Monthly Archives: June 2013

Music, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Adrenaline Mob and Mike Portnoy – Is He Serious?

Article

Is he serious?

From where I sit, this was a major misstep. Mike Portnoy isn’t a star in the sense of commanding multiple projects and making each one thrive on name alone. He’s a drummer. That’s it. Talented, relentless, precise, but a drummer first, not a solo brand.

It looks like the Portnoy philosophy goes something like this: start a band, convince yourself you’re the main songwriter, the driving force, maybe even a god in the room, and then spin up another band, and another, and another. When one starts to gain traction, walk away, schedules conflict, priorities shift. It’s a pattern. It’s ambitious, but it’s also scattershot. It’s not a strategy built to last.

Adrenaline Mob had legs. That band could have grown into something bigger. Flying Colors? Already stale. Winery Dogs? Lacks direction. Transatlantic? A cult following, yes, but niche, not career-sustaining.

Look at the chatter online. Facebook, YouTube, blogs, Twitter, the fans are speaking. And fans are everything now. They amplify a release, they create buzz, they breathe life into a project. When they start to shrug, disengage, move on, that’s when it all dies.

Portnoy’s peak came with Petrucci. That was the alignment that created Dream Theater’s defining moments. And walking away from that partnership was a gamble. He may not have meant to squander it, but when the chemistry that made the magic was gone, the results were inevitable. Because the truth is simple: the music isn’t about one drummer, it’s about the sum of the parts, and some parts carry more weight than others.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Music

The KISS that rocks

Revenge made Kiss relevant again.  1982’s Creatures of The Night and 1983’s Lick It Up, re-established Kiss as a force to be reckoned with in the Eighties.

MTV was the outlet, and every time Lick it Up came on, it made me stop and watch.  This was all about the music.  The band had removed their make-up and they needed to make a statement.  Lick It Up was that statement.   That crunchy and distorted guitar from Vinnie Vincent is what makes the song roll.  Of course, it wouldn’t be long before Vincent was shifted. It’s like Gene Simmons can’t handle having talented people around me for a long period of time. Gene likes to rewrite history that Vinnie Vincent’s contribution to KISS was as a salary paid employee, however the music doesn’t lie.

Life’s such a treat and it’s time you taste it
There ain’t a reason on earth to waste it

We all know what Paul is saying in the lyrics to the women in the world.  Make sure that no mess is left ladies.

By the time the keyboard heavy Crazy Nights (1987) and the pop metal Hot In The Shade (1989) came out, fans started to accuse the band of following whatever MTV trend was popular at the time. 

Crazy Crazy Nights to me was so hooky and it was as good as anything else that was in the Charts at that time. I personally love the song, and this is in the era, post the Slippery When Wet explosion.  It just reminds me of good times and crazy days, sort of like how Tesla’s Lazy Days and Crazy Nights song does.  Listening to the Crazy Crazy Nights song today (I did an Eighties’ CD for my wife and this song was one of the songs I put on it) it just reminds me of how busy my life has come to be, where most of the time I am running on empty or caffeine.  It would good to be able to kick back and relax. 

They try to tell us we don’t belong,
That’s alright, we’re millions strong
This is my music, it makes me proud,
These are my people and this is my crowd

A song for the rock show, making the people believe that they belong here. Crazy Crazy Nights was co-written by Paul Stanley and Adam Mitchell who he used on the Creatures of the Night album as well.  Going back to the well that gave birth to quality previously, is a good thing.   

Going back to the Revenge album. The Nineties had a massive paradigm shift in the music business.  Kiss, now had to compete with bands that released game changing albums.  Nirvana released Nevermind and Pearl Jam released Ten bringing Grunge and Alternative Rock to the masses.  U2 released Achtung Baby, Red Hot Chilli Peppers released Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Metallica released the Black album, The Cult release Ceremony, Guns N Roses released the Use Your Illusion I and II albums, Ozzy Osbourne released No More Tears, Skid Row released Slave To The Grind, Pantera released A Vulgar Display of Power and Van Halen released For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.  The majority of the albums had a heavy rock feel and in the case of Van Halen it was return to the brown sound. 

