So last weekend we were down in Southampton at the lovely Ranch Production House with Luke Leighfield and the wonderful We Heart Arts band (made up of Sam Little, Jose Vanders, Ben Price, Connor Christie and Nick Griffey). Our 2010 charity single is now way underway (video to come soon) and we hope you’ll all enjoy it as much as we did recording it.
We just thought we’d take this opportunity to show you all a few photos from the recording session.
Good afternoon! So we’re down at The Ranch Production House in the lovely countryside and the wheels are well and truly set in motion for our new charity single!
Drumming machine, Connor Christie, was spectacular and our cheeky bassist, Nick Griffey was awesome. It’s all sounding amazing, with Ben Price laying down some sweeeeeet guitar as I write.
Can’t wait to show you all what we’ve been up to – photos and videos galore! Day Two is gonna be marvellous!
As I’m sure you’ve already noticed the We Heart Arts website is having a bit of a spring clean, this is because we are getting ready to release our next charity single!! This is something that everyone involved in We Heart Arts is incredibly excited about, especially after the success of 2009’s charity single “Are You Devo” by Shelby Sifers
This year we have been blessed with having the wonderful Luke Leighfield sign up to write and compose our song, joined by a whole host of young, British talent such as Jose Vanders, Sam Little, Nick Griffey and Connor Christie.
Over the past three years Luke Leighfield has released two albums on his own label Got Got Need Records, played 500 gigs in twelve countries from the UK to Russia, Sweden, China, Germany and everywhere in between (all of which were arranged himself without the help of a booking agent), entered the top five of the UK indie singles chart with his debut single If You Haven’t Got Anything to Say and won plaudits from Radio 1, BBC 6 Music, Xfm and Prince Charles, amongst others. Despite this, Luke still managed to graduate from the University of Southampton with a 2:1 in English and Music in June 2009. Japan’s Rallye Records (Au Revoir Simone, The Joy Formidable) cottoned on to Lukes ability for churning out killer songs, releasing a Greatest Hits CD featuring the best songs from Luke’s first two albums in March 2009. Further accolades include Luke being asked to compere his own stage at The Great Escape Festival in 2008 as head of Got Got Need Records, playing the BBC Introducing stage at Latitude 2008, and recording live sessions for Huw Stephens (Radio 1) and John Kennedy (Xfm). Luke’s music was also used on the soundtrack to BBC 3 comedy, Coming of Age.
If you’d like to watch a video of Luke demoing the single in his bedroom you can do so by clicking here
We Heart Arts has paired up with American singer/songwriter Shelby Sifers to release the first ever We Heart Arts charity single. The much awaited indie, twisted-pop summer tune ‘Are You Devo?’ is released on 31 AUGUST 2009, and We Heart Arts are aiming to get the debut single into the UK top 40. The intention is that the single will raise money and awareness for the up and coming arts charity.
I got involved with We Heart Arts because I grew up in a small community that didn’t foster or encourage the arts. Our schools had poor funding, and we had little access or choices in the way of arts classes. Most of us graduated high school without ever getting to pick up a paint brush (myself included.) Who could I have been if I had taken cello lessons as a kid, or learned how to draw? Unfortunately, I’ll never know.
Art is a natural way for children to express themselves and learn about who they are, whether it be visual art, writing, music, or dramatic arts. It makes them more open-minded, it improves their cognitive thinking skills, and it’s fun! Funding these arts programs for children gives them the opportunity to find out what they love, what they are good at, and what the world has to offer.
Donating this song to We Heart Arts is very exciting to me, because it gives me a different way to use my music- as a fund- and awareness-raising tool. It gives the song a meaning beyond its original meaning, and made the whole music-creating process much more fun and rewarding. It also gives people a way to donate while still getting a little gift in return! By donating a dollar to We Heart Arts, you receive a song. It’s a win-win situation.
In 2001, my friend Dave Joslyn and I formed a band called Struggleburger. We recorded 11 albums in 12 months and put everything up for free online. At one point, our ridiculous and very sarcastic spoken-word cover of Linkin Park’s “Crawling” was more popular on Audiogalaxy than the real thing. Ah, Audiogalaxy. Still miss it.
