Canned Dragons

Bandcamp is one of the tools in fighting Swiftification. They offer editorial content that paves the way to new and obscure music discoveries. They make digital downloads and physical media accessible for even the fringiest of artists, but certainly for those outside the mainstream. Bandcamp is one of the most beloved internet services, but it is showing signs of trouble. The company lost roughly half of its workforce after the recent acquisition by Songtradr, following the service’s divestiture by Epic Games. The deepest cuts came in support and editorial. It goes without saying that this doesn't bode well for the platform that music fans and musicians alike have come to rely on for music distribution. Philip Sherburne sums up the many concerns about Bandcamp's future in a piece for Pitchfork.

Sherburne starts with the layoffs and departures, which he makes sound even more ominous than some initial stories indicate.

Bandcamp’s former executives, meanwhile, “all vanished on September 28, and no one has heard from them since,” says the ex-employee.

When I read this passage to my lady friend, she wondered if the executives had been taken out back and summarily shot, so bleak is that statement. The shedding of employees to boost the bottom line, and probably likely because they had a union, doesn’t scream confidence in the overall business model. What does this mean for the indie music industry?

And if Songtradr did implode—or, perhaps worse, strip Bandcamp for parts and discard the rest—the consequences could be catastrophic for independent music. Whether the death of Bandcamp came in one fell swoop or as a result of a thousand cuts, artists and labels would find themselves deprived of both a crucial income stream and their extensive mailing lists of supporters. Digital download sales would stagnate. More power would shift toward the major streaming platforms. And for listeners, it would become that much harder to discover strange, singular, unpopular new music outside of established scenes and communities.

Clive Thompson wrote recently about “solastalgia” and how it relates to online communities. “Solastalgia” is a term coined by the philosopher Glenn Albrecht, which refers to a type of melancholy brought on by a change in one’s environment. It’s a version of homesickness that occurs when one hasn’t gone anywhere. While it may be a first-world problem, music is one of my main hobbies, and a substantial change to the online music ecosystem feels tectonic to me. Along with potential changes to Bandcamp, it seems fees are going up on Discogs, potentially signaling a sale of the service. Since those are two of my most frequently used internet services related to music, another acquisition could affect my music habits substantially. That's just as a consumer. Particularly in the case of Bandcamp, the artists would surely be impacted by any degradation in the platform even more strongly.

Sherburne is honest in his pessimism.

It’s another reminder that the independent music ecosystem is far more fragile than anyone would like to admit.

It is fragile indeed.

Fr. Stephen Freeman writes about the modern condition in a way that resonates with me and what I've witnessed in my lifetime.

I think we are often disappointed that God refuses to behave as the god of modernity. The extremes of the “prosperity” preachers are only the most egregious examples of modernity’s god. There are others, more subtle. For example, we expect God to cooperate with our political projects (both Left and Right). As the problem-solvers of progress, we assume that God is interested in the same goals as we. He is not.

It's obviously a trait of humanity to view God in very personal ways and to believe that there are shared goals. In fact, it's difficult to escape this mentality (I certainly can't most of the time).

There are times in our lives when the modern project seems like pristine prophecy. Its promise of a better world feels as though it is being fulfilled before our eyes. People are occasionally nostalgic for one period or another when they think this was true. When these times change and become times of frustration, we begin to wonder why God allows such evil to exist. We do not realize that we are asking why it is that God refuses to go along with the modern project.

I often find myself wondering, and speculating about, why those on the progressive end of the political spectrum seem to have higher rates of depression and anxiety. The answer that most easily comes is that there appears to be an expectation of a sort of time-condensed version of what the Unitarian Minister Theodore Parker conceptualized — which was later paraphrased by Martin Luther King Jr. into, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." People, in the West, at least, have viewed the last few decades as a steady and rapid march in this direction. More rights, more recognition of the struggles of those who maybe aren't the dominant group in society. When something is perceived as a setback to this principle in action, it evokes a reaction that is almost like a crisis of faith. The reality doesn't match with the vision, and that may produce some cognitive dissonance. The most common reaction to the dissonance seems to be one of despair and doubt.

We don't typically have the self-awareness and humility to step back and assess things in a way that Fr. Freeman describes them — that God may not share our goals, or may not have the same timetable that we do. Those who view the various projects of modernity as essentially bringing the Kingdom of God into the world, in a sort of participatory eschatology, in the end, may reap disappointment. When the projects don't appear to improve things or have divine sanction, it can be deflating.

