Category Archives: A to Z of Making It

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

Money In Music, Greed, Elitism And A Lifestyle Of Not Taking Things Too Seriously

One thing about the world of heavy metal and hard rock was that we never took ourselves too seriously. It was always a camaraderie, a culture to have “Nothin But A Good Time”. A culture to “Seek and Destroy” and just have some fun “Smokin In The Boys Room”.

So when Zakk Wylde was playing “In This River” at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards for the fallen rockers and a picture of Jani Lane from Warrant came up, and it stated, Jani Lane, Motorhead, 1964-2011, it was just one of those things we had to laugh about. Of course, a lot people these days take stuff a little bit too seriously and the elite Motorhead fans were outraged that a wussy singer like Jani Lane was associated with their band.

Or what about when the Salem Community Easter Drama titled “Lamb Of God” actually used the Lamb of God logo on their tickets. It made everyone have a laugh. Because this is what metal and rock is all about. A lifestyle of not taking everything too seriously.

Then you have the other side of the metal and rock community, which is the elitism view.

First let’s go back to the beginning. It was all just rock, blues and folk.

Then it started to branch out into hard rock, blues rock, folk, R&B, Surf Rock, Brit Rock.

Then metal/heavy metal came into the picture, along with Southern Rock, Americana Rock, heavy rock, progressive rock and so forth.

Then came Funk, disco and punk rock.

Then came the New Wave Of British Metal and everything was just metal again for a few years. Regardless of how different the style of metal was, the audience always crossed over between genres. Fans of NWOBHM, also supported the LA metal and hard rock scene. Fans of that LA scene also supported pop rock and Americana acts like Kiss, Ted Nugent, Styx, Bruce Springsteen, Journey, Survivor, Reo Speedwagon and others.

It didn’t last for long as the genre that defined a cultural movement splintered into Hard Rock, Glam Rock, Glam Metal, Pop Metal, Power Metal, Thrash Metal, Death Metal, Extreme Metal, Progressive Metal, Black Metal, Metalcore, Groove Metal, Industrial Metal, Nu Metal, EMO, Punk Metal, Gothic Rock, Doom Metal, Djent, Technical Metal. Folk Metal and the list just goes on and on and on.

Within each genre, there is a subset of elitism within it. The type of elitism that sees the hard rock style as not just not hard enough for the heavy metal community. The type of elitism that sees Metalcore and melodic death metal as not evil enough for the “real” death metallers out there. Or the type of elitism that sees progressive metal as just not brutal enough compared to death metal or black metal.

Sort of like an episode I saw on the cartoon show “Metalocalypse” where the new song that the band Deathklok was writing just wasn’t brutal enough according to their singer.

The elitism goes both ways, where elitism in hard rock sees other metal bands as not melodic enough.

In some occasions it is simply down to taste. People enjoy the pop structure of the “verse – chorus” sing a long, every day, all year round.

The way I see it, people either praise someone else’s success, or they try to tear it down because they believe they should have been there and that someone stole their ride.

People attach themselves to this cancer within them that says “If this band made it, they suck” because they don’t want to admit that they wish it was them on that throne. They don’t want to admit that they are undeserving because they are not qualified or talented enough or good enough.

From the people that I know, and doing some crude math, eighty percent of wannabe musicians drop out when the going gets tough. The remaining twenty percenters keep at it, networking, planning, practicing, creating and moving on. Then from those twenty percenters, another eighty percent drop out due to starting or having families, which means that they have obligations and the need to have a stable income. So let’s say 100 start off. After the first cut, 20 will remain. After the second cut, only 4 will remain.

See no one tells you that when you reach a certain age, the power players in music don’t really want you. That is why the focus is on the young. It’s like McDonalds. Get em young and work em hard for less money.

Making it is hard work. It involves a lot of variables and the main one is luck. Very few make it and a lot of others have excuses for failing.

Sort of like the people who always scream to anyone who cares about how Spotify is killing the music business and pointing to pay out figures without giving the full picture as to how much the label took, how much the manager took, how much the publishers took, how much the lawyers took and how much went to the slush account for expenses.

Seen what Jared Leto said recently.

“We all know that, as content creators, artists and musicians, a great deal of our work is going to be streamed, but the issue is that artists are getting the short end of the stick. The streaming companies are paying record labels, but record labels are not paying artists.”

I have been saying this for a long time in other posts that the greed of the record labels is putting a stain on the streaming model.

