As I’ve mentioned before, since I have now been without cable a few years, instead of watching TV I usually watch original comedy stuff on YouTube – guys like this one and this one and this one, gals like this one, this piece of citrusy goodness, and, of course – these guys, as they’re the home team.
A month or so ago, I was voting in a Survivor-type contest among YouTubers, and I kept seeing this one three-letter acronym used over and over again in comments on people’s videos. It was confusing me terribly as to why people were repeatedly writing this acronym in regards to YouTubers they apparently liked.
Because when I was in college and thereabouts in the Eighties – and into the Nineties, for that matter – all those bad boys with their Black Flag and Minor Threat and Bad Brains records (i.e., the ones I always wound up with – go figure) used to stencil this three-letter acronym on guitar cases and skateboards and stuff. Or my ex’s slightly nerdy, acid-dropping, D&D-playing friends would fake tattoo it on themselves. It was spray painted on the walls (always either in black or red) of at least three apartments I remember in Murfreesboro and two in Nashville, and on the outside of one garage.
You’d have been hard pressed to walk into Cantrell’s, the Exit/In, or Elliston Square in the Eighties and not seen this acronym scrawled on a t-shirt, an Army jacket, or a pair of torn jeans in black magic marker. After all, it was all, everybody’s an anarchist, yada yada and all that… way back then in the ol’ Dark Ages. After all. (I just wanted to fit “all” into this paragraph somehow, just one more time.)
And it – said three-letter acronym – it wasn’t very, well… nice. (And understandably so, since everybody was an anarchist and all that.)
So a month or so ago, I was really having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around why in the world people kept leaving in comments things like:
“(insert YouTube comedian’s name here)… FTW!”
I guess it’s one of the disadvantages to not having kids/teenagers to set me straight – and next time, maybe I’ll have enough sense to just go straight to Urban Dictionary instead of straining my brain over something like “For The Win!” for days. Or a week and a half exactly.
But I guess at least not having teenagers meant I got to spare myself the inevitable ridicule when Mom asked why all these people on YouTube were telling all these other people to f*ck the world, right?
(NOTE: Not the usual case, but this post is being posted on both blogs since the series that is the subject of this post resides on both blogs…)
So, based on a glance at my Tweets on Twitter that night, I noted that I spent approximately nine hours replacing YouTube videos that have been removed since the last time I looked at my (so far) four-part Music Education 101 series of posts. If you missed that before (or just want to check them out again), all the video links except maybe one are working now, although I’ve had to replace several with “alternate” versions (some I’m not too thrilled about), but also added some extras that weren’t there before.
The series lives in my Music Education 101 category on both blogs, or here are the links:
I can’t even begin to illustrate what a painfully tedious process it was, searching for and updating all those video links – made even worse by the fact this series is on both my blogs, since it was begun before I added the music blog, so that doubled the work. But of all the posts on either of my blogs – spanning back nearly 13 years on the main blog – those four are probably the most important to me, so whatever.
What pains me, really, is the number of them removed because so-and-so company/organization has declared their ownership/copyright. Fine.
Do these people not understand the power of YouTube these days and the potential for financial gain in a YouTube partnership? When there are everyday people uploading their own videos – be it comedy, commentary, their own music, or what amounts to the video version of a traditional blog (i.e., vlogs) – and making better money doing that than they would with the salary of many very good full time jobs – is the potential financial gain of allowing music and video to be heard and seen on YouTube completely beyond the comprehension of the music and visual media companies?
If Joe Blow next door is able to make a living wage off of YouTube these days, just think how much cash these record companies and other media companies could be raking in by putting up their own partnered YouTube channel. Some have, yes (mainly individual artists/bands though) – but not nearly enough.
There’s one case in particular that gripes me the most – some of what are undeniably the most important performances – American debut and otherwise – of many artists’ careers are their first appearances on Saturday Night Live. These are almost impossible to find – if they get uploaded, it doesn’t take long before they get pulled. Replacing some of those (like Elvis Costello’s famous show-stopping appearance from 1977) is what took me so darned long the other night, and it just irritated the crap out of me.
So here’s my open letter to NBC Universal:
Get your heads out of your collective asses and put up your own YouTube partner channel with these fantastic performances so that they’ll be back in public view where they SHOULD be, for people to enjoy these fabulous pieces of music history – instead of repeatedly blocking them and keeping them hidden from public view.
