A Fight Broke Out at a Concert
Discover more from Sonikmatter: An Occasional Newsletter
A Fight Broke Out at a Concert
Volume 12: Are You Ready For Some Sportsball????
You’re lookin’ at the Fridge,
I’m the rookie.
I may be large, but I’m no dumb cookie.
You’ve seen me hit, you’ve seen me run,
When I kick and pass, we’ll have more fun.
I can dance, you will see
The others, they all learn from me.
I don’t come here lookin’ for trouble,
I just came here to do
The Super Bowl Shuffle.
-- Da Bears - Super Bowl Shuffle 🖇️ (1995)
Because last week’s issue was a re-do of the aborted January issue, you get to see our shining prose twice in the same amount of weeks. Today’s issue is brought to you by Sports Ball. As a kid, I played Baseball, Soccer, I achieved my Black Belt in Karate (editors fact check: records of yellow tips awarded to the white belt are found but no history of anything further), and of course, I played football. My father wouldn’t have it any other way. Growing up in Benton, Arkansas, I wanted to play soccer - my two best friends were on a team, and almost entirely Asian and Middle Easterners were playing in my area. My friends attempted to recruit me because, as a gawky white boy, I was nearly a foot taller than everyone else, and ironically, as a result, I couldn’t even play on the same team with my friends and was put into an older team where my physical differences weren’t as pronounced.
This made my father angry. At the time, soccer was not a proper game for normal boys. He told me only ‘pussies,' and other choice words played that game. Asked if I wanted to be enrolled in softball as well. We made a deal, if he allowed me to play soccer, I had to sign up for football as well.
I hated the game. It was run by good ol’ boys that decided that practice was over when enough kids puked. We did exercises intended to destroy our backs - one, in particular, one has been banned by high school sports but still practiced in the south on the DL. We were told to toughen up by ‘trading the paint’ with half our team wearing our away helmets and running full-on, head-to-head, in a game of chicken that if you bailed you were punished with laps or the occasional full team beating where you were stripped of padding, often down to far less than that, given a ball and told to run as fast as you can before the call of SMEAR THE Q***R was called. The word censored has been reclaimed by specific communities, but in the spirit it was used...I will refrain from using it. If you made it to the end zone, you were clear. If not...the entire team piled on, and the beatings happened under the dogpile where the coach claimed they could not see anything.
More often than not, I was the one to be smeared.
Without going into much more detail, I can safely say that this colored my views of football to this day. These days, the only time I turn it on is to find out when the halftime show is about to begin. I’m not the only one that doesn’t want to watch the game; US Senator Rand Paul has asked the Truckin’ Convoy to shut it down and block the streets 🖇️ in a fantastic reversal from his earlier statement about what should happen to protesters blocking the roads.
Side Link: William The Refrigerator Perry
Poll: Bangles Manic Monday vs. Paul McCartney’s Ram On
Whooo...that was longer than I expected. If you made it this far, you deserve the Sonikmatter Halftime Report.
Sometime tonight, Dr. Dre, with fellow performers Eminem, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and Mary J. Blige, will be performing for FREE. That’s right...they ain’t gettin’ paid. As most musicians know, exposure is far more important than getting paid. Who needs to eat? Besides, Dr. Dre invented headphones with Apple and made a billion dollars. Snoop Dog? He now owns Death Row Records 🖇️. Mary. J. Blige is now a superhero 🖇️, Kendrick? He seems to be more interested in poetry these days, so far as I can tell. That M&M guy? He’s been canceled ever since they stopped sexualizing candies. I agree with Tucker Carlson 🖇️, BROWN CHOCOLATE IS SEXY, AND YOU RACISTS CAN’T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM US.
The one thing we won’t be seeing today? Snoop Dog’s junk 🖇️. The Backstreet Boys aren’t going to be running on stage and ripping the gaffer-taped codpiece off of Snoop because as much as Roger Goodell wants to see this, Janet Jackson has advised him this may not be good for his career.
Why these performers won’t get paid, take a read at Forbes.
“Everyone from Beyoncé to Bruno Mars has headlined the event and performed essentially for free. As in the past Super Bowls, Maroon 5, Travis Scott and Big Boi will get union scale, a fraction of the six- and seven-figure sums these acts have banked on a nightly basis. Why work for a pittance? They do get to be in what amounts to a massive commercial in front of over 100 million people—without having to front any of the costs, which have been estimated as high as $10 million.”
More Info: Country Living
Side Link: Who Sampled Who Dr. Dre
Deaf Rappers
One new addition to the performance will be two Deaf Rappers performing the songs in American Sign Language beside the artists above as special guests of Dre. No word yet if these white artists will be immediately canceled due to the over enunciation of certain words used within the performance. Does sign language have an ‘Ahhhh’ in it?
Prince Prince Prince
Regardless of the performance, we all can admit Prince will always be the best performer at any of these events. Hell, he can even bring a level of cool to the Muppets 🖇️ in a way that hadn’t been seen since Elton doing Crocodile Rock in the ’70s.
VR News: Foo Fighters Performance (Tonight)
After the game, the Foo Fighters will be performing in Virtual Reality. One of the things I’ve loved about the last year has been experimenting with new technologies, and the Oculus Quest (sponsored 🖇️) has been a significant part of this.
