What this means to you, the DMusic Forum reader, is that all of the John Ludi currently \"approved\" album releases are now available as free downloads as zipped files with MP3s encoded at 192kps along with cover art and a lyric sheet.

They are available here, as well as a full list of reasons as to why this decision has been made:

http://johnludi.com

Interesting:

"OK you bastards, you win...and here is what you've won:

Free music and My retirement from recording new albums."

"Gee, John Ludi (whoever the hell you are), why is this"?


I got a few major reasons:



* I DIDN'T "CHANGE THE WORLD": My mission as an artist of conscience is largely over. For 30 years I have tried to make a difference in the world and I really haven't accomplished squat, despite devoting myself heart, mind, body and soul to the task. For 25 of those long and difficult years I tried to send a message that basically said "change your ways or you will be really unhappy about the results of your collective actions". That didn't work at all, even amongst most of the people I've known personally, so for the past 5 years I have tried to send the basic message "prepare for the inevitable consequences of all of those actions I was warning you about the previous 25 years". That didn't work either. Now it's too late. It does not make sense to warn people about something that has already happened. Currently, our civilization is at the beginning stages of collapse: it's too late to stop it, and it's too late for the unprepared to cope. If you are not mentally and emotionally (as well as physically and materially) prepared to deal with abrupt and unpleasant change, you are going to die starving. Too bad, little monkey-thing. As for myself, I think my job as an artist here on Earth is mostly done. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. You reach a point where you realize that it is best to just shut up if no one is listening. I have reached that point. From here on out I may play some acoustic gigs just for fun (before the grid collapses), but the time and effort involved in trying to make music of an exceptional quality level is too excessive for the nominal impact it has had in the world. Let humanity end its days as an organized global civilization listening to content-free crap by an endless parade of 18 year old blond whores with silicone implants who can't sing without the use of digital pitch correction...it really does not matter anymore. The Great Global Reset Button is being pressed and there will be those who live and those who die...and only our future history will be able to tell us which of those 2 groups is the better off...if there is anyone literate left to write that future history.

* DIGITAL PIRACY: Despite my mounting misanthropy and cynicism, hope does seem to spring eternal in my slowly hardening heart: I rather foolishly thought that some of hundreds of thousands of people who had been downloading my songs for free off of this site over the past few years might actually BUY my new projects. Nope. Of the 2 albums I put out last year, the Quiet Earth Orchestra album was the one that made a small splash and racked up an initial promising amount of sales on CDBaby (sadly, the Soft War album went nowhere despite sending out a ton of promo, and I personally think that it is the better of the 2 albums from an execution standpoint). I was greatly encouraged by those initial sales...but then something interesting happened: the sales stopped abruptly and I was able to find the entire album on Torrent sites as a free download at about the same time. Isn't that nice? I spend YEARS putting an album together that has quality music and thoughtful lyrics, spending hours and hours and hours perfecting the album to the best of my abilities, just to have people rip me off for the effort? LISTEN IDIOTS: If you rip off an Elton John album he is probably not going to give a crap...he is a fat old rich man in a mansion and won't miss the sales...but if you steal from independent and unsigned artists you may destroy what little incentive there is for us to keep making music "for the people". Every single album we sell makes a difference to us, believe me. If artists can't even HOPE to just break even on our projects, there will come a time when sharing our work with the public will become too expensive to sustain...and all you will be left with is crap music whose only virtue is that it has financial backing behind it or crap music by artists whose ambition to be famous far outweighs their talent. Oh wait...it's already like that now? Oh well, too late.

* ROCK IS DEAD: The time of really "quality" rock music is over: The era from the 60's to the 80's where brilliant and interesting people made brilliant and interesting albums. The music industry and the general dumbing-down of this plastic and hyper-materialistic culture has killed creativity and passion stone cold dead. I can't believe the crap people willingly listen to these days. It's like someone urinating in your ears. Vapid dribble would be a compliment. When the most popular rock band out there is frigging Fall Out Boy, it's time to stick a fork in it. The lack of originality out there is breathtaking. Everyone is a pale memory of a weak replica of a poor imitation of a half-baked clone. The era of idiosyncratic artists on a mission to change the world has passed into history...and now all that is left is pap, illiterate Rap/Hip-Hop, cartoon darkness, fake sensitivity, sophomoric lyrics, banal sensationalism, and tepid retreads of far better music created by far better musicians. And that means that MY time is over, because I refuse to make crap music for a crap audience. I'd rather take a bullet. As it stands, the people who used to listen to good music are all well past the age where they have stopped seeking out new artists and new music, and the younger people (Generation "Whine") wouldn't know a decent song if it crawled up their asses and laid eggs. Let them eat Beyonce.

