Case in point: Did you know I’ve put up four new songs for your listening pleasure since last we spoke of it here? It’s true! You can get all the dirty details at johnnyhighground.com.

And don’t tell anyone, but I’m currently working on a new tune that will be very, very different. That’s all I’ll say. FOR NOW.

This one goes in the “so simple I’m annoyed I didn’t think of it” file. When I moved and consolidated my iTunes library, there were some tracks that iTunes just absolutely refused to locate on its own — even though it moved everything itself. Yeah, awesome, right? So I’d been manually scanning my library to see what tracks weren’t linking properly to the source files. But I had a couple hundred files that I just could not track down. I looked for scripts to do it (Doug’s AppleScripts was a great source), but the best I could find was one that made a text file of the missing tracks; helpful, but not as efficient as it could be for actually fixing the problem.

I finally stumbled on this post at iLounge which made the whole thing almost stupidly easy. Here’s the gist: You make a regular playlist and put all your music in it (you’ll want to right-click and select Add to Playlist rather than trying to drag or you’ll be there all day). If iTunes can’t find the source file, it won’t put the song in the playlist. So then you just make a smart playlist with the criteria Playlist > Is Not > [the playlist you just made]

Voila, all yer dead tracks in one place, ripe for the locatin’. Simple, eh?

In the mid-’00s I sort of fell off that wagon, though, due to work schedule and time constraints and not knowing anybody in San Francisco I could play with.

But now, dammit, I’m getting back on.

I’ve redesigned and relaunched johnnyhighground.com, and put a hefty chunk of my older material up for sale on iTunes. With the exception of three tunes recorded with a live band in ’01, these are all songs I’ve written, performed, and recorded entirely by myself.

And that’s just the beginning. First off, those same songs should be up for sale at Amazon any day now. Once that happens, I’ll probably put the rest of my current catalog up for sale as well. And then: new tunes! I’ve got a backlog of songs that I’ve been dying to record for years, and I’m trying to trick myself into getting motivated to put them down for posterity at last.

I’m hoping to get some live performances in, too, one of these days. But it’s been years since I took the stage, so I plan to start small.

Anyway, I’d love it if you’d head over to johnnyhighground.com and check out the songs. And it would mean a great deal to me if you’d help spread the word about this musical endeavor. The great thing about having sat on these songs for so long is that the tools for spreading the word about new music have gotten much more widespread and powerful since I’ve been away. And you’ll find lots of those tools at the site.

I look forward to hearing what you think.

Second Coming
(with apologies to William Butler Yeats)

The dough-faced anti-Christ
is oozing crocodile tears,
building an army of the lowest of the low.

They wave their grease-stained placards
scrawled with badly misspelt fears,
a new religion with a one-word creed:
just, “No.”

Now the best lack all conviction, while the worst
are shouting fictions on T.V.

And what rough beast slouches across the screen?

See, I love music games. I mean, I really love them. This is in part because I love music in an embarrassingly wide variety of genres, and in part because I’m a musician myself (I sing and play bass, guitar, and drums, in case you didn’t know). So these games sort of hit me right in the sweet spot.

Anyway, I’ve been spending the last few months putting this site together. This is a solo project; I’m doing all the writing, design, coding, PR, administration… Suddenly I’m very tired. Where was I? Oh yes: This site is all me. But I’m also hoping it’ll be useful to other fans of music games, who can keep up with the latest news and releases, and find lots of new music in The Vault.

So there it is, my Big Secret Project: Plastic Axe — Music games for music fans. Go have yourself a look around, and let me know what you think in the comments (over there rather than here, please).

Ahem, sorry. Anyway, the reason I called you here today is to let you know that Mac|Life has posted a how-to I put together many months ago, which aims to provide tips for home recording with GarageBand. You Mac owners may enjoy it — and for anyone on Windows machines, I tried to make these tips as general as possible, so many of them can be applied to any recording situation.

So I hope you enjoy them.

