Tag Archives: Music Business

A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

Some Thoughts On The Music Business

YouTube

YouTube allows you to go directly to your audience whenever they want and you get paid in the process. It might be small now, however it will grow with time. And surely that is better than having your video on MTV and getting squat.

Longevity

The truth is you get wiser as you get older. You learn from experience and life. Artists done need to tell us how great they are or how great the new album is. The fans are smart enough to decide what is great and what isn’t. In the end, you need to have stayed in the game long enough to win.

Music Is Not Scarce Anymore

The days of growing up at the record store and budgeting what album to buy are gone and have been for a long time. Today our favourite artists release new music and we check it out. If we like it we give it a few more spins and then move on. If we don’t like it, we move on straight away. If we really like it, we commit to it.

Back in the day, music was a commitment. After having laid down our cash on a record, we took it home, dropped the needle and spent months digesting it. But today, music is everywhere.

You Survive On Your Audience

You want to be in their consciousness 24/7 and the majority of albums today just don’t hang around long enough. Sure there are exceptions to the rule. Volbeat has been selling their new album since April 2013. Yep, that is almost 20 months ago. Avenged Sevenfold and Five Finger Death Punch are in the same league. Bands like Trivium and Dream Theater had albums that came, got lapped up by the core audience and then disappeared from the conversation. The audience wants to always talk about you, so give them a reason to talk about you.

Information Overload

People are overloaded with information so they’ve only got time for the best and they want more and more of it on a regular basis.

Start With Your friends

They actually know and care about you. If you’re good, they’ll tell their friends, and some of them will eventually be friends/trusted filters of others and people will hear about it that way.

Overnight Sensations

Overnight sensations are a decade plus in the making.

Timing

The timing was right for metal and rock acts to go multi-platinum in the Eighties. MTV was rising. The disenfranchised youths were looking for a voice, something to attach too. They found it in “We’re Not Gonna Take It”, “I Wanna Rock”, “Shout At The Devil” and so on.

Rock Bands Were Never Supposed To Last

The Beatles had about eight years before going solo. Led Zeppelin had about 12 years before calling it quits after the death of John Bonham. Kiss’s original line up had about 8 years before they ended. Motley Crue had 10 years before they fired Vince. Twisted Sister had about 8 years from when the core line up was formed. Rage Against The Machine had 9 years before they split. Soundgarden had about 12 years before calling it quits. That is about the average of a band keeping its original line up in tact before other life events impact the dynamics.

Promote The Why and Not the What

Evergrey went all “why” for the promotion of the “Hymns For The Broken” album. We know the story about how the band was almost over and how the return of two former members gave Englund a new belief to continue. And the fans resonated with this belief.

Protest The Hero sold the why. That is why they the fans pledged over $300,000 to them for “Volition”. We understand as fans why they needed to go down the fan funding route. We understood how the record labels had ripped them off. We believed in their story and wanted to be a part of it.

People will do the things that prove what they believe. We don’t don’t buy what our artists do, we buy why they do it.

Personality

The truth is long-term careers are based on being unique and staying true to who you are.

What seems to happen is that artists try to appeal to everybody and in doing so they rub off their rough edges which is the X factor that makes them unique.

We don’t want fake heroes to believe in. We want real heroes with real personalities.

That is why rock and metal took off in the early Eighties. They represented the working class and the youth that lived under iron fists. The metal and rock got all polished up and all of its uniqueness was planed off.

That is why grunge and alternative took off in the early Nineties. They trail blazed their own path by not sounding just like everybody else. While the metal and rock acts lost their edge and started to sound the same towards the end of the Eighties, the Seattle scene was not afraid to go their own way. They didn’t care if radio didn’t play them and they didn’t care if the media wouldn’t write about them. They forged their own path and made everyone follow them in the process.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

Success

Creators Don’t Have A Clear Definition Of Success

On one hand, Nirvana sold 7 million copies of “Nevermind” in the US. By December 1992, all the band members had to show was a house. The rest of the monies went on fees, lawyers, accountants, managers, record labels and miscellaneous expenses.

While on the other hand, Tommy Emmanuel has a career in the music business. He releases new music frequently, tours frequently, runs master classes, works as a session guitarist and songwriter. He doesn’t have the 7 million multi-platinum sales on the board however he has been in the music business since the mid Seventies.

What is your definition of success?

Define that first.

