Category Archives: Music

A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

Dream Theater has a listening party and invites the fans this time around – That’s what I’m talking about.

The Dream Theater post on the band having a listening party and forgetting to invite their fans was the most viewed post on the Destroyer of Harmony blog. It even started The Great Debate on a Dream Theater forum. Knee jerk reactions from forum members Misunderstood the intentions of the post.

As a fan, it is with a sense of renewed optimism to see Dream Theater rewarding London fans with a chance to listen to the album with John Petrucci and James LaBrie. Did the post on this blog cause this change of heart? Maybe it did. I will own it.

So what does this new listening party mean?

Dream Theater will give ten fans a chance to hear the new album. Casual fans will not be queuing up for this. It will be their super fans that will Take The Time to email. These same fans will have walked the Rite Of Passage and purchased the Lifting Shadows book each time it has been released.

They will have seen the band live every time they have visited and they will have purchased all of the Official album releases, DVD releases, Official Bootleg releases and merchandise. This is a chance for Dream Theater to form an everlasting connection with these super fans. Studies released have shown that super fans are worth about $700 to a band on a yearly basis. These same studies have shown that these super fans once enabled are better than any marketing PR firm. Just Google, “Hypebot Superfans”.

When Dream Theater started off back in the late 1980’s, the marketing was the actual narrative that would sell the product. Fast forward to 2013 and Dream Theater started off their marketing campaign in the same way as 1988. It’s good to see that the marketing plan has switched to the actual product, as the current day marketing is the actual product itself. Otherwise, the product will end up like Megadeth’s Supercollider, outsold by the Metallica Black album that is 22 years old regardless of the narrative that Dave Mustaine puts on it about being his best work as it is an album that has come from his heart, not his mind.

Perception is all that matters these days. If people start to believe that a band doesn’t care about their fans or if they have lost control of their career, then they are done, regardless of what the numbers say in relation to sales, tour and merchandise grosses.

Kudo’s to Petrucci and Co.

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A to Z of Making It, Music

Social Media is Not Just About The Broadcast – What Dream Theater can be doing better compared to other bands?

Dream Theater is all about the advertisement/broadcast. Look at their Facebook account and it is all about the sell. This is expected as they have a new product and they are trying to push it. However, have they spent any time reading, listening or understanding what their fans are saying? The fans are the best advocates and for some reason bands are not realising it.

Compare what Dream Theater is doing to what Robb Flynn is doing for Machine Head with The General Journals: Diary Of A Frontman… And Other Ramblings. He is engaging with his fan base through personal stories. Of course they still have the sell aspect going on for their Mayhem shows and no one is expecting the artist to stop the sell. The difference is those personal touches and stories.

Compare what Dream Theater is doing to what Randy Blythe from Lamb Of God is doing on Instagram. He takes unbelievable photos and the stories he shares with those photos via Instagram is all about engagement with people. There is no sell here. It is authentic and heartfelt. This is pure gold.

Compare to what Dream Theater is doing to what Trivium is doing on Facebook. Both bands have the same label and both have albums coming out within a month apart. Trivium had the official download of the song Brave This Storm (it was just one post and the post was called Transmission #2) and then it has all been fan and band pictures posted from various shows. Dream Theater have plugged the new song post after post after post. We get it, you have a new song.

Also when Dream Theater had the corporate deal with USA Today to stream the song, a lot of their fans from other parts of the world couldn’t listen to it. Of course that problem was fixed within a couple of days and then Dream Theater started re-posting links for the song.

I recently posted that the years of when artists took a year to make an album and went on a two to three year victory lap are over. The artists that still take a year to make an album in this current climate are doing themselves a great disservice as they will have an album that is basically dead on arrival. The faithful will buy the album and then the victory lap is over.

It looks like the bigger the network around a band, the less they focus on fan engagement. Bands or artists cannot expect to use their social media accounts only when it suits them, just because they have a product to push or a song to push and expect that the fans will remain engaged.

A perfect example is Metallica, Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden or Bon Jovi. Dream Theater is trying to play in this field, however they don’t have the runs on the board to play against Metallica or Bon Jovi.

Bands with better runs on the board than Dream Theater like Five Finger Death Punch, Shinedown, Halestorm, Lamb Of God, Sixx A.M, Kid Rock and Stone Sour are still looking at ways to engage with their audience on different levels. Don’t focus on how many followers or likes you have. It’s all about connections and trying to make those connections bring value to the relationship.