One of Fr. Freeman's responses to a commenter on the article sums things up nicely.

I have written frequently that we are not in charge of the outcome of history. “Management” is among the great myths of the modern mind. Humility is the path of Christ.

I wrote previously about striving for humility, and I think that it is in the letting go of the belief that we can be causative agents for macro-level changes that we can gain a certain measure of that elusive virtue. That is not to imply that we abandon doing good works or living out the Gospel as truly good news. However, we can do so without the expectation that our efforts will achieve some grand goal, but hopefully in the belief that they will bring a bit of Christ's goodness into the lives of others.

As a manager, this is hard for me to swallow! I want to tweak processes in the stubborn expectation that goals will be achieved and the path to those goals be made smooth. I guess I'm at a point where I'm open to the message from Fr. Stephen because I've watched so many projects of man-made design fail, despite the best of intentions.

This was a rather intimate tradition for 8th graders who didn't know anyone at the church to be participating in. Some were visibly uncomfortable, but gamely went through the ritual anyway. The experience taught me a lesson in humility. Truly, it's hard to maintain a sense of pride when going through a process like this. Asking a stranger for forgiveness intrinsically means that you have faults and sins for which you owe just about anyone an apology. I'll admit, the concept seems strange at first. It's a powerful exercise, though, and I think it is instructional in the area of interpersonal relations.

Arthur C. Brooks writes for The Atlantic about the benefits of humility and how it can increase happiness. Brooks starts off the article with an analogy from the Matrix about taking the red pill. He then moves on to the research on the subject of humility.

Humble people are also more attractive to romantic partners. Dating research finds that most people find humble potential partners more appealing than those who are arrogant; the humble ones also tended to have more successful long-distance relationships. When people are prompted to think about humility in experiments, they show greater self-control. (No doubt this is why people who score higher on measures of humility are less likely to abuse drugs compared with those who are less humble.) Humility also can make you more generous with others, and more effective as a leader.

As someone in a leadership position, I'm especially interested in the possibility that humility can make you a better leader. Of course, this goes hand in hand with servant leadership, which necessitates a certain measure of humility. Being able to admit when you don't know is one of the toughest things about maintaining humility in leadership. It makes you vulnerable and, in some ways, can undermine your authority. You have to let go of the sense of control and be willing to accept that you can be a competent leader without knowing — or even appearing to know — everything. You also have to let others take the spotlight from you. To serve those who report to you, you need to let them shine. It's tempting sometimes to take the microphone, but sometimes it takes being mindful to step back a bit.

I sometimes struggle with humility, but I do think I'm making progress. There's no doubt that it's a skill you can practice, like any other. I hope and pray that I'm in the right place to do just that.

I've been writing recently about my new appreciation for physical media for my music collection. I've hit a few snags, though. As the absolute cost of obtaining music goes down in that you can get almost anything included as part of your all-you-can-eat streaming music plan, the cost of physical copies of that same music keeps increasing.^[1]

Just today, I received a CD I ordered from Bandcamp. When I opened the package, I couldn't help but feel a bit left down. I had been waiting for two weeks, just to receive a slightly bent cardboard envelope sleeve with a CD in it. The packaging is so minimal, that I won't even be able to find the CD in my storage solutions because there is no spine from which to read the band name and album title. It feels like the presentation of the CD was done as cheaply as possible, even though CDs are already very inexpensive to manufacture, and their margins are high. The only bonus is that it includes a lyric sheet folded four ways. For this, I paid about $18 more than what I had been paying when I was listening to the album on Apple Music. I'm happy to be paying the artist for their music, but it feels like I'm getting the short end of the stick here.

After getting the CD in the mail, I went to preorder another CD on Bandcamp. It's an EP from one of my favorite bands, so it was a foregone conclusion that I was going to buy it on physical media. Something happened at the virtual checkout counter, though. I looked at the total cost (CD + shipping + tax). To buy the CD and get it shipped to me was $22.50. That is for a package of 6 songs. It seemed pretty high to me given the incremental cost of that listening experience on top of my monthly streaming cost (which I'm not likely to give up) is nothing.

