Category Archives: A to Z of Making It

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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A to Z of Making It, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories

Attention

Everything happens at once.

You get a message on WhatsApp, on Messenger, a normal SMS, a blog post notification, a voice mail, an email, a Slack mention, a phone call, while you are listening to music with the earpiece in one ear and you are carrying out a conversation with a work colleague or a family member or a friend.

This is a crisis, and its real.

We have to choose on what to focus on, as our attention is a scarce resource. We need to find ways to use it wisely because every single human being gets the same amount of attention to spend each day, but some use it better than others and have an ability to focus on getting stuff done.

While others just waste their time on their smartphones or gaming or watching streaming TV. Imagine if all that time wasted on your smartphone scrolling the social media feed was money.

Would you waste your money like that?  

On absolutely nothing.

I suppose the question to be asked is, how do we want to live each day?

Do we want to live to just get through the day, and tomorrow will be another day to get through?  

And then what happens?

We’ve gone through all the days and lived the same as all the previous days. Is this a life fulfilled?

But what would happen if we saw each day as an opportunity to do something different, just for 10 minutes, instead of a task in a process.

How would that feel 12 months from now?

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

The Record Vault – Bon Jovi From 2000 to 2009

After a very limited release schedule of new music in the 90s, Bon Jovi became a different beast at the start of the 2000’s releasing more frequently. Almost yearly.

Was it the Napster effect?

100% it was.

When fans of music could get their music fix for free or by cherry picking from the iTunes Store, it meant the old business model of living off the royalties of your past successes and releasing music every two to five years was challenged and a new way was needed. Suddenly not a lot of people wanted the album, just the “hits”.

And because of the internet, people moved on to different artists and sounds quicker than ever before. So in order to stay relevant and in the public conversation, artists had to release more frequently. Which Bon Jovi did.

There was no escaping “Crush” released in 2000. “It’s My Life” was everywhere and Bon Jovi had another Super Bowl title win with this song. It’s no surprise that the hitmeister of the day, Max Martin co-wrote the song, in the same way Desmond Child co-wrote a lot of the Jovi hits back in the 80s and early 90s. I even got “Collectors Edition 05686”, whatever that means.

And I got all the singles from this album because they had so many unreleased tracks on them. Check em out.

“One Wild Night Live 1985–2001” came out in 2001 and I purchased it, to hear Jovi, still firing on all cylinders.

“Bounce” released in 2002 is one of my favorite Jovi albums. There is a lot of Dropped D riffing, it’s heavy and it’s angry. It’s written post September 11 and everyone who saw those images of the planes hitting the towers could forget em.

And I purchased the singles because they had a lot of B sides to them. Something that Jovi was doing really well.

“This Left Feels Right” came out in 2003. Sambora went to town here, re-interpreting all the classics in an acoustic folky way.

“100,000,000 Bon Jovi Fans Can’t Be Wrong” is one hell of a box set, released in 2004. This is the jewel in the Jovi crown. There is so much history on this.

“Have a Nice Day” came out in 2005 and it had some cool tunes on it as well. I’ve got the Aus Edition with bonus tracks and a DVD I haven’t played.

“Lost Highway” released in 2007 was interesting, because I liked it. I liked the ballsy change to country rock.

“The Circle” was released in 2009 and after the GFC so it had songs on it about the working man doing it tough. It was interesting how people took offense to Jovi even attempting to write an album like this while he was so far removed from the working man.

Regardless, it still had some cool tunes on it and I was still on board.

Coming up is my Jovi collection from 2010 to 2020.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

Imperfect

When artists create, they create because they need to create.

In most cases, it’s a pretty basic set up to get that idea recorded, like an acoustic guitar and a vocal or a keyboard and a vocal or a crappy distorted guitar sound and a vocal. But as soon the artist goes into the studio, the quest for perfection begins.

