John Benjamin Blog

The JBB Music R&D Blog

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Streaming Music Services are Lazy and Unfair to Musicians

Streaming Music Services are Lazy and Unfair to Musicians

Spotify, and services like it, are great. So convenient, and affordable, easy to listen easy to share and really bringing the act of listening to music into the 21st century. Unfortunately, the way in which the people who create that music are compensated hasn’t kept up with the times. It’s a nightmare, and unless you are drafted into the mainstream of artists, you really can’t make a living (not…

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Tumblr, the only major social network that lets its users post audio and displays it well.

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Spotify Launches Fan Insight Data Portal for Musicians

Hooray? Spotify Launches Fan Insight Data Portal for Musicians

Billions of songs a month means lots of information about who listened, when and where. Source: Spotify Launches Fan Insight Data Portal for Musicians | Re/code So this Spotify data thing. I’m sure it’s powered by the folks who built The Echo Nest, a streaming-music data company that Spotify acquired a while ago. They always did some really fascinating experiments with their data. I wonder if…

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Minifooger + Pustulus Maximus of Gwar

I don’t know anything, really, about GWAR, aside from that one dream sequence in Empire Records. But man does this video ever make me want to buy one of these pedals– even if the pedal weren’t awesome (which it really does look to be), the fact that Moog used this guy as the face of the promo video tickles my little dark heart something fierce.…

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iPad Pro + Adobe Stuff

iPad Pro + Adobe Stuff = *drool*

I really want an iPad Pro, and I do use the Creative Cloud apps to create really crappy drawings and stuff to pad social content. I’m a little concerned about how slowly the app seems to follow some of the pen strokes that are shown in the video, because for me that makes drawing apps really hard to use. Requires you to know what you are intending to draw with a high degree of confidence. Which I…

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24bit/192khz Audio is Dumb Source: 24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed A fascinating article about audio fidelity. I've annotated the bits I found useful/most interesting.

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So anyway, over on Song Fight this week, I have an entry in the “Day of the Dead” fight where the lyrics were given to me by a friend. I like the result, but I felt a couple of weirdnesses while going through the songwriting process.

On the one hand, I felt kind of free to do whatever I wanted. So what turned out was a kind of hard rock 80’s or whatever kind of recording. Loud guitars and loud vocals and loud drums. Someone on the Song Fight message boards said it’s “aggression all over the place” which I didn’t think about while I was making it, but I guess that’s pretty apt. It turned out that way because I like the idea of making these loud songs that aren’t like “me”. And since they weren’t my lyrics, I didn’t feel beholden to make the greatest song in the world.

On the other hand, like Tevye says, I don’t really have any attachment to that song. It’s there and meh whatever ok I’ll probably never play it in any live context, unless the guy who gave me the lyrics is there and wants to play it.

On the third hand, like some kind of alien hand grafted onto my back like in “The Dark Backward”, while I was writing the song I felt loathe to give it anything good that I came up with. I’d come up with a guitar riff and be like “I’m keeping that for myself”– as if using that riff for this song would be “wasting” it or something.

There’s no real point here, no realization that I came to at the end of making my “Day of the Dead”, only thoughts and ideas that I had during the process that clarify for me some of the aspects of creating something that’s wholly mine vs. a collaboration.

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A collaboration with fabulous musician and all-around stand-up American, Jeff Fal.

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Music by JB, Lyrics by Doug Gross

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For Dorie

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Jehosaphat, another Miley Cyrus cover. It wasn't on purpose, I swear.

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A cover of "The Love Cats", the first UK top 10 hit by The Cure. In honor of my pal Shane's 41st birthday, and his year full of love, and full of cats.

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This one isn't my fault.

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Oh Christina, how many hearts will you break?

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A ukulele version of "La Cucaracha", for Nanda.

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Bee Sting

“Bee Sting” is a song that dates from 2001(ish). For my birthday last year, my friend Jeff Fal made this wonderful cover of it.

BEE STING- by JB

Well I was taught all about the birds and the bees

And all those other things you learn when you are young

And I learned them from magazines

Other kids, and television

But I was never ready for the revelation

Of your smile and everything that came along with it

You hit me like a bee sting

I’m having some trouble breathing

You must have triggered one of my allergies

You hit me like a bee sting

I need a shot of antihistamine

I’m having a reaction to your love

Well there is no joy in my life

The rain has stopped the play

Now that you’ve gone and left me

I guess there ain’t much more to say

I’m left here standing in the ruins of my day

I had it all but I watched it slip away

The only thing I learned from magazines

Other kids and television

Is how easily everything can slip away

While your back is turned

And you’re watching something else

You hit me like a bee sting

I’m having some trouble breathing

You must have triggered one of my allergies

You hit me like a bee sting

I need a shot of antihistamine

I’m having a reaction to your love

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If you go down to the woods today, you'd better not go alone.