Bill Evans Interview - 1970

Great interview with Bill Evans..


Bill Evans Interview - Nardis

Harps and Angels

Randy Newman's Harps and Angels is right up there with the best of his work, sardonic, poignant, clever, and filled with compassion and humor. He is able to comment on the American condition directly, without pulling his punches in a way no one else can. 'A Few Words In Defense of Our Country', and 'A Piece of The Pie', are dead on. 'Easy Street' and 'Laugh and Be Happy' slide in under the radar but are just as pointed. The love songs, 'Losing You', and 'Feels Like Home', balance the biting satire. The orchestrations and arrangements are brilliant and direct as usual. Thank you Randy!

A Man Named Pearl

I just saw this over the weekend. A small understated film about a man who does something extraordinary with his life and doesn't let anything get in his way. The music in the web trailer is over the top though....don't know what they were thinking. The film score is a slightly whimsical small band jazz thing which helps to keep it light.

Go see it.

Shelby Lynne does Bacharach

I've been listening to Shelby Lynne's Dusty Springfield tribute, "Just A Little Lovin" quite a bit the last few days. It's a great sounding record, beautifully under-produced by Phil Ramone.

I keep returning to her version of the Bacharach/David tune 'Anyone Who Had A Heart'. This is a very hip tune. The harmonic structure travels through distinct sections, supporting the emotion of the lyrics perfectly. It has been recorded many times but I have never felt the essence of the song quite as directly. Shelby doesn't try to emulate Springfield but approaches the track with a soulful intimacy and passion that is her own...and the band sounds great.

Where do we go from here?

Change is the only constant in the world. The bigger the shift, the larger the opportunity. When people are coming from a place of scarcity and fear they hang on to what they know and miss the opportunity to embrace big change with creativity and intelligence.

The massive shifts in the record industry are creating fascinating opportunities for new business models and growth. The layoffs at EMI will hopefully result in a restructuring that brings the focus back to developing talent and creating new models for engaging consumers. In the early days of paid music downloads I was an advocate for very low per-track pricing (50 cents or less) as an approach to engaging consumers in this new way of accessing music. When industries create pricing structures based on old models they are looking backwards, not forward, and missing the opportunity to shift. See Seth Godin’s blog, ‘How much for digital?’ for a great read on this topic.

What happened to all the good music?

Much is being said these days about the huge changes in the record industry. Future business and marketing models have been endlessly discussed. Music piracy, the drop in CD sales and the bloated overhead of an industrybuilt on an international hit-driven model. The industry sustained itself for years getting consumers to replace their LP collections with CDs rather than focusing on developing innovative music.

What I’m not hearing about is the lack of compelling new music coming from the major labels. Even if the record business is able to adapt its practices, it is an industry based on imitation, not innovation. Without compelling music the most brilliant business models will still have nothing to sell.

There is a huge amount of great music popping up everywhere. The challenge is to filter and refine talent in a world where technology has made creative expression easy and accessible.

The enduring successes in the music industry have not been driven by ‘what was a hit last week’, but by recognizing and developing real artistry over the long haul. I hope that the upheavals in the record industry will lead to a reevaluation of what music means to us in the first place. Let’s not lose site of the prize in all this commotion.