Category: Music

Storytelling by Joe Wilcox

Iggy Pop Remembers 1960s London

The most civilized place I’d ever been. Everybody would get a little bottle of milk on their doorstep, and no one would steal each other’s milk. It was very good milk. Rupert Murdoch hadn’t bought the Times yet, so it still published with the beautiful old typeface.

Anorexia was in. We lived in a nice little neighborhood, with the Forum ABC movie theater on the corner and a little Turkish restaurant called the Baghdad, where they’d play Neil Young music and sell you a joint. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven.
Iggy Pop

He answers question: “Almost 40 years ago, you recorded ‘Rave Power’ in England with David Bowie. What was London like?”

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Apple by Joe Wilcox
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iTunes Music Madness

On May 29, Apple opened up iTunes Plus as a subset of its broader music store, offering DRM-free songs and albums encoded at 256kbps. Apple also offers to upgrade lower-bit-rate, DRM songs for 30 cents a piece. It’s a good deal. But the licensing is downright confusing. While browsing iTunes Plus, yesterday, I saw “Pat Benatar’s Greatest Hits” available DRM-free. I thought, “Huh? I’ve got other Pat Benatar music, and I don’t remember getting an offer DRM-free replacements”. I upgraded 25 other songs from other artists.

Sure enough, my iTunes library contains three Pat Benatar songs, from three different albums. My version of “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” from album “Pat Benatar: Best Shots” is available DRM-free from iTunes Plus. But Apple offered me no 30-cent replacement option. Is it a glitch? I don’t think so. The song in my library lists publisher as Chrysalis, while the DRM-free version is Capitol Records. 

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Music by Joe Wilcox
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DO Download This Song?

Weird Al Yankovic is at it again, with a nice parody of file trading and copyrights. His upcoming album “Straight Outta Lynwood”, features track “Don’t Download This Song”. The music video trails a young kid’s descent from peer networks to prison.

But this is something from Mr. Parody, so there is legitimate question which side of the file trading/copyright debate Weird Al belongs. As an artist, he might want to get paid for his work. Yet, his lyrics also stab at his profession. 

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