Category Archives: A to Z of Making It

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

April 2020 – Part 2

April 2020 has finished and a lot of new music has hit my earbuds and I am still listening to tunes released between January and March 2020. While the last post started off with the songs from previous months, this post will start the new ones;

Here is the Spotify link.

Here is post 1.

Ishtar’s Gate
False Prophet
Testament

“Souls Of Black” is a great album and it was my introduction to Testament in a post “Metallica Black Album” landscape. The earlier stuff is technical like thrash with Alex Skolnick creating jazz fusion solos over the chromatic riffs from Eric Peterson. Then Skolnick left and I was like why.

And throughout the years I have been following Testament and their releases. I don’t own a lot of the bands stuff, but I did have a pretty cool mix tape from the era and I recently purchased their first five albums in a CD box set for $23AUD.

And Peterson just kept writing excellent riffs that covered power metal, thrash, groove metal, nu-metal and black/death metal. Chuck Billy would sing, growl and spit those vocal lines out. Then Skolnick returned and so did my interest in the band.

These two songs stood out to me on their recent release. The riffs are top quality.

Walking On A Thin Line
Hartmann

Oliver Hartmann has been a mainstay in the German rock scene for the last 20 years. He sings in Hartmann, and he is the lead singer for “Echoes”, a Pink Floyd tribute band.

And he plays bass and has done a lot of guest appearances on other records from European artists.

“Walking on a Thin Line” sounds like one of the best Scorpions songs that the Scorpions didn’t write.

Honesty Files
And You’ll Say
Urge Overkill

Ken Taylor from sunny “10 degrees Celsius” Melbourne commented on a blog post recently and he told me to check out an album from Urge Overkill (as I had mentioned the “Sister Havana” song and how the band was like a one hit wonder), which I did and I saved two songs. This album is from the mid 90’s so it doesn’t really belong on the April 2020 new music, but hey, its new music to me, as I heard it in April 2020.

We Will Rock You
Empires Fall
Welcome To The Night
Stranger In The Room
Darkness Remains
Night Demon

“Night Demon” is another recommendation from Ken Taylor. Their energetic take on the NWOBHM and Iron Maiden is fresh. I really like how bands these days take an old style and sound and make it new.

Every song you play, will have something familiar from a previous song you may have heard. And of course they do a rocking cover of Queen’s “We Will Rock You”.

Billy’s Got A Gun – Live
Def Leppard

One of my favourite Def Leppard songs.

Can you feel it in the air?

Danger!!

What You Give Is What You Get (Edit)
Dance (Edit)
RATT

The RATT Atlantic Re-Issues are disappointing. Each album has an EDIT of a song released as a single as its bonus track.

The “Round And Round” edit cuts out DeMartini’s guitar solo and it goes straight into the harmony solo. The whole solo is a favourite of mine, so I couldn’t add that “edit” to the list. And from “Detonator” they have a dance funk mix for “Lovin’ You Is A Dirty Job” which is basically a joke.

I find it hard to believe that there is no extra material laying around or demos of the album songs. I remember reading an interview with Juan Croucier many years ago, and he states how he has over 60 songs left over from his RATT days, which either had him as the main songwriter or as a co-writer.

I play guitar and I know that even though a song is finished, there is another one in the works and other riffs been written. You just don’t stop creating.

The Canary
Protest The Hero

From Canada.

Protest the Hero (known as PTH from now on) are one of my favourite bands. They had a recording contract for their first three albums between 2005 and 2011. They built a cult following and then got dropped by their label. The label even said to them they have “no audience”.

So they went the fan funding route in 2012, trying to raise $125K USD and they ended up getting $341K.

I was on board with the Indiegogo fan funding campaign for the “Volition” album.

I was also on board with the Bandcamp six month “Pacific Myth” subscription campaign, where I get a song a month for six months, with a video that highlights the making of, plus the sheet music and I get to download the cover of each song, plus the track and the instrumental track.

Then they released that as a six song EP.

And then it was all quiet on the Canadian front, until “The Canary” flew in. And I’m back in the cage, ready to support them again.

Part 3 coming up.

