Last night I went along to the launch party for Lawrence Lessig’s new book, Remix: Making Art And Commerce Thrive In The Hybrid Economy. This book is the bridge between Lessig moving from his studies in Free Culture to his work on reform in Congress. It was an excellent evening, and it was great to catch up with Lawrence himself, the Creative Commons folks, and other friends.

I find Lessig such an inspiration. He has an incredible ability to understand, reason and articulate complex topics in such a way that not only shares his insight, but inspires the listener or reader of his work to aspire to a similar sense of objective, reasoned approach. Over the years he has written a number of books, and a flurry of essays and blog entries, touching on a wide range of subjects. Most widely known in our world for his contributions to Free Culture, Copyright issues and the Creative Commons, Lessig is now setting his sites on what he considers the more fundamental problem – corruption in government. Last night in his speech, he expressed that the problems that we have faced with Copyright are because government does not make decisions based upon sense and reason, but is instead heavily influenced by significant commercial entities. Money talks. Lessig has deduced that this is a problem that not only affects Copyright, but a wider range of more fundamental issues. With this in mind, he has decided to step back from his work on Free Culture and focus on his Change Congress mission.

In our world we have many celebrities, but what I admire most about Lessig’s work is that he does not seem to let religious ethical zeal for the topic affect his judgement. Lessig feels very strongly about the issues that he studies, but in every one of his works I always take away a calm, reasoned, measured approach, and one that uncovers the nuances in the debate that are articulated and communicated with inspiring precision. I will always hold him in high regard for his incredible contributions to Free Culture. The Free Culture train is really only just starting to roll, and Lessig but the rails down on the ground for us.

Over the last few weeks Lessig and I have been exchanging some emails regarding Severed Fifth, and he is excited about the project, which as you can probably imagine, makes me rather excited too. With Severed Fifth off to a fairly ripping start I am concious to do things the right way and asked for his thoughts and advice , and when he is back from his extensive travelling spree, we are going to meet up for lunch and discuss it. I look forward to having his input on the project.

So in a nutshell, a great evening, and lets not mourn Lessig’s move away from Free Culture issues, and welcome his insight into how we can change congress. As he said last night, we have an opportunity right now for this kind of reform, and I can’t think of anyone better to drive it forward.

A few quick updates going on in Severed Fifth land.

Firstly, thanks to the Linux Outlaws for interviewing me about Severed Fifth (and Ubuntu too) for their latest episode. Its a long interview and covers a lot of ground about the project as well spending a little time on some of the technical details around recording Denied By Reign. Thanks also to Fab from Linux Outlaws for being an active member of the Street Team.

Speaking of which, the legendary James Tait has been out and about in the UK putting up some Severed Fifth posters and speaking to potential Severed Fifth supporters on the street:

James wrote a really nice post describing his experience. One excerpt:

I managed over the last couple of days to take a deep breath, put my confidence issues behind me and talk to complete strangers! I got a couple of people in the Four Seasons centre in Mansfield (thanks dad for looking after the boys while I disappeared for a few minutes!) and a handful more in Mickleover Tesco today (thanks boys for behaving!).

I generally opened the conversation with a polite “Excuse me, do you have a minute? I’m going to make a snap judgement from your clothes/appearance that you’re into rock and/or metal. Have you heard of Severed Fifth?” I then went on to explain that you’d just released your debut album and a little information about the goals of the project, making sure that it clicked that it was totally legal to download and copy the music.

I was totally unprepared for all of this, but managed to play one couple a sample from my phone (Edge of Design), which seemed to go down well. The others I just pointed in the direction of the web site. I was so nervous I was shaking like a leaf, causing one girl to comment that she believed me “cos real salesmen don’t get that nervous!” Here’s hoping at least some of them follow it up — I doubt they’ll forget about the experience as it was all so surreal!

I was really psyched to see this post – not only in terms of the Street Team doing great work, but also James himself just throwing himself onto the street, despite being a touch nervous. Pretty darn cool.

In other news, more work has been going on with Frets On Fire, other Street Team happenings are happening, and I am working on a press kit. Why not come and join us in the Severed Fifth Street Team?

A few quick updates regarding our rampage towards a Free Culture music industry.

Firstly, I just wanted to quickly show off some work done by Street Teamer, Drunky, who has been putting Severed Fifth posters up in Hastings, England:

Like other street teamers, he has been out and about sticking posters up, and I have asked these Street Team rock stars to send over photos of their good work. Great work there, Drunky.

