This is very cool. If this proves to be true it’ll terrify the record companies as their cover has been blown on what they’ve been getting away with for years.

Last week, Radiohead released their latest album, In Rainbows, for free, asking fans to pay whatever they liked for the full length downloadable work. To me, the writing on the wall was clear. Radiohead wasn’t the first to give away their music, and they won’t be the last. I declared the era of free music to be upon us and the album as a saleable item dead. Many thought I was right.

A week later, the “sales” numbers for In Rainbows are starting to leak. By my calculations, Radiohead made out with a ton of money.

According to a source close to the band, In Rainbows has “sold” approximately 1.2 million copies as of October 12th. In comparison, that’s more albums sold in the first week than Radioheads’ last three releases combined. According to an Internet poll of 3,000 people, the average price paid for In Rainbows was $8. If these numbers are accurate, Radiohead has made close to $10 million in one week on this album alone.

From now on I stick to finding a band that’s already running that I only need to depend on me learning the tunes so I can start playing.

——– Original Message ——–

Subject:	The Band
Date:	Wed, 29 Aug 2007 20:05:48 +0000
From:	*****
To:	curtis, *****, ****, ****

Hey everybody,

I have decided to call it quits on the R&B band. I have too many other musical responsibilities right now to fuss with it.

I’m sorry that this group never really got off the the ground, and thank you all so much for the time spent on the tunes and at rehearsals.

Curtis: Thanks for everything…..the rehearsal spot, and all your dedication

[snip]

‘ “I was just enamored with Vinnie. Back in the Frank days, his whole approach, when I heard Vinnie play, his phrasing - it satisfied something in my heart. It was easy to get certain rhythmic gratification from straight up-and-down-type players. Playing grooves, alternate grooves here and there. But Vinnie just came in and threw a wrench into the works. The guy is an alien. He was able to touch buttons with his sense of polyrhythms that no one has ever done. Frank’s band was the perfect soundboard for that. I started transcribing his playing for The Frank Zappa Book. I mean, there’s five to six different notations for the hi-hat! [laughs]

I’ll tell you a really great Vinnie story. He’s one of the most amazing sight-readers that ever existed on the instrument. One day we were in a Frank rehearsal, this was early ’80s, and Frank brought in this piece of music called “Mo ‘N Herb’s Vacation.” Just unbelievably complex. All the drums were written out, just like “The Black Page” except even more complex. There were these runs of like 17 over 3 and every drumhead is notated differently. And there were a whole bunch of people there, I think Bozzio was there.

Vinnie had this piece of music on the stand to his right. To his left he had another music stand with a plate of sushi on it, okay? Now the tempo of the piece was very slow, like “The Black Page.” And then the first riff came in, [mimics bizarre Zappa-esque drum rhythm patterns] with all these choking of cymbals, and hi-hat, ruffs, spinning of rototoms and all this crazy stuff. And I saw Vinnie reading this thing. Now, Vinnie has this habit of pushing his glasses up with the middle finger of his right hand. Well I saw him look at this one bar of music, it was the last bar of music on the page. He started to play it as he was turning the page with one hand, and then once the page was turned he continued playing the riff with his right hand, as he reached over with his left hand, grabbed a piece of sushi and put it in his mouth, continued the riff with his left hand and feet, pushed his glasses up, and then played the remaining part of the bar.

It was the sickest thing I have ever seen. Frank threw his music up in the air. Bozzio turned around and walked away. I just started laughing.” ‘