Rocknerd

Shut up ’n play yer Wangcaster.

6 October, 200927 November, 2020 Musician 3

Solid body electric guitars are only shaped like an acoustic for reasons of familiarity — get the neck right and you can do anything

Featured Artists Coalition terminally shoots self in foot.

5 October, 200929 April, 2017 Industry 0

If you’re trying to be the peak body for musicians in the UK, it helps not to alienate anyone who can read. Supporting Lily

Take it to the bridge.

1 October, 2009 Indie 0

My first thought was: “Ed Kuepper and Chris Bailey will be more than a little annoyed.”

It’s not DRM, er, DCE, it’s DPP! Yeah.

9 September, 200926 December, 2016 mp3 1

In the digital world, you can make anything anywhere and anyone can have copies without you losing yours. I would so download a car,

The good parts.

2 September, 200929 April, 2017 mp3 2

iTunes beat into people’s heads that they could buy a single song instead of a CD of two good songs and lots of crappy

The social history of the MP3.

30 August, 200930 August, 2009 mp3 2

Eric Harvey at Pitchfork posts a social history of the MP3. “It’s possible the past 10 years could become the first decade of pop

Anvil! The Story Of Anvil

30 August, 200929 April, 2017 Film, Metal 2

After screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival last year, Anvil! The Story of Anvil is to go on general release in Australia in

The Universe as seen from the music industry.

24 August, 200915 October, 2016 Industry 0

The Performing Right Society has produced a really nice chart of the music universe. Everyone involved is on this diagram. … except one group.

Rocknerd.org sorta viewable for the moment.

21 August, 200921 August, 2009 Rocknerd 0

Rocknerd v2 is still in the hands of a domain squatter, but the front page as of 2007 is up from archive.org. Would you

Party Fears index updates and #11 up.

10 August, 200912 April, 2017 Rocknerd 0

The archive of my Perth ’80s–’90s Perth indie rock zine Party Fears has been updated, with the addition of a PDF of #11 and

Now that’s industrial.

10 July, 200912 April, 2017 Goth, Industrial 0

Is Joy Division goth or post-punk? When played by hitting bits of metal, you may wonder. Best cover of “Transmission” ever, by steel band

The discreet charm of the Grateful Dead.

12 June, 200919 January, 2017 Country 1

What is a Deadhead? How do they get that way? Why, dear God, WHY? Daniel Chamberlain attempts to answer this question. He does note

It’s not downloading, it’s games. Here’s the numbers.

11 June, 200921 May, 2017 Games, Industry, mp3 0

Charles Arthur from the Guardian nails music industry bollocks to a wall. The article is worth reading (the data was quite interesting to gather),

ACS Law is definitely not Davenport Lyons. Probably.

10 May, 200910 September, 2016 Your rights 1

Remember Davenport Lyons? Their clients who discovered that it was actually ruinous to get a reputation with paying customers as RIAA-like thugs certainly do.

WFMU launches the Free Music Archive.

7 May, 200920 May, 2017 Esoterica, Radio 0

WFMU is a fine New York-based “WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT”-format public radio station. They have a blog with a fine selection of the

Artist’s shit.

27 April, 20093 May, 2017 Esoterica, Opinion 2

This week, the cheap shitty MP3 player is filled with improvised noise. I have entirely too high a tolerance for this sort of thing if it’s the right genre, in this case early industrial — all those albums from the eighties released in limited editions of a few hundred for the Artist’s Shit market.

Sound copyright extended into perpetuity.

26 April, 20098 March, 2011 Industry 0

TALKIN’ ABOUT, Degeneration, Thursday (NNME) — With the conviction of The Pirate Bay administrators having immediately abolished all filesharing, the EU has approved an

Music is free. In China.

25 April, 200925 April, 2009 mp3 0

Google now gives away legal downloads in China. And thus the official market catches up with the kids with 500GB USB drive parties. Meanwhile,

Dancing about architecture! What is it good for?

25 April, 200920 May, 2017 Opinion, Writing 0

Back in my day, we had to search the dial for radio that didn’t suck and search the city for the one record shop that didn’t suck. And pay money for music! On pieces of plastic!

Iron Maiden: Flight 666

22 April, 20099 August, 2016 Film, Metal 0

Iron Maiden has a global fanbase, they even played Poland while it was still in the Soviet Bloc, but there is no better illustration

Oh dear.

22 April, 20095 September, 2016 Games 1

Today’s Penny Arcade.

The Boat That Rocked

10 April, 200925 November, 2016 Film 0

I was hoping The Boat That Rocked would at least be fictionalised reality about British pirate radio in the sixties, in the manner of

PRS demands middle-aged kicks all through the nap.

9 April, 20098 March, 2011 Industry 0

MIDEM, Cash from Chaos, 1977 (NNN) — The Performing Right Society and UK Music have come out strongly against YouTube and Google for not

Internet killed the video star.

8 March, 20092 October, 2016 Film, Media 0

Dot.com winner Paul Graham writes on why TV lost — computers + television = computers.

Albatross.

7 March, 20097 March, 2009 Record 0

Saw a girl on the tube with a Get Hip Records bag. I told her I approved. I’m contemplating my own half a ton

Oh dear what a pity never mind.

28 February, 200926 December, 2016 Industry 5

The RIAA is on the skids. The record companies are pulling support at a fantastic rate; what will be left will be a smaller

And yet different.

8 February, 20097 February, 2009 Rocknerd 0

*cough* And then there’s the other sort.

Danny Ben Israel: Bullshit 3¼ (1970).

7 February, 200929 March, 2017 Esoterica, Prog, Record 0

Today’s music is Bullshit 3¼, a 1970 psychedelic prog album in Hebrew (with titles in English) by Danny ben Israel. The music is deeply

Rock stars were not formed whole from the brow of Zeus.

23 January, 20098 September, 2016 Rock 0

From The Guardian: 1970s rock stars with their parents. “Life photographer John Olson’s extraordinary pictures of the biggest rock stars of the 1970s at

Microsoft employees give up all hope.

22 January, 200926 December, 2016 mp3 0

It’s not just Microsoft’s DRMed music at twice the price, which will be as popular as a Zune running Vista. It’s the PR guy’s