One last note for the evening.

Itunes has started selling higher resolution songs for $1.29 as a part of their new Itunes Plus. I haven't tried it and I don't think that I will try it any time soon. It's too much money. I liked 99 cents. That was easy. How about DRM-free music for 99 cents, Apple?

How the hell am I supposed to figure out if buying the new White Stripes single AND a Cat Power album is going to over-charge my debit card account if the songs are all $1.29? I can't do that kind of math in my head! Geez.

Looks like they've won for now. And yes, of course I was lying about not spending that kind of money. I want the high quality tracks because they're better, don't I?

Don't I?

Ugh.

Dick Dale's Deal.

Now here is something interesting. Surf Rock guitarist Dick Dale was asked what advice he would give to aspiring musicians.
It sounds like very good advice - and it would in fact leave your integrity intact, jack.

However, I'm not so sure that Mr. Dale takes into account just how difficult it is to become noticed by people like Nissan or Mountain Dew without the right amount of clout. And depending on where you live, grassroots build-up might not be enough to get that attention. Thankfully the internet makes the world a whole lot smaller.

I thought this was an interesting thing to post considering all the stuff going on with EMI and iTunes. Even though the sale of digital media just got a lot better, artists are still going to be on the losing end of the deal. More money will be charged for their songs and yet they probably won't receive one cent above what they previously got. At least not yet, anyway. It seems that Dale's advice (even if it isn't exactly the newest idea) is becoming more relevant with each day.

If you don't know about it already then check out this website: CD Baby. You can start your own store, sell your cd, and even get your music onto itunes for digital download. Though I'm not entirely sure if indie music even gets DRMs loaded onto them and I don't know if people will be able to buy higher quality recordings of indie music either.

Another place you can go is here: Stolen Radio. They're trying to get the same kind of deal going. Artists can sell their digital music through the store.

Brilliant.

[Thanks to Boing Boing for pointing out the Dale interview]

OH-EM-GEE! I just heard the craziest thing about...

Today's edition of Rollingstone.com features an article on the best rumors in rock and roll. Many of them are common knowledge like

24. Robert Johnson sold his soul to the devil in exchange for his guitar-playing gifts.

Some are rediculous:

10. Gene Simmons had a cow tongue grafted onto his own tongue after a car accident.

And some of them are absolute gems.

For example, did you know that

7. Jim Morrison was killed by members of the Nixon administration/faked his own death/died from a heart attack brought on by masturbating in a Parisian bathtub.

I didn't know that. I think that I'm going to stick with the idea that the Nixon administration did him in and consequently, did the world a favor. This way we can all agree that it didn't like talentless, fat and lewd rock grandpas either.

Or how about this one:

11. Rod Stewart/Lil’ Kim/Jordan Knight had to get their respective stomachs pumped after ingesting a gallon of semen.

Ok... so dying when you're 27, yes. Sleeping with as many groupies as possible, sure. Saying "Thank you Cleveland!" when you're actually in Philly, of course. But I was unaware that guzzling down man-juice was a rite of passage in the world of rock and roll. So let's give a sticky hand to these pioneers. Bravo, Rod Stewart/Lil’ Kim/Jordan Knight! Are the Fall Out Boys of the world paying attention? I hope so.

But my personal favorite - and maybe it's because I'm a sick fuck - is this one:

20. Bob Ezrin, who produced Lou Reed’s Berlin, got the anguished children’s cries you hear on “The Kids” by telling his own children their mother was dead and recording the sounds they made.

With most of the items on this list you can sort of brush it off and go "Oh, that didn't really happen!" But for some reason I can believe that Ezrin and Reed were sitting around in the studio, shooting poison into their arms and up into their noses, and hankering for a laugh. So why not tell the kids that mommy is dead? I have never heard the song, but you can be sure that I'm going to go download it and then I'm going to laugh at the image of 10 year olds crying their eyes out because I know that Lou Reed was doubled over in laughter in the next room.

And therein lies the beauty of the rock myth. The utter disgust, discomfort, and disapointment that is felt (or at least most people feel) towards stories like these tends to draw the curious consumer closer to... well.. consuming. The next time you you hear "Do you think I'm sexy?" you're not going to be able to shake the idea of Rod Stewart with a tube stuffed down his throat. I never will. But boy, does that song make me wanna shake my ass.

Maybe I'll go buy it on iTunes in *crisp* 256kbs mp3 format. And then I'll perpetuate the myth by sending it, DRM-free, to you too.

A supplement to Simone's previous post.

I was over at Engadget just now and read this wonderful post about Microsoft making some efforts to limit DRMs in the Zune player. This is very, very big news.

While we can't exactly give Microsoft any kind of credit for being innovative here (after all, they're just going with the flow), I will say that this is a big step in the right direction that Mr. Gates and Co. are taking. A world without DRMs is a prettier world to live in. But you have to laugh at statements like

Consumers have indicated [having DRM free music] is important to them so Zune has been working with a variety of partners to head in this direction

when these sorts of realizations come so late in the game, and only after someone else in the industry does something about it first. It seems hopeful though, so let's keep our fingers crossed.

So if Apple and EMI are going to sell higher audio quality mp3s at a higher price, there might just be a time when the majority of albums will be digital-only releases through stores like iTunes. DRMs and shitty 128kbs mp3s made all digital releases sound like a horrible idea to me in the past. But now I am not so sure. Thewayofthefuture. Thewayofthefuture. Thewayofthefuture.

And to answer your question, Simone... sure you've got your Lars Ulrich(es) but you also have your David Byrne(s) too.