Originally posted August 14th, 2011
By Michael Konik
We’ve previously discussed how poor programming choices on jazz radio are unintentionally sabotaging the medium’s noble mission to “keep jazz alive.” But terrestrial radio, an increasingly irrelevant distribution channel in the age of the Internet and satellites, isn’t the only culprit in our music’s alleged “death.” Some of jazz’s most effective assassins are the people who care most: the professional musicians.
In an age when fewer folks than ever are willing to pay for recorded music, the only way for a full-time jazz recording artist to earn a living is by touring, giving concerts, putting on shows, performing – being a performing artist.
Performing Artist: It’s a two-word job description. The majority of accomplished jazz musicians have no problem with the second part, the artistry thing. They’ve committed their life to learning and mastering a transcendent and mysterious magic replete with its own language, codes, and customs. . . . → Read More: Jazz is Dead, Part 2: Performing Artists
Originally posted July 23rd, 2011
By Michael Konik
Since the 1970s, for as long as I’ve been aware of the music commonly known as “jazz,” various authorities, mavens, and aficionados have been declaring it dead or soon-to-be-deceased. “Jazz is dead.” “Jazz is dying.” “Jazz is going extinct.”
If this is so, the suffering patient has been enduring a kind of decades-long hospice care that would bankrupt Medicaid. While it’s true that jazz record sales comprise a comically small percentage of the (withering) recording industry and an even smaller slice of the radio market, and live music venues calling themselves jazz clubs close more frequently than sales of foreclosed homes, the music itself is gloriously alive.
Thanks to college jazz programs, the advent of cheap recording technology, and an irrepressible need for members of a free society to express themselves individually and collectively, there are more artists than ever creating modern American music rooted in improvisation. . . . → Read More: (K)Jazz is Dead
Originally posted September 19th, 2010
By Michael Konik
A celebrity with a record label announced recently that she had signed a talented teenager to a recording contract; album due out soon! The adolescent lad joins another teenager on the Celebrity’s label. She specializes in discovering post-pubescent stars-to-be-made; indeed, this Celebrity, Ellen DeGeneres, discovered the Filipina belter Charice Pempengco, now known as Charice, which is a lot easier to say and a lot less Filipino and therefore easier to sell to the producer’s of Glee, for whom the teenaged singing champ permitted the use of Botox on her not-yet-old-enough-to-vote-or-drink face.
Kids these days! Man, do they ever have talent! Not a day passes without someone’s home video going viral, forwarded around the globe by folks who are deeply impressed by a precocious youngster doing something that seems way beyond her years.
One of the hottest acts in the jazz-pop world right now is a 17-year-old Canadian who . . . → Read More: Blame it On the Youths
Originally posted August 22nd, 2010
By Michael Konik
Most of the people I’ve not met who recognize my name “know” me as a book writer, or as that guy who used to be on television blabbering about poker. A smaller subset might know me as the producer and proprietor of jazz records, or even as a former jazz vocalist.
Those are all cool associations. But none of them fully address what it is I really aspire to be.
For a several years I’ve had a secret. In a few weeks it will be completely out, a matter of the cultural record, and I’ll no longer be able to hide the truth: What I enjoy doing most is writing lyrics to music.
It comes naturally and easily to me, with none of the labor or anxiety one associates with the blocked and tortured artist. I don’t mean that writing lyrics is easy, exactly. I mean that composing rhythmic, . . . → Read More: A Secret I’ve Been Keeping
Los Angeles is lousy with talent. Just as the plethora of beautiful men and women on the streets (and in the stores, and everywhere else) start to blend into the palm-lined boulevards, it’s easy to become immune to the charms of so many funny, clever, quick-witted people. When you see theater or hear music or comedy in this city you expect excellence — or at least what passes for it in a society whose cultural norms make folks like Adam Sandler and Chris Rock the emperors of entertainment. LA is home to a thriving live-performance scene; there’s not a day of the week when an intrepid ticket buyer can’t find stellar talent doing their thing on small stages in every precinct of town.
Improv Olympic West, the LA-branch of the Chicago-based institution — Second City also has an emerging presence here in Hollywood — is one of . . . → Read More: Ode to “Opening Night: The Improvised Musical”
Originally posted March 7th, 2010
By Michael Konik
Before 1909, when technology changed everything, performing artists earned a living by performing. The only way to sell talent was to traipse it around the countryside and throughout the theatrical circuit. Packaging a voice on phonograph recordings, distributing the disc through retail channels, and marketing the product as a valuable commodity was a radical and culture-altering innovation.
Now technology is changing everything again. Thanks to digital downloads and file sharing, we’re returning to the pre-phonograph model. For most recording artists — and probably for all recording artists within a decade — the only way to monetize talent is to become a full-time performing artist.
