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The State of the Business
The music business is in constant flux, but these days the confusion is at its highest. Just look at the famously heralded digital download world; it is supposed to give the widest of audiences access to millons of different music files - but look again. In the old days of CDs, the only thing you needed to play your music on was a cd player, although it was not backward compatible (as hard as you tried you could not fit your old LP into the slot). These same LPs were compatible with the previous technology, namely the 78 rpms, which was helpful in not having to buy a whole new collection of music in order to be hip. CDs, though, are forward compatible, as they can be played on computers, copied onto hard drives and turned into sound files to be played and shared (please keep the sharing to your 10 closest friends...) Now the new and furious race to be technologically correct has led to developments in the digital world that are not very progressive in the compatibility department. Walmart, for example, already big in the CD sales business by representing 14% of all CD sales in the U.S., is slowly chewing at the market share of more enlightened chains like Tower Records. Tower carries all of our releases and lots of other independents (and has recently filed Chapter 11). Walmart is getting into the digital download business and charging (hold on to your iPod) 88 cents a song. Now hold on to your Mini iPod, because Walmart’s digital format is not compatible with iTunes. In other words, not forward compatible! Nothing can stop progress, but shouldn’t progress mean one music player and several different music sources with a compatible format, as opposed to several music players that may or may not work with different formats?
We hope to eventually join the download game; in the meantime, we’ve got an upcoming new look to the website, thanks to Jon Tessler, Jonathon Land and The Complex; information about the latest in buckyball technology; a report on Tunnels’ highly successful tour in Japan; updates on the latest Buckyball release; and a scrumptious recipe to get plump on this spring!
Tour Notes from the Land of the Rising Sun
Well, the Tunnels gang is back from Japan, where we played six gigs in front of some of our most geographically distant, but ardent, supporters. The experience was incredibly successful, and after a mere eight days we return to the United States with a lot more conviction in the magic of live music.
We met so many new people and saw so many new places that it is hard for us to comprehend that we accomplished this in so short a span of time. The images are coming back to me in a blur through my mind as I write this, so I will try to sort it out into a coherent, continuous stream of thought.
In Japan, I realized that I really play a unique instrument. So unique that almost nobody has seen one! The fans in Japan soon realized that Tunnels is not only Percy Jones’ project, but that it has developed into a musical collaboration between Percy and I, and Lance is the rhythmic
glue that holds it together.
We were completely surprised when we sold a hundred and twenty CDs at the first two gigs.
This left us nothing to sell on the tour but a few t-shirts. The fact that we signed all of the CDs helped, I’m sure, but I really think that the demand was great. It was incredibly gratifying to have so many supporters and so many people eager to hear our music and share in its excitement.
After the two Tokyo gigs, we were sharing the stage with the Japanese group SixNorth. They were responsible for organizing that part of the trip and they were incredibly easy to work with and a lot of fun. They asked me to join them at the last two shows for a couple of tunes, and it was immensely entertaining. Hide, the leader, is the bass player and he wrote all their material, which can be best described as jazz/fusion.
Japan is a very populous country. It is the geographical size of the state of California, and yet it has 120 million inhabitants. It makes for an incredibly dense area. As a matter of fact, our last gig in Kobe, and our subsequent drive to the airport (which was built in the middle of a bay, due to the lack of space), made me realize how scarce land is here. In a ninety minute drive, I saw nothing but urban sprawl, and it was mind-boggling.
In the end, we made a lasting impression on our Japanese fans, and they made a lasting impression on us. We are discussing returning to Japan next year in order to promote a new Tunnels album. Right now, I’m having a lot of fun writing this article on the flight back, listening to a CD that someone gave me there, snapping pictures out the window of the plane and sipping a glass of white wine. We had a memorable time in Japan, and we look forward to returning.
A Few Quotes from our Guestbook
“...This is the best recorded music I've heard in years !”
“...Your music and performances are always dazzling me. That is a real 'state-of-the-art' sound!”
“...That was my first experience seeing someone play midi vibes and it was great. The musicial interplay was great to hear and it was jaw-dropping watching Percy play his 5 string fretless bass”
“...The virtuosity, musical firepower and pure imagination that poured off of that little stage was astonishing..”
What is an EPK?
As technology advances with each passing day, people come up with new and exciting applications for it. Sometimes, the cleverest applications are the ones that most people don’t see, however. Take, for example, the ‘reel’. Actors, musicians and artists often put together a video compilation of ‘clips’ of their work for self-promotion, called ‘reels’.
These ‘reels’ allow potential bookers, agents, managers and casting directors to decide quickly if this particular person is right for their project. The reel has been, for quite some time now, a marketing tool stuck firmly in the 1980s-- exclusively VHS and utterly non-interactive.
With the advent of computer editing and the Internet, suddenly, the reel grew up as well. Nowadays, actors, musicians and artists can put together an inexpensive interactive collection of clips that can contain still photography, biographical text, video clips, music clips and even links to their websites. Once we started burning DVDs at home, the process became even simpler and more interactive. The best part is: CDs are cheap, and it’s REALLY easy to replace clips with newer material now.
