Monthly Archives: February 2015

A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Unsung Heroes

Just Another Day In The World

Game Of Thrones

It looks like Piracy does pay. The sales of DVD/BluRay box sets for Season 4 of “Game Of Thrones” are going crazy. Season 3 also experienced the same craziness.

Led Zeppelin

Meanwhile, an album from 40 years ago is back on the charts. Led Zeppelin, who was so late to the streaming party, is now fighting for a spot on top of the charts due to their fans streaming their music.

Sales

So the recording industries response to piracy is to have a global release day on Friday. Hello, its 2015. Every day is a good day to release new music because music when done right doesn’t need a blockbuster opening day. Last week, 36 Crazyfists released their album “Time and Trauma” with first week sales of 3,500.

Yeah, high fives all round. Let’s blame piracy.

Meanwhile, ageing rockers AC/DC moved another 8,000 units as they move closer to 500,000 sales. However, sales of 500,000 does not mean that the record is popular amongst their fans. Does anyone know if it’s continually getting played? It’s not on Spotify so we can’t use any data from there.

Meanwhile, the “Rock Or Bust” clip has over 7 million views on YouTube, while “Play Ball” has over 6 million views. However, if you compare those YouTube views to Slipknot’s “The Devil and I” 26 million plus views, it’s easy to see what fans of rock and metal are listening too.

But hang on a second, the media outlets give ink to the fact that AC/DC has almost sold 500,000 copies of their album, while Slipknot is closer to the 300,000 mark. Further evidence today, that sales don’t equate to the actual popularity of the album. Listening data does.

Sales are old school and they are not coming back. In Norway, piracy is non-existent however revenues from recorded music haven’t increased. Goes to show that people never really wanted to own music, they just wanted access to it.

American Sniper

However if an entertainment product is done right, people will still spend their money. “American Sniper” is a perfect example of that. The movie is all over the piracy sites, and it is also approaching the $500 million mark on Box Office Returns. Compare that to the “The Expendables 3” which bombed big time. One movie hit the mark with the audiences while the other didn’t.

So when something does well, piracy is not mentioned at all as maybe a possible reason for its success, while when something does not do well, piracy is always blamed.

Performing Live

For musicians, piracy is exposure. Machine Head grossed $33,000 for one show in front of 850 Head Cases. If they play 100 shows with the same return, that would mean, they would have grossed $3.3 million. It sure sounds like a decent take home.

On a larger scale, Slash Feat. Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators grossed $316,696 for a show in Dublin.

Music is all about people listening and if we listen and we like it, we will spend our dollars.

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Music

Clash Of The Titans

I watched the Big Four DVD recently. I know, I’m about 4 years late to the party, however after seeing those bands live on numerous occasions, I didn’t think it was essential viewing. And I was right. It wasn’t essential viewing.

Regardless of the quality of the live performances, the Big 4 got me thinking about the “Clash Of The Titans” tour that took place back in the early Nineties. After Metallica’s self titled”Black” album blew up all over the charts a funny thing happened in the recording business. The major labels started spending a lot of money to get thrash bands away from their independent labels and onto the major label roster. These labels then spent a lot of money to record new albums from Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax and Testament. They started to put some serious dollars behind the music videos and the marketing. Some of these clips bordered on hilarious. Testaments “Electric Crown” comes to mind immediately. The clip just didn’t make sense at all with the palm tree paradise like landscape interspersed with footage of a dude that looks like he’s got issues.

Regardless Thrash Metal was strong.

Suddenly bands on independent labels became major label stars. The sub-genre was growing at an exponential rate. Albums from artists that got caught up in the wave were selling 500,000 copies and then a million plus copies. MTV played their videos and the movement skipped borders and went global.

Which brings me to “The Clash Of The Titans” tour.

The first iteration in 1990 featured Megadeth, Slayer, Testament and Suicidal Tendencies. The second iteration in 1991 featured Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax, as headliners. The funny thing is that a lot of people would probably be surprised to hear that a future superstar band in Alice In Chains was opening.

And how ironic is that. The opening act would end up catching the next musical wave and they would become bigger than all of the thrash acts that they opened for on that tour.

What the tour went on to show was “where do these bands go from here?” All of the bands (except for Suicidal Tendencies and Alice In Chains) had this technical and fast music which was commercially popular but also running low on quality. Metallica stopped re-writing the same record over and over again. Alex Skolnick in the Thrash Metal episode of the Metal Evolution series said it the best;

They made a record that sounded as big as any pop album.

Suddenly, Exodus, Testament, Megadeth and Anthrax all tried to follow the Metallica blueprint. The pressure from their major label backers was relentless. For a lot of these bands, the money aspect proved to be a game changer. Slayer on the other hand, stayed true to their extreme ways.

But then the commercial wave crashed down, and a lot of the bands that had major label deals started to get dropped, or break up.

Fast forward to 2015, all of those bands are around in some shape or form. With different members, but still thrashing.

