Tag Archives: Bon Jovi

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

Musical Cloning

I was reading a Motley Fool newsletter about investments and in that newsletter they talk about a process called “Capital Cloning”.

So the 3 Steps to “Capital Cloning” as mentioned in the newsletter are as follows;
1. EXTRACT a business model with a track record of profitability from an established company in a mature market.
2. IDENTIFY an immature, fertile market in which that business model can be successfully planted/recreated.
3. Watch your “Capital Clone” grow and HARVEST a second heaping of profits from a single business strategy along the way

So does the above “Cloning” template sound familiar when it comes to music. Let’s put into a musical context;

1. EXTRACT a group of songs with a track record of profitability.
2. RECREATE those group of songs.
3. WATCH your “Musical Clones” grow and HARVEST another round of profits from them.

The funny thing is that if you look at the largest bands today, that is the exact thing they have done.

Let’s start with Metallica.

“Fight Fire With Fire” -> “Battery” -> “Blackened”
See a trend there. Each song kicks off slowly and builds into a thrashathon. If I had to pick a standout, it would be “Battery”.

“Ride The Lightning” -> “Master Of Puppets” -> “And Justice For All”
The title track of each album always came in at number 2.

“For Whom The Bells Toll” -> “The Thing That Should Not Be” -> “Eye Of The Beholder”
The more mainstream groove song came in at number 3, so it would be no surprise when songs like these were heard on the “Black” album.

“Fade To Black” -> “Welcome Home” -> “One”
The power ballads that always ended with a WOW statement. On the “Black” album, “The Unforgiven” also came in at number 4, while “Until It Sleeps” and “The Unforgiven II” had that honor on “Load” and “Reload”.

“Trapped Under Ice” -> “The Shortest Straw”
Two little misunderstood songs in Metallica folklore.

“Escape” -> “Leper Messiah” -> “Harvester of Sorrow”
This is the groove of the “Black” album right here on these three songs.

“Creeping Death” -> “Disposable Heroes” -> “The Frayed Ends of Sanity”
A win-win and then a miss.

“The Call Of Ktulu” -> “Orion” ->”To Live Is to Die”
If one instrumental worked, why not re-create it and do another two more.

“Damage, Inc.” -> Dyers Eve”
The “Ride The Lightning” album didn’t really have a supersonic speed metal song. However “Master of Puppets” did in “Damage Inc” and it worked so well, the band re-created it on the follow-up album with “Dyers Eve”.

All of these musical clones set Metallica up for the self-titled black album that is still talked about today.

There are fans that wanted “Ride The Lightning” Part 4, while other fans wanted “Kill Em All” Part 2. But the biggest talking point was James vocals. It looks like a lot of the fans really enjoyed his unique snappy bark style as heard on the first four albums and were really upset because he actually sang on the “Black” album.

Of course when the “Black” album came out, what do you think Metallica tried to do next. Re-create the “Black” album with “Load” and “Reload”. Then they threw a curveball at us with “St Anger” and surprise, surprise, they went and cloned their back catalogue for “Death Magnetic”.

Let’s look at a few Bon Jovi clones.

“Let It Rock” -> “Lay Your Hands On Me” -> I Believe
They all have intro build ups. One is by keyboards, one is by drums and the other is by guitar.

“Livin On A Prayer” -> “Born To Be My Baby” –> “Keep The Faith” -> “It’s My Life” -> “Bounce” -> “Have A Nice Day” –> “We Weren’t Born To Follow”
Now here is some serious cloning going on. We need the President/Prime Minister to pass some new laws that bans it.

“Wanted Dead Or Alive” –> “Stick To Your Guns” -> “Blaze Of Glory”
Two number one hits there and one miss.

But then I look at Motley Crue and I cannot hear any musical cloning happening there. Blame it on the drugs, whatever. Each album is unique in its own way and according to who you talk too, full of filler as well.

Even when they had their big album in “Dr Feelgood”, they didn’t even try to replicate it. Hell, the Motley Crue album that came next with John Corabi on vocals is one hell of an album. Then they went all electronic industrial rock with “Generation Swine” and returned back to hard rock on “New Tattoo” and went all modern rock with “Saints Of Los Angele”

In the end, all progress in music is based on derivatives. In other words, musical cloning.

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My Stories, Stupidity

Money, Money, Money

I have been listening to Machine Head’s “Bloodstone and Diamond” and “Unto The Locusts” albums a fair bit lately along with Serj Tankian’s solo albums “Elect The Dead” and “Harakiri”.

