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Free Ukulele Lessons
Starting tomorrow (9/29) and continuing every Saturday in October ALL Guitar Center stores in the US are offering free ukulele classes. BYO uke, or they will provide a loaner. Classes start at 10:15am local time and each class will be the same content, so if you are a total newbie you can sign up for several and practice your basic chops.
Kickstarter projects I like:
Music to stream and download:
The benefits are over, but our friends have a long way to go recovering from the fire at Columbia House. A bunch of bands who played the benefits (including me as Reverse Polish Notation, and my band Ginger Ibex) donated tracks for a digital album – pay what you like, all money goes to the Columbia House folks:
The web was abuzz yesterday after a New York Times Arts blogger published this article about how for her current tour Amanda Palmer is soliciting volunteer local string, sax and brass players to perform with her in each city’s show.
Other bloggers piled on bemoaning that musicians should be paid. Facebook threads got acrimonious. People who don’t understand what it actually takes to pull off a tour and album release (never mind Kickstarter rewards fulfillment to nearly 25,000 people) with NO corporate support complained that she was being a cheap “millionaire.” My personal favorite snipe was the person who claimed she “owns an expensive condo in the South End” – they had obviously never been inside the Cloud Club, which is two 4-story narrow brownstones cobbled together out of found objects by owner and outsider artist Lee Barron. He lets upcoming artists live there for free – AP was one of those (and the last time I was in that part of the house she still seems to have rooms there).
The controversy appears to be fueled by people who view AP in the same way they view Lady Gaga – a top-tier famous musician with lots of fans touring a massive show. They may have heard of AP when she was in the Dresden Dolls, they know she tweets a lot (as does Gaga, but AP’s tweeting is several orders of magnitude more), but basically she is seen by non-fans as another greedy (some adding “untalented” since her music is not to their taste) superstar trying to take advantage of fans desperate to have any contact with her.
Add to this that she is recruiting volunteers from instrumental groups most often associated with the Classical genre. Members of this group are more accustomed to getting paid a decent wage for any professional activity – though it’s becoming a different economic world for them recently (several orchestras have locked out their players after failed contract negotiations). Aside from top-tier record company-sponsored bands, Rock musicians hardly ever draw a salary and consider themselves lucky to earn gas money most nights from a club/bar gig.
Information about some venues which performers can rent and keep the door. I’m sure there are more than this, so please tell me about others in the comments.
Outpost 186 – 186 Hampshire St Cambridge MA (Inman Sq)