A to Z of Making It, Music, Stupidity

The Studio Environment

You see from my experiences, the studio is the arena that more or less breaks a band. Four bands that I have been involved with, have broken up from the damage caused to each other due to being in a studio environment.

Let’s begin with my favourite first; the way the drummer in the band recorded his drum tracks.

This always happened by me recording a scratch guitar track to a metronome/click track. The reason why I had to do it that way was that the drummer would always be out with the click track if I had to play along with him in real-time.

I’m not fussed either way however by the time I had to record the scratch guitar tracks a few other little events happened early on in the process.

You see when you go in the studio it is ideal to freshen up your gear. What I mean by that is new skins and sticks if you are a drummer, new strings on the guitars/bass and so on.

So when the drummer turns up with beat up skins (because he couldn’t afford new skins) and the drum kit than sounds like a cardboard box miked up, its “Houston, we have a problem”. This in turn leads to a  band meeting. There is resentment there already towards the drummer from the other band members. The final decision is that we end up hiring a professional kit for a fee. The drummer is now upset with everyone and at the engineer as he believes it is a conspiracy against him. We are now upset with the drummer for making us stretch the recording budget to hire a drum kit which means less time for mixing.

Another golden rule for me is to ensure that each member is well rehearsed.

So while that fast 16th note double kick pattern might sound okay in a live setting, when you put the click track microscope to it, you start to see that the drummer really didn’t practice it on his own and it sounds “out” and sloppy against the click track. This in turn leads to another band meeting with some baggage in tow. The drummer now has had about 20 takes on a 30 second double kick section and he hasn’t nailed either one. We have spent money and no product is being produced. The band meeting decides that we cannot afford to keep stuffing around on this one song so a decision is made to can the song from the recording.

This leads to even more resentment from the singer to the drummer as it is the singer’s song. The drummer is refusing to accept responsibility that he is under-rehearsed, blaming everyone else for his misfortune. He is arguing that the song was sped up in the studio and that we play it slower live. He is arguing that it is the professional kit and the unfamiliarity of it that is making him play sloppy. None of this sits well with us.

So when you add all of these little hurdles together, you can see that the studio environment starts to become resentful and argumentative.

And it’s funny that as soon as we start to work in a studio (regardless if it is a home studio or an external professional studio) certain band members start to become unavailable for the scheduled time slots. The vocalist can’t make his scheduled times because suddenly casual work or something else becomes a priority.

So here I am spending my time and money and no one is putting in the same effort.

So I start to become even more resentful at how unreasonable the others are.

However I still believe in what I am trying to achieve and I still have the confidence and the motivation to see it through. As my Dad would always say, “Nothing is easy in life”.

Risk is always part of the equation. Some pain right now will lead to a lot of gain afterwards. But in order to get the recording over the line someone has to take the lead, so I take control like how I have always done.

So I begin to tell my band mates that their parts are not good enough. I make the drummer do take after take.

I re-do the bass lines with a pick as the bassist believes he is a finger style player. Like the drummer, the finger style bass lines work well live but sound sloppy in the studio. I get the singer to record line by line of the verses. In other words I become the control room dictator. The outputs eventually are good enough from all involved however getting to the end of the road meant a lot of road kill that would become hard to recover from.

I refuse to heel as I push for that finished product.

The problem of my ways is that I wanted it to be a band effort however I quickly learnt/realised that it was best to do it myself.

There was a producer for the recordings, however it was me that produced it and the producer was really an engineer. I am also the creator of the songs. Today there is no distinction between the roles. They are the same. In the studio I have at home, I am the creator, producer and engineer. I get what I want and I do a lot of trial and error.

No one said the music business was easy however being in a band and keeping a happy medium is tougher than doing it alone.

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Copyright, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Stupidity Incorporated

Stupidity just doesn’t seem to go away these days. Last month the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) promoted it’s World Intellectual Property Day with a slogan from a Bob Marley and the Wailers song called “Get Up, Stand Up”. WIPO’s theme was “Get Up, Stand Up. For Music”.

Did you know that a judge ruled against Bob Marley’s heirs a few years who sought to regain control of Marley’s copyrights from Universal Music claiming that Marley wrote the song as a work made for hire and thus Universal could keep the copyright, and not give it back to the Marley Estate.

Now “work for hire” means that an artist was commissioned to write a song to the exact specifications of the record label. Wikipedia states “work for hire” in the following way;

A work made for hire is a work created by an employee as part of his or her job, or a work created on behalf of a client where all parties agree in writing to the WFH designation.

I can’t believe how a judge would seriously believe that the record label at the time “Island Records” would have given the song titles to Bob Marley and told him the theme of what the song should be about.

Anyone involved in music knows too well that is not the case for at all. “Get Up, Stand Up” was written after Marley toured Haiti and the poverty that he was confronted with in that country.

As the Techdirt article points out, you have an organisation so dumb and out of touch with culture that it using a song from an artist that has been hijacked by the corporations who push for stronger copyright enforcement.

As far as I’m concerned, Bob Marley’s copyright MUST be in the Public Domain upon death. The public is meant to be the beneficiaries here, not the heirs and not the record labels.

Which brings me to the “Stairway To Heaven” court case.

You see I am not a fan of the heirs of an artist inheriting the copyrights of the artist once they die and I am definitely not a fan of the heirs of an artist suing others for money. We can all hear that Jimmy Page lifted the riff from the Spirit track “Taurus” and to be honest made a better derivative version of the Spirit track. For whatever reasons Spirit guitarist Randy California was cool with it and nothing happened. However the heirs are now challenging that.

What a sad state it is when a court has to decide on this and whichever way the court rules, the court is putting out the idea that one track is so original and the other is not. As a musician, trust me when I say that no song or riff is created in a vacuum. Each piece of music that comes out is a sum of our influences.

One final thing to add to my rant. When can the artists get it right when it comes to the music industry and recording industry references. Check out this quote from Ron Bumblefoot, the current guitarist in Guns N’ Roses.

”The music industry started to see their customers as their enemies and everybody suffered for it. Congratulations record industry – you’ve made a mess and you still don’t know how to clean it up.”

I always state over and over again, that the music industry is not the recording industry. They are two different entities. You see, the music industry didn’t see their customers as enemies, nor did they sue them, it was the recording industry that did that.

