If you plan on taking your band to New York City this October for the CMJ Marathon but are still watching “Golden Girls” reruns, time’s a wastin’ Mildred.

The deadline was recently extended to July 30, get off your duff and get on it while you can. You can't live in your mom's basement forever.

Here’s the scoop straight from the CMJ website:

To be considered for a showcase, all artists must officially submit an application, using either the online or mail-in version.

For labels interested in a showcase, please submit each artist individually and then contact the showcase department.

All applications are considered equally (i.e., we don't give preferential treatment to mail-in or online applications), so pick one method, not both.

Showcase submissions must be submitted online or postmarked by July 30, 2007.

Direct all mail-in applications to CMJ Music Marathon Showcase Department, 151 W. 25th St Floor 12, New York, NY 10001.

Please do not contact CMJ to find out if you've been accepted to perform.

For updates on accepted artists/bands, check www.cmj.com/marathon. Otherwise we will notify you of your status via email by August 20, 2007. Any other inquiries can be directed to showcase07@cmj.com.

-July 20, 2007

In 1967 a 20-year old young man decided that his generation needed a voice. Most of the media either ignored or hated rock ‘n’ roll, giving little to no coverage of what teenagers and those in their twenties loved, listened to, how they lived and who they admired.

This Friday, the pinnacle periodical about music and culture celebrates the big 4-0. The fortieth anniversary of Rolling Stone hits the stands, featuring interviews with twenty select artists and leaders they believe made significant contributions to their magazine and made their mark on our American society.

On the Charlie Rose show this week, Jann Wenner, now at age sixty but looking 10+ years younger, recalled those early days of Rolling Stone and how his magazine has evolved over the last four decades.

It was his love of music that inspired Wenner to start the publication, borrowing money from his mother and his mother-in-law. But Rolling Stone’s meat includes a big shank of politics, reading the minds of our population at times with articles like “Medicare vs. Britney: Why a brainless Mouseketeer gets more ink than the federal budget,” or what most media outlets wouldn’t dare to run, such as the provocative feature with a cartooned President Bush wearing a dunce cap, “The Worst President in History?”

In a sense, this type of brazen journalism is very much a part of the rock ‘n’ roll mindset of just saying it like it is instead of ‘spinning’ stories so toes aren’t bruised.

One of those interviewed includes Bill Moyers, who left the White House the year RS started, fleeing his post as the press secretary to President Johnson to become a journalist. Moyers throws an interrogation hot lamp on the media with his new documentary “Buying the War,” which follows the parade of journalist that towed the White House’s company line, hook and sinker, and how they all played a large part in selling the country on the war.

The RS interview with Neil Young begins with a question about his 2006 album, Living With War, and the heat he took for it. Although Young doesn’t believe he has the impact he once had, he still believes that music is just as powerful as ever at informing and effecting social and political change.

As evidence of this, page 22 of the anniversary issue lists ten new Anti-Bush tracks to look for, including NIN’s “Capital G” and Bright Eyes’ “Clairaudients (Kill or Be Killed).” I wonder if anyone will right a modern version of “Ohio” that sings about the attacks on protesters over the last few years, including this week’s immigrant rights rally in Los Angeles where protesters AND reporters were injured by the LAPD’s batons and riot guns.

If RS keeps this column going, they could add Brother Ali's tracks “Uncle Sam Goddamn,” “Letter From The Government,” and “Freedom Ain’t Free” to the list, which is featured in his new release The Undisputed Truth, reviewed this week by D Tha Man.

I have to admit, I haven’t subscribed to Rolling Stone in years, mainly because I felt it focused on more mainstream artists than the ones I was interested in. It has been the political and culturally oriented articles that have peaked my interest and caused me to make my way to the register for the occasional newsstand purchase.

After watching Wenner’s interview and picking up the shiny anniversary issue, I’m feeling compelled to send in that subscriber card (26 issues for $14.95…I spend more than that after just one night out at Sputnik). As a chip-carrying magazine junkie, I may need to call my sponsor first.

To connect the dots between the web and print, rollingstone.com features audio clips from the magazine’s interviews, “giving you unparalleled access to some of the most compelling personalities in history.”

-Kim Owens, May 4, 2007

The pinnacle start to the music festival season is launched by Coachella (www.coachella.com) the weekend of April 27 – 29 in the heat of Indio, CA. As usual, the line up is about big names and small indie acts, including Bjork, Decemberists, LCD Soundsystem, the only appearance for Rage Against the Machine, along with legends the Jesus and Mary Chain (and the rumor that Bobby Gillespie will join them on drums), Faithless, Arctic Monkeys, Tokyo Police Club, the Good, The Bad and the Queen, and the list goes on.