To me, Robb Flynn and Serj Tankian are great writers that take a stance on an issue and put their viewpoints out there. The music business is lacking heroes like these. A lot of musicians just seem to be sitting on the fence. Jon Bon Jovi is singing about moving mountains while Serj Tankian is singing about drum fish and blackbirds committing hara-kiri.

Serj Tankian’s “Elect The Dead” album came out in 2007 before the GFC. It has the same themes on that album that “The Circle” and “Wrecking Ball” from Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen that came after the GFC.

What a great inequality divide we live in. The mega wealthy artists need to hear and read about financial corruption after the fact to write about it. It just goes to show how much they are wrapped up in their own bubble to see how the real battler is really doing. While the wealthy got bailed out by the government and went on speaking tours, the working class lost their houses and their livelihoods.

Even though Serj Tankian is known and recognisable  his lifestyle is nowhere near that of the blockbuster duo from Jersey. But his reach and impact might not be far off.

Artists have the power to spread the truth in world where misinformation rules, however a lot of them choose to not do so. They conform so that they don’t upset the powerful ones just in case they are excluded from the social circle.

“Money isn’t everything” is a common catch-cry but the truth is we live in a money economy.

It’s the number one aspiration. My sons third class play from last year was about what they would like to be when they grow up. Some wanted to be famous at a sport they liked and some just wanted to play video games. But, the majority of the kids, especially the girls, all wanted to be rich. It looks like that’s the new norm now.

The belief is that if you’ve got money, you’ve won and no one can say a bad thing about you. The dirty little secret is that it actually costs money to save/make money. If you don’t have any money, how can you save money. The simple math is $0 in money equals $0 saved.

Now if you earn a wage and have $10 a week lying around, you  might put that into a savings account. By the end of the year you would have saved $520. Over the course of 20 years, you would have saved $10,400, Sounds great. However, I am pretty sure that something will come up that will need you to dip into these savings. Dental care for your children, costs around vehicles maintenance or some other urgent event. You could get sick, take extended leave without pay and then there goes that $10 a week saving plan.

Seriously if you work for a company with a lot of employees with different ethnicities, how many conversations do you overhear or are involved in when people just say the words “we can’t afford to do [something]”. And it confuses the fuck out of me when they say that they have created a budget, crunched the numbers and made a decision that something they want to do is not affordable.

So what’s the point of the budget?

Isn’t a budget put in place so that you can AFFORD to do something that you like?

To me it looks like we are all putting budgets in place to live within our means. That is why the rich get richer and the working class remain poor.

Isn’t that sad that we have come to this situation in life. Crunching numbers over our quality of life and then purchasing a lottery ticket when the jackpot is astronomical, hoping that the rays of luck will shine down on us.

I for one am terrible with managing money and saving money. I am sure I am not the only one in the world, but we all hide it and pretend that we are better off than what we really are.

While we see losing in sport as acceptable, we don’t have that same viewpoint when it comes to money. In the money game we see winning as the only acceptable outcome.

But money alone doesn’t give you a reach that art/music can provide and that is where I will leave you today, with some words from Robb Flynn, heard in the song “Darkness Within”.

Fill your heart with every note, Cherish it and cast afloat, ‘Cause god is in these clef and tone, Salvation is found alone, Haunted by its melody

Music it will set you free
Let it set you free

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

The War Between Money and Art

The music industry is a thriving industry. It always was and still is. History has shown that musicians have expressed themselves lyrically without interference in their vision. They have been creative and innovative. However, with the rise of the recording industry and the money pyramids that industry created, the musical vision was compromised. Greed became more important than the vision. Once our heroes attained riches, the songs post “most successful album” just didn’t connect or resonate anymore.

As kids growing up, we fall in love with music, the melodies, the riffs, the lyrics, the phrasing and that free rebellious feeling that it inspires in us. Music always captured a sense of time and place. I could hear a song that I haven’t heard in ages and immediately it places me back in a time and a place of my past.

Music is about the creative individual and how they express their creativity. Great creativity equals success and success equals profits. When money enters the game and people who contribute nothing musically start to live a very comfortable life from those profits, then all they care about is keeping those profits the same plus a little bit more. That is why pop music suffered in the Eighties while Metal and Rock took a foothold. Metal and hard rock was honest and real. However once it became a commercial viable product, commerce took over and metal/rock became stale, until Bon Jovi, Def Leppard and Guns N Roses blew open the paradigm again and suddenly every label was chasing similar style of bands or getting their current roster to emulate those two bands.