Bands like Metallica and Bon Jovi use PR agencies to run their social media accounts. Of course the whole business model of the PR company is the less is more model and to have total control over the message. This is in contrast with the social principles of giving out as much information and seeing what connects and what misses.

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A to Z of Making It, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, Stupidity

Put Your Efforts Into Twenty Little Derivative Projects Throughout The Year

Music and movies just don’t seem to last anymore. The way movies and music are done these days, they don’t fit the modern paradigm of needing to be in the face of the consumer week after week. TV on the other hand has a longer lifespan because it fits the modern paradigm.

George Lucas once said that the $200 million movie is dead. At the moment there are a lot of blockbusters that cost $100 million to $200 million to make that are flops.

Movies like R.I.P.D (a derivative version of Ghostbusters and Men In Black), Pacific Rim (a derivative version of Godzilla and Transformers), The Lone Ranger (a derivative version of The Lone Ranger TV show, National Treasure and Pirates of The Caribbean), Turbo, After Earth and White House Down.

Remember that progress is derivative. Each movie mentioned above is a derivative version of a previous movie that had come before it. So what went wrong. Remember, that this is Hollywood. Hollywood is well known to play on the stupid idea that they need a $200 million movie. So in order to make a $200 million movie, Hollywood focuses on a lot of formulaic material that the public is pushing back on as we are sick and tired of watching it. Meanwhile, the movies that are doing well are the lower budget films.

The Conjuring cost $20 million to make and so far it has made $140 million. The Heat cost $43 million to make and so far it has made $190 million. Now You See Me cost $75 million to make and so far it has made $233 million.

It’s just bad business sense. If you are in the market to sell a product, a better strategy is to test your luck with ten $20 million movies rather than dumping $200 million into just one movie? The public is speaking up. They want the studios to focus on how to make good movies that doesn’t involve following a formula. They want the studios to find quality content.

So what does the failure of several blockbusters have to do with music.

DO NOT PUT ALL YOUR EFFORTS INTO ONE GIANT PROJECT. Put your efforts into twenty little derivative projects throughout the year.

The years of when artists took a year to make an album and went on a three year victory lap as it sold by the truckloads are over. The ones that still take a year to make an album basically have an album that is dead on arrival. The faithful will buy the album and then the victory lap is over.

There is a massive paradigm shift happening in the way the audience consumes entertainment. The best way to sum up the change in consumerism mindset is to use the good old photo analogy. Once upon a time it used to cost a decent amount of dollars to have a photo done. You needed a camera and batteries. Then you had to buy a 35mm film roll for taking the photos and then once the roll was all used up, you needed to take that roll to a photo lab who then converted the roll into negatives and then printed up the photos for you. You then paid the photo lab money and they gave the prints and the negatives back to you. Then we would buy a photo album to store the photos in so that we can view them in the future over and over again. Some people even purchased slide machines to view their negatives on a wall.

Today we just take a photo on our smartphones. Today, photos cost nothing and are oftentimes shot and then discarded. In most cases, they are saved to a hard drive where they will sit forever or uploaded to a social site like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Flickr or Tumblr.

Music is also uploaded to a social site. YouTube is the unofficial and original streaming service. The record labels execs that are doing everything they can to keep their fat pay checks and thinking about yesterday didn’t see that one coming.

The change in consumer behaviour has led to the traditional photo print shop from disappearing. In music, this has led to the reduction in brick and mortar stores that sell recorded music.

Kodak the biggest player in the photography field has disappeared. They made the mistake of ignoring the changes in technology and assumed that people will remain true to the film roll technology. Hang on a second. Isn’t that the same viewpoint the Record Labels hold.

Once upon a time you could only play your music at home. Once upon a time you could only view your photos at home. Today we can view and take our photos everywhere we go. Today we can expect to have all of our music available to us everywhere we go.

So why are the artists creating content with the old Record Label mindset.

Record more frequently, release frequently. Give the people a reason to listen to your music.

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

Progress Is Derivative – The Welcome Home (Sanitarium) Debate

Remember my definition of Progress Is Derivative – taking the best things of what has come before and merging those things all together to come up with something unique, original and innovative.

Case Study for today is Metallica and their song Welcome Home (Sanitarium) from the album Master of Puppets released in 1986.

INTRO (0.00 to 0.20)
Let’s start with the natural harmonics intro. Back in 1971, a certain progressive rock band called Yes released Roundabout. The intro is more or less a droning note, with some harmonics and a hammer on/pull off lick on the E string. Remember Progress is Derivative. Take something from the past and make it better.

