear that they are interested in blog promotion, by submitting material directly to blogs, quoting good blog reviews, offering give-aways here, etc. I will also do my best never even to mention any official release by any label affiliated with the RIAA or IFPI. It will be harder for me to avoid the European watchdog, because I don’t generally buy or receive imports and it is difficult to impossible to tell what UK counterpart is affiliated with an independent artist. But I will do my best. If I screw up, I’ll quickly delete any offending links and may delete the post altogether, thus eliminating any reference to the artist from my little streetcorner.

To those who sometimes feel compelled to tell me I’m a snob, or plead that their artists shouldn’t be hated because of their label’s actions, etc.: Please leave or deal with it. My reasons are clear, as are my motives. I don’t hate the artists. I don’t hate the playa. I hate the game.

So, I will avoid major label releases, and generally will avoid major label artists as well. I won’t even buy their stuff. I will never purchase a Kanye, NaS, or Jay-Z CD again. Or Ryan Adams, John Lennon, Death Cab for Cutie, or even (whimper) The Clash. Not because I hate them, but because this is what I do. I support the little guy. And money talks. Without our financial support, wonderful small labels will up and die. Emerging artists will never grow. That’s where I want to help. If you’ve gotten the attention of a major label, you don’t need my help anymore. And the guys who sign your paycheck have made it clear that they don’t want my help.

Of course, unofficial bootlegs are still fair game. But I will be more cautious, selective, and deliberate. I don’t have a problem promoting, e.g., Joe Strummer, because I am confident that he would find what has happened to the recording industry to be a perfect death for an evil beast. After all, he insisted that the 3-record Sandinista! release not cost more than a traditional double album. The Clash regularly underpriced (or comped) their gigs. Ditto The Grateful Dead. These are bands that had the spirit of independence. Ryan Adams does, too, and I’ll support his tours and gigs with my dying breath. Any band that allows taping at their shows is up for discussion here, even if I can’t promote their official releases because I can’t sanction giving money to their corporate parents. Again, not because I hate them, but because they don’t need my money and don’t want my bloglove.

I am, of course, concerned that I won’t have much of an audience by sticking with small bands and relative unknowns. But as long as I’m clocking about a G worth of hits a day, I’ll stick around. Less than that, I dunno. If I can reach more people shouting out a window, then it isn’t worth staying around. So if you read me via RSS feed, I’d really appreciate it if you’d just pop on to the actual site. So my numbers stay up. Without numbers, the indies won’t use me, I won’t get good giveaways, and, most important, I won’t get advertisers (I don’t make much, but I what I do make pays for the site).

I want to thank all who wrote comments and sent e-mails during my brief hiatus. They were, and continue to be, much appreciated.

Now, without further ado, I want to welcome you all to the new but still fiercely independent Berkeley Place. I hope you’ll tell your friends about this site, and support it.

Independent music depends on you.

Why else did I return?

Because I did nothing wrong. I have nothing to hide. And my monkey must be free.

Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey (beatles/george michael)-My Brightest Diamond

It is with a heavy heart that I write this post. This is my last post on this site. It may be my last post forever, depending on the reaction to this post.

I’ve been a non-RIAA music blogger for over a year now. That’s why when companies send me CDs by The Annuals, Matisyahu, or Ryan Adams, I won’t review them unless the company hosts the mp3. That used to be a safe approach. Not any more.

A few weeks ago, I posted a collection of covers of songs from the 1980s. To my knowledge, only one of the artists featured in that post had a connection to the RIAA. That was Chris Cornell. But the song that I posted was a live recording, not commercially released. Nevertheless, the post mysteriously disappeared from my site. Over the next few weeks, this happened twice more. Blogger, my host, has been utterly silent on the issue. I am not alone in this—it’s happened to some of the best bloggers out there, like
Ryan’s Smashing Life, and So Much Silence.

