http://djmark.buzznet.com/user/journal/ en-us http://djmark.buzznet.com/user/journal/1705821/
The Library of Congress has begun uploading thousands of photographs to flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/
They've opened it to public tagging, commenting and notation -- which I have been contributing to for the past couple hours. Basically, I will never get any work done ever again. 

All the sumptuous historical photographs you could ever want.











A visual feast, as they say.]]> Buzznet djmark 2008-01-22T19:41:00Z http://djmark.buzznet.com/user/journal/1455361/ The Thrill Factory.
ho ho ho.
happy holidays all!
]]> Buzznet djmark 2007-12-10T15:55:00Z http://djmark.buzznet.com/user/journal/1396991/ i just posted some music up over at The Thrill Factory.  it's just a little playlist i posted for the fun of it... 1.7 hrs of musical treats for you to listen to/download.
maybe you'll hate it...

]]> Buzznet djmark 2007-11-30T18:11:00Z http://djmark.buzznet.com/user/journal/1308751/ http://www.rockyou.com/show_my_gallery.php?source=ppsl&instanceid=91077992]]> Buzznet djmark 2007-11-15T00:01:00Z http://djmark.buzznet.com/user/journal/1204251/



]]> Buzznet djmark 2007-10-26T14:19:00Z http://djmark.buzznet.com/user/journal/1192821/ Happy Band of JapanDate: Oct 24, 2007 6:26 AMBob Dylan has just made an advert for Chevrolete, marketing their latest SUV, a gas guzzling environmental disaster that Bob says will make your shopping trips a breeze.

Unless this is some kind of Dadaist, anti-capitalist hijacking by Bob of the American dystopia, one which somehow destroys the system from within in one wry, moutashied grin, then this surely stands as the biggest sell-out of the 60s dream there ever has been.  Bob Dylan?  An SUV ad?  That dusty copy of Abbie Hoffman’s Steal This Book on your shelf?  Burn it.  The Female Eunuch?  Just a precursor to a panty-liner ad campaign.  No Logo?  The cover is now a t-shirt line.

The one reassuring thing about this ad is this; it highlights in neon that, often ambivalent, distrust of art and ads being bedfellows.  This one ad makes it oh so clear; using your art to sell cars is morally, spiritually, and moreover, for any Mojo-readers out there, music-historically, wrong.

Ads and music have a long history.  I remember the 1980s jeans ad with that temporary superstar Nick Kamen stripping off to the sound of Heard It Through The Grapevine.  I didn’t know who Marvin Gaye was then but something in my kiddy-heart knew that whoever wrote that song didn’t write it for a 30 slot for denim.  It piqued me even as a innocent fan of the A-Team.  I knew something was up.  This song was too good for this send-up designed to titillate my friend’s older sisters.   I couldn’t pinpoint the problem but I knew there was one.  There was a suffering victim somewhere here.

My distrust deepened throughout the 1990s when Levis appropriated a string of great, good and occasionally tedious songs for their denim slots, driven by the success of the Nick Kamen prototype.  The Clash, Jimi Hendrix, and Babylon Zoo became wallpaper to a room of beautiful people having no trouble crouching in skintight 501s.  They looked and sounded great.  They were all having so much fun.  Where was the wrong in this?  To add further confusion I wanted a pair desperately, and still knew the lyric from White Man in Hammersmith Palais, ‘Turning rebellion into money’.  I grimaced when some of my favourite albums appeared in record-shops with an added kiss-off in the form of the sticker, “As heard in the Hovis ad”.  It peaked in 1998 when my grandmother experienced Mark E Smith for a full 30 seconds during an ad break in Coronation Street.

So what is the problem?  Feist, Manitoba and others have all recently found wider audiences off the back of ad campaigns; all great music-makers deserved of more listeners.  Musicians on the verge of poverty and showing early symptoms of malnutrition have found their gas and electricity switched back on and a crate of Moet sat in the fridge after being rescued by a lucrative ad.  We hear musicians can earn more from one ad than from the sales of a fair-to-middling selling album.  Nick Drake might still be alive today.  Syd Barrett might have been saved from the woods.

The dichotomy between art and commerce is often discussed, sometimes bridged, invariably scuttled and subsequently dredged up again whenever artists moan about the ‘sell-ou’t.  For the artist – be-smocked, misunderstood, slightly underweight, permanently heartbroken - art should be created in the world outside the market, where the only currency is the idea, where the birds sing for free and you don’t buy water in a plastic bottle (see Lewis Hyde’s the Gift, a bible for any sympathisers of this view).  So far, so idyllic.  So far, so broke.  So the snakes creep to the gates of Eden. 

The familiar rouse; the artist’s manager meets an advertising creative in a dingy bar in Chelsea and they negotiate a Faustian pact to destroy paradise.  Hours of labour become points and percentages, creative genius is funnelled into demographics and a finely-honed elegy to a dark haired girl from a small market town in Lincolnshire becomes the perfect backdrop to a bunch of pretend friends spending money they don’t have on their new Mastercard.

The ad is televised and the artist is rich.  But those who know, those who really get it, have turned their backs.  The artist is left between a rock and a hard place, integrity dissolved like salt in water, inspiration spent.