INTRO 2 and VERSE (0.21 to 1.48) and (2.10 to 3.10)
Anyone heard of a New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) band called Bleak House? If the answer is NO, then you are in the majority. However, a certain person called Lars Ulrich has heard of this band. James Hetfield has even said in an interview that the band shall remain anonymous. So Bleak House release a song called “Rainbow Warrior” as a seven-inch single in 1980 via Buzzard Records. By 1982, the band called it a day. The intro riff of Rainbow Warrior is catchy. It was so good that James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich are influenced by it. They start to jam on it and they start to tweak it into Welcome Home (Sanitarium). Remember Progress is Derivative. Take something from the past and make it better. Hetfield and Ulrich made this riff the centrepiece of Sanitarium.

OUTRO (4.05 to 4.26) and (04.48 to end)
Remember a little three piece band from Canada called Rush and a song called Tom Sawyer. Metallica have taken the intro from Tom Sawyer and used it as their outro. The feel and the phrasing of the two songs are almost identical. The note selection are just a touch different. Remember Progress is Derivative. Take something from the past and make it unique, innovative and original.

Welcome Home (Sanitarium) is a derivative version of three different songs accumulated into one song. This is what music is all about. Should Metallica have credited Graham Killin, the guitarist and main songwriter of the band Bleak House and the writer of Rainbow Warrior. My answer is No.

The final say goes to Graham Killin. The quote below is from an interview he did with John Tucker in November 2012, on the website http://www.hrrecords.de

‘Dad! You’ve got to go after them for this. They’re using your stuff and you’re not getting royalties for it!’ Killin can’t hide his amusement at the thought. The irony of the situation is that ‘Bleak House’, the novel from which the band took their name, has at its heart a lengthy legal argument that consumes everyone and everything. “So every now and then it’s a little topic that crops up in conversation, y’know? And I think ‘would it actually be worth approaching a music solicitor and saying that as it’s my intellectual property would I stand any chance of getting anything?’” he laughs again. “Who knows?”

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

The Modern Music Paradigm is the 1982 Paradigm (Comparing the output of Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Ronnie James Dio with Dream Theater, Trivium and Machine Head)

So you want to make it in the music business as an artist? You want to set the world on fire. Since I have been doing some reading on a New Wave of British Heavy Metal band called Bleak House, I wanted to share their story.

Let’s go back in time.

It’s 1982. Bleak House have two highly-regarded releases out in the market and a loyal fan base. One of those releases was a single called Rainbow Warrior, that had a movable power chord verse riff that went from B to C to D over an E pedal tone. Sound familiar. It should. It is Metallica’s Welcome Home (Sanitarium).

The below quotes are all from an interview that Graham Killin did with the website http://www.hrrecords.de back in November 2012. So what went wrong.

“Looking back now I think we got a bit complacent. We weren’t trying to push enough, the new material wasn’t coming through so easily, and when we were going out playing we were just rehashing what we’d done before. We should have knuckled down and put some new material together, and done more gigs. We should have stuck at it. You look back and you think ‘if we’d stuck at it and done a few more gigs, put some more new music together, who knows what might have happened.”

The modern paradigm is as follows;

1. Stick around and outlast the competition
2. Keep on writing and putting new music together
3. Keep on networking and building relationships – artist to fan. Not artist to record label.
4. Keep on writing and putting new music together

Remember back in 1982, it was very rare to get a two year gap between albums. In 99% of cases, most artists that released an album in 1982, had another album out in 1983 and then another one in 1984. If Bleak House wanted to be a force reckoned with, they had to compete with the competition.

Look at Judas Priest. In 1980 they released British Steel, in 1981 they released Point of Entry and then in 1982 they released the big one, Screaming For Vengeance. Then they went on a two year gap between long players.

Let’s look at Iron Maiden. In 1980 they released Iron Maiden. In 1981 they released Killers. In 1982 they released The Number Of The Beast. In 1983 they released Piece of Mind. In 1984 they released Powerslave. In 1985 they released Live After Death. In 1986 they released Somewhere In Time. Then they started to go on a two year gap between long players. Iron Maiden worked hard for their success. That is why they are on top right now.

Another hard worker I want to mention is Ronnie James Dio. Let’s look at his output.

In 1975, Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow was released. In 1976, Rising came out. In 1977, On Stage came out. In 1978, Long Live Rock N Roll came out.