* I'M TIRED: Really f**king tired. Recording just takes way too much of my vital energy for the lack of reward I get. I can't continue working in my professional career during the day (often working around 60 hours a week) and recording and promoting albums at night...it is just too much. Something has to give, and it's the recording. (As far as my own personal future plans are concerned, I recently bought some rural land in the middle of nowhere. On it I will build an eco-friendly dwelling like a yurt and live off of the grid. At some point I will bail out of society entirely and spend the rest of my days reading, growing food, and meditating.

* MY SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT: Since I first became aware of the universal fact of physical mortality, I have been asking myself the big question: what remains? All this time I have held to the hypothesis that if anything does continues beyond this mortal coil, it is the level of consiousness that one has developed. Dealing with the darkness of human experience and human civilization and human history is a road that can lead you into that very darkness itself. At some point you start to become what you warn people about, what you fight against. This has been progressively happening to ME over the past several years, to the point where I have become the bitter and angry and resentful person that I have never wanted to be. Prior to the past few years I was always able to maintain a sense of universal perspective, ironic detachment and even a level of humor about the human condition and where it is taking the species. I have lost that ability of late and I need to get it back. When it comes time for me to take my leave of this physical plain of existence, I don't want to leave it as a dark spirit. I have lost my sense of compassion and it has diminished me. I could never be one of those oblivious New Age types who ignores the shadow side and sings about unicorns and rainbows, to be that inauthentic would be an even greater crime against "Spirit"...but I can't keep exposing the down side of the human psyche and human endeavor anymore without it plunging me into a pit of hopelessness that I may not ever be able to climb back out of.


So now that I have made you feel all warm and fuzzy, here's the deal:

I am now making all of my current albums “donation-ware”.

Meaning this: you can download these albums as a zipped collection of MP3s encoded at 192kbps for your own enjoyment…and you may copy THE ENTIRE ZIP FILE (including notes) and share it with friends or whatnot, but there are a few things that I require in exchange. One is in the form of a gentle request, the other two are in the form of a legal demand.

*

THE REQUEST: If you like these albums, please donate something to my PayPal fund. If I receive sufficient donations for my previous efforts I might be moved to come out of retirement and record more material (probably when pigs fly in a frozen hell)…but as all of my previous albums have not come near to breaking even in terms of direct expense (let alone time expense) and people have been posting them to torrent sites, I see no reward in spending copious amounts of time and money to release more albums. Enjoy the free music, but know that if you do not encourage me to make more via a donation (however small), you will have discouraged yet one more creative independent artist to give up their artistic career in favor of non-creative activities that keep food on the table. You may enjoy listening to nothing but an endless parade of unmitigated rodent puke like Akon during these last few years of our current civilization. (If you do show that you are indeed a thoughtful and caring individual by donating to this fund, please leave a note that will tell me what album(s) you liked the most…that way I can focus on that type of project if I ever decide to record again.)

*

DEMAND 1: Unless you have a direct license agreement with me, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE MONEY OFF OF MY EFFORTS. If I find that you are doing so without my consent (or unless you are an authorized affiliate of CDBaby or a music seller I have an agreement with), I will sue you. I will find you, and I will sue you. This is not a joke. I have the financial means to make you my legal bitch and I will enjoy doing so.

*

DEMAND 2: You do not alter the songs or the attached tags IN ANY WAY, unless it for your own private consumption. The songs contain tags which have this website address in them...please leave it there if you pass these songs or albums on to your friends (or enemies).

If you can live with these types of covenants, feel free to download my albums and share them. At least 3 or 4 of them are world class projects that I am highly proud of...the rest are decent enough for public consumption, and the ones that are not on here need work done that I don't have the time or inclination to do.

I'd like to think that I am a better person for having made these albums, even though it would have been more in my self interest to have spend the past 30 years being a money-worshipping pig-whore like most people in our culture have been, ever since the 60's flower-children sold every last ideal they had for a house in the suburbs and a 401k (and I am ever-so-amused to watch most of them now lose both).

If you require more information before you invest your oh-so-precious time and effort in pressing a couple buttons on a mouse to download my music for free, the first two albums on the list have their own websites, and the rest have their own pages. In addition, the zipped files also have liner notes and lyrics (where I had the time to put them together), as well as a jpg file of the cover art.

I hope you enjoy them and get something out of them.

I wish the best of you the best, and the rest of you the rest.