Then, an 11-month-old post from my Wordpress site got dinged. Unlike Blogger, Wordpress, to their credit, did not delete my post. They simply marked it “private” and barred me from writing further posts until I addressed the issue. They also told me who the DMCA notice was from. It was from the IFPI, the UK equivalent of the RIAA. The post was on a band that was independent when I wrote about them, Wild Sweet Orange, and contained only one mp3, which was hosted by RED, an artist development site that Wild Sweet Orange was using for publicity. In other words, it was a legal mp3.

How can this happen?

First, let’s look briefly at the DMCA. Under this relatively new law, any individual (including your grandma) can send a notice to a host and tell them that a blog post infringes on a copyright. The host must act immediately, and the person who wrote the post has no right to appeal during the first two weeks. This is why some Obama supporters have begun serving You Tube with DMCA notices about McCain’s fully legal advertisements—You Tube must take down the ad, and by the time McCain’s camp can appeal, the election will be over.

And is a little guy like me, who just blogs for the fun of it, going to fight it? Of course not. Even though the law supports my actions. Under 17 USC § 107, it is “fair use” to reproduce portions of copyrighted material for “ criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research.” Fair use considers “the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes; (2) the nature of the copyrighted work; (3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and (4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.” I believe that my blog fits all four criteria; the only questionable one is the first one. And although I recently started accepting advertisements, the revenue is used to offset the costs related to this site
(such as buying music, sending out prize packages, occasionally attending concerts, etc.) This can hardly be considered a “commercial” venture. It is a labor of love that may be able to generate a couple hundred bucks a year. I’m not here to hurt anyone, and I’m not going to fight a takedown notice. I’m going to comply. Hell, I WANT to comply. I’m here to do favors for small labels and promote artists who do good live shows.

So that explains why blogger is acting this way. Why are the record companies doing this?

The answer is, they aren’t. Or, more precisely, they don’t all know they are. Sure, the big labels know exactly what’s going on. They’re trying to save a business model that is outdated and has been dying for years. But I don’t post their stuff. But artists on smaller or smallish labels may get signed to the big labels, and then the big labels hire attack dogs to protect their interests. That’s what happened with Wild Sweet Orange.

The other problem is that the U.S. label may not be aware that the British label hosts mp3s or submits material to blogs, or vice-versa. Thus, the IFPI may send out a notice where the RIAA would not. This is likely why some folks have told me that links to legal mp3s provided by Sneak Attack Media have been the subject of Blogger deletions/takedown notices.

Finally, the companies all hire robots to crawl the net, the robots find something that they think is offensive and tell the lawyers, and the lawyers send out the C&D notice. Nobody checks the robots’ work. I suspect that this is what happened to Chad, who posted links to an Elliott Smith show on archive.org, but got hit with a takedown notice anyway. These links were fully legal, but they were by an artist whose records have been published by an RIAA label. In his own words . . .

Even more weird, the post that was removed stated clearly at the very top of the post that it was an exact re-post of something I had posted one year to the day (so, easy to find if one was looking), and nothing happened to that post. So, in my case, you can actually see the post that was deleted…because it was posted a year earlier! Here it is, and notice, there is nothing posted that isn’t either directly from Elliott Smith’s official site, record label, or archive.org…

http://everybodycares.blogspot.com/2007/10/elliott-smith-august-6-1969-october-21.html

So that, ladies and gentleman, is what a potentially illegal or infringing post looks like. That it obtains nothing objectionable or not entirely on the up and up should concern ALL of you. Because I get permission for everything I post on my site, or use the direct links that labels or artists have made legally available online (or things that are officially in the public domain) for ALL my posts, and I got hit with one of these ridiculous DMCA take-down emails and automatically deleted posts, that certainly means it could happen to any one of you who posts anything at all.

Indeed, Chad. Indeed.

So what do we do about it?

Well, we could start posting streams only. Of course, that costs a lot of bandwidth, and it doesn’t serve the same audience. I, for one, almost never listen to streams. I go to my favorite sites, read a few reviews, take a few mp3s, and listen to them later. If I like what I hear, I go buy it. Streams do me no good.

The first thing I will do is never post on Blogger again.