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

Submersed Compendium

The potential of Submersed achieving greater success was there. You see once upon a time bands struggled for years building up a local following and then a statewide following and then a tri-state following and so forth. However MTV changed all that. MTV made acts into global superstars in an instant. Some of those acts deserved it and a lot of others didn’t. So by the time Submersed came to fruition, they came to exist in a world post MTV.

A “Song Ideas” CD found its way into the hands of Mark Tremonti who was so impressed with what he heard he ended up championing them to Wind Up Records.

The debut album eventually came out in 2004 three years after the band actually formed. The title changed from “All Things Becoming of the End” to “In Due Time” and the track list also changed.

Mark Tremonti produced the first version of the album and Creed drummer Scott Phillips also performed. Then Tremonti went out with Creed on the “Weathered” tour, so Don Gilmore was brought in to produce the newer album cuts and future Tremonti drummer, Garret Whitlock was them behind the drum stool at this stage.

You Run
It’s the best song from the debut album and it was the song that hooked me in. It’s also one of their earliest. It was on the original track listing of the album when it was called “All Things Becoming Of The End” so it has stood the test of time.

“You Run” is written by a songwriting committee of vocalist Donald Carpenter, guitarists, TJ Davis and Eric Friedman, bassist Kelan Luker, producer Don Gilmore and original guitarist Aaron Young.

Since the album was done in two stages, this song is actually produced by Don Gilmore and drums are played by future Tremonti drummer Garrett Whitlock.

Many debts I cannot repay
Too many clouds in my sky today
I trust in you

And then there are other songs from the debut that have some killer sections in them.

Hollow
That Euro metal section from about 2.40 to 3.00 is sublime. Brilliant.

In Due Time
That whole outro with the lead guitar line and the vocals singing, “Let me go, never wanna be this, never wanna be this” is brilliant.

Dripping
The vocal melody in the verses. What a hook?

Divide The Hate
That middle-eastern Phrygian Dominant sounding intro is just too good to be wasted in a song that has an uninspired Chorus.

Unconcerned
That U2 inspired section from the 3 minute mark is brilliant. When the shred comes in at 3.30 it’s totally unexpected and a WOW moment in the song.

The first album moved over 100,000 copies.

Then the two year process started to write the follow-up.

Producer Rick Beato was on board and guitarist Eric Friedman was out. The album eventually came out in September 18 2007.  Donald Carpenter said the following in an interview on the Rock On Request website.

I think definitely we would have loved to have had more of a luxury just to write more rock, rock, rock songs and make it work. I think on this record we stuck more to just trying to write great songs, whatever songs could give us a career and give us success. We always felt like we could go heavier as our career went on, once we could establish ourselves. That was the main thing. We felt like we had a nice record where we could establish ourselves the first go around, but things just didn’t really line up the right way. We definitely keep it in mind and it’s something that we hope to maybe go a little bit closer towards, making a whole record that’s more like our live show.

Immortal Verses became the final album from Submersed. The constraint and the pressures to be commercially successful proved too much of a burden to bear.

An Artists Prayer
A great ballad written by Donald Carpenter.

Maybe in the answers,
Of those same questions
Were right in front of us all along
Written in riddles,
Timeless prayers,
Hidden in lines of timeless songs

Sometimes what you are looking for is right in front of us. We just need to find a way to see it.

Sarah and Johnny
Another good rocker written by T.J. Davis, Kelan Luker, Garrett Whitlock and Eric Friedman.

He sat all night,
Trying not to cry
His future heart seen
Should he stay,
With his family
Their hearts too strong to let him go,
Makin’ it to hard to leave
A better world
To chase a dream

The life of a rocker once the family comes into the picture is all about making hard choices. Do you chase a dream or stay in the world that is really hard to leave?

At First Sight
The big arena power ballad and if this was released twenty years before, it would have been a smash and on every wedding playlist. It’s written by Donald Carpenter and Eric Friedman.

Rewind
All of the best songs on album are buried towards the end and if you got through the generic sounding first 5 songs, you will be enthralled. This song is written by Donald Carpenter, producer Rick Beato and Marc Tompkins .

Once I listened to the album a few more times, more songs started to stand out.

Better Think Again
It’s written by Donald Carpenter, Rick Beato and Marc Tompkins. It was also the first single from the album.

It’s heavy and to me it deals with Carpenter’s feelings in navigating the music industry. We are all dreamers. The previous band I was in, the members all believed that if we got signed, things would take off right away and that we would be rich and famous.

But nothing is easy in music and nothing happens overnight. A music career takes time and a lot of years to gain fans. Being a musician equates to a lot of unfruitful work as the time spent doing things doesn’t equal a wage.

Then you get signed and that advance ends up being a loan with a slim chance to pay off. In the process, the label ends up owning you. And that is the catch-cry of the song, “You better think again”.

Price Of Fame
It’s written by Donald Carpenter. To be honest, anytime I see the words “The Price” in a song, I think of Dee Snider, Twisted Sister and the song “The Price”.

When I think of how cheap,
The price of fame has become
Is it all worth it
To try and be number one

It says it all. Like the same price that Dee Snider had to pay by being away from his family, Donald Carpenter is paying the same price.

Over Now
Another composition from Donald Carpenter and Rick Beato

It’s over now
Fading

When you think of how it ended this song might have been packaged as a relationship song, however it could have been about the industry.

Then abruptly there was a post on Submersed’s MySpace page (remember MySpace) that stated the band parted ways with certain members and they would be dropped from Wind Up Records. On Wikipedia you can see the blog entry written by Donald Carpenter:

I know that all of you are wondering, what happened to Submersed? Well, the answers is… A lot.. This business and struggle to make it took its toll on the members… Two weeks before “Price of Fame” was slated for release, Tj, Kelan and Justin decided to move on with their lives and left SubmerseD. Garrett and I believing in “Price of Fame” made the choice to press on and see what could happen. Well, nothing happened… the single never had a chance… mind bottling… The fact is, is that a majority of our fanbase is unaccounted for due to Burning, making it impossible for the labels to understand just how many people really support us out there… When it comes down to it now, SubmerseD no longer has a place on Windup’s roster and will be dropped shortly… I was trying to wait until things were a little more official before an announcement but you guys and gals are smart and I felt you deserved an explanation now rather than later.