Hey you!!!
Drop the Entitlement Mentality long enough to donate something to this Paypal fund:

Hey John Lundi, ever hear of a creative commons licence? Would cover your requests nicely.

http://creativecommons.org

" DEMAND 1: Unless you have a direct license agreement with me, YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE MONEY OFF OF MY EFFORTS. If I find that you are doing so without my consent (or unless you are an authorized affiliate of CDBaby or a music seller I have an agreement with), I will sue you. I will find you, and I will sue you. This is not a joke. I have the financial means to make you my legal bitch and I will enjoy doing so. "

I can hardly wait to see how tough you
are when an RIAA member incorporates
one of your tunes in one of their projects.

I don't can't how financially set you are,
it is you, who will be the 'bitch'

" Hey you!!!
Drop the Entitlement Mentality long enough to donate something to this Paypal fund: "

Likewise.
Drop the entitlement mentality long enough to
consider the possibility that your stuff
just might not be what most folks consider
'good'.
Just because you make it, doesn't mean
you're 'entitled' to get paid either.

If you were doing it for the money, you
were no artist.

Let's see...

He goes to great lengths to condemn the "money-worshipping pig-whores," yet he obviously stepped up to the trough long enough to earn the financial means to unleash the unholy dogs of law.

For someone who claims to have a "60's flower-children" mentality, he certainly doesn't like to share, now does he?

I haven't listened to his music...don't think I plan to, given his crappy attitude...but, I can make a guess as to its quality. It's amazing how many artists complain about lack of sales and never seem to consider that the reason is that they just suck.

He doesn't even have to suck. He could be a good musician, but there are gazillions of "good" musicians out there. Most folks are only going to spend their time and money on the ones who are great.

A big portion of his complaints centers around the amount of time and effort he used in production. What's that old saying about polishing a turd? If the underlying music is not exceptional, all the production in the world cannot fix it.

I realize it's unfair of me to pass judgment on this guy's music without hearing it first. Consider this hypothetical. However, I don't generally invest my time in checking out the creative works of someone who has an attitude like this.

Getting pissed at a label and going off on them is one thing -- berating your audience, that's unacceptable. If he'd have THANKED the downloaders for their interest...especially since he claimed to have been trying to "spread important messages"...it would have been a different story. As it is, he's just not worth my time.

Btw, how is he planning to collect PayPal donations if he's living off the grid?

"Now it's too late."

It's never too late. Don't give up, John Ludi!

"it's too late for the unprepared to cope."

I am totally screwed.

"I will find you, and I will sue you. "

It's like a pacifist version of "The Most Dangerous Game".

"Btw, how is he planning to collect PayPal donations if he's living off the grid?"

His attorney will collect the money from the PayPal site and then convert it into cash. This cash will then be used to purchase items such as dried fruit, nuts, granola, patchouli oil and perhaps even a 4 stage portable reverse osmosis di drinking water purification system that can be found here:

http://www.amazon.com/Portable-Reverse-Osmosis-Drinking-Purification/dp/B002BXEXZC/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=miscellaneous&qid=1252771972&sr=8-5

These items can all be helpful and make living off the grid a pleasurable living experience.

"especially since he claimed to have been trying to "spread important messages"."

Jesus got paid, so why not John Lundi? I think maybe you guys are being a little tough on Mr. Lundi. After all, he is an "artist of conscience". That's a heavy load to bear. Think about how difficult that must be for him.

I'm a little short on cash right now, but I am going to mail him some cookies. Homemade, of course. Chocolate chip with some macadamia nuts. That's my specialty.

mroop -- You crack me up.

byteme -- "It's amazing how many artists complain about lack of sales and never seem to consider that the reason is that they just suck."

So explain the Jonas Brothers, Hannah Montana and everyone that uses Autotune because they can't really sing. Major suckage is not a valid reason for failure as anyone who looks at the Billboard charts can readily see. Neither is an inflated sense of self-importance, a preference for money before music, or any of the other faults which were pointed out.

And a lot of people want to deliver a message.

For 25 of those long and difficult years I tried to send a message that basically said "change your ways or you will be really unhappy about the results of your collective actions".

Who wants to hear that?

...for the past 5 years I have tried to send the basic message "prepare for the inevitable consequences of all of those actions I was warning you about the previous 25 years". That didn't work either. Now it's too late.

It's too late? Well, fuck it, then. If you've been trying to sell gloom and doom for 25 years, that may be your problem.

Hey you, don't tell me there's no hope at all...

". . . the time and effort involved in trying to make music of an exceptional quality level is too excessive . . ."

