*Hippies.TV Tonight - SOUTH BY DUE EAST 2008 - First Look
*WEEKEND MUSIC CALENDAR
*NEW JACK HIPPIES - Performing live in April!
*ESSAY FROM LEFSETZ - The MySpace Deal
*ESSAY FROM BILLY BRAGG - The Royalty Scam

MArlo, Roger, Mikey and I have still been living SOUTH BY DUE EAST 2008. I've finally finished capturing all 62 hours of videotape to the computer, divided into 3 or 4 gigabyte files by artist and camera, and we've begun giving out audio and video to our volunteer editors and mixers.

Some of the ruff footage will be on Hippies.TV tonight and a tightly compressed version is online for download at www.southbydueeast.com/video/SXDE2008firstlook.wmv today.


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Hippies.TV Tonight
SOUTH BY DUE EAST 2008 - First Look
Comcast Cable Channel 17 - 10pm Fridays
Also - online now!
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This is a ruff collection of clips without mixed sound, featuring performances by Guy Schwartz & The New JackHippies, Z-Rocks, Al B, Big Al Bettis, David Sha, Fahl & Dahl, Tommy Dardar , James Reese Project, Miles Ahead, LL Cooper, Jambolism, Mike Blas, DR King Cobra & The Texas Dub Crusaders, Tressie Seegers, Adrian & The Sickness, Mary Allen & El Gato Negrito, The Defenestration Unit, Herschel Berry,, House Of Moist, PJ Flowers, Romeo Dogs, Paula Maya, Karega Ani, orange is in, The Hates, Dune, TX, Sweet City Action, Happy Anarchy, de Sangre, Chaz Nadege, Leslie Newman, Johnny Smith, and The McKenzie's.

Guy Schwartz & The New Jack Hippies will perform live 3 times in Houston in April, all free shows or  benefits for good causes -

12APR - FREE PRESS HOUSTON WESTHEIMER BLOCK PARTY
                12pm at Avant Garden (formerly Helios, Mausoleum)
19APR - 420 Benefit for Houston NORML
                 8pm at  LAST CONCERT CAFE
19APR - Benefit for Freddie Everitt
                 10pm at The FIREHOUSE

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FROM BILLY BRAGG
The Royalty Scam
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LAST week at South by Southwest, the rock music conference held every year in Austin, Tex., the talk in hotel lobbies, coffeeshops and the convention center was dominated by one issue: how do musicians make a living in the age of the Internet? It’s a problem our industry has struggled with in the wake of the rising popularity of sharing mp3 music files.

Our discussions were brought into sharp relief when news reached Austin of the sale of Bebo.com to AOL for a staggering $850 million. Bebo is a social-networking site whose membership has risen to 40 million in just two years. In Britain, it ranks with MySpace and Facebook in popularity, although its users tend to come from a younger age group.

Estimates suggested that the founder, Michael Birch (along with his wife and co-founder, Xochi), walked away with $600 million for his 70 percent stake in the company.

I heard the news with a particular piquancy, as Mr. Birch has cited me as an influence in Bebo’s attitude toward artists. He got in touch two years ago after I took MySpace to task over its proprietary rights clause. I was concerned that the site was harvesting residual rights from original songs posted there by unsigned musicians. As a result of my complaints, MySpace changed its terms and conditions to state clearly that all rights to material appearing on the site remain with the originator.

A few weeks later, Mr. Birch came to see me at my home. He was hoping to expand his business by hosting music and wanted my advice on how to construct an artist-centered environment where musicians could post original songs without fear of losing control over their work. Following our talks, Mr. Birch told the press that he wanted Bebo to be a site that worked for artists and held their interests first and foremost.

In our discussions, we largely ignored the elephant in the room: the issue of whether he ought to consider paying some kind of royalties to the artists. After all, wasn’t he using their music to draw members — and advertising — to his business? Social-networking sites like Bebo argue that they have no money to distribute — their value is their membership. Well, last week Michael Birch realized the value of his membership. I’m sure he’ll be rewarding those technicians and accountants who helped him achieve this success. Perhaps he should also consider the contribution of his artists.

