11 posts tagged “performance”
Tea with Hungry Lucy, Episode 113 ends with a performance of "Shine" (originally from the album, "To Kill a King"). This version is just electric piano, hammered dulcimer and Christa's delicious vocals. Rather un-electronic for Hungry Lucy. Before the performance, though Christa goes on a rant about a newly opened local "restaurant" that the pair visited on their Sunday of attempted creativity boosting. War-N and Christa take a personal trip down memory lane and tell us about the apartment from hell in which they used to live. in the "other people's music" segment, War-N talks about trip-hop pioneer's Portishead and their very challenging, but rather clever new album "Third". CB & War-N also talk about MP3 vs. CD vs. vinyl.
Do you still buy vinyl, or is it ancient history?
Any Twitter-folk out there? Why not follow War-N's ramblings? It's fun. You can point and laugh.
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Portishead - Machine Gun (Live on Jools Holland)
What did HL talk about this episode? Well, there was Howard Jones, Howard Jones and uh Howard Jones! Just back, literally, from the road on a trip to Pittsburgh, the duo settle back into a warm house with a nice little chat. Other than HoJo madness, CB mentions an unusual OPM (in this case Other People’s Market’s) in the form of Jungle Jim’s International Market. A mainstay in Christa’s culinary adventures, she just wanted to “shoutout” to the man in the cape for sticking with small business since 1974! Thanks, Jim!
What the SMEG is this? It’s beautiful, it’s functional and it’s in the kitchen! What Christa thought was Italian is actually British. Oops!
Also, a BIG thanks to Ellie for allowing two total strangers to sit front and center at the Howard Jones show at her table! It was lovely to meet you and hope you made it back to Wisconsin safely
You made the experience even that much cooler!Hey…you should grab the original version of ‘Glo‘ while you still can. After this bunch runs out, the double-disc will no longer be available!! A single disc version will be put in its place. This is all in the hopes to draw more folks to the lovely songs on the album and make it more affordable for YOU! Oh yeah. Don’t forget we still have a bunch of t-shirts and hoodies available for your lovely body to wear!
See ya next week on the 100th episode of Tea with Hungry Lucy!! Thanks for listening all these episodes! You’ve made it great
Howard Jones then:
Howard Jones now(ish):
For this week's Tea with Hungry Lucy, Christa and War-N chat about the fun they had performing and attending the Fetish Fantasy Island - Pirate Invasion event in Pittsburgh. There was lots of spanking and exposed parts, fire, flying luncheon meats and even a little (unintentional) blood .... eek! Both War-N and Christa were impressed with the venue and hospitality of everyone involved. Although still having voice problems, Christa pulled off a great performance and War-N said it was the most fun he's had on stage in a while. Christa expresses concern that HL is still not quite "there" yet, when it comes to live performance. No worries, the next few months are about finishing the next CD anyway!
Your questions and comments will be addressed next week ... so tell us what they are.
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After a week off, War-N and Christa return for more random banter. This week the duo chat about preparations for two upcoming shows (in Dayton, OH and Pittsburgh, PA). War-N is working on some new arrangements and Christa on some new videos. These shows should fill the need for some full-on, real Hungry Lucy shows. War-N rants a bit about the foolish comments of Elton John and Christa shares some new writing and photos on christabelle.com. For OPM this week, War-N talks about the song "Listen" by Tears for Fears as well as the wonderful film Little Children (and soundtrack by Thomas Newman). Christa chats about Peter Murphy, his involvement with Sarah Fimm and her own return to all things dark and lovely as Fall approaches.
T-Shirts have been ordered ... order yours very soon. Do your musical moods change with the Seasons? Tell us about it..
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In episode 81 of TWHL Christa and War-N talk about more BSOD adventures, how live performance has chipped away some of their former confidence and their plans to overcome it. The pair tell us of their grand plans for two upcoming shows in September (in Dayton and Pittsburgh) and War-N threatens to perform topless .... ewwww! OPMs this week are Azam Ali's latest project, Roseland, The Cranes and the deliciously dark film, Pan's Labyrinth. Then podcast ends with Christa off to punch some dough.