People often ask me for recommendations for things like games and books and music and other things we humans need to survive. So a couple weeks back, I spent an afternoon putting together a huge collection of lists of my favorite games, music, movies, books, and even food…and then promptly forgot to mention it here on the main page.

So, hey, lookie there in the left-hand sidebar! It’s a Favorites page! It has all sorts of recommendations of stuff I happen to enjoy a whole lot. I hope you’ll find them useful. If not, feel free to leave a comment on that page. As long as you’re okay with me telling you how wrong you are.

First, a definition: In the article, Arrington says, “Let’s put the law aside for a moment – this post is about doing the right thing.” OK, so the question Arrington is actually asking is, “Is stealing music ethically wrong?” That’s helpful, because it makes the answer particularly easy:

Of course it’s wrong, you fucking idiot.

But Arrington — an erstwhile corporate attorney — disagrees. He spends the whole article setting up a lot of really awesome hoops and jumping through them all to arrive at the conclusion that it isn’t. Here are some of my favorite gems from the article:

“People who are older than say 30 think that downloading music is ethically wrong [because] they remember that music is something that you pay for. … But if you’ve discovered and come to love music in the last decade, I don’t see how you can be expected to know when listening to recorded music is ok, and when it’s wrong.”

Oh, I see: If you can’t figure out if stealing something is wrong, that means it’s OK to steal it.

“Just a couple of years ago anyone listening to free streaming music anywhere on the Internet was violating copyright and subject to being labeled unethical. Today, its no problem.”

Oh, I see: If something is easy to take, that means it’s OK to take it.

“If you live in China, you can download music legally from Google for free.”

Oh, I see: If something is legal in China, that means it’s ethical. Let’s celebrate this revelation: Lead sundaes for everyone!

“Over the last few years the line has blurred to the point where there really isn’t any line any more. We can listen to free, on demand streaming music at MySpace Music and lots of other sites. It’s ok to do it at MySpace, but it’s wrong to do it at Project Playlist, just because the right contracts aren’t in place?”

Um. Yes. Just like it’s OK for my friend to borrow my car when I tell him he can, but not to take it without my permission. Is this concept really so hard to grasp?

Look, you really need to read the whole article. Arrington dances around the issue with lots of insinuations about the recording industry and record labels and all the Big Bad Boring Wolves of the music industry, including one particularly awesome segment where he claims that the labels should be paying him for his stealing of their music. But nowhere in this article — not once — does he mention the people who make the fucking music he’s stealing. There’s a very good reason for that: Once you introduce musicians into the equation, all his carefully balanced hoops fall like festive dominos.

Because musicians are the people who are trying to make a living by creating and selling music. Sure, there are other revenue streams open to musicians: touring, merchandise sales, royalties, etc. But without ownership of their own music, all these things fall apart. If stealing music is OK, why should radio stations have to pay when they play it? Why should ad agencies have to pay to license it? Why should record labels have to pay the artist for the right to put it on a disc and sell it, for fuck’s sake?

Perhaps this shockingly ignorant argument can be better illustrated with a different profession. Let’s say you’re, oh, I dunno, the editor of an awkwardly named technology website. And let’s say one day you decided you wanted to collect all your editorials into a slick e-book, complete with commissioned illustrations and bonus material. Now let’s say you wanted to let people read the material of the entire book for free on your site, but you wanted to charge a buck or two for the deluxe edition, for those who wanted to download it to their Kindles and whatonot.

You’re saying it’s ethically fine for me to pirate a copy of Internet Ramblings of a Fucking Idiot just because some of the material is available for free on your website? And not only that, but you should actually be paying me for the privilege?

No? Because you should have the right to earn a living from your talent, hard work, and clear intelligence? Hmm. I wonder how that’s different from musicians.

Oh, that’s right — it’s not.

Update: OH GOD THE IRONY!

