now playing

Whilst exploring some other jazz blogs I thought it might be nice for me to try to blog about things other than shamelessly plugging Beats & Pieces related stuff all the time – on that note I thought I’d mention some of the things that I’ve been listening to recently, and this list features three big bands that you should definitely check out…

Some of you may know that my Efpi Records co-founder Sam Andreae is studying across Scandinavia at the moment, currently in Aarhus. He sent me back a CD of an amazing Danish band called the Blood, Sweat, Drum n Bass Big Band and I’ve been listening to it quite a lot… Check them out on myspace (Redrum/Asa Nisi Masa is particularly cool) or there’s a taster video of their live show below.

One of my biggest musical heroes is Django Bates, and I was really excited when I heard that he was releasing a live recording of Loose Tubes, the band that bred a whole generation of British jazz musicians including Julian Arguelles, Steve Berry, Mark Lockheart and Iain Ballamy, whose music up til now has only been available on second hand vinyl (I got mine on eBay…). That CD, called ‘Dancing on Frith Street‘ is now out (as of today in fact) and I’ve been playing it constantly since it arrived with me on Saturday due to the eagerness of HMV to deliver – cheers!

Also while browsing the London Jazz Festival programme it was a nice surprise to see that Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society are coming over from New York. I first heard about Darcy and his band about 18 months ago and their debut CD ‘Infernal Machines’ is great – you can also download full recordings of their live gigs from their website. Secret Society are playing at Cafe Oto on Thursday 18th November, see you there…

P.S. I couldn’t mention the London Jazz Festival without pointing out that we’ll also be playing… Sunday 21st November, 7pm, Spice of Life in Soho!

Posted by Ben on 27/09/2010 at 23:28 in misc and tagged , , , , , , . Leave comments here.



Maria Schneider and fan-funding

Saw via twitter (follow me @beatsnpieces!) that Maria Schneider has announced another opportunity to participate in the creation of her latest commission – if you’ve $125-$2500 burning a hole in your pocket then click here for details.

mariaschneider_feb10

I know that this type of deal (and ArtistShare in particular) was groundbreaking at first, and the model has since been adopted by countless other artists, but I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with it. I think that this is because of the other ‘benefits’ you get if you sign up to donate money – for example, if you sign up for the $2500 Maria Schneider package she’ll phone you up 3 times to chat and update you on the commission’s progress. Fair enough as you’ve paid $2500 for the privilege, but it feels a bit to me like she’s just offering up just a bit too much of herself… Similarly for another one of the albums (I think it was Sky Blue) the top package included the chance to go birdwatching with her in Central Park.

I know that this ‘rewarding’ of investors probably goes in internally behind closed doors inside record companies all the time, and Maria probably does enjoy spending time with her fans, but still aren’t you kind of selling yourself rather than your music? I should stress that its by no means just Maria Schneider following this kind of model – there’s been plenty of other examples that I unfortunately can’t think of at the moment (I definitely read about an American metal band offering cookery lessons or a game of golf or something, thought it was Nine Inch Nails but can’t find it on Google so if you have any ideas as to who it was then let me know!).

While we’re talking about Nine Inch Nails, I think that they manage to do a similar thing without over-selling themselves. For example, you could buy their ‘Ghosts I-IV‘ album in a $300 package that included a hardback book, included the multi-track session files on data DVD and was signed by Trent Reznor himself. Limited to 2500 pieces at $300 each = lots of money. I do recognise though that Maria Schneider’s target market is probably somewhat smaller than NIN’s so this may not be possible for her.

At the same time, other jazz artists have also been funding their albums through donations from fans but in a slightly different way. Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society album was funded by donations, and indeed everything we do at Efpi Records is entirely down to donations from you (cheers!). I think that the difference is that people are donating to/investing in you rather than ‘buying’ you though. Whilst I am certainly very grateful for donations through the Efpi site (indeed transporting a band of 14 people to gigs without financial suicide would be impossible without income from donations), I imagine I would feel a bit uncomfortable about offering myself to someone in return for a few grand. And thats not because I’m miserable and don’t want to spend time talking to people about me or our music, indeed its quite the opposite and thats one of the things that I love doing! Its just the feeling of being paid to do it that I think would be a bit weird (to me).

Again I want to reiterate that this is in no way an attack on Maria Schneider, her music or her business model. Her music is amazing, and I had the good fortune to meet her briefly after her gig at the Barbican in 2008 when she was lovely. I’ve also bought at least 4 of her albums through ArtistShare (as well as the new Chris Potter Underground album) and much enjoyed the extra videos and content that I got through the site. I just thought I’d write a little bit about my feelings about giving people the opportunity to buy access to YOU (important to note that I’m talking about something different than paying for teaching) rather than your music in the hope that it would stimulate some discussion… Go!

Posted by Ben on 24/02/2010 at 15:13 in misc and tagged , , , , , , . Leave comments here.