Front Page

Record companies merge in saturated market

Can they find the road to the nodal lode?

Record companies are merging. But can they change their ways and listen to their consumers?

David James ponders a nodal future.

Avante-garde

Soundtrack to holocaust

Diamanda Galas: Defixiones

Hamer Hall, October 7th 2005

By Emma Waters

A low rumble pervades Hamer Hall at the Arts Centre, as brooding and severe as Diamanda Galas's promotional poster, her long hooked Greek nose diving down the middle of a gaunt face that flickers into points dramatically like flames. And slowly, after some delay, she enters from side stage to perform Defixiones: Orders from the Dead. Shrouded in black diaphonous cloth that will soon tremble with her rivuleting vibrato, she walks, controlled, funereal, to the lecturn.

Defixiones means "warnings engraved in lead". In Greece, Asia Minor and the Middle East, definxiones were placed on the graves of the dead to warn people against desecrating the graves. Galas wears the Defixiones around her neck. A torrent of hair covered by a simple veil falls over her shoulders. A tape spoken in the tongue native to her region plays, reciting a text. There was a booklet containing this text in translation but, frustratingly, that wasn't available until after the show for many, including me. I wouldn't have been able to read it in the dark theatre anyway. This proved to be an ongoing barrier to understanding the heavy-going repetitive homages to the dead and exiled, sung in a Middle Eastern mode.

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Eclectic Australian

Happily ever after

Album: Home of the Big Regret
Artist: Nic Dalton

By Emma Waters

Nic Dalton. The name may sound kind of familiar, but you can't quite place it. Well, this reportedly "hyperactive kid," born in the sixties, continued that hyperactivity into his adult life.

He start out playing guitar in a band called Girls With Money and drumming in Get Set Go simultaneously. Taking on three or more projects at a time became a bit of a habit for Dalton. Much later he played bass for Ratcat in the reunion years of 1997-98. But in the meantime he kept himself busy starting a book store and record label Half A Cow, which has become a steady in Australian music. He has played in many bands including Love Positions, The Hummingbirds and Sneeze. He even joined The Lemonheads, touring with them for two years and recording the album, Come On Feel the Lemonheads with them.

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Punk ska reggae

The Black market:
Subtle as a brick

Album: Subtle as a brick
Artist: The Black Market

By Emma Waters

They're young, they're punky broodsters all teeming with enthusiasm, they're spilling out storm clouds of political vitriol in a youthfully appealing ska-punk-reggae mix and they wear a lot of black. And with a whole bunch of high ideals, they're not gonna let themselves sink to any low level.
The opening paragraph on the website for Black Market Records (not to be mistaken for their band The Black Market) is a political polemic outlining the ethics of the label and its bands. It says in part, "we are a people who live and die by our beliefs. We are anti-racist, anti-ignorance, pro-unity.... There are people in the world who have never been full, who have never drunk clean water, who have never had a chance and unless we do something about it, they never will. They suffer at our expense, they make our shoes and we walk all over them. We owe it to them to keep up the fight." Remember the shoes reference.

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Strapping chaps rock oot!

Live concert DVD:
For Those Aboot To Rock:
Live at The Commodore
Artist:
Strapping Young Lad
Released by:
Century Media

By Michael Haydon

Strapping Young Lad are the greatest metal band you've never heard of. Having three albums under their belt (at the time of this DVD recording, and excluding 1998's live release No Sleep Till Bedtime, recorded right here in Melbourne) and a hefty reputation for being very, very good at being very, very heavy, it was about time for a video account of the 'Lad performing live. But before we start, a little backround is in order.

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Get the knives out

Album: Skin Flicks
Artist: The Knives

By Emma Waters

They've been around for little more than a year and a half and already have sponsorship, a record label bidding bout behind them and a debut album Skin Flicks cut and out. They've also created their own scanty yet all-pervading mythology of 'rising up from the sleazy, sun drenched, smog choked streets of downtown Los Angeles,' but is this all there is to this boy band: Le'Von, Brane, Jonny U and Scott, made good so they can be bad with a bigger budget?

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Cut and dried

Album:
Those Who Were Hung Hang Here
Artist:
Uncut
Released by:
Paper Bag Records

By Emma Waters

Uncut are a band from Toronto, Canada who currently in the business of creating hype. They're doing the circuits of showcase events in Toronto like the NXNE Paper Bag Records Showcase (they are signed to Paper Bag Records) and the auspicious Texas Music Festival that has brought bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs to notice.

But are Uncut ready or even cut out for the hype? In an interview with Mote Magazine, Ian Worang didn't seem too enthused with the politics of who's in and who's out - of the door, the hype, the industry. And is this, their debut album Those Who Were Hung Hang Here, the one to be hyping (let alone the rather ambiguous grammar of its title)? Uncut are busy traveling the well-trodden path, having toured both Canada and America and in late September are to tour with Husker Du's Bob Mould.