“Man In The Box” from Alice In Chains has about 11.2 million streams on Spotify. Megadeth’s “Symphony Of Destruction” has over 6.5 million streams. “Madhouse” from Anthrax has 1.8 million streams. “Raining Blood” from Slayer has almost 9 million streams. “Electric Crown” has 721,000 streams.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Don’t You Just Love What Copyright Has Become?

Remember the original intention of Copyright was to promote learning. It was conceived that if creators of works would have a 14 year monopoly on their creations (with the option to renew for another 14 years provided they were still alive), they had enough incentives to create new works and when the copyright expired on their older works, they would fall into the public domain so that others can use and build on these older works.

200 plus years later, we have a lot of stupidity around in the name of Copyright.

A German based association called, Total Wipes Music Group is using Google’s anti-piracy system to censor everything it doesn’t like. Read the article and be amazed at how Copyright is abused. In order to stop the infringement on an album they own the copyright  for,  Total Wipes Music Group tried to censor a legitimate article on how to download anonymously. Since then, they have targeted legitimate articles from the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF), AVG, Dropbox and Opera, just to name a few. And guess what, not one of those sites listed contained any infringing links or even mentioned the music that Total Wipes Music Group administers or holds the copyrights to. What Total Wipes attempted to do was to censor legitimate articles that provided users with information on downloading and anonymous VPN’s under the disguise of Copyright.

And the laughable thing is that the Group is now claiming that it was a bug in their automated takedown system. Well, I guess that bug just keeps on resurfacing each year.

Don’t you just love what copyright has become?

Then you have a powerful organisation like the MPAA trying to censor a website called Open Culture. Open Culture offers Public Domain movies however according to a takedown notice that the MPAA sent to Google, Open Culture’s list of 700 free public domain movies contains copyright infringing material.

Remember that Copyright’s intent was to promote learning and this was done by ensuring that each country has a rich public domain. Well it looks like in the U.S, the rich wealthy copyright monopolies want to control that as well and put those works back under Copyright protection.

Don’t you just love what copyright has become?

Remember the good old days when the copyright monopolies lobbied hard against radio, television, the introduction of blank cassette tapes and those advertisements that “Home Taping Is Killing the Music Business”, then blank CD’s, then mp3’s and piracy sites. They did that all in the name of the artist. That same artist that they exploited and signed to a deal that was stacked in the favour of the record label.

It’s pretty easy to read between the lines and see that the record labels and their lobby groups did all of this lobbying to protect their business models and to ensure that their copyright monopoly remains in place. And this leads to more lobby groups that want to have a say.

Now we have the Grammy Creators Alliance. On the face of it, they proclaim that they are backed by artists like Steven Tyler and their intention is to lobby Spotify, so that Spotify pays them fairly for their works. However, the organisation is run by agents and managers whose only interest is securing a big pay-day for themselves. Hell, these types of people don’t even create anything of value that people consume, however they now have a voice on copyright disputes because they have money behind them to give them that voice.

For the record Spotify does pay fairly to the Copyright Holders of the works. So maybe this new Alliance should lobby their record label to pay them fairly.

Don’t you just love what copyright has become?

And then on certain occasions you have some excellent innovation that happens when people don’t allow Copyright to influence their creations. iFlix is another torrent client that streams any magnet link in an instant. It’s easy to use, it’s available on Android and it uses material that has been infringed on.

It’s created by a Romanian software engineer. Romania is one of the poorer countries in the EU and it also has the highest rates of software piracy. And from all of this piracy, you wouldn’t believe what happened. It made Romania a powerhouse in software development. Romania now has the most techies in Europe. Google and Microsoft employ a lot of IT workers from Romania. All of this was made possible by infringing on the rights of others.

And going back to iFlix, the ecosystem all came about because the developer was hired to offer a service to parents to watch their kindergarten kids on their mobile.

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

The Great Copyright Hijack

Copyright in its first incarnation via the “Statute of Anne” and the “Copyright Act of 1790” stated that the objective of copyright was to “encourage learning” and this was to be achieved by securing authors the “sole right and liberty of printing, reprinting, publishing and vending” the copies of their “maps, charts, and books” for a term of 14 years, with the right to renew for one additional 14 year term should the copyright holder still be alive.

So think about what the intent of Copyright was. It was to ENCOURAGE LEARNING.

So fast forward 200 plus years and Copyright has a very different meaning. The encourage learning part is gone, replaced by massive expansions of copyright terms.

Copyright law has also given birth to corporations who purchase copyrights from creators.

Copyright law has also given rise to collection societies and licensing societies.

Copyright law has made infringement a criminal offence.

Finally, copyright law has become a money-making scheme that only benefits the large corporations that have a copyright monopoly. It’s become worlds apart from its original intention.

For a lot of people copyright law relates to the fact that they shouldn’t download movies or music without paying for it.

But what people fail to understand is that copyright reaches into everything we do. Copyright now is NOT about encouraging learning, but about locking up learning.

