John Frusciante, the former guitarist for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, just up and released a bunch of new music for free. In a lengthy open letter, Frusciante clarified a statement from an earlier interview, explaining that he’s been creating music for the sake of creating music, and not with any audience in mind. He detailed his releases in the letter:
At present, I have put up a 19 minute group of 6 songs recorded on 4-track cassette in May 2010, the instrumentation being 3 guitars and one drum machine. It is a bunch of weird anti-rock star guitar solos, played mainly on a Mosrite Ventures guitar, and a Yamaha SG, accompanied by an Elektron Machinedrum, excepting one song where I used a Roland TR 707, and another where a 707 was used, but is not in the mix.
I have also uploaded a 37 minute collection of tunes made between 2009 and 2011 which were all recorded in my main studio during various stages of its development, as well as various stages of my devopment as an engineer.
Furthermore, you will find in these places the full 20 minute version of Sect In Sgt, my all-sample piece, in its entirety. The version which was online before, under the name Trickfinger, omitted the first 5 minutes of the piece.
Frusciante goes on to explain why he’s sharing all this music for free instead of charging for it:
When someone releases music on a label, they are selling it, not giving it. Art is a matter of giving. If I sing my friend a song, it goes from me to her, at no cost. That’s giving. If I sell you an object, we do not say that I gave you that object. Recording artists have been “giving” the public music by selling it to them for so long that we now think of sell-outs as dedicated musicians who love their audience so much that they aggressively sell them products, and sell themselves as an image and personality to this audience on a regular basis just as aggressively…
…Giving people music for free online being so common these days is a good reminder that artistic expression is always a matter of giving, not taking, or selling. Selling is the making money part, and artistic expression, creation, is the giving part. They are distinct from one another, and it is my conviction that music should always be made because one loves music, regardless of whether one plans on selling it or not. Creation is the source of life, while making money is what people do for food, clothing, shelter, necessities, and comfort in some cases, and to exercise their greed in others.
It is my pleasure to give you this music. Sometimes I will announce here on my site that I have posted music in these places, and other times I will not. Any music I stream from here on my site will now be linked to my Soundcloud page.
Stream the music below, and look for more releases in the future on his Bandcamp and SoundCloud accounts.