Impose any financial and marketing frameworks on creativity and you get compromised art.

Conformity.

A business that is 100% about profit.

And the very thing that brought money into the industry in the first place and made the industry so popular is sacrificed. What was free and rebellious becomes controlled and processed. In 2014, the songwriters from Sweden have this down pat, which is no surprise as Sweden did give the world IKEA, which sells generic and bland ready-to-assemble furniture, much like the pop industry right now, bland ready to listen music.

The songwriter of the two thousands is without doubt Max Martin, a Swede. Taylor Swifts pop career has been written by Max Martin. Britney Spears career has Max Martin all over it. Bon Jovi’s comeback hit “It’s My Life”, yep that had Max Martin as well on it. Pink’s “Please Don’t Leave Me” and Kelly Clarkson’s “Since U Been Gone” also had Max Martin all over it.

And where did Max Martin start his career. It was as a singer in a metal/rock band called “It’s Alive”. The band was a stepping stone to meeting other people and eventually he got into song writing and at the moment his team is known as an “assembly line song writing team”. Martin is that big in Sweden, that the Swedes will now be able to lick him via his own postage stamp.

It’s a thin line as artists want to be paid for their creations and record labels want to make money of art that they have funded. Add to that mix songwriters like Martin who also want to get paid along with the publishers. However all sides are forgetting the crucial unknown, the FANS.

The casual music fans will lap up the trashy, mass-marketed pop music and any other music that crosses over into the pop stratosphere. The niche fans will bank roll their heroes forever and a day. Think of Shinedown as an example. They crossed over with “The Sounds of Madness” album and had platinum parties for singles and album sales in excess of a million. The follow-up, while still popular moved half of its predecessor. What that means is that the original niche fans of the band still purchased the album, the merchandise and the concert tickets while the casual fans streamed it and purchased the concert tickets, as Shinedown did big business at the box office on the Amaryllis tour.

But the question in all of this is that labels are seeing a future where the artists are tied to corporate ‘brands’. With this kind of business mindset, would another Dream Theater, Pantera, Machine Head or Metallica even come to be.

How can an artist be free to express their musical vision if they are tied to a corporate brand whose only interest is profit and commerce.

George Orwell said that “Myths which are believed in tend to become true” and the recording industry via the RIAA and the Publishing firms are all about making myths into truths. However Orwell also said that “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act” and that is what the Internet has allowed. The internet has allowed people to tell the truth or to offer a differing viewpoint then the one that is pushed by the lobbyists and the copyright industries.

For artists it is all about the song. That is your ticket and your bargaining chip. The song is your entry into the business. A lot of songs equals a body of work (not an album). But you need to work it, and you need to connect.

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

The Art Of Copying, Tweaking and Creating

“Good artists copy, great artists steal.”

“Success is dangerous. One begins to copy oneself, and to copy oneself is more dangerous than to copy others. It leads to sterility.”

“To copy others is necessary, but to copy oneself is pathetic.”

One person said all of the above and that person was Pablo Picasso who is seen as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century and who is also known as a co-founder of the Cubist movement. His comments about success leading to copying oneself is spot on. Bon Jovi re-wrote “Slippery When Wet” and called it “New Jersey”. Jovi and Sambora re-wrote “Living On A Prayer” and called it “Born To Be My Baby”, “Keep The Faith”, “It’s My Life”, “Bounce”, “We Aren’t Born To Follow” and so on.

Stryper re-wrote the “To Hell With The Devil” album and called it “In God We Trust”.

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to”.

Film director Jim Jarmusch said the above and he is seen as one of the most ORIGINAL storytellers in the world of cinema.

Metallica took the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal to new heights.

All of the above sort of led me to Black Sabbath.

“Take a tune, sing high when they sing low, sing fast when they sing slow, and you’ve got a new tune.”

The above advice came from the experienced Woody Guthrie to a young Bob Dylan. And that is exactly what Black Sabbath did. They took the blues, distorted it even more, played it faster and sang it darker.

Now some might dispute this way of songwriting where an artist uses the structural template of older songs to create newer songs. And the funny thing is this, music progressed and developed through the ages because of this. The whole British blues rock invasion of the world happened because those artists copied, tweaked and reinvented blues classics. Prior to the recording industry, music mainly spread from performer to performer without any issue of copyright or licenses.

