Floor/Ceiling/Ionic/Iconic
No answers about the valuation of music blowing in the wind here....
For a long time, the discussion about recorded music has been about the floor.
We know it well: The vaguely disquieting shadow world of free file sharing, which operates (still!) in the dusty basement of the Internet; the cluttered, disorganized sites maintained by Spotify and the other streaming services. These are killing floors of a sort, governed by specious algorithms that reward conformity and are openly contemptuous of art while delivering the “product” at harsh audio levels that beg the ear not to listen. They thrive because of Joe Rogan. Kidding/not kidding! They thrive because once upon a time, the unwitting consumer said Yes to free – an act that obliterated commonly held notions of art’s value. And sent the ecosystem of recorded music into a strange and mournful freefall.
On July 7, music people got a glimpse at the outline of a ceiling. On that day, the only existing copy of Bob Dylan’s re-recorded version of “Blowin’ in the Wind” sold at auction in London. For $1.7 million dollars. The producer of the recording was T-Bone Burnett, the esteemed multi-Grammy winner whose new company, Ionic Originals, has developed a method for recording vinyl acetates – the one-off test pressings used in the first vinyl era – that capture audio in breathtaking detail and don’t degrade over time.
As Burnett explained in a fired-up interview in Variety, the motivation is nothing less than a reset in the valuation of music. “This really started because recorded music has been commoditized to zero over the last 20-30 years. Because we work in an age of mechanical reproduction, musicians have had to accept the definition of the value of their music from the government, from corporations, from technologists, from record companies, from streamers. Well, in this case, we have taken matters into our own hands, and we control the means of production and we control the copyright. We’ll be able to explore: What is the value of a song?
This endeavor borrows inspiration from the high-end visual art market, from the promise of exclusivity associated with NFTs, and from that one-copy-only Wu-Tang Clan 2015 double album, Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which sold to Martin Shkreli for $2 million and was then seized by the Justice Department when the pharma mogul got nailed for securities fraud.
Unlike the solo version on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, the new “Blowin’ in the Wind” features Dylan, now 81, with a full band, including Greg Leisz on pedal steel guitar. It was recorded in 2021 during the post-lockdown period when touring was still impossible; those who’ve heard it say that Dylan sings his original melody (a surprise, given his penchant for improvisation) and is in clear voice. Some have commented that the lyrics – which ponder unknowable metaphysical questions, lament injustices and observe the transitory nature of life – take on added resonance in the new version.
Burnett told Variety that Dylan recorded other well-known original songs during the sessions, and that other artists have signed up to do similar projects. “With any luck,” Burnett said, “this is the way I’ll spend the rest of my working life, doing these beautiful one-of-one pieces of high art.”
At one point, interviewer Chris Willman asks Burnett about cheap copies – the audio equivalent of phone snapshots of the Mona Lisa. His response: “You’re right, there are snapshots of the Mona Lisa. But the apocalypse, the sonic catastrophe, that we’re facing is that all music for two decades now has been distributed at such a low level, of an MP3 or a stream, except for a couple of higher definition streams. But an MP3 is the sonic equivalent of a Xerox of a Polaroid of a photograph of a painting. It’s that far removed from what you actually see when you see a painting. So this piece of work we’ve done here, if people hear it, I want them to hear it the way we made it sound. I want them to hear it at full force.”
Still, Burnett acknowledges that his Ionic Originals are, by their nature, not intended for mass consumption. “We are making art. Music is an art. Recorded music is an art. This is not for the mass audience. The mass audience has told us what they want: they want music for free. If the audience has trouble with what we are doing, then they have to check themselves out.”
Along with that comes a nagging thought: Making audio recordings at this level is expensive. On both the production and consumption sides, the Ionic approach is concerned with an elite sliver of the market: To draw those high bidders, the artists need to be highly visible elite superstars, and the songs they select will probably be super-well-known hits. Which, in its way, is just another version of the Spotify algorithm that lavishes dollars on Taylor Swift while the vast majority of indie artists run around chasing scraps on the dirty floor.
So don’t hold your breath for an Ionic Original recreation of this wonderful and improbable track from 1971, featuring saxophonist/flautist Charles Lloyd collaborating with Brian and Carl Wilson, Mike Love and Al Jardine of the Beach Boys. It’s called “All Life Is One” and it comes from a completely different time on Planet Earth.
Why yes, we have a fancy digital suggestion box. Share your favorite Underloved/Overlooked records here: echolocatormusic@gmail.com.