With Black Sabbath, he was involved with the Heaven and Hell release in 1980. In 1981, Mob Rules came out. In 1982 Live At Last came out.

In 1983, Dio released Holy Diver under his own name. In 1984, The Last In Line came out and in 1985 Sacred Heart was released. 1986, the Live EP Intermission and then in 1987 Dream Evil came out with Craig Goldy on guitar.

That is 12 releases in a 12 year period. Remember that all of these releases took place at a time when it was expensive to create and release music. During a period when the artist was king and in control of what they created, before the dark times of when the Record Labels controlled what style of music would be recorded and what songs would be released. As an audience we felt that those records deserved our attention. Today, anyone can record and release material. However, the fan now needs a reason to pay attention.

So for any artist starting off. This is the standard again. You need to be creating and releasing. You need to be giving us a reason to pay attention. Forget about the 2 to 3 year gap between albums. That is the Record Label standard. It was never the artist standard.

Compare the above paradigm to the music released in the last 10 years.

Trivium kicked things off in 2003 with Ember To Inferno. In 2005 they released Ascendancy. In 2006 they released The Crusade. In 2008 they released Shogun. In 2011 they released In Waves. In October 2013 they are going to release Vengeance Falls an album that was finished in March 2013. Five albums in ten years.

Machine Head released Supercharger in 2001. In 2003 they released Hellalive and Through The Ashes of Empires. In 2007 they released The Blackening. In 2011 they released Unto The Locust. In 2012 they released Machine F***ing Head. It looks like a new album will see the light of day 2014. Five proper albums in 12 years and seven all up (including the live albums).

Dream Theater is an interest subject on this. Let’s look at the 2000’s era with Mike Portnoy in the band.
2001 – Metropolis 2000: Scenes From New York
2002 – Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence
2003 – Train Of Thought
2003 – Official Bootlegs – The Majesty Demos 1985-1986
2003 – Official Bootlegs – Los Angeles, California 5/18/98
2003 – The Making Of Scenes From A Memory
2004 – Images and Words: Live In Tokyo/5 Years In A Livetime DVD (re-release of their 1990’s VHS releases)
2004 – Live At Budokan
2004 – Official Bootlegs – When Dream and Day Unite Demos 1987 – 1989
2004 – Official Bootlegs – Tokyo, Japan 10/28/1995
2004 – Official Bootlegs – Master Of Puppets
2005 – Octavarium
2005 – Official Bootlegs – Images and Words Demos 1989 – 1991
2005 – Official Bootlegs – The Number Of The Beast
2005 – Official Bootlegs – When Dream and Day Reunite CD and DVD
2006 – Score
2006 – Official Bootlegs – Awake Demos 1994
2006 – Official Bootlegs – Old Bridge, New Jersey 12/14/96
2006 – Official Bootlegs – The Dark Side of The Moon CD and DVD
2007 – Systematic Chaos
2007 – Official Bootlegs – New York City 3/4/93
2007 – Official Bootlegs – Falling into Infinity Demos
2007 – Official Bootlegs – Made in Japan – Deep Purple
2007 – Official Bootlegs – Bucharest, Romania 7/4/02 DVD
2008 – Chaos In Motion: 2007-2008
2008 – Greatest Hit (…and 21 Other Pretty Cool Songs)
2009 – Black Clouds And Silver Linings
2009 – Official Bootlegs – The Making of Falling Into Infinity
2009 – Official Bootlegs – Train of Thought Instrumental Demos 2003
2009 – Official Bootlegs – Uncovered 2003-2005
2009 – Official Bootlegs – Santiago, Chile 12/6/05 DVD

And this is the Dream Theater era without Mike Portnoy
2011 – A Dramatic Turn Of Events
2013 – Dream Theater
2013 – Live at Luna Park

“Gez wanted to earn some money from it and we weren’t doing enough gigs for that and besides, whatever we used to earn we’d plough straight back into the band for merchandise and to cover recording costs and have more singles pressed, stuff like that. But he wanted to actually earn something, make some money out of it; and yes, he did join a country & western outfit, as the urban myth goes, and yes, he has made money out of it; he joined a band that was actually making money. And he ended up marrying the singer!

As for Roy, it was inevitable that he might get an offer from somebody else. At one stage I think he had the opportunity to audition when AC/DC were looking for a drummer. But he didn’t go! He bloody well should have done; I’m sure he would have got in because he was such a great drummer. After Gez and Roy left I don’t think the magic was there any more. Bleak House got put on the shelf, and there it stayed. I think that was around September 1983, and we never played live again after that.”