In 2002, we formally created Celestial Bison Records, one of the first netlabels, where all the music was available as free mp3 downloads. Struggleburger’s music was there along with my early solo work, Dave’s, and lots of other bands over the next few years, including Bucket of Nails, Josh Brookoff, Marc with a C, Steve Garron, and more. We had a lot of success with it until we shut it down in 2005 (for a lot of reasons, none of them financial). And in 2006, I released the first record under my own name, The Black Hole, online for free.
So, in 2008, I put out O Great Queen Electric, What Do You Have Waiting for Me?. The music world had changed a lot in two years, so I decided to experiment. It was my first experience with iTunes and digital distribution. I’d always been against iTunes and paying for mp3s (obviously, given my history). I was, and still am, a big supporter of BitTorrent and file sharing. But I was getting more and more requests for my music to be available on iTunes. I didn’t understand why at the time, but I figured it was worth a try. Who am I to tell people they can’t have my music the way they want to have it (save vinyl, which is still hella expensive to press)?
The experiement was a success. The album did really well online (“Joss Whedon” being passed around all the Whedon fan sites probably didn’t hurt, something I somewhat naovely did not expect). But what really pushed its success was the song “We Start the Cure in Paris” ending up on Criznittle’s February 2008 Indie/Rock Playlist torrent. If you don’t know what that is (and I didn’t until I started getting a bunch of e-mails about it and the song), it was a monthly torrent full of new indie music put together by some guy from somewhere (who, as I understand it, is actually now in jail for unrelated reasons, poor guy). It’s really cool, just one person’s mixtape, but a great way for people all around the world to see what’s going on in music that month. So, very suddenly, tens of thousands of people from around Portland to Poland had that song on their computer (and their, uh, interesting YouTube videos… sorta NSFW, that one). How did Criznittle find it? I don’t know, exactly. But he did, and he liked it, and he shared it, and I found a lot of fans because of it.
Sure, not everyone who downloaded it ended up buying it. That’s ridiculous to wish for, and even more ridiculous for the RIAA to expect it. But I guarantee that no one bought that album, or any of my other albums, without hearing them first. Or without seeing me live. Or without “pirating” it first. And why would you expect otherwise in this day and age? I’ll never forget downloading Kid A when I was in college, months before it came out. The idea that you could do that now (to speak nothing of the actual album) totally blew my mind. But I still bought the CD the day it was released. Mp3s weren’t a replacement for owning something. That’s where I think the RIAA went wrong.
iTunes is pushed as a legal way to download music. I don’t think that’s the point, though. That might be the way it is for the major label artists, who are still paying off their advances. To me, it’s all about convenience and about supporting the artist. I actually purchased Alan Sparhawk’s Solo Guitar last week from iTunes (something I rarely do, I’m a vinyl LP guy). I’ve heard the record many times before, but I was talking about it with a friend who’d never heard it and wanted to give him a taste. I could have easily gone to What.CD or Waffles.fm and found it, I’m sure. But instead, I just went to iTunes on my iPhone (I know, I know), purchased it, downloaded it directly, and we were listening to it moments later. Both super convenient for me and I know the bulk of that money is going straight to Alan. It’s a win-win. (The artist making the bulk of iTunes cash depends on the label they are or aren’t on, to be sure, but in this situation, I knew who was getting the cash.)
Was I paying for the right to listen to that record? The temporary license, as it were? The industry says yes, I say no. I can find that record anytime I want to online and listen and no one is going to come after me (not even Alan, I’ll bet). But I was paying for the convenience, and I was supporting the artist. And that’s the best way to look at something like iTunes. Some people just really like the convenience. Who needs a bunch of plastic discs cluttering up the house, when they’re just going to my iPod? And even though BitTorrent is second nature to me now, the majority of the world doesn’t use it, doesn’t understand it, and doesn’t want to bother with it, especially since iTunes downloads fast, immediately, and directly to your iTunes library and iPod. Simple.
The world is changing faster than we can keep up with, and I can tell you assuredly that no one making music today has any idea what they are doing anymore. When you see Of Montreal releasing an album with decals, paper lanterns, and whatever the hell else along with it, you know something is sort of wrong with the process. Napster, BitTorrent, iTunes, and file sharing of all kinds have not just leveled the playing field, they have slashed and burned it.There is nothing left but the charred remains of what used to be the only way to find and listen to music. It’s a stupid analogy, maybe, but when a forest burns down, eventually new growth appears stronger than ever. That’s what’s starting to happen, little green buds coming out of the ground. It’s going to take a long time for those to be trees again.
