FreshNerd

I know I’m late on announcing the winner of the free CD, but I’ve been swamped nerds. We (yes, I refer to myself as ‘we’ from time to time) have surpassed well over 100 downloads early this week and I’ll probably do another giveaway at 1000 downloads.

I figure it would be messed up to post the winner’s email publicly here, so I’ll shoot you an email over the weekend for your contact/shipping info.

p.s. Shout out to everyone who has supported, I really appreciate the love and the feedback. Good music prevails….along with chicken wings

“I don’t got no lyrics” – Wocka Flocka

Get the gas face....

So I was planning to mentally block my first interview here in London, but I can’t bring myself to. It was an interview for a small art/music events company which I figured would be some fresh a$$ ish to get into. So I meet with the owner of the company at a small cafe in….let’s just say not the best part of London. Long story short (you like how I skip to the end?) it didn’t work out on either side. But my reason for this rant is not the fact that this woman wasted my time, but more about what she said to me. At one point in the interview we started talking about what kind of art I’m into (keep in mind she saw my resume before hand….or supposedly did) and she looks at me and says “Well, I know urban and street art is considered contemporary art, but I don’t consider it art at all.” Then the cherry on top was when she proceeded to say “I only deal with pretty/happy art and happy people”. Umm….what the fuck is that supposed to mean?!? Anything that’s not suburb is angry and ugly?? Maybe I’m overreacting but I took offense as if I was an urban artist myself. I guess I am in a sense but in the music world. I guess it just surprises me that people are still blatantly classist in this day and age of new money. The age where more and more inner city kids are turning into successful entrepreneurs off of art and/or music. Will it ever change? Who knows, all I know is that I want my 2 pounds 20 back that I spent on the tube transportation to the interview. She gets the gas face!!! Now pardon me as I go hang out with my ugly and angry urban friends….

p.s. If for some odd reason you don’t what the gas face is, click here

**Names were omitted to protect the guilty

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I’m sure all of you blog/mixtape heads are familiar with the mixtape art seen above. Ever wonder where it came from? Of course you did, that’s why you’re here. The original artist behind this piece is THE richest contemporary artist of our time. His name is Damien Hirst. He dominated the British art scene in the 90’s and is the richest living artist to date. In September of 2008, he sold a complete collection for £111 million ($198 million). Not bad huh??

The original piece used for the 50 Cent cover is titled ‘For The Love of God’ (2007) which is a sculpture. The sculpture consists of a platinum cast of a human skull encrusted with 8,601 flawless diamonds. It was on display at London’s White Cube gallery with a generous price tag of £50 million. Yea….see below for a pic of the original piece. Class dismissed…..