Coming into the recording process of Revenge, Kiss already had some momentum going with God Gave Rock N Roll To You, which appeared in the movie, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey in 1991. The song is an Russ Ballard composition for the band Argent, however additional credit is given to Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley and Bob Ezrin.  Argent at that time was trying to follow up their mega hit, Hold Your head Up, so when God Gave Rock And Roll To You came out, it bombed.  However the song is a great song, and it is a good thing that Kiss rescued it and turned it into a hit.

For Kiss to be relevant in the Nineties, they had to do something different, so they hired a marketing consultant firm to find out what the fans wanted. The answers came back.  The fans wanted more Demon, more heaviness, more rock and an album to rival 1976’s Destroyer. It was time to get the team together.  Bob Ezrin who produced the epic Destroyer and the terrible Music From The Elder was hired to produce.

The biggest decision made was to use the fantastic, talented and egotistical Vinnie Vincent as a songwriter.  Simmons and Stanley realised that Vincent’s contributions to the Creatures of The Night and Lick It Up albums, had produced songs that have become some of the best and well known Kiss songs in recent memory.  The sinister single opener Unholy was written by Simmons and Vincent.  It is heavy, it is evil and it fit perfectly in the current music climate at the time. 

You send your children to war
To serve bastards and whores

It’s a tough lyric line.  There is that devilish theme throughout the song.   

Other classic Vincent penned songs that appear on Revenge are Heart of Chrome is written by Paul Stanley, Vinnie Vincent and Bob Ezrin, while I Just Wanna is written by Paul Stanley and Vinnie Vincent.

It is a shame that this song writing partnership went sour so quickly again, and they haven’t collaborated since. 

Revenge is Kiss being themselves and by doing that, they made a record that satisfied the hard core fan bases and somehow also fitted in with the times,

Of course, the album is also in memory to drummer Eric Carr, who passed away due to cancer, before the recording process started.  Eric Singer took his place in the band and he has been with Kiss, since then.  How good was the Badlands project that Eric Singer was in, with Jake E.Lee, Ray Gillen and Greg Chaisson?  However that is for another day.

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Music

Dave Nadolski – Off Your Mind and more Under The Flood

All I can say, is that Dave Nadolski has some pipes on him.  Very similar in style to Chris Daughtry.  The song is good, however it is still in the same modern rock style that other artists do a bit better.  

For those who don’t know, Dave Nadolski is the lead singer of the band Under The Flood.

Under The Flood have been doing the hard roads since forming in 2005 by bothers Matt (guitars) and Dave (vocals) Nadolski.  The first album, The Witness was released in May 2008.  Alive In The Fire was released in June 2010 and A Different Light in February 2012.

At the moment they are recording new music for a new release.

However, the web presence of the band, needs some major renovations.  The Facebook page is far from informative, the twitter feed offers nothing really useful and the ReverbNation account is also left unattended.

They need to start promoting themselves right now, way in advance of the release of new material.

They need to start connecting with their fan base.  They need to give songs away for email addresses.  They need to be able to hit send and reach their fans whenever they are ready.

The Facebook presence needs to be updated with more content, so that people keep coming back.  It needs to be grown. The Twitter account as well.  Posting pictures without any description or story is just not good enough.

They need that one song that will connect and mobilise the fans, as their success depends upon the fans breaking the record to the masses.  The days of the press breaking records are over.

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Alternate Reality, Copyright, Music, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Fear of the New – Alternate History

The Pirate Bay celebrated their 7 year raid anniversary a few days ago, so the question needs to be asked, what can the music business learn from The Pirate Bay?  The Pirate Bay has been court blocked in various countries, however, that still hasn’t stopped people in those countries from accessing the website, via proxies.  On top of all that, the site has gone through numerous changes, like removing its tracker then moving to magnet links, and a few months ago the torrent site moved to the cloud. The site has also switched domain names on multiple occasions.

All of these changes make the site more resilient and it all started seven years ago, when the Pirate Bay was first raided.

So let’s think about this for a second.  The Pirate Bay, is a site that wants to escape the long arm of justice and in order to do so, they keep on innovating so that they remain open.

So what has the RIAA (the music labels lobby group) done during the last 7 years on the innovation front.  All I keep on reading, is that Google keeps on getting millions of take down requests from the RIAA and the labels.  They still want legislation enacted that will put the internet under their control.  They still want others (like ISP’s) to enforce copyright breaches.  Basically, they still want others to pay for their own short comings.

