My Best Tunes

Mos Def, De La Soul, Kano, Bobby Womack, Shaun Ryder – it sounds more like a festival line-up than a list of just some of those who make an appearance during Gorillaz’s first full UK show for five years, but such is the power of Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s creation. The fact that the group’s three albums feature so many collaborators makes a full-blown tour a logistical nightmare, but when they do manage to get together it can produce a hell of a show.

For the right price, some lucky Beatlemaniac will be able to own the lyrics to the final song on the Beatles album “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”

The high priest of improv’s 1956 album Brilliant Corners is a remarkable insight into his wayward musical mind

The New Yorker critic Whitney Balliett once described Thelonious Monk’s idiosyncratic timing and unexpected resolutions as feeling like “missing the bottom step in the dark”. His pauses could be so prolonged, you’d wonder if he’d left the studio. John Coltrane observed that playing Monk’s music could be so rhythmically and harmonically taxing that if you missed a chord change it felt like falling into an empty elevator shaft. But these were among the qualities that turned Monk into one of the great jazz composers, whose rigorously beautiful, remorselessly pared-down themes are nowadays reinterpreted by both jazz and classical artists.

This great moment is the 1956 recording of his Brilliant Corners album with Sonny Rollins and others – acclaimed ever since as a jazz landmark, and a remarkable insight into the working of Monk’s wayward musical mind. It was also a sensational comeback for him, since by the mid-1950s his sales were dwindling, and the loss of his crucial cabaret card on a drugs charge meant he couldn’t play gigs in New York.

Monk emerged in the 1940s as one of the high priests of bebop, and was the house pianist at Minton’s Playhouse, bop’s after-hours laboratory. He learned piano while accompanying his mother’s gospel singing, and his first influences were blues, hymns, swing, boogie and the “stride” piano style derived from ragtime. Monk fell in with young beboppers like Charlie Parker, Charlie Christian and Dizzy Gillespie in the after-hours Harlem jamming-joints of the early 40s, and his bohemian tastes and eccentric choices of headwear identified him as a hipster iconoclast. But he didn’t really play like a bop pianist. Unlike his contemporary Bud Powell, he didn’t sound as if he was delivering a piano version of Parker’s skimming sax lines. He played percussively with fingers flattened and splayed, he left unexpected spaces others would have filled with showers of notes, and his chords clanged with dissonance.

The 50s had not been a good time for Monk, but though neglected he continued to explore. The results became apparent when he was rediscovered by two young jazz obsessives, Orrin Keepnews and Bill Grauer, who ran a jazz magazine called the Record Changer and wanted to move into production. Keepnews bought Monk out of an unsatisfactory record deal for $130, and thought at first he’d give Monk a fresh start on the new Riverside label by relaunching him as an interpreter of classic jazz themes. Monk made an album of Duke Ellington tunes that wasn’t well received (Keepnews and Grauer were accused of manipulating him for the marketplace) but in December 1956 Riverside recorded Brilliant Corners, with Sonny Rollins and Ernie Henry on sax, Clark Terry on trumpet, Oscar Pettiford on bass and Max Roach on drums.

In an interview for BBC Radio 3’s Jazz File in 2004, Keepnews told me that the session had been the toughest time he could ever recall in a studio. It took 24 takes to make the title track, as the opening dirgey theme with its bleakly reverberating phrase-turns shifted into swing and back, and even some of the most accomplished players in New York couldn’t time it right. The final version had to be spliced from different takes, but the result conveys the essence of Monk’s melodic and rhythmic audacity. When I asked Keepnews about the album’s challenges, he said: The most obvious thing was a tempo change every eight bars. The nature of almost any Monk composition is that it’s difficult to play – but Thelonious’s problem was that he didn’t want to admit there was anything unusual or difficult. If he understood it, then the others should. Monk was an impatient taskmaster.”

The result of that singlemindedness, however, was some of the most innovative and unsentimentally beautiful music in jazz.

The UK streaming service has shown that internet advertising can cover running costs and pay proper royalties to artists. Why can’t rival Spotify do the same?

This week, We7 announced that it had managed to get advertising revenues to cover the cost of royalties due to artists and songwriters, claiming that it is “the first music streaming service to demonstrate that the music on-demand ad-funded model can work in the mainstream market”.