Music’s history is very much like any other form of creativity – influences and ideas are taken, reshaped and reinvented. All of that originality is simply reinterpretation.

But then came the Corporation and Copyright was remade so that others could get unearned income from someone else’s creations. In other words, enter the RECORD LABEL and the PUBLISHERS.

The lawmakers at the time were quite worried that extending copyright to sound recordings would stifle creativity and it could create monopolies, harm consumers, throttle innovation and competition. It is there to protect the profits of the record labels and the publishers, not the artists. Mitch Bainwol and Cary Sherman got paid in millions each year due to their involvement with the RIAA.

This is what Copyright has created. People getting paid so much more than the actual artists who created the works. Copyright law originally lasted for 14 years from production. In most parts of the world, Copyright is now life plus 70 years.

Jimi Hendrix has been dead for 44 hears and it looks like his music will not enter the public domain in my lifetime for others to build on and re-invent.

The rise of digital music, both pirated and legal, has led to a steep decline in revenues for artists yet there has been no decline in the amount of music being written and recorded. More people are making music now than in the pre-Napster era and that is all happening with piracy and copyright infringement being rampant.

Copyright needs a re-think and a re-write so that it benefits the artists again.

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

The B-Sides For Engaging With Fans

Remember how cool it was to discover new bands or songs from the B-sides of singles.

Like when I purchased the “Creeping Death” single and I first heard “Am I Evil” from Diamond Head and “Blitzkrieg” from Blitzkrieg. Or picking up the Whitesnake singles to “Here I Go Again” (and hearing “Guilty Of Love), “Give Me All Your Love” (and hearing “Fool For Your Loving and Don’t Break My Heart Again”), “Is This Love” (and hearing “Bad Boys” and “Standing in the Shadow”) and “Still Of The Night” (and hearing “You’re Gonna Break My Heart Again”).

Europe also promoted their back catalog with the release of “The Final Countdown” single. On the B-side there was the excellent “On Broken Wings”. Def Leppard also went into the archives when they put non album tracks “Ride Into The Sun” and “I Wanna Be Your Hero” as the b-sides to “Hysteria” and “Pour Some Sugar On Me” respectively.

Throughout music history, the b-side has often thrown up an extra, unexpected treat. And with technology advancing, the vinyl b-side is a thing of the past, and when CD singles started coming out, the B-side was relegated to a four song EP while the MP3 introduced the era of cherry-picking and the b-side was dead forever.

One of my favourite rock acts from Australia “Candy Harlots” had real good single releases. I still have the original 7 inch single of the Leeno Dee penned “Danger” that was with Ron Barrett (RIP), Mark Easton, Leeno Dee, Tony Cardinal and Marc DeHagar. On the B-side was the Ron Barrett penned “Wrap 2 Arms”.

Then a few years later came the “Danger” CD Single. However this time the B-side was another Ron Barrett penned song called “Hot Love Child”.

The intention of the single was for artists to double up with releasing two great songs at a time.

“The Beatles” single releases came to be known as the “Double A-sides”. In the Seventies, the second cut was even seen to overtake its a-side: “Beth” from Kiss comes to mind. It was their biggest hit and it was a b-side to “Detroit Rock City”. By the Eighties, the B-side started to become a method for releasing versions of songs that were not officially released. Some bands used demos of unreleased songs, while others used live recordings of released songs or demos of released songs. Other bands used the B-side as a way to record cover songs.

Bon Jovi took the “unreleased demos of songs plus liver versions of released songs” route initially with each single, while Metallica took the “demos of released songs plus cover songs route”. Both formats worked and fostered a connection with fans that ended up with both bands releasing  albums that celebrated their own paradigm.

Bon Jovi came out with the boxed set” 100,000,000 Fans Cant Be Wrong” which focused on the unreleased songs. They did it again with the 2014 re-issue of “New Jersey”.

Metallica brought out “Garage Inc” which further built of the culture that both bands created.

Motley Crue tried to get in on the act with their “Supersonic And Demonic Relics” release.

Just recently Machine Head did a similar concept with “Killers and Kings” and their cover of Ignite’s “Our Darkest Days”/Bleeding”. It was a creative release that had four different covers based on Tarot Cards. As a fan, I purchased all four of the covers and they are still wrapped in plastic.

Coheed and Cambria released all the demos plus a few unreleased songs as part of the Super Deluxe release for “The Afterman” releases.  We, (the fans) lapped it all up.

