A Day In Music

Nicking this idea from Collapse Board: one song for every hour of the day.

06:00 Controlled Bleeding – Words (of the Dying)

The “real” victims of online piracy

I admit I have an agenda. Almost everyone I know makes some sort of income from the arts. Some are writers, some are artists, some composers and songwriters, and some make video games. None of those people are rich, and every single one of them has been made poorer by piracy. My husband’s in a band who are signed to an indie label and – like Colleen Doran – is “depressed” by the number of people who’d pay £400 for an iphone and £50 for a concert ticket but won’t fork out £8 for an album.

Doran explains:

I spent the last two years working on a graphic novel called Gone to Amerikay, written by Derek McCulloch for DC Comics/Vertigo. It will have taken me 3,000 hours to draw it and months of research. Others have contributed long hours, hard work and creativity to this process. But due to shrinking financing caused by falling sales in the division, these people are no longer employed.

The minute this book is available, someone will take one copy and within 24 hours, that book will be available for free to anyone around the world who wants to read it. 3,000 hours of my life down the rabbit hole, with the frightening possibility that without a solid return on this investment, there will be no more major investments in future work.

The other day I likened it to Morrowind. When starting the role-playing computer game, your character is placed in an unguarded room that is filled with items that can be taken without consequence. I take the bread from the basket, then I take the basket, and the cutlery and crockery, and then I strip the room bare. I take everything that I can carry. I don’t even use, let alone value, everything I take. I take it because it is there and because I can and because it is easy and I won’t get caught.

Spare me any justifications about it being “one in the eye for The Man” or some sort of noble protest against outmoded distribution models. You’re just doing it because you can and because you can get away with it – and this time you’re not just taking from the faceless Imperial forces of some video game.

I’ll let Colleen Doran explain, since she’s much more eloquent than I am:

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/129741-the-qrealq-victims-of-online-piracy

Memory Lane: Download

Note: these interviews were conducted when I was 17-19 years old and running a music fanzine, so if they seem rather amateurish, it’s because they were. The italics are notes added 10-15 years after the event.

This is actually two pieces cut together; my recent recollections of a week back in June ’96, plus an earlier telephone interview I’ve edited in after finding it in the attic (which answers my own question of why I didn’t bother to interview them when we met.)

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CK: It’s very electronic, it’s very improvised and very experimental. I expect each evening to be different and spontaneous. I don’t know how well I’m answering your question …

Thousands of miles away in Vancouver, cEvin Key is on the telephone. I ask the man born Kevin William Crompton what the hell influences their weird noises.

CK: I don’t know. I know it sounds weird, but we don’t work like that. The thing is that we’ve been doing this for so long with Skinny Puppy that Download came about as a result of having too much pressure build up during that record. It was a lot of fun just to make a record with friends – and not doing it just to please a record company or whatever. Download was created as a stress release, which is somewhat how Skinny Puppy was formed. We just sort of found ourselves with a band. It wasn’t a case of being influenced. That is the antithesis of this album. The influences came from having original people to do it with. Mark Skybey is always doing totally different stuff, and Genesis (P Orridge) was great to collaborate with, and Philth – who’s more of a techno artist … Dwayne was always frustrated that we weren’t able to explore more of their ideas in Skinny Puppy, so Download was a special thing for us. We were getting a lot out of it, so it was good.