In June there’s Bonnaroo (www.bonnaroo.com), which transformed itself a few years ago from a hippie jam band gathering to an indie rock, hip-hop, dance party. Taking place in Manchester, TN, the weekend of June 14 – 17, 2007 features The White Stripes, Tool, The Police, El-P, Mute Math, Sasha & Digweed, The Cold War Kids and Wolfmother (and more), and to please the diehard Bonnaroo goers, Galactic, Widespread Panic, and Gov’t Mule.

A music festival that doesn’t require Colorado citizens to travel is the Van’s Warped Tour, which comes here on July 8. So far the spot for the kiddie fest is TBD, a great place to see a show, and regulars Bad Religion are returning once again to remind many that they are still around. I honestly don’t know if that band tours at any other time during the year, do they?

Last year the Capitol Hill Block Party (www.capitolhillblockparty.com) in Seattle took place July 28 - 29, and past performers have included Sleater-Kinney, Built to Spill, Mudhoney, The Gossip, Pedro the Lion, The Thermals, Minus the Bear, The Melvins, Pretty Girls Make Graves, and Silversun Pickups. They have yet to announce the actual dates or line up, so you'll have to stay tuned for that.

The Pitchfork Music Festival (http://pitchforkmusicfestival.com) takes place in Chicago's Union Park on July 13 - 15, with tickets at an affordable price of $15 on Friday, and $25/day for Saturday or Sunday (or $35 for both Sat. and Sun.). Notables in the line up include Sonic Youth, Cat Power, Iron & Wine, New Pornographers, Stephen Malkmus, De La Soul, Of Montreal and The Ponys.

A few weeks later Chicago kicks it off again with another round of Lollapalooza, taking place August 3-7 in Grant Park. The line up is being announced this week, so check out www.lollapalooza.com to see what's in store for this year.

If you aren't able to make it to Coachella and have a hankering for a bit of the Irish country side, then the Electric Picnic is just for you (and me). Many of the same artists will be performing at the Stradbally Estate the weekend of August 31 through September 2. We're talking Bjork, The Jesus & Mary Chain, !!!, and LCD, along with others that won't be sweating it out in the California desert, including The Beastie Boys, Primal Scream, Iggy & The Stooges, and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The prices are a bit steep for the three day fest - $220 EUROS or around $300 US. Go to www.electricpicnic.ie for more info.

Then to wrap up the summer festival circiut, at least here at home, is the inagural Monolith Festival at Red Rocks, where over 50 bands (or 70+ if you watch their YouTube promo) will perform over two days and nights, September 14 - 15 at Red Rocks. The line up includes both local bands and national acts, and so far they've got Earl Greyhound, Cloud Cult, Laylights, The Photo Atlas, The Colour, Nathan and Stephen, Hot IQs, Meese, and Born in the Flood in their online music player. To keep posted on the final line up and when tickets go on sale, or if you'd like to submit your band for consideration to play the Red Rock party, you can sign up for their notifications at , www.monolithfestival.com.

-Kim Owens, April 11, 2007

Music's Digital Drive

It was a Saturday afternoon in Austin. The last official day of SXSW 2007. Many, including our other Kaffeine Buzz writers, were off grabbing stories about this band and that, whilst taking advantage of the daytime party favors, including the variety of cold beverages abound.

I, on the other hand, was holed up in a convention center seminar room, typing away as the group and panel speakers delved into the day’s focus: A Managers Survival Kit for Today and the Future. With a raise of hands, there was about a 50/50 split between band managers and band members. But the room full of people put the partying aside in lieu of getting down to the continual changes in the music business.

One of the first things moderator Steven Scharf (Steven Scharf Entertainment/Carlin America) noted was the shift of importance to managing one’s own music career versus putting it in the hands of a record label. Not too long ago, it was the A&R panel that packed the rooms, as artists and bands eagerly awaiting the latest tips for getting signed. That wasn’t the case in 2007.

We’ve all seen the paradigm shifting at a higher speed, and labels, especially the majors, are scrambling as they see their CD sales plummet while the embrace of digital technology surges, impacting digital sales grow by the month.

On the downside, we all cried a little inside when the retail chain, Tower Records, closed its legendary locations. Was it a huge surprise? Not really. The label downsizing isn’t either. Recently, EMI Music merged Capitol and Virgin into The Capitol Records Group, laying off approximately 200-250 employees. The adage of ‘can’t teach an old dog new tricks’ is costing the old dogs millions, although I’m sure there are plenty of personal golden type parachute plans still in tack.

Well, it looks like the major labels couldn’t ignore customer demands any longer, or the realization that most people (but not all, unfortunately) really are willing to pay for music if you make it easy for them to do so. Taking them to court wasn’t the end all resolution to piracy.