Perfect is the enemy of good, because no one and nothing is perfect. It just can’t be. If everything was perfect there would be no viruses, no illnesses and everything would work and never fail.

And music is littered with artists talking about how it took them weeks or months to get that “perfect” sound, which they never replicated again, and when money became even tighter and recording budgets even smaller, never even tried to get that “perfect” sound.

I’ve read stories of drummers describing their studio time with other artists as the most painful experience of their life, because of some made up standard of perfection. Drummers in some bands didn’t even make the recordings because the producers felt they weren’t up to it. Again, some made up standard of perfection.

Music works because it’s imperfect.

The first Black Sabbath album was recorded in 48 hours. It’s a snapshot in time of a well-rehearsed band on the cusp of something new.

If you have seen artists perform live, you will know what I mean about imperfections. Each concert is never the same regardless if the set list is the same. A drummer will miss a beat, a singer will be pitchy, a guitarist will miss a lick here and there and the bassist will play a note that they shouldn’t. It still doesn’t take away from the show, the act of being there and experience the energy.

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

Change Was Needed

By 1988, the slick and polished sounds which heavy metal became known for was starting to fade. We saw the NWOBHM morph into the Sunset Strip rock and roll show and when the hairs became bigger than the sounds courtesy of MTV, the label reps came up with so many other wonderful names like Glam Metal, Hair Metal, Pop Metal, Hard Rock, Heavy Rock and whatever other word they could find to put before rock and metal. Basically, a rethink was on the cards for a lot of the artists.

But not for all.

Bon Jovi delivered one hell of a slick rock and metal album in 1986 and followed it up with another slick album in 1988. Whitesnake had the same dilemma, so they wrote another guitar heavy album to follow up from the self-titled 1987 album. Kiss continued on from “Crazy Nights” to “Hot In The Shade”.

Then Motley Crue dropped “Dr Feelgood” on September 1, 1989. All of those interviews about the drug overdoses, the death and subsequent return from death for Nikki Sixx, the drugs, the crashed cars, the lawsuits, the drugs again, the imposter, Vince escaping jail, the women, the drugs again times two and three and four, the partying, the clashes with the law, the break ups and the eventual “sobriety”.  “Dr Feelgood” had to be number 1. If the music didn’t do it, the stories would have.

But “Dr Feelgood” wasn’t just an album, it was a statement and it was a sound. And underpinning it all was the blues. That’s right, the baddest boys of rock and roll had gone back to the Missy Sippy Delta (I know how Mississippi is spelt) well for inspiration.

I remember walking down to the local shopping centre to buy the album which cost $19.99 in Australian dollars.

From the start of the Dr Davis call in “Terror N Tinseltown” which segues into the thundering rolling E note that kicks off “Dr Feelgood”, you knew this album was an assault on the eardrums. But it’s the chromatic blues riffs which come after which showcases the underrated Mick Mars. There is the chromatic passage and then two note chords, a D5 to an A/C# chord. Then it goes back to the chromatic passage and then that “Purple Haze” chord, the E7#9.

Sonically, its heavy and pleasing on the ear drums. It has a lot of groove. And lyrics that deal with a drug boss called “Dr Feelgood”. You can create a comic book character based on the lyrics of the song. Descriptive all the way down to the type of car with primed flames.

But it was the nod to the blues which got me very interested, especially when bands like Aerosmith, Badlands, Lynch Mob, Dangerous Toys and Tora Tora all released decent albums based around heavy blues rock. You could say they were all building on what Guns N Roses brought back to the masses with “Appetite For Destruction”.

And the changes weren’t confided to blues rock.

Some bands went heavier based on the new found success of bands like Pantera. Other bands went back to classic rock acts from the 70’s and others went more progressive. One thing that was clear, change was happening, except if you were AC/DC and Iron Maiden. And maybe there is something to be said there as well, as both of those acts still make great coin from touring.