Packaging

Then there is the matter of packaging, which is essentially — with digital music on a compact disc — what you are paying for. It's rarely advertised how the CD is packaged, so you could get almost anything now that there is no standard presentation for that format. I have recent CDs of all different shapes and sizes. Even multiple releases from the same band on the same label, like older Metallica albums, have different sized cardboard sleeves. I've had to buy various sizes of plastic covers for the sleeves on these albums. As I mentioned before, there is no way of knowing what you are going to get until your music arrives in the mail. I just got a Mudhoney CD in wallet style cardboard packaging, and it's inexplicably wider than other similar two CD sets. I can't even fit it in my storage containers, so it has to go with my box sets. It makes me miss when everything came in jewel cases or at least digipaks.

Vinyl

Vinyl has fairly standard packaging, and a differentiator from digital music you can find online is that it sounds analog. You are actually engaging in a changed experience with the music. It's also usually nicely packaged because the record companies and artists view it as the premium way of releasing music, as opposed to CDs, which seemed to be viewed as an afterthought. However, you pay for that premium. The 6-song EP I mentioned earlier is $37.51 to purchase on vinyl (I hesitate to mention that it's almost sold out). I predicted, sometime around the mid-aughts, that vinyl would become the premium way to distribute music, but that it would continue to cost more and more.^[2] Boy was I on the money.

The Right Thing

I'm all about paying musicians for their work. It feels like it keeps becoming difficult to do in a realistic way and the returns are either cost prohibitive or mysteriously poorly done. I'm getting to the point where I might just start building a digital library through Qobuz, which offers both streaming and the ability to purchase lossless and hi-res music. Or I may just buy the releases I really care about digitally on Bandcamp. Currently, all I know for sure is that I'm frustrated with the options for physical media.

When I went to the Hopscotch music festival a few weeks ago, two of the bands that I went to see were Soccer Mommy and Pavement. Pavement played the first day, Soccer Mommy the third. After Sophia Regina Allison, the woman behind the stage name Soccer Mommy, took the stage, she mentioned getting really into the festival and staying the whole weekend (something not all the artists did). She must have enjoyed the Pavement set because she just dropped a tasteful and well-executed batch of covers for an EP and the first song is "Here" from Pavement's seminal LP Slanted And Enchanted.

Though undoubtedly still firmly in the vein of indie rock, the cover of "Here" fleshes out the spartan original with an arrangement worthy of an artist who resides in Nashville. There's a very contemporary hint at a radio-friendly country aesthetic. Keyboard flourishes accentuate the track nicely. Though not without some respectable nods to the noisier aspects of 90s indie, its earnest execution almost makes the song seem like the opposite of what it was (the opposite of what just about any Pavement song was) — sincere. Any artist who can take a line about "crotch mavens" and make it sound like a cause for legitimate introspection and perhaps even restrained sorrow is deserving of some amount of admiration. Chuck Klosterman writes about Pavement's reputation for being cool and aloof in his book about The Nineties.

Emotional uninvestment made so many contradictions fun and enriching. It was simultaneously possible to view Pavement as the finest band of the decade while also seeing them as five guys who weren’t even trying (and who ridiculed any rival who did).

Allison's take amplifies the emotional aspects of the song that were buried under layers of irony to laudable effect.

The semi-obscure Pavement cover is followed by an unlikely sequencing pick — a Sheryl Crow bonafide hit single. The original version of the Crow song "Soak Up The Sun" is everything the Pavement track is not. Its complete lack of self-consciousness and unabashed accessibility mark it as slacker college rock inverted. The surprising part is that it works on its own and as a follow-up to "Here" in equal measure.

The EP ends with a straight cover of the REM song "Losing My Religion." It's another choice that stands in stark contrast to the start of the release. It's hard to think of someone who might take their art more seriously than Michael Stipe. Interestingly, though, the members of Pavement are big REM fans, so maybe there are more threads connected than are evident without closer inspection. It's clear that Allison sees some of those threads, which makes her vision for this EP a compelling one.

Matter continues to add features that make a subscription to the service even more valuable. The latest is an enhancement to their recent podcast support. Matter will not intelligently (some might say artificially) break podcasts down into chapters. This is something that used to be done organically with podcasts, but seems to have fallen by the wayside as podcasters potentially worried about people skipping the now ubiquitous ads. It's nice to have this capability back. Though it may be a comment on our go-go lifestyles, it's really handy to be able to skip to the parts of a podcast you are most interested in. This is especially useful on the podcasts that are discussions of different subjects. The above image is how it looks for a show like The Holy Post.