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Old tunes at the cutting edge

What do jazz and the Real Book have to do with really old music? John Griffiths explains 12th century jammin'.

By Peter Haydon.

Part One of a two-part interview

John Griffiths is a leading figure in the Australian early music scene. Teaching at the University of Melbourne's Conservatorium of Music, Professor Griffiths is also one of the players (literally) in the recent revival of early music in Melbourne. In the following interview, Griffiths explains to Peter Haydon the whys and wherefores of early music, and why it fascinates scholars, world music fans and jazzers alike.

PH: John, what differentiates early music from, say, classical music?

JG: I'll give you two answers. The first answer is purely mechanical: when you learn classical music, you learn from a teacher who's learnt from their teacher - there are continuous generations of didactic experience. Early music goes back before that, where there's been a hiatus, where the older traditions have been lost and so have not been handed down.

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Black Market

The Marketeers: All for one and one for all

By Emma Waters

I spoke to the one in the all for one, protagonist Toby Market about his Aussie battle (well, world battle really).

He's a young bloke who has worked for numerous charity organisations including Amnesty International, Greenpeace and WSPA. He runs his own touring company Too the Show Productions and a record label Black Market Records with a community of nine bands, including the one he fronts, The Black Market. There's also a free zine, The Black List available through the Black Market website.

Forget dread-headed visions of a commune of mild-mannered John Butler look-a-likes dressed in brown woollen grandad pants and topped with a handknitted green rasta cap - The Black Market wear a lot of black, emblazen their arms with skull tats and play really loud and fast. Eschewing half measures, they spit out great chunks of high energy, political punk-ska-reggae rant on anything from homelessness to indigenous issues to gentrification.

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To enter a competition to win a pack of Black Market Records merchandise, read the article above. Or if you're in too much of a hurry to do that just now, click here.

Send us your email, notes, memos, random thoughts, trenchant complaints. Tell us about your adventures, strugggles, disasters, disappointments and successes as a musician.

Trad is jazz too

Dear sir,

I read with interest the article entitled Merimbula a jubilee for all players [Issue 7]. Firstly, congratulations for bothering to deal with jazz at all - it seems to be hardly written about in most magazines I've come across.

But secondly, here's my quibble: why did your reviewer not cover trad jazz at the festival? Is he biased against trad? Surely we are past all that "two camps that never shall meet" stuff by now?

Alright, it didn't happen this time. But could you please invite a bit of balance in the jazz stakes and cover the trad side of things a little?

By the way, thanks for a good read.

John C.
Sydenham (via email)

We give preference to letters of 200 words or less, but try your luck anyway. We may edit your letters for reasons of space, or possibly because we're just a bunch of interfering bastards. Despite that, we welcome your feedback, comments and observations. You can use a pseudonym if you wish, but please include your real name, suburb/town and, if you are writing from outside Victoria, your state/country.

Email us at musosunion@aol.com.

Got a problem or question relating to the music biz? Ask Uncle Terry.
(Uncle Terry is a grumpy old man who lives in a cave in one of the less fashionable corners of the Yarra Valley. He is not a qualified legal practitioner and he does not dispense formal legal advice. Neither he nor the publishers of "The Dues" accept any liability for the results of acting on the opinions, statements or recommendations expressed in his column)

Email Uncle Terry on musosunion@aol.com. Please provide your name and suburb (& state/country, if you're not a local yokel...)

From new to blue

Dear Unca T

I've been playing in original bands for several years, including 3 independently-released recordings, without songwriting credits. That's OK, I'm just the grunt bass player and though I do help with arrangements, I don't do melody or lyrics, which is where the songwriter's copyright is. I heard that the copyright laws have been changed so that all the performers and not just the songwriters get some money when their tracks get played on the radio. I know writers get their money through APRA but where do the rest of us get it?

Nikka

Dear Nikka,

You are correct in saying that the Copyright Act (1968) has been amended. Anyone who performs on a recording now starts off with a share of the copyright. There are two big problems:

1. The right is assignable and it is now unfortunately standard practice for record companies to demand that performers sign away this new right before recording.
2. The new right is not a new type of copyright. It simply expands the old right to include performers that the producer of the recording has had for years. (I'm using the term "producer" here in its formal copyright meaning: basically, whoever paid for the making of the recording. The act now calls this right the "Maker's" right).

Royalties for this copyright are collected by an organisation called PPCA. They are like an APRA for record companies. The new performers' right is a part of this maker's right but PPCA does not seem to be interested in collecting and distributing royalties for performers.