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

Mastery

I did a little write up a few months back on Survivor’s debut album for one of my yearly review posts. And I mentioned that the production team for a debut album was impressive.

The producer is Ron Nevison.

The engineer is Bruce Fairbairn.

The assistant engineer is Mike Clink and one of the mixers assisting Fairbairn is Bob Rock.

And overseeing the whole thing is John Kalodner, who was always trying to get inspired people of similar mindsets to work together.

Basically every single one of them would go on to be involved with a lot of multi-platinum albums in the 80’s and early 90’s.

A book came out in the 2000’s called “The Talent Code” by Daniel Coyle and in that book, Coyle quoted a lot from the research work of Anders Ericsson, who came up with the “deliberate practice” model which leads to mastery.

Ericsson also wrote a book called “Peak” with Robert Pool as a co-writer many years later, focusing more on the research. Both of those books mention that in the past, mastery was achieved by people spending time with masters. All of those brilliant Italian painters and sculptors (like Michelangelo, etc.) spent time with previous masters, first as paint brush cleaners, then as canvas makers and paint mixers and then as students. The apprenticeships took years/decades. And by being around masters and learning from masters, they themselves achieved a certain mastery. Which they then passed on to others.

And this form of learning is the first thing I thought off when I saw the people involved with the first Survivor record.

Ron Nevison by 1979 is the master.

He did his apprenticeships with other masters, which goes back to being a sound engineer on “Quadrophenia” from The Who in the 60’s, “Physical Graffiti” from Led Zeppelin, plus he engineered the first three Bad Company albums. Then he started producing, doing “Night Life” with Thin Lizzy, “Lights Out”, “Obsession” and “Strangers In The Night” with UFO and albums with Jefferson Starship and The Baby’s.

Bruce Fairbairn on the other hand is the apprentice. By 1979, Fairbairn had the “Prism” albums under his belt, however their success was largely in the Canadian market.

Mike Clink was also apprentice, however at this stage he had done more time with Nevison than Fairbairn, as Clink was involved in the UFO, The Baby’s and Jefferson Starship albums as assistant engineer with Nevison. And Bob Rock was a protégé of Fairbairn’s so wherever Fairbairn went at this point in time, Rock went with him. Rock would learn from Nevison and then from Fairbairn.

And this form of mastery teaching happened in other recording studios with other producers.

Tom Allom spent time as a sound engineer, learning from Rodger Bain while Bain produced albums from Genesis, Black Sabbath and Budgie. We all know that Tom Allom went on to produce a lot of classic albums afterwards. Roy Thomas Baker also spent time learning from others and then he passed on his knowledge to a new breed like Geoff Workman.

To put into context the reach these producers would have, in the 80’s Ron Nevison produced the “Bad Animals” album from Heart, both Damn Yankees albums, Ozzy’s “The Ultimate Sin”, the other Survivor albums, “Out Of This World” with Europe, the first four MSG albums and “Crazy Nights” from Kiss.

Bruce Fairbairn did a lot of albums in the 80’s, but his biggest being “Slippery When Wet” and “New Jersey” by Bon Jovi, “Pump” and “Permanent Vacation” from Aerosmith, along with all of the Loverboy stuff.

Bob Rock did “Dr Feelgood”, The Cult, Blue Murder, “Keep The Faith” with Bon Jovi as producer and he was also involved as engineer on “Slippery When Wet” and “New Jersey” and his biggest one as producer, the “Metallica” black album, while Mike Clink did “Appetite For Destruction” as his first album and co-produced “Rust In Peace” by Megadeth.

The artists get all the glory and the adulation and the concert revenue, if they can still tour, but it was the magic behind the scenes that made the 80’s one of those decades of landmark album releases.

All of these producers did their time learning from others and once they achieved their mastery, they passed on their knowledge to others and the cycle kept repeating, until it stopped happening from the mid-80s onwards as recording gear got cheaper and more and more independent studios started and eventually, home studios.

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