When the game is over, the real show begins. Watch Foo Fighters take the VR stage and perform like never before in an up-close and personal concert. Consider this your free, front-row ticket to rock out with the legendary Rock and Roll Hall of Famers and other fans. And, if you miss the show, catch the replays and highlights afterwards in Oculus TV and Horizon Venues.
*The show will start at 8:00PM PT or following the conclusion of the game, whichever occurs later.
https://www.oculus.com/experiences/event/3405746222985606/
Screw Spotify The Redux
Once again, I am a firm believer in the Freedom of Speech and believe that we can choose who we wish to send our money to. Especially when sending money to a company is a HOPE that it gets passed along to the folks creating the things we love.
Over the last few months, if you’ve found that a lot of the comedy you’ve loved to stream has disappeared, it is because Spotify decided that they didn’t want to pay for it. As in the company's early beginnings, they made agreements with publishers to play the music but decided that the artists came last. While royalties are generally split almost 50/50 with Mechanical vs. Compositional rights, Spotify agreed that those that own the master recordings are the ones that should get paid first -- especially since they own the rights if they can or cannot be played.
As explained here: https://soundcharts.com/blog/performance-royalties-vs-mechanical
When a musical composition is fixed in a tangible medium, like lyrics written in a notebook or a harmony recorded in sheet music, copyright is instantly created for the songwriters and their music publisher (if there’s a publishing deal in place). This copyright covers the underlying piece of music — the harmony, melody, and lyrics — and is owned by the songwriters and their music publisher.
Master copyright, on the other hand, is created for the particular expression of a composition in its recorded form and is owned by the recording artists and the record label who funded the recording.
To understand the difference between the two types of copyright, think of cover versions: each newly recorded cover version will have its own master copyright, but the original piece of music, containing the harmony, melody, and lyrics, is covered by the composition copyright.
In the case of comedians, Spotify has decided that they don’t have any compositional rights at all. A comedian may spend years honing their act in front of family, friends, and small groups, going to great extents to keep their material from leaking before publishing it 🖇️. Still, Spotify has decided it will not allow royalties to be collected from said writers/performers of comedy.
Spoken Giants 🖇️, a company that wishes to be the ASCAP of the comedy world, issued this statement:
“With this takedown, individual comedians are now being penalized for collectively requesting the same compensation songwriters receive,” he added. “After Spotify removed our members’ work, we reached out but have not received a response. We have now requested an immediate meeting to resolve this situation.”
More information can be found at WDSU 🖇️.
In Other News: Music Stuff for Musicians
Moog Documentary Series
‘GIANTS’ is a platform for legendary electronic musicians and innovators to express themselves through the art of storytelling. This new documentary series, filmed and produced by Moog Music, is about honoring and preserving the legacy of these artists and sharing their untold stories with the world. The first installment of ‘GIANTS’ focuses on Herb Deutsch, co-inventor of the Moog modular synthesizer. The composer, music educator, and friend and collaborator of Bob Moog journeys back in time to talk about some of music history’s most prolific moments and expand on “the perfect definition” of what music is and can be: sound organized in time.
via: Engadget
DIY Music
Having jumped on the EuroRack world, I am finally putting together my first rack. So far, I have a power supply, a VCO on its way, a Bartola Valves Fuzz 🖇️, and a EuroPi module 🖇️. I have to solder much of it together and realize that my skills are less than adequate, but I am getting better!
Regardless, if you are in the world of DIY music, it seems that fake components are easily faked, and while they give almost mechanical accuracy, they do not provide musical ones. As someone sourcing components and often looking for the best prices, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.
https://hackaday.com/2022/02/05/how-to-spot-a-fake-op-amp/
Free Audio Plugins
Emergence Granular Effects (Windows and Mac)
And once again, Tom Shear 🖇️comes through with sources for amazing plugins:
Audio Damage Legacy and Discontinued Products
These products have been discontinued or upgraded to new versions. Feel free to download and enjoy them!
PLEASE NOTE: No support whatsoever is provided for these products. Most of them will work on most systems, but some of the oldest ones will most likely not work on a modern Mac or PC. Each installer contains VST2.4 versions, and in almost all cases AU. There are no VST3, AAX, or Linux versions in these older products. If the product requires a registration code, one is provided in the Zip.
Link: https://www.audiodamage.com/pages/free-and-legacy
End of the List:
God Speed You Black Emperor’s lost album reappears:
via: Kottke.org
Weird Al Biopic
Harry Potter will be starring as Al Yankovic, the early years, for Roku, the world's maker of the continually 4th rated set-top box. I feel bad for Roku, it is a great product, but given that AppleTV and the Amazon Fire are inexpensive and already have the services that we want to watch on them, this company that pioneered streaming boxes is often left out.
They are producing Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, not to be left out of the premium content.
Read more at the NYT (free link courtesy of Sonikmatter)
Sonikmatter: Mind + Music + Technology
An occasional newsletter. Barely fact-checked and often wrong.
Mind+Music+Technology
Once again, thank you for reading this. And as for who I am rooting for tonight: Lego Tiger.
If you’d like your music or project to be featured, send us a message. Or call (415) 683-1381 and sing, rawk, or prog into the answering machine! We will post it!!!