Those albums that I purchased, I played them over and over (especially the demo/unreleased songs). However, all that time and devotion from all the fans was not counted by any metric so the artist had no idea the engagement the fans had with those releases.

All that mattered was the flawed business model of the initial purchase.

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

Piracy, Lost Sales and Profits

I am sure that everyone has come across the “Minecraft” game in some form or way. My exposure to this game was when my kids asked me last year if they are allowed to download the free version of the game, which I agreed. After playing it for months and unable to save their progress, they kept on asking me to download the full version, which cost $6.99AU.

I said NO.

They kept on playing the game and as they did new features kept on getting added to the game that made it better. However they still couldn’t save their progress and they kept on asking me to allow them to download the full version.

Eventually after a stellar week of good behaviour I couldn’t say NO to them and they got the full version at the beginning of the year.

For the uninitiated, Minecraft is one of the biggest games in the world right now. It debuted on Mac and Windows PC in May 2009. By February, 2014, it had sold 15 million copies of the PC version. Also in the same month, Mojang (the makers of Minecraft) had sold more than 21 million copies of Minecraft: Pocket Edition on Android and iOS; more than 12 million copies of the Xbox 360 Edition; and more than 1.5 million copies of the PlayStation 3 Edition — making for a sum very close to the 50 million mark. They have over 100 million registered users.

Just imagine if a streaming service had those numbers. However, the argument would still be the same. Artists are not getting paid. We all know why this is so. Talk to your record label.

And they did all of this with piracy being rampant on the game. However, Minecraft’s developer Notch (Markus Persson) has been on record in saying that worrying about piracy was a waste of time, and it was much more important to focus on giving people a reason to buy.

“Piracy is not theft. If you steal a car, the original is lost. If you copy a game, there are simply more of them in the world. If you just make your game and keep adding to it, the people who copyright infringed would buy it the next week.”

Persson adds features to the game based on conversations he has on Twitter with random people and he fixes bugs based on the Minecraft community voting on the priorities. He is engaging with the users and a majority of those users are people who said that they copied the game initially, but then bought a copy for both themselves and a friend. Or they are people who didn’t ever buy a copy, but had friends who learned about it through them who then went on to buy copies.

There is a clear indicator here for any artist.

Make sure that everyone has access to your music.

I remember a time when I went to Utopia Records and I purchased four CD’s. They were “Subhuman Race” from Skid Row, “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” from Slash’s Snakepit, “Balance” from Van Halen and “Waiting For The Punchline” from Extreme. I hand over my cash and a sale goes onto their chart record.

The fact that “Subhuman Race” and “Waiting For The Punchline” gathered dust on the shelves, while I played the hell out of “Balance” and “It’s Five O’Clock Somewhere” didn’t even come into the equation. All of those bands got a “SALE” or a “COUNT” from me. The fact that two albums connected with me more than the other didn’t even come into the equation. Probably the reason why SLASH is still such a force to be reckoned with in the music business, while Skid Row and Extreme, not so much.

That is why a lot of the Eighties bands couldn’t understand or get a handle on their decline in popularity. Everything under the sun got blamed, however the real reason was ignored.

WHAT DOES A SALE OF A PIECE OF PLASTIC/VINYL REALLY MEAN?

Everyone saw a sale as a fan number, a unit to add up, however the fact that the real fans listened to the music non stop and due to playing it to death they had to re-purchase the album.

In my music collection, anyone will see that for bands like Motley Crue, Dokken, Megadeth, Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Twisted Sister, Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, Stryper, Ratt and many more, that I would have an LP, plus a CD, plus for a select few, remastered releases and remastered releases with bonus tracks. That means that I have re-purchased the bands whole catalogue over 4 times. And I am sure I am not alone in that.

In other words, a sale of an album never reflected what we (the fans of music) did with the albums after we purchased them. The second-hand music market thrived for a reason as music consumers got rid of those albums that gathered dust. However, was this stat shown.

But what about all the tons of money, lawsuits, lobbying, education campaigns, advertising, threats, news reports and the like from the recording industry, all telling people who unauthorized downloading was unquestionably morally wrong and that each download is a lost sale.

The developers of Minecraft (who struck even bigger when they got acquired by Microsoft in 2014) showed that you can compete with free and that you can get people to commit if you focus on the art. Making money was always a byproduct and in the end they made a bunch of it.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

The Record Label Deal

I have been debating with people the record label route that artists take. Lets get one thing out-of-the-way pretty fast, the chances of an artist actually getting a record deal are extremely low. Then once they actually get a record deal, the chances of an artist actually making money from the deal is extremely low.