Thing the First: My weekly column about music games is up over at Green Pixels. We did something a little different this time, reorganizing the column as a collection of links to let you dig into the catalogs of the different artists. I think you’ll find it more useful than previous columns.

And Thing the Second: Don’t worry, fans of office-related destruction, I’m still working on the Ziff-trospective, Part III — I had some things that needed tending to over this past week, but I’m planning to have it up over the weekend or early next week. Thanks for your patience.

I was doing a search for statistics on the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises for my weekly music-game column over at Green Pixels, and for some reason stumbled on this article about late-’80s/early-’90s punk band Pennywise. I was pleased (if a bit surprised) to learn that the band is still together and performing, but the part of the article that really amused me goes like this:

The band’s punk credibility was boosted by some Sex Pistols-like antics. During an appearance on the syndicated call-in radio show “Loveline,” [guitarist Fletcher] Dragge intentionally vomited on strait-laced co-host Dr. Drew. The interview took place at alternative rock station KROQ-FM in Los Angeles in 1995.

What the article does not tell you is that a day or two later the band played a show at Peabody’s Down Under in Cleveland, Ohio. I happened to be in Peabody’s legendary green room while they were telling the story to a friend of mine — it’s possible my band was actually opening that night, but I honestly don’t remember — and was as aghast as you probably were the first time you heard this story. But then Fletcher did something that in some ways is even worse.

Apparently, after the appearance on Loveline, he had been smoking a cigar. And apparently, he decided it would be a good idea to put the cigar out on the back of his own hand. (I cannot see Fight Club without thinking of this story.) And apparently, before going on that night, he decided it would be a good idea to pick the scab off the burn and draw the Pennywise logo on the wall of the room.

In his own blood.

And make it three feet high.

But this was just one contribution to the art on the wall, which included a nearly mural-sized bit of abstract art courtesy of Natalie Merchant, and another large drawing from Eddie Vedder. Lemme tell you, Peabody’s back in the ’90s was the shit. They had this spectacular booking agent who had an almost scary sense of when a band was about to get really big. Nirvana and Pearl Jam both played there right before grunge exploded. Jane’s Addiction played there when nobody had any idea who they were. The Offspring played there right as “Come Out and Play” was hitting the radio. It was uncanny. Maybe it was the size of the club — big but intimate, I think the capacity was around 450, which is just right if you ask me. Maybe it was the great sound system and sound guy. Maybe it was the location in the Flats, Cleveland’s longstanding (but now largely tame) neighborhood of debauchery. But this place was something special.

Technically there is still a place in Cleveland called Peabody’s, but it’s not remotely the same. (And a quick peek at their website indicates their days of booking interesting up-and-comers are pretty much over.) Luckily the memories aren’t going anywhere. I even have a nifty memento to mark my own experience with the club: On Ani Difranco’s live double-album Living In Clip, there’s a shot of her sitting on a battered couch in front of a wall with writing all over it. (I’ve tried to find a version online, but can’t seem to.) Above her head is the name of my band, and the bands of some of my good friends. That’s Peabody’s green room. It was legendary.

It’s gone now.

So I agree with the article up to a point. But then the author starts dishing out gems like this one:

What happens to the music itself when the way to build a career shifts from recording songs that ordinary listeners want to buy to making music that marketers can use? That creates pressure, subtle but genuine, for music to recede: to embrace the element of vacancy that makes a good soundtrack so unobtrusive, to edit a lyric to be less specific or private, to leave blanks for the image or message the music now serves.

I’m sorry, Mr. Pareles, but that is just so very much bullshit. Anyone who would seriously allow a thought of marketing to affect their songwriting would already have been writing commercial-friendly music. It’s not going to “corrupt” artists because corruptible artists are already corrupted.

If launching a “music career” is your goal, you’ll begin by making choices that are in line with that — see “…songs that ordinary listeners want to buy…” — which means you’re going to look for some method of getting your music out in front of as many ears as possible. The idea of the incorruptible artist who suddenly “sells out” and begins writing radio-friendly crap in order to make a buck — it’s a myth. Either the success was an accident, and a truly independent artist got “discovered” by a hip ad exec, or the artist was in some sense working toward that goal (or one like it) all along.