Creators Are Not Sure On What To Focus

There you are, in your room, writing and demoing away the killer song that will break you to the masses. Time goes by and suddenly you have created 5, then 10, then 15 songs. When do you say enough and start focusing on that one song and putting that out to market and seeing how it floats in the sea of twenty million unheard songs.

Then once the song is out what do you do. This is where you will need to focus on three things:

1. Are new people gravitating to your song
2. Put time frames in place and measure it and then compare the time frames.
3. Work and finish off the next song.

Creators Don’t Put Their Time Into Understanding Metrics

How is your song being used? How is it being listened too? Which musical platform is getting the most traction?

There are a few ways to do this. Talk to your fans. Create fan groups and give them ranks. Tell them to email you so that they can join one of those groups and talk about the songs released, the new songs in the pipework and so forth. You would be surprised how much goodwill and loyalty this fosters.

Creators Have No Budget

You need to invest in yourself to launch your music onto the world and after that is done, you still need investment in yourself to maintain it.

No Sign Of Life

In IT/Product launches, the actual creators of a new product get really scared right after their products launch because of the very typical “launch bump” and the eventual “pit of despair” when the press and social media stop caring about you.

So let’s take that analogy and apply it to music.

You create your song, record it, mix it, master it and then release it.

And nothing happens.

There is no sign of life that your song is even alive.

Maybe it wasn’t good enough for fans to like it enough that they couldn’t live without it.

Songs have a funny way of finding their way into people’s lives. The big difference today is that the get paid right now paradigm of the past is gone. That paradigm worked when the Record Labels had control of the distribution and acted as gatekeepers. Todays paradigm is different. A song released 5 to 10 years ago could connect with an audience right now. Are you still around to capitalise on this change of fortune. If you are in the music business for the right reasons you will be still around.

No Idea On How To Grow

I am sure that any business entity has come across the following three questions;

Why are we not growing?
Why is growth slowing?
Why are we shrinking?

In order to plan for growth businesses put someone in a position to build that plan, execute that plan and study the results so the next plan can be 20% better.

Apply that to music and ask any artist if they have a growth plan and how do they measure if they are growing.

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

“Why Do You Do What You Do?” And Guess What! “Rock Is Not Dead”

Gene Simmons from KISS declared that “Rock is finally dead” which stirred up a lot of debate in the music industry. Dee Snider was one of the first to post a rebuttal. Then came Dave Grohl’s rebuttal and recently it was a diplomatic Slash. Basically everything that he said I more or less agree with.

“The music business itself is not catering to rock ‘n’ roll at all. And if you’re aspiring to be a guitarist or a drummer or a singer in a rock band and trying to make your way up the ladder, the obstacles are much bigger than they were when I first started.”

The music business does cater to rock’n’roll however it is the recording business that doesn’t cater that much to it. The majority of the labels monies are focused on the pop stars singing Max Martin songs.

“The rock ‘n’ roll audience is rabid. It’s huge and just as alive and kicking as it ever was.”

That’s god damn right. The audience for rock music is there. Also with so much rock music coming out right now, that is the evidence right there to prove that rock is very much alive and kicking.

And that is a biggy.

With so much rock music being released every day, how is the rabid rock audience going to find it and hear it. Apply simple supply and demand economics to the equation. When the record labels controlled the distribution, the music that was released and when it was release, the actual supply to the fans was limited even though demand was high. Now with all of those barriers of entry torn down, the supply of new music is constant. And even though demand is still high, our time is limited.

Another big difference is that the way we consume music. It is still a very fragmented marketplace. Think about it for a second.

There are the usual CD sales. Amazon is still a big player in this regard along with the record labels and the unique limited deluxe editions they offer. In addition the brick and mortar stores still exist that cater in sales. Then there is the sales of MP3’s. Apple is the big player here, while Amazon offers AutoRip features on CD’s sold.

Then there is streaming. You have Spotify type streaming and the radio style streaming of Pandora. Terrestrial Radio is still there as well. So as an artist it is a confusing time. Hell, even the cashed up labels are confused as to what needs to be done as they still rely on the nuclear bomb style of marketing to push new acts or new music from established artists.

“If you’re really passionate about the kind of music you wanna do and you’re not looking at it from a dollars and cents point of view, but you just want to create new music and somehow go out there and play live and get it out there, that passion has to be honed in and it has to be real.”

So what is your view of success?

