How the internet is powered and why iTunes changing their logo is a good thing

Fun fact: I used to study physics*.  I know! would've thought it? Newton was a clever chap wasn't he, and he surmised that every object has at least two opposite forces acting upon it at any one time in.  For example the surface you are stood on exerts a force upwards into you at the same levels as gravity pushing in the opposite direction.  Otherwise you would either go spinning off into space or crushing through the Earth's mantle.  This concept of opposite forces continues throughout the world of physics be the that the forever fantastically named quarks**,  electrons and positrons or a myriad of other examples.  Nowhere is this more true than in the Internet.  However unlike other examples, The Internet not only has these two complete opposite forces exerting on it at any one time, in this case it is fact powered by them!

So what are those forces, well they are:

CATS!

Mr Joel Veitch in his paper "The Internet is made of Cats"*** got it half right.  He, correctly, theorised that the internet is not only made of and by said Cats but that it was also a positive influence on the world creating all the nice things that you find on the Internet.  This is evidentially true to anyone who has spent any length of time on t'interwebs or indeed opened an email during the 90's.  What Mr Veitch failed to mention is the opposite force acting upon the Cats at all time.  Naturally this is...

HATING STUFF!

Hating stuff**** occurs naturally throughout the Internet in many forms. In blogs such as these, forums comments, social networking sites and at the Daily Mail's website.  Now some of this is quite justified, I can heartily recommend www.redlettermedia.com  for some simply fantastic hate filled criticisms of modern cinema and quite often the internet can be the voice of common sense pointing out and lampooning the ass-hatery of individuals and companies world wide.  Lots of it is just hating stuff however.  And there has been a lot of hating stuff recently.



Last week iTunes released it's 10th iteration and shock horror it changed it's logo! This has caused uproar on the internet! Somehow.

"Classic iTunes" logo

Steve Jobs has been criticised for "abandoning 10 years of instant product recognition and replacing it with an unknown".  Now in my opinion, unlike the whole iPhone4 signal strength problem (yeah, you're holding it wrong) this strikes me as utter nonsense.  Why I assume you ask? because things have changed in the last ten years.  No they have, go check I'll wait.  You see what I mean?! I know, it surprised a lot of other people to.

If there is one thing we human beings hate, it's change but change the world has.  Where iTunes has been successful is that it has gone outside of it's area of influence.  What I mean by this is that once upon a time in the early days of the internet people who kept music on their computers were viewed with suspicion, fear and generally ignored.  They were viewed as Crazy types who have digitised their music destroying it in the process with psychoacoustics (actually that argument is still going on just most people don't care anymore).

Amongst other things what iTunes very cleverly did was put on a CD on it's logo.  (It also got locked into DRM by the SDMI but that's another matter entirely and that's not the subject here.)  By placing a familiar household object within the logo Apple reached out to people who did not put music on their computers and told them that it was ok to do so. It gently stroked their heads and put a picture of a CD on there to remind them that it's like a CD except that it's spreadsheet that plays music.

Nasty horrible fake fruit...I mean iTunes 10 Logo

Now whereas this is a tiny part of iTunes' success it is still part of it. The marketing within the brand logo was clear, this is a product you use alongside your CD collection, this is a resource you can use in conjunction with your CD's, put your music on here and keep your CD's safe it said.  This is simply just not the case any more.

It's now 12 years since Napster, 8 years since Kazaa, 5 since Limewire.  The concept of peer to peer networking is thoroughly embedded within the mindset of todays music listeners.  The simple fact of the matter is that the CD is in it's death spasms. The failure of the music industry to recognise the digital revolution is well documented and I am not going to add to it here but in all honesty if you still do not think that the CD is on it's way out ask yourself this:

Name the last 4 cd's you bought and the length of time between the first and last purchase.

There was a time when all of us have gone into HMV and picked up 4-5 albums in one go.  Chances are you were some where between 16-24 when you did this.  Chances are you've not done it for a while now.  Year on year download sales increase and physical format sales decrease and at long last the Music Industry is beginning to recognise that this is not actually a problem, it's just the way of things.

Apple have recognised this, in removing the CD aspect of their logo they are turning away from it's first 10 years of providing a product that integrates with a CD.  Whereas I doubt the ability to rip tracks from a physical format onto iTunes will go the message here to me is clear.  The first 10 years was about iTunes and the CD being together.  Now iTunes is all grown up and moving on to other things, it doesn't need the CD anymore.  None of us do.

In short it's not something to hate, not really, if it really bothers you that much just change the icon on your computer it's not hard and there are dozens of tutorials on the internet teaching you how.  It's really much more of a cat thing.

* I did fail though.
**up, down, side, bottom, strange, charm, anti up, anti down, anti side, anti bottom, anti strange & anti charm
*** Basement Cat notwithstanding
**** FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

Making shows happen - Part 1 Riders

Well I've not done this in a while and probably should.

In intermittent period I have largely been doing two things; Working and trying to find more working....work.

When people ask me what I do at gigs and I tell them "usually a combination of show advancement and stage management" this usually garners a couple of raised eyebrows and the question "what's that then?".  So I thought I would say what they are here and then in the future I can just refer people here.  In the interest of sanity I will try and make this as jargon free as possible, I will also try and insert some advice to unsigned bands because I am nice like that.

