Dead Elvis was a Irish record label which was active between 1994 and 1999 and put out releases from Wormhole, Rumble, Alan Lambert, The Sewing Room and Jubilee Allstars amongst others. Eamonn Doyle, Marc Carolan, ‘Og’ Crudden and Eamonn Crudden ran the label and Eamonn Crudden recently began posting up songs, memories and multimedia from that time on http://deadelvisarchive.tumblr.com.

The blog is a great resource for reminiscing about the bands playing around Dublin during the 90s but also serves as an insightful history lesson into that period. It all started when Crudden attended the 40th birthday party of a member of one of those bands – Female Hercules earlier this year. “I was prompted to start the blog by the unexpected wave of affection and emotion I felt meeting many of those who contributed in many ways to the quite subcultural scene that Dead Elvis was a part of,” Crudden says.

The reaction so far has been positive. “What has been amazing about the response is the way in which quite a gang of people have started to help me gather material and kind of reconstruct various events of the time,” Crudden explains. “I’m firmly convinced that a lot of the stuff I’m searching out and making available from Dead Elvis bands and their contemporaries is great forgotten treasure.”

Even if you are unfamiliar with the music, the blog’s posts outline an interesting time which involved running a club night called Crush in Fibber Magees, recording in a basement studio in 147 and the various difficulties of running a label without the ease of ubiquitous internet usage. As Crudden says in one of his blog posts accompanying the audio of Rumble’s Chips – Dead Elvis was a “phonecalls from coinboxes and post-office operation.”

“There’s no greater pleasure than gifting music you love to others – known and unknown,” says Crudden”. “It’s so easy now compared to then. We used to wish that we could find a way of giving the music we were recording away. That wish has come true!”

If you have any Dead Elvis-related stories, releases or photos to share, get in touch with the blog deadelvisarchive.tumblr.com or via Twitter @deadelvis_blog.

5 Essential Dead Elvis songs

• Wormhole – Riotman
• The Jubilee Allstars – Better Than I Know Myself
• The Sewing Room – Tidewater
• Rumble – Star Wars
• The Floors – No Excuses

Related archival Irish music links

• http://diyirishhardcorepunkarchive.blogspot.com
• http://bluntrecords.blogspot.com
• http://www.freewebs.com/ringsendblues/
• http://dublinopinion.com/category/great-irish-bands/

Since that time, starting a record label is cool again, judging by the number of music bloggers who are now doing so. In many ways, a blogger starting a small independent label is a simple extension of their modus operandi with the blog – to promote music they are interested in.

Popular alternative Texas-based music blog Gorilla Vs Bear started Forest Family Records along with fellow blogger Weekly Tape Deck three months ago. Far from acting as an MP3-selling hub, the label releases limited vinyl releases from bands they love. So far artists like Cults, Gauntlet Hair and Dent May have been lined up with the first two releases selling out quickly.

Popjustice – the UK pop music blog with discernable taste has struck a deal with Virgin/EMI to launch their own imprint called Popjustice Hi-Fi which will release the Robyn-esque pop of Rosanna in August. There were accusations that Perez robbed his music recommendations directly from Popjustice so it’ll be interesting to see how this UK major label partnership fares.

It’s mostly small DIY blogs though who have gotten in on the physical music-releasing game like BigStereo, My Old Kentucky Blog, White Guys With Beards, Chocolate Bobka (both cassette releases) and Catbird Seat.

Blogs are niche and they know their audiences very well. At the top of the pile, Perez feels the pressure to break acts internationally while the smaller blogs have no such worries. Most of them are selling around 500 copies of each record only. Technology has now empowered them to sell, not just share. It makes competitive sense as well. Many labels sign bands after reading about them on blogs so this just cuts out the middle man, at least at the start of an artist’s career.

Meanwhile, a host of independent music blogs were recently snapped up themselves by the larger and more popular boy in the class, Pitchfork. The Chicago-based influential music site launched Altered Zones, a sister site consisting of 14 blogs who will be highlighting creative and adventurous small-scale new artists on Pitchfork’s dime. It’s an interesting development as rather than try to ratchet up into the mainstream, Pitchfork has gone the other way, appealing to the even more niche group of people who like pychedelic, drone, new-age and lo-fi music. It seems niches really are the new mainstream.

iTunes’ advert spots from five years ago helped launch the career of Feist and others into the mainstream. Corporate patrons have tangible benefits and many more musicians and artists are increasingly comfortable with corporations and brands funding their creativity. Most collaborations are accepted by fans. The exception to the rule, are venerated rock stars whose fanbases can’t marry the blatant commercialism with supposed legendary punk spirit – see Iggy Pop flouncing around for a car insurance company or John Lydon advertising butter.

