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The end of Easytree

king ubu

By king ubu
in Miscellaneous Music

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relyles Apprentice

relyles

Posted
Posted

There's a reason why most artists (and their labels) don't record and release everything they do, and it's not just economics. It's a matter of "presentation", of offering up a "vision", if you will. An "official" recording is usually an attempt by an artist to present, to the best of their ability, the truest portrait of said vision. The rest, the outtakes, aborted/unsuccessful sessions, live dates, etc. are definitely of interest often enough, but it could easily be argued that their "purest" interest should be to "deep" fans, scholars, etc., and that such material really was/is not intended to be heard by anybody else. An artist's vison is their most personal possession. To deny that in effect puts the artist in the positon of a slave. It denies them the intrinic/assumed right to posess anything personal, as well as the control over how their most personal impulses should be presented. In effect, it gives the "fan" the position of being able to say, "We OWN you. Give us everything you have, whether you want us to have it or not".

Those are some interesting comments. I have read similar comments by other musicians before. In particular, Ellery Eskelin has on several occassions articulated his preference that recordings of his live performances not circulate for much the same reasons that you stated. I could not locate the exact comments I was thinking of, but following are some interesting comments by Ellery in a similar thread on Jazz Corner over one year ago:

"But one must take into account the effect that the poor sound quality has on the music itself. There's so much of the sound that simply isn't even there. It paints a very distorted picture of the music and in my opinion a lot of improvised music suffers immensely if the textures of the sound itself are compromised to that degree.

Most of the time my own music doesn't even make sense to me when I hear it back recorded that poorly (which is 98% of the time). I can't imagine what someone else would think. If this were someone's introduction to my music I certainly wouldn't expect them to go any further in seeking out one of my CDs. So I don't feel that having these kinds of recordings floating around really does me any favors.

. . .

As for radio broadcasts of performances it's a gamble...on the one hand you're getting some extra money from the radio to let them record and broadcast your gig...on the other hand I'd say of all the radio broadcasts if been a part of (and I'm guessing there've been dozens) there's maybe 3 that I know of that I think sound good. Not great, but good. Actually there was one that sounded better than good and that was the Baron Down gig from the Willisau festival some years back. There was talk of releasing it and I actually hope that happens one day.

But so many of the radio gigs are less than great sounding since the engineers don't always know your music and there is rarely sufficient time to do a proper sound-check. There's always some amount of compromise involved...as the clock ticks and start time looms and you realize that's about as good as it's going to get if you want to actually eat before the concert.

Ironically one of the better sounding radio gigs we did was one in which we arrived at the festival about 30 minutes before show time. Keep in mind that we need one or two hours just to do a regular setup and sound check. So we threw the equipment up on stage and the engineer put up some mics and that was it. We had no idea what it was going to sound like. But the engineer was special...his name is Dick Lucas and he records a lot of the Dutch cats. He did better in 30 minutes than most others do in a whole afternoon. I was shocked.

So I take my chances and hope that the recordings are going to be OK. There's little I can do about them being diseminated and as I agreed to have them be recorded in the first place I can't get too upset about it. There are many that I think sound terrible but thems the breaks.

As for boots as keepsakes I try to offer a deal on CD sales at the gigs so that people who've already paid to get in can take something home with them rather than boot the show."

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Tom Storer Newbie

Tom Storer

Posted
Posted

The whole appeal of EZT was that the concert performances being shared were not commercially available anywhere and most likely never will be.

I've been thinking about Sangrey's and Ellery Eskelin's objections that these concert performances are blemished and imperfect and therefore not kosher to pass around. Without contesting the artist's prerogatives, it seems to me the fan's motivations in wishing to hear and share such material stem from a fundamentally more generous attitude than one of cold and demanding judgment. Anyone who's heard more than a few of the kinds of things that circulate, let alone people who listen to a lot of them, know that they rarely equal a well-prepared studio session, but also that well-prepared studio sessions rarely equal the best moments of exceptional concerts. Those exceptional concerts are the rare nuggets whose existence makes the whole business of acquiring unreleased concert recordings worthwhile. The sub-par stuff doesn't bother us because we also go to concerts and understand that not every concert is perfect, and that even imperfect concerts have moments of beauty that make the imperfections worthwhile. Artists are understandably nervous about how they are presented, but fans have already seen and heard them warts and all, and love them anyway.

Every jazz fan knows that live performance is what it's all about. 99.9% of the bittorrent and postally traded recordings are live. What we're trying to do is be a fly on the wall at all the concerts we couldn't attend because we can only be in one place at a time. One can object that we don't have the right to attend those concerts virtually and after the fact, and I can't really argue that we do. But our keen and selfish desire to listen, in the absence of a commercial interest that would be adversely affected, gets the better of us. And I believe that the more we hear, the better listeners and fans we become, and the stronger the bond there is between us and the musicians, whom we continue to see in concert and whose CDs we continue to purchase--even if we piss off artists with the show-trading thing. An artist might retort, "My interest is not in how much or how well you listen, my interest is in controlling the presentation of my music." Therein the interests of fan and musician quite naturally diverge. Like couples in love, artists and fans are in a symbiotic relationship that involves both deriving advantage from one another and looking after one another's welfare, and the line between them is often an area of conflict.