Meanwhile, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) published a report on worldwide revenue for recorded music in 2009, showing that ad-supported services, such as Spotify, We7, Last.fm and YouTube, increased their contribution to industry income in the UK by 247% to £8.2m – though, importantly, this still only represents 1% of the annual total.

Last August, Per Sundin (managing director of Universal Music Sweden) announced that in the five months from its launch, Spotify had become the labels’ largest digital source of income, surpassing iTunes. I didn’t believe this, and the songwriters and artists I’ve spoken to agree, saying that their royalty statements tell a different story.

Readers of this column will be aware that I questioned the issue of record labels owning shares in services like Spotify last August and, more recently, The British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors (Basca) went public with their dismay with the service. One figure that is mentioned is the infamous $167 that was apparently paid to Lady Gaga by Spotify. That figure originated from STIM, which is the Swedish equivalent of the UK collections society for songwriters, PRS for Music. It doesn’t represent the entire sum that Spotify paid out for the most streamed song on its Swedish service: she had a co-writer and a publisher whose shares had, most likely, been deducted from the total. It also didn’t include the recording royalty (which goes to the record label/performer). However, a recent Billboard analysis on revenue from recording royalties made from streaming showed that only 10 artists made more than $2,000 from non-interactive streams in 2009, with Beyoncé topping the list with $5,000. For on-demand streams (like Spotify and We7), Michael Jackson came top with $10,000. Though it’s a lot more than $167, it explains why streaming represents 1% of total revenue from recordings.

I’ve read articles that try to calculate exactly how much artists and songwriters make from streaming, but it’s a futile exercise, as most of the rates are secrets that only the people around the negotiating table are privy to because of Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs). The PRS last year set specific rates for ad-funded on-demand streams at 10.5% of revenue, subject to a minimum of 0.085p per stream (interactive webcasting is 8% revenue with 0.065p per stream minima). Jez Bell, who is in charge of negotiating on behalf of the PRS with services like Spotify and We7, says that because of the NDAs he can’t talk about what the deals are with specific licensees. In what other profession does it take a year and a half to get paid – and when you do, you don’t know on what basis your income is calculated?

We7, in my experience, tends to be more forthcoming than most services on these issues – maybe because one of its founders is artist and songwriter Peter Gabriel. CEO and co-founder, Steve Purdham, confirms that We7 does indeed pay the 0.085p per stream rate that the PRS set. I ask him why, according to their press release, 1m streams can generate anything from £2,000 to £4,000. Is it because different record labels have different deals with We7?

“Yes, the range is indicative of unsigned artists (but registered with the PRS), small labels through to significant labels,” Purdham said. “Most of the music on We7 is popular music so on average we tend to pay at the higher rate of the scale.” In other words, songs by major-label artists get a higher per-stream rate (this does not apply to songwriters, however).

Swedish songwriters have now started a Facebook group called Unison (as in United Songwriters, not the UK union). Recently they sat down with STIM to discuss if they could have a say in which music services were allowed to feature their songs. STIM welcomed the idea as, it solely exists to represent its members. A few days later, Sony contacted the songwriters inviting them to their offices so that they could explain why they should support Spotify. Could this have anything to do with Sony owning shares in the service? Surely not.

Spotify says its concerned about the dissatisfaction displayed by artists and songwriters, and asks for patience. I like Spotify as a service, and I believe that the guys who run it are genuine, but I think more transparency would go a long way in gaining goodwill – and patience – from music creators.

Bloc Party singer Kele Okereke goes solo, electro and falsetto with this musical reinvention

Bands going on hiatus often means one of three things: the group have fallen out, the band have run out of ideas, or the lead singer wants to go it alone. In the case of Bloc Party, it appears to be the latter, as Kele Okereke prepares to release his electro-tinged solo debut, The Boxer. The first single is apparently a “slow-churning dance-pop gem” (don’t you just love it when PRs write the Wikipedia page?), but we like Mr Okereke’s new direction, even if it does stray close to other electro anthems (Wiley’s Wearing My Rolex, for instance, or Mason Vs Princess Superstar’s Perfect). Anyway, have a listen to Kele’s Tenderoni and let us know your thoughts.

Last time was all about avian anthems. Now we want to canvass your votes for this week’s candidates

It would be fitting, though impossible, to reduce the last thread to a tweet. After the relative disappointment of the previous week it was full to bursting with great songs, from all corners of the globe and from as many musical genres as there are avian genera (see what I did there, taxonomy fans?). All in all, a real pleasure to listen to, if something of a challenge; the list of nominations was longer than a curlew’s beak.