Despite the uncomfortable relationship between art and commerce, there has been some great examples recently of engaging online campaigns that straddle both successfully. Here are four:

1) The Creators Project – thecreatorsproject.com

A collaboration between Intel and cool bible Vice, The Creators Project kicked off in NYC last month, calling itself “a completely new kind of arts and culture channel for a completely new kind of world.” Basically, this allows the organisers to get in the coolest bands around (M.I.A, Sleigh Bells, The Rapture, Die Antwoord), revered film directors (hello Spike Jonze), art installations and more. Cram them into large warehouse spaces and you’ve got a hot event taking place in London, Seoul, Sao Paolo over the coming months. Even if you can’t make any of the events, the website has tons of original content to peruse and is genuine in engaging the art side of your brain.

2) Three Artists, One Song – converse.com/music
The sneaker company Converse got three disparate artists together in 2008 to make a original song. Julian Casablancas of The Strokes, Pharrell Williams and Santigold all collaborated on a superb track – My Drive Thru which was given aways as a free download on the website. The concept is back for 2010 with rapper Kid Cudi, Vampire Weekend’s Rostam and Best Coast collaborating on All Summer.

3) 8 Songs, 8 Weeks – adultswim.com/promos/201005_kia/

Cult cable TV network Adult Swim released eight singles in eight successive weeks – all quality, from artists steeped in blog buzz like Cults, Washed Out, Black Lips, Holy Ghost! and Madvillain.

4) Dr. Martens is 50 – 50.drmartens.com

Another shoe brand already closely aligned with youth culture, Dr. Martens has asked ten artists like Noisettes, BRMC, The Raveonettes, Dam Funk and The Duke Spirit to cover a cult classic song. An original video is made with a notable video director and the song is given away as for free.

Originally, the enigmatic productions featuring a blonde woman and lots of vague symbolism was purported to be any one of a range of pop stars and musicians: guesses included Christina Aguilera, Goldfrapp, Lady Gaga, The Knife and Little Boots. None of these were correct and while there is no absolute reveal of the artist in question; many observers (myself included) believe the project is the work of Swedish singer Jonna Lee. The songs featured in the videos have become more memorable while the mystery has all but vanished. A commenter on my site Nialler9.com revealed that the single letter title of the most recent videos spell out ‘B-O-U-N-T-Y’ and that a simple internet domain search on the website iambounty.com reveals that that site is registered to Ms. Lee.

It’s a pity that the viral has dragged on so long, as it has inevitably lost interest of the course of the last seven months. A pity too because the most recent song was actually the best thing I’ve heard from the project. You can see all 12 of the videos here.

Another mystery long-awaiting an answer is “whatever happened to Lauryn Hill?”. The former Fugees singer and solo artist whose The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill album was amongst the best of the ’90s has been absent from music for much of the new century and with gig cancellations, erratic behaviour and stalled recording sessions defining recent years. Hill finally broke the silence last week in an interview with NPR in the US where she talked about the reasons for why she stopped releasing music, her voice and a possible return to the stage. You can hear the whole interview.

Meanwhile, anarchic Photoshop-heavy message board 4Chan devised a cunning plan based around teeny bopper Justin Bieber’s upcoming world tour. Bieber is giving fans around the world an opportunity to decide where he performs. The pranksters at 4Chan have rallied around North Korea as the number one country of choice. The ploy has worked with North Korea at the top spot with over 460,000 votes closely followed by Israel. Somehow, I doubt that Kim Jong Il is the kind of guy who dances on his “ronery” to songs like ‘Baby’ but if he is, and he is truly an internet expert like he claims, then it may be ‘Great Leader’ himself who is doing all the voting.

See the final result.

We mentioned the actual Vuvuzela Time website last week (vuvuzela-time.co.uk),  which adds the sound to any website but since then, the web meme possibilities have exploded. There are mobile apps, a vuvuzela radio site (vuvuzela.fm) playing the sound non-stop and without interruption, an endurance test which asks how long you can blow a vuzuzela (bit.ly/wcendurance),  a Twitter feed (twitter.com/the_vuvuzela) – sample ‘BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ’ and much much more.