The musicians who posted their work on Bebo.com are no different from investors in a start-up enterprise. Their investment is the content provided for free while the site has no liquid assets. Now that the business has reaped huge benefits, surely they deserve a dividend.

What’s at stake here is more than just the morality of the market. The huge social networking sites that seek to use music as free content are as much to blame for the malaise currently affecting the industry as the music lover who downloads songs for free. Both the corporations and the kids, it seems, want the use of our music without having to pay for it.

The claim that sites such as MySpace and Bebo are doing us a favor by promoting our work is disingenuous. Radio stations also promote our work, but they pay us a royalty that recognizes our contribution to their business. Why should that not apply to the Internet, too?

Technology is advancing far too quickly for the old safeguards of intellectual property rights to keep up, and while we wait for the technical fixes to emerge, those of us who want to explore the opportunities the Internet offers need to establish a set of ground rules that give us the power to decide how our music is exploited and by whom.

We need to do this not for the established artists who already have lawyers, managers and careers, but for the fledgling songwriters and musicians posting original material onto the Web tonight. The first legal agreement that they enter into as artists will occur when they click to accept the terms and conditions of the site that will host their music. Worryingly, no one is looking out for them.

If young musicians are to have a chance of enjoying a fruitful career, then we need to establish the principle of artists’ rights throughout the Internet — and we need to do it now.

Billy Bragg is a songwriter and author.


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BOB LEFTSETZ
The MySpace Deal
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If this had happened even one year ago, it would be considered a big deal. But at this point, with iMeem streaming music, with music available free, with major labels having less power than ever before, it merits little more than a shrug.

Now Mark Zuckerberg may have been revealed to be a barely pubescent money-hungry twerp who doesn't really care about his users, but you've got to hand it to him, Facebook's software is light years ahead of MySpace's. MySpace is barely tolerable. It loads slowly and you're assaulted with a bizarre combination of content added by site owners, users and the service itself, which heretofore has only cared about advertising. MySpace may not be a Detroit auto company, but Facebook is definitely Japanese, and Apple is a combo of BMW and Toyota, the best running and best built. And home penetration of Macs is now at 21% (http://apple20. blogs.fortune. cnn.com/2008/ 04/01/analyst- apples-us- consumer- market-share- now-21-percent/). Turns out the public does care about usability and functionality, and so far Apple has been the only company to deliver this in the music sphere. Every Mac comes with iTunes. In order to beat Apple a competitor has to deliver better software. MySpace is not that competitor. Hell, Apple beat SONY!

Furthermore, social networking sites are trendy. MySpace has peaked. Who knows where surfers will go next. All that's clear is that the major labels will show up long after the peak, with lawsuits, after an extended period of nail biting. I mean give the labels credit for getting a share of MySpace's streaming revenues, but is that really the future, low-quality streaming on the Web? When even the straight business press is talking about the iPhone becoming the new laptop? When the 3G iPhone is right around the corner? How about a deal with AT&T to stream tunes on 3G iPhones, then I'd care. But getting in bed with Rupert Murdoch as a solution to dealing with Steve Jobs is like making a deal with Irving Azoff because you can't get what you want out of Cliff Burnstein. The devious Rupert and Irving always end up winning for themselves. Can't the labels see this?

With Live Nation inking the old superstars and it almost impossible to break new acts in any profitable fashion, where does this leave the major labels? Clive can work contest winners and Jimmy can put high concept acts in Vegas, but the vast middle...they' re completely flummoxed. They don't know how to aggregate the journeymen, spread the word online, build slowly and try to make a pile of money at the end. The oldsters are just looking for a rocket ship, to take them to outer space, to deliver diamond sales. Shit, the original rocket ship even gave up on music. MTV moved on to reality programming. Can't the major labels look into the future and find a reasonable place to live?