“Record companies are taking giant advantages, they’re taking pieces of stock options or technology companies in exchange for guaranteeing rights to artists’ streams, there’s all kinds of deals being made, and artists aren’t a part of those deals.”

This is a biggie. Spotify needed to give over half of the company to the Major Record Labels so that they could operate in the U.S. What did the Major Record Labels use as their bargaining chip in these negotiations?

Yep, you guessed it, the right to access the music of artists past and present. And as Leto alluded too, artists are excluded from these conversations and negotiations.

Spotify is a great enabler of getting music out to the masses. It’s also set to overtake iTunes in Europe due to the closing of a digital tax law loophole in the UK – that put an end to all song downloads being priced at £0.99 ($1.79AUD). This in turn is means that iTunes is expected to lose consumers opting for subscription streaming services instead of paying for each track as a download.

In relation to the heavy metal and hard rock communities, they are not doing a really good job at promoting Spotify by still relying on album sales as a measure of success. Streaming is a tried and true business model. Hell, the whole free to air TV industry is the same model as the free streaming option. And the TV stations made a monza. In 2014, there is no fundamental reason why music needs a “sales” business model.

And while popular culture artists are raking in 100 million plus streams a song, metal and rock bands are still going the mp3/CD sale route. It is the wrong way. There should be no reason why a metal act should not have a song that has surpassed 100 million streams on Spotify by now. No reason whatsoever.

It’s the selling (instant money in the pocket right now) mentality versus the streaming (money in the pocket later) mentality and everyone wants to be paid right now. From the labels, managers, lawyers and producers, down to the individual band members. Everyone wants money to live on and get by.

But music is a risk game. Music was never an industry that guaranteed an income.

So why are bands pushing that argument.

Guitar World ran an article back in April 1997, about where are the Eighties Guitar Heroes now. Now meant 1997 for the article. One of the questions they asked each guitarist was their FINANCIAL STATUS. This is what they had to say;

WARREN DeMARTINI (RATT) – “It’s not like I never have to work again, but I had the luxury of not doing anything right away and I really enjoyed the break.”

“Out Of The Cellar” sold over 3 million copies in the U.S. “Invasion Of Your Privacy” sold over 2 million copies in the U.S. “Dancing Undercover” sold 1 million copies in the U.S. “Reach For The Sky” sold over 1 million copies in the U.S. “Detonator” sold over 500,000 copies in the U.S.

In total Ratt sold over 7.5 million records in the U.S. Using the average retail price of $10, you can do the math on the gross sales of Ratt’s music.

And that break that DeMartini took was roughly 12 months. After that he was a touring guitarist for Whitesnake in 1994, releasing instrumental albums in 1995 and 1996 and new Ratt albums in 1997 and 1999.

In other words even though he was the main songwriter in a band that grossed $75 million in album sales in the U.S alone, he still had to work his arse off.

REB BEACH (WINGER) – “I’m certainly not set financially. I still have to work. I didn’t sign the best contract. Back then, it was ‘Sign this, or we’ll get another guitar player.”

ERIK TURNER (WARRANT) – “We made millions and we spent millions. Now we’re like everyone else: we work for a living.”

BLACKIE LAWLESS (WASP) – “Slow and steady wins the race. We’re a lot better off that a lot of bands that sold a lot more records at one point because we have a cult following. We have the most devoted fans in the world. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

STEVE BROWN (TRIXTER) – “We came out of the whole thing in decent shape. We all have to work, but we don’t have any day jobs and I have a nice house.”

TRACII GUNS (L.A. GUNS) – “I’m by no means set. But I’ve established myself where people buy my records and come out to see us live.”

There is a lot of money in the music business and the ones that create it are the least underpaid.

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

Lizzard

They have a sound and a style. Their debut album “Out Of Reach” is an experience in itself, merging alternative rock and metal music on a background of progressive and experimental grooves.

And they are a three piece band from France, formed in 2006 that no one even knows about. The vocalist in the band is Mathieu Ricou. The bass player is William Knox and the drummer is Katy Elwell.

Who?

They sure don’t sound like a rock star names like Synester Gates or Zacky Vengeance.

Back when the Record Labels controlled who got signed and who got heard, the French metal scene was more or less ignored. For a band/artist to come out of anY European country that band/artist had to more or less dominate the country. And Europe always has a habit of turning out intriguing acts who only occasionally managed to gain widespread attention.

The Tool influence is very prominent but there are overtones of at least four other bands.

Chevelle, Earshot, 10 Years and Karnivool.

