Yesterday, Blogger, the blogging arm of Google, wiped, without notice, a mounting number of music bloggers whom have had various notices from the DMCA regarding “illegal” music on their site. Bill of I Rock Cleveland has detailed his fight against Google’s actions and fought his case on their support forum.
Back in May of last year, we ourselves received a takedown notice from the DMCA regarding a Little Boots track that her American label’s publicist had sent us to post the January before. GoDaddy, our hosting company, received the initial notice and pulled our site for an agonizing few hours as we scrambled to remove what was once a cleared track from the site. We wrote Little Boot’s manager, her labels, her publicists, everyone we could think of and no one had sent the DMCA after us. Apparently, the DMCA plays by their own mysterious and unscrupulous rules. But Google, as much as we do have an undying love for them, is not without fault for failing to report this problem to the blogs which have called them home for years. We found an interesting post from Nashville Scene regarding the takedowns which links to an LA Weekly article from Feb 5th warning that Google will now be hitting delete on blogs instead of giving them notice. Apparently there was some notice that this new policy would be instated but not to the bloggers themselves.
Music blogs and music lovers have gathered on Twitter to discuss the issue, hashtagging posts #musicblogocide2k10. The Music Slut is about to celebrate its 5th year anniversary, we can’t imagine 5 years of our work being gone in a matter of moments. Those sites gone and attempting to rebuild are: Pop Tarts Suck Toasted; Living Ears; It’s a Rap-Rogo; Masalacism; I Rock Cleveland
Senryu have a new album, Inkling, coming out this March and in anticipation, have released a new video of their first single, ‘Obsess Much’ shot by James Khanlarian in Los Angeles. Shot beautifully by the way, all in HD, we assume. We especially loved the stop photography (is that what the term is for the flashing pictures? Whatever, it’s awesome).
The song is a real banger as well. We’d like to hear the radio edit begin at the 52 second mark though (djs, take note). You can download the mp3 of ‘Obsess Much’ for free over on the group’s bandcamp site, we’ll let you head over there to grab it and while you’re there, feel free to download Senryu’s entire catalogue, a practice which we give a hearty thumbs up to.
Last night at Union Hall, I saw my fifth Blood Warrior show. After seeing them three times during CMJ, they’ve come back from an eleven day tour of the eastern seaboard a tighter, stronger band with a palpable joy of playing together - whether that was aided because this was the last day of the tour or not, didn’t really matter. What did matter was that with each soaring and uplifting song, I too felt uplifted. Uplifted quite literally in fact as I found myself on my toes, higher and higher, during each song. Truly a band to keep an ever watchful eye on. You can buy their new 7 inch from Ernest Jenning.
Check out this quirky and adorably funny video of Brooklyn band Pearl and the Beard singing a medley of Will Smith’s bigger hits. Though perhaps the most outstanding part about this (beside the singer’s outrageous voice) is the beautifully shot music video itself by Goddamn Cobras Collective. Well done all around.
The Music Slut is proud to be a part of Multiverse Playground: an amazing art, music and comedy event happening this Saturday evening in Brooklyn. We’ll be DJing from 6pm until 7:30pm and we also have a pair of tickets to give away to one lucky winner. To enter, leave a comment on this post! We’ll select someone randomly on November 5th @ NOON.
Today it was announced that the Federal Trade Commission has amended it’s guidelines on endorsements to include bloggers. This means that anytime a blog receives something free, or an outright payment for a review, they must make a full disclosure.
We realize there is a whole world out there of other blogs getting cool tech gadgets or free trips but here in the good old music realm, what does that mean? Idolator thinks that means we must disclose when we get a free cd in the mail. The Culture of Me believes it also includes guestlist spots. Does it? We’re not sure.
We’re not so naive to think that there are no blogs out there accepting payment for reviews that they do not then post as a “sponsored review” which, to put it bluntly, flat out sucks. Here at TMS, that doesn’t happen however, you all know that for the most part we go to shows for free right? But it’s never for a show we’d otherwise wouldn’t buy a ticket for if we weren’t so desperately poverty stricken. You might also notice in our FAQs that we do not want cds. EVER. Ok, maybe cool music geekout things but please see our previous comment on being poor, we live in small places that cannot possibly hold cartons of music. As for anything else, well, if someone ever wants to send us a new camera (which we really really need, hint hint), ship us someplace outrageous or pay us buttloads of cash to review something, we promise to tell you all. Deal? In the mean time, we’ll just continue to accept our usual sexual favors for reviews. Oh, wait. Do we have to declare that too FTC?
Yep, you read that correctly. The Music Slut and Flavorpill have teamed up to give one lucky winner a pair of CMJ 2009 badges. From October 20th - 24th, the CMJ Music Marathon will be taking over various venues around Manhattan and Brooklyn with hundreds of artists from all over the world coming to participate. It’s a great time of year in NYC, one of our favorites.
Enter now by tweeting to @flavorpill_nyc and @themusicslut which artist you are most looking forward to seeing during CMJ. Don’t have Twitter? No worries! Just leave a comment below with the same info! We’ll be randomly picking a winner on October 12th.
Questlove seemed dubious. Earlier in the evening, he had tweeted “based on their setup and sound… imma take a wild guess dirty projectors are from BK”? But then last night, not two tweets later, Quest posted a twitvid with the tag line “Man. Dirty Projectors came into our room and demonstrated their awesomeness. How cool is it for them to do this”? Seems the avant indie group, who are indeed from Brooklyn, saw his tweet and came in to change his mind. They piled into his dressing room and performed ‘The Bride’ from their latest album Bitte Orca for The Roots clan, which Quest recorded on his phone for us all to see. Check it out below.
Embarrassing story confession? Dirty Projectors played on New Year’s Eve for After the Jump two years ago at Knitting Factory and I came upon a solo David Longstretch strumming in the green room. I introduced him to a friend I was with and called him DANIEL. Sigh.
It’s not everyday that a shaggy haired musician in a 70’s era polyester suit starts making eyes at you. Well, maybe it is, I don’t know you that well. But it’s certainly not every day that you make out with said musician behind a DJ booth while his drummer performs the full choreography from ‘Thriller’. Actually, maybe it is, you don’t know me that well either.
Sometimes fate has a funny way of introducing you to people that will end up an important character in your life’s story. And though once upon a time there was a “once upon a time”, occupational hazard I’m afraid, that musician’s band still remains a part of my story and hopefully in turn, yours. That band is Senryu. A group that over the course of the last two years, we’ve seen grace the pages of Spin and most recently record a session with Daytrotter (which we hope we’ll hear sometime this year, guys!).
Senryu has a new EP out entitled Dying In Fast Forward. Released last week free of charge on Bandcamp and featuring the new additions of Puerto Rican brothers Dan and Andres McCormack to the long time line-up of Wil Wright, Steven Rodgers and Mike Agentis, the title track from Dying In Fast Forward has slowly become ingratiated into my brain. I find myself humming it at all hours of the day. Always a sign of a fine song. While you can download the straight EP from Bandcamp, you can only find the remix EP, Laughing In Slow Motion, here exclusively on TMS. We love it and hope you do too. Make sure to grab both to properly contrast and compare.
Waiting... One of the things that gets under my skin is having to wait for a music download to finish. I usually end up playing something silly, like online bingo or some other flash game, while I'm trying to kill some time. It's an easy way to kill 10 minutes while waiting.