Let’s see what an alternate history could have been created, if the RIAA innovated instead of legislated.

2003 – The Pirate Bay and MySpace is established.  The RIAA and MPAA take the opportunity to purchase the technology and employ the creators.  With integration between both technologies, both sites are relaunched as The Entertainment Portal. Users that want to upload, need to create an account, however users that want to download don’t need to be members.  Downloading is all free and the The Entertainment Portal makes money from advertisements.

2004 – The Entertainment Portal want to engage more people to upload their collections, especially hard to find and long forgotten titles.  They even give out awards to the people who upload the most, much in the same way they give out gold records to artists who sell.

In the meantime, The Entertainment Portal has been working on advancing the MySpace technology, so that users can also personalise it and share their own stories.

2005 – Cyber lockers start to become a threat, however The Entertainment Portal is too busy innovating to care.  A video sharing technology is released.  It is called YouTube.  A new feature is also added where users can do status updates.  Everything is rebranded to become The Portal, a one stop shop for anything to do with entertainment.  

2006 – A streaming service is offered for both music and movies.  Users can also stream new release movies into their homes on the same day of release.  The Portal encourages users to do movie launch parties and to share it over the Portal.  Users are also encouraged to create their own “hangouts”, where they can play radio DJ to other people in the hangout.

… to be continued

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

The Great Gatsby and Iron Man 3 and the Lessons They Can Teach

I watched The Great Gatsby on Saturday with my wife and on Sunday, I took the boys to watch Iron Man 3. So what, you say, who cares. I agree. Who cares? This post isn’t about the movies, nor is it a review of the movies. It is about what we music lovers can learn from the movies.

What can The Great Gatsby teach us music lovers? From the storyline, nothing. However, from looking at the story of it’s creator, we can learn a great lot.

The author Scott Fitzgerald, started planning the novel in 1923. He was coming off the commercial success of his two previous novels, This Side of Paradise and The Beautiful and Damned. The book is released in 1925 and it sells poorly. In 1940, Fitzgerald died, seeing himself as a failure and believing his work is forgotten. At the time of his death, The Great Gatsby had sold only 25,000 copies. Today, The Great Gatsby has sold over 25 million copies worldwide and it still sells 500,000 copies annually.

So let’s just say that you are musical creator, either in a band or as a solo artist. You release an album and start to have some success, generating a buzz around you. You release another album, and the buzz starts getting louder. You spend a long time creating your next masterpiece. You then release what you believe to be your magnum opus and the silence is deafening. The buzz starts to dwindle. It doesn’t sell as well as you expected. It doesn’t sell anywhere near the numbers the marketing firm focus group predicted. You believe that you are failure.

Are you really a failure? Is Scott Fitzgerald really a failure? Fitzgerald died believing he was.

Comparing yourself to the instant hit wannabe’s is wrong. Yes, some people can strike gold on the first dig, others, will need to dig a little longer and in more than one place. Persistence is what builds a career. If you want to be around for a long time, doing what you love, you need to persevere. Luck and timing also play a big part in the grand scheme of things. If you create something great, people will find it. That greatness that you create could be something that is so evolved and so out there, that people just fail to understand it right now. Eventually that audience will find it.

Another point to consider here, is that after the failure of The Great Gatsby to sell the numbers that Fitzgerald wanted, Fitzgerald started to focus on short stories as a means to an income. It is in this format, that he made the most of his monies. So instead of focussing on the big novel (the album), he moved onto short stories (great songs), which meant, that he released more content frequently. So instead of spending two years writing a novel, he wrote more frequently, releasing more frequently, while still focussing on the great novel as well. Fitzgerald went on to release another novel while he was alive, and one more was released after his death. However the monies he made came from short stories.

As a musical creator today, that is what you need to be doing. The album format, is still a good statement, however it needs to have quality all around it. Having four great songs and seven fillers, is unacceptable in today’s world. Also being out of the public eye for such a long time, is a bad idea in today’s world. To be relevant, you need to be releasing quality and the fans need to be spreading the word. They are the ones that steer the ship these days. The fans own you. They are the shareholders that the band needs to please and satisfy.

Moving on, both movies combined have earned $1.5 billion in box office takings. That is $1.2 billion to Iron Man 3 and $300 million to The Great Gatsby.

