drivearoundthistown

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How Music Works: Salon interview with David Byrne

Salon: You share the budget, the advance, what you spent every step of the way. So if they give you $225,000 for “Grown Backwards” and you’re paying musicians and engineers — how much is left for you, how many copies do you need to sell? Why is important for people to understand the economics of art? Because it does seem incredibly important for people to realize that the people who do this have to get paid — and not just the people at the top, whose name is on the record, but all the people who are playing on it and working with it and publicizing it and producing it and engineering it. And if they’re not getting paid for it these things don’t get made. We live in sort of a time of free. Is that part of your thinking in laying out the economics of it? Showing people that free is dangerous?

DB: I think when I was laying it out I wasn’t trying to make an argument against the “free” culture idea. I think I was really kind of doing it for myself and my fellow musicians. I was really just thinking: let me lay this out in a way – let me see if I can understand it. And let me see if I can lay it out so that my peers or emerging musicians might have a clue as to how these things affect their decision making. There’s implications if you do this; there’s a consequence if you do this; this is going to bite you in the ass down the line. All that kind of stuff. And then I realized that even for people who are not musicians or in bands or whatever, who don’t deal with those exact same things, the idea that these kinds of considerations – the financial stuff – has consequences. And it affects what we hear and how we hear it, or whether or not we hear it.

Salon: How concerned are you about a culture of “free” that makes it harder and harder for people to –

DB: I’m kind of concerned.

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'When I woke up this morning the guards came to me and said, 'What do you want for breakfast?' And at midday, 'What do you want for lunch?' In the evening they said, 'What do you want for dinner?' " All day long he said they kept saying, "What can we do to help you? Can we get you stamps to mail your last letters? Can we get you water? Can we get you a phone to call your friends and family?" I'll never forget that man saying ... "More people have said, 'What can I do to help you?' in the last 14 hours of my life than ever did in the first 19 years of my life." I remember standing there, holding his hands, thinking, "Where were they when you were 3 years old being abused? Where were they when you were 7 and being sexually assaulted? Where were they when you were a teenager and you were homeless and struggling with drug addiction? Where were they when you came back from war struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder?" And with those kinds of questions resonating in my mind, this man was pulled away and executed.

Bryan Stevenson on NPR for his book Just Mercy 

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Ex Hex * Beast

Ex Hex keeps it simple and it sounds so good. Ex Hex is my artist of the weekend.

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#regram of Emma Watson being a real life Hermione Granger with UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon #HeForShe

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One of the biggest and earliest wins for fandom can be credited to a single shrewd nerd girl. In 1968, Trek superfan Betty Jo "Bjo" Trimble learned that NBC was planning on canceling the new show Star Trek, which wasn't doing as well as expected after two seasons (at the time, shows that didn't make it to three seasons didn't get reruns and tended to fall through the cracks of TV history). Together with her husband, John, she organized a massive grassroots letter-writing campaign that rallied fans across the country to demand the show be saved. Obviously, the crusade worked, and thanks to third-season syndication, Trek has become one of the longest-running and most lucrative — not to mention one of the most socially progressive — franchises ever.

"The Most Feminist Moments in Sci-fi History" from The Cut

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"I am used to it, but it never ceases to surprise me how easy it is to leave the hybridity of the city, and enter into all-white spaces, the homogeneity of which, as far as I can tell, causes no discomfort to the whites in them." — Teju Cole, Open City

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The Harold Song (Deconstructed) - Ke$ha

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It was only then that I realized what I had let myself in for, and only then I realized how bloody thick I had been not to have predicted it. It would seem that the combination of elements - woman, desert, camels, aloneness - hit some soft spot in this era’s passionless, heartless, aching psyche. It fired the imaginations of people who see themselves as alienated, powerless, unable to do anything about a world gone mad. And wouldn’t it be my luck to pick just this combination. I was now public property. I was now a kind of symbol. I was now an object of ridicule for small-minded sexists, and I was a crazy, irresponsible adventurer. The world is a dangerous place for little girls. Besides, little girls are more fragile, more delicate, more brittle than little boys. ‘Watch out, be careful, watch.’ ‘Don’t climb trees, don’t dirty your dress, don’t accept lifts from strange men. Listen but don’t learn, you won’t need it.’ The threat. And so she wastes so much of her energy, seeking to break those circuits, to push up the millions of tiny thumbs that have tried to quelch energy and creativity and strength and self-confidence; that have so effectively caused her to build fences against possibility, daring; that have so effectively kept her imprisoned inside her notions of self-worthlessness. And now a myth was being created where I would appear different, exceptional. Because society needed it to be so. Because if people started living out their fantasies, and refusing to accept the fruitless boredom that is offered them as normality, they would become hard to control. And that term ‘camel LADY.’ Had I been a man, I’d be lucky to get a mention in the Wiluna Times, let alone international press coverage. Neither could I imagine them coining the phrase ‘camel gentleman.’ ‘Camel lady’ had that nice patronizing belittling ring to it. Labeling, pigeon-holing - what a splendid trick it is.

Tracks by Robyn Davidson, x (via drivearoundthistown)

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I’m a feminist, just by the virtue of the fact that I believe in equal rights for everyone.

-Daniel Radcliffe, actor from the famed Harry Potter series, calls for more roles in the top positions in the entertainment industry to be made available to women. (via halftheskymovement)

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BUY HIGH QUALITY DOWNLOAD: http://shop.wearetheacid.com/ Pre-order the album 'Liminal' here: http://smarturl.it/Liminal Buy The Acid EP here on 12" Vinyl: http://smarturl.it/b3by5t

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MS MR ✖ Bones 

Dig up her bones, but leave her soul alone

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people who actually use the word bisexual

Anna Paquin x o

Joe Lycett x o 

Alan Cumming x

Carrie Brownstein x

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The surest way to make an honest romantic comedy? Don’t rely on men to make it, the way endless studio efforts have. 'It’s notable that both ‘Obvious Child’ and ‘Laggies’ are female-written, female-directed films about female stories that star females.'

Indies Invent a New Breed of Romantic Comedy

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Mardy Bum (With string section) - Glastonbury 2013

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Bloomsbury Children’s Books revealed the complete set of new Harry Potter covers today! They’re so beautiful. Prisoner of Azkaban is my favourite, if you couldn’t tell. They’re published on 1st September in paperback and hardback, and illustrated by Jonny Duddle. 

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"Sorrow" by The National // Self-Portrait and Self-portrait with a Bandaged Ear by Vincent Van Gogh