A minor victory

“Hate is easy; love takes courage”, so says an excellent site I was recently browsing on MySpace.

Seeing too many documentaries and reading too many books on American foreign policy in recent history (and further back) isn’t good for the soul. And then George W. Bush comes on the television with his patronizing and arrogant nonsense. Its funny how America is never to blame for anything, it is always someone else.

Yesterday in my little world, I went slightly out of my way to hold a door open for someone who I really don’t like very much at all. If one can, much better to work at building bridges with any potential “enemies”, better than setting oneself apart and looking down on someone with a feeling of judgmental superiority. If one can!

Juggling work and thoughts

On the receiving end of disrespectful management behaviour at a hospital ward, evidence of my Uranus opposite Moon transit, amongst other things. Costume fitting in London for Young Victoria film at end of month, shooting last week for other film good. Watched John Pilger’s documentary about American foreign policy and empire-building, mainly in South America. John Young Brighton gig support slot now on 30th September and got another one at The Peel in October. Nursing work generally pretty good, although it looks as though Southlands Hospital is going to close without protest, all media focus on Worthing and its accident and emergency department. Confirmed September Buddhist festival gig. Miserable grey weather. Still haven’t got my passport renewed. One or two remaining guest musicians to try and get along for recording in September. Found some good ethical/humanitarian/environmental groups as friends on My Space, more important than the music really. Saturn now just entered my 7th house, new phase of “public involvement” for the next few years. Couple downstairs are keeping their noise down, no further calls to the police necessary. Am taking a couple of days off to listen to music and generally do nothing!

Tony Wilson

Very sad to hear of the death of the infamous Tony Wilson, apparently of a heart attack, although he was also being treated for cancer. One of the founders of Factory Records (“We own nothing, the musicians own everything”), he was responsible for bringing the likes of Joy Division, New Order and the Happy Mondays to the world, aswell as the Hacienda nightclub in Manchester. He also had a “dayjob” as a television presenter for Granada TV.

Sometime around the late 1980s, I attended a seminar for independent music labels in London. The opening speech was given by Wilson, whose brief talk was more interesting and inspiring than the following two days of other industry speakers put together. He began with discussing “The mode of production determines the mode of consciousness”, which was written up on the board behind him. At that time I didn’t know anything about Marxism, but the phrase stuck in my mind regardless. Wilson was articulate, funny, rather arrogant, but refreshingly honest.

Roughly 25 years later I attended another music business seminar, again in London, this time on the subject of the internet and the music business. Here I heard and saw a different side of Wilson. The same articulate cheekiness and passion for music was present, but there were occasional rants about how “the bastards took all my money” and similar complaints about the business.

Reading two obituaries today, one is struck by how much he gave to pop and rock music, and the culture of Manchester in general, often at considerable expense to himself. The music business (and the world as a whole?) could surely do with more genuine visionary mavericks such as Tony Wilson? May your spirit live on mate.

Music downloads from my site

Nice to see that July saw around 300 music tracks downloaded worldwide from www.timburness.com, the second biggest monthly total this year. Generally these days I can count on a monthly average of about 200 plays from all over the world, with an occasional dip down to nearer 100 plays. When I first put all the tracks up in 2004, it was around 500 plays a month for some time.

“Who is listening and do they like the music?” I often ask myself. Three categories always seem to feature prominently in my web statistics: US Commercial, Network and Unresolved/Unknown. After that, last month saw the UK, Canada, Sweden and Malaysia listening the most, with Japan, Germany, Brazil and Australia not far behind. In the other busy month this year: Hungary, Russian Fedaration, Netherlands, Italy, Venezuela and Viet Nam were the main culprits. So it really is worldwide.

But I still don’t know how many people really like the music!? Or if the same people have been coming back for another listen over the last two and a half years, or whether new people are continually coming to the site? I guess I have to trust that a fair percentage have been enjoying the tracks. If anyone reading this wants to comment on listening to my “free back catalogue”, please do, either here or via my site.

Possibly I have been over-generous with putting up so many free tracks, but the notion of paying for downloads hadn’t really taken off in 2004. Once they were up, I figured the publicity was more important than making money. Of course there is a whole debate about the de-valueing of music through the expectation of free downloads on the net, but that is another conversation. I basically resigned myself to not making any money from my music long ago. The small amounts I have made down the years have gone straight back into it, in one form or another.

I guess I can now also add the number of My Space plays per month, around 2000 plays in the first two months since 21st May. But again there are questions… for example, what is the quality of listening on My Space? I often only listen to 20 seconds of some people’s music myself.

And will anyone like the new Burness album later this year!? Aha…