In this day and age when almost anything can be instantly viewed on the Internet in all kinds of different venues, it’s a doggoned shame that some of the finest musical performances in rock & roll history are being withheld like this. You have the potential to make far, far more profit on those clips as a YouTube partner than you likely ever will recoup in DVD or video sales.
I guess there’s a DVD or music video out there on the market already – point being, I don’t care, and they probably don’t contain the clips I want to see most anyway. How many DVDs have I bought in the past three or four years? Less than ten, and virtually all are feature films.
That said, I’m your target audience with those SNL music clips, NBC Universal – listen to me. Do the right thing and get those clips up on YouTube under your own account so those precious pieces of musical performance history are out there for the public to enjoy (and for those young musically-minded kids, like I once was myself, to learn from) – and make money off of me and everyone else who will watch, rate, and favorite those clips time and time again.
You have nothing to lose – except for the profit you’re not making by withholding them for DVD or whatever purposes, in which case you’re never likely going to profit nearly as much as you would have as a YouTube partner – and instead, the whole world is losing out by not being able to easily access and view these like you now can most anything else on YouTube. I know a big music fan – and Elvis Costello fan – in his twenties who has never even seen that priceless infamous clip. It’s a danged shame.
C’mon, NBC Universal. The solution’s so simple, and everybody wins. You line your pockets probably a lot more than you would have counting on DVD sales – and that music’s back out there where it belongs, for folks to dig. Simple.
Also just a reminder to please (if you don’t mind) change any bookmarks and blog links to the Zone to the default WordPress URL of http://thelynnsterzone.wordpress.com/ (and for the music blog, http://lynnstersmusiczone.wordpress.com) – I think the feeds are pointing correctly (but if you’re not finding my new posts in your feed reader, please let me know so I can see what’s up with the feed). I really don’t know when I’m going to be able to get this situation resolved with my domain host and get thelynnsterzone.com pointing back here (donations welcome, LOL) but you can always find me at the default URL anyway. Thanks!
Some probably recall that I deep-sixed cable TV a few years ago. It wasn’t for financial reasons at the time, really, since I was still working a traditional job at the time with a steady paycheck; it was just simply because I was hardly watching any TV at all – cable or network – and most of what I did watch was available to watch online, albeit often a few hours or days after the initial broadcast, but I could always catch up. I just couldn’t justify paying what had grown to nearly $100 a month anymore when I never watched it, and even downgrading to a lesser package was still an expense I couldn’t justify, as little as I watched. Plus I had a Netflix account, so movie and even series watching was just more convenient that way anyway, for the most part.
So I cut cable and pretty much stopped watching TV, and haven’t regretted it since except for once, and that was Internet-related, not TV-related. When I got to the point where I’d just about had it with my increasing frustrations with AT&T and was fed up and thought about switching to Comcast, I discovered that even though it hadn’t been all that long since I’d turned off cable, I wasn’t eligible for the self-installation and Comcast was insisting on sending someone out to install it AND charge me an installation fee, so there went that idea out the window.
So anyway, yeah, I don’t watch TV. Really I don’t even watch TV online anymore, except occasionally. Time that would have in the now-distant past been spent watching some TV, like when I remember to eat dinner every two or three days (yep, I still forget to eat all the time) – instead I read blogs, or (more and more recently) look for interesting stuff on YouTube.
That in itself has its pros and cons. The best part is I have found some really amazing, fun stuff on YouTube in the past year or so. Some really funny, brilliant stuff.
The other side of the coin is that once you start watching one thing, it inevitably leads to a dozen more videos or a dozen other YouTube peeps. This is especially true if you’re a music junkie – you could easily get stuck there for DAYS – but also true of a lot of the comedy/sketch performers, and also just the plain old personal “vloggers” there are these days on the site.
The funny/comedy stuff is really, really great though, and while a lot of it is still pretty raw and rough (which is not a bad thing in itself by any means), a good bit of it’s very nicely professionally done these days as well. For me, the more immature and juvenile the humor, the better, since my sense of humor is pretty twisted and about on the level of a 12 year old boy (LOL), but there’s plenty of more sophisticated fare to be found on YouTube as well.
YouTube humor is cool in the way once upon a time way back in the dark ages, Saturday Night Live (which I haven’t really laughed at in 13 or 14 years) and Fridays (remember Fridays??) used to be cool. Or Fox in the early days, especially when Fox only broadcast a couple of nights a week (jeez, I’m old), and back when Sunday nights meant The Simpsons, Married With Children, In Living Color, and all the other hilarious shows that came and went. Sunday nights on Fox used to be the best.
