Monthly Archives: June 2023

A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

Four For Friday

Without artists and their connections to their fans, no one else can make money.

Artist Power

Movies are struggling at the box office, but Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” is tipped to bring in over $1B.

The sorry state of ticket prices, dynamic algorithms and artists scalping their own tickets to increase demand, all play their part to increase these revenues.

Artists deserve to be compensated well because it is their connection with the fans which brings in the dollars, however it sure look like everyone else is getting a larger cut of the pie than the artist.

And the government investigation into the monopoly that Ticketmaster and Live Nation have, ended up like all other government investigations against monopolistic corporations.

Business as usual for the corporations.

When monopolies exist, prices go up, so it’s no surprise that the previous highest tour revenues have came from 2017 to now.

Elton John’s “Farewell Yellow Brick Road” tour is still going I think and it’s almost to $900M for shows played between 2018 and 2023.

Ed Sheeran’s “Divide Tour” grossed $776M between 2017 and 2019.

Hans Zimmer

If he comes to Australia again with his 38-piece orchestra and band, I’ll be in the audience.

Truth is, his music was and still is performed by Orchestras around the world to sell out crowds.

While they pay a licence fee to perform his material, the bulk of the money is in the show.

So Zimmer has seized the day and over the last 5 or so years, he’s hit the road himself.

And he’s selling out arenas at the moment. Because he knows he has fans. He’s seen his streaming stats and he knows there is money to be made.

An 80’s Doc

“I Wanna Rock: The ’80s Metal Dream,” is coming to Paramount+.

Dee Snider from Twisted Sister appears.

But.

Then you get Kip Winger from Winger, Janet Gardner from Vixen, Dave ‘The Snake’ Sabo from Skid Row and John Corabi from The Scream along with former Guns N’ Roses manager Vicky Hamilton.

Most of these are smaller players.

Apart from Twisted Sister, the other artists had their big breaks from 1988. The Scream didn’t even release an album in the 80’s as their first and only album came out in the early 90s. However two of their members were in Racer X who released three albums in the 80s.

But we will hear stories of rejection and resilience.

Because, regardless of what happened in the 90s and the wastelands of the early 2000’s, all of these artists survived the chaos and are still making music and creating in 2023.

I’ll still watch it. It’s only three episodes.

Discography

One album or one song can make an artists career. But no one knows which song or album it’s going to be.

The problem after that, is artists fall in love with the one album or the one song that breaks them and suddenly all the albums and songs sound the same like the hit album. Suddenly their discography is that one album over and over again.

The best Discography’s have some albums or songs that are out there or ahead of their time or just bad. They often end up as the ones most talked about. Variation is good for the career.

However there are some artists who are the exception to the rule. Like AC/DC.

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Music, My Stories

Discogs Newsletters

Are CDs making a comeback?

Discogs seems to think so in their newsletters. They have over 20 million CDs listed for sale and 1 in 5 items purchased from the site is a CD.

It makes sense.

CDs can be produced a lot quicker and cheaper than vinyl and the current prices are dirt cheap. So it makes them very attractive to music consumers.

The thing is, I don’t have a CD player anymore however I am looking for one similar to the stand alone vinyl turntables with their own speakers.

If you know of any brands let me know as I have a lot of CDs I would like to play

And I saw a post on the Top 25 most expensive items sold on the site. Black Metal at its core is or was opposed to Christianity however it was also a movement against political correctness, consumerism and globalization.

Well the commercialism aspect didn’t bother a Black Metal fan who parted with $5200 for two Mayhem albums; the original vinyl pressings of “Deathcrush” and “De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas”. Regardless of ideology and ethos, anything to do with music is a business.

And a 7 inch single from 1981 by a hard rock metal band called “Fallout” sold for $2400. I saw that it was a limited 500 pressing.

But.

I had never heard of the band and that surprised me however a fan of theirs was parting with some serious money.

And who said punk fans are a bunch of anarchists because they sure like collecting rare punk records.

One thing I don’t understand on the site are the delivery fees for a item.

They are so damn high especially when a lot of eBay items I buy from the US, the UK and Europe come with free postage.

I am looking for a few albums on vinyl and while I am happy with the vinyl price, the delivery feea are ridiculous.