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

Youth Gone Wild

Sebastian Bach showed the tattoo on his arm in every photo he took and in every interview he did. All publicity is good publicity, well Bach was the master at it, from the bottle throwing incident in which an innocent girl got hit, to his TShirt that said AIDS Kill Fags Dead, Bach was always in the news.  

The track introduced Skid Row to the world. Its written by Dave Sabo and Rachel Bolan but Bach made it his own, living and breathing the message.

It was also the track that made Bach move from Toronto to New Jersey and join the band. It was the track that got em signed to Atlantic, which was also having a war with Geffen for popularity and sales. Actually, it was only Bach, Sabo and Bolan who got signed to the label. Drummer Rob Affuso and guitarist Scotti Hill did not get a deal, but from my own experience in having being in bands, there would be a band agreement in place that provides them with wages.

Roll It.

Then the Gm riff starts and we are off and rolling.

Since I was born they couldn’t hold me down
Another misfit kid, another burned-out town

All the towns were the same. A main factory, a couple of pubs, a main street, a school and then a shopping centre or mall. And the kids, we were misfits. Some took it to extremes more than others, but it was all done in the name of fun and out of boredom, because all we had was our records to keep us enteretained.

I look and see it’s not only me
So many others have stood where I stand
We are the young, so raise your hands

We are not young anymore, and the new young have different viewpoints. We stood for our voice to be heard, to prove to people that we matter. The young today care about different things.

I went to my sons school performance and they asked the kids what they want to be when they grow up. These kids wanted to be gamers, social media influencers, rich, princesses and sporting stars. And then you have Greta, the face of climate change.

They call us problem child
We spend our lives on trial

Not anymore.

Kids and their parents are like friends and mates these days. But once upon a time it wasn’t like that. I got in trouble for saying “Get Lost”. People treated that combination as a swear word.

Boss screaming’ in my ear about who I’m supposed to be
Getcha a 3-piece wall street smile and son you’ll look just like me

Our education system and the curriculum it uses, produces compliant factory workers. And it does this by telling students to do well on tests and to pay attention in class and to memorise things for exams.

These things don’t help when you are trying to map out a road less taken, and when you need to figure out what needs to happen next to solve a problem you’ve never seen before.

But society, has been conditioned, under the pressure of the financial system and the government (under pressure from the lobbyists) to go to school and become a worker to serve the system.

There is a also great story of the song over at Classic Rock.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

Magic Words

I came across a book summary about “Magic Words” by Tim David. And of course I was interested as to what are magic words.

But it starts off with a warning, that magic words will only work when there is a strong human connection. And the most important magic word is “yes” and the word you should avoid the most is “no”.

And I’m thinking, “No shit” or “Yes what a crock of shit” because Dee Snider said “No” when he was told to turn it down in “I Wanna Rock”.

Well not exactly.

More like “can you help me?” style of questioning which gets the person answering either “yes” or “no”. Because, if they say yes, then there is a high chance they will actually do it. But they need to feel connected to you to make the words magic.

So it all comes down to our need to belong to something. Hence the reason why Rock and Metal songwriters had a lot of “We” in their lyrics and song titles like “We Rock” or We’re Not Gonna Take It”.

Avoiding the questioning which could lead to a “no” is important because the mood shifts from positive to negative and feelings of rejection.

The other magic words are But, Because, If, Help and Thanks.

And I’m thinking how this writer Tom David is telling the world what heavy metal and hard rock fans already know. That communication is the key to all human interactions.

So to make connections, get people saying “yes” a lot and “no”, not so much, unless someone is trying to exploit the group/you then a big “NO” is warranted.

To get peoples attention directed use the word “but,” and use “because” and “if” to motivate them and show your appreciation with “help” and “thanks.”

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

Better

The theory was that the most technical musicians become great artists. The fastest kids become professional athletes in the sports they selected and the smartest kids become good leaders or innovative ones. And that proved rarely the case.

When CC DeVille did a guitar solo spotlight live, people wanted to walk up to the stage and unplug his guitar. Same deal with Mick Mars. Reviewers in guitar magazines had a certain elitism in their writing and used these two guys as punching bags, but people are more aware of the music that DeVille and Mars created, than the words the elite journalists wrote.

Then another theory came out, that we all need to be better at what we do, that companies need to get better at their social responsibilities, that we need to be better at inclusion and how we need to keep learning to be better.