Show advancement is what happens when the deal has been done.  Promoters, tour reps, bookers and venue managers all get together and do theirjobs (which I wont go over here as it wouldn't do justice) and from this a concert or series of them is arranged, advertising is done, tickets are sold and all prepare for an enjoyable and profitable evening.  What show advancement entails is making sure, this then happens and that everybody has everything they need to make this happen.

In more detail they fall into the following categories:

Technical Rider: What you need to provide from a technical aspect to make the show happen.  This will almost certainly involve a Public Address system of some sort a Front of house mixing desk and a monitor mixing desk.  The bigger the show the bigger the requirements.  Particularly large artists may ask you to provide amplifiers yourself and Chuck Berry insists on a psychic 30 piece band, that know his entire back catalogue and must be able to guess what song he is going to play next because he wont tell them in advance. Conversely to this at large festivals the production crew may tell the bands lower down in the line up what equipment they are allowed to use as this will then be shared between them all to speed change over times only allowing the head liners to use their own gear.

Chances are if you're just starting out you wont be making many demands.  However do use a technical rider to tell people what you are bringing or more accurately not bringing. If you are not bringing a bass amp and drum shells, say so.  This allows arrangements to be made well in advance.  Conversely if you will be bringing a bass amp and drum shells you will mysteriously end up being booked for more shows by your local promoter, allow other people to use them to and you will also mysteriously end up getting pretty decent gigs. No really, making it so local bookers don't have to phone round every band asking whether or not they're bringing a bass amp will pay dividends, even if you're rubbish.

Channel List: A spreadsheet that details how many signals will be going from things that make noise (outputs) into things that make them louder (mixing desk and amplification).  Particularly fancy ones will details what microphones are preferred, whether this signal needs to be monitor mixed (do the people on stage need assistance hearing it through the wedges on stage) whether it needs a phantom channel (I have no idea what this means either) and other technical requirements as well.

Now this used to be a fairly simple process as every band was the same.  Namely there were two guitarists, a bass player, a drummer and maybe some of them sing.  These were simpler times.  Now as more and more equipment is stuffed onto a stage and everyone has at least one mac book, some kind of bontempi organ from a car boot sale,  a good five keyboards, samplers, sequencers and a whole host of other electronic trickery channel lists are fast becoming huge.  Some bands even go so far as to plug all of these things into their own mixing desk on stage and one of them handles everything giving the sound engineers only one input cable for about 15 different assorted instruments.  These people are gods in my opinion as they save a lot of time, but it's not always appropriate so having an accurate channel list is an absolute must as it lets people know how much work they need to do in limited periods of time and enables them to have everything prepared in advance saving that most precious of commodities; time.

A good channel list will make sound engineers hate you less.  They will hate you a little bit, but that's just part of being a sound engineer.

It will also help avoid statements like "what do you mean you don't have 32 plug sockets on stage?"

Stage plot: The stage plot is in essence a handy diagram showing where bands are going to put everything on stage.  Sounds fairly innocuous but it is an incredibly hand thing to have.  Firstly it's a visual aid and they always help, plus they will give information like how many mic stands are going to be needed and where everything is and therefore where all of the cables need to be.  Essentially it works alongside the Channel list to complete the picture.

A good stage plot looks like the one on the right.  It shows where everything is on stage, shows where the preference of monitor placement is and has been done on the computer for legibility and has in this case provided a legend all though this is not always needed.  The set-up is not particularly complicated but is made immeasurably easier with this handy diagram.

Whereas a bad one looks like it has been done a napkin.  Even this though is useful, it's just not as useful and will probably generate more questions than answers.  Sometimes on purpose.





Dear unsigned bands: Have a stage plot.  Spend some time on it and you will only have to do it once or until you buy a new glockenspiel that you just have to incorporate into your set for one song.

Lastly Schedule: This is in many ways the most important of all information provided by a venue.  It will state load in times, sound check times, door times and stage times.  Stick to them.  Certain bitter stage managers (not me of course) will say that musicians need to have times adjusted by about two hours to make them turn up on time now whereas I would never be so jaded as to make statements like that it is true that timings are generally the first place to slip.  If you can not make the time's given, which for the unsigned band is entirely possible given that you most likely have a day job as well, let people know.  Things can be adjusted and moved around.  Chances are there will be some sitting around to be done, but similarly if you are there and somebody else decides not to turn up on time you can purloin that stage time for yourself and garner yourselves a sound check rather than just the line check you were going to have.

Like wise with stage times.  Most venues now have their entertainment licenses very strictly enforced and the time you are given on stage will be cut short if you take too long getting everything up there.  I can remember when I first started doing this ten years ago bands would be told "you have thirty minutes" now it is very much the case that you are told "you have till 8:30".  Once you're finished the most likely thing you will want to do is have a beer and chat up that red head, but don't just yet!  Get everything off as fast as possible, in all honesty you should and must be able to strip the stage of your gear in about 5 minutes.  Get a reputation for being on time and setting up/stripping stages in a timely fashion and again that mysterious promoter effect will kick in.

Well that's about it I think for now.  Technical riders and scheduling documents are not the most exciting things in the world but they do make shows happen smoothly.

That said I did recently come across the finest written rider known to man, have a look not only will it give you a good idea of what I mean by all of this but it is also genuinely hilarious in places.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1004061iggypop1.html

TTFN - DFTBA