The sound has become so ubiquitous that even Youtube has got in on the act, unveiling a vuvuzela button which played the sound of the horns over any video. Also, like the Lord of the Rings with Vuvuzelas parody (bit.ly/vuvlotr), there is a fake film trailer which takes its cue from M Night Shyamalan’s The Happening, possibly one of the worst films of all-time has been re-christened The Buzzening and also features in Nicholas Cage’s “No! Not the bees speech” from The Wicker Man remake (bit.ly/buzzening).

Surely though, as a musical instrument, albeit a crude one note one (B flat to be exact) , the vuvuzela has the potential to be included in popular music? Some valiant producers have tried. Boston’s DJ Ghostdad has gifted the world Vuvuzela Beat (http://bit.ly/vuvbeat), a parping techno funk track which manages to be more irritating than listening to oily Ken doll  and Eurodance producer Basshunter non-stop for 24 hours.

The most salient recorded effort thus far comes from UK dancehall’s Serocee and Rukaika Russell (bit.ly/soundvuv), who wisely chose to keep any vuvuzela samples low in the mix while using the horn as a symbol for global celebration.

Winner in the music stakes though, is an actual Vuvuzela Orchestra from South Africa who mix brass and plastic horns so that there is more on offer than a one note drone. Their performance (http://bit.ly/vuvorch), which was uploaded to Youtube showcases their ability to mix proper South African funk with panache while still incorporating the din of a vuvuzela. All together now – ”BZZZZZZZZZZZZZ BZZZZ BZZZ BZZZZZZZ”

Venerable geek bible Wired recently had a similar attempt in crowdsourced music - http://bit.ly/wiredsong. Provided with a bass, drum and guitar track, readers and the community at Indabamusic.com – an online remix and collaboration site, were given the month of May to record the best song they could with the materials provided. Many artists collaborated and the results are interesting, if a tad bit generic. Wired plans to extend the crowdsourcing concept by asking readers to pick a winner, which will then be remixed too, which may answer the age old question – can you turn dung into dollars, or more accurately, a few thousand online streams?

Devo have based the entire concept of their first album in 20 years Something For Everybody on crowdsourcing through marketing, but have filtered the concept through their own brand of humour. Over the last few months they’ve given an entertaining presentation at a music convention, chosen their tracklisting via focus groups and have changed their trademark energy dome hats to a light blue colour after the result of a survey.

Of course, all this blatant marketing is ripe for a ribbing, so the band have also produced a five-part fake reality documentary (http://bit.ly/devodoc) which does just that, and makes them look a little bit cooler in the process. In the first episode, the band meet their label Warner music to discuss the album and the result is cringeworthy from both sides.

Finally, crowd-sourcing is at the heart of a Popmatters.com feature in which 100 music writers are asked the question  “If an eager young writer cornered you and asked ‘What’s the best advice you could give me?’ what would you have to say?” (http://bit.ly/writeword). The resulting answers are of course, dizzyingly varied and contradictory but it makes for fascinating reading, both for aspiring young writers and readers alike.

You may have had the misfortune of seeing US reality TV “personality” Heidi Montag’s online tape. No, not a sex tape as you might predict but an audition tape. The video uploaded to Youtube shows Montag firing guns at targets after saying to the camera: “This is for you Michael Bay”. The video is her public audition for the replacement role of Megan Fox in Transformers 3. It’s unlikely to get her hired but it has spawned a parody site transformers3auditions.com with Ashton Kutcher, Ben Kingsley and hundreds of members of the public making their own jokey auditions.

In the free downloads department this week, State.ie are giving away a free label sampler from Ireland’s best independent label at the moment Richter Collective. The label with a DIY spirit is home to a glut of Ireland’s best guitar-heavy bands like Adebisi Shank, The Redneck Manifesto, Enemies, Worrier, BATS and more. Grab the 15-track sampler.

If you’re in a festival mood, or more specifically, a European electronic festival mood, you’ll know that Sonar takes place in Barcelona this weekend. If you’re not there you can still take advantage of Warp Records’ download store Bleep.com’s exclusive MP3 giveaway. The site has given away eight (mostly) unreleased tracks from UK artists playing the festival including Broadcast, F**k Buttons, Hudson Mohawke, Roska and King Midas Sound.