Here, for your information, is the A-list that, as ever, is discussed at greater length in the column: Quasi – Birds; Abbey lincoln – Caged Bird; Fleet Foxes – Meadowlarks; Sufjan Stevens – The Lord God Bird; Lorez Alexandria – Baltimore Oriole; Mocky – Birds of a Feather; Abba – Eagle; Lyle Lovett – Penguins; Big Joe Turner – The Chicken and the Hawk.

Flapping onwards, here’s the B list:

Caetano Veloso – Cucurrucucu Paloma
A sad dove hangs outside the house of a heartbroken man. But with a voice this silken, you just want to give that hearbroken man a little cuddle.

Sparklehorse – Hundreds of Sparrows
If listening to Quasi (above) leaves you slightly in fear of avian assault, then this actually contemplates it. It’s also unusual to value your girlfriend against a quantity of birds, so another win for Linkous.

Sun Kil Moon – Heron Blue
Pretty much off-topic, but the guitar picking is mesmeric and, along with the subdued vocals, forces you into an introspective trance.

MIA – Bird Flu
Chicken squawks ahoy! Not the only unusual ingredient in the mix; there’s the rhythm, percussion and vocal snatches too. And yet it works. In fact, it sounds better than it did two years ago.

Anne Murray – Snowbird
I had There’s a Hippo in My Tub as a kid. When I mentioned this song to my colleague Tim Jonze, he remembered it so fondly he even learned how to play it on guitar.

The Trashmen – Surfin Bird
Jumped up and just a little bit mad this. I thought it must have soundtracked a Tarantino movie at some point, but in fact it was famous for soundtracking this scene in Full Metal Jacket. Seems appropriate.

The Ink Spots – When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano
Nice, easy, happy, comfortable stuff and sometimes that’s what you want. I love the vibrato in the voice and the introductory guitar line.

Kristin Hirsh – The Cuckoo
Not many entries were actual studies of birds and their behaviour, which is why I liked this so much. “The cuckoo/She’s a pretty bird/She wobbles/when she flies.” I am unable to verify whether this is true or not, but I like the idea.

Rufus Thomas – Do the Funky Penguin Part 1
A lot of dances encourage you to act like birds it seems. Few, however, encourage you to “shuffle your feet” because it meets you feel “alreet”.

Syd Barrett – Birdy Hop
It’s hard for me to listen to Syd Barrett without feeling a little sad. The way the mood of this song shifts from spookily cheery, to calmly spooky and back again is a case in point, but it’s hard not to listen in.

This week, a toughie I believe. It’s pertinent, of course, what with the imminent dawn of a new reign of Tory terror about to descend on us, but I don’t imagine there being too many songs that begin: “Woke up this morning, toddled off to the polling booth.” So I’m ready to accept nominations on any aspect of the electoral process – voting, stump speeches, declarations, the lot. If it occurs during an election campaign, it’s in. I will be on the blog to explain further if needed.

The rulebook:
DO NOT post more than a third of the lyrics to any one song.
DO Post your nominations before midday on Monday if you wish them to be considered.
DO Post justifications of your choices wherever possible.
DO Be nice to each other!

The toolbox: Archive, the Marconium, the Spill, the Collabo.

Having dallied awhile on the fringes of Hollywood without ever establishing herself as more than a thespian novelty and car-crash sideshow, Courtney Love has finally returned to music with Nobody’s Daughter, the first Hole album in 12 years, and her first musical offering since America’s Sweetheart, her self-pitying solo album from 2004.

The UK may still be infatuated with Lady Gaga, but America has gone gaga over Lady Antebellum – and it’s easy to see why, given the way the trio’s politely rockin’ country-pop fits the same musical demographic which made Garth Brooks the most bankable singer on the planet.

Having dallied awhile on the fringes of Hollywood without ever establishing herself as more than a thespian novelty and car-crash sideshow, Courtney Love has finally returned to music with Nobody’s Daughter, the first Hole album in 12 years, and her first musical offering since America’s Sweetheart, her self-pitying solo album from 2004.

The UK may still be infatuated with Lady Gaga, but America has gone gaga over Lady Antebellum – and it’s easy to see why, given the way the trio’s politely rockin’ country-pop fits the same musical demographic which made Garth Brooks the most bankable singer on the planet.