Thursday, October 5, 2006
Music / Post No Bills The digital revolution crawls forward
Posted by Peter Margasak on Thu, Oct 5, 2006 at 8:04 PM
I’ll admit that I’ll always prefer to own music on record or CD rather than in a digital file any day of the week. But ultimately I just want music, regardless of format, and if it can't be had on physical media, a digital file will do. Thanks to a recommendation from a reader of this blog, I’ve been gorging myself on all sorts of rare Brazilian music at this site. The stuff is free, which, of course, raises all kinds of legal issues, but this guy is probably losing money operating the site, and the labels that own the music don’t seem to be in any kind of hurry to release it.
I know that Verve Records has been offering a bunch of out-of-print jazz albums exclusively as downloads through iTunes, and RCA has been doing the same for a series of dance records. I’m sure there are other indie labels doing the same thing. But we’ve been promised a utopian future where all recorded music in history will be available with just a few keystrokes, and it still seems like a long way off. Why? If Google can hire Chinese laborers to scan every book ever published, I don’t see why these multinational corporations can’t start digitizing their vaults. (Of course, there’s a good chance they don’t even know what they own, or where the tapes are.)
I mention all this because a new operation called Anthology Recordings launched today; it's the brainchild of Keith Abrahamsson, an A&R rep for Kemado Records. The site will sells digital reissues of obscurities of numerous stripes, but it’s off to a modest start, with just six titles, including one from Adrian Sherwood’s experimental dub project African Head Charge as well as a live album by Minneapolis proto-pop-punks the Suicide Commandos. Future releases suggest a strong psych-rock slant, but they’ll also be making available catalog items from the fine Spanish label Vampisoul —including boogaloo pioneer Joe Bataan--although I believe these titles will also be on CD.
Pricing is generally competitive with iTunes. Until that day when everything is available, I guess I’ll keep trawling the blogs. Anyone got some more suggestions? Vintage Colombian music, maybe?
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Hello Peter, Very niece statement, I agree with you when saying that some legal issues arises by making available free music with a website. However, the music that everybody takes from Loronix is out of commercial interest from record labels for a long time. Some LPs that I have there – you should believe me – does not have the master tapes available, they were missed during the industry mergers and acquisitions over time. I have received some emails from Brazilian artists making complaints that their music is not available at Loronix. So we need to take in consideration that sharing those old and obscure LPs is a manner to bring a new demand for some forgotten artists. I hope that very soon some of those LPs be reissued; I will promptly remove them, being very happy to make such shift. Congrats for your blog that I didn’t know. zecalouro
Peter- If you ever hear that I've been fired, divorced or both, you can blame these damn music blogs. That Loronix site is pretty excellent. There's more Brazillian stuff (less bossa and more samba and psych-type material) at brnuggets.blogspot.com, though it hasn't been updated for awhile. There's a truly staggering amount of blog activity on the psych/kraut, English folk and hard rock fronts. citiesonflamewithrockandroll.blogspot.com has nearly every Japanese psych, speedfreak and headbanger record released during the 70s -- highlights include the Speed, Glue & Shinki lps and the west coast pop stylings of Happy End. And when you burn out on term-paper indie darlings like the Decembrists, et al., something that takes me about 5 minutes, there's no cure like the scuzz on hardrock70s.blogspot.com -- Toad, Granicus, Groundhogs, etc. www.curved-air.com has excellent stuff too, everything from Larry Young's "Love Cry Want" to Terry Riley's "Persian Surgery Dervishes." See ya, Rob
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