But no, they want land grab 360 deals. Give me more not because I do more, but because I'm making less. And I'm gonna give you a smaller advance. And I can't get you on the radio...

That's the story here. How the major labels are ill-prepared for the future. Life is going to go on, people are going to make music, but are the majors going to be cut out of the profitmaking?

The major labels made music free, they refused to license Napster.

The major labels are keeping music prices artificially high. They want a buck a cut when people have iPods with thousands of free tracks. Are they living in an alternative universe?

Even if they sell DRM-less tracks at MySpace, what's the appeal? They're not going to be significantly cheaper than the songs on iTunes, the process, if not hellacious, will be buggy, and then you've got to import the tracks into your iTunes library for syncing, assuming you can figure out how to do this.

Want to beat Apple? Come up with something Cupertino hasn't delivered in a seamless first edition. Come up with insanely great instead of late to the party second-rate. Think of the customer. Think of the act! What act wants their music streamed at a low quality bit rate to the consumer? This MySpace deal isn't a solution, it's a sideshow.

Visit the archive: http://lefsetz. com/wordpress/

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WEEKEND MUSIC CALENDAR
Courtesy of The BluesHound & KPFT-FM90.1
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FRIDAY April 4

    * Anderson Fair – Kimberly M'Carver
    * Armadillo Palace – Brandon Jenkins
    * Baker Street Pub (Rice Village) – Citizen X
    * Baker Street Pub (Sugar Land) – 3 Peace
    * Baker Street Pub (Willowbrook) – The Slags
    * Baker Street Pub (The Woodlands) – Shinolah
    * Big Daddy's Sports Bar (Spring) – Brother2Brother (9 pm)
    * Big Easy (The) – Jabo & the Southside Playboys
    * Big Texas Dance Hall & Saloon (Spring) – Cory Morrow/Will Makar
    * Bogart's – Cecil Shaw
    * Bojangle's (Seabrook) – Mambo Jazz Kings
    * Bugle Boy (The) (LaGrange) – Tom Faulkner & Beth Wood
    * Capone's Bar & Grill – Luther & the Healers (9:30 pm)
    * Cock-Eyed Seagull (Clear Lake) – 98 in the Shade
    * Concert Pub (The) – JD's Throwdown Band
    * Continental Club (The) – Dune TX (10 pm); Grady (11:30 pm)
    * Corner Pub (The) (Conroe) – Shake Russell (8:30 pm)
    * Cypress Saloon – The Pictures
    * Dan Electro's Guitar Bar – Fahl & Folk (7-9 pm); Herschel Berry/Honky Tonk Revival
    * Einstein's Pub (Katy) – Dean Seltzer
    * FBI Rocks #1 – Judith Priest/Brian's Johnson
    * Gravity Bar (Galveston) – Carl Pianosmith (12-3 pm); JD Richards (3-7 pm)
    * Hickory Hollow (Heights) – Bluegrass Solution (7-10 pm)
    * Hideaway (The) – Lounge 4407
    * Howling Coyote (The) – Ezra Charles & the Works
    * JP Hops House – Brian Ashley Jones & Tisha Simeral
    * Katie's Bar & Grill (Bacliff) – Little Stanley & the Executives
    * Last Concert Cafι (The) – The Intersection
    * Magnolia Bar & Grill – Terry Rogers (6 pm)
    * Marguerites (LaMarque) – Southern Accent
    * McGonigel's Mucky Duck – Front Porch Society (5-8 pm); Randy Weeks (7:30 pm)
    * My Bar – Gypsy Train
    * Nutty Bar – Next Level Band
    * Old Quarter Acoustic Cafι (Galveston) – Green Mountain Grass
    * Palmer Club (Texas City) – Down To Earth Band (9 pm)
    * Poor Michael's on The Strand (Galveston) – Counsel
    * R & R Sports Bar (Friendswood) – Level One
    * Red Cat Jazz Cafι – Althea Rene
    * Rowdy Buck's Saloon (Crosby) – Still Broke Band
    * Rudyard's – Penny Royal
    * Sammy's – Faye Robinson & the Midcity Players
    * Scout Bar (Clear Lake) – 20-20/Dawn Over Zero
    * Shakespeare Pub (The) – Erin Jaimes & Her Bad Habits
    * Sherlock's Pub (Clear Lake) – Cracker Jackson
    * Sherlock's Pub (Humble) – Rat Ranch
    * Sherlock's Pub (River Oaks) – The Crisis
    * Sherlock's Pub (Westheimer) – Cross Check
    * Spring Tavern (The) (Spring) – Mike Volsen Blues Band
    * Super Happy Fun Land - The LP's/Tyler Flame and the Ellipsis/Jetpack Black
    * T-Bone Tom's (Kemah) – Ezra Charles & the Works
    * Walter's on Washington – One Small Step for Landmines