For more festival anticipation or for the seemingly thousands of Irish gig-goers who travelled to the same city for Primavera Sound 2010 last month, the New York radio station WFMU has archived hours of live broadcasts from the festival including sets from Major Lazer, Gary Numan, The Slits, Van Dyke Parks and Pavement.

Finally, if you still need another festival hit, the always brilliant NPR in the US are hosting complete live sets from last weekend’s Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee. In great sound quality, you can hear full sets from She & Him, Dan Deacon, Norah Jones, Regina Spektor, LCD Soundsystem and many more. It seems NPR have a live set from every band who played so there’s hours of listening to do.

Enter – Shaved Bieber – a browser plugin designed to remove all mentions of the words “Justin” and “Bieber” from web searches, sites and even pictures. A simple install results in an eraser-like effect. Where the word “Bieber” once was, a solid block of colour now appears. It’s a silly little add-on from the same person, Greg Leuch, who brought us Lowercase Kanye – an add-on designed to let you read Yeezy’s blog in non ALL-CAPS demented form.

As you can imagine, Shaved Bieber wasn’t looked upon kindly by Bieber’s most-obsessive fans, who call themselves “Beliebers”, and Leuch has posted many of the rants and mails he has received as a result at shavedbieber.tumblr.com.

Some of the correspondence was obviously written by fans in a heightened sense of emotion. “What’s next?,” writes Kelly. “Are you going to blow up a federal building with a daycare [facility] in it cause the sound of the children’s laughter gets on your nerves?”. Others are delusional: “If you say anything else about my boyfriend I will find you!”, written in Kanye-style all-caps of course.

Others yet resort to threats involving guns or accuse him of being a “hater”, envious, and so on until that inevitable accusation in internet commentary rears its head once more and the whole thing jumps the shark. “What you are doing is going back to World War II all over again,” writes Swiss 15-year old Alex. “Hitler wanted to erase Jews from society – you want to erase Justin Drew Bieber… Are you really ready to become that next bad guy that everyone i against?” That missive was followed by a mention of a “Biebercaust” and this whole silly plugin idea gets taken to seriously by the Beliebers.

Still, another Twitter user showed the potential of Shaved Bieber, after tweeting that her parents threatened to install Shaved Bieber “if my grades don’t come up.” Parents, you now have a new skill.

If you’re like me, you have shelves of CDs and DVDs in your house which you’ve been adding to regularly over the years. Recently, I’ve been finding this vast library of music and movies to be redundant thanks to our increasingly on-demand world.

Last weekend, I wandered into a local HMV and spent 30 minutes surveying the aisles of CDs and DVDs. A few years ago, I would have snapped up something to bring home with me but these days all I see on the shelves is plastic stuff. Cheap, finite, locked-in ugly formats which I have no desire to own anymore.

I now buy music through eMusic and iTunes digitally while satisfying my craving for ownership of a physical product by purchasing big beautiful vinyl albums in Dublin record shops like Road Records and Tower Records, which often come with download codes. I’m not alone. A recent report indicates that vinyl sales rose 5% last year worldwide and digital sales make up 30% of all music purchases.

Lately though, the concept of owning entertainment has become less of a desire and you can blame, yes, you guessed it – the internet. Legal services like Spotify, Youtube, Netflix – the on-demand US movie streaming service are making vast libraries of CDs and DVDs in homes feel a bit primitive and dusty. Now, If you want to listen to a Pixies’ first album Surfer Rosa, you open Spotify (18% owned by major labels). If you want to watch a film or catch up on a TV show, you download it via a Torrent or Rapidshare etc. Be it right or wrong, this is how people are consuming media.

In our always-on world, we will increasingly demand things instantly and physical formats will lose out as will content owners, which explains why IRMA’s plan to warn 50 illegal downloaders a week on Eircom’s internet service started last month.

It is a futile fight. The entertainment industry cannot currently provide us with the services we crave as they too busy protecting their current revenues so they threaten us – their customers even when we do the right thing. Buy a DVD to watch and you get up to 10 minutes of unskippable piracy warnings and trailers before the main feature. A nice way to reward the buyer.

What will it take for a shift towards innovation and new services? As internet connections improve, as 3G networks propagate, we can potentially have access to the entire world of entertainment in our pocket. Even dodgy Scooter albums.

Indiecater have spent a year putting together their World Cup compilation: Fast Forward together. 32 bands from across the world were asked to write a song about a country participating in the tournament in South Africa. The result is eight groups with four teams each with songs by artists like The Very Most, The Dirty 9s, Grand Pocket Orchestra, At Last An Atlas, Hunter-Gatherer, Spirit Spine and Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin. The entire compilation can be streamed or downloaded for €5 at http://www.indiecater.com.