I like a whole lot of different YouTubers, but the two that make me laugh the most are Matt Brown, better known as SwiftKarateChop, and Shane Dawson of ShaneDawsonTV. Both have become extremely popular on the Internet thanks to YouTube and appear to have a pretty broad following, heavy on the teenage fan side (especially girls), but many others too.
Shane (Twitter bio: “That guy from YouTube that wears his mom’s clothes…”) is an aspiring actor/comic from L.A. and is currently YouTube’s fifth most subscribed, and has a larger Twitter following than most of the verified celebs on Twitter. His YouTube channel is a mix of sketch comedy and personal commentary/vlogging. Just a really talented kid. (Following video NSFW):
Swifty is my favorite, though – (AskSwifty Twitter bio: “I talk funny”) – and I’ve spent countless hours cracking up over his videos. Fellow Nashville/Memphis/Knoxville/Tennessee/etc. bloggers will probably identify a good bit with Matt, who’s a neighbor just across the state line in North Alabama, and is just insanely hilarious and twisted, but in a really good and fun way. Between his commentary vids & collaborations with his friend and fellow Alabamian and YouTuber ChanceXplosion and Matt’s “Ask Swifty” series, I’ve just laughed until my sides ache. (Following video is most definitely NSFW):
So be sure to check out Matt’s & Shane’s YouTube channels, there’s hours and hours of hilarity there to take up all your spare time. They both also have alternate channels you can find linked from their main channels with a bit more personal vlogging-type stuff, and in Shane’s case, some pretty hilarious outtakes and bloopers.
And honestly, if they’re not your style and don’t make you laugh, both have several links to other friends and colleagues among the YouTube set that are equally funny as well and fun to watch. There’s definitely something for everyone around the YouTube humor set.
One thing that occurred to me recently, after having watched videos from those two and many other popular YouTubers for a while, is how awesome it is that all this stuff’s doable and available nowadays – but on the other hand, I’m kind of sorry this medium wasn’t around 20 or 25 years ago or so – just like I wish I’d had the kind of computer access kids do now for high school and college. We had a computer in my home, which not many did at the time, but we mostly used it to play games (heh) and not much else.
I was particularly thinking of my friend Travis Harmon of The Travis and Jonathan Show and Red State Update, who went to school with my ex and we ran around in the same crew in Middle Tennessee in my early college days. I glance now over at my bookshelf and see a VHS tape made back in 1986 and 1987 that I’ve had nearly as long, a copy of one of the first video ventures Travis filmed back starting when he was still in high school. It’s raw and rough and absolutely, utterly hilarious, and I think wow, what things might have been like had YouTube been around back then. I have another old acquaintance who did a lot of early video humor with his friends from college days and beyond – same thing for them. If YouTube had been around in the ’80s and early ’90s, what a big difference that would have made for many.
Certainly Travis has had some nice success in his career, but it’s been a long time coming and he’s worked hard for it. If he’d been able to start out on YouTube like guys like Matt and Shane are doing nowadays, that probably would have shaved several years off his work towards success. Consequently, Travis and Jonathan have a pretty nice following on YouTube now, of course.
And I hope many of these YouTubers see some great success out of their efforts – many are getting a pretty fair amount of attention just by their YouTube activity, but many of them deserve a lot more attention than they’re getting now. So go give ‘em some, subscribe to their channels, and try not to crack a rib laughing.
So, I need the attention of the music junkies, music geeks, music fans – all you people for just a few minutes. You know who you are. All you Pixies and Replacements and White Stripes and R.E.M. and Elvis Costello and Nirvana and Bowie and Stones and Stooges and Hoodoo Gurus and Cheap Trick and Clash and Ramones and… well, you know. Everybody.
Everyone who has ever said, “Lynnster, you really need to check out (Pavement, the Hold Steady, the Bottle Rockets, The White Stripes, and insert hundreds of other band names here).” All you former record store employees from back when there was still vinyl in the bins. And all the music folks I’ve gladly pushed and promoted over the years, I could use a little return of favor right now – y’all too. So again – you know, everyone.
All of you, I just need you to listen up for a few. This’ll just take maybe ten or fifteen minutes of your time, tops. I have something (or rather, someones) very important to bring to your attention, and they could use your help if you could spare a few minutes.
