Ruth (Chestie La Rue – what’s not to love about a name like that) from Modernaire has replied to my rambling nonsense about copyright and freebies, although she did so in a comment, so I thought I’d move it up here for your perusal:

Hello all. It’s Ruth here from Modernaire and The Moulettes. Sorry for the delay in responding but we’ve been touring and driving a lot and today is the first proper bit of time I’ve had to get something written down. I apologise for my clumsy way with words but I’m extremely tired and verging on mid-tour tonsilitis.

As Matthew explained earlier, the problem was in fact just with one song and one particular site (the Kruger website). In fact all of us love blogs and bloggers. To be honest Hannah and I aren’t particularly technically minded but we still browse blogs from time to time to find out about new and exciting things. I know that you were expecting us to come back with an adversarial response but really we completely support the use of our songs by people on the blogs. After all, it’s about the music and it virtually pointless to write about music if it can’t be simply heard. I honestly do not believe that blogs are taking money from our pockets, if anything they are helping a huge amount. So many people have discovered us through blogs and then gone on to come to gigs and buy cds. This may be a vast generalisation but I would say that the people who are interested enough in music to spend their time discussing music in fora such as these are the kind of people who go out and buy/see the music too. For small bands like us gigs are the biggest potential sources of income and without internet hype nobody would be booking bands outside their local area.

There’s one small thing that would possibly cause a little resentment but I don’t think blogs generally do this. If you were to put up a band’s songs for download without their permission I think that would be a bit cheeky. Essentially a band’s material is theirs to do what they like with but if other people want to talk about it, play it to their friends and even give it to their friends then that is fine as long as we don’t forget to support the music scene in a physical as well as a virtual manner by going to gigs and buying the music too

I just think it’s such a shame to see talented musicians, such as Hannah, wasting their potential creative time working in crap jobs to pay the bills. I could slip into a little rant now about the evils of greedy promoters (they’re the guilty ones not the music fans) but I won’t because i don’t have time, got to get ready to play the sold out Astoria this evening!

Hmm. A few things to think about there, if you ask me, as well as thanking Ruth for taking the time to write back. I really do appreciate it.

Firstly, I don’t always ask permission to post things. In fact, I rarely do. I know blogs that do but I, erm, am just too lazy I suppose. It would be a nightmare and would rub out the spontaneity of the things I write here. That’s not a justification exactly, nor an excuse, more of an admission of culpability I suppose.

Secondly, I have some doubts about the following statement: “Essentially a band’s material is theirs to do what they like with”. I know it makes sense on the face of it, but I am not sure if it’s true. Culture is a shared enterprise and, as Campfires & Battlefields has eloquently pointed out on this site before, once you release things into the world you kind of relinquish ownership and spill it into the sea of things that we share between us. I know it sounds crazy to say that someone’s artistic output is not entirely their own, but art of all kinds is an interaction, not something that is merely delivered to you and I think that once you put it out into the world you do have to surrender a degree of ownership. I am not sure how much ownership you have to surrender – I am still thinking about that one – but I don’t know if you can claim anything to be entirely ‘yours’ once you ask other people to listen to it. That doesn’t change the fact that failing to get permission to post people’s songs is not entirely okay, of course.

The most crucial point, actually, is the last one. You can make a justifiable argument for giving anything and everything away for free. Take this site for example: I give it all away. The writing, the sessions, the podcasts, all of it. Given the effort, what do I get to charge for? I really don’t know. For musicians it’s similar. They do not make money touring – don’t let anyone tell you this because it’s bollocks. Touring is an arduous and expensive business for virtually all bands, so don’t let anyone tell you it will make up for lost album sales because it won’t (touring, I mean, not just playing live, which is a different story).

So at some point, after you’ve raised all the publicity you can and received all the critical acclaim you can muster, you have to decide that some things need to be paid for, but what are they? As Ruth says, it makes sense to allow blogs to talk about things because I would agree that the word of mouth is important, and it can even be argued that it makes sense to allow some file-sharing as well, because it too spreads the word far and wide. But where does the money come from? Ultimately, if you are to avoid having great musicians sweating away at shitty jobs, they need to be paid. Money needs to be coming into the system from somewhere, and at the moment I really don’t see where that is coming from.

I think that trying to drive traffic, as Kruger have done, by trying to insist on exclusivity or trying to restrict or own dialogue as many are trying to do in the internet age, is just not the way to do it. I can see their point of view, in the same way I think I would be justified in trying to make the Toad Sessions exclusive, but I still pretty much think it’s the wrong approach. Then again, I am not paying my bills with this.

At the moment though I think the best plan is not to worry about that sort of thing: build an audience, build a fan base, get out there and get some loyal listeners and trust that somewhere, somehow, this will end up being something that will create its own opportunities. How the fuck you manage this as a band without losing all faith in the dream is beyond me though. How and when do you put your foot down and say ‘No, not this time. Now you need to put your hands in your pockets, people.’ I just don’t think anyone has a good answer to this question at the moment.

These two songs come from the brilliant Velvet Never Dries, which can be purchased from the Modernaire MySpace page here.

Modernaire – Bloodshed in the Woodshed One of my favourite songs of the year, this one.
Modernaire – Rain

And here is Hannah and Ruth’s other band, the wonderful Moulettes. Do me a favour and buy something from both bands because it’s not expensive, and I really appreciate them making their contribution to this page and being so patient with my nonsense. And, of course, they’re both fucking brilliant.

The Moulettes – Pirate Song

Watusi wasn’t the first Wedding Present album that I bought for myself – that was Mini – but it was the first one I was really aware of.  The Wedding Present, like Yo La Tengo, are one of my favourite bands and one I owe entirely to my friend Strath who played them constantly over the space of about four years, despite a constant hail of abuse from my good self, until such time as I finally gave in an admitted that they were brilliant.  I think Yo La Tengo required more persistence.

The Wedding Present, brilliant as they are, are rarely what you would describe as musically or lyrically inventive.  Lyrically strong, yes, but not all that varied.  This album might in fact be their most creatively arranged effort by some distance.  The hiss and crackle of Click Click and the three-songs-in-one craziness of the superb opener So Long, Baby are both amongst the best The Weddoes have ever produced, but the overall rise and fall of the album really is perfectly judged.  Seamonsters and Bizarro and, I suppose, George Best may take most of the plaudits, but Watusi is chock full of great songs and is perhaps, as a whole album, better assembled.

I’ve never quite understood how it can take so long to get into a group you come to love, but sometimes things just don’t sink in.  Strath really tried his best to open my eyes but for some reason I persistently failed to twig.  I remember hearing this album repeatedly from student halls in Maryhill to a damp, cold basement flat in Arlington Street, to the flat on Great Western Road that was occupied by an ever-changing cast of our cronies for nigh on six years.

That flat was a pit, but it seemed brilliant at the time; a massive Victorian tenement building, with two huge bedrooms with massive bay windows.  Strath and I would do our own thing most of the time – play Championship Manager, watch telly, important stuff like that – and when we got bored we’d wander into one another’s room for a chat.  I would invariably make some comment about ‘the latest selection from Strath’s Shit Music collection’.  It never failed to irritate the poor fella, and it still does, despite the fact that three quarters of it is now in my very own Shit Music Collection.

Most definitely including The bloody Wedding Present.

The Wedding Present – So Long, Baby
The Wedding Present – Spangle
The Wedding Present – Big Rat

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