What HL songs would YOU like to hear live?.
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After a one-week hiatus, Christa and War-N are back to delight you with tales of musical excursions, violently smashing rehearsals, War-N’s Facebook fun and Bjork spoofs. War-N speaks about some other people’s music in the form of the delicious Tania Moran (who reminds War-N of Olivia Newton-John) and the fascinating new project from Collide and Daren Garcia (of Curve) called The Secret Meeting. Christa tells us of her plans for a new video series and promises to deliver the first one next week … personally, I’m moist with anticipation! War-N also alludes to some life-changes in the not too distant future, but we’re unsure of what’s the hell he’s talking about … what’s new? ;P
Hungry Lucy perform this Tuesday (June 12) at Northside Tavern in Cincinnati with the amazing Stephanie’s Id.
Comments? here.
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If you haven’t experienced Stephanie’s Id live (from Asheville, NC), you won’t want to miss this show. They have managed to reaffirm my faith in the power of music every damn time I see/hear them!
Earlier today I bought into some posts I was reading on how SoundExchange collects money on behalf of artists without their consent. Well, this is kind of true, but not in an extortionist kind of way. Since my post earlier, I have emailed back and forth with John Simson, the Executive Director of SoundExchange. He explained how SoundExchange works to me. for the sake of completeness (and perhaps a little laziness) I will simply include the email exchange below (with John’s kind permission).
In response to my original email, John replied:
Please give me a call so I can explain to you how this works. You don’t need to “opt out” of SoundExchange – but you are free to direct license any service you want at whatever price you want. That is and has always been your right. What you will find is that most webcasters want to make one single payment for everything they play – and we facilitate that. As the webcasters wanted to make one payment and provide data about what they were playing to one entity, we were designated by the Copyright Office to be that entity.
I responded with:
Thanks for getting back to me so quickly. I would love to speak with you about this as it’s clear there is a lot of potentially inaccurate info in the web/media on this topic. I am simply reacting to what I have read.
So, is it correct that a “flat fee” is collected from the webcaster and each artist played is entitled to a portion of that whole? If so, what happens to the portion that goes unclaimed? Is it the webcaster that would need to opt-out of the system, and play only freely available music? I’m trying to get a handle on what I can tell webcasters who come to me. I guess in order to avoid paying anything on music of ours that has been played, they would just not report airplay of our music. They would still pay the same fees, but no portion of that would come to us, via Sound Exchange. Is that accurate?
John replied:
It depends upon the service. The 40 or so blue screen channels that play music over your cable tv or directv or dishnet pay us 7.25% of the revenue they collect and provide us with complete census data on every channel. We match the money to the performances and distribute. Satellite radio (XM and Sirius) also give us census data for all performances and we match their payments to performances and pay out accordingly. Webcasters, if they are non-comms (college, religious, community) for the most part pay a $500 annual fee. They do not provide data – so there is no data to match against their payments. We have tried to work with them to create a technology solution since getting data from them is important to me – so we can pay the right artists and labels.
Large commercial webcasters (who pay in 95% of webcasting royalties) are now required to report 2 weeks per quarter. If you show up in that survey, you get paid. Those payments would be made on the basis of audience size. In 2005 the rates for large commercial webcasters was .0762 cents per stream. So, if 100 people were listening to a song, the label and artist would receive approximately 7.6 cents for that performance. If 10,000 people were listening it would be $7.60.
What happens to unclaimed money, as in every performing rights organization is that we hold it for a minimum of 3 years (Copyright Office regulations) and if we can’t locate the person and they haven’t come forward to claim, the money is redistributed to all other SoundExchange royalty recipients.
Let me know if you have any other questions.
This is all good info. John is very open to conversation on this stuff, so I encourage anyone concerned (particularly webcasters) to contact him directly with questions. You can find his contact info on the SoundExchange contact page.