The new feature doesn't exactly fit a workflow of listening to a podcast when you are, say, cooking or driving. When you are listening for reference material, though, this feature and the ability of Matter to transcribe podcasts, then use built-in tools like the highlighter + sync with Obsidian, make for a powerful workflow.

I've seen a lot of sentiment recently about overcomplicated workflows, but there are some, like the above, that truly enable superpowers when it comes to research and documentation or even curation. Linking together ideas is one of the things that Obsidian advertises, for instance, and Matter's new feature is just the type of tool that makes that process a lot easier.

A side note: The FAQs for Matter's new podcast feature are contained in a tweet (or whatever you call posts on X). What happened to actual product documentation? It's not uncommon these days for software to gain features with little to no documentation that actually explains how to use them.

This article about the lifecycle of tricks in skateboarding really brought back memories for me. It heavily references the early nineties, the period I was most active in skateboarding. As noted in the piece, it was a time of big pants and small wheels. Lucas Wiesenthal, who wrote the piece, focuses on a few particular tricks, one of which is the pressure flip. Wiesenthal relates how quickly tricks came into vogue and how, just as quickly, they went out. I distinctly remember the cycle of the pressure flip (and occasionally, I still think about it).

Pressure flips initially seemed really cool and exotic. I loved technical flat-ground tricks and was never really into the Evel Knievel-style big scary stunts. Once everyone was doing the trick, though, I was glad to see its departure from the scene. Back then, once a trick was "out," it was verboten to do it, unless you were having a larf. To do tricks that were no longer fashionable was to risk serious scorn.

And that’s basically what skateboarding was like in the early ’90s. Doing a trick that was a month past its expiry date could get you vibed out of a spot, and the self-worth of teenage skaters worldwide hinged on how closely they could emulate a group of slightly older teenage skaters from San Francisco.

Reading the article, all of this easily comes back to mind in vivid detail. I used to ask my friends who would go into D.C. to skate at Pulaski Park, which was featured in New Deal videos, what tricks were popular with that crowd. I even recognize the pressure flip trick guide from Thrasher that was linked to from the piece.

I wasn't as active in skateboarding later on in the decade, but I started to notice a shift that has recently become more complete. You can now basically do any trick and no one is going to hassle you. It all comes down to personal style and expression.

“Aside from maybe a street plant or something, if you do it right, I don’t think there’s really much limitation on it,” says Ellington. “It’s who’s doing it, and they’re doing it in a certain way, and they’ve got speed and they’re flowing. I couldn’t write off anything. You could kind of do anything and get away with it.”

I love this change in skateboarding. That — and the fact that I have a skatepark nearby — makes me wish I were still active in the sport today.

via Clive Thompson

The aforementioned article got me curious enough to checkout Braille Skateboards, which makes inexpensive skateboards, offers lessons and encourages people to skate regardless of age, color, body shape or size.

Last week, I spent some time serving at a soup kitchen. This soup kitchen no longer serves soup, but I guess no one can decide on something more appropriate to describe the establishment. I ended up serving donuts, which were the dessert du jour, the last thing on the line before drinks. Previously, I had served drinks, and people could pick sweet tea or lemonade, but now, the only drink offered is water. The food is a set course, which changes as one dish runs out and has to be replaced by another. The only place on the line where people have a choice as to what they can pick is when they get to desserts. The desserts consisted of different varieties of donuts, including most of the ones you would expect. Some had chocolate, some had glaze, some had sprinkles and a few in the bunch had jelly filling.

Most of the patrons of the soup kitchen had very specific opinions about the donut they were getting. They pointed and gestured, and tried as best as they could to speak through the plexiglass partition to make their preferences known. Someone from the soup kitchen (one of the staff — not a volunteer) made a statement about not letting the guests have too much choice. Too much choice, I thought, these people barely have any choices. The least I could do was offer them some agency in what donut they would get!