But better is always in the eye of the beholder.

I subscribe that we always need to be improve. For me, it’s a basic need to learn new stuff, as I am a curious person to begin with, and I like to create, so to create, I like to spread my learning wide so I have enough tools and information to create. Because nothing is created from living in a vacuum. Even those artists or the heirs of the artists who believe that their songs are so original, well they ain’t.

Every new song has to push the sound, the melodies, the lyrics and the music a little bit more than before, but not too much, otherwise the artist will lose the trust of the audience which they battled so hard to gain. It’s a big reason why some artists don’t stray too much from what made them famous, like Kiss, AC/DC and Iron Maiden.

Buy an album from these bands and it will still sound like an album they did, 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago and even 40 years ago. And then there are artists who did stray a lot from their sounds and divided their fan base.

Def Leppard with “Slang”, which is a great album by the way and perfect for the time and era it came out. Motley Crue with their self-titled debut, which is one of their best albums for me and “Generation Swine”, which has great rock songs but an industrial production from Scott Humphries which I don’t like.

Bon Jovi with “Lost Highway”, a cool pop rock take on the country/southern rock sounds.

Queensryche with “Promised Land” an album full of dissonance and bleak landscapes so far removed from the polished sounds of “Empire” and even further removed from the operatic and concise storytelling of “Operation Mindcrime”.

Dokken with “Shadowlife” and their attempt at Nu-Metal, which is their worst album by far and after this, George Lynch reformed Lynch Mob, smoked some Limp Bizkit and delivered “Smoke This”, a rap metal album which was a complete disaster. Two from two for good old Georgie.

And then you have an anomaly in Metallica. They pushed the limits of technical thrash and then dropped a self-titled album with shorter songs, a powerful sound and concise lyrics. But it was still rooted in metal. Then they became a classic rock band with the “Load” releases. Then with “St Anger” they became a hybrid, but that trash can drum sound with James spitting out words rather than singing was interesting before they returned to their speed metal roots.

The truth it this, it doesn’t matter how technical you are, how fast you run, how much better you get or improve your skills, it all depends on your execution. Sometimes you will win, sometimes you will lose. But don’t ever stop executing. Just keep going and keep creating.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories, Piracy

Streaming in COVID-19

It’s strange how things work out.

In reality, most artists and the labels wanted a return to the old sales model for recorded music.

This meant that the labels acted as gatekeepers and they decided who got a chance to come into the walled gardens of a record deal.

As we know, then came Napster and everything changed. iTunes, torrents, YouTube, Pandora, Spotify and other streaming services all came.

The recording labels hated digital services, in the same way the book business and the movie business, and they all did everything in their power to stifle or kill the digital book and streaming services.

All because it meant they had lost control.

The record labels kept arguing about rising prices on monthly steaming rates and then they kept running stories everywhere about limited edition vinyl and record stores and the tradition of seeking out a vinyl and dropping the needle.

And now, COVID-19 is everywhere and suddenly physical sales are non existent and even online orders will not be delivered.

But this is when people can listen the most or read the most. And if you are championing physical, the problem is you can’t really buy anything as all of the stores are closed.

Suddenly streaming services are a source of income. In some cases the main source of income since all postal services are prioritizing essential deliveries over non essential. Somehow physical albums don’t matter when life and death is at stake.

Is this when streaming really takes over the world?

Because if there is a winner here, it’s the record labels, as they hold the majority of the copyrights, so they will keep getting paid forever. Yeah, I still see articles from the labels RIAA about people still obtaining music illegally, but hey, those people will never pay for recorded music in the first place.

And I haven’t heard of any label executive taking a pay cut during these unprecedented times.

But I have heard of artists doing it tough. And now we are getting artists dying as well from COVID complications.

And the labels are doing nothing to help their artists or even their former artists, the ones they still hold the copyrights for.

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

Unknown Heroes

For every guitarist that makes it, there are a lot of well-known guitarists who have a large impact on their development and style. And there are also a lot of guitarists who didn’t make it out of the club/pub circuit, who despite never attaining platinum albums, inspired a generation of guitarists to pick the guitar and rock like hell.