The more I read about Sound Exchange (and the fact that they collect performance royalties for artists who have never asked them to) the more upset I become. It is yet another example of a totally fucked up music industry dragging down both its customers and the other people that allow it to exist (artists and broadcasters). Hungry Lucy is currently a "member" of Sound Exchange. We receive a (very) small check every quarter for money they have collected from broadcasters that play our music. With the recent performance royalty increases (links to PDF), many of the broadcasters who have helped Hungry Lucy gain exposure are faced with ridiculous costs that threaten to put them out of business. THIS CANNOT HAPPEN.
With this in mind I just sent the following email to the Executive Director, Chief Operating Officer and Licensing & Enforcement Specialist at Sound Exchange. I hope it results in us getting one more foot out of a corrupt system. Excuse my language (above) ... I'm angry! If any other artists are upset about this (and I hope you are), please let Sound Exchange know.
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Hello,
My name is War-N Harrison. I am one half (and business manager) for the band Hungry Lucy (www.hungrylucy.com).
We currently receive statements/royalties from Sound Exchange. I joined up/registered with Sound Exchange a few years back after I received an email that Sound Exchange had collected money on our behalf for airplay of our music. So, I signed up and collected that money along with a few royalty distributions since. Since that time we have seen a significant benefit of increased exposure from podcasts and internet radio play. We see this exposure as a far greater benefit than the royalties Sound Exchange has collected on our behalf.
So, with this in mind, I would like to know how we can go about opting out of Sound Exchange, such that you no longer collect performance royalties on our behalf. We can then go to the podcasters and internet broadcasters that have helped us by assuring them they can play our music with no cost to them.
I also have a question. How is it that Sound Exchange is able to collect royalties on behalf of artists prior to the artist authorizing this?
Thanks for your help. I look forward to your response.
Regards,
War-N Harrison
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Hungry Lucy / Hungry Media
www.hungrylucy.com
www.hungry-media.com
We played our first show in 6 months (down to the day) last night at Alchemize The Decibel Lounge. We were using a new (far simpler) setup ... just two keyboards and two microphones. We had Christa's Casio Privia piano and my aging Korg Triton LE (has two knobs missing and one key that has a nice sag to it). I had sequences for bass, drums and extra bits in the Triton for several songs and others we just played using only our four hands ... shocking! This is oddly nerve-wracking new territory for me ... not being for a normal band background. I was really pushing the voice limits of the Triton on some of these sequences. A new workstation keyboard perhaps could be in order, but why focus on new tools? Our set went pretty well. I sang (on the new song, Sunday Smiled) for the first time in 11 years. In retrospect we (perhaps) should have moved that song up in the set. It was the second to last song of the set, so I spent the entire set thinking "oh shit oh shit oh shit. I have to sing" rather than getting into the performance. Once that song was finished I felt relaxed and into the music ... but then we were done. Now I've done it once, I'll feel better the next time around.
This was also the first time in 2 years we relied on house monitors instead of our fancy in-ear system. I see benefits to both methods. I did feel more connected with the audience without the in-ears ... but that just fueled my nervousness I think. When writing things like this I wonder how I ever get up on a stage at all! Plus, I couldn't hear anything I was doing over the crowd noise and muffled monitor wedges. I think I'd rather continue the illusion that everyone is listening to us in my sound isolated cocoon!
It was wonderful not not have to worry about laptops, video and complex signal routings last night. Plus the songs did feel more grounded and "real". I think a little further refinement is needed, but this new setup is a good thing. This point was driven home when Diet Audio (who's release party this was) had their laptop top decide to fail mid-set. I truly felt for them as we've been there SO many times. We joked afterwards about taking their laptop and our old Power Book and having an office space moment.
OK ... on to more song writing and more shows. I feel certain there will be no major touring this year ... but we'll get out on the road a bit. Bare with us folks. This kinda feels like we're starting from scratch with plenty of lessons learned over the past few years.