“Out Of Reach” is a perfect example of their style that merges Tool like grooves with Dream Theater like progressive grooves. All of it is underpinned by the melodic vocals of Ricou, who shifts between a Maynard James Keened to an Aaron Lewis to an Chino Moreno.

My personal favourite is “Loose Ends”. The bass groove from William Knox is hypnotic and the drum patterns from Katy Elwell just enhance the groove. Mathieu Ricou knows how to enhance the song with his vocals, his melodies, his phrasing and his guitar lines. “A Perfect Circle” also comes to mind. I still call it hard rock. At 3.05 the trance takes effect with a solid Tool like groove. Then at the 4 minute it goes into a Pink Floyd style atmospheric outro full of dissonant volume swells.

“Twisted Machine” is a stand out. It looks like all three members lived and breathed, “Aenima” and “Lateralus” from Tool while writing this album. From 3.40 the song goes into a wicked groove, ala “Schism”. I actually cranked “Schism” after and thematically the two songs flow in together. And that whole section from about 3.30 in “Schism” got me thinking of “Ragnarok” from Periphery and off I went to digest that song.

At 44 minutes “Out Of Reach” is a compact album, which is how it should be.

Since Tool is on hiatus, Earshot are more or less no more, Chevelle are trying out new musical horizons and Deftones are here and there when they want to me, Lizzard is a perfect replacement to fill the gap. They haven’t just filled the gap, they have made it their own.

They have a fan funding campaign up for their new album on Ulule. It’s in French and the Google translator is working spasmodically. 61 contributors so far and they have achieved 89% of their target. The target is 3,500 Euros.

Did I contribute?

No.

Fan funding to me is about delivering something unique to a fan. The perks are just not unique enough and $15Euro for a CD (which equates to about $22 Australian) is above what I would pay for a CD. So it will be a Spotify album.

If an album sold 61 CD’s it would be seen as a dud.

Fan Funding a CD and offering fans what the old legacy gatekeepers offered fans, is not embracing the new. It is using new and exiting platforms to prop up old business models.

People want access to the music and they will contribute for a perk if they believe they are getting value for their money. Make it worth their while, otherwise it is leaving money on the table.

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

Work Ethic Of Our Fallen Idols Is No Different From Generation to Generation

Music is forever.

Our heroes will die or already have died but their music lives on.

With the power of internet it should be every persons goal to continue to reach new generations of fans, so that they too can also benefit from hearing the work of musicians like Paul Kossoff, Dimebag Darrell, Randy Rhoads, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Schuldiner and many more.

Paul Kossoff’s career was short at 25 years of age. As a guitarist he was always looking to “have a jam”.

Randy Rhoads just wanted to play guitar, evidenced by taking classical lessons while on tour with Ozzy and then receiving a punch in the face when he told Ozzy that he wanted out.

Jimi Hendrix was always booking studio time and running his different bands through jam sessions over and over again.

Chuck Schuldiner was a technical death metaller who just wanted to be a guitarist in a band and he finally achieved that dream with “Voodoocult” and the progressive “Control Denied”.

One thing that all of these musicians are renowned for regardless of what generation they come from is their prolific musical output, their jamming ethic, their hard work and devotion to the lifer lifestyle of the music business.

Paul Kossoff was involved in 10 studio albums and 2 live albums between 1969 to 1976. Talk about jamming up a storm.

Jimi Hendrix was prolific. Apart from the official releases (three within a year), Hendrix created a musical vault so deep, his family members are still making money from his legacy.

Dimebag Darrell had 4 independent releases and close to 10 years of experience under his belt before “Cowboys From Hell” opened the door for a bigger stage to play on.

Chuck Schuldiner was involved in 9 albums between 1987 and 1999.

It’s always been tough for new bands or artists to make it. From the sixties to now, that toughness hasn’t changed.

The difference between then and now is that there are so many more people making music which in turn makes the current state of the music business highly competitive.

Seen a shortage of ticket sales recently for bands that work hard.

Seen a shortage of ticket sales for the classic rock bands lately.

Of course not.

The music business is thriving. And it is also cram-packed with music that it’s hard for a lot of music to find an audience. There is a reason why Spotify has over 4 million songs that haven’t even been played.

And if any artist wants to be in the hard rock/metal game, then the bar is set very high.

You need to compare yourself to Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Bon Jovi, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Pantera, Megadeth, Free, Ozzy era bands, Motley Crue, Queensryche, Free, Jimi Hendrix.

In the end the importance and essence of great rock music will never fade away and that bar that is sitting very high, will just keep on going higher.