The second thing I will do is try to find an independent host that is free or cheap. For this, I need your help. There’s a donate button the blog. Hit it and donate, if you want to keep seeing this site. But before you do, read the third thing.

The third thing I will do is, if I return to posting, religiously avoid any artist who is in the RIAA. This includes live material. What this means for you, my readers, is far fewer A to Z posts, far fewer gonzo posts, and far fewer folks coming in through places like Hype Machine. For me, that means, most likely, less traffic.

I’ll have to see if I get enough readers to keep going. This blog has always been about independent music, and mostly that’s not been a problem.

If there’s interest in me keeping going, and I can find the funds, I’ll look for a new host. I want to note that Tim at www.thebluewalrus.com has already been most helpful in such an endeavor. Drop a comment, let me know if I should bother coming back. Tell me if you’re interested in reading about indie artists who you may not know about, like Saturna, Diacon Panthers, LoDeck and Omega One, Marnie Stern, and all the others I’ve featured here over the years. On the other hand, if you only come through for the big cover
posts, which may include artists who are on RIAA labels, tell me that, too. ‘Cause it means I’m done.

Well, they took another post of mine and I can’t figure out why. I no longer believe that this is the work of the RIAA. Someone out there just has it in for me. I can’t figure out who and, of course, Blogger won’t say anything about it because it is impossible to reach anyone at their help desk.

The post did not have a single protected work. It was indie artists, most of whom submitted to my site.

If this post disappears, I’ll really know something is wrong.

I may publish a few things I have already written over the next few days, but other than that, expect my site to be defunct for a few weeks while I figure out what to do next.

And if you are reading this, and you’re the one who is messing with me, please let me know why. I have made every effort to avoid distributing RIAA protected material. If you’re just someone that I offended, I wish you would just tell me. This is ridiculous.

Look out behind you! It’s the fucking RIAA sending out DMCA notices on stuff they don’t even own! Or stuff that label reps sent to you to review, knowing full well what your submission policy is! Run for your life! Or better yet, poke him in the balls and shit on him!

I’m wondering if I should quit blogging, in light of the deletions and stepped up C&Ds being issued here and at wordpress.

THIS POST WAS EATEN BY BLOGGER, AND I’M NOT SURE WHY.

But here’s the text of it. No links, though, and no pix. Apparently, someone complained. Can’t imagine who.

10. Down Under-Men at Work.

I chose to use this song, rather than the paranoid “Who Can It Be Now?” to represent my favorite member of the invasion of the Aussies in my top 20. Arguably, “Who” is more appropriate because there were so many paranoid songs in the 1980s (one of the best: Norman Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me.”) But ever since I heard Colin Hay rework this song acoustically, I realized that this is a very well-crafted pop song. Besides, if it weren’t for this song, which topped the chart from January 15 through Feb 11, 1983, nobody would know what a fried-out Combie was. If you still don’t know, go rent Prescilla, Queen of the Desert.

Versions:

Spacecake. A bizarre version–part hard rock, part woodblock.

Curtis Peoples

9. Rapture-Blondie.

This one was harder for me, because the song itself is only so-so. But I really do dig the concept, and it was such an important song because it represented the first time a female “rapper” hit #1 on the Hot 100. More importantly, it brought Fab 5 Freddie’s skillz to the mainstream—a direct result of a few CBGB punks making their way to a Harlem block party one day and being blown away. Hard to believe it was as long ago as 1981. Now, rockrap has become godawful.

Versions:

None that I am aware of. But as a consolation . . .

Rappers Delight-Of Montreal

8. Beat It-Michael Jackson.

Two songs from “Thriller” are in the top 10 because, hey, even though it came out at the beginning of the decade, no record better exemplifies the excess, the nonsense, the booming pop, and the drama of the 1980s. Beat It topped the chart for three weeks (April 30-May 20, 1983), featuring an Eddie Vedder guitar solo and a young Wesley Snipes in the video. And let us never forget the best Weird Al video ever: Eat It. Two gangbangers attached by a roasted chicken, armed only with forks.

Versions:

Supergrass

The Last Dinosaur

7. Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)-Phil Collins.

