Ooh, I’m slightly annoyed after submitting a few questions for a Q&A session (in Norwegian, if you’re so inclined) on a local site today with Ragnar Bjerkreim, a board member of TONO, the Norwegian Performing Right Society, and leader of NOPA, the Norwegian Society of Composers and Lyricists. Today’s session was about the record industry and file-sharing.

Admittedly, no matter how much you try to avoid it, you look somewhat like a member of the Green Ink Brigade posting questions for these Q&A sessions, forced into asking multiple questions in a slew, unable to format them in a sensible manner on a lousy submit form. Nevertheless, I think his answers were foggy and evasive to the point that I suspect he didn’t even understand my questions. Or maybe he just didn’t have any real answers. I sure don’t — that’s why I asked him.

My questions:

• What do you think the future will look like? Do you think it is possible to agree on international technology laws to effectively put a stop to illegal file-sharing?
• If so, how are we going to avoid affecting the democratic and legal exchange of information […] on the web in a negative way with this kind of legislation?
• Is it alright to sacrifice parts of this democratic and legal exchange of information in order to protect commercial interests, or do you rather consider these aspects to be unrelated? If so, why aren’t they related?
• And finally: Do you think recorded music is permanently devalued, or is it possible to regain the commercial value of recorded music in a reality where — if technology continues to evolve at the pace we’ve seen so far — we will be able to get all music that has ever been recorded onto our iPods in 20 years’ time?

Granted, the general direction of these questions is somewhat colored by my own views. I’m trying to force him into a trap. I’m also taking for granted that introducing new technology legislation implies restricting the use of file-sharing tools, which is totally relevant in regards to the ongoing Pirate Bay trial. But maybe I wasn’t clear enough after all.

Here are Ragnar’s answers that pissed me off a little bit. Not much, but enough to put it on my blog. He probably answered a lot of questions within a limited timeframe, but I say that doesn’t excuse him from actually reading the questions. My comments in parentheses, if you were wondering:

• It’s hard to say what the future will look like (No shit. Stupid me for asking)
• Your questions include several assumptions that I don’t agree with (?)
• It’s allowed to share files that are not copyrighted  (Yes it is, but I didn’t ask)
• It’s not a democratic right to walk into a book store or a music store and take whatever you want and not pay for it (No it isn’t, no one said it was. I asked how we could avoid affecting the democratic and legal exchange of information with new laws)
• As time goes by, I’m sure new and better technical formats will come along, where you can choose whether you want to own or rent your music (?!?)

None the wiser, then. He answered my first question, I’ll give him that.

A little bit about my viewpoint: I’m all for finding viable solutions that will ensure that the artist gets paid for his/her work, but to be honest I’m more worried about the potential implications of new technology laws for me as a regular web user.

I can upload my holiday videos to YouTube. I distribute my music (I’m an amatur musician) to last.fm, iLike or any other service that is willing to host my music. I’m a total publicity whore. I write this blog to express myself, and I upload all of my pictures to Flickr. I don’t use BitTorrent — but I might as well have uploaded my pictures to the web using a BitTorrent-client if that was my preference, it’s still totally legal.

To my knowledge, everything I do on the web is legal. But at the same time I could easily have used either of these services to upload large amounts of illegal content, copyrighted material for which no permission has been obtained. As, indeed, many do.

The way I see it, if you’re ever going to reduce the amount of illegal sharing on the web, you inevitably have to reduce a lot of the perfectly legal sharing that is going on all over the web, because the tools are the same. For every paragraph I publish, for every song I make available to the public, for every video I upload, I could have chosen to do something illegal - I could have copied a large portion of someone else’s book onto my blog, I could have uploaded the latest Britney Spears album to the web using my ftp-software (not really, I don’t have it)… anyway, you get the idea.

It worries me. How are they going to stop all those “pirates” and all those “thieves” without bothering me and my legal web habits? I just don’t think it’s possible, and I don’t think the entertainment industry cares about how their crusade affects me and my internet habits. I am skeptical of the entertainment industry, the right holders and their motives at large. I’m worried about how their endless search for petty cash may ultimately harm the web. Most of all, I’m skeptical because of the way they have treated fans, developers, technological innovation, competition, thieves, bands and musicians in the past.