Copryight law is all about censorship. You know the one I am talking about, when a company/person with some wealth, issues a takedown claim to another entity that is not so powerful/wealthy to remove content they don’t like.

I am sure by now everyone has probably heard about the YouTube video of a cat purring being taken down by a Copyright Claim from music publisher EMI and collecting society PRS for Music. This is silly for a whole lot of reasons. First, EMI and PRS for Music use automated take downs, so there is no human involvement. Second, YouTube’s Content ID algorithm is obviously flawed as it thinks that a cat purring links back to a recorded song. Third, the YouTube user has been punished for doing nothing wrong.

REDDIT REJECTS COPYRIGHT CLAIMS – this is when an entity fights back and actually investigates the claims made against it.  As mentioned above, corporations with money use automated take down systems and a lot of the sites that get hit with these take down requests comply without investigating the merits of the claim.

However Reddit doesn’t take the takedown requests as gospel. They actually investigate and determine if the takedown requests have merit. And WordPress, which hosts this blog is by far the best at handing and investigating take down requests.

COPYRIGHT CLAIMS OVERREACH – this is what happens when a powerful entity censors the speech of others. They look silly and they hurt their reputation.

Remember when Nuclear Blast via a Panama-based copyright troll called World Digital Rights went after people (maybe fans/maybe not) of metal band “All Shall Perish” back in 2012. Well the band wasn’t happy about their label going after people who could be “All Shall Perish” fans and guess what happened afterwards.

Vocalist Eddie Hermida departed to join Suicide Silence. Guitarist Ben Orum became a family man. Co-Guitarist Francesco Artusato was involved with another project called “Devil You Know”. Drummer Adam Pierce joined “Emmure” and at this point in time he is listed as Emmure’s drummer on their Facebook page and also listed as the “All Shall Perish” drummer on their Wikipedia page. That just left bassist Mike Tiner as the only member that didn’t have anything on.

The whole Metallica vs Napster focused on Copyright Infringement however what did that really mean. Metallica at the time already had a handsome deal in place where they would lease their shares in the songs copyright to a corporation for a nice upfront payment. Hell, Sammy Hagar paid for his divorce by putting three new songs on a Greatest Hits package and selling the copyrights of those new songs for a nice fee.

So going back to Metallica, who was really hurt when their music was infringed on. It definitely wasn’t Metallica. And if we had the original terms of 14 years, plus 14 years renewal “Kill Em All” and “Ride The Lightning” would now be Copyright free and in the Public Domain.

And that my friends is the great Copyright hijack.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Saints (Winners) and Sinners (Losers)

WINNER
Machine Head are doing the opposite of what all the other bands are doing. Playing smaller venues, selling them out and doing “An Evening With..” extravaganza. The prices of tickets are affordable and not extravagant. This is one band that realizes their niche place in the metal music business and they play to their core audience, the Headcases.

In Robb Flynn, they have one of the best frontmen in thrash/metal circles that is not afraid to take a stance on an issue. He speaks to his core audience via his journals. He controls his own narrative and not the press, which is the downfall of a lot of other artists.

Flynn, along with Monte Conner from Nuclear Blast have realized that music is all about the souvenirs. The “Killers and Kings” single release for Record Store Day with the four different tarot covers proved once again that if people believe in the artists, they will spend their money. Machine Head weren’t selling music, they were selling collectibles. I purchased all four and I still haven’t opened them.

WINNER
Megadeth. As a guitarist I didn’t really dig Broderick’s uninspired lead breaks so I am pretty happy that he has left. Just because a person is super technical it doesn’t mean they are good songwriters. Seriously put those lead breaks up against the jazzy shred work of Chris Poland, the neo – classical shred metal of Marty Friedman, the tasteful phrasing of Al Pitrelli and the pentatonic chaos of Dave Mustaine and you will see where Broderick stacks up. Drummers are plentiful so I am sure that Megadeth will have no issues here finding one that will suit.

LOSERS
Chris Broderick and Shaun Drover.

The history of guitarists and drummers that have departed Megadeth is vast. The real good ones have had stellar careers pre and post Megadeth. Marty Friedman had a fan base before he joined and then he became a Japanese musical icon post Megadeth. Al Pitrelli also had an established fan base prior to joining and he was already in demand as a session guy and touring guitarist for various projects. Chris Poland did “Damn The Machine” which was an unbelievable album/band that wasn’t embraced by the waves of change that happened to metal in 1993 and Poland’s instrumental album “Return To Metalopolis” was also a favourite back in the day.

WINNER
Streaming. Fans of music didn’t care at all that The Pirate Bay got raided or that Kickass Torrents got taken down. Those raids/takedowns are all pure PR stunts by the associations and a waste of money/legal resources because copyright for the last 15 years has been hijacked and used purely for criminal pursuits and nothing to do with aiding the artist.

LOSERS
Artists and entities that compare the streaming dollars earned today to those pre 1999 sales dollars without understanding that streaming is all about scale. The more people using the platform, the higher the payments will be in the future. But no one can look that far, when everyone thinks about “right now”. The ones complaining about streaming royalties just don’t have enough fans interested in listening to their music consistently.

