Ray Manzarek 1939-2013

Kilbey and Kennedy Are Live and You Are Everything

If I was in Australia, and if I had anything to say about it, I'd be at this show.

The venue looks amazing. If this is the future of music, okay then. Playing shows like this for small crowds should be something someone could make a living doing. We are such a fractured society already, taste wise and entertainment wise that it just saddens me.

The Ringtone is All But Dead

The ringtone is going extinct.

Owning a ringtone business is like being the last guy with a paging service. Remember when you could go to the mall in the crappy part of town and buy a pager from a dozen different kiosks? I don't either because that was forever ago.

Sure, there will always be a consumer or two who fails to adapt to new realities and holds on to legacy habits--this is why there are, in America at least, a significant number of people who still pay $24.99 or whatever it is to access the Internet through America Online, much as they did fifteen years ago.

The ringtone business exploded because people had favorite songs they wanted to put on their phone. And while it is true that you can now put ringtones on your phone for free, I think there has been another decline of note here and that has been an evaporation of music being made that people were willing to pay for. As the number of artists has dwindled to the point where the only people making music are the ones who either love it or the ones who haven't gotten the memo, so too has the number of songs worth getting the ringtone for.

Trends being what they are, the ringtone business has fallen on hard times. Good riddance.

Lush Spooky Cover

Just in terms of sheer originality, the cover of Spooky by Lush is one of the iconic album covers of the 1990s.

When I think of how many times I saw this in record stores, it makes me wonder how many people know how good the album was and how original their sound was. Lush were knocked for having a Cocteau Twins sound, due mostly to having Robin Guthrie produce the album, but the songs were strong enough and the band were accomplished enough to rise above such criticism.

Anyway, here's a bonus--a poster of the album cover combined with other elements to promote an EP.

Slowdive Publicity Photo

Here is a publicity photo of the English band Slowdive, and I just love the composition and the arrangement of the photo.