There is simply is no right way to release music any longer. You can put it in any sort of shiny packaging you want, offer as many bonus tracks as you want, and put free copies in as many newspapers as you want. Nothing will change the fact that the people that want to hear the music will do it how they want to, not how they’re told to. Some people will buy the CD. Some people will buy only vinyl. Some people find iTunes best for them. And some people download everything they can get their hands on and eventually buy what they like. Who’s right? Everybody. The Internet has put the power in the hands of the consumer and the artist, and taken it away from the corporations. This is awesome. This is the way it’s supposed to be. What does that mean for the future? What’s the best way to release a record these days? No one knows. And, for those that make music, that problem may never be solved again.
So, it’s widely known that I leak all of my records in advance to torrent sites. I can tell you from numerous conversations and firsthand experience that there are few artists left, even in the big leagues, that do not. You wonder where the early leaks come from? Don’t be so surprised. “People are going to do it anyway, it might as well be me.” So it’s out there, for anyone to have. The vast majority of my physical sales come from people who’ve “pirated” it first. And why not? Why wouldn’t you want to hear in advance what it is you’re purchasing? No one should ever be upset that people are downloading their record for free. They’re listening to it. And chances are they will buy it someday if they like it. Someone who doesn’t buy it still wouldn’t have bought it if they didn’t download it, so what’s the worry?
But, in all that, and in all my support of BitTorrent, I’m still leaving out an important part of my fanbase: everyone else. Why reward those people who think they’re stealing something, when there are plenty of people in the world who don’t use BitTorrent and would probably enjoy it being in their iPod just as much as the IndieTorrents member?
In the end, there’s no use in hoarding my music and forcing people to pay for it, since it’s just going to end up on The Pirate Bay anyhow. And there’s no use in giving it only to people who use The Pirate Bay. The music world will continue to change perpetually in the future, and it will never stop. But it can’t change past “everything is free, buy it if you like it,” so I’m permanently making that step and staying ahead of the game.
I want you to listen to my records. That is why I made them, and that is why I released them. Sure, I’d like to make some money for it. If anyone says they don’t want to be paid for their music, they’re either lying to you or themselves. But it’s not the sole reason I make music. I make music because I want to. I need to. I am compelled to. It comes out of me whether I want it to or not, for better or for worse. So why not share it? And if someone wants to reward me monetarily for that, why not let them?
So the records are now, and will forever be, on this web site, chriszabriskie.com for free. My friend, lo-fi pop legend, imaginary label-mate, and co-conspirator in crime, Marc with a C, is taking this same step early next week. This is not a replacement for purchasing a CD or buying it off iTunes, it is a recognition of both what I believed in when I started making music and the way the world has changed. I think it’s all for the better. There’s so much amazing music out there, and you don’t have to go to Best Buy or even your local independent record store to hear it anymore.
Bottom line: if you like something you listen to, support the artist however you can. If that means buying something, great. If that means going to a live show, great. If that means sharing it with a friend, great. If that means blogging about it, great. If that menas requesting it on your local college radio station, great. If that means just scrobbling it to Last.fm so people can see that you’re enjoying it, great.
That’s the future of music. It’s completely in your hands, not mine, not anyone else’s who makes music. Yours. Don’t let anyone judge you for how you choose to find and experience music. The soundtrack to your life is up to you. All music is free, everywhere. Don’t take that for granted. Share it, disappear into it. It’s yours.
-Chris Zabriskie
Hello! Tony has asked me to do a guest blog here for We Heart Arts, and I’m very honored for the opportunity. My name is Marc Sirdoreus. I perform music under the name Marc With a C, as well as doing some pop culture journalism at retrolowfi.com. But today… I’m going to tell you about how I fell in love with music.
I liked music as much as any kid growing up in the MTV generation, I suppose. I liked the songs I heard on the radio by Michael Jackson – “Thriller”, “Human Nature and “P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)”, especially. Just thought they were fun to sing along with, even if I couldn’t make heads or tails of how you got a job where it would seem that your only assignment was to sing things for people. I also didn’t totally understand why the “in concert” clips you’d see of, say, Duran Duran doing “Union Of The Snake” didn’t sound as good as the versions on the radio. It was weird. You’d hear a song on the stereo, like it, stay up late to watch the band play… and they would almost universally be god awful. Few things scarred me for life the way that seeing Duran Duran’s performance at Live Aid did when I was a kid.
