{"id":301,"date":"2007-10-03T16:44:41","date_gmt":"2007-10-03T16:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/?p=301"},"modified":"2011-07-29T16:01:53","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T16:01:53","slug":"no-way-eh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/?p=301","title":{"rendered":"No way, eh!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m too busy to think this week, let alone blog, but I was inspired by my colleague Richard Parent’s wonderful “Holy Crap!<\/a>” posting earlier this week to pull together some of the things I’ve been meaning to blog on for the last week or so. Channelling the spirit of the great Bob and Doug McKenzie, I thought I would provide a Canadianized version of my colleague’s exclamation that I occasionally hear him shouting from his office from time to time. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

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\n\"Bob\n<\/div>\n

No way, eh! The Weakerthans<\/a>‘ new album Reunion Tour<\/a> came out last week and NPR has an interview<\/a> with the band’s John K. Samson. There’s also a good feature<\/a> on the band at the cbc.ca Arts site. Great to see them getting some well-deserved acclaim<\/a> for this album. Make sure to listen to his interview<\/a> with Grant Lawrence on CBC Radio 3, too. If you’ve not heard The Weakerthans before, you can listen to some of their songs here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Check out their “webisode” on curling that The Weakerthans have posted on YouTube.
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No way, eh!<\/b> Maybe it’s not so bad that I’m more a Jack of All Trades<\/a> than a master of one or two…<\/p>\n

No way, eh! This news made my week! Radiohead<\/a> is releasing their new album<\/a> In Rainbows<\/a> next week. I heard a lot of the new material last year at their amazing concert in Montreal and have been waiting for this day ever since.<\/p>\n

In a completely game-changing move<\/a>, fans will be ordering it directly off their website and paying whatever they see fit. Issa<\/a> (formerly known<\/a> as Jane Siberry<\/a>) has been using this self-determined pricing<\/a> model for years now, but we’ve yet to see a band as big as Radiohead (is there a more important band in the world these days?) give this a try. What you can see from Issa’s store at www.sheeba.ca<\/a> is that the majority of people who pay do so at the suggested rate or above.<\/p>\n

Check out these stats from the Sheeba website:
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Avg Price\/Song\t $1.18
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%\tPaid Below Suggested\t6%
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%\tPaid At Suggested\t80%
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%\tPaid Above Suggested\t14%<\/p>\n

If Radiohead comes anything close to this, and I expect they will, this might really change the face of how music is bought and sold.<\/p>\n

As usual, Bob Lefsetz<\/a> has some interesting things to say about this on his blog, and I think he really nails it here:
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It makes no difference that you don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t like Radiohead. Makes no difference that they get no radio play. They\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve got their own cottage industry. Which they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re managing brilliantly. Rather than burn out the field, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re not taking every opportunity, they\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re letting certain aspects lay fallow. Who are endorsements going to reach? Oh, you get a check, but the newbies aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t for keeping, and the core is thrown off. You\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re THEIR band, not Madison Avenue\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s, not Cadillac\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s.<\/p>\n

And there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s enough money in the core. Maybe not enough to get on the Forbes list, but what does that list represent, is that where you really want to be? Is our culture really winner take all? Is it really all about the money? Tell that to the Radiohead fan. He just wants to revel in the band\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s music. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s as good as sex to him. Maybe better if he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not getting any.<\/p>\n

Think about that. Radiohead has created something its fanbase can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t live without. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the music. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a return to basics. We\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re back where we once belonged.<\/p>\n

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No way, eh!<\/b> A shout out to my pal and former bandmate Brad Clarke for tipping me off on an up-and-coming band from Edmonton, the perfectly named The Wheat Pool<\/a>. I’ll buy their CD<\/a> for that name alone, though it doesn’t hurt that they have songs about Whyte Avenue and Emily Carr<\/a> either.<\/p>\n

No way, eh!<\/b> The Edmonton Oilers<\/a>‘ first game of the season is tonight and the team is looking great. The only trouble is that it’s nearly impossible to catch the Oilers on television here, aside from when they appear on Hockey Night in Canada<\/a>.<\/p>\n

No way, eh!<\/b> If only our governments would be as quick to realize that Nourishing the mind and the soul are as important as food and clothing. Over the next two years, the Chilean government will be donating care packages of 49 books to over 500 000 needy families. A three-person jury worked to select these titles and announced the results of their deliberations this week. It’s a pretty phenomenal list, and reading it reminded me of a great Harpers article I used to have my Composition students read back when I taught at Mount Royal College in Calgary. It’s by Earl Shorris and it’s called “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As a Weapon in the Hand of the Restless Poor<\/a>.” It’s companion piece in that issue, Mark Edmundson’s “On the Uses of a Liberal Education: As Lite Entertainment for Bored College Students<\/a>” is also well worth reading, and it perhaps even more relevant now than it was ten years ago.<\/p>\n

The Chilean jury’s reading list is fascinating, and it includes Gabriel Garc\u00c3\u00ada M\u00c3\u00a1rquez, Jack London, Pablo Neruda, Aesop’s fables, Daniel Defoe, Franz Kafka, and Oscar Wilde. If your French and Spanish are up to speed you can read these<\/a> articles<\/a> for the full story.<\/p>\n

No way, eh!<\/b> A few more<\/a> interviews<\/a> with William Gibson in the Canadian press over the last couple of days about his new book Spook Country. Dying to read that book…<\/p>\n

No way, eh!<\/b> The Arctic ice<\/a> is melting<\/a> far<\/a> faster<\/a> than anyone could have imagined. Something tells me that this scary news should have been listed above all of these other stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m too busy to think this week, let alone blog, but I was inspired by my colleague Richard Parent’s wonderful “Holy Crap!” posting earlier this week to pull together some of the things I’ve been meaning to blog on for the last week or so. Channelling the spirit of the great Bob and Doug McKenzie, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulwmartin.ca\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}