Jack White has followed in Prince’s footsteps, unveiling a subscription service to exclusive videos, streaming concerts, pre-sale tickets, podcasts, vinyl, and other secret future benefits from the Third Man Records roster. What’s more, White also sort of cribbed the term for Prince’s mysterious archives, naming his new venture “The Vault.”
Here’s how it breaks down: For $7 a month, you get the videos, pre-sales, pay per view live concerts, and a bunch of online stuff from the artists on Third Man Records, including the Dead Weather, Raconteurs, White Stripes, Dex Romweber, and more. The second “platinum membership” option is really what makes this a Jack White project: For $20 a month (3 month minimum), you get all of the above features plus one limited 12” LP, one 7” single, and a t-shirt every quarter.
In a funny twist, the Q&A/sales pitch basically admits that an advantage to choosing the latter option is that your exclusive vinyl “would at least be an investment plan far more reliable than Wall Street” via Ebay, etc.
It looks like Radiohead, Trent Reznor, and Prince have a new famous member for their “We ‘Get’ The Internet” club.
What makes Radiohead’s “pay-what-you-want” for In Rainbows release still so relevant this far down the road is not that it was the first of its kind (it wasn’t) or that it changed the mainstream music industry (not IMO), but that music fans, bloggers, journalists, Wall Street, and famous musicians can’t stop talking about it. That’s an especially fitting feat because, as Jonny Greenwood said at the time, the point was to question the value of music, not quantify it.
Most music stars err on the side of praise for The Radiohead Model, but a few, including Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and The Cure’s Robert Smith, have come out in support of less popular bands that could possibly not sustain themselves by letting their non-existent fan base choose whether to pay or not. Now that he’s in good company, trance producer and one of the few surnamed DJs Paul Van Dyk has chimed in on the subject in an interview with Time Out Chicago’s Dani Deahl (via The Daily Swarm):
Bands like Radiohead who basically made millions and millions and millions of dollars back in the days when there were no download sites. They can easily say “Hey whatever, we don’t need the money,” just put it out there. It’s such an easy gesture for them. But at the end of the day those young talented bands, they have to live off every single dollar they earn. They can’t just give it away. And this is something where I believe that thing that Radiohead did was absolutely counterproductive for developing music and for any artist in the world. And was very selfish. But the thing is, you just have to see the bigger picture. It’s not like they just give their music away for free to somebody. I mean, they don’t need that money, fair enough, so why not. But in return, what would have been a fair gesture is saying, “Okay you pay for my record but I don’t take the money, I give it to the young bands, I give it to whoever supports interesting new music.”
Don’t want to get too opinionated ‘round here, but I do agree that rock stars should become (some already are) the new patrons of the arts. For more, including how he thinks illegal mp3 downloading is “a major crime” akin to stealing from “a bakery shop,” click here.
Ben Gibbard’s engagement to Zooey Deschanel was the real-life indie nerd equivalent of Brian Krakow dating Angela Chase on My So-Called Life. So it’s no wonder Gibbard and fellow Death Cab for Cutie member Nick Harmer are seizing the moment to talk some trash about Angela’s ex Jordan Catalano. I mean, Jared Leto.
“Jared Leto and his band 30 Seconds to Mars — he’s acting the part,” Harmer told The Big Takeover (via Spinner). Then Ben Gibbard chimed in with more specifics: “He’s a professional actor in music; so there’s no way to feel any sincerity about his position as a musician.”
Gibbard went on to say that Leto’s schtick as the guyliner-donning frontman of 30 Second to Mars could be boiled down to simply “acting what you think a rock star should act like.” Harmer adds that Leto’s fans then believe the stunt, saying to themselves, “Oh, that’s what rock stars do: they wear eyeliner.”
Don’t they realize that real rock stars ride their bicycles in circles and take pictures for the yearbook? Nick Harmer does end the rant with some praise for their pasty indie brethren: “I think Jack White — he’s savvy as all get out with the media. But he also just has this magic around him. Conor Oberst is another one for me. They’re able to kind of be one inside of the other.”
Anyway, at least a new Death Cab video/song dropped today amid these squabbles.
We posted a while back about Nine Inch Nails’s Trent Reznor’s efforts to help Eric De La Cruz, a Nevada man who is uninsured and desperately in need of a heart transplant (background here). Reznor sent out a call, and fans answered in droves, raising nearly $900,000 toward De La Cruz’s medical expenses.
In response to his efforts, Reznor has been presented with “proclamations from the US House of Representatives (three Congressmen in total), the US Senate, the NYS Governor, the NYS Senate, the NYS Comptroller and the Suffolk County Legislature,” according to an email sent to theninhotline.com from fan Mike Caplice.
Caplice’s email continues: “These proclamations were in honor of the generous work done by Trent and the entire NIN Community to help #Eric. You can see a picture of the presentation as well as pictures of the procs/citations themselves at my twitpic account.
“I wanted the entire NIN community to see that their efforts have been recognized by all levels of government. I’m an 18-year fan of the band who has two parents with cancer, and have seen just how flawed the US Healthcare system is. I thought this was a really special moment for all of us who have seen the band and the community evolve over the years into a really positive and powerful force.”
Click here for a video of Caplice surprising Reznor with the proclamations at a New York NIN concert, and click here for updates on De La Cruz’s progress.