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

The Cover Song Is A Doorway Into Your Act

My first introduction into Trivium and Bullet For My Valentine was from the Kerrang “Master of Puppets” 20 Year Anniversary album. My initial interest to hear the album was because Machine Head was covering “Battery”. So after they blew me away with their downtuned cover, along came Trivium with their cover of the title track and man what an undeniable job they did with it. Bullet For My Valentine didn’t set the world on fire with their cover of “Welcome Home (Sanitarium) however they did enough to get me interested in it.

By hearing those two cover songs, I started to seek out the actual original music of Trivium and BFMV.

Another record was “Maiden Heaven: A Tribute to Iron Maiden.” That one had Black Tide covering “Prowler”, Fightstar covering “Fear Of The Dark” and Madina Lake covering “Caught Somewhere In Time”.

Upon hearing those cover versions, I had to go and seek out more music from those bands.

So you see, as an artist trying to make it, those original songs that you create and release might be great, but it doesn’t get you the connection with the audience just yet. Sometimes a cover song does the job.

There is a reason why Jimi Hendrix connected with “Hey Joe” and “All Along The Watchtower”. “Hey Joe” didn’t do much for “The Leaves” in 1965, however it was The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s first hit single in 1966. “All Along the Watchtower” these days is well-known as a Hendrix psychedelic groove rock song instead of a Dylan folk song.

There is a reason why Van Halen connected with “You Really Got Me”. As good as the debut album is, the needed an introduction and “You Really Got Me” was the introduction.

There is a reason why Joan Jett and The Blackhearts connected in 1981 with “I Love Rock N Roll” that was penned by Alan Merrill and Jake Hooker from the British rock band Arrows and released in 1975.

There is a reason why “When the Levee Breaks” became so enduringly influential. It’s origins go back to 1929 when husband and wife singer-songwriters Kansas Joe McCoy & Memphis Minnie originally recorded it as a blues song about the Great Mississippi Flood.

“Hard TO Handle” was the breakthrough hit single for “The Black Crowes” in 1990 and it is a cover song from 1968, originally written by Otis Redding.

Quiet Riot went platinum in 1983, with “Cum On Feel The Noize” and it was a cover song from 1973. The thing is, the Slade version went straight to #1 in the United Kingdom and Ireland and was a top 10 single throughout parts of Europe. The Quiet Riot version reached the #5 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US.

“Black Magic Woman” is known as Carlos Santana’s flagship song, however it is also a cover from the Peter Green version of Fleetwood Mac. Actually, Carlos Santana’s Woodstock-era period made a career out of re-imagining other peoples’ songs.

Cover songs are not the enemy and on a lot of occasions, the cover song broke a band to the masses. It was the doorway to the other treasures that lay in waiting.

Recently bands like “Within Temptation” or the “Smith/Meyers” project have taken to re-interpreting cover songs.

Machine Head have always selected great cover songs from “Battery” to “Hallowed Be Thy Name” to “The Sentinel” to “Our Darkest Days/Bleeding.”

Find a great tune and get cranking on a kick-ass remake/re-imagining of it. You never know how it could connect as music has a way of making peculiar connections.

Standard
A to Z of Making It, Copyright, Music, My Stories

The Old And The New – Times Are Changing

MY MUSIC COLLECTION vs THE KIDS MUSIC COLLECTION

My Record and CD Collection

This is my record and CD collection along with the issues from Guitar World from January 1986.

My kids have all of this on their iPod’s and iPad’s.

THE PURCHASE OF MUSIC from RETAIL STORES vs INSTANTANEOUS

The Way I Purchase Music On Occassions

I took the kids to the “Record Store Day” two days ago.

They loved the record store and it was their second record store that they had visited ever. They enjoyed searching through the piles of records but hated the following things;

– the line up/wait to pay for our purchases compared to clicking a few keys and having it all happen instantaneous.

– the chance that what I wanted to buy at the Record Store Day could not be there or it could have sold out compared to having the history of music available at your fingertips without any issues. For the record, it was the last copy of the “Killers and Kings” single and the second last copy of the “The Illumination Theory” picture LP.

– that once they found a record that had a cool cover from an unknown act, they couldn’t hear it BEFORE they decided to buy it compared to what they do on-line with YouTube and Spotify.

– the price of the special edition releases. As a hobbyist/collector I paid $30AUS for the Machine Head “Killers and Kings” single and $40AUS for the Dream Theater “Illumination Theory” picture LP. My kids thought I was insane, spending $70AUS on two products, especially when a years subscription to Spotify is just a touch more and for that you get millions upon millions of songs.