Younger hipsters will know the Postal Service version of this song, which was brilliant for taking an overwrought arena ballad and making it sweet and small.

Versions: Go buy the entire Postal Service record. It’s all you’ll need.

6. Let’s Go Crazy-Prince & The Revolution.

The Purple One is one of two short African Americans to make my top 10. He’s litigious, but there’s no denying his genius.

Versions:

Band of Tipsys. The WTF?? version.

5. Like a Prayer-Madonna.

I wasn’t a fan when the song first came out, but when all the relignuts got crazy over it, I learned to love it. Now, it’s my third favorite Madonna song ever. I can’t believe Maddie only made this list once. I guess I don’t like “Like a Virgin” all that much.

Versions:

See this huge A to Z post.

4. True Colors-Cyndi Lauper.
Love the Cyndi. And love this song, especially when she does it live. It topped the charts in late 1986.

Versions:

See this huge A to Z post.
3. Owner of a Lonely Heart-Yes.

One of the first #1 hits in the year 1984, and the lonely Yes song ever to top the Hot 100. I’m not a huge prog-rock fan, but the opening of this song is pure adrenaline, and the drum work is simply awesome.

Versions:

See: Owner of a Lonely Post.

2. When Doves Cry-Prince.

The ’80s was the time for androgyny, and Prince was the king of it all. Doves was #1 from July 7 through August 10, 1984. And it is one of the greatest songs ever.

Versions:

Ben Sollee (live, direct link)

Animal Liberation Orchestra. This is a particularly awesome version.

1. Billie Jean-Michael Jackson.
Topping the hot 100 for almost two months in 1983, Billie Jean (BJ to her friends) maliciously got pregnant and caused little Mikey so so so much pain and angst. Next time, Mr. J, put a sock on the pickle.

Versions:

I recently did an MJ covers A to Z post, so I’m not going to re-do that here. But this is a particularly good one.

Billie Jean-Chris Cornell (Live, acoustic)

Coming soon: The also rans.

I can’t find any e-mail for blogger support, and individual posts I ‘ve made keep fucking disappearing!!!!! ARgg!!!!!! Does any reader have any idea why, or who I could contact about it?? My top 10 songs of the ’80s posts is gone, without any explanation!! And I don’t keep back ups of this stupid blog.

I am so fucking aggravated.

I showed much love to Marnie Stern when she exploded on the scene in 2007, picking “In Advance of the Broken Arm” as the Best Debut of 2007. It was alternately dissonant and shredding, muscular and intricate, and like nothing else I’d ever heard. With a sound as distinct as hers—it’s kind of like a nine-year-old choir boy at a metal nightclub, shouting in your ear that he wants a Shirley Temple with a rum chaser—it was hard for me to imagine how a sophomore release could be anything but disappointing. But it isn’t.

Like most artists, Marnie Stern’s follow-up is less wild and more melodious—but not much more. It starts with “Prime,” a car-alarm of sonic urgency that blasts and blasts until, in track 2, Marnie offers the first single: “Transformer.” Here, she raps. Yes, raps. But not in a stupid, white girl way. This is the most accessible Stern song I’ve ever heard, but it’s still so off-the-wall that it leaves me out-of-breath, looking for a toehold. And while I’m dangling, she rips right into “Shea Stadium,” which begins with rolling, careening drums that bash and batter. And so it continues.

The album is much like the horrendously difficult title: “This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That.” Every song is a series of quick bursts, start-stops, nothing with more than one syllable. Sounds don’t continue for very long, notes don’t sustain, and the guitars cut out rather than fade. In some ways, it’s psychotic. In other ways, it reflects our current instant, mash-up, disposable, short-term culture.

Most rock grrls try to sound sexy. But Marnie never does. Instead, every song shouts of a body on fire and a running brain back-to-back windsprints. And that’s sexy, without even trying.

Ruler

Marnie Remixed:

Absorb the Lipgloss

BONUS COVER that is about as opposite of Marnie as humanly possible:

You Will (Bright eyes cover)-Snow Patrol (live, acoustic)