WINNER
Slash. He has shown that he is more Guns N Roses than Axl Rose is. His output has been solid via his many projects, like Slash’s Snakepit, Velvet Revolver, Slash (the guest vocalist album) and now Slash featuring Myles Kennedy and The Conspirators. He is doing what every other musician should be doing, which is releasing product and touring.

LOSER
Duff McKagan. His views on piracy/copyright infringement are restricting him from doing what he needs to do, which is, to create music.

WINNER
Dee Snider. His views on Doug Aldrich are spot on.

LOSER
Doug Aldrich. He’s a good guitar player but nowhere in the league of the Eighties guitarist he was competing against when he was with “Lion”. For the years he has been involved in music, there is not one definitive song/riff that can be attributed to Doug Aldrich.

WINNER
Data. The era of feeling it or rorting the charts is over. It’s all about the fans and what they listen too.

LOSER
Sales. Just because Spotify is killing off piracy, it doesn’t mean that people will start to buy physical CD’s, vinyls or pay to download MP3’s again. Seriously there is a lot of rubbish reporting out there stating something like “sales are worse now since Spotify has entered the market”. Well, hello genius, Spotify and streaming for that matter are also competing with sales.

WINNER
George Lynch. He realizes it’s all about the music and without making new music, he has no career. That’s why people come back. Lynch Mob, his solo career, KXM, Sweet and Lynch and now the announcement of a new project called “The Infidels” which is another pseudo-supergroup.

LOSER
Don Dokken. Without the involvement of Lynch and Pilson in the songwriting department, the band Dokken is a shadow of its former self.

WINNER
Indegoot Entertainment. They have a roster of bands that make up a very large portion of the U.S Hard Rock market, that have proven to be consistent sellers in a recorded music sales market that is contracting instead of expanding. Shinedown, In This Moment, Halestorm, Chevelle, Adelitas Way, Black Stone Cherry, Theory of A Deadman and Story of The Year.

Rock is far from dead when you have rock artists like these. And with a good roster of talent comes power on the live circuit. That is why Indegoot is a winner.

LOSER
Any metal or rock band that is spending months upon months creating their new album and being out of the public consciousness. The modern way is to be in our head space every day. If an artist today takes a break then they are on their way to being forgotten. And you don’t want to be in the news if it is not about your music. No one can forget what their core business is.

Slipknot took almost seven years to release their new album, only to have “The Devil In I” rack up 9.6 million streams. What about the other songs?

Yngwie Malmsteen has delivered a lot of dud albums in the last ten years and he still takes his time before issuing the next one.

WHY?

You would think after one crap album, he would get going with delivering a better song quickly to make amends. Malmsteen can be doing much more to keep in touch with his fan base which doesn’t revolve around issuing ten to twelve songs every two years under his own name.

Take a leaf out of George Lynch’s or Michael Sweets or Marc Tremonit’s or Russell Allen’s playbook.

WINNER
Kevin Churko. Everyone wants to work with him. He is the modern-day version of Tom Werman or Keith Olsen. Five Finger Death Punch, In This Moment, Hellyeah, Papa Roach are all bands that have used the might Churko as producer and on some occasions as songwriter. If you want to use sales as a statistic of reach, then bands produced by Kevin Churko are some of the best sellers in the genre.

LOSER
EVH.

My EVH Peavey 5150 Combo that I purchased back in 1995 is still my favourite amp to record with. So it is a shame that the greatest and most innovative guitarist cannot get it together to deliver new music worthy of his stature. Reading Sammy Hagar’s bio recently cemented my views on EVH who has become a person that is so out of touch with reality and a victim of his own vices. His future without any doubt is with Sammy Hagar as the front man.
WINNER
Allen Kovac’s move from management to the label business has paid off. Eleven Seven Music is another label doing their bit in bringing hard rock back to the masses. Artists involve Hellyeah, Mötley Crüe, Papa Roach, Pop Evil, Sixx:A.M, Nothing More, Art Of Dying, Apocalyptica, Escape The Fate and Drowning Pool.

LOSER
AC/DC without Malcolm Young have lost their foundation. Don’t get me wrong, I love AC/DC and always will. They will make a killing on the live circuit however no one cares for their new music. On top of all that their views about withholding their music from certain digital outlets (while it is available for free on pirate sites) shows how out of touch they are. They are leaving money on the table.

WINNER
Marc Tremonti. He showed the world that he was the brains and driving force behind Creed. He kept his career going with Alter Bridge. He started his own solo band. He went away and mastered the art of shred. His PRS guitars are state of the art and brilliant to play. Trust me on that one as I have one. The PRS through the 5150 is the perfect sound for me.