Case in point.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Influenced, Music

2001 – Part 6.1: Radiohead – Amnesiac

It’s been sixteen years since “In Rainbows”?

Back in 2007, the issue surrounding that album was getting paid. Remember “pay what you want”. It was meant to bring the money back into music. It didn’t.

But it gave artists a hard truth, that they have fans who are willing to pay zero dollars for their recorded music.

Today the main issue is getting peoples attention and holding it. Anyone remember what was trending last week. Me neither.

“Amnesiac” is the fifth studio album by Radiohead, released on 30 May 2001.

Although the album came out in 2001, it was recorded with producer Nigel Godrich in the same sessions as Radiohead’s previous album “Kid A” released in 2000.

Radiohead considered releasing the work as a double album, but decided against it.

Based on the buzz created from the earlier albums, “Amnesiac” debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and number two on the US Billboard 200.

Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box

It’s an electronic song with synthesisers and industrial percussion. Actually the tone of the synth riff feels like it became the design for the TonePad or SoundPrism apps.

Auto-Tune was also used to process Yorke’s vocals which sound hypnotic and other worldly.

After years of waiting nothing came, as your life flashed before your eyes you realize

A realization that the thing you have been eagerly anticipating for a long time, didn’t come to be.

After years of waiting nothing came, and you realize you’re looking in the wrong place

After the passage of time you come to the realization that your search or focus has been misguided.

Your strategy was ineffective and it led you astray. But there is time to reassess your approach, redirect your efforts, or reconsider your expectations in order to find the desired outcome or solution.

I’m a reasonable man, get off my case

Pyramid Song

The piano chords drive the song, which is a trippy 60s experimental acid rock track. Wikipedia tells me the musical part of song was inspired by the Charles Mingus song “Freedom” and its lyrics were inspired by an exhibition of ancient Egyptian underworld art Yorke attended while the band was recording in Copenhagen and ideas of cyclical time discussed by Stephen Hawking and Buddhism.

I jumped in the river and what did I see, black eyed angels swam with me

A symbolic leap into the unknown.

And while angels normally represent the light, the mention of black-eyed angels is seen as mysterious. The color black is also associated with darkness.

And we all went to heaven in a little row boat, there was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt

The mention of a row boat, which requires teamwork and coordinated effort to navigate, suggests a collective experience or shared journey.

“Pyramid Song” was named one of the best tracks of the decade by Rolling Stone, NME and Pitchfork

Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors

Wikipedia tells me it began as an attempt to record another song, “True Love Waits”.

It features keyboard loops recorded during the “OK Computer” sessions. Deciding that the arrangement did not fit “True Love Waits”, Radiohead used it to create a new track.

Yorke added a spoken vocal and used Auto-Tune to process it into melody.

Unfortunately the story of the songs creation is better than the song. It’s a skip for me.

You and Whose Army?

Wikipedia tells me that the song is about someone who is elected into power by people and who then blatantly betrays them.

At the time Yorke was protesting against the British PM, Tony Blair. However it seems that every democratic country has this problem.

Its like lounge music with a drunken vocal melody for the first 1.50 as the song builds and I was going to skip it.

But it changes and the last minute is dreamy rock and I like it.

We ride tonight ghost horses

A journey into the unknown. It seems to be a recurring theme on the album.

I Might Be Wrong

I like the Bluesy riff but don’t like the industrial sounding drum beat.

You go down the waterfall, think about the good times and never look back

Another phrase about a challenging or transformative experience.

As you draw strength, inspiration, or comfort from the good times during times of adversity. You know the whole wellness business model is built on selling the “power of positive thinking”.

Knives Out

It sounds like they just got in the room and jammed this one out.

Lyrically I think it’s about cannibalism.

Morning Bell/Amnesiac

I’ll give them points for trying to do something different and out of their comfort zones, but as a title track it’s terrible.

A skip for me.

Dollars and Cents

Another skip for me.

Hunting Bears

Its a two minute instrumental on electric guitar and synthesizer and backwards effects. It’s cinematic and I like it.

Like Spinning Plates

It’s a skip for me.

Life in a Glasshouse

It’s jazz noir and jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton and his band performed on this in the style of a New Orleans jazz funeral.