So what can we rock / metal heads learn from Iron Man 3?

So the character, Iron Man, had two of his own movies, Iron Man 1 and then Iron Man 2. Both movies were hits. He then went on to join the supergroup, The Avengers and had another hit movie. So he is back to his own movie, and scores another hit.

So let’s just say that the Iron Man 1 and 2 movie releases are album releases from an artist. The artist already has two hits under their belt. The artist then goes on to become a part of a super group project (think the Avengers movie). The artist then has another hit, bigger than the other two combined. Said artist returns to their solo career or band and they release album number 3, that also makes a lot of money.

Let’s use Ronnie James Dio as an example. He was in Elf. He was in Rainbow and released two albums (Iron Man 1 and Iron Man 2). He was then asked to join Black Sabbath (Avengers). Think of this project as the SUPERGROUP. Dio then goes solo, and see’s even more success with Holy Diver (Iron Man 3). Going back to the Scott Fitzgerald story, initially, Holy Diver, didn’t set the world on fire in sales on its release (like The Great Gatsby). It almost took a year to obtain Gold Status, and six years to obtain Platinum status. The Heaven and Hell album from Black Sabbath also followed the same time line.

In the end, it is okay as an artist to spread your wings, just ensure, that when you do, it needs to be quality 24/7. Be patient and be great.

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Music, Treating Fans Like Shit

Predictions

A lot of changes have taken place in bands that we all love over the last 18 months.  Some good, some bad and some sad.

Slayer
Dave Lombardo found out online that he has officially been replaced by Paul Bostaph.  Main songwriter Jeff Hanneman sadly passed away. For the touring cycle, Hanneman has been replaced by Gary Holt from Exodus.

Prediction: Slayer will just tour from now on, playing the summer festival scene, without any new music being released.  The estate of Jeff Hanneman would fire off a legal letter to Slayer over unpaid royalties.

Stone Temple Pilots
Scott Weiland is fired and then he claims he can’t be fired from the band.  Chester Bennington from Linkin Park is in as the new singer, and on top of that there is a lawsuit, where the STP guys are alleging that Weiland has broken the terms of a band agreement, which stipulates what each member can do outside of STP.

Prediction: This will just stay in the social media pages, with pot shots thrown at each party.  STP will do the Twentieth Anniversary tour for Core, and so will Scott Weiland.  Expect another Queensryche saga.

Bon Jovi
This is all about Richie Sambora.

First he didn’t turn up to a show.  Jon Bon Jovi then grabbed Phil X to fill in for Sambora and the PR machine issued a statement saying that Sambora had to leave the tour for personal reasons.  Fans are still purchasing tickets, only to see the band without him. Sambora remained quiet for some time and now the feuding is going public, with Sambora saying that Bon Jovi is making his return “very difficult”.  Bon Jovi then mentioned that Sambora is replaceable, whereas The Edge from U2 is not. Bon Jovi further stated, that Sambora wasn’t committed enough, and that his clothing business had taken up more of his time.  Sambora tweeted that is not the case, as his clothing business has been happening for 5 years, and music is and always is his first priority.

Prediction: This will get sorted. Jon and Richie will make up, record another album and then the same thing will happen again.

Queensryche

Geoff Tate is building a resume, that includes spitting at Scott Rockenfield, telling festival crowds they suck, pulls a knife at his band members, tell’s fans to record themselves telling him how bad his new album is (he actually thinks it’s funny) and now he takes a fans cell phone and throws it away.  This guy is all class.

The lawsuit over the name is in limbo land and the Todd LaTorre fronted Queensryche are about to release their album.

Prediction: Geoff Tate will be classified insane and then he will blame all the fans again, telling them they suck.  The Todd LaTorre fronted Queensryche version will also fail.

Machine Head 

Adam Duce was fired from the band because his heart wasn’t in it anymore.  No official replacement has been announced, however on-line bassist auditions have taken place and the list was whittled down to 8.

Prediction: Robb Flynn will ensure that Adam Duce is taken care off in relation to royalties payments post his departure.

Black Sabbath 

Prediction: The Bill Ward saga is over.  The band has moved on.  Black Sabbath will sell out their shows, however the new music will be hit and miss.

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