Meanwhile, music bloggers continue to bare the brunt of the music industry ambivalence towards their operations. After the IMRO licence situation in Ireland last month, Google is at it again – deleting the popular Scottish music blog The Pop Cop from its Blogger service. Jason who ran the site also runs the Music Alliance Pact (MAP) project wrote about the situation on http://musicalliancepact.blogspot.com.

Jason received a DMCA violation notice that alleged he was infringing on copyright law on a two-year old post which contained two songs from the I’m Not There soundtrack. It was the fourth violation he had received in three years. The tracks were removed when the first violation was received in 2008 but the notices continued to be sent. As a result, Google shut down the blog and has not allowed Jason access to three years of his archives. Three years of work just gone. Jason is asking people to email support@blogger.com asking Google to allow him to access his content.

“It feels like I’ve popped out to the shops to buy a loaf of bread and come home to discover the locks on my front door have been changed,” says Jason. “However, my possessions are still inside and I want them back before they get torched.”

Jason also points out that Google have not told him specifically which posts violated their terms of service so he has no way of defending himself, nor have they currently responded to his emails. Fellow Scotsmen, Franz Ferdinand tweeted their support for The Pop Cop expressing their disappointment in its untimely demise.

Take the example of PJ Ligouri – a 19 year-old Youtuber who has built up a community of followers who eagerly await each video he uploads to the channel. While his videos share a lot of the characteristics of videologging (vlogging) i.e. – a guy or girl in their bedroom talking to camera, the real creativity comes in the form of PJ’s self-taught skills in animation and special effects in packages like Final Cut Pro, Photoshop and After Effects, which have given his videos an extra and unique element.
Youtube first featured his videos on the front page in 2007 and he has since uploaded over 60 videos to the channel with over 31,000 Youtube subscribers and 2.25 million video views in total. His latest videos are particularly impressive. A Story About A Girl (below)/A Story About A Boy sees PJ apply his skills to live video creating live storytelling out of thin air with hand gestures.

An equally creative individual, but in the A/V mashup realm is 21-year old Perth artist Pogo whose mix of Alice in Wonderland has had over received over 4 million views with over 11 million views of all videos in total.

With rumours that a major movie studio is interested in getting him on board to do official mashups of their films, Pogo has since made remixes of films like Terminator 2, Up and The King & I.

Like PJ, Pogo’s skills have developed into live action mashups with the most recent video focusing on the sights and sounds of his mother’s garden. Up next, an A/V mashup of the entire city of Johannesburg in South Africa. You can watch his videos here or get more info at his official site – pogomix.net. Youtube, not just for cat videos.

The idea is simple. Pick a public place, the more random the better, lie down horizontally with your hands by your side, straight as you can and get someone to snap a photo. Upload to Facebook or Twitter, and it becomes a part of the hottest social networking phenomenon since sleeveface (augmenting a vinyl record cover with your own body – see sleeveface.com).

Facedown seems to have captivated the Irish internet-using public in the past week but it has been happening for a few years. Memorable facedowns include a young man lying in the cheese counter in Tesco, an ambitious Limerick resident balanced precariously on a large road sign and others on top of goalposts, the pavement outside a fast food restaurant, a Gardaí car, atop a garage roof, an airport runway and a bridge.

It’s not strictly an Irish interest as Amy Mihyang and Lynn and Michael Chealander have been doing them around the world since 2006 and posting the results on their site facedowns.wordpress.com. The original idea was to mess with the regular concept of the tourist photo (much like the garden gnome travelling around the world – http://bit.ly/gnomesnaps). The blog features photos of the trio in facedown mode in New Zealand, at Obama’s inauguration, India, at the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea and confusing the Times Square naked cowboy in New York. All in all over 24 countries so far are featured.

Now, the idea has taken off here so if you’re out tonight and see someone lying across the bar, the stairs, a path or balancing on a bollard, then it’s probably a result of facedown time.

Five best resources for finding facedowns:

1.The original – facedowns.wordpress.com
2.Live Twitter search – http://bit.ly/facetweet
3.The best of Irish – http://bit.ly/bestfd
4.The Facebook Group – http://bit.ly/facedowngroup
5.The blog – http://extremefacedown.blogspot.com