You may or may not have heard about this week’s announcement from EMI and Apple that EMI’s entire digital catalog of music (with the exception of the Beatles) can be bought from iTunes WITHOUT the Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology embedded. This is a giant step for EMI, but one that should have been taken years ago.

If there was ever a drawback to using iPods or buying music from iTunes, it was DRM, something that wasn’t part of the game with other digital music sites like emusic and their independent label partners. Nor was this technology used with non-iPod MP3 players.

DRM has kept digital music files from playing well together, literally. A song you downloaded from emusic wouldn’t work on an iPod, or the “Oops, I Did It Again” track you downloaded from iTunes would be kicked to the curb by the must-have Zume player (insert laugh track here).

Apple’s ring leader, Steve Jobs, acknowledged this self imposed dilemma at the joint press conference this week. Now iTunes customers have the freedom to do whatever the hell they want with their Death Cab for Cutie song after they’ve paid slightly more for it—$1.29 versus the .99 cents. A higher level of quality is also part of the premium price, offering 256 kbps AAC encoding, twice the bit rate of the standard 99 cent version, “resulting in audio quality indistinguishable from the original recording.”

If you’ve already plunked down some change with iTunes, Apple gives you the option to upgrade to the new DRM-free versions for $.30 cents a song. But, and there’s always a but, not all songs on iTunes are available DRM-free. Jobs, however, hopes to have at least half of the 5 million songs in their catalog up to snuff by the end of the year.

On a different side of the Internet moon, the Future of Music Coalition launched Rock the Net (http://www.futureofmusic.org/rockthenet/index.cfm), a new campaign to support the efforts of Massachusetts Representative (D) Edward Markey, who is battling Washington on net neutrality, to keep the Internet as it is: free and open.

So far those battles have been won, but the war isn’t over. The coalition under the Rock the Net umbrella is set out to “come together at this critical time to demonstrate to Congress and the FCC the music community's broad support for this principle. As musicians and entrepreneurs, we understand the importance of treating all websites equally -- from the busiest online music store to the smallest blog.”

So far there’s quite a list of who’s who joining RTN, including R.E.M., Death Cab for Cutie, Ted Leo, OK Go, Calexico, The Donnas, and a number of others included in the almost 300 bands, 94 labels, and hundreds of individuals. To find out more about net neutrality, to join the petition, or get the scoop on Rock the Net events planned across the country, go to www.furtureofmusic.org.

“Just as we have been saying for the last couple of years, ‘The revolution has begun’. This latest merging and downsizing is just another clear indication of just how the entire major label paradigm truly is over,” states the publishers of the Music Registry, Ritch Esra and Stephen Trumbull, in their monthly music business newsletter.

And guess who made that happen. You, me, and all the rest of the consumers out there. When you put the power of one together with the power of many, you’ve got, well, a lot of people, taking things in the direction they want. Remember that when you want to change the way things are going around you, or in your own life.

Along the way, please, please don’t forget the indie labels that are working the old school rules of supporting bands on their way up, functioning on those shoestring budgets right along with their artists. Or the artists themselves selling their goods DIY. They’re already at the .99 cent price point. A penny less than what you throw down to your bartender after he/she serves your PBR.

-Kim Owens, April 6, 2007

We! Love! Band! Names!

It seems that we just can’t seem to get enough exclamation marks in music. We’re just so damn excited about it!

First it was !!! who really set the gold standard for elated punctuation, not even needing to include any pesky letters in there. I remember seeing that “name” for the first time and not knowing how the hell I was supposed to pronounce it. Thank God for indie rock talk at Sputnik where I got schooled, otherwise I would have looked really silly in the A-list hipster circles.

While going through the droves of bands to appear at SXSW, I saw that others were also very excited about their band’s name. First there was Triclops!, who we were aware of after getting in their new release and I got check them out one night at Emo’s Jr. We caught GO!GO!1788 on Japan night and were very pleased with their charged performance.

We missed a couple of others, including Oh No! Oh My! from Austin (opening for Mew on Saturday), and Die! Die! Die! from New Zealand (playing hi-dive on Sunday), but thankfully we’ll be able to catch them both this weekend. Then we decided to pass on Tiger! Tiger!, Holy Shit!, my!gay!husband! (who is on its evangelical tour), and a few others because, well, we just did.

Runners up in the close-but-no-cigar-punctuation-mark category include E>K>U>K, k-the-i???, and a band that can go either way, ±.

So there you go. You can never have enough shoes or enough useless information. Feel free to use this as a conversation starter when you’re out and about this weekend, shmoozing with the beautiful people.

-Kim Owens, March 29, 2007