MY BOOK COLLECTION and DVD COLLECTION vs THE KIDS BOOK COLLECTION

My Book and DVD Collection

In other words, Physical books vs The Kindle Touch.

If you are a business that is in the entertainment/arts arena that is still hoping on physical sales for profits, then your business model is challenged.

Research is constantly showing that in order to compete with piracy, sellers of music, movies and books need to have a “free music approach, targeted at young users and supported by advertisements along with a high-quality music offering to older customers, where they pay for downloads but with no visible advertising.”

The take away is this comment;

“Our research shows that consumers do prefer legal and ethical options if available but each age group has different ways of making this economically viable.”

I bet that comes to a shock to the traditional labels and marketing firms. The days of when music was only made available to people who had disposable incomes are over and have been for a long time.

Music consumption is now being driven by different age brackets. The 113 million streams of Katy Perry’s “Roar” is being driven more by the kids in the 4 to 14 age bracket than the 25 plus adults. It is the song of the young, their anthem, their “We’re Not Gonna Take It”.

It all reminds me of a song I once wrote called “Times Are Changing”.

I wrote it in 1993, just when Grunge finally made the hard rock movement a footnote in history for the next decade. And the song wasn’t about the death of hard rock, it was the about the power of a cultural movement enforcing a change that no one could stop. As the pre-chorus stated;

It’s a revolution in their eyes
Against society and its lies

Times are changing, re-arranging x2

Guess the times are constantly changing and they are changing even faster in the era of the internet. And when I compare the new to the old, the times have really changed.

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

Jamming and Nuances

The last band I was in didn’t jam. The drummer in the band wanted to hear a finished song with riffs and vocals before he even contemplated putting drums too it.

So the way it worked was that I would put a song together and then on a working day, get together with the singer and the bassist to flesh out and finalise the melody. We would record that acoustic/vocal demo on one of those Zoom Handheld devices and then circulate the mp3 out to the drummer.

In most cases, that finished song would be given to him with another sheet that would say something like;

0.00 to 0.45 – Reference the drum part in the verses of “The Bleeding” from Five Finger Death Punch
0.46 to 1.20 – Reference the drum part from the 2nd Verse in “Forsaken” from Dream Theater
1.21 to 1.40 – Is the 7/8 time section. Listen to “Natural Science” from Rush.
1.41 to 2.05 – Is the next 7/8 time section. Listen to “The Masterplan” from Evergrey.

On one hand I didn’t mind doing it this way, as I gave me a lot of control and on the other hand it bothered me. Because from jamming a lot of good musical ideas and progressions and performances could come out of it. It is those little musical nuances that make or break a song.

You know when that riff you had in 4/4 just got better when it syncopated with the bass and instead of playing 8th notes constantly it developed some groove.

Or that little hammer on and slide choice of notes coming out of the chorus and into the verse, just made that section flow better. Or that solo section building to a crescendo along with the beat.

It is all of those little nuances that come up from jamming a song. Bob Daisley summed it up when he said that Randy Rhoads, Lee Kerslake and himself got the best performances out of each other.

But then I thought about the band I was in before that. All we did was jam and record. It seemed like we had infinite rolls of tape. In one year we wrote 4 songs. The singer/guitarist at the time said quality over quantity. I argued back that quantity breeds quality by default. You try out all of the ideas and the quality ones will always stand up. What I had instead was a dictator saying either YES or NO to an idea.

There are no happy mediums for all involved.

Democracy in songwriting doesn’t work. Democracy in songwriting is like the Democracy in Australia (or the US or the UK). We believe that we have a say, however our Governments are ruled by the bureaucrats and the rich.

Growing up with the MTV generation suddenly our heroes were everywhere and the focus on writing THE SONG to film an expensive video clip for, meant that the bands or artists would have two to three-year gaps between albums.

And we have continued that trend well into 2014. Everyone still tries to write THE SONG or THE SONGS in some cases and then they surround THE SONG or THE SONGS with filler and call it an album. If you don’t believe me, name me all the tracks from your top 10 albums of the last two years. I guarantee you that you will fail.

And with what we know now, we don’t want that album unless it is great from start to finish or unless it is part of a vanity concept story.

Machine Head almost nailed the complete album with “The Blackening”. Go to Spotify and you will see that five from the top 10 most played tracks from their catalogue come from that album. If you add the two cover songs from Metallica and Iron Maiden, then that makes it seven.

I also dig the fact that for “Unto The Locust” they had only seven songs on the album with four stand outs in “Be Still and Know”, “Unto The Locust”, “Darkness Within” and “Who We Are”.