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SATURDAY April 5

    * Armadillo Palace – Kenefick
    * Baker Street Pub (Rice Village) – Bad Boyfriend
    * Baker Street Pub (Sugar Land) - Shinolah
    * Baker Street Pub (Willowbrook) – Cross Check
    * Baker Street Pub (The Woodlands) – 3 Peace
    * Big Easy (The) – Jim Suhler & Monkey Beat
    * Bohemeo's – Susan Robbins
    * Bojangle's (Seabrook) – Mambo Jazz Kings
    * Bugle Boy (The) (LaGrange) – Doug & Telisha
    * Cafe Soleil – James (8 pm)
    * Cock-Eyed Seagull (Clear Lake) – Gadget White Band
    * Concert Pub (The) – Fireball
    * Continental Club (The) – Blaggards/The Zydepunks
    * Corner Pub (The) (Conroe) – Randy Pavlock (9 pm)
    * Cruiser's Ice House (Santa Fe) – Down to Earth Band (9 pm)
    * Cypress Saloon – Keith Davis Band/Scott Wiggins Band
    * Don's Park (3332 Sampson Street) - Houston Blues Society Members' Day Picnic (formerly Founder's Day) (2-6 pm; music from Mojofromopolis; food; children's activities)
    * Einstein's Pub (Katy) – The Reds
    * FBI Rocks #2 - Johnny Raygun/The Fight Scene/Forever Miles/Blastula/ Contusion/Colossal/Transense
    * Firehouse Saloon (The) – Eleven Hundred Springs/Doug Moreland
    * Gravity Bar (Galveston) – Carl Pianosmith (12-3 pm); Dave Oates (3-7 pm)
    * Hickory Hollow (Heights) – Pat Gavin & the Buckaroo Band (6:30-9:30 pm)
    * Hideaway (The) – Luther & the Healers
    * Howling Coyote (The) – The Fab 5
    * Java's 213 (Galveston) – jam (8 pm)
    * JP Hops House – Michael Marcoulier & Anthony Klonaris
    * Katie's Bar & Grill (Bacliff) – Slide Effect (9 pm)
    * Last Concert Cafι (The) – The Rafters/Fondue Monks
    * Magnolia Bar & Grill – Stringbenders (1 pm); Fuzzy Side Up (6 pm)
    * Marguerites (LaMarque) – Jeff Griffith
    * McGonigel's Mucky Duck – Jack Saunders (7:30 pm)
    * My Bar – Infinity's Twin
    * Poor Michael's on The Strand (Galveston) – Bourbon Street
    * Pub Fiction – John B (patio)
    * Q Sports Bar (Katy) – Busted
    * R & R Sports Bar – Mark May Band
    * Red Cat Jazz Cafι – Kyle Turner
    * Rowdy Buck's Saloon (Crosby) – Misbehavin
    * Rudyard's – Alpha Rev
    * Sammy's – Faye Robinson & the Midcity Players
    * Sandbar (The) (Clear Lake Shores) – Snit's Dog & Pony Show
    * Sandy McGee's Restaurant (Richmond) – Fort Bend open mic (8-11 pm)
    * Scout Bar (Clear Lake) – Eve 6/Thee Armada/Under the Green
    * Shakespeare Pub (The) – Benny Brasket Band
    * Shanahan's – Color of Fire
    * Sherlock's Pub (Clear Lake) – Cracker Jackson
    * Sherlock's Pub (Humble) – Rat Ranch
    * Sherlock's Pub (River Oaks) – Vertigo
    * Sherlock's Pub (Westheimer) – Adrenaline
    * Spring Tavern (The) (Spring) – Wiseguy
    * Sugar Land Town Square – Ezra Charles & the Works (7-9 pm)
    * Super Happy Fun Land – Translations/J. Andrew Bobbitt/Thomas Ayresol/Track53/Trills/Forests/Black Forest Looking Glass
    * T-Bone Tom's (Kemah) – Navigators
    * Tut's (Conroe) – 98 in the Shade
    * UniTunes Coffeehouse (Emerson Unitarian Church) – Rhett Butler (7:30 pm)
    * Walter's on Washington – The Anchor/This Years Tiger


