Chris Anderson, one of the editors for Wired Magazine, and author of ‘The Long Tail‘ — an excellent book about the niche economy, recounts the story of how the multi-platnum band REM got it’s name, or should I say got to keep it’s name, on his blog.
The long and the short of it? Chris was in a synth-pop band back in the day, that was also called REM. Both bands were just starting out, and got booked at the same club on the same night (they staged it as a battle of the REM bands). The winner, chosen by audience applause, got to keep the name. The loser got renamed by the winner. You can already guess what happened, but you should read the anecdote for yourself.
And if you haven’t you should pick up ‘The Long Tail‘ for yourself, if you expect to survive and thrive in the “new” new economy of niche media.

Welcome to dr.xnlb! This site is a steady stream of art, music, videos and photographs, many of them produced by me and my friends, some of it just random awesomeness from around the web. Thanks for visiting!

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my updates. You can get them by email, RSS, Podcast, and lots more options.

If you've been here before, maybe you want subscribe to the comments feed? love,
dr.xnlb

The Observer, a UK periodical, has just published a list of the 50 most influential albums in music history. These are the albums that they say, changed the music world forever. I generally look at these kinds of lists with suspicion. I mean most of them leave so many seminal underground releases and artists off the list that it erodes their credibility. I was pleasantly surprised that this list does no such thing. In fact the way they connect albums is about as right on as you can get in 98% of the cases. I mean anyone that can recognize King Tubby’s influence on remix culture, or sees the connection between LFO and the later success of predecessors such as Aphex Twin has got the right time of day, in my book.
Here’s an excerpt:

1 The Velvet Underground and Nico
The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)

Without this, there’d be no… Bowie, Roxy Music, Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Jesus and Mary Chain, among many others.

…

2 Kraftwerk
Trans-Europe Express (1977)

Without this… no techno, no house, no Pet Shop Boys. The list is endless.

…

7 Patti Smith
Horses (1975)

Without this… no REM, PJ Harvey, Razorlight. And no powerful female pop icons like Madonna.

…

10 The Beach Boys
Pet Sounds (1966)

Without this… where to start? The Beatles acknowledged its influence; Dylan said of Brian Wilson, ‘That ear! I mean, Jesus, he’s got to will that to the Smithsonian.’

…

14 Joni Mitchell
Blue (1971)

Without this… no Tori Amos or Fiona Apple - and Elvis Costello and Prince have cited her as a prime influence.

…

15 Brian Eno
Discreet Music (1975)

Without this… we wouldn’t have David Bowie’s Low or Heroes, the echoey guitars of U2′S The Edge, and no William Orbit, Orb, Juana Molina. To name but a few.

…

23 Augustus Pablo
King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown (1976)

Without this… no DJ remixes, no house, no rave.

…

25 James Brown
Live at the Apollo (1963)

Without this… great chunks of hip hop - which has sampled Brown more than almost any other - would be missing.

…

28 Prince and the Revolution
Purple Rain (1984)

Without this… no Janet Jackson, no Peaches, and certainly no Beck.

…

33 Herbie Hancock
Head Hunters (1973)

Without this… suffice to say, almost everything in the jazz-funk idiom can be traced back to this.

…

37 Massive Attack
Blue Lines (1991)

Without this… no Roots Manuva, no Dizzee Rascal. In fact, there would be no British urban music scene to speak of.

…

43 Primal Scream
Screamadelica (1991)

Without this… no lad culture - it was no accident that a mag founded in 1994 shared its name with Screamadelica’s defining single, ‘Loaded’.

…

49 De La Soul
3 Feet High and Rising (1989)

Without this… thoughtful hip hop acts like the Jungle Brothers and PM Dawn wouldn’t have arrived.

…

50 LFO
Frequencies (1991)

Without this… no success for Orbital, Underworld, Leftfield, Chemical Brothers or Aphex Twin.

digg this story

The Recording Industry is at it again. This time they are suing XM Satellite Radio and Sirius over new time/place-shifting devices that act like TiVO for Radio. I’ve long wanted this for even normal FM, since I got my DVR. Most times it for the pause feature, or for rewinding back to a part I missed. The RIAA claims that users are now being able to download tracks they here on their receivers, and keep them forever. The thing is, none of the devices allow you to off load the music to any other format or player, much like almost all of the DVRs on the market (and the ones that can are home built and run software designed for this purpose).

Sirius rolled over, which is a bit strange to me, considering XM is owned by Clear Channel. They agreed to pay $15 per device sold, on top of the usual 2% Fair Use “tax” that has been applied to devices that store media broadcasts since the days of home-taping and beta-max.

In the case of XM, they refused, and the RIAA slapped them with a federal lawsuit. And just so you know that the RIAA is still in the same frame of mind as they typically are, one device, the XM Inno, even has the feature to push a button and purchase the track they saved on Napster. Basically they want XM to pay up, or pull these devices from the market.

The madness continues.