OK, so now that I’ve got your attention, I want you to think back to that whole six or seven or eight year period in the Nineties when you actually didn’t have to stay up until late Sunday night to watch the videos YOU wanted to see, and didn’t have to go searching the radio dial for a college radio station that actually had enough power to pick it up wherever you were – or one that was even on at that hour (unless you were one of the very fortunate few that had a 24 hour station nearby) – to get your fix. You know what I’m talking about.
If you were like me, you were probably seeing bands and artists that used to crash on your apartment floor, or that of your friend’s or brother’s or sister’s, in the Eighties when they came through town, now suddenly making it so big that they were playing stadium shows to thousands of people instead of little dive bars with 20 people tops most nights. For a while there, it seemed like everyone I ever knew, every band I had ever liked, and every band I had even just remotely heard of was making it big, or at least getting heard and by many.
Now come back with me to specifically around 1994, 1995, 1996 for a minute. I know you’re all hearing it in your head right now, but in case you need reminding (and of course, insert any number of Pearl Jam, Nirvana, etc., offerings in between to make it really sound right)… Soundgarden, “Spoonman” and “Black Hole Sun”. Oasis, “Wonderwall”. Weezer, “Buddy Holly”. Hole, “Doll Parts” and “Miss World”. Green Day, “Longview”. Live, “I Alone”, “Lightning Crashes”, “Selling the Drama”. R.E.M., “Bang and Blame” and “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?”. The Cranberries, “Zombie”. Better Than Ezra, “Good”. Elastica, “Connection”. Beck, “Loser”. PJ Harvey, “Down By the Water”. Radiohead, “Creep”. Smashing Pumpkins, “Bullet with Butterfly Wings”, “1979″, “Zero”, and “Muzzle”. Alanis Morissette, “You Oughta Know”. Foo Fighters, “This is a Call”, “I’ll Stick Around”, “Big Me”. Veruca Salt, “Seether”. Social Distortion, “I Was Wrong”. Stone Temple Pilots, “Vasoline” and “Big Bang Baby”. Scarce, “Freakshadow”.
Huh?
Yeah, I know. Only a handful will know the band Scarce. Mainly a few lucky people from the North Atlantic coast and thereabouts, some more in England maybe, and certainly some folks from Knoxville.
My point is that you SHOULD have known who this band was, and you SHOULD have known this song. You should have known them as well as most of the other bands and artists and songs I listed up there.
It’s a heartbreaking story, it really is.
Scarce came together in 1993, formed by Chick Graning, bass player Joyce Raskin, and drummer Jud Ehrbar (who would be the first of numerous drummers in and out of the band). Chick’s from Knoxville – we share a lot of mutual friends and acquaintances – and had had some success earlier in the Nineties with Boston band Anastasia Screamed. I’m a big fan of the solo stuff he’s put out in recent years too – but for now, let’s get back to Scarce.
Soon after Scarce formed, the trio was soon involved in a major label bidding war. They toured America, Europe, England, and Canada to much acclaim for their live shows. Their Red EP was distributed worldwide and landed in the UK charts, with songs like “All Sideways” and “Days Like This”.
In 1995, following a support tour with Hole in Europe and on the verge of seriously making it big with their debut album, Deadsexy, Chick suffered a brain aneurysm and lapsed into a coma for several weeks. The record company pulled the Red EP from the shelves in the UK. Scarce had been scheduled to play Big Day Out in Australia, which is a big deal for non-Australian bands to score a slot down there – that got canceled too.
When she initially put the “Freakshadow” video up on Scarce’s MySpace profile, Joyce said this:
Just wanted to share the video for “Freakshadow”, which was shot about a month before Chick’s brain hemorrhage. I placed it before the “All Sideways” video thinking how poignant it is to see Chick before his hemorrhage and a few months after when the Sideways video was shot. I remember watching this video while Chick was in a coma and crying because it shows so much of his charm and personality, and at the time he wasn’t moving at all.
Here’s the video for “Freakshadow” – the hit that never was:
Chick eventually recovered & astonishingly, Scarce kept going as a band till 1997, playing two major US tours—even though this meant Chick relearning all his guitar parts and vocals from scratch. But the strain of his illness took its toll on the band, and eventually Chick and Joyce went their separate ways.
Let’s pause again a moment for the video for “All Sideways”:
There are a lot of heartbreaking stories in rock & roll, I know, but this is one of the more heartbreaking I’ve ever known. And especially heartbreaking to me that this band’s music just didn’t get heard like it should have, and that most of you didn’t know this band and these songs like all the others I mentioned above from the same time period.