Wikipedia tells me that the lyrics were inspired by a news story Yorke read of a celebrity’s wife so harassed by paparazzi that she papered her windows with their photographs.

But it’s a skip for me.

Back in 2001, two years after Napster, sales were still a big thing and man of albums were good, sales would go through the roof. Linkin Park’s “Hybrid Theory” and “Meteora” come to mind here.

“Amnesiac” was certified Gold in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, France, Japan and the United States.

It was certified Platinum in Canada, United Kingdom and Europe.

It’s different. Give it a go.

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

Mask

When Twisted Sister disbanded in 87, Dee wasn’t in the news a lot, except for a few little paragraphs here and there in a magazine about his upcoming “Desperado” project.

Then that project got killed by record label bosses at Neglektra.

And the biggest voice in my life was missing during the “golden commercial years” of metal and rock music.

Then Widowmaker got up and running, however Grunge came and after a two albums, the band was done.

A solo album called “Never Let The Bastards Wear You Down” revived hope that more would come. But it didn’t eventuate.

However Dee is a lifer when it comes to music. He battled tooth and nail to make it, so there was no way he was going to lay dormant for long.

And like it was written in some holy book, Dee came back, more diverse than ever. He became a movie maker, a radio show host, a solo artist, an author and when TS reformed, he led them up front all the way to the last show.

“For The Love Of Metal” came out in 2018 and it is basically metal music the way I know it.

His solo music doesn’t have the same public acceptance as the Twisted music, but it doesn’t mean it’s not important or influential. As I’ve said before, a million sales of an album doesn’t mean you have 1 million fans. You just have a million people who purchased the album.

The question any artist should be asking is, how many people actually listened to the album from start to finish?

In a one to one commercial sale, it will never be known how many people listened to the album at least once and how many people listened to the album over a hundred or a thousand times.

“Mask” is a great song.

Depending on how you experience the album, it’s either hidden deep in the album at track 8 or it’s at the start of the B side of the vinyl.

That intro riff hooks me in right away. It’s thrash power Metal like.

With torn and bleeding smiles we move on
And mouth all different kinds of broken promises
Why should our days be spent in denial
While counting our faults and ripping our hearts out

These lines express the struggle of carrying on with a facade of happiness despite inner turmoil.

The smiles we wear is depicted as torn and bleeding, indicating the pain and suffering we endure internally.

We continue to make promises we cannot keep, adding to the brokenness within. The questioning of why one should spend their days in denial is a desire for honesty and authenticity, rather than pretending everything is fine.

The act of counting faults and ripping hearts out shows a self-destructive pattern of dwelling on personal flaws and causing emotional harm.

These lines highlight the complexity of navigating through life’s challenges while grappling with inner turmoil and the longing for genuine connection and self-acceptance.

The face you see is not our own
It hides our tears and shades our eyes
The heart you touched has since grown cold
We wear the mask that grins and lies

We live in a world of suppression.

The idea of each one of us presenting a false image to the world, concealing our true emotions and vulnerabilities behind a mask is real.

The face that others perceive is not a genuine reflection of our inner feelings. Instead, it serves as a shield to protect ourselves from judgment, pain, or further emotional exposure.

The heart that was once open and receptive has now become distant and detached.

The mask we wear may project a smiling and seemingly content facade, but it conceals the truth and hides the pain beneath the surface.

Behind our doors the time cannot be whisked away
Crashing and burning, leaving hints of darkness
Deep within their withered faces, lines are sunken in
We say we’re fine behind the mask
We say we’re fine, why do you ask

The passage of time and the struggles that accompany it. Behind closed doors, the weight of time cannot be escaped or avoided.

The phrase “crashing and burning” conveys a sense of chaos and turmoil that leaves traces of darkness in its wake. The imagery of withered faces with sunken lines reflects the toll that time and life’s challenges have taken on us.

Despite the weariness and pain hidden within, we still maintain the facade of being fine. We wear a mask of contentment and happiness, even when asked about our well-being.

The repetition of “we say we’re fine” emphasizes the disconnect between our true emotions and the image we project to the outside world. Its easier to maintain appearances and avoid delving into the depths of our inner struggles.

The subject matter is serious and the music is thunderous.

Crank it.

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