LOSER
Metallica. They are trying to replicate the corporate deals of U2 and the product saturation of Kiss. This in turn leaves the hard-core fan base squeamish. Meanwhile it has been seven years since they released “Death Magnetic” and music is the very reason why Metallica is in the powerful position they are in right now. However it seems they have forgotten that part of their career. “Lords Of Summer” will most probably be turned into a totally different song however if it doesn’t, then it doesn’t bode well for Metallica as they sit down to write the next album.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, Unsung Heroes

Going Viral

I have a Killswitch Engage Google Alert set up and from when I set up that alert I would be lucky to get at least one alert a day with a story on Killswitch Engage. The only exception to this rule of thumb was when Killswitch Engage had a new album coming out and the guys in the band started doing the whole promotional run. During those cycles I would get daily alerts with two to three links of interviews.

So imagine my surprise when I started getting Google Alerts a few days ago on Killswitch Engage and it had over 12 to 15 links to different websites all telling the same story.

“Metal Guitarist wins big on “The Price Is Right”.

News outlets that have never run a Killswitch Engage story at all (and probably never will after this) suddenly jumped on the band wagon.

Yep, Adam Dutkiewicz’s hilarious appearance on “The Price Is Right” and then going on to win over $50K in cash/prizes plus a holiday was brilliant and it went viral. For Adam Dutkiewicz, if he got a marketing team and paid them top dollar for this type of promotion, he wouldn’t be able to get it.

The reason why it went viral is that we, the fans shared the fuck out of it because of Adam.

He is a genuine rock star, a great talent, a hard worker (via being a producer and a band member) and a madman that keeps it real.

I remember watching him perform when he toured Australia with “Times Of Grace”. He is a dead set madman on stage. His leg was in a knee brace, however that did nothing to slow him down. Eventually, the knee brace came off and ended up backstage.

So when I saw the footage from “The Price Is Right” it was exactly as you would expect Adam to be. Hilarious and all he wanted to do was say hello to his dog. Because when you have a resume that involves musician, recording engineer, songwriter, and music producer, it leaves little time to be a family man.

That is why he is adored.

Music is his lifestyle.

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Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Curse of 27

I am sure that everyone has heard or read stories about rock/pop stars dying at the age of 27 and how that age group is cursed. Seriously, the question that needs to be asked is why aren’t all the of the ages in which a person dies cursed. Why isn’t there an age 24 curse, or an age 25 curse, or an age 29 curse, or an age 34 curse, or an age 38 curse and so on?

Why is the suicide by gunshot of Kurt Cobain at the age of 27 more relevant than the tragic plane crash death of Randy Rhoads at the age of 25, or the tragic bus crash death of Cliff Burton at the age of 24 or the tragic overdoses of Tommy Bolin and Paul Kossoff also at the age of 25?

Why is the drug induced heart attack of Jim Morrison at the age of 27 more relevant than the shooting murder of Dimebag Darrell at the age of 38?

Why is it that overdose of Jimi Hendrix at the age of 27 be more relevant than the cancer death of one of the most inspirational guitarists in the thrash/death genres in Chuck Schuldiner at the age of 34?

Why is the alcohol poisoning death of Amy Wineshouse at the age of 27 more relevant that the AIDS related death of Robin Crosby at the age of 42 or the alcohol related death of Bon Scott at age 33 or John Bonham at age 32?

What about the death of Marc Bolan a few days before his 30th birthday or Phil Lynott at the age of 36 or the death of Jeff Hanneman at 49?

I can go on and on.

It goes to show how clueless the mainstream reporters and news outlets are. The scary thing is that these so-called reporters/news outlets have the numbers and the reach, so whatever narrative they put out there, people accept it as gospel because the majority of people are generally too lazy to their own research.

In some of the discussions I have had with people, one of the arguments put forward about the 27 age curse is that those people who died at that age had exceptional talent and made a large innovative contribution to their musical genre. I tell them that I have no issues with their viewpoints, however there are also other artists with exceptional talent that made a large innovative contribution to their musical genre that died at different ages.

For example, Randy Rhoads.

Name me a guitarist right now that doesn’t list Randy Rhoads as an influence.

Name me a European born guitarist that doesn’t list Randy Rhoads as their only inspiration. Hell, look at most of the extreme metal guitarist and you will see a reference to Randy Rhoads in their playing styles. If you know who Alexi Laiho is, then you will know of his devotion to the school of Randy Rhoads. Dimebag Darrell also loved Randy Rhoads (along with Ace Frehley and EVH).

And it is good to see that every year there is a Randy Rhoads Remembered Tribute, so that we never forget the legend that he is.

The same can be said about Chuck Schuldiner who introduced a new level of technical playing to the death metal genre. Dimebag Darrell via his love for the blues introduced a groove to thrash metal that was never there before and in the process spawned thousands of bands in it’s wake. I love Machine Head and if you look at all of their albums, there is always a song on there that has the Dimebag Groove. Or is that the Dimebag Swagger.

Then you have some artists who at the time of their peak really went under the radar however their influence on the band they were in was mammoth. The artists I am talking about are Paul Kossoff and Robin Crosby from FREE and RATT respectively.