And from reading the blogs that Robb Flynn writes it is safe to say that Machine Head are a jam band with the final say sitting with him.

That is why after Machine Head pressed the reset button on their career after “Supercharger” they have gone from strength to strength. They’ve jammed themselves into lifers and still dealt with the complexities that are bands.

And there is no doubt about it, bands are complex and simple rules just don’t do anything to govern certain situations.

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

What Happened to The Guitar Riff?

The mighty Guitar is still in the forefront of all the main hard rock and metal music. Regardless of what music style came and regardless what technological new medium came to kill it off, (like the Eighties midi craze), the mighty guitar has fought its way back time and time again.

Like a true champion it rises up from the canvas. That sound through glass tubes and cones made from paper. What can beat it?

To quote Dark Helmet, “Absolutely Nothing”.

Try as the trend setters might to eliminate distortion, the power chord and it’s many different versions remain unique. The human feel of a guitar is the essential element that makes a song unique and intimate enough to form a connection with a listener. You don’t see people growing up wanting to be clarinet and flute players.

It is an integral part of culture, both past and present. Think of Jimi Hendrix burning one or Pete Townsend smashing one or Randy Rhoads playing that immortal polka dot guitar or Eddie Van Halen’s Frankenstein guitar.

Think of all of the album covers that featured a guitar;

Dire Straits – “Brothers In Arms”
Stryper – “To Hell With The Devil”
Def Leppard – “On Through The Night”
AC/DC – Take your pick of the many classic album covers that involve Angus and his trusty Gibson SG.
The Cult – “Sonic Temple”
Van Halen – “Women And Children First”
Bruce Springsteen – “Born To Run”
Jeff Beck – “Guitar Shop”
MSG – “Built To Destroy”
Boston – The self titled debut and “Dont Look Back” covers are iconic.

At the moment, the number 1 hits around the world are “The Monster” by Eminem/Rihanna, “Timber” by Pitbull/Keisha and Happy by Pharrell Williams. Not a lot of guitar in those songs and if there is guitar, it is in the background, relegated to a support act.

It is not the main instrument in popular culture anymore.

The guitar is disappearing from popular culture.

So what happened.

So what happened to that riff that connects. The one that we can play air guitar to.

Commercial sensibilities are trumping artistic sensibilities.

Rock and Metal bands are churning out songs. Good songs. Great choruses. But no definitive riff. We hum the melodies, we tap the groove, but we don’t do the der, der, derr on the riff. For those who don’t know what the “der, der der” is, it is “Smoke On The Water” from Deep Purple.

Avenged Sevenfold came close with the “Hail To The King” album. Pissed off a lot of people in the process. They called them copycats. But they had the balls to create a classic rock album. And Classic Rock albums are created from influences.

Machine Head nailed it with “Be Still and Know” and “Unto The Locust”. But because of their niche, popular culture would never even know about it. Too ignorant to care.

Maybe it is the downtuning. Maybe it is the speed. Maybe it is the focus on the melody to be catchy.

One thing is certain, there are no riff driven songs, with a great hook doing 100,000,000 streams on Spotify. All of those numbers belong to Imagine Dragons, Avici, Daft Punk and a whole host of EDM artist and pop artists that have songs written by Max Martin.

And one last thing, for all the doubters that Spotify is hurting artists.

Check out this story.

Yep an independent artist that uses Tunecore as its digital distributor has earned from September 2010 to November 2013, $334,636 for over 57 million plays. It’s easy money earned by people listening to his music on a consistent basis. It’s that simple. It’s that pure. We create music so people can listen to it. First and foremost. And Spotify along with YouTube are here, telling the creators which songs are being listened too.

Isn’t that a great thing.

But hey, Spotify doesn’t pay artists said the old guard. Bullshit I say.

Spotify pays. It pays well. It is the record labels that don’t filter it down to the artists. It is the same old argument like before of Record labels not paying artists.

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

In Music, Rules Are Meant To Be Broken (If You Want To Rock N Roll)

Small businesses need to understand that life’s changing and because it is changing so fast, it is a case of adapt or die.

To put it into perspective, the Australian Government recently signed a few Free Trade Agreements with South Korea and Japan, with China set to follow soon. All of this will make it easier for the big retail giants of those countries to enter the Australian market. All of these FTA’s makes it harder for small businesses to compete. Because as is the norm when big giants come into a market, prices go down, and for small businesses it does not make life easier, it makes it harder.

However, opportunities always emerge for the fast adapters.