You see, in the record label good old days, when the CD ruled and big advances were the norm, the percentage of bands that actually succeeded in the music business was already low. So even back then in the heyday of the CD, if the main aim was to purely chase a record deal as a means of succeeding then the artists were already doomed for failure.

Let’s put it into context.

By the time Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora got together to write the “Slippery When Wet” album, they were still living in their parents’ house and they had a half million debt to their record label.

Now how can that be?

They had two albums out that had sold over 500,000 copies each in the U.S alone and they had toured Europe, the US and Japan for both album cycles. Surely having sales over a million units in the U.S would have earned the band members some coin. But it didn’t because the record labels creatively ripped of the artists.

Lucky for Bon Jovi, “Slippery When Wet” went into the stratosphere. So imagine if “Slippery When Wet” didn’t blow up and cross over like it did. The band then would have been in further debt and most probably no longer in the recording business as a band. The record label at the time hoped that the album would at least move 500,000 units in the U.S again. That there is proof alone that the record labels are clueless. That there is proof alone that there is no such thing as a sure bet in music.

Let’s look at Twisted Sister.

By the time Dee Snider wrote the “Stay Hungry” album which was during the recording of the “You Can’t Stop Rock N Roll” in 1983, he was living in a one bedroom apartment with his wife and kid. By then he had been in the music business for over 10 years. He didn’t rely on sales of recorded music to provide him with a living. He earned his coin by delivering the goods on stage.

Twisted Sister was a consistent crowd puller on the live circuit. You would think that would be enough to get them signed, however it didn’t. All the U.S labels rejected them, until an independent label in the U.K called “Secret” signed them. To simplify the story, this eventually led to Atlantic’s European division signing them for the “You Can’t Stop Rock N Roll” album which in turn led to the U.S arm of Atlantic picking them up, once the imported versions of the “You Can’t Stop Rock N Roll” LP started selling in the U.S.

“Stay Hungry” went global. That was 1984. Three years later and two more albums, the band was finished. Some creative legal maneuvering and accounting got Snider out of his Atlantic contract and into a contact that would prove to be a career death sentence with “Neglektra”.

And if you want to hear about record label mistreatment look no further than Dee Snider.

Metallica went the independent route initially because no label wanted to sign them. Same with Motley Crue.

Artists are faced with so many challenges in the music business.

I have been in bands, where we had to pay to play at venues who used their legendary name to con us into paying. To be honest, we didn’t need much conning as we all blindly believed that we were the ones destined for success. We saw it all as a small sacrifice in order to be “discovered”. I remember having the band meeting where we agreed to go ahead with the pay-to-play gig because that mythical record label rep could be there.

But pay to play doesn’t stop just there.

Even when an artist gets a record deal, their opening support slot on an established bands tour is paid for.

Their song on the radio station is paid for.

Their appearance and interview in a magazine is paid for.

Their album review in a magazine or a website is paid for. Don’t believe me. Tell me that last bad review that you have read. We all know that “Lulu” was pure garbage and it got good reviews.

Is that the world you want to be in as an artist?

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Copyright, Music, My Stories, Piracy, Stupidity, Treating Fans Like Shit

Everyone Is Trying To Twist The Narrative To Their Own Advantage.

So Desmond Child is telling the world that Jon Bon Jovi, Richie Sambora and himself had to split a total of $110 in 2012 for the 6.5 million streams of Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ on a Prayer” on Pandora during a three-month span in 2012. Pandora’s published rate is about .0013 cents per stream. So doing the math, that means that “Livin On A Prayer” actually earned $8,450 for that three-month spell on Pandora. If that is true, that means that the songwriters are getting about 1.3% of the monies paid to the record labels.

Daniel Ek claims that Spotify will pay $6 million to Taylor Swift from worldwide streams. Swift’s label, claims that is a lie and that they received less than $500,000 for the streams. However what the label is forgetting to say is that the amount is for US streams only.

And Spotify argues that it is competing with free/piracy, while the artists side argue about Spotify not paying enough. They are two different arguments that have no correlation with each other whatsoever. When are people going to realise that Spotify doesn’t sell music, it provides access to it. And consumers like it, otherwise Spotify wouldn’t be starting to overtake iTunes in some markets.

Rob Zombie once upon a time hated copyright infringement and now he reckons it makes him more creative as he doesn’t have to write songs that fit a sales metric.

