Songwriting Tips from the Hitmakers, Pt. 1 | DIY Musician

Songwriting Tips from the Hitmakers, Pt. 1 | DIY Musician

LADY GAGA: THE END OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION?

Camille Paglia, Sunday Times UK - Although [Lady Gaga] presents herself as the clarion voice of all the freaks and misfits of life, there is little evidence that she ever was one. Her upbringing was comfortable and eventually affluent, and she attended the same upscale Manhattan private school as Paris and Nicky Hilton. There is a monumental disconnect between Gaga's melodramatic self-portrayal as a lonely, rebellious, marginalised artist and the powerful corporate apparatus that bankrolled her makeover and has steamrollered her songs into heavy rotation on radio stations everywhere.

Photos of Stefani Germanotta just a few years ago show a bubbly brunette with a glowing complexion. The Gaga of world fame, however, with her heavy wigs and giant sunglasses (rudely worn during interviews) looks either simperingly doll-like or ghoulish, without a trace of spontaneity. Every public appearance, even absurdly at airports where most celebrities want to pass incognito, has been lavishly scripted in advance with a flamboyant outfit and bizarre hairdo assembled by an invisible company of elves.

Furthermore, despite showing acres of pallid flesh in the fetish-bondage garb of urban prostitution, Gaga isn't sexy at all – she's like a gangly marionette or plasticised android. How could a figure so calculated and artificial, so clinical and strangely antiseptic, so stripped of genuine eroticism have become the icon of her generation? Can it be that Gaga represents the exhausted end of the sexual revolution? In Gaga's manic miming of persona after persona, over-conceptualised and claustrophobic, we may have reached the limit of an era. . .More

ANOTHER REASON TO BOYCOTT THE RECORDING INDUSTRY

WIRED

A federal appeals court is ordering a university student to pay the
Recording Industry Association of America $27,750 - $750 a track - for
file sharing 37 songs when she was a high school cheerleader.

The decision by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reverses a Texas
federal judge who had ordered defendant Whitney Harper to pay $7,400, or
$200 per song. The lower court had granted her an "innocent infringer's"
exemption to the Copyright Act’s minimum of $750 per track because she
said she didn't know she was violating copyrights and thought file sharing
was akin to internet radio streaming.

The appeals court, however, said the woman was not eligible for such a
defense even if it was true she was between 14 and 16 years old when the
infringing activity occurred on Limewire. The reason, the court concluded,
is that the Copyright Act precludes such a defense if the legitimate CDs
of the music in question provide copyright notices.

Harper, now 22 and a Texas Tech senior, said in 2008 interview that she
didn't know what she did was wrong when she file shared Eminem, the
Police, Mariah Carey and others as a teen.

"I knew I was listening to music. I didn't have an understanding of file
sharing," she said.

Scott Mackenzie, the woman's attorney, said Friday that "She's going to
graduate with a federal judgment against her." The RIAA, which has sued
thousands of people for infringement, labeled Harper as "vexatious" when
she refused to settle the case.

Only two RIAA cases against individuals have gone to trial, both of which
earned the RIAA whopping verdicts.

--

Kate Miller-Heidke 'The Last Day On Earth' Official Video

I heard "Are You Fucking Kidding Me (Facebook Song)?" and wanted to hear more. Found this...

Dance Hall Crashers - Go

Used to love these guys! Kind of Prog-Ska!

Beck Comes Out on Top of Ridiculous, Somewhat Imaginary Band Feud

By Jocelyn Hoppa, Crawdaddy!

I’ve kinda been watching this one from a distance over the last week or so, trying not to care. But it’s gotten too ridiculous to ignore, and I suppose now is the right time to give you all the recap. Especially since, you know, today’s theme is all about our hungover brains being easily entertained with music people’s shit talkin’. That’s what today’s all about, in case you didn’t know.

SO. Way back in August, before we even had this blog, Radiohead released a one-off charity track called “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” Patch was the last surviving UK veteran of WWI and died just recently at the age of 111. Proceeds from the single benefit the British Legion. Seems like a nice, sensible thing for a band to do, right?

Well, on November 3rd, the webzine Spinner ran an interview with the Fiery Furnaces in which the brother half of the duo, Matthew Friedberger, upon being told that Radiohead sent out a mass email describing the tribute, went fucking apeshit about it. He said, “F— you! You brand yourself by brazenly and arbitrarily associating yourself with things that you know people consider cool. That is bogus. That’s a put-on. That’s a branding technique and Radiohead have their brand that they’re popular and intelligent. So they have a song about Harry Patch.”

Confused? You should be. While I’m sure Harry Patch was a real cool guy, it’s a rather suspect thing for a band to align themselves with so to appear as thought they are all cool and obscure with their references. As it turns out, Friedberger confused war veteran Harry Patch with American composer Harry PaRtch. D’oh! Good one, dude.

THEN. Then, because he obviously had to answer to what was at least perceived as his giant fuck up, Friedberger issued a statement saying that he knew all along that it was Harry Patch, duh, and he just thought it would be funny to make a joke. Is that even believable though? I dunno…

The story gets better and continues on after the jump.

Friedberger’s statement:

“Like most creative musicians, Matt Friedberger is not a fan of Radiohead and most of their chart busters. Of course, Matt and all the Fiery Furnaces family are great fans of allTommys living or dead, so much so that lots of the Fiery Furnaces’ work is, because of the pun, dedicated to imitating the Who’s Tommy.

“Back in the fall of 1996 or whenever that interview was conducted, the interviewer asked what Matt thought of the Radiohead song celebrating a WWI veteran. Matt naturally thought it would be interesting to pretend that they wrote a song about the celebrated American composer of a similar sounding name, hence his joking in the interview about Radiohead composing a song with something like 48 notes to an octave. It was easy and amusing to imagine Radiohead’s attempt to colonize that relatively arcane bit of our musical lifeworld. This is what they used to call, in some bohemian and advertising circles, ‘riffing’ or fooling around.

“Matt has not heard the Radiohead song about Harry Patch, but if he did, he is sure he wouldn’t like it. No doubt Radiohead and their fans can ignore his opinion of this matter and continue with their triumphant artistic interventions. Matt would have much preferred to insult Beck but he is too afraid of Scientologists.”

Okay, so this is the point where we cease being confused and start thinking to ourselves that this Friedberger guy is kind of a dick and should learn to keep his trap shut (and maybe get someone else to write his statements? I mean, lifeworld???). And the last sting on Beck from out of nowhere? WTF, Fiery Furnaces dude?!

AND THEN. Then, Beck posted a 10-minute tribute to Harry Partch on his website (click and scroll a bit). It says nothing directly of the Friedberger insult, but the implied “fuck you” speaks volumes. Awesome volumes. That there is a life lesson, from Beck to you.

So yeah… then… Friedberger, who apparently thinks more circular logic is just the answer to saving face here, penned a MySpace blog just yesterday about Beck’s song, titled “Imaginary Response!” If you want to read it go ahead, but I can tell you right now that it’s full of mind-numbing sentences like this one: “I propose nothing less than the liberation and use of only our imaginations for the direct purpose of, not just pop music writing, but pop music production and distribution. And subsequent, now imaginary, blog discussion.”

Ugh. So, yeah, that’s the recap. Beck comes out on top. Radiohead is obviously staying out of it. Fiery Furnaces dude reveals himself to be severely annoying. I mean, does anyone else have the image of him alone in a room talking to himself stuck in your head like I do?

The Dictators - Search And Destroy

The 'Tators!