Paying for recorded music is rapidly becoming an obsolete, 20th Century concept. Replicating and distributing sounds has never been easier or cheaper. But, with apologies to Vegas “tribute” acts, replicating a live performance is impossible. Purloined concert tapes and bootleg videos can offer only a . . . → Read More: The End is Near!…for Selling Recorded Music
Originally posted February 28th, 2010
By Michael Konik
1. Culture always builds on the past. Whether it was composer and piano virtuoso Franz Liszt using Gypsy melodies in his compositions, Metallica borrowing song structures from Diamond Head or The Rolling Stones recording Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain” as a “traditional, arranged by Keith Richards,” composers have always used previous works as inspiration for their own pieces. Even Walt Disney – whose company is now among the most aggressive of copyright holders – was an inveterate remixer.
2. The past always tries to control the future. Since the Internet was developed, the entertainment lobby of the USA has pushed the government towards tougher laws leading to lawsuits being filed against more than 24,000 American citizens. Corporations have limited the free exchange of ideas in order to increase their profits. Whether it’s patenting forms of life or intellectual concepts, these attempts to gain control and ownership over . . . → Read More: Remix Manifesto
Originally posted February 7th, 2010
By Michael Konik
The angry folks at Focus on the Family bought a Super Bowl advertisement meant to illustrate what a big mistake abortion is. They enlisted college football superstar and possibly closeted gay religious zealot Tim Tebow to communicate how terrible it would have been for his mom, doing missionary work in the Philippines and carrying her fifth child, to have terminated what doctors viewed as a deeply troubled pregnancy. Had she listened, we — “we” meaning the University of Florida, the NFL, and everyone else who is going to earn jillions of dollars from Tim’s exploits, as well as the millions of voyeurs who enjoy watching him crash into defenders and thank God before and after every victory — we all wouldn’t know Tim. There would be no Tim! If the answer to the obvious question is, “Yes, of course, all God’s Children are all precious and valuable . . . → Read More: Super Thoughts, One for Each Quarter of the Big Game
Originally posted January 31st, 2010
By Michael Konik
The most irksome problem with the Blogosphere is that everybody is a critic, which is cool for everybody but troubling for everybody else. Without institutional authority — a newspaper, a university, a trade group — to certify who should be listened to and respected and who should be dismissed and neglected, discerning the wheat from the chaff has become increasingly difficult.
This is why now, more than ever, we desperately need award shows.
When a consumer must decide which record he needs to own — or, more likely, steal — he can either trust his own critical faculties, sift through thousands of nattering nabobs postulatiing into the ether, or he can take the word of Sony/Warners/Universal. Who knows more about music than those guys?
Buzzkillers who dismiss industry-sponsored awards shows as cynical marketing ploys meant to consolidate advertising power among the most influential of the cartels miss . . . → Read More: An Opinion You Can Trust
Originally posted November 21st, 2009
By Michael Konik
In the golden days of hardcore punk rock — yes, there was such a period; it ran roughly (very roughly) from 1979-1985 — a “movement” emerged called Straight Edge, which was an edgy way of saying Straight.
Straight as in, “I don’t do drugs or drink. I’m a thrash-metal-loving cutural outsider who doesn’t defile his mind or body with toxins.” Sexual preferences remained optional.
One of the leading proponents of this quasi-puritanical ethos was the D.C.-based band Minor Threat. Aside from their well-meaning politics, the lads could play their instruments pretty well, and their frontman was a good lyricist and convincing angst-ridden screamer. They shredded and they spoke to elemental discontents. A very cool band.
Minor Threat had a memorable song called “Out of Step With the World,” which elegantly summed up how most teenagers feel about life. Lately, though, it seems to be my marketplace anthem — and . . . → Read More: Out of Step With the World
We're really sorry about our most recent trading loss. People will say we require more oversight, and, in this case, maybe they're right. It shouldn't have happened, and we'll take steps to make sure it doesn't happen for a third time.
The $4,000 or so ($4,882) of your money that we failed to bring back from our annual company trip to Hollywood Park Racetrack and Casino will in... Read More-->
If you’re reading this essay on MichaelKonik.com, you know that this is a reliable place to find “me,” the me who shares his ideas with the world, whether or not any part of the world is interested. This is where I unilaterally invade my privacy, allowing strangers...
North Korea is launching rockets, Syria is slaughtering its citizens, and the Filipino community is organizing a massive get-out-the-vote campaign for a crucial election (not for something boring and unimportant like a public office but a cause that’s got folks passionately engaged: the American Idol finals). So...
Sometimes our chaotic, unknowable, seemingly random Universe arranges itself with perfect symmetry. In these moments of bracing clarity, authored by a Creator (in whatever guise or nomenclature you prefer) whose sense of irony is matched only by her/his/its sense of wicked humor, our innate foolishness and learned...
Poet Robert Pinsky. Pianist Laurence Hobgood. Text, music, and the moment -- what we hear on the new POEMJAZZ recording is two giant artists making something greater than the sum of its parts. While Pinsky recites his lovely words with his unlovely (but weirdly attractive) voice, Hobgood, the longtime arranger and accompanist [...]