The band had an audience however the record label didn’t know how to quantify it. The band didn’t know how to quantify it, believing that once they got signed, world stardom would be at their door.

That same problem still exists today. The majority of bands/artists still believe that a record label would bring about untold riches.

The record labels are still pushing out that old model focused on “CREATING A SALE”.

The world today demands that acts and the labels that support the acts “CREATE A CUSTOMER/FAN”. The model is not top down anymore, its reversed. It’s from the bottom up. We are looking for experiences that enhance our lives and not for block buster campaigns.

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Copyright, Derivative Works, Influenced, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

The World We Live In

I am over it.

I am over people like APRA/AMCOS CEO Brett Cottle calling on the Australian Parliament to offer legislative support to members of the creative industries.

I know from my own experiences APRA has been negligent for accepting dual song writing registrations on songs that I wrote and registered with them over ten years ago. They had the balls to call me up to ask me if I am okay with their negligence for accepting dual registrations and if I’m not okay with it, they can offer mediation to me to sort it out with the other party at a cost to be paid by me.

Yep, that sure sounds like a lot of support and respect from APRA/AMCOS towards the artists it is meant to represent. The truth of the matter is this.

Small time musicians don’t mean crap to these large organisations. All we do is generate a lot of money for them by playing live and by using our hard-earned monies to promote ourselves and get our songs on radio. Yep, APRA as a publishing and collection association collect those radio royalties (that we as artists worker our backsides off to get on radio) and those live returns from Club owners on our behalf.

They then hold the pool of monies for as long as they can before paying anything out to the artists based on a formula that no one can make sense off. That way APRA can double dip on the pool of money. They do that by earning interest on the large pool first and then they take out their admin fee.

So I am sick and tired at corporate entities that put out crap saying they are concerned about the artists. The music business and the movie business have consistently opted for legislation to combat piracy and when it comes to innovation they are continually dragged kicking and screaming into it.

The major record labels in the U.S killed off the 20 million strong membership of Grooveshark as it wasn’t legit enough for the record labels. Well guess what happened the next day. It was cloned and made available for users to stream music on.

Can we also make the distinction between the recording industry and the music industry?

They are two different categories. The recording industry is part of the music industry. The music industry at a high level also contains the live industry, the merchandise industry, the publishing companies, the collection agencies, the local clubs, etc..

So when I see people saying that the music industry cannot compete with piracy, it is totally a clueless and dumb statement to make.

I don’t see the live industry complaining because of piracy. I don’t see the merchandise industry complaining because of piracy.

Piracy is a recording industry problem. Actually I still find it hard to hear when people in the recording industry still complain about competing with piracy or pirates. People just don’t get it. The recording industry (and by default they acts on their roster) are competing against other products for fans/customers. It has been proven time and time again that if the customer sees value in the offering, they will pay for it.

There is a lot of money in the industry right now. “Blurred Lines” is just one song and it took in over 17 million dollars since 2013.

When it comes to music, I stream via Spotify for free and I buy physical CD’s from Amazon in the U.S or from the band direct. I never got into paying $1.29 or $2.19 for a digital mp3 of the song. However I do have a lot of mp3’s. When you buy pre-release albums from bands directly or via a fan funding campaign, you always get an mp3 version of the album. Amazon offers Auto-Rip and then there is the CD’s I purchased which I rip and put on my iPhone.

While ripping a CD is acceptable to an MP3 file is acceptable in the recording industry, the DVD I purchase is not allowed to be format shifted to an AVI file.

Torrentfreak is a website that I got to regularly to keep up to date on the latest issues around Copyright issues. So it’s no surprise to see that the MPAA is putting their hands in foreign policies. In this case, it was lobbying hard the UK Cameron government to not legalize DVD ripping. However the lobbying efforts didn’t pay off and the private copying exceptions became law in October last year.

Speaking of the MPAA, they are sure doing their best to keep their business model flourishing. Thanks to the Sony email hacks, the world know has official proof that the MPAA are offering grants to academics to write pro-copyright papers that can be used to influence future copyright policies.

As the article points this is nothing new for the MPAA.

Last November we revealed that the MPAA had donated over a million dollars to Carnegie Mellon University in support of its piracy research program. Thus far the Carnegie Mellon team has published a few papers. Among other things the researchers found that the Megaupload shutdown worked, that piracy mostly hurts revenues, and that censoring search engine results can diminish piracy. As expected, these results are now used by the MPAA as a lobbying tool to sway politicians and influence public policy.

So how is Brett Cottle from APRA/AMCOS or those stooges at Village Roadshow any different to the MPAA? All of these organisations profit from the creative works of others however they contribute nothing creatively.

In the end if copyright becomes too extreme, creativity will die.

Thank god in heavy metal and hard rock some common sense is prevailing when we hear similarities between songs. So far we haven’t had the court cases like “Blurred Lines” or the out of court settlements between Sam Smith and Tom Petty for the “Stay With Me” and “I Won’t Back Down” vocal similarities or the other out of court settlement between the song writing committee for Mark Ronson’s “Uptown Funk” and The Gap Band’s 1970s funk hit “Oops Upside Your Head.”

Music survives because the creators are constantly borrowing, sharing, and reacting to the different connections the 12 notes in the musical scale offer.

“The Ultimate Sin” is a forgotten song in Ozzy’s solo career (even though Jake E.Lee does perform it with Red Dragon Cartel) and it was good to hear part of the vocal melody get resurrected by Five Finger Death Punch in “Life Me Up”. Yes, they are similar for those small sections and if anything fair use is the order of the day.

Hell, we all know that Avenged Sevenfold’s latest album “Hail To The King” references a lot of great metal albums from the past. What about Kingdom Come’s “Get In On” and it’s references to Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir”. As I have always said, music is derivative.

It’s getting ridiculous how everyone is slapping copyright lawsuits on everything and the reason why that is occurring is that corporations own the copyrights. Hell, even George Clinton who has been sampled by every hip hop artist known, is fighting Bridgeport Music (a publishing company) to get his rights back. Basically at this point in time, George Clinton has NO royalty rights.

Yep, the person who copyright is designed to protect and the person who actually created the music has NO royalty rights to his music. And of course, in case you didn’t know Bridgeport Music was also one of the plaintiffs in the “Blurred Lines” copyright case.