Dave Sabo and Scott Hill kept talking about several unknown musicians from New Jersey who inspired them to rock and roll. These hometown guitar heroes and the thousands of other gifted musicians who play in cover bands, one man shows, who teach, who jam in their rooms and once in a while break out the electric to inspire their kids or grandkids, these people we don’t know about are nothing short of legendary.

And the same goes to the blogging community who share their stories and experiences around the music they love. Even though they are unknown, they are all legendary.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

Interesting Times

Interesting times we are living through. We have gotten so used to everything just happening. Flick on a switch and the light comes on instantly. It doesn’t matter where you go, you are connected to the internet and to all of the good and bad things that comes with it. Book a holiday and it happens.

But now, everything is getting cancelled or postponed.

Machine Head just cancelled their European tour, so did Sons Of Apollo a week earlier. Festivals are cancelled. NBA cancelled its season, football leagues in Europe and the US have either suspended their leagues or cancelled their leagues or are having matches/events go ahead behind closed doors.

Goes to show how much dollars the TV rights are.

In Australia, the Formula 1 Grand Prix was on with an audience, then it was on with no audience and now it is off, when McLaren pulled out because they had members in their team with Coronavirus.

Holidays have been cancelled, my Euro trip in April has been postponed to sometime in September, whatever that means and countries have shut down people movements and from all of this, there is no toilet paper in Australia but plenty of alcohol to buy.

And this will be a hard time for artists who make their coin on the road and the crew that also rely on these tours to make coin.

Brian Slagel posted on Twitter how fans should purchase something from the artist, like buying music or merchandise. It’s a nice suggestion, but then again Slagel is in the business of selling recorded music, while the world has gravitated to streaming, which based on the streams that rock artists get, it doesn’t pay enough to be split between band members, management, legal and labels.

But, the people who buy, have already purchased something. The people who stream, will continue to stream, regardless of the pleas. It’s just the way it is of the interesting times we are living in.

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

And The Cradle Will Rock

From the jet flanger in the intro, played on an electric piano, cranked through a Marshall, to the cruising vibe of the song and DLR freestyling over the verses, it makes this one of my favourite Van Halen songs. In addition, the purchase of this electric piano led to the “Jump” keyboard riff.

Well, they say it’s kinda frightening
How this younger generation swings
You know it’s more than just some new sensation

It’s like the movie “Footloose” before it was even written and made.

No one wanted to go to school.

We just wanted to hang out somewhere, listen to music, read about music, talk about music and do so many other things. Because going to school was like being in the military. It’s why “I Wanna Rock” resonated. The teachers demanded obedience and everyone was moulded to fit a box.

But that doesn’t work.

It’s been proven to not work. The military even stopped this kind of teaching in the early 70’s, but schools kept at it, up to the late 80’s. Kids need to have their beautiful uniqueness kept intact, it’s what makes em special.

And these days we tell our kids to enjoy school, as it should be the most stress free time of their lives. Unless they freak out over exams, which means, it’s not as stress free. But you know what I mean.

Teachers are also at a different level these days, being more enablers than disablers. But kids need to deal with social media and the good and bad which comes from it. So maybe not as stress free as it should be.

Which brings me back to the words of the mighty David Lee Roth which I quoted above.

Well, they say it’s kinda frightening
How this younger generation swings
You know it’s more than just some new sensation

The younger generation swings to technology more than music these days.

Once upon a time, having an album from an artist was like a badge of honour and now, the kind of phone you have is the new totem. Plus, the mainstream news outlets just don’t understand the youth of today. They worry about climate change and student debt and all the things that the current powers ignore, while they drain our Earth of its resources.

It was the youth that blew apart the record labels business model. They killed CD’s, adopted Napster early, then iTunes, then YouTube, then other streaming services. And the youth have short attention spans, moving from one thing to the next. The only thing they can do for a short time is binge Netflix.

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

Aeromantic

I really like The Night Flight Orchestra, otherwise known as TNFO for short. This little side project from melodic death metallers which paid homage to their classic rock and pop influences from the past has grown into its own beast.  

The first album, “Internal Affairs” came out in 2012 and I thought it was a one off. Then in 2015 they dropped “Skyline Whispers”, then “Amber Galactic” in 2017, “Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough” in 2018, then a couple of stand-alone tracks in 2019 called “Satellite” and “Cabin Pressure Drops” and in 2020, the new one.