It’s time to add a fifth point to the modern paradigm.

5. Don’t focus on the money side of the art. If you want a weekly wage, it is time to get a job that pays weekly.

Great art and everlasting music comes from inspiration. It doesn’t come from a thought process that involves money. As soon as a band member or an artist is thinking about the pay day, they are not in it for the right reasons.

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

Music Is A Long Road – A Trip Down Memory Lane with Fates Warning, Tom Petty and Dream Theater

For any artists these days, be it Bon Jovi or Metallica or Dream Theater or Motley Crue or Imagine Dragons or Shinedown or Machine Head or any new band starting off right now, they all need to understand one thing. We are living in the generation of kids born from 1997 onwards. This generation wants to consume music. Their sense of community is all online. Anyone that says they don’t have a Spotify account is not living in the modern age. These kids weren’t alive when the Record Labels ruled the day, so they have no desire for yesterday, they are all about today and what lays beyond.

For any artist these days, their whole career is about relationships. If you want an audience to invest, you need to establish a relationship. You need to make the effort. The days of touring a city based on the record sales figures for that city are long gone. Ask Dream Theater or Iron Maiden how many albums they have sold in South America? Then ask them how many people came to their shows in those countries.

Mike Portnoy stated in the linear notes on the released bootleg recording of Dream Theater’s Santiago, Chile show from June 2005 that they didn’t know what to expect from South America due to the low number if records they had sole there. They even went to the show with a cut down stage set to save money. In the end, they played to their biggest headlining audience ever.

It’s all about roots. If an artist doesn’t have any, the audience is not interested. Experience moulds the artist, it influences them. Music is an end unto itself. When done right, the sound and the feel is enough. It doesn’t need the videos, the PR sell and all the pyro that comes with the rock n roll show.

Tom Petty sang that Love Is A Long Road. That is the aim of every artist. To foster the love of the audience into a sustainable career. To paraphrase Tom Petty, Music is A Long Road. The same way that a relationship with a partner has its ups and down, so does the relationship between artist and fan. The same effort that an artist puts into a loving relationship is basically the same effort they need to put in to their music career.

The music community has shifted to being a song centric community. We just dont know it yet. The album format that used to make the most money for the record labels is almost a dead format. However artists still go back and release a collection of songs as an album.

In order for the album format to work for you, you need to create an album that is playable throughout. You need to create an album that needs to be heard over and over again. You need to create an album that stands up years after its release.

Fates Warning released an unbelievable album called Disconnected in 2000. However talk to anyone these days and it is like the band never existed. It’s been years since I’ve heard Disconnected and to my amazement, it sounds as fresh and innovative today as it did 13 years ago. Jim Matheos is the pure definition of the progress is derivative statement. He has the ability to take good things from songs that came before and mould them into something great, unique and innovative.

In the Year 2000, progressive music was at opposite ends of the spectrum. You had the Dream Theater style of progressive music on one side and the Tool style of progressive music on the other side. In between you had a band like Porcupine Tree, merging Tool like aggression with Pink Floyd like atmospherics. The mainstream was ruled by Nu-Metal bands. The missing link was Fates Warning.

With Disconnected, Jim Matheos merged the Tool and Porcupine Tree progressive elements with the Dream Theater progressive elements and put them through the Fates Warning blender.

Disconnected is a fusion of all the best progressive elements at the time into a cohesive piece of work that can be listened to over and over again from start to finish. It is a tragedy that this album is so overlooked these days. In the same way that each lick and melody from Images and Words by Dream Theater sticks in my head, Disconnected from Fates Warning does the same.

I am looking forward to hearing “Darkness In A Different Light” when it comes out on September 27. Nine years is a long time between albums. Nine years in the music business is an eternity. So much has changed. Love is a long road. Music is a long road.

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Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Piracy

Deja-Vu. 2011 vs. 2013 with Dream Theater and Trivium – Random Thoughts on their new songs

It’s like déjà vu again. In 2011, I was listening to new songs from Trivium and Dream Theater. Trivium had just unleashed In Waves as its promotional single for the In Waves album and Dream Theater had unleashed On The Backs of Angels as its promotional single for the A Dramatic Turn of Events album.

I remember listening to both songs back then and taking into account both of the band’s position in the musical landscape. Dream Theater to me, had the most to prove, as this music would be their first without founder Mike Portnoy.

