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Here's the official list of dirty sellouts whom you should not pay.

Not really a whole lot on that list to miss... although I'm terribly disappointed to see Rush backing this kind of disingenuous horseshit. What happened to the spirit of radio, guys?

And thanks for your continuously superb journalism, CNN! Next time don't even fucking bother writing an article.

I can understand what you are saying. However, I believe the RIAA only succeeds at making untalented "artists" survive. If you have talent, most likely you will be able to develop a fanbase without the help of the RIAA. At least that's how it is in today's world. There are so many good bands out there that get free promotion from their fans regardless of their label affiliations or lack thereof. They may not be superstars, but they're not unknown.

I can image it is really hard to translate an LSD trip into language others can understand. However a real artist will be able to do so.

As the story goes, the first time Paul McCartney got high, he discovered something very deep and mystic. He wrote it down on a piece of paper and folded it up, entrusting it to Mal Evans, the Beatles' road manager. The next day Mal asked Paul if he wanted to see what was written on the paper. Paul said "yes". He opened it up. Scrawled across it was the phrase "there are seven levels".

I wrote a Hanukka fun guide for a column for jambands.com. It's located at http://www.jambands.com/dec00/columnists/zzyzx.htm l [jambands.com... but you probably knew that]. I'm pasting it here, but the lameness filter didn't like my ASCII art. Go to the orginal if you want to see that.

The Hanukkah Fun Pack

What is Hanukkah?

Hanukkah (also spelled Chanukah, Hanuka, and pretty much any other way you can arrange h's, a's, n's and k's to make that sound) commemorates a military victory over the Greek empire some 2400 years ago. After the Maccabees (aka "The Good Guys") defeated the Greeks (aka "The Bad Guys"), they went to light the everlasting light in the synagogue. Despite having only enough oil to last one day, somehow the light remained lit for the entire 8 days that it took to get some more.

Why Should I Care?

Beats me. Never a major holiday, Hanukkah only really took importance in the 19th century. Frustrated with hearing their kids whining about not getting any Christmas presents, people noticed a holiday located conveniently close to Christmas. Not only was the timing helpful but, unlike most Jewish Holidays, this one didn't even require you to dwell on your failings for 10 days, or do a sundown to sundown fast, or eat all of your meals outside, or not eat bread for 8 days. In fact, this one could even be described as fun. Rabbis poured over the Talmud, figuring that having a fun holiday must be against Jewish law somehow. They were pursuing an investigation over a digression inspired by some 15th century debate over whether killing a snake that wandered into your tent on the Sabbath counted as "work," when someone reminded them of Purim. While Hanukkah is enjoyable, it doesn't hold a candle (that's a little holiday humor there, laugh ok?) to Purim - what with the story involving oral sex and rampaging hordes of angry Jews, the encouragements to go out and get drunk, and kids given noisemakers and told to be really loud and annoying.

Wait a second! You said "fun." Is there any actual enjoyment here?

Well kind of. The celebration of Hanukkah revolves around three things - fire, grease, and gambling.

Fire: The most ritualistic aspect of the holiday involves lighting a menorah for 8 days. No menorah was included in this Fun Pack because:

(1) They tend to be expensive.
(2) If you knocked over the Menorah and burned down Concur, everyone would end up blaming me most likely.
(3) There's an annoyingly complicated special way that you have to light the candles.

Despite their absence here, Menorahs do provide many happy memories. For example, there was the time when my parents left the house, leaving me in charge of the menorah lighting. I then decided to show some basic candle tricks to my brother (including the "flaming ball of wax" trick). Ok, when they got home, I did have some questions to answer - such as, "Why is there wax all over this table?" - but any excuse to play with candles is a good thing.

Grease: Since one of the major parts of the Hanukkah story involves oil burning longer than it should, an aspect of celebration involves eating food fried in oil (traditionally potato pancakes, but I like to push this rule). How often can you say, "I'm eating these Jo-Jos for religious reasons." Eight days of Onion Rings and Mozerella Sticks. That's my idea of a holiday.

Gambling: This is the biggie. You may have noticed many tops inside this package. These are known as dreidels. Each side has a Hebrew letter on it. The letters are the first letter of each word in the phrase "A Great Miracle Happened Here." While some people question whether misestimating the amount of oil you have really qualifies as "great miracle" - it clearly doesn't match up well with - say - the birth of a savior - the phrase does sound better than "A New Measuring Device Was Needed Here."

The way the dreidel works is simple. You start out with a pot of M&Ms or Gelt or something in the middle. You spin the dreidel and see what side comes up.

If gimmel comes up, that means Get... you get the entire contents of the pot.

If hey comes up, that means Half... you get half of what is in there.

If nun comes up, that means Nothing... nothing happens.

If shin comes up, that means Shit, I have to put one back.

I thought about being a dreidel hustler who would wait until the pot got really big and then say, "No, you must have misheard me. THIS one is gimmel," when I spun. Instead though, here is a little ascii hebrew letter guide:

[Guide removed to satisfy lameness filter]

Look for the tail there for gimmel

Now you can tell this game is made for kids, because it's all about getting lots of M&M's and rarely about giving them back. The question becomes, what do you do with your dreidels when you're sick of candy. One thing is to do stupid dreidel tricks. My favorite is the spin the dreidel on its head trick, but the bounce and then spin trick is also cool... when I can get it to work.

Other games (such as high stakes dreidel gambling and strip dreidel) are to be played at your own risk. Know your limits. If you find yourself dreidelling uncontrollably, please call the Washington State Council on Problem Gambling Hotline number at 1-800-547-6133.

What if I think this whole Hanukkah thing is kind of lame?

See that koosh ball in there? Play with it.