I hope several of us take the time to buy and listen to some of his music and then report back to this thread.
That would put things in a significant perspective.

Thanks guys. You gave me some laughs at the expense of a self-important blowhard today. I feel sorry for a guy, a little. I guess after a quarter century of beating his head against a brick wall, he decided it was time to stop. Slow learner, but better late than never. I still haven't learned.

" I hope several of us take the time to buy and listen to some of his music and then report back to this thread. "

If I had to judge by what I have read ..

If I have to pay one red cent before I get
to hear his message, then no thank you.

If I want a gloomy guilt trip i'll just call
my mom. ( fifth element ).

Well, my reading comprehension is a bit off.

I am downloading the album 'Soft War' as
I type this ( feeling quite brave ).

I'll post a fair review tomorrow when I
get a few moments.

I promise to be fair and not let his self
important rant taint my opinion, if anyone
really cares.

Thanks, Dredd.
I'll wait for your feedback,
and if it's positive to any extent,
I can download it too.
BTW, your opinion is quite good
on most of the things I've read
about what you've posted in past years.

If I want a gloomy guilt trip I'll just call
my mom. (fifth element)


good one

Just finished John's Album 'Soft War'

Not going to do a track by track, i'm not all that
interesting.

I fired up the first track, 'There is the Window' and
I almost stopped right there.

It had kind of that hippy 60's folksy Pure
Prairie league thing going and I can only
handle so much of that, and the vocals
on it were somewhat questionable but
I promised completeness so I sallied forth

After that, it started to become interesting.
Every other song here is at very least
average and interesting, with some
( 'Fate' for one, i'll let you figure out the
others ) coming damn close to really good.

This is tight, cleanly produced, and overall -- nice sounding.

Here is why I think 'Great' evades it.

Think of the difference between songs on
'Frampton Comes Alive' to the same songs
on the studio album.

While well done they suffer from a lack
of 'life' for lack of a better way to describe it.

I think in the hands of a very experienced
producer
some of these songs can be polished to
the shine of a diamond.
The Police is a good example of simplicity
polished to aural art with a producer with
an ear for Art, not just music.
( if you listen to the whole thing you might
find I did not choose the 'Police' as an
example by coincidence ).

Thats all this needs, in my opinion, since
the skills are there, the songs are there,
they need to be filled with life, not just
put to tape.

Brief, and just my opinion, Album worth
listening to, so you can form you're own.

PS..

I'm willing to bet if he has a band and isn't
a solo act, they are probably excellent live.

Pessimist,

If you get the time, see if you can spot the
same influences I did

Okay. I'll go ahead and download,
and plan to report back tomorrow.

Thanks, Dredd.

Leeching away; I'll give them a listen later.. I'm tired, long day.

I just realized Ludi's got seven albums, so I'm thinking that reviewing just one isn't a fair assessment.
But I don't have time to properly go through all of them this week, so I'll wait to see if some of us can choose different ones besides "Soft War" and critique them.

alrighty then... as soon as I get the time, I'll try to give them a listen.

Thanks, Raid.
And Dredd, I'm glad you reviewed the first one.
(Sounds like you did a really good job.)
Eventually, I'll get a chance to scope out all of the albums on my own, but this is not a good week for me to try to do that.

Considering all the listening experience and/or musicianing experience some of the posters to just this thread alone have (in no particular order: Raid, Dredd, mroop, gdZiemann), it would be interesting to look forward to opinions about the material Ludi has released.

You guys may talk me into listening to it, but without you, Ludi talked me out of it, much the same way Don Henley has talked me out of being an Eagles fan.

Lack of "life" -- I have a very talented friend who made an album like that. MIDI drum tracks have no soul.

" Lack of "life" -- I have a very talented friend who made an album like that. MIDI drum tracks have no soul. "

It's pretty damn wierd, isn't it ?

Musicians in the process of recording
really undervalue the importance of
a talented engineer and producer.

Those, contrary to popular opinion, are
every bit the artists as anyone else in the
band.

When my bandmates and I did our only
CD ( i'm keyboardist and backing V ),
They wouldn't give me or the engineer
any leeway on recording and as a
result most of that CD is lifeless.

Sometimes you HAVE to put your ego
aside and take input from outside ears.

George, it IS possible to give 'life' to
midi drums. I used to do it all the time
in some of my own personal work.

It just takes time and effort.
Most use midi drums out of laziness,
and it shows. Spend time adding
dynamics, painstakingly, a measure or
phrase at a time and introducing random
elements.

Of course, a really nice sound module
to push the drums to an audio track
helps as well.