RATT rolled because Robin Crosby rocked and when he didn’t rock anymore, RATT ceased to ROLL. If you don’t believe me, then look at the songwriting credits on all of RATT’s biggest songs. The music scene is toxic and when artists fall, they fall hard. Robin Crosby is a perfect example of how toxic it really is.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Music, My Stories, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit, Unsung Heroes

Music Business Brewtality

Put all the myths aside and lets not carry the delusion on any longer.

The music scene is brutal.

Anyone heard the song “Chainsaw Charlie (Murders In The New Morgue)” from WASP.

For those that have heard the song you would know what I mean. For those that haven’t heard the song, Charlie is the President of show biz who feeds on the pop stardom dreams in wannabe artists by promising to make them a star. After those artists make Charlie millions, their careers are chopped up by Charlie and his Chainsaw and discarded to the morgue just for someone younger to take their place.

In other words the junkyard of broken rock n roll dreams is piled high with the souls of artists who didn’t meet the commercial milestones that the record labels were after.

And when an artist sees that all they are worth is just an income generating machine, they start to change. Some can’t handle it and they may end up dead. Others deliver albums that polarized their fan base. Others just play the game and keep on delivering the same album over and over again. And then there are others that deliver more ground breaking work.

We all know that in the pre-Internet era, signing with a label was the only choice an artist had if they wanted to have a career in the music industry and of course, like all great monopolies the labels exploited that power and position. And I use the “career” word loosely, because we should all know by now that the monies earned by 1% of the artists prop up the whole business which in turn means that a lot of artists never really had musical careers. Sure they rode on a wave and had some cash thrown at them, however once the wave crashed down, so did their so called careers.

But the internet was supposed to level the playing field and in a way it did, however what didn’t change was the need for artists to still require a record label to be heard above the noise. Of course there are a lot of artists that are DIY artists and are quite happy to be so. However they are competing with a shitload of other artists that are DIY and Label artists.

From October last year you had Sixx:A.M, Exodus, Slipknot, Sanctuary, Texas Hippie Coalition, Scar Symmetry, Devin Townsend, Sister Sin, At The Gates, Black Veil Brides, Cavalera Conspiracy, Machine Head, Pink Floyd, Foo Fighters, In This Moment, Nickelback, AC/DC, Angels And Airwaves, Smashing Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson, Papa Roach, Periphery, Blind Guardian, Lynch Mob, Alpha Tiger, Sweet and Lynch, Serious Black, Eclipse, Harem Scarem, Level 10, Crazy Lixx, Rated X, Allen/Lande, Vega, Dalton plus a plethora of re-issues, best offs and live releases. All of these releases are on labels.

Then you go onto Bandcamp and you start to see hundreds more being self-released.

Just in one day, February 4, 2015 there were over 40 new metal releases. Now think about all of the new music hitting the net in this fashion and that was just for the metal tag on bandcamp. So with so much new music out there, how can fans find an artist and if they do, how much time will these fans invest in the artist before new music from another artist comes their way.

And that is why the music business is brutal.

Brutality Number 1:

We all know about record label mistreatment and greed. Seen this study recently about streaming monies and how they are actually distributed from the streaming platform. Click on the link and find out who is keeping the majority of the money. Trust me there are no surprises there however the take away of the study is that it was commissioned by a Record Label association and they state that it is perfectly okay for the labels to keep the majority of the streaming money because of the costs they incur to record and  upload the actual music.

Brutality Number 2:

But the real brutality in the music business is finding and then keeping an audience and once that audience is found, it needs to be replenished year after year as original fans drop out, so new ones need to come on board.

The biggest killer of the Eighties bands like Dokken, Kingdom Come, Anthrax, Skid Row, Yngwie Malmsteen and many others that had platinum albums is that their fan base didn’t get replenished as quickly as it was dissipating.

Seen interviews recently of some of the above artists. They are confused and wondering what the hell happened to those million plus fans who purchased some of their Eighties LP’s. They assumed that just because they sold a million records they had a million fans. They cant compute that people might have purchased their record, listened to it once and then never played it again. They cant compute that people might have purchased their record, listened to it once and then hocked it to a second hand store. And seriously how accurate are those stats anyway.

Soundscan metrics came in around 1991 and at least these metrics are based on sales from shops. But the fact that a large part of my metal and rock collection is from second-hand shops, well those sales don’t even rate a mention as an official sale/fan. Dokken and Malmsteen are two artists that came into my life in this fashion. Hell, Twisted Sister, Metallica, Blind Guardian, WASP and Megadeth came to me via dubbed copies of their albums on cassettes. So how does that compute as a sale/fan.

How much money do you think I have invested in those bands afterwards in merch, ticket sales and recorded music purchases? Trust me a lot.

So that is why the music business is BRUTAL towards the artists as the artists who create the music are clueless and the labels are more so, because FANS don’t just come from sales of recorded music.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Class of 1989

Another trip down memory lane via my Hot Metal magazines. This is issue 6 from 1989. Lets look at the bands/artists mentioned:

Doro Pesch
Remember “All We Are” from Warlock. Even though Doro has released a shit load of records under the “Doro” name, none have come close to “All We Are”.  One YouTube channel has 3,428,785 views for the song “All We Are”. It was anthemic and energetic.