So, musicians are given something new by the changes and then it is immediately taken away again. Sounds like the music industry to me.

Uncle Terry

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Box Hill B&B. Lovely rooms. Views over Station Street. Full Mongolian breakfast (yak milk smoothies, lard tarts, moss over easy). $1000 a minute.
Laura 5554 6587

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The gig was a success -
but the musicians got screwed.

I have in my hand the executive summary of NMIT's State of Play, a recent report about the state of the music scene in Melbourne.

It contains many interesting statistics, often based on analysis of the street press. For example, since 2000 advertised live performances have increased by an average of 7.7%. In the last financial year, $15.3 milliion was spent on print advertising. And fascinatingly, Gold FM have increased their market share of Melbourne's listeners from 4% in 2000 to 25% in 2005.

Live music goers surveyed spent per month an average of $11 on gig entry and $30 on food and drink. Venue owners are saying the industry is "stronger than ever and continuing to grow".

All these indicators seem to show that the consumption of live music in Melbourne is on the up and up.

But there is one statistic conspicuously absent from the summary, and it relates to an indispensible element in all this musical activity - namely, the musicians.

Why is there no mention of how much musicians are getting paid?

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Disclaimer:
Articles express the opinion of authors and not necessarily that of theMusicians Union of Australia. No responsibility is accepted for unsolicited material. The Dues makes every effort to use reliable, comprehensive information, but we make no representation that it is accurate or complete.

Russo
De Ville's advocate

What happens when good neighbors become good musicians? Michelle Le Cornu interviews Marcella Russo about
Lucy De Ville.

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Dead man walks to the sound of singing

People have heard too much about Tuong Van Nguyen. That's tough - I'm going to talk about him anyway, because I think his execution says something about music.

Like a large part of the nation, I followed the story of Nguyen's final weeks and days with an interest I can only hope wasn't morbid.

Both Alexander Downer and Kevin Rudd said they had nightmares thinking about the 25-year-old's impending hanging. If a fascination with death row can produce a common denominator between those two, there must be something deeply human about the story.

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Texas sues Sony over spyware on CDs

By Theo Schulsospekz

Recently, the US state of Texas filed suit against Sony/BMG, alleging that copy protection software on its media player included spyware. CDs manufactured under Sony's XCP system cannot be played on a computer unless customers download Sony's media player. The download inlcudes software that allegedly remains hidden and active after installation, making users potentially vulnerable to security risks. Sony said on its website that it had recalled all CDs with the XCP technology, although according to other sources some retailers apparently still had stock some days after the announcement was published. IOn news just in, Sony has offered to replace all offending audio CDs with spyware-less versions.

...more Intelligence

Lost in a flurry of words

Reviewer:
Martin Ball
Title:
Exquisite sounds of the unfree
Event:
Tokyo String Quartet, Hamer Hall, November 5
Published:
Ther Australian 8/11/2005

By Porter Snifta

A strong opening paragraph and verbal variety are two of the foundational tenets of the journalist's method. The first determines whether the reader will go beyond the first few sentences; the second spices up the narrative so the reader's senses are not dulled by unnecessary repetition such that he may, with any luck, stay awake to the end.
A journalist's life is not, however, always so time-rich as to allow him leisure to polish a gem of an introduction to so capture a reader's attention, especially when we take into account pressing deadlines, the feature due by next Tuesday that will require extensive reading and interviewing, and the other half dozen little pieces that have to cobbled together immediately after this one goes to the production crew. That is the charitable explanation of the inept opening to this review.

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HARMONY
for the
Compleat Idiot

Part Eight in a series by
Holden Fairlane

Welcome back or, if this is your first visit welcome! First visitors are advised to check out previous “Harmony for the Compleat Idiot” columns. (There is a harmony column in each of the seven previous issues of The Dues).

Your homework from last time was to work out the notes in all 12 of the Diminished, Augmented and power Chords. This time we'll see them in both letter name form and in musical notation (check the last couple of issues if the term "musical notation" causes confusion or anxiety.) OK, let's go:

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How to get a properly-paid gig

Part V in a series by
Bellaire Hillock

I suggest newcomers go back to the last four issues of The Dues so they can catch up, otherwise this might not make a lot of sense.

Last issue we looked at the processes involved in the Preparation stage of our grand master plan. It is now time to pause for a moment and examine one of the most contentious parts of the preparation stage… Rehearsal.

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Recording - finding
the right information

By Steve Smith

As part of the lead-up to this article, the editor suggested that an article on microphone placement and recording tips might be useful. It struck me that, rather than revisiting the subject in yet another web location, it would be more helpful to refer you to the resources I have found to be most useful in my own recording over the past few years. There are many excellent references on the internet for microphone placement, and all manner of other recording matters.

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