All you have to do is ask

THE ART OF ASKING by Amanda Palmer (PIatkus Books, 2014)

This book is part memoir, part manifesto and part egocentric vanity project.

Amanda Palmer is a performance artist. She has been a human statue, a stripper and is best known as the lead singer of The Dresden Dolls who, in their early years were, in her own words, “a punk-cabaret duo specializing in tear-jerking seven-minute songs with drum solos”.

The manifesto part, is her fervent belief that artists, and by extension all human beings, need to learn that there is no shame in asking for help when you need a place to sleep or money to finance projects.

The experiences she recounts are proof that this can work. The most dramatic example is a Kickstarter campaign to fund an album. She set a relatively modest target of $100,000 but eventually raised a record-breaking $1 million. This level of success was not without its critics. She has been labelled a “self-serving, greedy, superficial attention whore” but is thick-skinned enough to overcome such unmerited slurs.

NEIL YOUNG’S PONO – DOOMED DEVICE OR GAME CHANGER?

Neil Young says he’s not an audiophile but his Pono music device is surely destined to get most of the early adoration from discerning hi-fi enthusiasts.

Young’s pledge is that with he is saving a dying art form but lossy music and streaming sites are what most consumers have grown up with and persuading the masses that they need another format and dedicated player is a hard sell.

On top of that, the failure of the Super Audio CD (SACD) does suggest that there is at best only a relatively small market straining at the leash for high-resolution digital audio. Having said that, the huge success of the Kickstarter campaign means that Shakey’s brainchild should not be dismissed out of hand.

If all you want to listen to are ‘classic’ albums by established artists then Pono might be more appealing. But even though I love stuff like Highway 61 Revisited or Dark Side Of The Moon, these are not records I go back to that often. I’d much rather hear something new than go on some nostalgia trip. It remains to be seen how much of Pono’s music store will cater for marginal tastes.

Nevertheless, the video promo for the device does make me curious to hear what all the fuss is about. A series of star names are full of superlatives after having taken a ride in one of  Young’s vintage automobiles which is presumably fitted with a state of the art sound system. Though you ought to take what Mumford & Sons say with a pinch of salt, you begin to think there may be something in the Pono to when the likes of Beck, Rick Rubin and Gillian Welch sing its praises.

I don’t for a minute doubt Neil Young’s sincerity but my gut failing tells me that it is a product that has arrived too late in the day. I regard myself as more than a casual listener but even so my musical addiction is already well catered for by web services such as Spotify, Bandcamp or Soundcloud.  When on the move I’m happy with my iPod or smart phone and am prepared to accept a poorer sound for the convenience.

The proof of the Pono pudding will be in the hearing but I seriously doubt it will the game changer some are claiming.

GOING BERSERK OVER ICELAND

ICELAND, DEFROSTED by Edward Hancox (SilverWood Books, 2013)

If I was commissioning a book about Iceland, I would want something that was more than a standard check list of places to visit and things to do.

I’d want a book that told me exactly why this small duck-shaped country is so unique, stunningly beautiful and how it comes to be blessed with the knack of producing so many stunning musicians.

And lo and behold, I don’t need to commission anything because Edward Hancox has just published almost exactly the book I’ve been looking for. The book was crowdfunded through kickstarter and hit the target in just six days, as clear an indication as any that I am not the only one looking for a book on this topic.

CREATIVE COMMONS: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE FREE?

“Universal access to human knowledge is in our grasp for the first time in the history of the world. This is not a bad thing” – Cody Doctorow (from his preface to Little Brother – available as a free e-book here)

Copyleft symbol

Creative Commons was set up to encourage authors to surrender part (but not all) their rights under copyright law so that their work enters the public domain.

A prime mover behind this so-called copyleft movement was the late Aaron Swartz.

I’m ashamed to say that I have only come to realise what an important figure he was since his tragic suicide at the age of 26.

He stood up to enemies of the freedom to connect and one of those who ensured that ill-conceived Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) failed to get on the statute books. He explains this campaign against state censorship in a keynote address at a Washington DC conference.

SOPA and the legal campaigns against Swartz illustrate that there are many powerful groups and individuals who would dearly love to claw back control of the internet from the ordinary people.

The introduction to Cody Doctorow’s novel which I quoted from above contains a passionate argument in favour of what essentially amounts to giving away creative works for free.

Doctorow argues that for the vast majority of writers and musicians, meaning those who aren’t the next Dan Brown or the new Coldplay, the big problem isn’t privacy but obscurity. He writes: “if the choice is between allowing copying or being a frothing bully lashing out at anything he can reach, I choose the former”.