But hey, Bridgeport Music, like APRA/AMCOS would lead you to believe that they are pushing copyright agendas for the artists and that stronger copyright is needed to combat piracy. On the other side of the fence you have a housewife from the fifties who wrote the lyrics for a song called “G.I. Blues” which was later turned into a hit song for Elvis Presley who is not credited as a songwriter because she didn’t pay the $25 copyright fee back in the sixties.

But, wait, according to the corporations who own the copyrights, the world needs longer copyright terms and stronger enforcement rights.

That’s the world we live in.

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

Time Is Your Greatest Friend

The recording industry is a mess, known for its creative accounting, manipulative one-sided contracts, it’s lobbying efforts to enact favourable laws that benefit the executives and do nothing for the artists and it’s monopolistic control over any new technologies that seek to bring a certain value to the consumer of recorded music.

Streaming service Grooveshark is no more.

The service had over twenty million users. Surely that is ample proof to the record labels that there is a large market for a service/product to offer what Grooveshark offered. However, the record labels have the dollars and the power behind them and any legal war of attrition will end in a record label victory.

Grooveshark’s sin was that they didn’t license the music on the service from the record labels. All the music was uploaded to Grooveshark by its “users”.

Grooveshark contended that if they paid royalties for the plays on the service they would be legit. However, the labels wanted Grooveshark to also pay for the licenses to have the “user uploaded” music on the service. On paying royalties, Grooveshark was also hit and miss, playing the same record label games against them.

But in all honesty, paying royalties is a contested issue. There is no transparency around it so the system is open to abuse.

Nick Menza (former Megadeth drummer) is complaining on social media that Dave Mustaine is ripping him off when it comes to his publishing royalty payments.

Add to that the unsignable contract that Menza (like Bill Ward and Dave Lombardo before him) were given and you can see that when money clashes with art, you have winners and losers on many different sides.

You have winners and losers between the executives and artists. You have winners and losers between the managers and artists. Finally you have winners and losers between the individual artists themselves and it all cases the main creative force is the winner.

If you want an example of the discontent, look no further than the guitar riff in “Every Breath You Take” from The Police.

That riff has been sampled in a lot of pop and rap songs. All of the monies earned from those samples goes to Sting as the sole songwriter and not to Andy Summers as the creator of the riff.

You see, Sting wrote the vocal melody and played the chords on a keyboard. That demo version of the song was then worked on by the whole band to get it to the level that we know today.

That iconic guitar riff follows the keyboard chords that Sting laid down.

A, F#m, D and E.

However the way Andy Summers chose to play it by adding the ninth note of each chord is iconic and innovative. That extra tone and the palm muted arpeggios tweaked the simple chord progression into an Aadd9, F#madd9, Dadd9 and Eadd9 chord progression. But Sting is the songwriter and he gets all the royalties for when that riff is sampled.

Sales of recorded music always goes to the record label and very rarely back to the artist.  So why are artist complaining about copyright infringement.

Monies for the artist come from other opportunities like licensing out music for advertisements of products. Australian band Tame Impala has made nothing from overseas sales however the monies they received from licensing out a song to Blackberry and to a Tequila maker ended up allowing the songwriter to buy a house and set up a studio.

As Kevin Parker from Tame Impala put’s it;

“I know what you’re thinking… “wait so…when I bought an album I was helping some businessman pay for his mansion on an island somewhere, and when some dude bought a mobile phone he was helping to pay an artist? WHHHYY?” I’ll tell you why, IT’S MONEY. It doesn’t always go where you want it to go.”

And the best take away from that Reddit session is the following;

“As far as I’m concerned the best thing you can do for an artist is LISTEN to the music…fall in love with it…….talk about it”.

The above sentiments are a far cry from what the classic rockers are talking about.

Roger Waters is angry at the techies for creating tools that facilitate “stealing” and he is angry with the “whole generation that’s grown up who believe that music should be free.”

I enjoy Pink Floyd. I like Roger Waters while he was in Pink Floyd.

I picked up Pink Floyd’s seventies output on LP from a second-hand record store (which meant that I picked up someone’s unwanted Pink Floyd records) in the Nineties and the only Pink Floyd CD that I own is “A Momentary Lapse of Reason” which I picked up from a discount bin.

Man reading his rant, he comes across as not sure if he should love his fans or hate them, because in the end it is the fans who love everything that he has recorded and spend $200 plus on a concert ticket that are downloading his songs. Not the tech companies. So which way does Waters want it.

Change is forever. Every other business can embrace change and move on however the recording industry is still fighting it. Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Roger Waters, Joe Perry and others all state that they are thankful they came out in a different time. Illegal copyright infringement is a record label problem, not an artist problem.

It’s actually one of the best times to be involved in the music business. The barriers of entry are low and recording technologies are affordable. You can physically create and distribute your music without a record label and do it for almost zero dollars. However, 99% of artists would still look for a record deal and then complain against the techies when the labels don’t hand over some of that streaming money that they have collected twice, once in licensing and then again in royalty payments for the listens.

The recording industry thrives in making their world look difficult and important. They will use trumped-up numbers of job losses, creative accounting charts and blame everyone else for the reasons why the artist is not getting paid. And the stupid thing is that the artists would sign up again for another term with the label with poor royalty returns.

The music business is not rocket science. Like any form of outlet there are some golden rules and the main one is to keep a decent cash balance.

So, yes that means the artist needs to work.

George Lynch had a record deal with Elektra and was driving trucks during this period just before Dokken broke through with the “Tooth N Nail” album.

Dee Snider worked many jobs while Twisted Sister was establishing itself as a serious live band.

Even Gene Simmons had a decent cash flow happening in the early days of Kiss. If you don’t believe me, then read “Face The Music” from Paul Stanley.

Music is an investment for the long-term that involves winners, losers and more importantly re-investment back into your career.

Time is your greatest friend.

Remember that.

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

Being A Musician Means ….

I still have the debate with people about the economics of being a musician vs earning money and the debate always ends with me asking the question;

Would a musician prefer to have their song or album shared/copyright infringed on/pirated (use whatever word you want, depending on what side of the debate you are on) 100,000 times or ignored and not shared at all?