Sort of like the music business.

The ones that adapted to the changes fast, survived. While the ones that complained and whined about peer-to-peer either perished or downsized.

Traditional music distributors. Gone or downsized. Replaced by Digital distributors.

Record Store Retail Outlets. More or less gone. Replaced by online shopping carts, streaming and digital downloads.

Publishing companies. Downsized or merged.

Record Labels. Downsized or merged. Saved by the tech industry.

Bands. Either are breaking up or are constantly replacing members.

So if small businesses needs to adapt to survive on a constant basis, than artists, record labels and the music business in general should be no different. And just because the recording business was dragged kicking and screaming to embrace mp3’s, then YouTube and then streaming, the innovation doesn’t end there. Adaption is the key.

Instead, the music business is cashed up and the record labels have a powerful lobby group that instead of innovating and adapting to the changes, they lobby hard to have laws passed to assist them.

Instead of adapting, they have the courts step in to assist them.

Instead of innovating, they had the Federal Police step up to the plate and assist them in using terrorist style raids on unsuspecting victims, like a 5-year-old girl and her Winnie The Pooh laptop.

And now that the recording business is all in with the techies, those same techies now have shareholders and boards that want profits first and innovation second.

Seen the stocks of Netflix, Facebook and Twitter recently. But tech is where the action is I hear people say. Well I say tech is where the action is up until profits trump innovation.

Music drove culture up until a point in time in the mid Eighties when executives put profit margins ahead of music.

And in business, cash flow is everything. In music, cash flow is a byproduct of great music.

In music, rules are meant to be broken. Innovation is about breaking the rules.

New musical legends will combine both and rise from the ashes to enrapture the public. And they will be different. These artists will not be interested in corporate deals and sponsorships.

These new artists will not be concerned about the past. They will be concerned about changing the future. With music. Like it was once before. When music led the way.

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

Divided We Stand. But It Doesn’t Have To Be That Way.

Metallica resorted to a professional coach to get it together again. So did Aerosmith.

Motley Crue imploded at the peak of their powers with the firing of Vince Neil and then sued each other in the courts. Then when Vince Neil was back in, John Corabi was out and soon it was Tommy Lee that was out.

Bon Jovi and Megadeth resorted to group therapy. For Bon Jovi it was a way to keep the band together after “New Jersey” and for Megadeth it was a way to keep a stable line-up together.

Van Halen ousted David Lee Roth and there was a few years of bad mouthing each other. Then when Sammy Hagar was ousted, the feud turned ugly with both sides airing their dirty laundry.

Guns N Roses appetite for destruction more or less has the band as an Axl Rose solo project. According to Axl, “Slash is a cancer”. There was a lawsuit as well from Axl to Slash to stop the “It’s Five O Clock Somewhere” album as Axl claimed those songs were written for Guns N Roses by Slash.

Scott Weiland had a nasty split with his first act, Stone Temple Pilots (on more than one occasion) as well as with the Velvet Revolver project that featured Slash.

Sebastian Bach and Skid Row are still at loggerheads. Matt Kramer left Saigon Kick because he felt ripped off.

Machine Head and Adam Duce are in the courts because Adam Duce felt ripped off. Dave Lombardo is spitting venom at Slayer and their management team because he feels ripped off.

Paul Stanley went to town on Ace and Peter, calling them anti-semitic. Gene Simmons said that Ace and Peter didn’t deserve to wear the make up.

Dream Theater and Mike Portnoy ended their relationship abruptly.

And Rock and Roll was supposed to be fun. Yeah right, I hear people say.

The ugly truth is that the biggest obstacle standing between musicians and a career in music is the simple fact that we cannot get along.

Every band I have been in imploded because I was writing the music and the lyrics from the beginning. So when the other members realised that I am getting extra royalties and publishing moneys, then money becomes a factor and suddenly everybody wants to write a song or make suggestions to change a finished song just so they could a songwriting credit.

And I said NO a lot of times.

And that starts to put a strain on the relationship and the band dynamics. Eventually we became assholes to each other and one of the main commandments that I swear by is to “Don’t Be An Asshole”.

It’s easier said than done. Especially in metal and rock circles. You know, we are all alpha males in this business.

So how can we achieve a healthier band dynamic.

We need to handle criticism better. At one point in my life, the way I offered criticism wasn’t at all constructive and criticism towards me was seen as a personal attack.

Don’t be assholes to each other as everyone is replaceable.

True love of music is the best reward. Money is a byproduct.