All of this made me think again about Tyler Huckabee's response to the song "Rich Men North Of Richmond". While I'm sorry to be bringing up the Oliver Anthony song again, I'm having a hard time getting past that line where he sings "if you’re five foot three, and three hundred pounds, taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds." Some of the people I served at the soup kitchen were overweight. Many were also underweight. Poverty does strange things to the body. As I handed people their choice of donuts, I couldn't forget what Huckabee wrote.

Can I tell you about a guy I used to know in Chicago? We’ll call him Chuck. Chuck was a big fan of horror movies and pro wrestling. He didn’t have a lot of money — mental health issues made it tough — but he had a steady job. One time I went grocery shopping with Chuck and after he got a bunch of essentials like bread and eggs and such, he got five two liters of orange soda. Those two liters really cut into his food stamps budget. I asked Chuck about that, and you know what he said? “Well, my mom loves orange soda and I like to have a nice treat for her when she’s done with work.”

Some people don't have much in the way of delights in their lives. I feel blessed to admit that I'm not one of those people. I'm aware of their circumstances, though, and I feel like anything I can do to give them a treat is something I should do.

The moment when I became a catechumen in the Orthodox Church is captured on Instagram. There are a few comments about our group of catechumens. One reads, "may they persevere to the end." I believe I've heard this before in the same, or similar contexts, so I think it is a pretty common saying under these circumstances. When I first read it, I wondered why there was such a strong statement of hope in our ability to run the race. I didn't understand why this race would be considered to be especially difficult or challenging.

I think I'm beginning to understand the exhortation. There are difficulties which I theoretically understood in my mind, but are now becoming more a part of reality. This hit home when I listened to the homily that our priest delivered on Sunday, 9/10/2023. It was a poignant and powerful homily, and one that contained a challenge. The call was to pattern life after the calendar of the church. This is not easy. For most of us (those who live relatively close to church and are in good health), the expectation is to attend no less than three times a week. This, in fact, is considered a modest goal. Throughout the year, there are weeks when the standard three services are but a part of a larger group of worship opportunities.

Though I have regained the gift of good health (thanks be to God) and stand miles apart from where I was two years ago, I still find energy to occasionally be in shorter supply than I would like. I have to pace myself, though my spoons are pretty close to filling a reasonably sized drawer. There are times when special events — outside the church — are calling in competition with those sacred services. This comes up more when you have frequent church services. Then there are just the common and not-so-common reasons that people start to miss communal worship opportunities.

Just how much I may have to sacrifice is now dawning on me, and it's presenting a dilemma that is provoking a lot of introspection. I would rather not be like the rich young ruler, who walks away disappointed because I simply don't have what it takes to make the sacrifice to properly follow Christ.

As offensive as Kids was, the soundtrack, while adhering close to the tone and plot of the film, also provided a revelatory experience. I don't mean that in the sense that it brought outsiders like Daniel Johnston and Slint closer to the mainstream (many of us were already listening to those bands). — although it did that. What made it so revealing, though, was the way it brought an infusion of hip-hop into indie rock. Sure, there were other experiments in the space — like the soundtrack for Judgment Night — that would have also claimed to have made that fusion. That collection of rap/rock collaborators was done in such a contrived, corporate way that managed to be simultaneously self-conscious and overly brash. The Judgment Night soundtrack was made by people who grew up thinking Aerosmith and Run DMC had obtained the perfect elixir of hip-hop and classic rock alchemy. Lou Barlow and John Davis had a different vision when they composed and compiled the Kids soundtrack.

Davis and Barlow had started off as an experimental folk outfit whose name played on the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, a band whose popularity was rising at the time. Incidentally, Spencer's band combined a faux-bluesy posture with a phoned-in (literally) rap from new indie breakout superstar Beck Hanson. It wasn't until the soundtrack work that listeners heard how influences from R&B and hip-hop powered the Folk Implosion duo. It was anything but the folk that was to be expected from the Folk Implosion or the solo work of Davis and Barlow. The soundtrack scored a genuine hit with the song "Natural One" that even brought a major-label record deal.

As surprising and influential as the sounds of the Folk Implosion were in 1995, they still sound different from anything that has come since, even almost 30 years later. The New York Times reports that, after a rancorous split in 1999, the duo of Davis and Barlow are back together again and planning on releasing new music (as well as rereleasing their songs from the soundtrack that boosted them into the popular conscience). Time will tell whether they can recreate the magic that started with a letter from an unknown filmmaker.