Understand me: I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. Writing music for money is no less noble than, say, writing game reviews for money. The whole idea of commercial music being ipso facto bad is something I find faintly amusing. I’m just saying, if you sell out, you were probably sold out to begin with.

Agreed? Great. Now, on to what I really wanted to talk about. Check this shit out:

It took Guns N’ Roses 15 years between albums to complete “Chinese Democracy,” certainly long enough to receive worldwide notice when the album was released this year. But instead of letting the album arrive as an event in itself, the band licensed one of the album’s best songs, “Shackler’s Revenge,” to a video game that came out first. Metallica fans have complained that the band’s new album, “Death Magnetic,” sounds better in the version made for the “Guitar Hero” video game than on the consumer CD, which is compressed to the point of distortion so it will sound louder on the radio. But they take for granted that the music will end up in the game in the first place.

OK, dude: If you think licensing music for Rock Band or Guitar Hero is in any way similar to licensing music for a Subway commercial, you officially have no friggin’ clue what you’re talking about. These music in these games is focal, not incidental. It’s the reason for the game. The songs sell the game, sure, but they sell the game in exactly the same way that they sell the albums they come from. The music-rhythm game is a new method of music appreciation, not some sort of nefarious new avenue of commercialism. To imply any different is to display a very special sort of ignorance, not to mention the almost admirable amount of gall necessary to parade that ignorance in the Times.

More and more, music games are growing into a new music delivery system, no more “commercialized” than radio or MTV or iTunes. In fact, I could argue that experiencing music through a music game offers a substantially greater appreciation for the song, because you’re experiencing it from both the perspective of the listener and the perspective of the performer.

An example: I was never a huge fan of the Who. I don’t mean that I disliked them, I just didn’t have much of an opinion about them. But then I happened to download the Rock Band version of “Who Are You” for a story on Green Pixels. And suddenly I understood why they’re considered one of the greatest rock bands of all time. Once I experienced the song from the artist’s perspective — felt the weird, organic structure and timing of Pete Townshend’s guitar work, the barely controlled chaos of Keith Moon’s drumming — I got it. It gave me an appreciation for the band that an infinitude of C.S.I. spinoffs could not.

Listen well: Music games are a vital new frontier, a way for the music industry to redefine and revitalize itself in the age of the MP3. They’re a way for listeners to experience new music in a powerful new way, to connect with artists in an entirely novel fashion and perhaps even discover a talent (or at least drive) to produce art of their own.

To try to make that seem like a bad thing isn’t just ignorant, it’s irresponsible. New York Times, you should know better.

Bring on the change.
Let’s keep it simple, now:
Don’t confuse your wants with your needs.
Believe in love,
forsake your greed,
and give away what you want to receive.

Little Plastic Castle

People used to make records,
as in a record of an event:
the event of people
playing music in a room.
Now everything’s cross-marketing
it’s about sunglasses or shoes
or guns or drugs; you choose.

We walk every morning in silence
Past the mills on Whetley Lane
Where the lights went out for the very last time
And they never came on again
The spokesmen all shred crocodile tears
In the glory of the News at Ten
But the proudest eyes are long since dry
And they’re never going to cry again

Dear Friend, I salute your courage and I toast to your health
And I wish you all the luck in the whole wide world
May you never be broken like they say you will

For example, did you know that I was the first person ever to write about the original Guitar Hero? It’s true — I was down at RedOctane doing a completely unrelated story and they asked if I wanted to see the game.

I did. And I got to write about it before anyone else in the world. I still think that’s pretty neat.

Anyway, that’s not what I came here to talk about. I came to talk about my review of Guitar Hero World Tour, which has just gone up at Green Pixels. Head on over and check it out, won’t you?

Let’s fight about my choices. But over there, not here.