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1. The first telephones did not have bells and were connected all the time. In order to attract the attention of someone on the other side of the line, one would have to yell, “Ahoy!” into the receiver.
2. After publishing his famous dictionary, Noah Webster rewrote the bible, replacing all the words he considered were “naughty”.
3. A nepheligenous is someone filling a room with tobacco smoke.
4. Van Gogh sold only one painting during his life.
5. In the original Star Trek series Captain Kirk’s middle name was Tiberius.
6. 17th president Andrew Johnson was the only president to sew his own clothes.
7. Ernest Hemmingway founded an annual fishing tournament in Cuba, where he lived for many years. Fidel Castro was the winner of this contest in 1960.
8. Mark Twain’s favourite cats were named Sour Mash, Sin, Apollinaris, Beelzebub, Buffalo Bill, Zoroaster, Blatherskite, and Satan.
9. In 1968, Steve McPeak traveled from Chicago to Los Angeles on a unicycle. The trip took him six weeks.
10. The longest word used by Shakespeare in any of his works is “honorificabilitudinitatibus,” found in “Love’s Labours Lost.”
11. The original title of the musical “Hello Dolly!” was “Dolly: A Damned Exasperating Woman.”
12. Spam is so resistant to spoilage that, if kept in the closed can, it may well outlast eternity and will certainly live longer than you.
13. Spam was first promoted as a health food.
14. In Korea Spam comes in gift boxes.
15. If placed end to end, all the Spam ever sold would circle the Earth more than ten times.
16. When Pedro I became King of Portugal in the 14th century, he had his dead mistress dug up so she could be crowned queen alongside him. Many of the nobles at the coronation even kissed her hand. After the ceremonies they put her back in the box and returned her to her tomb.
17. It’s illegal in Alabama to wear a fake moustache that causes laughter in church.
18. In parts of Alaska, it’s illegal to feed alcohol to a moose.
19. You’re subject to fines and/or imprisonment for making “ugly faces” at dogs in Oklahoma.
20. In Utah, birds have the right of way on all highways.
21. Mao Zedong, like many Chinese of his time, refused to brush his teeth. Instead, he rinsed his mouth with tea and chewed the leaves. Why brush? “Does a tiger brush his teeth?” argued Mao. As you can imagine, his teeth were green.
22. Chairman Mao also loved to chain-smoke English cigarettes, when his doctor asked him to cut down, he explained that “smoking is also a form of deep-breathing exercise, don’t you think?”
23. The groundhog is only accurate in predicting the weather 28% of the time.
24. Gene Sarazen, a golfer from several generations ago, set the record for the fastest golf drive: 120 mph.
25. Michael Sangster, who played in the 1960s, had tennis’ fastest serve, once clocked at 154 mph.
26. Since 1949, the LEGO company, based in Denmark, has produced more than 200,000,000,000 of the plastic elements that make up the Lego System.
27. There are 102,981,500 ways to combine six of the 8-studed Lego bricks of one color.
28. The name LEGO came from the Danish, “LEg GOdt,” which means “play well.”
29. In England there is no difference between a pig and a hog, but here in the states if a pig is over 180 pounds, it is considered a hog.
30. The specific gravity of your skin and Silly Putty is close enough that doctors have actually used it to align and test CAT scan machines.
31. Lake Titicaca is known as the largest lake in South America.
32. The Dead Sea is the world’s saltiest body of water.
33. The earliest known legal text was written by Ur Nammu in 2100 B.C.
34. The population density of the state of Alaska is 1 person per square mile.
35. The original host of “Jeopardy” was Art Fleming.
36. David McConnell used to sell sets of Shakespeare door-to-door. In order to make books more appealing, he offered free perfume to his customers. Realizing the perfume was more popular he began selling cosmetics door-to-door. And so began Avon.
37. Some unwrapped mummies had a total bandage length of about 1.5 miles.
38. Although it’s only 2% of our body weight, the brain uses 20% of all oxygen we breathe, 20% of the calories we take in, and 15% of the body’s blood supply.
39. Income tax was first introduced in England in 1799 by British Prime Minister, William Pitt.
40. The coccyx is the only bone in our 200+ bone system that serves no purpose.
41. The Aztecs had a primative form of basketball called “ollamalitzli.” The difference from today’s sport is that the first person to get the ball through the ring high above the ground had the right to collect the clothes right off the backs of everyone watching the game.
42. If you were to guess at a number chosen between 5 and 10, you would be wrong five out of six times.
43. Donna Griffith is credited with the longest recorded bout of sneezing. It lasted 978 days, from January 1981 to September 1983.
44. According to old historical opinion, Valentine’s Day is a good day to prepare eels for the purposes of magic. It was once believed that eating an eel’s heart would give sight of the future.
45. The youngest person to receive a driver’s license is a 14 year 8 month year old by the name of Andrezej Makowski.
46. The most miles ever put on a car is 1,615,000 miles on a 1966 Volvo P-1800.
47. Renee Descartes, the 17th century philosopher and mathematician, is the person responsible for “x” being the universal variable in algebra.