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SUNDAY April 6

    * Bugle Boy (The) (LaGrange) – Showcase Sunday (1:30-5 pm)
    * Cock-Eyed Seagull (Clear Lake) - CC Rider/Grateful Geezers/Louisiana Boogie/Tommy Dardar Band/Pee Wee Bowen Band/What Is Hip/Texas Johnny Brown/Trudy Lynn/Dean Scott/Groove Kings/Original Soul Brothers/Ronnie Hall & Green Onions/The Revelators/Beth Greenway (memorial tribute concert/ benefit for Charlie Greenway; 1-10 pm)
    * County Line Bar & Grill – jam (5-9 pm)
    * Cruiser's Ice House (Santa Fe) – blues jam w/Adam Burchfield (4-8 pm)
    * Gravity Bar (Galveston) – Marc Twyman's One Man Band (2-7 pm); open mic (9 pm)
    * JP Hops House – open mic hosted by T.C. Smythe (6 pm)
    * Katie's Bar & Grill (Bacliff) – jam w/The Amigos (7-11 pm)
    * Last Concert Cafι – jam (12-5:30 pm); Fahl & Folk (6 pm)
    * Magnolia Bar & Grill – Revelators (1:30 pm); Green Onions (6 pm)
    * McGonigel's Mucky Duck – Tommy O'Sullivan (6 pm)
    * Meridian (The) – Sick Puppies/Dropping Daylight/Saving Abel (Red Room; 8 pm)
    * Mr. Gino's – I.J. Gosey (5-9 pm)
    * Neon Moon Saloon (LaPorte) – jam w/The Bodacious Tata's (6:30 pm)
    * Notsuoh – blues jam/open mic
    * Poor Michael's on The Strand (Galveston) – JD Richards (2-6 pm); jam (8:30 pm)
    * Red Cat Jazz Cafι – Andre James
    * Sambuca Restaurant – Blue Monks
    * Scout Bar (Clear Lake) – Trellis/Sounds Under Radio/Sunset Vail
    * Shakespeare Pub (The) – blues jam w/Spare Time Murray
    * Sherlock's Pub (Clear Lake) – Last Heros
    * Sherlock's Pub (Humble) – Acoustic Villains
    * Sherlock's Pub (River Oaks) – The Underground
    * Super Happy Fun Land – Casa De Chihuahua/The Defenestration Unit/The Delta Block
    * T-Bone Tom's (Kemah) – Dave Nevling & the Blues Kats
    * Warehouse Live - Family Force 5/Ivoryline/The Maine/The Myriad (7:30 pm; The Studio)
    * Woody's Bar (Galveston) – Rick Lee & the Night Owls (3-7 pm)

That's it for now. See you where the live music is!