The same conversations come up over and over again.

Musicians are either complaining about streaming payouts, copyright infringement/piracy of their music or jumping in with the corporations or the lobby groups looking for stronger copyright laws and enforcement. However, the music business wouldn’t be a business if it wasn’t for the fans. The customer. The consumer.

So what value is there to the consumer?

You see once upon a time, the musician and the consumer met with the RECORD. The record was an attempt by the musician to make something unique and likeable that it could be purchased.

A musician and a listener met with a performance via Radio, a TV spot or some other form of promotion.

This kind of listener might not end up as a consumer of the recorded product however there was always a good chance that this listener might end up at a concert hence making them a consumer in a way. From buying the record or from buying a ticket to the show, all of the exchanges are very one-sided. It is all about money leaving the consumer and going to the musician. The musician believes that the value comes in the music they provide.

With so much competition in the entertainment industry these days, surely obscurity is a much larger threat to a musician than copyright infringement will ever be. The more a musicians’ music spreads, the more true fans they will find that will end up becoming consumers. It doesn’t mean that all of those people will become consumers.

There is tons of music available that I will listen to. I enjoy doing that, however it doesn’t mean I like it enough to become a true fan and invest in the artist. However with Spotify I am investing in them by listening to them. In the past, I could listen to an artist from a taped copy or a mix CD and the artist got nothing from those listens. In the end each consumer has so much money to spend on entertainment products.

I like drinking wine and one thing I have learned from all the drinking I have done is that the price of the wine is not always indicative of the quality. So with all of the discussions about taking away Spotify’s free tier, it doesn’t mean that people will suddenly start to pay for a subscription. Just because music has a price, it doesn’t mean that it is something of quality that needs to be paid for.

There are other similarities between the winemaking business and the music business. Even in the wine making business, there are brilliant wine makers from around the world trying to break through the monopolies that control different markets.

Just like artists starting off, young wine makers invest a lot of time and money in their craft/product without knowing if that investment will pay off. They do it because they love it. The weather could be that severe/extreme that years could go by with so little yield and zero income. And once they produce that wine, it doesn’t mean that they have a consumer base to market it too.

Anyone gone wine tasting. You are physically at the door of the wine maker’s house where they open up bottles of wine and allow you to sample them. That is how wine makers form their tribe. By their cellar doors.

Metallica are kings of the hill because they formed a tribe around the people who heard their music and those fans followed the band everywhere. It didn’t mean that all of those fans purchased their music. And then Lars Ulrich did his best to divorce the band from its fan base with the Napster shenanigans. However the boat already sailed, with a lot of free music from Metallica doing the rounds. All of this copyright infringement established a whole new tribe for Metallica that is still sustaining them to this day. Yep those free loaders from Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South East Asia and Central/South America have become consumers to their sold out shows.

The fans are all a musician has.

Warren Buffet (investor) has an investment rule that rings true here when I think about the current status of some of my favourite artists;

“Be fearful when others are greedy, and be greedy when others are fearful.”

Tidal is all about greed. Taking away Spotify’s free tier is all about greed. Destroying the public domain by hijacking copyrights true intent is all about greed. The whole music business is about income inequality.

So can anyone blame us when we, the consumers became fearful of greedy people.

I support what is in my opinion the best music. I know other people’s opinions differ from mine. That’s just life.

As a musician I would be happy if my music was downloaded illegally 100,000 times and I am not one of those deluded people that equates those illegal downloads to 100,000 missed sales.

Do the math.

With no downloads a musician has no fans/listeners/future consumers and no cash.

With a 100,000 downloads via cyber lockers or torrents, the musician has possibly 100,000 fans and no cash at this point in time. I know what I would prefer.

There is a reason why Metallica and Iron Maiden have played to large audiences in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, China and South/Central America respectively and it has nothing to do with sales of recorded music.

Fame always came after however MTV made everyone believe that fame comes first.

And musicians in most cases are ignored for long periods of time before they break through.

Five Finger Death Punch is a band that sells a decent amount of recorded music right now and they have been doing those numbers since 2007. However the musicians in the band didn’t just come from out of nowhere. If you look at the individual band members careers before FFDP, you will see musicians who have been ignored. Their previous bands did not set the world on fire, however it was all stepping-stones. And the musicians that have that mindset end up reaching the top. The ones that want only the fame and the money end up in the rear view mirror.

Europe is a band that I have followed since “The Final Countdown” days. I purchased their back catalogue once that album broke through. I purchased John Norum’s solo output and I hold the “Face The Truth” album (with Glenn Hughes doing vocals on quite a few songs) in high regard. I followed Joey Tempest solo albums and with pleasure I took in their comeback from 2004 and onwards.

The first version of the band came together in 1979 and was named Force. Via a song writing contest they got a recording deal in 1982 with a Swedish label. By 1985, they had some songs in a movie that gave me some more traction. Joey Tempest wrote a song for aid in Ethiopia however at this stage the band was still largely ignored. That all changed in 1986 with “The Final Countdown” album. The journey was seven years long. Compare that to some of the ideals today of musicians. They believe that by putting up a video or a song on YouTube, we should all pay attention.

Michael Poulsen from Volbeat was in a death metal band called Dominus from 1991 to 2000. Then he formed Volbeat in 2001. Their first album came out in 2005. For the next seven years they kept on building on their following and it wasn’t until Metallica took them out as an opening band that American success came knocking. By 2012, Volbeat was a big business.

Do the math on the years in between. Poulsen became an overnight success however that success was 21 years in the making and a large part of those years dealt with being ignored.

That is what being a musician is.

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

Leaving The Past Behind

I got an email a few weeks ago from the singer of the previous band I had. Let’s just say his name is “Two Face”.

It was sent to the drummer who is called “In The Band Because I Couldn’t Find Anyone Better”, the bassist “Con Artist” and myself “The Idiot”. The title of the email was GOOD TIMES, and Mr “Two Face” lead singer wanted to remind us all of something great we had at one point in time in the past.

Chasing the lies you live by
Won’t be something new to you
– Sick Of It by Evans Blue

And that was the first issue I had with the email. There was nothing great in that band, once the “Con Artist” bassist joined. He joined the band once the album was recorded. Eight of the ten songs that made the album were all written by me and registered by me with a Performing Rights Association going way back.