Most people think Jack White’s first turn as a feature film actor was in Cold Mountain, opposite then-girlfriend Renée Zellweger, but diehard White Stripes fans know that his first role was in The Rosary Murders, a 1987 Donald Sutherland starring drama, where a 12-year-old White (née John Gillis) played an altar boy. A fitting role, considering he was bound for a stint at a seminary in the future. Well, a much more interesting early John Gillis acting gig happened between those films and it’s set to appear at the Comic-Con International-Independent Film Festival later this month: Mutant Swinger from Mars.
The film, written and directed by Michael Kallio, was pieced together back in 1997/98 for a mere $22,000, according to this White Stripes fansite. Though White only has a minor role as Mikey in the sci-fi spoof, there’s a rumor floating around that he will be appearing in a videotaped introduction for the film’s Comic-Con showing.
I haven’t seen the picture yet, but the trailer is pretty funny and there’s definitely a late-90s Detroit vibe going on. Watch the trailer below (or jump to 1:05 for a brief clip of 22-year-old Jack and his bowl cut hairdo):
Reunion rumors surrounding The Smiths pop up at least a few times per year, but one rumor that the band were offered, according to “a published report,” $75 million to play 50 shows has refused to die out with the others. In an interview with Xfm London, Johnny Marr confirmed that there was some truth to all that talk about insanely lucrative reunion offers. Sorry to put it “all over the internet,” Johnny, but here’s the quote:
“I think we were offered 50 million dollars for three… possibly five shows,” Marr said. “It’s pretty obscene, it’s pretty gross.” Sure, Coldplay can get $2 million for a gig at the Emirates Palace, but $50 million for a handful of shows is higher than even the rumormongers could dream up.
The Smiths are definitely not reuniting, but Marr adds that “It’s absolutely nothing to do with money.” Well that’s kind of obvious at this point.
First off, I want to thank TwentyFourBit readers for sticking with us, as we have only been posting stories not covered elsewhere of late. I’ve been sick for a month now, but seem to be recovering (no, I didn’t catch the “swine flu” from Jens Lekman). Our news bits have been popping up on some of our favorite sites, however, so I’m very thankful to those folks as well. We’ve got a new contributor and some really cool news we’re saving for later this week, but for now check out the big stories from today that are making the rounds:
Quincy Jones wrote an awesome piece on his personal and professional history with Michael Jackson. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes info on the making of Thriller, and more. Thataway. Meanwhile, Joe Jackson is seizing the moment to promote stuff.
It’s a sad day for print media, as Vibe Magazine has closed up shop. ?uestlove tweeted about the news: “damn. i dont know how to react to this vibe thing being over. i purchased every issue since its inception. i was proud of it actually. it wasn’t like rolling stone was going to put wesley snipes or d’angelo on the cover.”
A documentary on Auto-Tune aired tonight on PBS. Check out a clip here or read an interview with the inventor of Auto-Tune here in which he uses the “guns don’t kill people…” defense of his popular invention.
Two more bits, representing the extremes of unimportant and significant news from today, respectively: Joan Jett made Kristen Stewart cry and Pirate Bay was bought for $7.7 million.
Stay tuned tomorrow for a funny Jack White story and more music news by real live musicians.
Cheers,
Peter
Whenever Tom Waits takes on an acting role, he can basically pick any famous director he wants. So it’s no wonder Waits has chosen films directed by Francis Ford Coppola, Jim Jarmusch, Terry Gilliam, and Robert Altman to show off his more than capable acting chops. This year, Waits has been getting rave reviews for his turn as Mr. Nick (aka Satan) in Terry Gilliam’s star-studded The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus (Heath Ledger’s final film). In a post on the film’s official site, Gilliam reveals how easy it was to get Waits to join the cast and Waits muses on how he got into character as the devil.
Gilliam says it all started when he passed a friend’s script on to Waits, adding, “He turned down my friend, but asked ‘have you got anything going for me?’ And I said ‘well, there is this interesting part in my new film…’ and that was it. Just like that. I said, ‘I’d got a part’ and he said ‘I’m in.’ Before he’d read the script.” Just like that, then.”
On how he got into character, Waits says he didn’t try to take on 2,000 years of history. “How do you play the devil?” Waits asks. “How do you play an archetype that large, that deep in history? I finally realized that I was just going to have to play it myself; it’s my devil. It’s the way I play the devil.”
In case you haven’t been following, Bono and the Edge’s Spider-Man musical is actually happening. Evan Rachel Wood stars as Mary Jane Watson, Alan Cumming is the Green Goblin, and the lead role has yet to be announced, but rehearsals have begun and this random (even Larry Mullen thinks so) U2/Broadway mashup is actually going down. At least we get this funny bit: Rolling Stone reports (via The Playlist) that Evan Rachel Wood was on the Jimmy Fallon show the other day and she dished about a workshop for the musical where she told Bono to lighten up.
“I got to do the workshop, sit down with them playing guitars going over the music, and I was making jokes going, watch by the end of this, I’ll be telling them what to do,” Wood said. “And by the end I was! I was like, Bono, I know you want to save the world and everything, but in this song you’re talking about poverty and world hunger and it’s Broadway, can we lighten this up a bit, can I just not sing this? And he was like, [in Irish accent] ‘You’re right, I know, we have to try, we have to try.’”
Poor, Bono. These independent women just won’t leave him alone.
