Category: Arts & Performance

Arts & Performance

Music Is Not a Loaf of Bread

Wired News interviews Jeff Tweedy, frontman for one of my favorite bands, Wilco. He talks about file sharing, DRM, and releasing music online. The Wilco Book, which I am thumbing through now, is also mentioned. The book is “a collaborative picture book about music” that also includes some music on an accompanying CD. The book features Henry Miller’s essay “The Angel is My Watermark”, an interesting piece that I first discovered some years ago during a phase when I read much of Miller’s work. They essay discusses creation and ego, activism and the “crumbling of civilization”, and the pleasure of pissing away time. Many of Miller’s comments bear relevance to the file sharing debate. He concludes the essay with this.

No one can be paid to give us his joy, it’s always freely given.

Given Tweedy’s interview and Wilco’s history of freely sharing their creative output, I can see why they included “The Angel is My Watermark”. Miller offers a fine creative philosophy.

What I recommend for the few remaining years that are left to us is — to piss the time away enjoyably.

I’ll drink to that.

Hat Tip: PhotoMatt

David Byrne Live

I just returned home from watching David Byrne perform at the Bass Hall in Fort Worth. I must resort to expletives to describe a David Byrne concert, “Fucking Great!” He can work a crowd and lay down a groove. Live music, especially such exhuberant live music, is good for the soul. And you have not really heard “Once in a Lifetime”, “And She Was”, “Psycho Killer”, “Life During Wartime” or other Heads’ classics until you hear them live. David is good about throwing in old gems from the Talking Heads and his early solo career as well as the new stuff. Besides the aforementioned Heads’ tunes, he played a killer groove tune from “The Catherine Wheel” as well as most of my favorites from “Look into the Eyeball”. He had a string section from Austin playing with the band on almost every tune, and it worked wonderfully.