And guess what “Con Artist” did?

Yep, he put in a counter registration for the songs on the album for a 25% share saying that he wrote the words and lyrics. The “In The Band Because I Couldn’t Find Anyone Better” drummer also did the same. That was when I spoke to “Two Face” and asked him to tell the truth regarding the song writing and he told me one thing and did another thing behind my back. So think about that for a second.

You might win one battle
But know this, I’ll win the fucking war!
– The Way Of The Fist by Five Finger Death Punch

Four of the songs were written and registered by me with the performing rights association in 2005. The band started in mid 2008, with myself, “Two Face” on vocals, “In The Band Because I Couldn’t Find Anyone Better” on drums and “Original Bassist” joined on bass afterwards.

2005 vs 2008.

“Con Artist” joined in 2010.

2005 vs 2010.

Get your money for nothin’
– Money For Nothin by Dire Straits

You can see why I am bitter. The dishonesty by “Con Artist” and “In The Band Because I Couldn’t Find Anyone Better” just amazed me. Up until then I have never been around people with deceit levels cranked up to a 100%.  I am sure that others have gone through life dealing with some miserable person trying to hold em down. I had three.

Down they come, the swarm of locusts. Skies above converge to choke us
Feast of souls consume the harvest. Young and old, suffer unto the locust
– Locusts by Machine Head

It took a few years, however I finally opened my eyes and realized how much better life is without them. I realized that some people are who they are.

I’ve been the king, I’ve been the clown
Still broken wings can’t hold me down
I’m free again
– Goodbye To Romance by Ozzy Osbourne (with lyrics written by Bob Daisley)

The email further stated that “Two Face” remembers all of us fondly and that he hopes that we get to meet at some point. “Two Face” goes on further to state that we should all forget the bad times and remember those special jam sessions we had.

And that is where I took further issues because to me there are no special jam sessions from when “Con Artist” joined the band on bass. The special jam sessions happened when “Original Bassist” was in the band.

You can’t take my honor, you can’t take my soul
You can’t take the fact you’ll never have control
– Bulletproof by Five Finger Death Punch

The truth is that period of my life was a bitter and angry period. Instead of pushing myself out of my comfort zone and joining established bands, I instead stayed within my comfort zone and surrounded myself with below average players which in turn led to a decline in intensity on my guitar playing.

Another area which led to a lot of arguments was my iron grip on song writing. For every twenty songs that I would write, I would get a partially completed song from “Two Face”, some riffs from “Original Bassist” or an email with words meant to be lyrics from “In The Band Because I Couldn’t Find Anyone Better”.

Notice how no songs were even worked on with “Con Artist”. But hey, this guy feels entitled to put in a claim for 25%.

You’re the monkey on my back and it’s time for you to go.
– Hammered by Motley Crue

So by default, most of the time together was spent on the songs that I wrote. I would always go back and work on the ideas provided by the other band members, but man, they took up so much time and in the end, turned out uninspired.

This then lead to arguments over writer’s royalties (that come to me as the songwriter) and the mechanical royalties (that go to the band as performers on the sound recording). The other guys in the band thought that I was ripping them off and it just deteriorated even more. The sad part is that by then, I had already invested a lot of dollars into the band, with the promise that “Con Artist” and “Two Face” would pay me back.

The only pay back I got was deceit and lies.

Mistakes I would never ever repeat again.

And when my response to “Two Face” wasn’t to his liking, he replied back that I should leave the past behind and stop focusing on it. However he was the one that sent the email in the first place, focusing on the past. Go figure.

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

Some Songs Starting With ‘Y’

YOUNGBLOOD Audrey Horne

There is something unique when members from death/extreme metal bands end up crafting retro sounding rock albums.

Sweden’s “The Night Flight Orchestra” featuring members of Soilwork and Arch Enemy are one such band. Actually TNFO’s new album due out in June was a pure blind pre-order for me. I know some artists lament the internet and wish for the good old days of record label gatekeepers and monopolies. However if those days still existed, bands like The Night Flight Orchestra and Audrey Horne would never have been released in Australia. To me there is no doubt that the internet is there to spread music on a global scale and it is a shame that the record labels have been dragged kicking and screaming into this global world.

Going back to the story, the original band that came from extreme metal bands is Norway’s “Audrey Horne”. The band was formed in 2002. “Youngblood” is their fourth album released in 2013. That intro groove especially when the drums come in remind me of early Black Sabbath. Hell, even the vocal tone reminds me of Ozzy.

They say he’s been around forever
I’m pretty sure he taught the devil to steal
And somewhere down the line… they cut a deal

The solo section reminds me of the Thin Lizzy harmonies merged with Scorpions Euro Metal influence and that retro sounding lead in the outro is brilliant. And no one even knows it. The YouTube clip is approaching close to 14,000 views.

YEAR TO THE DAY Van Halen

The biggest change to Eddie Van Halen’s unique style of crafting rock songs was Sammy Hagar. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the Van Hager period of pop metal/rock songs. It was a total departure from the more chaotic rock abandonment style of the Roth era. Of course I know that there are songs from the Roth era that follow a pop formula like “Jump” and both eras bring back a lot of great memories.

Then the split with Hagar happened. Roth was back in, talking/singing over “Can’t Get This Stuff No More” and “Me Wise Magic” from the 1996 “Best Off – Volume 1” compilation. You can hear musically where EVH was progressing. It was more a throwback to the beautiful chaos of the pre-Hagar era, however with a touch of progressiveness.

Then the split with Roth happened again and Gary Cherone was chosen to write lyrics over the bed of chaotic musical progressions created by EVH.

The period of the “Van Halen III” album is bitterly debated amongst people and always compared to the previous versions of the band. To me it was just another era for the band and good enough to stand on its own feet. However it is not as glorious as the other eras and the 36,880 views this song has on YouTube is proof of that.

I woke up to yet another day
Grown to expect, expect more of the same

Conformity. It’s the new suicide these days. The song peaks at the right time and then it quiets down when it needs to. The 12/8 blues groove just adds to the pull and release tension of the music. Underpinning it all is EVH. He owns this song. From fingerpicked verses, to fleet fingered solos to holding down a blues groove, the song has it all.