So one day, I come home from school, and a member of my household was watching a broadcast on HBO: The Who’s “farewell show”, filmed in Toronto, 1982. I sat on the carpet and watched it in full, the way a dog might stare at delicious-looking food that it isn’t allowed to eat. I didn’t know any of the songs, but each one seemed like it was already hit in some galaxy with really good taste. Not that I knew anything about taste at the time, really. I also didn’t know that this performance was indicative of a band going through the motions. All I saw were balls of energy, and songs that sounded absolutely brilliant in a precisely chaotic form. I’d never really heard anything like it, and these guys… they weren’t dancing, but they certainly had “moves”. No moonwalk, but that crazy guitarist would swing his arm to hit chords really, really hard. That stockier, bearded man playing the guitar with less strings? He seemed to be making all of the music on his own but wasn’t moving a millimeter. And the singer would twirl his microphone in dangerous ways that didn’t seem to have any purpose except to give him something to do during the solos.
But really? It was all about the songs. How could a band be so forceful just singing a song about pinball? Most of the songs I knew before this day were simply people talking about girls. How could this guitarist spend his turn at the microphone singing so joyfully about drowning? And… the guy with the beard scared the bejeezus out of me with the tune about the spider, but a fun type of scary. (C’mon. I was like six years old). For the first time, I liked every single song I’d heard from a singing group, and this was sort of the end of my life at the time.
From that moment on, I pumped my mom – a lifelong Who devotee, as it turned out – for any bits of information i could get about this revolutionary “new” group I’d found. All of the music I’d previously purchased with my allowance money practically ceased to exist at this point: “Weird Al”’s “Eat It” 7″, a cassette of Duran Duran’s “Seven & The Ragged Tiger” and an eight-track tape of Hall & Oates “Big Bang Boom”. Oh, and the great beat up tape of “Dark Side Of The Moon” I’d stolen from my dad, since he had three copies of it anyways. That one didn’t seem stupid in comparison, for sure, but it doesn’t really count, either.
I did everything in my power to obtain every bit of digestable music I could get my hands on starting right then, but first? I had to conquer The Who. I had to figure out what set them apart, what really flipped my switch about them. I went through other big weird phases for a kid my age at the time – Yes, Pink Floyd, The Monkees, Hank Williams Sr. – but The Who was the constant for me. And that only grew with each story I’d heard about them, and every album I acquired. I taped “Tommy” off of the radio when a local station broadcasted it in it’s entirety at midnight. I fell asleep during the first song, and right after the “Underture”, they went to a commercial because that was the end of the first act… and my tape ran out. For a few months, I assumed that Tommy’s story ended with him getting beaten up by his cousin and given away to some mythic woman known as the Acid Queen. Imagine my joy when I got to hear the REST of it!
This music rattled everything I knew, and literally was the soundtrack to every move I made in life afterwards. The next logical step was to start playing music in some capacity… trouble was that I didn’t know where to start. I couldn’t make music on any instruments that sounded very good, but I could carry a tune fairly well thanks to my years of singing along with my growing record collection. So in fourth grade, my choices were limited to musical lessons that we couldn’t afford… or joining the school chorus. I chose the latter, and we put on shows about a reindeer named Pablo and other sundries.
In the meantime, my friend Cassandra Brown and I would play “shows” on our street corner in our fake band: Thing Of The Past. She couldn’t play anything either, so we mostly just sang Monkees songs at the top of our lungs to passing cars. My mom was slightly embarrassed by this, and said “you can’t play any more of those concerts until you learn an instrument”, and I was crushed. I’d sulk in my bedroom, listen back to the tapes we’d made of our performances and mourn the breakup of my first “band”. Mom got me some keyboard lessons, but I just didn’t like that instrument very much. I wanted to play guitar… like Pete Townshend.
But I still kept on with the school music, as well. In fifth grade, our music teacher Mrs. LaFrance had us put on a pretty ahead of it’s time show called “The GIGO Effect” to a really baffled batch of students. It was us explaining the future of computers in 1988-89, how they should be properly programmed, etc. I got to play the part of a bumbling scientist that explained the “garbage-in-garbage-out” ethos, which I thought was pretty cool… even though most of the other kids had no idea what we were singing/talking about.
It should be noted that my request for our choir to do a version of “Tommy” was flatly denied.