Fortunately, this tale has a happy ending – or coda, as it were.
Writing a book about the band called Aching To Be (available through Amazon) led to Joyce contacting Chick, and then to Scarce’s re-forming, ending nine years of silence. Songwriting is already under way for a new album, and some of the band’s old material, along with previously unreleased material and pre-A&M demos, are now available. With no expectations but to savor being a real band again, and no one to answer to but themselves, Scarce finally have the happy new beginning they deserved all along.
There’s one problem, though, and here’s where I – and Scarce themselves – could use your help.
At present, Universal Music Group has refused to re-release the band’s debut CD, Deadsexy – not the physical CD itself nor making it available for download/purchase. It’s a fine album and it deserves to be out there and to be heard. Especially by those who have never had a chance to really hear it before.
YOU guys – all you music fans and others – YOU deserve to be able to have an opportunity to hear it, download it, buy it, own it, etc. There are a few used copies of the old release floating around, but not that many, and this record just deserves another chance – and the chance it never really had the first time.
Here’s where you can help. If you can spare a couple of minutes to fire off an email to (email and info removed – see update below!) – requesting UMG release the Deadsexy CD for purchase & download purchase – Joyce, Chick, their manager Teresa, everyone involved would really appreciate it.
And I personally would appreciate it too, as I’m dying to get this CD on my MP3 player, you know.
Those of you who know me (online or off) and frequently talk music with me, you know I wouldn’t steer you wrong. Bottom line is it’s a great record, and it needs and deserves to be out there. Anything you can do to help get it out there, and to spread the word – thank you.
In the meantime, here’s what else you can do Scarce-wise:
You can check out Scarce’s MySpace profile and listen to (and even purchase for download) what music is currently available by clicking HERE. (“Sudden Downtown Polo Club” is a particular favorite of yours truly.)
You can buy Joyce Raskin’s awesome book about the band, Aching to Be, at Amazon by clicking HERE.
Also go to Chick’s MySpace profile by clicking HERE and check out some of his solo work. I love his stuff and Scarce has already been incorporating “Dead Bleux” into their sets, that’s awesome.
All right, that’s enough from me for now but again, if you can spare a minute to (email and info removed – see update below!) – and politely request that UMG release the Deadsexy CD from Scarce, again, it is very much appreciated! Thanks for listening and watching and reading (and hope you enjoyed)!
UPDATE 05/29/2008: Happy to report that I’ve just learned from Joyce that UMG has agreed to let Deadsexy be licensed, so no further correspondence requesting its release is necessary! It will soon be available on iTunes (and I expect the usual other sources). Thanks so very much to everyone that assisted with this effort to get Scarce’s old music out to the masses – Joyce & Chick appreciate you all SO much (and me too)! :)
So I’ve been busy on some projects I have been trying to pull together and complete forever now, thanks to my well-known Aussie rock fetish, and I guess you could say Phase 1 & 2 are up to speed now, Phase 3 is about to get done, and then onto Phase 4 one of these days when I have some free time that I never have anymore.
Anyway, I’ve been busy here and here, and finally got the only existing video footage of The Monarchs up on both MySpace and YouTube, and those of you who pop over here occasionally from the Pen and that general sector who haven’t already heard about the videos will certainly want to check those out.
Otherwise, I am so exhausted right now, and have had so little sleep in the past week and a half (not because of this stuff tho), that I have absolutely nothing else to blog about unless you wanna hear me yawn, so ’til later, folks…
WARNING: Total Music Geek post ahead. I mean, this is a realllllly major one, so you know, many of you are welcome to skip it if you really wanna.
It’s a freakin’ holy grail week! Not only do I have live, never-seen-before Monarchs video IN MY HAND (thank you from the bottom of my little blonde heart, Muzz!) – which hopefully I will find time to convert and pop on the MySpace profile and YouTube within the next couple of days (as well as put a finish on and unveil the new website)…
But I just found a studio-quality MP3 of something I have not had on anything but CASSETTE in over 20 YEARS!! It can’t even be found on CD anywhere! I would tell you what it is, but 99.99% of you (even the music geeks) would have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about anyway. But YAY!
Thus whittles down the long list I have been carrying around since 1986 of nearly impossible to find, out of print stuff to, like… maybe two things now?
Listen, I could have won $40 million in the lottery today and wouldn’t be any happier.
OK, yes, I know I’m whacked. But who cares, I’m happy!