In between the album release years, the guys in the band did albums and tours with their “original” bands of Soilwork and Arch Enemy and released albums with those bands and toured with those bands.

So for all those artists from the past complaining about everything not being like how it used to be, change your mindset and your work ethic and anything is possible.

And man there are so many good songs on this.

The opening track, “Servants Of The Air” has a similar riff to “This Time” from their previous album, “Sometimes The World Ain’t Enough”. The similarity is enough to make me a fan.

“Divinyls” is one of the pre-release tracks, with its infectious keyboard lick still remaining in my brain long after the song is finished. Actually the keyboard lick is the chorus vocal melody, hence the reason why it remains.

Glancing at the stars, mending my own heart
Is it time to break the chains?
Now I will embark, making my own mark
Waiting for the world to quake

We all had dreams to get out of the town we lived in and make it in the big city. Then we grew up and became comfortable and we don’t want our kids to even think about things like this. But we still yearn and dream of making our own mark.

“If Tonight Is Our Only Chance” sounds like it came from an ABBA album, but with metal overtones.

If tonight is our only chance, we’ll take it,
If tonight is our only chance, we’ll try it

So much truth in these lines. Our situations and lifestyles determine what chances we take. And when those chances come up, the aim is to be free to take it.

“Transmissions” is another pre-release track. It’s classic TNFO, full of hooks and homage to past influences, even a killer violin solo to close it off.

Talk to me
Won’t you talk to me?
You’re the remedy
For my starless visions

Ace Frehley once said talk to me, all he needs is a little conversation. I guess he wasn’t wrong. It’s why we always look for connections.

“Aeromantic” has my favourite drum beat in the intro. “Curves” has this funky groove. “Taurus” sounds like it could come from a Styx/Toto/Steely Dan album (the earlier ones).

“Carmencita Seven” has this musical passage after the chorus that I keep scrolling back to listen to. “Sister Mercurial” has a super catchy synth riff over my favourite drum beat. I call it the tark, tark, tark, beat, as its metronomic in nature.

“Dead Of Winter” is the closer and it’s such a good closing song, that the only thing I can do is press repeat and re-listen to the album again.

In other words, I love this album.

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A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Treating Fans Like Shit

How Much Should Streaming Services Pay?

A lot of people hate Corey Taylor, but I’m not one of em. I enjoy the music he creates, more with Stone Sour than Slipknot and he has a point of view, a stance, which he shares with the world.

In an interview with the Irish Times which Blabbermouth grabbed and ran with a few months ago, Taylor was asked if SLIPKNOT could live just on royalties from listens.

He said, no they couldn’t survive at the current rates but if the streaming services paid the same publishing rate as radio stations than they could.

In Australia that equates to about $6 per song (for the main cities), as regional cities have a lower fee and then there are separate fees paid for when the song is played, like prime time hours or graveyard hours. In some cases the artists pay to get themselves played and they don’t even know it as it’s charged back to them by the label via miscellaneous expenses.

Also the $6 fee is paid just to the songwriters not the recording act. Since Taylor writes his own songs, he is okay in that department as he would get the payment.

But streaming services charge us $9.99 per month to access a catalogue of music. The math doesn’t work and suddenly piracy looks more appealing of that fee goes up.

Taylor doesn’t have a problem with streaming services for what they are trying to do, but he has a problem with them, when they spend millions of dollars on buildings and then more millions on decking out those buildings for offices and then more millions on flying private and more millions on wages while the artists who bring people to their service are not experiencing the same share of those millions.

But hang on a second, the label he’s signed deals with also spend millions of dollars meant for the artists on the same thing.

Steve Miller said something similar about the recording industry and the RNR Hall Of Fame people at his RNR HoF induction, how they take so much money from the artists and they don’t compensate the artist fairly.

The problem that I have as a fan of music is this;

Artists on a label sell their masters to the record labels for a fee. They are compensated at that point in time. Some for a lot more if they are successful and others for peanuts because they didn’t know any better.

The labels are aware of this power they have and since they are offering the cash, they want a return on investment. So the label benefits in this streaming era because they hold the masters.

Get your masters back like Motley and Metallica and suddenly you will benefit as well.

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