My hunch that there is a problem is always subtly justified by the arguments given in favour great music being used in ads.  They always point towards a ‘greater good’ ethical viewpoint.  I personally have a problem with this.  You can do anything, however heinous, if it benefits the majority.  There are so many terrifying historical examples of this approach in action that I only need say the words Genghis Khan to conjure up images of the consequences. Anyway, the arguments go along the lines of:

1    It gives the artists more exposure
2    The money allows them the time to develop new tracks and ideas

Now, exposure is a wonderful thing.  If three million people heard my music everyday I would be delighted.  If I could play my favourite song to the world via  the television instead of to my battered eardrums via cheap earphones, that would be just great. 

Two asides before we hit the main point here.  Firstly, and I direct this primarily to the artist, is it really worth it?  If you’re exposed via an ad this will be the reaction:

“Oh I love this – it’s the track from the Jif advert!  The one with the Mum in a spacesuit!”

Moreover, you will have comments like this attached to your albums on Amazon:

“All of these tracks could be on car ads!  I can’t wait!”

Is that the reaction you wanted when you wrote that blissful yet galloping ode to the dark-haired girl, subtley influenced by MBV, Dizzee Rascal and Strings of Life alike, yet transcending them all in an act of fusion that jumpstarts a new musical paradigm? Well Jif-boy?  To quote the fore-mentioned credit giant; soundtrack to your life? Priceless.  Soundtrack to a Vodafone ad?  £50 a month (…with 100 free text messages).

Secondly; the money argument.  Personally I think no good comes from throwing money at artists.  Most have no idea what to do with it, years of scrimping, drinking other people’s flat lager and smoking Lambert and Butler, means a sudden cash injection ends in either drug abuse or chronic laziness.  Most musicians get worse as they get richer. 

Thirdly, and this is the main point, neither of these arguments are resolutely positive.  They’re both excuses rather than justifications.  No one wants to discover their favourite band via Nestle.  In our deepest heart of hearts we would agree that the world would be a better place if Jimi Hendrix wasn’t used to sell HSBC current accounts.  I know I’d rather associate Orbital with the night of my life at a Tribal Gathering rather than Muller Rice.

Of course we all know money causes problems, that we’d rather not have to work for a boss we hate, that flying Ryanair is killing the planet, that Lynx aerosols are bad news, but the thing about art is this, we still work because the real world is where we live, but art is not the real world.  Music is the world as we want it to be, music is the real world removed and made beautiful through the light touch of the artist.  We will trudge to the tube in the rain for the rent money but Stand by Me, or Venus in Furs or Boy/Girl Song shouldn’t have to.  They exist in a world separate from all the day-to-day.  They don’t need the tube, a squallid flat to live in or the money to pay for it.  They’re better than that.

So the arguments have that underlying apologietic shrug that says, “Yes its cheap and kills the music but its not all bad”.  Even the ad companies spin these lines, they secretly know as well as we secretly know, and you can see the consequences most hauntingly in the eyes of the musicians themselves; the dull-echo of an empty space were once sat their crazy souls.

Dan @ HBOJ]]> Buzznet djmark 2007-10-24T07:07:00Z http://djmark.buzznet.com/user/journal/1187941/
http://www.stopbigmedia.com/blog/?p=133

Ok copy and paste, whatever. Anyway, this isn't just to get you all riled up. The site makes it so easy to send your oppinion to our elected representatives that it won't take you more than a second. You can actually do something to help stop the FCC from giftwrapping a monopoly for these companies.]]> fcc media music radio Buzznet djmark 2007-10-23T07:12:00Z http://djmark.buzznet.com/user/journal/1186331/

 tune into KCSB 91.9fm tonight at 10pm to hear an explosion of 60's girl group sounds.
if you are outta range hit up our fantabulous webcast and listen right on your computer!
i'll have a special co-host, a member of the future generation of female rockstars!!!
see you on the air.
love, djmark]]> Buzznet djmark 2007-10-22T21:04:00Z http://djmark.buzznet.com/user/journal/1115341/ how are you today? it's a fine day so far here in my (current) neighborhood.  the sun is shining it's glorious warmth upon Goleta, CA which means it's way too nice to be inside packing up records, right?
anyhow...
i just wanted to let you know about some updates over at The Thrill Factory, go check 'em out and don't forget to peek at the upcoming events section, there's good stuff on the horizon.
oh, and Dear Austin TX...
are you ready for us?
be gentle when we arrive, we will be in a fragile state.
a tall, cold Shiner Bock would be nice upon arrival.
see what you can do.

LOVE TO ALL...
hearts and hugs and kisses from,
-djmark

]]> Buzznet djmark 2007-10-08T11:02:00Z http://djmark.buzznet.com/user/journal/1091271/ ----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: night shift at the thrill factory
Date: Oct 3, 2007 7:25 AM




The last ever broadcast of Night Shift At The Thrill Factory goes down Thursday morning.
6-8am california time.
tune in.
KCSB 91.9 fm.
if you are out of range you can listen online
i'll be playing some of my all time favorites as well as saying thank you to all the bands/people with whom i've had the pleasure of working with during the past couple of years. we'll also have some special requests to get to from some of our dedicated listeners.
hope you can listen.
***********************]]> Buzznet djmark 2007-10-03T10:59:00Z