48. If you counted at the rate of 100 numbers a minute and kept counting for eight hours a day, five days a week, it would take a little over 4 weeks to count to one million and just over 80 years to reach one billion.
49. Every day, more than 1,000 gallons of water are lost into space from the top of Earth’s atmosphere. Yet there is about as much water on Earth as there was 3 billion years ago.
50. Les Miserables has a 3-page, 823-word sentence which is divided by 93 commas, 51 semicolons, and 4 dashes. Rumor has it that someone suffocated from lack of oxygen in the 1940’s just short of the 73rd comma while giving a dramatic reading from the work.
51. Flag semaphore invented in Europe in 1791 by Claude and Ignace Chappe. Using this form of communication, Napoleon Bonaparte was able to send a message from Rome to Paris in about 4 hours at the rate of 15 characters per minute.
52. About 40% of the world’s varieties of freshwater fish and more than half of the 8,600 species of birds in the world are in the Amazon River basin area.
53. The largest stick of incense ever created was nearly 15 feet long and 6 inches in diameter.
54. Jackie Bibby sat in a bathtub with 35 live rattlesnakes, procuring himself a world record.
55. The word ‘byte’ is a contraction of ‘by eight.’
56. The word ‘pixel’ is a contraction of either ‘picture cell’ or ‘picture element’.
57. The longest one-syllable word in the English language is “screeched.”
58. The dot over the letter ‘i’ is called a tittle.
59. Duddley DoRight’s Horses name was “Horse.”
60. Charlie Brown’s father was a barber.
61. Of the six men who made up the Three Stooges, three of them were real brothers (Moe, Curly and Shemp.)
62. Ohio is listed as the 17th state in the U.S., but technically it is number 47. Until August 7, 1953, congress forgot to vote on a resolution to admit Ohio to the Union.
63. Only 1/3 of the people that can twitch their ears can twitch only one at a time.
64. Ingrown toenails are hereditary.
65. The largest city in the United States with a one syllable name is Flint, Michigan.
66. On the cartoon show ‘The Jetsons’, Jane is 33 years old and her daughter Judy is 15.
67. Only humans and horses have hymens.
68. The word “set” has more definitions than any other word in the English language.
69. The state with the longest coastline in the US is Michigan.
70. We will have four consecutive full moons making two blue moons in 1999 (January 2 and 31, March 2 and 31.) The only other time it happened this century was in 1915 (January 1 and 31, March 1 and 31.)
71. The longest U.S. highway is route 6 starting in Cape Cod, Massachusetts going through 14 states, and ending in Bishop, California.
72. The first man to sail solo around the world was Joshua Slocum, who couldn’t swim.
73. It took 20,000 men 22 years to build the Taj Mahal.
74. Vincent Van Gogh painted a picture every day for the last 70 years of his life.
75. If you stand at the bottom of a well you would be able to see the stars even in the middle of the day.
76. STASI, the East German secret police, managed to duplicate the scent of a female dog in heat and apply it to the shoes of people they had under surveillance. If they needed to track them down, they just had to let some male dogs follow the scent.
77. Arnold Schwarzenegger began his transition from Austrian bodybuilder into an American film star when he made his screen debut in 1970 under the name “Arnold Strong” in “Hercules Goes Bananas.”
78. The Hundred Years War of the 14th and 15th centuries actually lasted 116 years.
79. Trees, not whales, are the largest living organisms on Earth today.
80. Karen Roman grew the world’s largest cauliflower, weighing in at 22 pounds.
81. Charles Dickens kept the head of his bed aligned with the North Pole, believing the earth’s magnetic field would pass longitudinal through his body and ensure him a good night sleep.
82. The Titanic’s rudder outweighed Christopher Columbus’ Santa Maria.
83. Scientists find as many as 10,000 new species of insects a year.
84. Worms can have up to ten hearts.
85. The dragonfly has about 30,000 lenses covering its retina, enabling it to see many images.
86. More employees are injured in the meat packing industry than any other line of work.
87. By the time you’re 70 you will have lost half your taste buds.
88. Low fat foods are more likely to contain harmful bacteria than regular foods.
89. The largest ball of twine in the world resides in Cawker City, Kansas, USA. It is over 12 feet in diameter, weighs 8+ tons, and never stops growing. More
90. Average wait in the waiting room of a doctor’s office: 20 minutes.
91. Black was the only colour that Ford produced the Model T. It was the only paint available which would dry fast enough to keep up with the fast pace of the assembly line.
92. About 50 ant farms are sold an hour.
93. The world’s longest mustache is more than eight feet long.
94. The world’s largest squid was 35 feet long and weighed 2.2 tons.
95. The fastest speed that a rail vehicle has gone is 6,121 mph or mach 8.
96. The world’s largest gum drop was 11 lbs, 9 inches tall, and contained 15,250 calories.
97. The largest tumor ever removed intact weighed 303 lbs.
98. On the South Pole every direction you look is north.
99. The world’s first coffee shop opened in 1554 in Constantinople. But it wasn’t until 1683 when coffee was served with milk, sugar, and a strainer was used to separate the grounds from the beverage.
100. The tuna fish never stops swimming.