In my opinion In Waves is a stronger song than On The Backs of Angels. The song wins all the time. I was listening to Images and Words yesterday and the reason why that album is awesome 21 years after its release is the songs. Learning To Live, Metropolis and Take The Time are progressive as hell, but man, I can physically hum the whole songs to anyone including the progressive interludes.

Images and Words is Dream Theater. That album represented what Dream Theater are all about and it set in motion everything that was to come. This new album is self-titled, therefore it should represent what Dream Theater is all about.

Anyway I digress, going back to my 2011 experiences. In relation to the albums, both of them had a six week U.S sale run (physical sales) and then disappeared. Will history repeat itself? I think so.

Dream Theater – A Dramatic Turn Of Events
Week 1 – ending 21 Sept 2011 – 35,750 units sold
Week 2 – ending 28 Sept 2011 – 8,030 units sold
Week 3 – ending 05 Oct 2011 – 4,430 units sold
Week 4 – ending 12 Oct 2011 – 3,120 units sold
Week 5 – ending 19 Oct 2011 – 2,600 units sold

Trivium – In Waves
Week 1 – ending 17 Aug 2011 – 20,640 units sold
Week 2 – ending 24 Aug 2011 – 6,700 units sold
Week 4 – ending 07 Sept 2011 – 2,890 units sold
Week 5 – ending 14 Sept 2011 – 2,890 units sold

Artists are so scared if an album under performs these days. WHY? The album sales figures quoted above is not the metric to judge success on. Dream Theater have hardly sold any music in South America, however they play to their biggest crowds there. I wonder how that came to be?

As Nicko McBrain said in Flight 666 The Movie, Iron Maiden hasn’t sold an album in Costa Rica, however they are playing a stadium show that is sold out with 30,000 people attending. Put it down to piracy, file sharing, Bit Torrent or copyright infringement. The bottom line is this, if what you create is great, expect it to be shared.

Before the Internet, before YouTube, before streaming services like Spotify, fans had to own the music to hear it. That is no longer the case. The history of recorded music is at our fingertips. Fans are participating in this new arena, while artists and labels are still banging their heads against the wall judging success by album sales.

Even Mike Portnoy asked fans to buy The Winery Dogs as a show of support to the label and to show to them that this project is viable. Why does he care about sales? Look at all his posts, show after show. He is blown away at the reaction they are getting. Isn’t that the validation he should be seeking?

So here we are in 2013. We have Trivium’s new song Brave This Storm and Dream Theater’s The Enemy Within.

So what is the verdict.

I can’t say that The Enemy Within is anything special. Some bits remind me of Scenes from a Memory, but really, I could see this song fitting on A Dramatic Turn of Events. It is not a great leap forward in musical terms. Let’s hope that the other songs make the “definite statement.”

Hopefully what we heard was their “Commercial” piece for the album, in the same way that Forsaken was seen as the “Commercial” piece in Systematic Chaos. If this new album turns out to just be ADToE part 2, then yeah I’ll be pretty disappointed, and everyone will know what a pivotal role Portnoy played in the band and how directionless they are without him.

On the other hand, I was very cautious as to how the Trivium and David Draiman collaboration would work. From hearing Brave This Storm, I would say they are on a definite winner. The song is heavy, it is a progression from what they started with In Waves, it is all math in the verses and it is very melodic. Let’s hope that the other Trivium songs are not Brave This Storm 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and so on.

For some reason this got me thinking about a song from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers called Rebels which is the lead off track on his 1985, Southern Accents album.

With one foot in the grave
One foot on the pedal
I was born a rebel

Are musicians/artists rebels in 2013? It seems that they all want to be winners. Seen any posts from a musician recently about what they think, what they feel, what they are going to do and it doesn’t relate to selling music. Our heroes are even beholden to the Corporations.

Randy Blythe is one artist that shows his humanity. He uses his photographs and puts stories around them, which always relate to a personal part of his life. We are all human. We win and we lose. Blythe focuses on his work, not the sales pitch.

There is new news every day, so if Dream Theater and Trivium want their story to survive, they need to keep it alive by making news every day

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

Shifting Thoughts with Evergrey, Dream Theater and Five Finger Death Punch – Are Corporate Deals the New Music Business?

The internet is flush with information about artists needing to do what is valuable to them. However what is valuable to them doesn’t always mean that it is valuable to everyone else.