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relyles Apprentice

relyles

Posted
Posted

AND before anyone thinks otherwise - I had nothing to do with the problems they are having.

It was actually Nirvana:

Howdy again, folks.

The fax just came in a couple of minutes ago.

The offender was torrent # 30630, NIRVANA 08/30/1992 Reading Festival

Complete PRO Shot DVD. In particular the title "Smells like Teen

Spirit", rightowner: Universal, claimed through Universal Music GmbH,

Germany, and pro MediaGmbH (exclusive partner of IFPI in Germany).

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JSngry Grand Master

JSngry

Posted
Posted

I've been thinking about Sangrey's and Ellery Eskelin's objections that these concert performances are blemished and imperfect and therefore not kosher to pass around.

That was Ellery's objection, not mine.

Mine was merely that one should exercise discretion in the dealing of such material, out of respect for it's nature, and, by extension, for the artist his/her self. In other words, a "private recording" becomes significantly less private when it's put up on the Internet (even for free) for unlimited/unrestricted access.

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7/4 Newbie

7/4

Posted
Posted

AND before anyone thinks otherwise - I had nothing to do with the problems they are having.

It was actually Nirvana:

Howdy again, folks.

The fax just came in a couple of minutes ago.

The offender was torrent # 30630, NIRVANA 08/30/1992 Reading Festival

Complete PRO Shot DVD. In particular the title "Smells like Teen

Spirit", rightowner: Universal, claimed through Universal Music GmbH,

Germany, and pro MediaGmbH (exclusive partner of IFPI in Germany).

This is Courtney Love's fault! :rfr

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Indestructible! Newbie

Indestructible!

Posted
Posted

Hi 7/4 and All,

I've been getting e-mail announcements of shows loading on the website link you provided 7/4, but everytime I try to access that page it gives me the old "Page Not Found" screen.

Anyone else having this problem in accessing the site? Or, as I suspect, is it just a function of the "newness" of the site and all the bugs haven't been removed yet?

Feel free to PM me if you don't want to discuss all this here (as soon as I get access to the site I've got a couple of nice shows to upload)...

Cheers,

Shane

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7/4 Newbie

7/4

Posted
Posted

Hi 7/4 and All,

I've been getting e-mail announcements of shows loading on the website link you provided 7/4, but everytime I try to access that page it gives me the old "Page Not Found" screen.

Anyone else having this problem in accessing the site? Or, as I suspect, is it just a function of the "newness" of the site and all the bugs haven't been removed yet?

Feel free to PM me if you don't want to discuss all this here (as soon as I get access to the site I've got a couple of nice shows to upload)...

Cheers,

Shane

works for me.

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Indestructible! Newbie

Indestructible!

Posted
Posted

Thanks guys,

Still can't load the page, so hopefully it's nothing too serious on my end! Hell, I had a share ratio of 2.1, so it can't be that! :P

Glad to see the site back, though! My guess is that this all was some pretty large hoax from some pissed off dudes who were selling Nirvana boots on eBay and many EzT-ers called them on it. The supposed "letter" from the lawyer to EzT's ISP was a complete joke!

Cheers,

Shane

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Jazzmoose Newbie

Jazzmoose

Posted
Posted

Now that makes sense. If the artist doesn't mind then of course it's okay. But it should be incumbent on the offerer to make sure the artist doesn't mind, not just to be willing to stop if the artist finds out and says something...

That said, how long can I resist this stuff....

:wacko:

Not long, apparently...

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Chuck Nessa Mentor

Chuck Nessa

Posted
Posted

Has anyone tried http://www.tradersden.org

I think everyone from easytree jumped over to there. Right now the server is down do to too many users.

So, I take it you have bought all the cds you want and are looking for more.

Why do you say that Chuck? Are they trading officially available material?

Guy

I was asking if he/she had bought (or at least owned) every recording "they" could have wanted and now "needed" more, hence downloads.

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Hardbopjazz Collaborator

Hardbopjazz

Posted
Posted

Has anyone tried http://www.tradersden.org

I think everyone from easytree jumped over to there. Right now the server is down do to too many users.

So, I take it you have bought all the cds you want and are looking for more.

Why do you say that Chuck? Are they trading officially available material?

Guy

I was asking if he/she had bought (or at least owned) every recording "they" could have wanted and now "needed" more, hence downloads.

No, I don't every recording I want. In fact, this past Sunday I was at J&R music world in NYC. I had 15 CD's in my hand and had a hell of time cutting it down to 8 I ended up buying.

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Guy Berger Enthusiast

Guy Berger

Posted
Posted

Has anyone tried http://www.tradersden.org

I think everyone from easytree jumped over to there. Right now the server is down do to too many users.

So, I take it you have bought all the cds you want and are looking for more.

Why do you say that Chuck? Are they trading officially available material?

Guy

I was asking if he/she had bought (or at least owned) every recording "they" could have wanted and now "needed" more, hence downloads.

Speaking for myself, I don't have every recording I want. Some of them are available for download at easytree and nowhere else (except possibly via time- and resource-consuming trading), hence I get them via easytree.

Guy

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