Alright nerds, support real hip hop and head over to Stones Throw to support this project. Madlib is definitely one of my favorite producers hands down (top 10, yea I said it). Album due out in Fall, until then…

Listen/BUY

Shout out to DA of Chester French for the retweet. Very, very, very good post from Trent Reznor and his thoughts on being an indie artist A.G. (after Google). I’ve been trying to tell yall but hey…what do I know. Check out what Trent has to say:

(disclaimer)
This was written on a bumpy Euro-bus ride across the wilderness – may ramble a bit but I think the point gets across.
TR

I posted a message on Twitter yesterday stating I thought The Beastie Boys and TopSpin Media “got it right” regarding how to sell music in this day and age. Here’s a link to their store:

[illcommunication.beastieboys.com]

Shortly thereafter, I got some responses from people stating the usual “yeah, if you’re an established artist – what if you’re just trying to get heard?” argument. In an interview I did recently this topic came up and I’ll reiterate what I said here.

If you are an unknown / lesser-known artist trying to get noticed / established:

* Establish your goals. What are you trying to do / accomplish? If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake) – your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days your need old-school marketing muscle and that only comes from major labels. Good luck with that one.

If you’re forging your own path, read on.

* Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.
To clarify:
Parter with a TopSpin or similar or build your own website, but what you NEED to do is this – give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people’s email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special – make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan. Make a premium download available that includes high-resolution versions (for sale at a reasonable price) and include the download as something immediately available with any physical purchase. Sell T-shirts. Sell buttons, posters… whatever.

Don’t have a TopSpin as a partner? Use Amazon for your transactions and fulfillment. [www.amazon.com]

Use TuneCore to get your music everywhere. [www.tunecore.com]

Have a realistic idea of what you can expect to make from these and budget your recording appropriately.
The point is this: music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away. This is a fact – it sucks as the musician BUT THAT’S THE WAY IT IS (for now). So… have the public get what they want FROM YOU instead of a torrent site and garner good will in the process (plus build your database).

The Beastie Boys’ site offers everything you could possibly want in the formats you would want it in – available right from them, right now. The prices they are charging are more than you should be charging – they are established and you are not. Think this through.

The database you are amassing should not be abused, but used to inform people that are interested in what you do when you have something going on – like a few shows, or a tour, or a new record, or a webcast, etc.
Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace – it’s dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don’t autoplay). Constantly update your site with content – pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any – Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.

If you don’t know anything about new media or how people communicate these days, none of this will work. The role of an independent musician these days requires a mastery of first hand use of these tools. If you don’t get it – find someone who does to do this for you. If you are waiting around for the phone to ring or that A & R guy to show up at your gig – good luck, you’re going to be waiting a while.

Hope this helps, and I’ll scour responses for intelligent comments I can respond to.

TR