Realise that if the guitarist does come in with a completed song, or an albums worth of songs, it’s okay. Same goes for the other musicians in the band. And if your song doesn’t make the cut, that is also okay.

If the band is a democracy, then happy creating, however let me tell you one truth. Bands that claim that their songwriting is a democracy are lying. There is always one that will be the boss.

Look at Van Halen. Songwriting credits originally showed Edward Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony and David Lee Roth. However it is a well-known fact that Eddie Van Halen wrote all the music and David Lee Roth wrote the lyrics, with little input from Van Halen’s rhythm section.

Slow and steady wins the race. Remember a music career is a lifers game.

You will get screwed by someone in the music business. Don’t let it get you down. Roll with it and learn from it.

In order to be seen or be heard, we need to stand united.

Don’t see every other artist or band as competition. The history of rock n roll shows that it was friendships and recommendations from other artists that broke artists to an audience. This is needed even more so in 2014.

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

The Piracy Debate… Goes On and On and On and On.. But The Hard Work For An Artist Never Goes Away

BitTorrent is a tool. How people decide to use the tool depends on them. Technology has a history of people/society shaping the technology. The BitTorrent protocol was designed to move large amounts of data. So of course, companies like Facebook and Twitter use BitTorrent to send updates to its employees. Then you have other people who use it to download torrents.

To use an analogy, knives are used in the kitchen to great effect. However people also use knives in illegal ways. Should we ban knives because they are also used illegally. According to Robert Steele, one of the bosses at the copyright troll Rightscorp outfit we should.

This is what Robert Steele said;

“BitTorrent’s architecture and features are designed for one reason only – to assist people in avoiding legitimate law enforcement efforts when they illegally consume other people’s intellectual property.”

As TorrentFreak points out, people who use BitTorrent are easy to track down, which is in fact something that Rightscorp is basing its entire business model on.

So why is it that so many people in the industry are so against Pirates.

Studies of Industry Professionals show that the “Sales and Distribution” sector are the ones saying that they’d been most affected by piracy because it is those middlemen who sit behind the scenes, have the largest vested interest in stopping piracy as they don¹t have many other reasons for doing what they do.

Artists just want to create. Money is a byproduct of those creations. All the rest of the enablers are trying to make money of the creation.

P2P research even shows that Piracy helps push the overall industry forward and that downloaders actually spend more on music than non downloaders.

There is a reason why bands are going to South America, even when the number of albums sold in the continent dont equate to the fans who attend shows. Look at all the DVD’s coming out from bands. Dream Theater, Rush, Iron Maiden and Megadeth are four bands that come to mind that have all released DVD’s of concerts in South America. Metallica have covered Mexico.

I was also going through some Billboard BoxScore figures from last week and based on recorded sales, the concert grosses don’t really equate. So in the same way that the RIAA correlates an illegal download to a lost sale, I will say that each fan that buys a ticket to a live show has also illegally downloaded at least ten full albums. (I am being conservative).

Who would have thought that a bill of “Bring Me The Horizon” and “Of Mice & Men” would gross about $70,000 per show. Play 20 of those shows and you have a $1.5 million tour.

Who would have thought that a bill of “The Used”, “Taking Back Sunday”,”Tonight Alive” and “Sleepwave” would also gross about $70,000 per show. See above, do 10 shows and you have a $700,000 gross tour.

Even the mighty “Manowar” still gross $60,000.

A bill of “Asking Alexandria”, “August Burns Red”, “We Came As Romans”, “Crown the Empire” and “Born of Osiris” grosses about $50,000 per show. The albums sales combined from all of the artists wouldn’t even pass 50,000 in the U.S.

“Falling In Reverse” and “Escape The Fate” gross about $30,000 per show.

While a bill that featured “In This Moment”, “Butcher Babies”, “Devour The Day” and “All Hail The Yeti” gross about $19,000 per show which was the same as a bill featuring “Animals As Leaders”, “After the Burial”, “Navene-K” and “Chon” gross about $19,000 per show. Not bad for a progressive djent band.

“Sevendust” are doing a run of shows and they are grossing at least $13,000 per shows Since the start of April 2014 to July 2014, they will play about 54 shows. Do the math on that one. It comes to about $700K in gross.

Indiegogo champions “Protest the Hero” played a small venue and grossed $4,000 per show. If they do a 50 date run like Sevendust, then do the math. It all adds up.

It’s hard work being an artist however if you are in the game because you love it, it makes it easier. If you are in the game to bitch and moan about piracy, then get out of it and join the bankers or the techies.

Standard