So artists are always going back to square one. This is when artists will start to compromise their artistic vision and produce cookie cutter crap. However what an artist should be doing is to keep on writing. In the end, that valuable song will be written and it will translate to your audience. This is when the thing that you love to do, translates to an audience that loves what you do.

Evergrey is a Swedish progressive metal band. They are eight albums in so far. Their first album The Dark Discovery came out in 1998 and the most recent one Glorious Collision came out in 2011. The mainstay of the band is guitarist/vocalist Tom Englund, who also functions as the main songwriter in the band. Around him, band members come and go, with the most recent change happening in 2010.

Englund is remaining true to his artistic vision. He is not compromising on it and he is not changing his vision to chase any current trends. Drummer Jonas Ekdahl and guitarist Henrik Danhage left Evergrey in 2010 to form a metal core outfit called Death Destruction with the lead singer from another Swedish band called Dead By April. Chasing trends.

It all comes down to what the artist wants to achieve from their career. Englund is all about the art and to me it seems like he is happy with the level of success he has. Would he like to be bigger? I am sure the answer would be YES to that, however would he complain about his lot in life. I think not. Englund is doing the thing that he loves to do and he has found an audience that loves what he does.

Bands like Coheed and Cambria, Digital Summer and Protest The Hero all get it.

Digital Summer is all fan funded. They have been around since 2006. They have toured strategically since inception as all the band members hold down full time jobs. They are three albums and one EP in so far and based on their business model, they will be around for a long time.

Protest The Hero is also fan funded. Their recent Indiegogo campaign more than tripled their goal (and YES I am one of those fans that donated). They have even rewarded the super fans that have shared the contribution link and gotten other people to contribute with additional perks.

Coheed and Cambria are a very fan centric band. The way they have packaged The Afterman releases with the digital downloads available on the day of release, along with demos and back stories of each song, as well as an 80 odd page hard cover book is just brilliant. They did it their way and with a price that was just right.

Dream Theater is one band that is sitting on the fringe here. They are still doing it the old way as they know their fan base will lap up the new self-titled album. Their recent co-promotion with mainstream entity USA Today to launch their new single The Enemy Within is just another corporate deal in the same vein as Jay Z partnering with Samsung.

USA Today offer a certain amount of dollars so that they are the exclusive and first on line website to premier the new song. By doing this, Dream Theater, their label, their manager and whoever else has a stake in the band will get paid up front and USA Today will get traffic to their website which they can then use to get a higher ad revenue from their advertisers’.

Before all the DT Forum Elitists start jumping up in arms and start calling me an idiot, every band is entitled to earn money in any way they see fit. This is no different to Dire Straits and Phillips teaming up in the Eighties, to push the new CD format onto consumers. If that what Dream Theater’s business model needs them to do, good on them. In the end the fans will decide the fate of the band, as they have done for every band that came before and that will come after.

Five Finger Death Punch did something similar were they teamed/partnered with Loudwire to produce a track by track webisode series. The Five Finger Death Punch co-promotion was super cool as it focused on delivering back stories to each of the songs. As a fan, it is those little extra details that I really like. That could be the reason why Five Finger Death Punch have reached Gold status with each album release. Those little things, like a track by track webisode.

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Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories

Learning To Live – Dream Theater – Classic Song To Be Re-Discovered

It’s the music that makes Learning To Live a classic.

If I had to recommend one song to a new Dream Theater fan that typified the progressive rock leanings of the band, then that song would be Learning To Live. Learning To Live was released on the 1992, Images and Words album. The song is that good, that Dream Theater even rewrote it and called it Breaking All Illusions. That version was released on A Dramatic Turn of Events in 2011.

The Kevin Moore keyboard intro kicks things off with a wicked 15/8 time signature. This same passage re-appears and this time it is played over alternating time signatures, starting off with 14/8 for 2 bars, then 13/8 for one bar and back to 14/8 for another bar. Then it goes back to 13/8, 14/8, 13/8, 7/8.

In between you get a very metal like passage in the vein of Immigrant Song from Led Zeppelin, that moves between 7/4,6/4,4/4 and 5/8 time signatures over F#m, C#m and Em root notes. It doesn’t sound forced. It is very fluent like.

The verse is unbelievable. Myung holds it all together with an unbelievable groove over a 7/4 and 6/4 time signature, that is supplemented by Kevin Moore’s choir like voicing’s outlining the Em9, Cmaj9, Amadd9 and Em9 chords. Myung paraphrases the novel Atlas Shrugged from Ayn Rand.

