“MFM SPEAKS OUT” EP 30: Flaviyake on the Importance of Skill Stacking to Achieve Music Career Success

“The secret to success in the music industry is to always be learning and never stop improving your skills.”

In this episode of MFM Speaks Out, Adam Reifsteck interviews singer-songwriter, DJ, and producer Flaviyake (aka Duck The Bass) about the importance of combining multiple musical skills to achieve lasting success, immigrating to the United States, the issue of gender inequality in the music industry, and the biggest challenges musicians and DJs face in the current digital landscape.

Flaviyake is a record label owner, Pop and EDM producer, songwriter, DJ and Grammy NEXT alumna  with releases on prominent dance music labels such as Acapulco Music, Blanco y Negro, United Music Hits and SoundEvolution. Originally from Moldova, she started her music career by studying the flute and piano at the Sergey Rachmaninov School of Music in Chișinău. After spending a few years working in the London music scene, she moved to Los Angeles where she currently writes and produces songs for various artists. Her song “Lonely Seal” became an anthem for a Californian Marine Mammal Rescue Center.

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An Editorial: Concerns About Technology – Big Tech Backs Us Into A Corner

Text by Dawoud Kringle

In 2016, the World Economic Forum released a Facebook video with predictions it had for the world in 2030. One of these is that by 2030, technology may, in all likelihood, have advanced to the point that owning physical devices may become obsolete.

TechnologyThere are advantages to owning less things. There are fewer commitments and responsibilities, and have the freedom to sever ties whenever you want.  But the downside is that when you buy a device that requires proprietary software to run, you don’t own it. The money you pay does not offer actual ownership; it is a lease where you  agree to a life defined by terms you had no part in deciding. When hardware is merely a vessel for software and not a useful thing on its own, you don’t really get to decide anything. The company or corporation that built it will decide when to stop pushing vital updates and what you do with the product after it’s dead or obsolete. Anyone who owns an older computer will recognize this. The power has shifted so that companies set the parameters, and consumers are forced to choose the lesser of several evils.

Much of this can be traced back to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA https://www.copyright.gov/policy/1201/) makes it illegal to circumvent digital locks that protect a company’s proprietary software. Manufacturers have exploited this loophole brilliantly. It allowed software developers to essentially lock up the whole world behind software with the intent to turn the entire planet into a permanent renting class. The oligarchy / elite who actually own everything will, inevitably, make you pay money to access the things you use and own.

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Jerry Garcia

A Homage to Jerry Garcia of the GREATFUL DEAD

Text by Bruce Gallanter (Downtown Music Gallery)

Cream Puff War (Written by Jerry Garcia for the Grateful Dead. And appearing on their first self-titled album in 1967)

No, no! She can’t take your mind and leave
I know it’s just another trick she’s got up her sleeve
I can’t believe that she really wants you to die
After all it’s more than enough to pay for your lie

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A Homage to the Legendary Jimi Hendrix

Text by Bruce Gallanter (Downtown Music Gallery)

Jimi Hendrix1983, A Merman I Should Turn to Be – Composed & Performed by the Jimi Hendrix Experience
Recorded for Electric Ladyland, 2 LP set released in October of 1968

Hurrah, I awake from yesterday
Alive, but the war is here to stay
So my love, Catherina and me,
Decide to take our last walk through the noise to the sea
Not to die but to be reborn,
Away from lands so battered and torn
Forever, forever

Oh say, can you see it’s really such a mess
Every inch of Earth is a fighting nest
Giant pencil and lipstick tube shaped things,
Continue to rain and cause screaming pain
And the arctic stains from silver blue to bloody red
As our feet find the sand, and the sea is …
Straight ahead, straight up ahead

Well it’s too bad that our friends,
Can’t be with us today
Well it’s too bad
The machine that we built,
would never save us’, that’s what they say
That’s why they ain’t coming with us today
And they also said
It’s impossible for a man to live and breathe underwater
Forever, was their main complaint
And they also threw this in my face,
they said: Anyway…
You know good and well it would be beyond the will of God,
and the grace of the King (grace of the King) (Yeah, yeah)

So my darling and I make love in the sand,
To salute the last moment ever on dry land
Our machine, it has done its work, played its part well
Without a scratch on our bodies and we bid it farewell
Starfish and giant foams greet us with a smile
Before our heads go under we take a last look at the killing noise
Of the out of style, the out of style, out of style …oooh…

I can vividly remember the first time I heard a song by Jimi Hendrix on the radio (FM radio, mostly). It was the Spring of 1967 and the song that erupted from my speaker was “Purple Haze”. That opening two-note riff and the chorus of “Scuse me while I kiss the sky” were almost too much for my 13 year old mind to deal with.

I was astonished by it and felt like Jimi Hendrix had come from another (psychedelic) dimension or planet! I became a Hendrix fan-addict right then & there and remain that way more than 50 years later! The Jimi Hendrix Experience (with Noel Redding & Mitch Mitchell) recorded just three albums in around two years before Mr. Hendrix’s untimely demise in September of 1970, just before his 28th birthday.

For me and many Hendrix fans, all three albums are essential masterworks. Aside from being one of the most singular, pioneering and brilliant electric guitarists of all time, Jimi Hendrix was also a great songwriter, singer, producer and performer.

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Plastic People of the Universe

An Amazing Story: The Plastic People of the Universe and Why All Musicians Should Know Them

Text by Joe Yanosik

The Plastic People of the Universe

Copyright of image: The Plastic People of the Universe

The Plastic who of the what?  Never heard of them and I’ve been playing music for decades, you might say.  Well, it’s not your fault.  Even on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean where they’re from, the Plastic People (actually from Czechoslovakia, not the Universe) remained obscure.  In America, fans of alternative music may simply know them as a cult band who made weird, experimental music.  In fact, the Plastic People of the Universe were one of the greatest rock groups to emerge from Central Europe during the Communist era and their incredible history should be known far and wide by everyone who plays music for a living.  

Formed in Czechoslovakia in 1968 shortly after the Warsaw Pact Invasion in which Soviet tanks and troops crushed the liberal period known as the Prague Spring, the Plastic People of the Universe endured two decades of persecution from the Communist regime simply because they refused to conform to the Soviet “normalization”.  Since the era of Stalin, the Communists knew the importance of controlling the art in a society and they used art as propaganda to promote their own fake reality.  They were fully aware of the power of music and art and couldn’t let it be created freely for fear that the truth would escape.  

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