Also, Xoke has been working on some Severed Fifth business cards, and an initial mock-up is over on his Picasa album. Here is one example:

The grandiose outreach campaign has been kicking off in terms of letting people know about Severed Fifth and I have been letting a bunch of people know about the project. Thanks to Cory for putting me in touch with Sparky from Misery Index who wishes us luck with Severed Fifth too! Would be great to catch up with those guys sometime soon.

Finally, there has been a flurry of interest around Frets On Fire songs for Denied By Reign. More on this soon!

Want to come and kick arse, Street Team style? Join us!

Thanks to Brady Merriweather who produced a Severed Fifth promo that went on YouTube:

Would be fun to kick off a bunch of FifthRolls on YouTube (a video that starts of as something different and kicks into Severed Fifth). Anyone want to produce some?

Well, Denied By Reign has released for about a day now, and I want to thank everyone for their kind comments and support behind the project.

I am pretty tickled-pink with the response so far. I have been trying to keep track of write-ups of the project and the album, and so far I have seen the following:

• Creative Commons Weblog
• Creative Commons Features Commoner
• Ars Technica Write-up
• GearDiary
• Stephan Hermann’s Blog
• Linux Outlaws
• Rich Johnson’s blog
• My Science Is Better
• CLibra’s Blog
• Joaquim Rocha’s Blog
• lummie.co.uk
• Mean Machine
• Singpolyma’s Blog
• Alternating.net
• Cesarius
• Locohygynx
• simsus.de
• Nicubunu’s Blog
• Dave Neary’s Blog
• Der-Lehmann
• Mediterranei’s blog
• Linux Today
• Newsvine

I also noticed some good Twitter and identi.ca action going on, and there has been lots of chatter on the Severed Fifth Forums and in the #severedfifth IRC Channel on Freenode.

In terms of downloads, I have been reliably informed by Neuro, king of the BitTorrents, that it is blazing pretty hard with over 500 BitTorrented downloads in the first day. I estimate that in terms of downloads from the Bytemark mirror that there have been about 280 downloads and I need to check with Adam about how well his mirror has done, but I think it is reasonable to suggest 1000 copies of the album have been shifted in its first day. Nice.

As I mentioned in my last post the next step of the project is to spread the word and build exposure. I am pleased to see that the Severed Fifth Street Team is growing and a bunch of street teamers are getting out into the trenches to spread the word. We have heard of people printing out posters to put up at schools/colleges/stores, contacting local radio stations, posting on discussion forums, sending messages on IM and various other activities. If you put up a poster, give out fliers or whatever else, do take a photo of it and send it over – I would love to feature some of these in the Severed Fifth News.

Another key element here us growing exposure of Severed Fifth and Free Culture in social networking websites. This is kicking off in earnest, and check the following:

• Severed Fifth Facebook Group
• Severed Fifth MySpace Page
• Severed Fifth at Last.fm

More coming on MuseAmp (a rocking website by a friend of mine, Dan) and Jamendo. If you know of more which need attention, do let me know.

More later…

One thing I am really keen to do as part of the release of Denied By Reign is to have the songs available for Frets On Fire; the excellent Open Source Guitar Hero clone. I would love to have these available for release if at all possible.

So, I am looking for some volutneers who would like to help transcribe the album to Frets On Fire ready for release. I know this is a lot to ask with a week to go before the release, but if anyone wants to do it, I will send you the full album and you can work on it. You will also recieve an unholy amount of gratification and respect from me and others in the Severed Fifth community. Surely that is worth it in itself? Rock on!

Any takers? If you can help – email me at jono –AT– severedfifth –DOT– com – thanks!

One of the key decisions I have needed to make for Severed Fifth is which license I wanted to use for my music. There are a variety of license options available, too many in fact, but the key considerations in my mind were in securing the freedoms I deem valuable for my listeners while also ensuring opportunities for being successful commercially so I can fund Severed Fifth. Throughout the license selection process I was cognisant to get this balance right – in an already limited set of commercial options for free culture artists, I did not want to further limit my options if I didn’t need to.

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Time for a quick update on the recording.

Things have been hectic around here to say the least. The last few weeks have been pretty busy outside Severed Fifth, but I have been working hard on getting the remaining instruments recorded. After finishing up a bunch of small overdubs on the guitars, I started work on the bass.

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Since I kicked off Severed Fifth, some of you have been wanting to hear some of my previous material from Seraphidian. Well, rather luckily, I recently discovered all of the original recordings from the Seraphidian releases, some of which I thought had been lost, so here is a page outlining a little bit of history and links to a bunch of songs.

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Well folks, here we are for another update. I was planning on getting some updates out every day, but its been an incredibly hectic few days recording and I just haven’t had time to sit down and write some of my thoughts down. I wanted to fill you in on the latest on the Denied By Reign recording sessions though.

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