Alright. I know it seems like I’m a bit of an audio-video dork to be explaining this now, and I am. I’d have to be, because I am the one who has brought these new reels-- or as we like to call them-- electronic press kits(or EPKs) to Buckyball. Before I started doing promotions here, I had developed a new system for EPKs working at Digiview Creations in Los Angeles. Once I got to Buckyball, it seemed only logical that I would upgrade their press kits to this fun,
new, state-of-the-art format.
So for the last two months, we here at Buckyball have been busy digging through our video archives (full of great performances from the last few years!), interviewing our musicians, sifting through photographs and press clips, to put together great promotional videos for Sarah Pillow and Tunnels. The (highly compressed) results will soon be available to you on our website. We hope to finish up the basic press kits very soon, and to use much of the same material (as well as a lot of additional bonus material) for a Tunnels concert DVD that is tentatively in the works. (Write to us and let us know what you think about the idea/what should be included, so we can have a good idea of potential audience response! We aren’t just stopping there, however. After beginning this EPK process, we all got so excited about it that we decided that we were going to explore the possibility of doing EPKs for other people-- any artists who were interested in getting their work out there and having a great, classy way of showing it off. If any of you Buckyballers are interested in having your work compiled, you should give us a call and we’ll see what we can do. In the meantime, check out the EPKs up on the website because we know you’re going to love it!
Buckyballs in Energy Conservation
Everything that happens in the miniscule world of nano-space is about to be the biggest thing in the near future. As ever-more powerful computers have become ever more affordable, computational nanoscientists can readily simulate materials atom
by atom (a buckyball has 60).
One arena in which simulations are moving nanotechnology forward is energy. Academia and industry have been investing millions of dollars in research preparing for a hydrogen economy. One hurdle in the envisioned switch to a “hydrogen economy” displacing fossil fuels is that hydrogen is hard to store.
The Stanford University researchers performed computational analyses of how hydrogen interacts with carbon nanotubes (close cousins of buckyballs). They determined that hydrogen-storage capacity is a function of the tube's diameter. A carbon nanotube 1 nanometer in diameter is just right. Another project is to simulate a light-driven molecular machine. The design consists of a buckyball linked to a light-absorbing unit, which is attached to a molecular assembly that can move as a tiny muscle. When the light-absorbing molecule absorbs light, one of its electrons hops over to the buckyball. That stimulates the nanomuscle component to donate one of its electrons to the molecule thus closing the loop, a transfer that causes the muscle to change shape. Such changes could be useful, for example, for converting solar energy directly into mechanical energy.
The Well Fed Starving Artist
Sand Cookies
1/2 cup brown sugar, tightly packed
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 stick (1/4 cup) butter, softened
1 egg
1 generous cup crunchy peanut butter (and only natural pb, no sugar, salt or additives)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon soda
1 1/2-2 cups sifted flour
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
3 oz. bar dark chocolate (the darker the better), broken into chunks
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Sift sugars together and then beat with butter until creamy. Beat in egg, peanut butter, salt and soda. Sift flour a second time and stir into the batter. These cookies will be really “dry”. Stir in chocolate chunks, roll into balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet. Try your best to flatten them with a fork, criss-crossing the fork tine impressions….some of the cookie may fall apart. But do not fear, just poke it back with the main body of the cookie, and bake for no more than 15 minutes.
Enjoy with an ice-cold glass of 1%, soy or rice milk….try to limit yourself to 3, you don’t want too much of a good thing.
New Look for Buckyballmusic.com
Thanks to The Complex, Buckyballmusic.com will be sporting a new look in the near future. We are currently working with Jonathan Tessler and his team to develop a navigational map so our visitors can find out more quickly and easily about our activities. Jonathan has many talents (musician, chef, artist) and the one he is using now is his eye for design (as in his design for our Trilogy CD) and has some great ideas that we can’t wait to share with you! The new web look launch should be coming up soon…and check out The Complex site, it’s an inspiration! (You might even recognize someone on their
front page…)
The up coming live Tunnels CD
Slated for the summer of 2004, this exciting cd will contain Live renditions of some of Tunnels’ classics, recorded in various locations in the U.S., using selections from shows recorded in 2003.
The cd will feature Percy Jones, Marc Wagnon, and Frank Katz, and will also have some special guests such as Mark Feldman on violin, John Goodsall on guitar, Julien Feltin on guitar, who toured with Sarah Pillow in the fall and played some amazing improvs with the band, and our current drummer Lance Carter.
This is an opportunity to have Tunnels Live in your very own living room...as for those who have been to the live shows know, a Tunnels live performance goes above and beyond the call of duty in creative interplay and
spontaneity.
We are also organizing some dates in Europe in the fall for Tunnels; we will keep everybody updated about our progress on the web site.
Reminder!
if you are not on our mailing list and would like to be, visit our site and click on the mailing button, fill out a short form and you are in.
- Also, check out our online store for spring specials - Our t-shirts are selling like hotcakes, but we only have a few large, x-l and xx-l, so get them while they’re hot!
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