YOU’RE NOT ALONE Revolution Saints

The supergroup project featuring Deen Castronovo on vocals/drums, Jack Blades on bass and Doug Aldrich on guitars playing songs written by Alessandro Del Vecchio. This is a good song for a ballad. There are two versions on the album, I actually enjoy the version that features Arnel Pineda on vocals.

It’s a ballad for the ones that haven’t heard it. Check it out.

YOU’VE GOT TO STAND FOR SOMETHING John Cougar Mellencamp

From the mega selling “Scarecrow” album released in 1985.

You’ve got to stand for something
Or you’re gonna fall for anything

Although I don’t agree with John Cougar Mellencamp’s views on blaming search engines for piracy/copyright infringement, I at least admire him for taking a stand on a situation, much like the lyrics above exemplify.

In the end copyright infringement/piracy is an availability problem not a search engine problem. See how all of the large-scale piracy is now related to locked up TV content. Streaming and Spotify’s free tier is a piracy killer.

The “Scarecrow” album had a lot of other “MTV” songs, however “You’ve Got The Stand For Something” was my favourite.

I saw Miss America
In a girly magazine
I bet you saw that too

Love it. It’s a brilliant lyric as it is so tongue in cheek and funny that it doesn’t come across as cheesy at all. Everyone would get it. The whole song is littered with moments in time.

YELLOW TEETH Protest The Hero

“Yellow Teeth” is from the fan funded “Volition” album and man the songs lyrics are littered with truths about people’s judgement of others.

A man is nothing more than what others claim he is,

Judgement by others…

I can’t be the only one losing sleep
over things I should or shouldn’t have done.

The lies spread by others.

YYZ Rush

If you want to hear the major influence on Dream Theater’s sound on the first two albums “When Dream And Day Unite” and “ Images And Words” then look no further than ‘YYZ’ from Rush. For an instrumental it is packed with what I call today Dream Theaterism’s.

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Music, My Stories, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Booms And Busts

I don’t mind dabbling in the share market. And like everything in life, the share market is one of boom and busts. If you look at the share market booms and busts you can casually make a comparison to the recording industry booms and busts.

There are billions/trillions of dollars in the share economy while the recording industry is a billion dollar industry and when you add the rest of the industry that forms the music industry you see that music is worth a lot of money.

In share market investing, the usual story is that if someone has a great idea and makes some dough from it, then others will eventually find out about the idea and they will start to put money in, to get money out. So use this analogy for the music business.

When one-act becomes a success, the recording labels would go about and sign hundreds/thousands of acts that sound the same. The labels would also get their current roster of acts to produce music that is similar sounding to the “HOT” act. Three periods in metal music stick out.

From 1980 to 1983 it was the Judas Priest era for clone like acts. From 1983 to 1986 it was the Motley Crue era for clone like acts. From 1986 to 1989 it was the Bon Jovi, Whitesnake and Guns N Roses era for clone like acts.

What about streaming. From only a few streaming players in 2008  we know have a crowded market place. The early success of Spotify and Pandora leads to a monster called envy. This monster than leads others to want to get in on whatever else is in vogue. The latest to join the line of streaming services is the star-studded Tidal. Remember the last star-studded product launch in Neil Young’s PONO. Tidal is no different and the same fate awaits it because both services are about protecting the incomes of the better off artists and they have nothing to do about what the music fan wants.

If Tidal and Pono want people to pay for music again then their business model of putting music behind a pay wall is not the answer. As soon as you do that, P2P will increase again. Newspapers tried to put their content behind pay walls and guess what happened. People just went to websites who offered the content for free.

How do you think the Huffington Post became a large game player?

But as sure as night follows day, all booms come to an end, with a thud. The recording industry is not immune to it. In the share market investors turn to safe companies which pay a secured dividend. In music we turn to the acts that we know off. So those few companies/acts benefit a lot from our patronage.

Then, interest in the share market is renewed through mergers and acquisitions. Remember all of the mergers and acquisitions that have happened to the plethora of record labels over the past 20 odd years. The majors are down to just three.

Throughout it all, musicians still create and get on with their lives. You have the mega rich artist trying to stifle a genuine music business saviour in Spotify while in the meantime said artist is making way more money than any artist has in the history of music. You have wannabes complaining about digital payments. You have a public that 90% of the time cares about the stars and the artists who break through.

And then you have the middle of the road artists who are stuck in a world where the whole history of music is available to the fan and the music fan doesn’t have enough time to gravitate to them.

Sort of like Shadows Fall, Chimaira or God Forbid. All three bands came into my head space when an early 2000 issue of Guitar World was delivered to my mailbox that spoke about a New American Movement in Heavy Metal. So of course I had to check them out.

And all three bands are good. Each band has a definitive song. Being caught up in a cultural movement helped them out a little bit more than other bands however with all cultural movements only a select few end up rising to the top while the rest either fade away, dissolve or continue as middle of the road acts.

So you have bands like Lamb Of God and Slipknot moving into the Institution league. Killswitch Engage and All That Remains are two bands that come to mind immediately that are middle of the road acts.

Then you have Shadows Fall, Chimaira and God Forbid who decided to call it a day and move on. As guitarist Jon Donais (who is in Anthrax at this point in time) said in a recent Loudwire interview;

“Brian (Shadow’s Fall vocalist) was the first one to say, ‘I can’t go on tour anymore because it doesn’t make sense for me. I got kids and a wife’”. He needed to do something more stable because Shadows was always a crap shoot. We never knew what we’d come back [from a tour] with. We never became a headlining band. We were always a support act. I got so lucky. Shadows Fall was coming to an end and this opportunity with Anthrax came up. There just weren’t that many opportunities out there for Shadows Fall. It kind of fizzled out. People stopped caring, so we were all like, ‘Alright, what’s the point?’ We got along great and we loved writing music, but financially it was impossible to go on the road and come back with enough money, especially for the guys who have families. Two of the guys have kids. When you’re single you can go, “Alright, it’s just me on the line,” but when you’ve got a family, you gotta provide for them which means coming back with enough money so they can survive. The fun and games stop once you become a real adult.”

The fate that befell Shadows Fall, God Forbid or Chimaira is no different to the fate of many bands throughout the history of music. It is a cycle that keeps on repeating regardless the propaganda of the recording industry and the RIAA. It is a cycle of boom and busts.