I wrote a column[jambands.com] on jambands.com expressing that mp3 players are liable to be the next medium if they're not destroyed by Congress. A 100 gig notebook size hard drive would give the ability to have 700+ hours of music at 256k. That people would be interested in.

Seriously, I have bought maybe 15 cds in the past 3 years. Three of those were replacements of cds I'd have for years had been remastered, and the rest were by bands that allow me and others like me to freely record and trade their live concerts. Radiohead and U2 are two big name acts that have recently figured out that people who trade their concerts are more likely to buy their albums and attend their concerts than someone who doesn't trade.

Check out the links above, there is something for all tastes. There is plenty of music to be had for the price of your bandwidth and blank CDs.

Burris

Can you imagine bands "open-sourcing" their pieces? Not only would we have access to every music sheet they write on, but they would be giving their "software" out for free. How would they make a living?

Those two bands are the best two examples of the "Jam Band" business model; tour a lot, play a differen show every night, let people record and trade the music; lather, rinse, repeat. There's a whole industry of bands using this model and some are quite successful.

Yes, these bands also sell albums which are not freely distributable, but it is clear that album sales are not a very large portion of their income at all and they subsist almost entirely on live performances. As Public Enemy's Chuck D has said, you can't download the actual artists.

Some bands using the "Jam Band" model also have had radio hits and became _very_ successful, including Dave Matthews Band and Blues Traveler.

Burris

Well, you also have artists signing because it beats flipping burgers or pumping gas, at least for a few years.

Does it beat g33king for a living? Hard to say. I'm in a fusion trio, and all of us are professional geeks. The majority of geeks I know are big fans of music, and a lot of them are musicians themselves.

One of the most exciting prospects of this whole digital music thing is that we can probably find a way to turn our geek knowledge into a living as a musician...

There are a few things that are scaring the crap out of the RIAA at the moment, but nothing scares them more than individually empowered musicians. If I can make a living pressing, marketing and selling my own CDs and live shows, they're screwed.

And nothing in the world would make me happier. Trust me, they'll be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes. :]

The whole piracy issue from my vantage point is legal right vs. moral right -- the RIAA has the legal right to ream the crap out of artists however they see fit, while my own personal support of the artist tends to circumvent the system of making the record companies wealthy.

If I can legally and morally be happy with a system of music distribution, whether it's through downloads or just pressing and selling my own CDs, then my goals are accomplished and I'm not giving scumbags like David Geffen another penny.

The major advantages to signing to a label are promotion, which doesn't exist 90% of the time, although it's usually an incentive to sign, and distribution.

The distribution chain that these large record companies have is phenomenal -- try getting a local band's CD sold in Tower Records or Strawberries nationwide. But what is the return on investment? Artists don't seem to think about that.

Selling a million copies of a CD and getting less than a penny from each of them gets you $10k. Selling only 1000 CDs at $10 apiece and keeping $9 from them gets you $9k. Which seems more realistic to you?

The remaining issue is marketing for live shows, which is where, up to this point, most bands make the majority of their money. This is usually the argument that I see remaining after people have refuted the idea of making money from signing with a major.

But really, how much marketing of live shows do you think is done by the larger record companies? It's usually minimal, if there is any effort at all. The effort is usually put in by the club you're playing at, whose interest it is to pack the place.

There are also growing communities like Jambands that are aiding immensely in marketing, and a lot of smaller management firms are growing rapidly and aiding smaller acts in getting national tours and recognition -- get a few gigs opening for the right bands and you're in. Hone your act, get in front of the right crowds and you're off and running.

So it's up to you and me, the individual bands/artists to take this fucker by the reins and ride. Innovate both musically and economically. Chase your dreams, kids.

The Dead started a movement in music that is very similar to the open source movement, and readers of /. would be wise to know about it as it offers parallels to the software industry. The model is now being followed by literally hundreds of "jam bands" (see JamBands.com).

The model is simple: play lots of concerts, improvise so every concert is different, allow people to freely record and trade your concerts. You get free publicity, and if you are any good people will buy tickets for your shows and buy your albums.

Another band called Phish used this same model. Without any radio or MTV play and no hit singles this band now regularly sells out 20,000 seat venues. They just sold 75,000 tickets for the new years show where they were the sole performers (they could have sold more but the place wouldn't hold any more). These guys are all millionaires and people trade their MP3's all day (and DAT's and CD-R's through the mail too). They have an official policy regarding MP3 trading since they even have their own MP3's available for download for fee!

You wanted to know how many other bands encourage the trading of their music, look at this, the bands that allow taping list. Note that these are bands that allow fans to record their live concerts and trade the recordings. Some of the big bands on this list are Perl Jam and Dave Matthews Band. There are many other small bands that are using MP3 for publicity that don't explicitly allow fans to record the live concerts.

This site, Sugarmegs is devoted to trading MP3's of live concerts and is fully condoned by all of the bands. The bands traded are Grateful Dead, Phish, and many other bands that allow trading of their music under the same model such as Widespread Panic, Medeski Martin & Wood, Moe., and others.

There is a lot of free music out there and it's not all hippie jam bands. There are many jazz artists that allow recording and trading such as Branford Marsalis, John Scofield, Medeski Martin & Wood, Bill Frisell, and Ken Vandermark. Almost all bluegrass is tradeable and some of the major bluegrass festivals have special sections for people to setup microphones (Merle Watson Memorial Bluegrass Festival, for instance).

There is a movement in free music (and subsequently free promotion of artists!). Much like free software, not all copying of music is copyright infringement!

Burris

• the Etree - high quality (no lossy compression) Internet distribution via volunteer FTP sites
• SugarMegs Audio - modem-friendly; everything from RealAudio to mp3 and Shorten