April 20, 2010

Once again the Robinson boys are taking their proverbial ball and going home. But this time around the brothers and the rest of their Black Crowes band mates are going out on good terms as they have setup a lengthy tour titled Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys in which they’ll play a full 90-minute-ish acoustic set followed a full 90-minute-ish electric set at most locations. The tour kicks off in Milwaukee on August 13 and is currently slated to finish with a multi-night run at The Fillmore in San Francisco that ends on December 19. After that, the Black Crowes will take another indefinite hiatus.

The group is currently celebrating their 20th anniversary with this tour and by releasing a double album of all acoustic material on August 3 just a few days before the tour kicks off in Milwaukee. Dubbed Croweology, the double album will be sold for the price of a single album as a thank you to their fans for 20 years of support.

Each longtime band member commented on this announcement…

Chris Robinson: “With a smile so wide you can count my teeth and with a heart so full of love that it is spilling over the rim, I offer a humble and simple thank you. Thank you for your time, your imaginations, your heartaches and joy. Thank you for 20 years of cosmic rock n roll. 20 years of keeping it weird. 20 years of chasing horizons and before the band that dares dream out loud puts it down for a while, we are proud to give you our Croweology. This year the music is only for you as we celebrate what has been, what is now and whatever will be”.

Rich Robinson: “At this milestone in our career, I feel very fortunate that I have had the opportunity to spend my life making music. It’s been 20 years since we started out on this journey. I would like to extend my deep gratitude to all of our fans who have been there with us along the way. We would not have gotten here without your support. Every night I stand on the stage I feel great pride and respect for what we share with our fans. After this tour we are going to take some much needed time to spend with our families. But for now, we are very much looking forward to a great year of touring. I look forward to seeing all your familiar faces again on the road. See you soon.”

Steve Gorman: “20 Years Gone – To look back over the past twenty years …there are so many thoughts, feelings, and memories of all shapes and sizes that it’s tough to process it all. Lots of ups and downs, lots of everything. One can easily get lost in the labyrinth of those many experiences. However, there is one constant – and that’s an overwhelming sense of gratitude to all of you that have supported us for the past twenty years. Our tour this year serves as a very large THANK YOU to all in attendance. Whether you have seen us one time, ten times, a hundred times, or more, it goes without saying that we wouldn’t be here without you. The lives that we all lead, and the opportunities that we have been presented with, all trace directly back to your support. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You! And after this tour, we’ll be taking a nice, long, much needed break. We are all in agreement (no, seriously, we are!) that this is the right time to spend time with our families, friends, outside musical and non musical projects and of course, our personal lives. So, we’re going out swinging with all we got. Let’s all join hands and share the ride!”

READ ON for a full list of Black Crowes tour dates…

For all of the positives we’ve heard from Coachella, there was one performance that went terribly wrong. Unsurprisingly, the trainwreck set came from Sly Stone and his poor backing band

Independent artist Ryan Holiday considers himself a music business survivor after releasing more than 10 albums and EPs both as a solo artist and with his former band In Between Blue. For his latest project, Ryan has teamed up with his wife to write a musical. He’s also busy singing with jazz pianist Fred Hersch, writing a new album and rehearsing a “Stereolabesque” project, yet he’s found some time to bitch and moan about file sharing…

Eyes down round and round let’s all sit and watch the moneygoround
Everyone take a little bit here and a little bit there
Do they all deserve money from a song that they’ve never heard
They don’t know the tune and they don’t know the words
But they don’t give a damn
There’s no end to it I’m in a pit and I’m stuck in it
The money goes round and around and around

– The Kinks

Trent Reznor, singer and songwriter of the band Nine Inch Nails, states on his website that “Music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away.” In 1999 Napster revolutionized what is called peer-to-peer file sharing. File sharing occurs in networks which allow individuals to share, search for, and download music files from one another, all for free. The popularity of file sharing has practically destroyed the conventional music industry. Once there were six major record labels dominating the U. S. market. Since 2001, that number has shrunken to four, and file sharing technology has evolved so rapidly that the remaining record companies can’t keep up with the exchange of music. The next logical step, then, is to legalize it.

Although the phrase “legalize it” is more often associated with marijuana use than with file sharing, people can’t be stopped from smoking pot in their homes just like they can’t be dissuaded from swapping music files on their personal computers. According to an article by Sarah Reidel, Napster was “cobbled together by a scruffy-haired high school dropout named Shawn Fanning in the summer of 1999.” As with many internet-based applications, Napster was never intended to operate as it did. In her article, Riedel writes that Fanning’s program, written for himself and his friends, spread to 15,000 users in as little as a week. By 2001, billions worldwide had discovered P2P file sharing. This prompted the Recording Industry Association of America to file lawsuits claiming that Napster was “facilitating the free trade of ‘illicit’ music files [which] amounted to a violation of copyright law.” After years of litigation, the RIAA was able to shut Napster down but by then it was too late: filesharing had become more popular than ever.

READ ON for more of Ryan’s essay on Music and File Sharing in 2010…