There was no time for pain, no energy for anger
The sightlessness of hatred slips away
Walking through winter streets alone, He stops and take a breath
With confidence and self-control

I look at the world and see no understanding
I’m waiting to find some sense of strength
I’m begging you from the bottom of my heart to show me understanding

Petrucci and Portnoy build the song nicely into the chorus. Petrucci begins with normal volume swells, while Portnoy locks in with Myung. As Petrucci’s guitar gets busier with harmonics, chords and arpeggios, Portnoy’s drumming becomes busier.

The second verse has an unbelievable progressive groove that keeps within the 7/4 and 6/4 time signature of the first verse. This time it’s all power chords and its heavy as hell. Chugging along on an E5 power cord, Petrucci enhances the riffs by chucking in B5, Bflat5 and F power chords, utilising the devil triton to maximum effect.

The 90s bring new questions
New solutions to be found
I fell in love to be let down

Then when you think they are going to go into the Chorus again, they go into a bridge part with a simple 4/4 groove and then the instrumental break starts. Petrucci is now playing what Moore played in the intro.

The flamenco passage at 5.30 kicks things off. From 6.30 it gets progressive and then the woo ohh ohhs kick in and Petrucci takes over at 7.10 in one of the most heartfelt solos Petrucci has laid to tape. Those bends remind me of Dave Gilmour in Comfortably Numb.

The whole Wait For Sleep segment that begins at 7.30 and ends at 9.35 includes brilliant jazz bluesy solos from both Moore and Petrucci and the main piano riff from Wait For Sleep. It then segues back in to the Chorus.

The way that your heart beats
Makes all the difference in learning to live

Just when you think the song is over, the outro kicks in, again led by an unbelievably groovy and very funky Myung bass line. Then Petrucci joins in with the Natural Harmonics and then the monk style voices take over. As a listener I just sit back with the head phones and allow myself to be taken away. A brilliant song and a brilliant piece of work.

Mike Portnoy has gone on record saying how much he hated working with the producer David Prater and the use of drum midi triggers. Portnoy feared that the triggers would make the album sound dated and seen as another generic hard rock album.

One thing is certain. The album still sounds fresh and current in 2013 as it did back in 1992. As Rush’s 2112 laid the groundwork for what was to come for Rush, Images and Words did the same for Dream Theater.

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Music, My Stories, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Dream Theater has a listening party and forgot to invite any fans.

The future and the present is all about going direct to the people who will pay for what you do.

Dream Theater just had a listening party for their new self-titled album and who did they have in attendance? The answer should be their FANS. They should have done the work via their website (which is still showing A Dramatic Turn Of Events graphics – another dumb decision so close to the new album coming out) or on Facebook to identify fans in the local area that should have been there.

Instead they had the people that will not pay for the music there. The usual media suspects and reporters. They surrounded themselves with people that will not write a negative review about them because this is the year 2013 that we live in and everyone wants to be a member of the club. Everyone wants to be invited back and everyone wants to be liked. Has anyone purchased a Dream Theater album because Billboard Magazine rated it highly or poorly or from a Village Voice review? The answer would be a definite NO. Why? Dream Theater built their career outside of the mainstream. It was the mainstream that came knocking on the door for Dream Theater and they let them in.

This is where Dream Theater missed an opportunity to go directly to their fans. They are marketing this album the old way. Yes they are using online blogs and so forth, however they are still not going direct to their fans. Remember back in 1991, Metallica had arena sized listening parties for their fans before the release of the Black album. This is where Dream Theater could have gone in deep with their fan base. This is where Dream Theater could truly CONNECT with them and find out what it is they love about the band. This is where the album could have marketed.

I am a Dream Theater fan and I am negative about the way they are missing out on so many opportunities to connect with fans in the current climate. The webisodes updates have been really lame without any hint of how the new music will sound like.

Don’t get me wrong, I will be purchasing the deluxe edition of the album as I have always done and so will thousands of other fans. The difference here is I believe Dream Theater can sell in the millions, if only they shift their thinking and stop missing opportunities to connect direct to fans.

Remember The Blackening from Machine Head. It has been heralded as the best metal album of the first decade. They also had a listening party in the studio before the album came out with their fans. After that, they went on a three year victory lap touring behind it.

Dream Theater needs to shift their thinking.

In the meantime, go check out the great new song from Trivium called Brave This Storm.

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