That being said, I have no sympathy for self-righteous people who assume that it is their God-given right to get things for free either.

Yes! Yes! As some of you may know, I’m a “recording” artist, and some time ago I signed up for last.fm’s royalty program. That means that every time someone streams my music on last.fm, I make a little bit of money. I’m all for transparency and being open towards my fans and all that, so please let me share my revenues with you so far (not share share of course, just share as in… well, you know, show you the numbers… I’m not stupid or anything):

So you see, it’s no joke. I’m actually making money off my music. And I want more! Dear fans, you’re wonderful, you’re beautiful. I love you all. Now off you go, off to my artist page on last.fm to help me make more money. Stream my music as if there was no tomorrow. Support the my art. $ee you soon.

I loved this one. It’s from a very funny web show, featuring Lisa Kudrow as Fiona Wallice, a rather self-centered psychotherapist offering three minute sessions via webcam. Here she is, meeting a new patient, Ted Mitchell, portrayed by the brilliant Bob Balaban. More stuff like this on the web, please.

From Times Online:

EMI, the troubled music group, is close to appointing a little-known Italian executive from the consumer goods industry to run its recorded music division.

Guy Hands, chairman at EMI, is in the process of poaching Elio Leoni Sceti from Reckitt Benckiser, the consumer products giant behind brands such as Cillit Bang, Veet hair remover and Finish dishwasher tablets.

Cillit Bang and Veet hair remover - how appropriate. They just fired 1500 employees this spring, and by the look of it they plan to continue with their spring cleaning well into the summer and beyond.

My guess is that Hands is planning to get rid of the entire recorded music division. The money is in the publishing division of EMI and they’re losing big time on their recorded music investments at the time.

Steve Lukather on his website a couple of days ago: “The fact is yes I have left Toto. There is no more Toto. I told the guys before the last leg of our tour.”

I used to be a big Toto fan, so I’m kinda sad to see them go, but I totally understand him. David Paich was out of the band, the Porcaro brothers were out - it wasn’t really Toto anymore anyway, even though Bobby Kimball was back on vocals. It must be a great relief for mr. Lukather to finally call it quits.

Toto lost me around 1991-92, after the release of “Kingdom of Desire.” Jeff Porcaro died, that was a major blow, of course. And after Joseph Williams had to leave the band in the late 1980s, followed by the disastrous Jean-Michel Byron experiment, they were left with Steve Lukather as their lead singer - and, although a decent ballad singer, his voice isn’t very strong. And I absolutely hated “Kingdom of Desire.” They never really recovered after that. Not for me, anyway.

My favorite Toto period was probably the Joseph Williams “era”, “Fahrenheit” (1986) and “The Seventh One” (1988). I loved those albums when I was a teenager.

By the way, I enjoyed Lukather’s honesty in his recent announcement: “I really cant go out and play Hold the Line with a straight face anymore. I was 19 when we cut the record. I am 50 now.”

The fans apparently didn’t like it very much (he had to retract the statement after a couple of days) but seriously, who can blame him? I’m pretty sure he’s not the only musician who feels that way about his old stuff. I mean, artists should be allowed to grow sick of their own material. Even if their fans still love it. Even if it has turned them into wealthy men. Especially after 30 years. I guess the problem is that most of the Toto fans really loved those early albums. So the band wasn’t really in tune with their fans anymore - another good reason to split up, I guess.

Besides, what separates Steve Lukather’s recent solo album, “Ever Changing Times” (2008) from anything Toto did the last 15 years. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. So, nothing lost then, really? I don’t think so, not at this stage. But so long, Toto, and thanks for all the fish.

…that We Are Scientists are the new Rubinoos until I just played the last track on their new album!

The bass, the vocalists singing the melody parallelly in two octaves, the guitar fills, the rich background vocals - it’s pretty similar. Not similar as in "Girlfriend" vs. "Boyfriend" mind you, but the Rubinoos-style is definitely recognizable.

The track in question, "That’s What Counts", is softer than anything else We Are Scientists have ever recorded, at least to my knowledge, and that’s probably why the Rubinoos suddenly came to mind. But once I made the connection, I see quite a lot of similarities between the sound of the two bands.