When I was twelve, my grandmother bought me my first guitar. It was a cheap Spanish doohickey that wouldn’t stay in tune at all. Plus, my dear grandma had inadvertently bought me a saxophone strap to wear said guitar, but I made that work out by simply wrapping the strap around the back, hooking it into the sound hole and holding it close to my body. But none of that was important. The big deal was that now I had an instrument, and I could finally make some sounds like those of my heroes. My mom taught me how to play an E chord, and once I got that right… I then tried to figure out how to do a windmill with it. I got it right roughly four years ago, as those things are harder to do than they look. I also figured out how to do other things with the instrument that have come in handy as a musician. Namely… learning how to play it?
I’d be nowhere without creative arts in schools, cheap instruments and the influence of The Who. As a matter of fact, I reference the band every chance I get: maybe it’s through the “I wanted to be Pete Townshend” line in “Stuck With Me”, the cover of their “Mary Anne With The Shaky Hands” on my DVD, the way I try to interject “Pinball Wizard” into the bridge of “Music geek”… or sometimes it’s super blatant, like in “Jessica, I Heard You Like The Who”. Without creative arts in my life, I’m not sure where I’d be at all. All that restless energy can’t be good for me.
And if Cassandra Brown happens to be reading this? Please email me. I think that Thing of The Past is long overdue for a reunion, don’t you?
Love on ya,
Marc
marcwithac.com
myspace.com/marcwithac
retrolowfi.com
For weeks prior the people of Salisbury couldn’t escape the bunny in a top hat plastered in the windows and doors of supportive businesses in Salisbury. Come Thursday 28th August, they were enlightened as to what all the fuss was about.
8pm, The Old Ale House in Salisbury, and the very first We Heart Arts Awareness Night was upon us. We enlisted the help of two much-loved local acts – Go Vegas and Citystereo – to get the ball rolling. As We Heart Arts aims to promote the benefits of creative programmes for young people, it seemed only fitting that the acts on the night had directly experienced programmes like these (Bass Connection at Grosvenor House for those who’d like to know) would be the first bands to advocate our message.
Citystereo took to the stage first with the unmistakable sound that has already made them one of the bands to watch on the south coast music scene this year. Fresh from their slot at Guilfest, they whipped their hometown crowd up with their hooky riffs and infectious lyrics – the sound of the crowd echoing ‘Do, do you know?’ is still ever present in my memory – starting the party in the high-energy vibe that continued throughout the night.
Luckily for the crowd, a brief respite to catch their breath and get a drink lubricated them for the great presence that was Go Vegas.
Now, every other time I’ve seen Go Vegas belt a set out in their hometown my senses have been assaulted with pure pop-rock, the sweat of the crowd going mad and the visual delight of their nearest and dearest joining them on stage to end their set on a high. I think Reading Festival only a few days before had subdued their audience somewhat (we were spared the stage invasion), but the vivacity those who’ve seen them before have come to expect was still present. During their famed song ‘Single’, we were graced with a sing-a-long from the crowd, and some crazy dancing to boot – anyone see that wild blonde guy at the front?
We just want to thank everyone who came down on the night and those who helped us with flyers, posters, filming and photography – major thanks to Nik and Sean at the Old Ale House, Russell ‘The Soundman’ Parsons and to both bands for all their hard work.
However, don’t think this is the last you’ll see of We Heart Arts – we’ve got plenty going on, including the We Heart Arts Digital Split EP Collection. So far such great artists as Shelby Sifers, Eyes For Volume, fire island, AK and Secret Owl Society have lent their creativity to the splits and there are more to come! In the pipeline is an Everyone Except Me/I Heart Dog Split and the possibility of Jordan O’ Jordan doing a split. On the subject of CD’s there is also the release of “(Home) Made With Love” We Heart Arts’ first all home recorded children’s album to look forward too in the coming months.
These releases coupled with other things in the pipeline that we cannot disclose at the present moment should take us nicely into the New Year and we hope everyone will tag along for the ride as 2009 sees the possibility of more We Heart Arts gigs (and if the first one was anything to go by they will be occasions NOT to be missed). We would love to hear from any bands that might be interested in being on the bill for any upcoming shows or that would like to be involved with the splits (or even in passing out We Heart Arts info cards at their shows).
We have started a movement here that we could not have achieved had it not been for everyone that came to the show, has brought a CD, passed out We Heart Arts info cards or just been supportive in general. We love each and every one of you!
Tony & Lucy
xo
