25 Years Ago
Well, actually, 27, but 25 somehow seems more important. So, yeah… the release date is coming up, funny enough, as I prepare to release this site, as I finish up the last bits of the first “GenAI for the Curious Businessperson” books. (3 written so far!).
But, yeah, 25 years ago. I keep kind of swirling away from that number, just shying away from how long ago it was. It was in a different life. It was before I really started in this AI journey. Sure, I was in technology and I was only a year away from selling a company to Cisco – which is where I would take the first steps into AI. 25 years ago was before I got married, before I had a kid – who is 23 now with a degree in cognitive science from UC Santa Cruz. (Boy, that sure places this back in time. Wow.)
It was before the world changed along with the skyline in NYC. It was way long before we were worried about stocking N95 masks.
And yet. Something about us still remains the same.
I care about this album deeply. It was the last, and by a number of metrics, the best album that I released from a music company I had co-founded that was called “Mindspore Records.” This was back when the biggest thing record companies were worried about was people ripping CDs and physically burning them on new CDs. There’s some interviews of me out there talking about the economics of this.
Napster, the first P2P music file sharing system came out about a year after this album released, June 1, 1999.
April 26, 1998
Was the day we released Critical Mass. It was in a time when electronic music was really surging against the pop consciousness. Madonna Ray of Light released around that time (Feb 22, 1998). I mention that album for two reasons – one, because it was produced by William Orbit – a famous name in electronic music circles, and two, because we managed to outsell her in a few markets, like Los Angeles.
At least “outsell” by some music business maths. (Which, as I learned in my time in the business – those maths were very malleable in some cases. We’ll talk on that some more at some other time.) I think our maths was a basic one like number of units sold. Back when you could actually count something like that.
But, yeah, we were pretty proud of it. Ray of Light is a really great album – and you can hear the influence that electronic music had on it. “Electronic music” is such a broad topic that it’s almost useless to put it as such, but it’s the best I can do without a whole lot more words than I am willing to spend here.
This was the golden era of Trip Hop – of Massive Attack, Mezzanine (1998) (Teardrop, the first song, is famous for being the signature song of the TV show House – but beyond that, this is a masterpiece album). Big Calm, Morcheeba (1998); DJ Shadow, Endtroducing (1996); Homogenic, Björk (1997). These were albums made by artists in their prime produced by experienced producers and released in ways that the public actually got to hear them without pawing through bins of records down at the record store. They mattered in a way that pushed how pop was being produced.
And it was into this environment that our album was released. Influenced by these, and produced to mirror the sound of electronic music at that moment in Los Angeles. One of the key producers on this album (Kevin Lincoln) was a name over at KCRW – The Station if you wanted to hear what was current in the world of music, and particularly influential in electronic music. The other was a fantastic musician, producer and someone with his ear to the ground in LA – as well as someone who would become a close personal friend and business associate – Kevin Crosslin. I was the third, the business side of things. I worried about the logistics of getting CD’s produced and art printed. Of artist contracts and royalty checks.
I loved the art form, but I didn’t love that part of what I was doing. And I don’t miss that bit at all.
1998 plus 25 is 2023
So, now we’re here. I didn’t want to spend any more words on music. As someone famous said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” It is unclear who said it, but it holds up. We will talk more about the modern forms of electronic music, or at least listen to it more, at a different time.
In 2023, you would think that the world would have forgotten about our little release, from a record label that didn’t sell that many records in the grand scheme of things. But, I’m going to say that we released something special that captured a time in a way that is timeless. That stands up to time, that deserves to be listened to. Insofar as anything “deserves” anything, that is.
Copies of the CD are going for over $200 each (no, really, it’s hilarious).
And a fan dragged all of the various YouTube clips that all of these artists had put out – and this fan put them together into a playlist of the album. Which is really the reason I brought you all here today. (Or, brought you all “hear”.)
It’s gotten over a million listens since they put it together – not much in the era of billions, but not bad for something with no marketing in 25 years.
The fan favorite is #3, “Unsaid Warning,” T.H.C
My favorite is #7, “L’Orque Epaulard” (Killer Whale)
I’m going to leave you tuned to #7, but if it tickles your fancy, just rewind and listen to the whole thing.
Here’s #7
Nostalgia
Wow, just listening to the bits that I just heard brings back such powerful, complicated memories. Getting this album out was *hard*. Artists can be difficult. Things are expensive. Lots of hard decisions.
But, I’m really proud of this. And I think it stands up, and will stand up for another 25 years, and maybe another after that. Do I think it is a Beatles album? No. I do think that it captures a bit of the American electronic music scene that was fleeting and beautiful, and a moment that we’ll never pass through again. That’s okay – there’s other moments we’re going to have. But we lived in and, in our way influenced, this time.
That’s pretty groovy.