Dee Snider
Dee Snider’s new band Desperados had just signed a recording deal with Elektra Records and the article mentioned that they will start recording their debut album shortly.

We all know how that turned out. Elektra Records became Neglektra Records. The project is almost forgotten, except for Dee Snider who always resurrects a song or two or three from those sessions.

The Widowmaker debut album had a few and his solo album “Never Let The Bastards Wear You Down” also had a few. His new anthology will also contain a few songs.

Quiet Riot
Strong rumours circulated that the band had split up and that Frankie Banali had become a permanent member of W.A.S.P while vocalist Paul Shortino had been offered a solo record deal.

How funny that the vocalist who came in towards the end of Quiet Riot’s fame gets a solo deal. Seriously what song has Shortino written that has stuck around for the last 25 years.

Go on YouTube and type in Paul Shortino or Rough Cutt.

Forgotten, because no one cared.

Rough Cutt was just a band that had okay musicians and those okay musicians acted as a backing band for the better musicians like Jake E.Lee, Craig Goldy and Claude Schnell to launch careers. If Chris Hager was really a great songwriter he would have remained in RATT.

Whitesnake
The new Whitesnake album was finished and the press release said it was tentatively titled “Slip Of The Tongue” and the band had also re-recorded two old Whitesnake tunes in “Fool For Your Lovin” and “We Wish You Well”. The album was set for an August release, however it wouldn’t come out until November of that year.

We all know that the album was held back by David Coverdale as a threat to Geffen to stop the promotional push on the Blue Murder album. “Slip Of The Tongue” went on to sell over a million copies while Blue Murder’s self-titled debut got killed off.

David Lee Roth
Was recording his third album with producer Keith Olsen who just finished the Whitesnake, “Slip Of The Tongue” album. The band had new guitarist Rocket Ritchotte who replaced Steve Vai.

The album that would eventually become “A Little Ain’t Enough” came out in January 1991 (almost two years later), and the producer ended up being Bob Rock and the guitarists ended up being Jason Becker and Steven Hunter, however Rocket Ritchotte does have a few songwriting credits. Goes to show how quickly things can change in the music business.

And lets not forget Jason Becker and his diagnosis with Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

In the end the album is forgotten. The title track lead single has about 420,000 YouTube views, which pales compared to “Yankee Rose” and “Just Like Paradise”. Hell, it even pales to Warlock’s “All We Are”.

Black Sabbath
They issued a press release calling off their U.S tour because guitarist Tony Iommi had fallen ill. The band at the time consisted of Tony Martin on vocals, Cozy Powell on drums and Geoff Nicholls on keyboards. The illness came at a time when the band was enjoying a revival of interest following the release of their critically acclaimed album, “The Headless Cross”.

But the truth was so much different. Sales in the US/Canada were low as the record wasn’t available in the shops to buy. Iommi more or less said the same in a Black Sabbath fanzine called Southern Cross, which is also up on Wikipedia for all to read.

Blue Murder
Weeks after the release of their self titled debut, the album was enjoying a decent run on the charts. We all know that this promotion push from Geffen would be pulled because of a certain David Coverdale withholding the “Slip Of The Tongue” album. And with that went the mainstream career of John Sykes.

Britny Fox/Faster Pussycat
Both bands began work on their follow-up albums. “Boys In Heat” and “Wake Me When It’s Over” are the albums respectively. Britny Fox and CBS didn’t go over too well with audiences, while Faster Pussycat continued their Gold run with Elektra. However by 1992, both bands were at the crossroads.

Both bands don’t even have the stats that “All We Are” from Warlock has.

Junkyard
The Hot Metal magazine loved their no bullshit rock n roll. The band at the time was a success story in work ethics. All the magazines wrote about their story to the “big time” and in all of their interviews all they wanted to do was be successful enough so that they can do more follow-up records to the debut.

In the end they came at the tail end of a glam rock movement which unfortunately they got lumped into and when that movement committed hara-kiri, the career of Junkyard was collateral damage. Their major label career also forgotten. The stats on YouTube tell the story.

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A to Z of Making It, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Intervals

I hate the name “Djent”. I actually hate names given to types of music full stop, however we all use them in conversations to distinguish between styles because the media that reports on music also use them.

All the bands that fall into this “Djent” category are just metal bands with a progressive technical edge. (Yeah I know, more names for types of music).

To me the difference between a good band and a bad band is the song. Regardless of how virtuoso the members are in each group and how great they can play, if they can’t write a good song then what is the point.

I don’t mind Periphery and I never got into Animals As Leaders. However, TesseracT, The Kindred (formerly known as Today I Caught The Plague) and Intervals are my top three at this point in time. Some might say what about Protest The Hero. Well for that band, they are already in the Hall Of Gods, so let’s leave it at that.