Lars Ulrich is now reserved and diplomatic in his responses to music piracy or copyright infringement. Maybe it is because he knows that if it wasn’t for music piracy, Metallica wouldn’t be playing sold out shows in China or the Middle East and some South East Asian countries.

Scott Ian wanted the people who downloaded the “Worship Music” album to be disconnected from the internet, even though they could have been fans who ended up purchasing a concert ticket and an over-priced T-shirt.

Gene Simmons famously said that downloaders/fans should be sued and also have their houses taken from them. He said that rock is dead because of piracy. Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Stanley, Joe Perry and others agreed with him. Many others didn’t.

Internet Radio station Sirius XM is going to lose its case over pre-1972 sound recordings by the band The Turtles. The shameful part here is that the recording industry fought hard against making pre-1972 recordings fought hard against this. The hypocrisy here is huge. While the recording industry has fought so hard against making pre-1972 sound recordings subject to federal copyright laws, now they suddenly want aspects of federal copyright law (like public performance rights which did not exist under previous laws) to apply to those very same works. If Congress made it so those works were under federal copyright, there wouldn’t be an issue and all these works would be treated identically. But the truth is that the RIAA wants to keep these works out of federal copyright law to use them as a weapon against internet innovation.

Sony is re-evaluating it’s support for free streaming, however as a part owner of Spotify, I find it hard to believe that they will pull their catalogue from the free-tier.

Everyone is trying to twist the narrative to their own advantage.

Everybody has an angle.

And what about the musicians.

The hardest challenge facing musicians is getting people to listen to their new music and then getting them to stick around once the album because those big marketing awareness campaigns are goneski. It’s proven that they don’t work if the music is shit and the narrative is shit.

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

Junkyard

You could say wrong time, wrong place hurt Junkyard. Being from Australia, I am always into bands that can take the AC/DC style of rock n roll and spruce it up with their own twists without sounding too much of a copycat. Junkyard was such band that did it really well with their debut album released in 1989.

Guitarist Chris Gates came up with the name Junkyard. One name that was floated around was ‘Crack’ however they decided against that when the actual drug named crack became mainstream news.

They came from a hardcore punk scene into a scene that was splintering into a few different genres/groups.

One group was the bands that wanted to be like Motley Crue and Poison.

The other group was bands that wanted to be like Bon Jovi and Journey.

Then you had another group that didn’t mind if they merged and criss crossed between genres. Underrated bands like “Junkyard”, “Raging Slab”, “Dangerous Toys” and “Circus Of Power”.

This time the genre mash-up revolves around the following ingredients;

Bad Company/Free Classic Rock – CHECK

AC/DC Hard Rock – CHECK

Punk Rock – CHECK

Punk Rock Attitude – CHECK

Aerosmith Hard Rock – CHECK

ZZ Top Blues Boogie Rock – CHECK

Southern/Country Rock – CHECK

Guns N Roses Current Flavour Influence – CHECK

A lot of people believe that the Guns N Roses comparison is the reason why Geffen Records became interested. To put it into context, Guns N Roses didn’t really take over the world until 1988 and by then, Junkyard already had a record deal in place with Geffen records.

One other point to note is that the media always emphasised the fact that Junkyard got signed nine months after forming. However, the origins of the band and the respective musicians go back even further.

All of the band members were paying their dues way before Junkyard started. Guitarists Chris Gates and Brian Baker have been at it since 1980 beginning with punk bands “Minor Threat” and “The Big Boys”. Bass player Todd Muscat and drummer Patrick Mazingo had been at it since 1983 with the band “Decry”.

So they get together and form a new band in 1987. Labels started to become interested. Virgin came knocking first based on an 8 track demo the band did. However during a gig with Jane’s Addiction and Green River, they got approached by Geffen. The A&R rep at that time also knew about the members previous punk bands and a deal was made.

The excellent Tom Werman was on hand to produce the debut album that came out in 1989. The engineer was Duane Baron who was also no slouch in the producer chair either.

While others complain about Werman’s work ethic or input, the Junkyard team had nothing but praise. However, another candidate that was considered was Matt Wallace, who did the initial demos that Geffen financed before they gave the go ahead for the full album to be recorded. Matt Wallace was a more eclectic producer, being involved with artists like “The Replacements”, “John Hiatt” and “Faith No More”.

“Blooze”

It is the album opener and it kicks it off in style.

“Simple Man”

“Throwing pennies into the wishing well”

Chris Gates wrote it before the band even got together. I love that lyric line. So simple but effective.

