Sunday Wax Bits

Fred Goodman's new book, Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman
Jr., Warner Music and an Industry in Crisis, offers a searing indictment of the executive's business decisions and a stark portrait of how the music industry wound up in its current state. Here's a passage from Fred's book:

"One reason the record industry has been hit so hard by the Internet is that the CD was not a beloved product. Audio arguments aside, its only selling point was convenience. Its appearance marked the end of great album graphics, and it never inspired the passion that the vinyl LP did. CDs just weren't as much fun to own, and when MP3s appeared, CDs were easy to abandon. Today, as nice as it is to be able to go online and hear virtually whatever I want whenever I want, I miss the experience of buying a music product worth owning: filling a terabit storage device with ten thousand music files isn't anywhere near as engaging as wandering through a great record store or even a good used bookstore. [Photo: Fred Goodman]

"That is the business record companies should be in: creating products and online services that add value to recordings and excite people rather than writing off a generation that never had anything worth buying. Until then, media companies—even with some measure of online rights protection—won't have any real spur to growth. And there will never be another Ahmet Ertegun [pictured]."

Fortune's Fool is a smart, easy read filled with insights and behind-the-scenes anecdotes. For a music lover, it's a look inside the sausage factory, and what you learn isn't pretty. You'll find Fortune's Fool here.

Ayako Shirasaki. Last Wednesday I had an opportunity to hear pianist Ayako Shirasaki perform solo at Smalls in New York. She played two sets with enormous sensitivity and grace, including a moving rendition of Turn Out the Stars in tribute to Bill Evans on the night of his death 30 years ago. To hear Ayako's performance, check Smalls' site here. Her current album is Falling Leaves at iTunes or here.

Hank O'Neal. If you dig photography and first-hand jazz stories, dig legendary photographer Hank O'Neal's blog. Last week Hank featured a terrific post on John Lewis here.

Radio roundup: David Brent Johnson [pictured] of Night Lights' fame on WFIU just posted a podcast of his recent show, Jazz From Monterey: 1958, the Birth of a Festival. The show features recordings from the first Monterey Jazz Festival and includes Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Cal Tjader and Jimmy Giuffre. You'll find David's podcast here... Jazz musician Bill Kirchner's Jazz From The Archives show tonight will feature pianist-singer Franck Amsallem. Bill [pictured] will spin recordings of Amsallem with bassists Gary Peacock and Johannes Weidenmuller, drummer Bill Stewart, saxophonist Tim Ries, singer Elisabeth Kontomanou, and others. The shows airs tonight at 11 p.m. (EDT) here.

Oddball album cover of the week. Gerald Wiggins was a  sharp pianist with impeccable taste. This 1956 album, on the appropriately named Dig Records, features a surrealist landscape by drummer Johnny Otis. At the top is the Gerald Wiggins trio in powdered head coverings. It's all too cool for school.

Comments

[David]

Fred Goodman's prior book, The Mansion On The Hill, a history of an earlier era of the music biz, is also superb. You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Mansion-Hill-Springsteen-Head-Collision/dp/0679743774/ref=pd_sim_b_1

[David]

Possibly the most interesting part of that quote was the part about "writing off a generation that never had anything worth buying" as this suggests that the value of recorded music lies primarily in the packaging rather than the music itself. Of course, in the music industry, "hype" has often proved to have greater commercial value than musical substance. (Jazzers love to complain about this.) Eric Felten's recent article in the Wall St. Journal about Liberace and Lady Gaga has, perhaps, some relevance here.

[Ed Leimbacher]

A slow learner, it's only taken me 20 years to appreciate the miniature convenience of CDs. (Maybe if I live to be a hundred, I'll come to value I-Pods and MP3s and whatever gadget takes over next.) But as someone born in 1943, I was literally a child of the Long Play record era, and I quickly came to live my life in 20-minute chunks, to read the jacket backs for stories and bios and details, and to glean tidbits about fine art and photography from the covers (even the risible ones Marc drops on us each Sunday as examples of what-were-they-thinking silliness). The venal stupidity of record label execs may be proof of "plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose," and digital disappointments certainly don't measure up to climate change, but the shrunken, now disappearing completely, packaging for recorded music just makes me feel old and sad--one more thing my grandchildren won't get to enjoy. For every step forward, must we always take two steps back?

[David]

The link to the Small's site yields only a message saying "no audio posted for this event, check back later." The artist responsible for the Wig album cover is the same as for the Tanganyika album cover featured in a recent post.

[Tom]

While I am a child of the LP era, and I do miss the cracking of cellophane and the look of a pristine LP emerging from it's sleeve...I DON'T miss the pops,clicks, and other anomalies associated with poor pressings. I am now a CD-ophyte and intend to remain that way for my remaining years.