Ready, Set, OK Go –Eight Songs In Eight Hours
01:01 PM Monday 4/11/11
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Ben Folds, OK Go’s Damian Kulash, Amanda Palmer and author Neil Gaiman are teaming up for a ambitious spin on the writing, recording and album release cycle.
The group has given themselves an eight-hour deadline to write and record eight songs in eight hours on April 25 at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Fans can watch the project as it unfolds through a live broadcast from the recording studio at rethink-music.com.
After recording from 4 p.m. to midnight, the album will be released 10 hours later through Bandcamp.com, a site that allows artists to sell music and merchandise directly to fans. Proceeds from the first week of downloads will go towards Berklee City Music, a nonprofit organization that provides music education for 4th to 12th graders.
Byrd Stadium, College Park, Md.
April 30, 2010
(Andrew Markowitz)
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“Digital technology allows singers who can’t sing and musicians who look better than they play to sing and play in tune and in time,” Folds said in a statement. “At the same time, it empowers the musicians to distribute music without a middle man and directly to an audience within moments of its creation. It even allows two-way communication during the process so that the audience might collaborate to some extent or be present in some way – like live music.”
The writing/recording/album release collaboration corresponds to the timing of Rethink Music: Creativity, Commerce and Policy in the 21st Century. The conference takes place April 25-27 at Hynes Convention Center in Boston.
Folds, Kulash, Palmer and Gaiman will give a presentation about the project at 10:40 a.m. at Rethink Music, followed by an 8 p.m. private concert for conference registrants at the Berklee Performance Center. The concert will also feature Basia Bulat and Black Joe Lewis & The Honeybears.
Turner Hall, Milwaukee, Wisc.
April 16, 2010
(Matt Schwenke / ConcertLivewire.com)
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Kulash released his own statement about the project:
“Can the album cycle actually be reduced to a single day?” If the recording industry is supposed to be a means of connecting musicians to music listeners, well, then, here it is – spontaneous and circular. They send us ideas and a day later we have an album, a show, and some semblance of a documentary. And then the next day (we hope), a big public flameout and a battle over rights and the release of competing slanderous autobiographies.”
Click here for Rethink Music’s website.
Click here for Bandcamp’s website.
Click here to learn more about Berklee City Music.
--Sarah Marie Pittman