Muffin Bottoms

OK so while we’re having hot discussions about Spotify, let me say a few things this way: 

If you refuse to listen to me over at Spotify (I totally understand by the way. They only pay me .003 of a penny each time you stream a song there, that’s nearly criminal) you can get my songs completely free many places. I make a tiny bit of money at some of these when you listen for free, and other places I get nothing, but racking up “hits” helps me feel heard, to be sure. 

http://www.reverbnation.com/modemandguitar

and

http://www.soundcloud.com/atizine 

are some good places to start. 

Some of my electronica work is over at https://soundation.com/group/SoundDesignAnswers/tracks?page=2

And if you want to actually buy some of my songs, you can still go to amazon or itunes. When you listen to snippets before buying there I get a tiny bit too. Perhaps more than at spotify, I’m not actually sure. I haven’t checked lately. 

And frankly, the best place to listen to my songs where I’ll recover many pennies instead of .003 of a penny is over at TikTok. 

Yes, the place mainly driven by teenagers and preteens dancing the Carlton, Orange Justice and the Jerk. Maybe if we’re lucky they’ll start reviving the Locomotion, Electric Boogaloo, Charleston and Jitterbug or something right? 

I bumped into the whole tiktok thing when I didn’t even have a username and password there because one month I was looking over my revenue stream and saw that I made 7 cents for about 10 streams of my Frybread, Swedish FolkSong and Follow the Drinking Gourd. When people choose to use a song of mine in one of their 15 second videos, then the people watching the video hear the song, and some extra “crumbs” are sent our way. I had to ask around, but quickly found out that when I printed my first commercial CDs and opted for open distribution of digital publications too, that included places like TikTok, Deezer, Napster, etc. 

https://www.tiktok.com/music/Swedish-Folk-Song-6859339400266909697

https://www.tiktok.com/music/Fry-Bread-6859339392826247169

That’s like 3/4’s of a cent per stream. Something like 250% more revenue than Spotify gives. Yikes! 

Yes, tiny but it all adds up eventually right? 

So that brings me to my next point. I’m fine with Joni Mitchell and Nils Lofgren joining others in turning their back on Spotify corporation. They’re big and sacrificing hundreds of dollars when they’re making low millions or high hundreds of thousands of dollars a year is just a little pinch compared to what us smalltime indy artists would face if we joined such a boycott, buynot or cancelban, right? 

So for the mean time, I’m staying at Spotify just like I’m staying everywhere else. I’m actually hoping this current fiasco will widen to a more discerning eye on each and every place there’s injustice in the Music Industry. Because it really isn’t fair. And Spotify is just one of the perps. 

I remember when Spotify first began and artists all over Europe and Asia were making their living honestly by giving people links to their Spotify pages. 

https://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/artist/Marco+Capelli+Frucht/a/albums.htm

There was about a one-year period where Spotify was blocked in the United States until the major labels could figure out how they could participate without going bankrupt. Well did these labels even think about how to keep all the rest of us from heading for bankruptcy while we waited? While we watched all the other streaming sights go down and down to match what Spotify was starting to do as it entered the EEUU market? Ouch. I remember that well. No one except the Taylor Swifts, Jason Aldeans, Neil Youngs of the world could figure out a way to make more than say 10 dollars a month or 10 dollars every three months out of that part of the game. 

So when Taylor Swift had her little spat with Spotify over her collection, I thought, “ooh, maybe that will benefit us a little too.” 

It didn’t. 

And now I think the same thing out loud about today’s growing fiasco, “ooh, maybe…” 

And maybe it will, or maybe it won’t. Remains to be seen. So far Neil Young has accomplished one major change over at Spotifylandia. They’re now going to put disclaimers on hate radio from the right AND the left. That’s a start. 

Now one rhetorical question I’ll have to ask. 

Can they keep paying someone like Joe Rogan a 100M a year when they lose 2B a month? or 2B a week? Yikes. 

Of course after tightening their belts, and then seeking out all the other wide margins they can exploit around the world, maybe they’ll throw an extra penny or 3 to some of the rest of us “little guys,” right? 

A guy can dream. 

Ooh, very stressful but oh, so fulfilling.

Over the past month and a half I took 4 core classes in 8th grade science from approximately 2/3’s failing to more than 80% passing across something almost resembling bell-shaped curves we used to come to know and love. They were a little heavy on the B’s and C’s but much better than all those F’s so I feel pretty good about the whole thing.

I bridged the gap between when a teacher quit and a new certified teacher could come in.

So what helped me accomplish this? Everything from Sahana Srinivasan’s brand new “Brainchild” videos to Little Steven Van Zandt’s teachrock org curriculum such as the “sound breaking” episodes.

https://cptv.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/fuzz-tone-soundbreaking/fuzz-tone-soundbreaking

I found clever ways to show them that music cuts across all of the Gardner multiple intelligences and relates directly to the concepts they had to focus on like Kinetic and Potential energy.

Now I don’t want you to think it was all fun and games and Romper Room. There were some grueling issues of classroom management to overcome such as repeating the same “Do Now” requirements every day and moving on from the fact that more than half the students at any given time refuse to do anything they’re told to.

I doubt any one of those 4 core classes will resemble a “perfect” Harry Wong classroom but I have to be honest with you, those “goals” only worked perfectly in the 1990’s. These days even award winning K thru 12 classes have constant issues throughout the day that leave teachers wondering just who “Teach Like a Champion” and “First Days of School” were written for. Certainly not the 2019 classroom anywhere in THIS nation.

Good pointers, great guidelines. Be all to end all? Not even close.

But I digress. Long story short, I saw some totally disengaged students become enthralled with science experiments and final project essays and posters, and learning in general. I have to hope some of them now see themselves as scholars or life long learners. At the very least, I think most of them now realize that the scientific method is a great way to be wrong and then figure out what’s right instead of some scary monster to procrastinate away from or fight.

Why We Clash

by Marco Capelli

We clash you and me.
First I thought because you are so different, you see.
But then after all the dust cleared
And the shrapnel was swept up into neat little tins
And all our respective allies’ bodies were policed up by loved ones—
Dogs and crows and old men with metal detectors and headphones
Closing the circle in little by little hoping to find a scrap or two,
And the grandmothers all weep over tea, saying

I Told You So: See? Nothing Was Accomplished Again;
Who’s Gonna Feed The Kids.

For the 432nd time,
It was then I realized:
The reason you and me,
We used up every bullet we had
Not because we’re so different, you see.

Because we’re mirror images, aren’t we?
Like Isaac and Ishmael maybe,
But who needs analogies when we’ve each got th’other?
We do kinda look alike, huh?
Besides all the acting, and talking
And walking like each other.

But enemy, my friend.
Can I ask you one question?
What kind of Creator lets us miss each other that many times?

Originally published in volume 4 number 5 of  Autumn Leaves magazine.