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

Time Machine

Since I did my left knee I have been in bit of a slump. At first I thought it was some minor bruising and tissue swelling. I was getting better and within 2 weeks of the injury I was walking properly. There was still some tenderness however it didn’t concern me. During that period I also had an MRI.

Then I got the results.

Basically I have a complete tear of the ACL and a partial tear of the MCL.

Now I was very surprised at the mess in my left knee that the MRI showed. I was feeling better and even contemplating playing sport again.

The Doctor was very surprised to see me walking unassisted and pain-free. According to the Doc, I should have been in a bit of a bother.

The weird thing is that after the Doctor told me the results guess what started to happen.

I started to limp.

Isn’t it amazing how the mind processes information. Prior to knowing how unstable my left knee really is, I was walking fine and contemplating returning to the soccer field on the weekend.

After I was told the MRI results on Wednesday my mind became fearful that if I tried to walk properly I was doing more damage to my left knee and I started to limp.

So here I am bumming my way through the days. I always turn to music in days like these. At the moment I am trying to find some new band that I haven’t heard off that just blows me away.

I listened to “Issa” (Finnish female rock goddess) new album “Crossfire”. It’s actually her third album and it did nothing for me.

I listened to “We Are Harlots” self titled debut. For those that don’t know they are the hard rock super group formed by ex Asking Alexandria vocalist Danny Worsnop and ex Sebastian Bach guitarist Jeff George. I enjoyed three songs in “Someday”, “Never Turn Back” and “Love For The Night”. The sad thing is that those songs are not the ones out there promoting the album.

Then I listened to an album from a Swedish band called “Dirty Passion”. It did nothing for me. So I moved on.

I took in new albums from “The Poodles”, “Kid Rock” “Scorpions” and “Gun” in a marathon four-hour session.

Does anyone have four hours to spend to listen to music these days? It’s not like the days of old when you kick back with the record and the album sleeve and just take it all in.

The Poodles “Devil In The Details” album was a surprise and an enjoyable listen, however nothing memorable stood out.

Kid Rock had one great song in the title track “First Kiss” and that was it.

The concept behind Scorpions “Return To Forever” is brilliant. Going back to outtakes from their most successful commercial period (1980 to 1990) and re-freshening those outtakes into songs is a great way to pay homage to the past.

Musically it is a good album.

The origins behind the songs that I have read in interviews and on Wikipedia is brilliant story telling. That is what we love as fans of entertainment, the story, the narrative. The “Return To Forever” album is an enjoyable listen however it doesn’t have that X-Factor song that makes me want to go back. The closest they got to it is the song “We Built This House”.

For Gun, I think I had certain expectations for their “Frantic” album and at this point in time it didn’t live up to those expectations, which is okay as their first three albums “Taking On The World”, “Gallus” and “Swagger” are classics to me.

So I went back listening to some W.A.S.P from their Eighties days. I took in the self titled debut, “The Last Command”, “Inside The Electric Circus” and “The Headless Children”. I’m a huge fan of Blackie Lawless and that eighties period was also a very creative one for him.

Then I wrote some tunes in my studio. “Revolution In Black” is a cross between the AC/DC blues groove and the era of “You Cant Stop Rock N Roll” from Twisted Sister. Lyrically the song deals with growing up listening to metal music and wearing my black metal t shirts. In the end that is what we are, a REVOLUTION IN BLACK.

For “The World We Live In” my wife has been listening to a lot of the pop songs out on the charts and I noticed that they all follow the basic Em, C, G, D chord progression. Of course some songs are in  different keys, however the progression is the same. For example, if the key was in B minor, then the progression would be Bm, G, D, A. If the song was in A minor, the progression would be Am, F, C, G.

Look at the list below and it just goes to show that music is all about the influence and re-using what came before;

One Republic – If I Lose Myself – 41,323,341 views on YouTube.
One Republic – Apologise – 100,377,441 views on YouTube.
Maroon 5 – Daylight – 17,539,902 views on YouTube.
The Script – Hall of Fame – 174,512,128 views on YouTube.
Imagine Dragons – It’s Time – 121,828,132 views on YouTube.
Bastille – Pompeii – 205,301,496 views on YouTube.
Passanger – Let Her Go – 588,321,169 views on YouTube.
Avicii – Wake Me Up – 597,531,921 views on YouTube for the official video. 221,445,894 views for the lyric video.
Keith Urban – You’ll Think Of Me – 1,581,515 views of the official video. 9,834,735 views of a fan made lyric video.
John Legend – All Of Me – 450,748,280 views on YouTube.
Bon Jovi – It’s My Life – 202,924,429 views on YouTube.
The Cranberries – Zombie – 219,952,452 views on YouTube.
Smashing Pumpkins – Disarm – 6,586,181 views on YouTube.

Looking at the above list, think of the dollars those songs have generated for artists and labels alike just by using the same chord progression. Hell, look at the YouTube view count for each song. Any artist would kill to have stats like that.

In a nutshell that is what “The World We Live In” is all about, a common chord progression with an uncommon vocal melody.

Then I went and listened to the new Halestorm album, “Into The Wild Life” (I have it ordered via Amazon and I came across a pirated copy, so I couldn’t wait to sink my ears into it). Lzzy Hale is a powerful leader and what a great voice. Emotional and yet aggressive. The band rocks hard when they need too and they can tone it back or pop it up when they need to.

Then I cranked the “Crooked Doors” album from Royal Thunder and I was BLOWN away. I listened to the opening track “Time Machine” over and over again. The albums tone, feel and emotion just resonated with me and the mood I was in.

The whole melodic guitar section from about 4.35 with the vocals layered over it is brilliant.

I know nothing about them.

It never used to be this way. We would get the scorched earth marketing push, the press interviews and the magazine articles written by the PR company.

Like Halestorm, Royal Thunder is fronted by a powerful female voice however both bands operate in two vastly different places when it comes to the commercial tree. Mlny Parsonz is a force to be reckoned with. When she sings, you can hear the years of vocal damage in her voice. And that is the uniqueness which makes her vocal style special.

Add to that the brilliant guitar playing from her husband Josh Weaver and you have a formidable songwriting team.

And suddenly I wish I was in the time machine, going back to that moment in time and not making some of the mistakes I made.

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