The tracks are available for streaming here: "That’s What Counts" by We Are Scientists and "The Magic’s Back" by The Rubinoos. And, I may add, I do like the new We Are Scientists album. It’s more diverse than the first, but it still has plenty of punch. It’s called "Brain Thrust Mastery" and was released in March 2008 on Virgin.

If you’re reading this a few weeks from now the tracks are probably gone. Sorry.

Update:

The archive.org servers appear to be a little unsteady, so I’m sending the links to my last.fm page instead.

- - -

I just had a wonderful experience. Yesterday I was aimlessly surfing on the internet, kind of restless and feeling very unproductive.

Then I came over this project entitled Album-A-Day (applied crap art). It’s been running for years, and to create an "Album-A-Day", you must record a piece of music following these rules (quote):

Dear God. Here I am, sitting unsuspectingly in my garden enjoying the evening sun when all of a sudden I’m hearing "Animal" booming from a massive soundstage somewhere downtown in this sleepy, little village on the west coast of Norway.

I’m rushing in to grab my computer and find out what the hell is going on. And you’ll never guess who’s coming to town - my town - for a Classic Rock Festival this week: Def Leppard. Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. Thin Lizzy. Roger Hodgson. Slade. Mott the Hoope and Rod Stewart!

Robert! Rod is here! Why didn’t he tell me he was coming? Why didn’t he warn me? I need to go dig up my old toy trains right away.

Anyway, after rubbing my eyes (and ears) and double-checking the calendar (ok, it is still 2008, I’m not going crazy) I really don’t know what to do next. Should I lock up the door, close the windows and stay inside for the next couple of days or pull out my old pub rock outfit from the basement and head on down and join the party?

Hooo-ooooo! [cl-ick]

Here’s a song I wrote a couple of months ago. It’s a collaboration with my nephew, really. He’s 15, and he asked me to write a song for a school project. They were making a fictional short film about a dysfunctional family, and the song was meant to reflect the teenage daughter contemplating suicide. The lyric ideas are all his - pretty great, I think - a lot of emotion and teenage angst in there.

I put a gazillion effects onto the vocals, and I’m pretty happy with the end result. There’s a chilly ambience to the vocal and the track in general which is exactly what I was aiming for. I’m good!

OK, enough with the self indulgence already. Here is the track:

No Hope (Terje Fjelde / Endre Storli) © 2008 [download link]

I’m a piano player. Not a real piano player, but I play the piano. I know where to find the notes and the chords I need for my music. I’ve played the piano since I was 8, but I never had a single piano lesson due to unfortunate circumstances: a band instructor told me early on that the piano was for girly boys. Real men played the horn. I believed him.

Still, my band years did teach me to read notes. The problem is that I can’t read them fast enough when I’m sitting in front of the piano. So I’m basically playing by ear, and I’m not half-bad at it. And I have a pretty good ear when it comes to arrangements and piecing musical elements together.

But more than anything else, I feel like an impotent piano player. I will never have the drive, the overview, the fluency or the style of a trained pianist. It’s immensely frustrating, but the piano remains the most important thing in my life along with the people that I love and care for.

That feeling of impotence is never stronger than when I’m listening to jazz pianist Bill Evans. He’s my favorite piano player, and he moves me in ways no other musician has ever done. But every time I listen to his music I get just a little bit frustrated. To be quite honest, I sometimes even get frustrated beyond belief.

I know it’s completely irrational. He’s a world-class jazz pianist, possibly the finest the world has seen. Why would I even begin to compare myself with him?

It’s probably because his music describes my emotions so acurately. He describes my feelings way better than I’ll ever be able to domyself, musically or verbally. And even though I can hear what he is doing technically (sort of), I’ll never be able to replicate it, not even remotely so. Due to my limited technical abilities, my music will never be based primarily on raw (or refined) emotion, like his, but rather on the careful assembly of different parts. I’m not so much a musician as I’m a musical engineer.

Whatever. I bought the first tracks on Evans’ “The Last Waltz” yesterday, and they’re absolutely perfect.

“The Last Waltz” contains the final recordings of Bill Evans - he played nine nights live at Keystone Korner, San Francisco in September 1980. His trio at this point consisted of himself, Marc Johnson on bass and drummer Joe LaBarbera, and the support is flawless. It is widely considered as one of Evans’ finest recordings.

A week after his last performance at Keystone Korner, he died at 50.

Listen to the tracks on eMusic.