Linking Horn: 12 October 2010

Viking Ship Cake - YUSS!

Everyone in the antipodes is going mental over the amount of insanely good music coming our way. Aus is getting Soundwave festival, with Iron Maiden, Saxon and Slayer, and We’re getting the Big Day Out with Rammstein, Deftones and Grinderman (yuss!) and No Sleep Til Auckland, with Megadeth, GWAR, NOFX and 3 Inches of Blood. It’s a tough choice for me, but Nick Cave is probably going to win out. It figures we decide to leave this country in pursuit of more and better music, and suddenly, everyone in the world decides to play down here. I am STILL waiting for my Wacken tickets in the mail.

Big News for aspiring musicians. Roadrunner Records have announced the launch of SignMeTo, a free service which uses social networking to put potential unsigned bands in front of Roadrunner execs. Bands upload music, dates, pictures and video, and “scouts” rate the music, which is compiled into “charts” that refresh daily or weekly. The more you participate as a scout, the more weight your opinion carries. The band profiles are static, so you can replace your Myspace page with a SignMeTo profile, if you so desired.

Now, I’m going to be a bit skeptical here, and suggest that ordinary methods of getting your work in front of execs have remained thus over the years for a reason – they work. And perhaps this is a cunning move on Roadrunner’s part to skim off some of the mountains of unsolicited demos that must bury their desks every week. I’ve worked with a slush pile before – I can’t blame them.

When Harper Collins began their social networking experiment, Authonomy, many people said the same thing. And yet, Harper are acquiring books through Authonomy. I think anyone putting their work up online with the intention of gaining the attention of a publisher or record label has to understand that the quality of your music matters NOT ONE SINGLE BIT. It’s about getting the buzz – making friends online, getting a crazy gang of obsessed people to mad pimp your stuff till the big wigs can’t help but pay attention. In order to gain that army of loyal followers, you probably have to write awesome music to start with, but record execs aren’t too worried about that – they hear awesome music every day. What they don’t get every day is a product with an inbuilt audience – a product they KNOW they can sell.

In short, it does no harm, it might be fun, and you never know, so throw your stuff up there, but remember, social networking is about being social – the people who rise to the top are the best at making friends.

My delightful country, New Zealand, has been in the news a bit recently, after one of the presenters on the Breakfast show (which I’ve never watched) made a rather banal joke about the pronunciation of an Indian official’s name. This came only a few days after he suggested our Governor General should “look more like a kiwi” (I think he has Pakistani heritage but couldn’t be more kiwi if he tried. He’s a very kind and even-tempered man). Well, Paul Henry has resigned, and our government and TVNZ has apologized. So yeah, sorry world – we’re honestly not actually racists! We are lucky to live in a country where many different ethnicities and cultures intermingle with ease. I love that about New Zealand – it’s one of the most culturally diverse and accepting places I’ve ever been. Some people think it’s been blown WAY out of proportion, but I disagree – I think it was a pretty poor taste joke (that wasn’t really a joke at all, since it relied on a mispronounciation) and represented NZ very poorly on our national, government-funded TV.

Rigor Amortis – Zombie erotica. This reminds of of far, far far too many tasteless leper jokes.

Buried at the Box Office: 10 Creepy Cinema Cemeteries.

Halta Definizione is posting uber high resolution pictures of famous paintings. I adored art history in school (Leonardo de Vinci is one of my absolute heros. I will explain why at a later date) and it’s pretty amazing being able to get this close and observe the brush strokes.

Scared Stupid: Dumbest Horror Movie Plots Ever. I’ve seen most of these, and love ‘em, but I’m eagerly seeking out “Evilspeak” which seems like just the sort of film I should review on the blog.

THE SWEET VALLEY TWINS ARE BACK. And now they have orgasms. Read the excerpt on the Sweet Valley website.

Tim Burton, Victorian Goth, South African Wedding.

Forest I carry Inside. Wicked.

Via Reign in Blonde, Songs for the Deaf. Elise brings up the point that she doesn’t understand deaf people listening to music, much less being at concerts. Not a lot of people do. The truth is, like blind people, many deaf people aren’t entirely deaf, and might be deaf in some frequencies but not others, might be able to hear the bass but not the vocals, and even those who ARE deaf sense vibrations. Deaf people can play the drums and dance in time to music because they feel vibrations through the floor and through their bodies. I imagine that’s epic at a huge metal show.