“Shot In The Dark”

Not the Ozzy version. This one is more raucous and sleazy. I think the term they used in the Eighties was “Snotty”.

“Hollywood”

Looks like Zakk Wylde was listening to Junkyard as the intro and feel of the song could have inspired Ozzy’s “I Don’t Wanna Change The World”. Chris Gates tells that story that the idea for the riff came from a “Cheech & Chong” movie however after the song was finished he went back to see if he could find the scene where Tommy Chong played the riff and he couldn’t find it.

Credit insane French Canadian video director Jean Pellerin for the cool “Hollywood” clip that MTV picked up and put into rotation.

“Life Sentence”

Musically it reminds me of Motorhead’s “Ace Of Spades”.

“Texas”

“More uptempo driven re-write of “La Grange” from ZZ Top.

“Hands Off”

It continues with the Southern Rock/Gospel Rock style feel. But the lyrics. Man they take the cake for some of the most funniest shit ever committed to music.

The darker “Sixes, Sevens & Nines” came next and by 1992 the band was dropped from Geffen. That is how quickly fortunes changed in the era of record label control. The band knew what was up. The writing was on the wall. All of their contemporaries were getting dropped.

This is what drummer Patrick Muzingo said in an interview with SleazeRoxx.

“We decided it’s about time for us to face reality and get real jobs. Sure, we were bummed and still wanted to be a band but we also were extremely responsible adults and, from the get go, knew we weren’t gonna become millionaires doing this. We all got REAL jobs and went our separate ways. Some of us continued on with new bands for a few years, others got careers. There was no drama when we spilt up. No BS.”

If you are a musician and have dreams of making millions, then I will give you a second to digest the above comments because that is reality. Even the musicians today that complain that the past was better are misleading people. Junkyard had a major label contract and when it all ended they had to go get real jobs.

They wrote and recorded material for a third album with the working title “103,000 People Can’t Be Wrong” (which was a reference to the first week sales of album number 2) but the record never got made for various reasons.

The band wanted to produce it themselves so Geffen gave them an ultimatum.

Record it with a real producer, however they will give no marketing support or touring support.

Or they would release the band from their deal and allow the band to shop the record to other labels.

But no other label would come forth to support them as all of the labels had moved on to find the next Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden or Alice In Chains.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

A Clash Of Singles

Remember the days of purchasing an album based on a heavily marketed opening track and to find out that the album had 1 great song and 2 to 3 maybe 4 decent songs. And the rest were there as pure filler.

So the public, after being burnt so many times on purchases like these really took to the whole cherry picking idea when the mp3 became available. It wasn’t the artists fault, it was the fault of the greedy record labels.

And now with streaming, we have taken it up a notch.

Look at the streaming count of Journey.

“Don’t Stop Believin” is at 70.8 million streams on Spotify. Nothing else even comes close from Journey’s catalogue to that one song and how many albums have Journey released so far. A lot. But “Don’t Stop Believin” is the song.

It has also sold over six million digital copies and when it was released back in the early Eighties it didn’t even hit Number 1.

Bon Jovi have the usual suspects.

“Livin On A Prayer” is approaching 30 million streams and “It’s My Life” is at 21.3 million streams. “You Give Love A Bad Name” and “Wanted Dead Or Alive” are also up there. That is why “Slippery When Wet” was a strong album.

Name me the Journey album that had “Don’t Stop Believin” on it without Googling it.

I expect the fans of the band to know, however in 2014, I also guarantee you that a lot of people would not know that the album was called “Escape” and that the song goes back all the way to 1981. “Don’t Stop Believin” even though it wasn’t a number one hit, pushed the “Escape” album to Number 1. And it was a Blockbuster of a song. Just the way the record label liked it.

Journey was touring Australia a few years back and my work friend got tickets and asked me if I was going. I said that I am not interested in seeing Journey without Steve Perry. And their response was;

“What is it with me and my appreciation for guitarists”.

Here is a person, that purchased two Journey tickets and he didn’t know who Steve Perry was and I couldn’t believe that he actually thought that Steve Perry is the guitarist in the band. Your honour, I rest my case. But the truth of the matter is this, no one cares these days who wrote the song, who played on the song, who produced the song and so forth.

All they care about is THE SONG.

And music is a cultural beast. Nobody owes a musician a living, never mind the executives trying to keep enslaved musicians as cash cows. But if you create that song, expect a living.

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