I have already written about TesseracT, The Kindred, Periphery and Protest The Hero. Now it’s time for Intervals which is another band I really dig that of course comes from Canada.

Intervals began as an outlet for founder and guitarist Aaron Marshall to create music under. As with all musicians, no band is forever, and Marshall had just parted ways with a band that he was in for many years with his high school peers. Musical break ups are always difficult and as Marshall was trying to figure out what to do next, a friend of his convinced him to shoot a video of him playing one of his newer songs. That track led to Marshall meeting Anup Sastry who would end up being the drummer of the band.

Instead of touring and building an audience, Marshall and Anup built it up online. The first piece of music officially released is an instrumental EP called “The Space Between” in 2011. In the liner notes of this EP, the band expressed that they were open to a vocalist. In 2012, came another instrumental EP called “In Time”. All self released.

Then in 2014 came the album, “A Voice Within”. The big difference here is that as the title suggests, there are vocals on the album and really good clean tone ones at that. Mike Semesky (Ex-The HAARP MACHINE) who played live bass was introduced as the vocalist. The album explores the idea of self-discovery and refers to a person’s inner self and staying true to who they are. They composed three songs by locking themselves in a home studio. They collaborated on the others through file sharing. That’s the modern music business.

It’s a typical DIY attitude. No label involved, no middle men. It is a direct to fan connection. In an interview with “The Wellz Street Journal” from October 24, 20132013 this is what Marshall had to say about it;

We’re really into the DIY approach, for now. Direct support from our fans has been the number one reason we’ve been able to tour and sustain the band. We couldn’t be more grateful for that, so maintaining a direct rapport with our supporters is important to us. We’re not ruling anything out, but we’ve always approached things with that mindset, as opposed to rushing into a deal with anyone. I think it’s much better to be cautious and make the right moves in today’s music industry, as there appears to be more wrong ones to make, than the right ones.

“Ephemeral” kicks off the album. It’s only fitting that a song with title that means “nothing lasts forever” starts off the album. Co-guitarist, Lukas Guyader described the songs meaning in an interview on February 28, 2014 by The Wellz Street Journal;

“The meaning of ‘Ephemeral’ is something that is fleeting. We’re referring to the moments that pass by in day-to-day life, and how you have to make the most of those, even though they are exactly that – fleeting.”

The music might seem disconnected however as the song progresses, you just get it and understand it.

“Say goodbye to the world as we knew it
To the eyes that couldn’t see”

That’s right, time marches forward and it doesn’t break for no one. The chorus is a combination of twisting melodies and syncopated riffs, all topped with a captivating voice.

“It is our duty to live while we can”

Perfect lyric. If you are on cruise control, you need to shake it up because you never know when your time is up.

“Automaton” is by far my personal favourite.

There is a problem in the music business right now that any artist which is not mainstream is almost forgotten on arrival. That is the power of the ones that control the narrative. They only talk about the ones that will give them clicks.

With a title that more or less describes a person who acts mechanically or leads a routine monotonous life, the music underlying the song is chaotic and unpredictable. Nothing like the title suggests.

It’s all about the riff, with that syncopated poly rhythms and perfectly executed technical arpeggios.

The gears pulling forward
Always falling into place
This battle I know is over
Despite the effort and the haste

I always connect to songs that have a “slave to the grind” kind of vibe. I saw my father and my grandfather do the grind each day as they set up a family and a life in a new country. I swore that I would not be like them and when I realised that I was, I switched off the cruise control and shook things up a little bit. However, in time, despite the effort and the haste, as the song lyrics state, the gears start pulling forward and I am back in the same place, doing the grind. And I repeat all the above steps again.

“The Self Surrendered” is both striking and transcending especially from about the 4 minute mark when it goes into this clean tone jazz fusion post rock section. Intervals are not about the single, but the body of work.

The self surrendered are after all
Minds reduced to marionettes
Forever performing on our stage

A common theme of dancing like marionettes to the symphony of destruction.

“Breathe” is just brilliant. The song opens up with arpeggio lines that sound like rain drops. It’s an instrumental, it only goes for about 2 minutes and it acts as an intro to the more frantic song called “The Escape”. But it’s two minutes without any filler. Quality all the way.

With “Atlas Hour” Intervals scores a hit that lives in our head space and that’s the most important one.

Through functional dependency
We endure conformity
A greater purpose will be served
Within this life and the next

“A Voice Within” is a song that can cross over into the mainstream. It has all the elements of being unique enough to be rooted in technical metal, mainstream rock and (cough, cough) pop rock.

In time we all will hear what resonates from within
The voice that we must find and embrace to guide us

To feel, to see, to create, to dream
It is our duty to live while we can

And as quickly as Mike Semesky came in as vocalist, he was gone and the band is currently a three-piece with the original crew from 2011. The announcement said that the remaining three members are looking for a new vocalist that can dedicate themselves to Intervals. Maybe, dedication played a part in the departure of Semesky.

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