NOTES INTRODUCING THE “WRITINGS” SECTION OF ELEPHANTMICAH.COM (JANUARY 2008)

Hello, and welcome to this new area of the Elephant Micah website.

Let me begin by saying a little bit about what I’ll be posting here, and why. 

Strange things have been happening in cyberspace. Here’s one example:

From what I understand, someone on a fairly prominent message board recently invited other users to download a set of somehow “leaked” Elephant Micah demos, suggesting not to bother with the songs’ official release. 

It doesn’t seem very practical to try to address the full details of this specific case or the events leading up to it--I’m more lastingly concerned with the potential rift it represents between my own outlook, as the person making this music, and that of a growing set of internet listeners, who often have little context in which to place the mp3s that trickle down to them. 

Lately I’ve considered that simply offering more in the way of personal explanation, via the website, might help foster the kind of ethical and aesthetic common ground that I’d like to share with my audience. By now, Elephant Micah recordings are far more widely and fluidly available among individuals online than they are in any official for-pay forum. The dissemination of the music in a primarily indirect, casual form seems to call for some better accompanying source of background information, ideally reconnecting the recordings to the people, processes, and other realities of their creation. 

In this new section of the webpage, I’m planning to post a series of writings that stem from some of the questions and issues introduced to me by online listeners, as well as by other Elephant Micah-interested parties. For instance…

“Why does this recording sound the way it does?”
“Why isn’t Elephant Micah better-known?” 
“What guitar tuning are you using?” 
“Is music marketing ‘evil?’”

These are all fair questions, and variations of them come up pretty frequently. I’ll say what I can on these and other topics, publishing short pieces of writing on the site whenever I find the opportunity. Not everything will be analytical, though--keep an eye out for lyrics and other musings. 

The first item I’m posting is a statement focused on file sharing. 

While file sharing is of course hugely important to building word-of-mouth, I want to point out that Elephant Micah is not necessarily positioned to benefit from pure “buzz” in the same way as artists who are more casually consumable (i.e. have access to large scale commercial distribution and can pull off professional, well-promoted tours). It bears repeating, in this disembodied cyberworld, that we are not Iron and Wine. So, I’m encouraging listeners to 1) offer direct support when they can and 2) share appropriate information along with the music when file-sharing. Hopefully the “Writings” section will serve as a resource in the process. 

Read the article here.

If there is something in particular that you’d like to see addressed on this page in the future, or if you have relevant comments of your own that you are interested in posting, just let me know. 

Joe O.