Do you have a short-term view on measuring success or a long-term view? Is success your main motivator for creating music because if it is, there are risks in a short-term view of measuring success and there are risks in having success as your main motivator?

It comes down to the “Golden Circle” idea from Simon Sinek. “How” is in the centre, surrounded by the “Why” which is then surrounded by a larger circle called the “What”.

Apply those principles to a musician. A musician knows that what they do is to write and perform music. A musician knows how to write and perform music but do they know WHY they do it. If a musician’s “WHY” is solely to make money then they need to be reminded that their “WHY” is a “RESULT” of “WHAT” they do.

As Sinek explained, people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. And if you don’t’ know why you do what you do, then how will you ever get someone to buy into it, and be loyal, or want to be a part of what it is that you do.

A perfect example of a simply WHY can be found in Zakk Wylde and Black Label Society. The WHY is to get dressed in your BLS Chapter colours, get together at the show and drink a lot of god damn beers. And guess what. People responded to that WHY in the thousands. They want to let their hair or goatees or beards down and down a few brewskis.

Protest The Hero focused on the WHY on their fan funding campaign for the “Volition” album. They told their fan base that their time with record labels has resulted in the labels telling the band that they have no fan base and that they are not a viable option for a label to support. The fans wanted to show that is not the case. And the best way was for the fans to be a part of what Protest The Hero wanted to do, which was to record an album, promote it and tour on the back of it. The fans didn’t care how they did it because we bought into the WHY they were doing it.

Claude Sanchez’s WHY for Coheed and Cambria is to tell the Amory Wars story and guess what, thousands upon thousands of people bought into it. Comics, Albums, Novels, T-Shirts, Deluxe Packages, Live Shows and Vinyl Re-Issues. You name it, we have supported it.

So ask yourself, why do you want to be  a musician?

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

Attention, Affluence, Dominance and The Artist Is Somewhere There In Between. BUT WHY.

It irks me when a person that you are having an email conversation with CC’s in other people who really don’t need to be CC’d. Instead of coming back to the person they are originally communicating with on the email they reply back and CC a few more extra people in. It is like they are broadcasting something to someone. Maybe they want to CC in a Manager to show how great they are and how terrible I am. Maybe they just want to make me look bad. I do it as well however when I do CC in an extra person I tell the person that I am responding to why I am CC in that extra person in. I also tell the person that I is CC’d in why they are included with a question that seeks their point of view.

Maybe we all just want some attention. It seems we are all fighting for attention these days.

Guess how many people know who Kim Dotcom is?

According to the MPAA and the RIAA, he is the greatest money launderer the world has ever seen. They convinced the police force to send their SWAT teams to break down his door and arrest him in the early hours. And the funny thing is that he is virtually unknown to ordinary people. Even his companies MegaUpload and Mega are not known brands to a large portion of people. So how can this great criminal mastermind remain undetected to most ordinary people. Hell, I was in Eastern Europe and all the people who I spoke to didn’t even know who Kim Dotcom was.

This goes to show how the entertainment industries like the MPAA and the RIAA have used affluence to hijack proper due process in the courts. And that affluence doesn’t stop there. It is used to hijack many debates especially when it comes to legislation around copyright. It is unfortunate that the music industry as a whole seems to be interested in protecting their business models, dominance and control.

The biggest issue today is attention.

The record labels still believe that their affluence and their publicity campaigns will get people’s attention. But that is old school thinking. Real attention grows over time.

And attention is just part of the equation.

How do we compensate the artist themselves or the songwriters that wrote the song once they have received our attention. The Copyrights of the artists are held by the labels. The labels purchase these copyrights for a value that is far less than what they are worth. And that is a big problem between artist and label. Because the record label is using the copyrights that they have amassed over 80 years of dominance as bargaining chips in licensing deals.

Spotify pays the labels a license so that Spotify can have their music on the service. In addition Spotify also pays the labels when songs are streamed. Plus Spotify pays any profits it makes to its part owners. In the case of the US market, Spotify is partly owned by the labels. And all of this was possible because the labels amassed an arsenal of songs from the artists they signed. Did the artists receive any compensation in these corporate deals?

The environment that musicians operate in is changing all the time, and with that comes a requirement to be flexible and forward-thinking in their approach. In addition the expectations of musical fans about how they access music and how they wish to be serviced has changed dramatically over the past fifteen years. And the ones that are investing in innovation are the technological companies. The Record Labels did nothing except litigate. The artists just waited to see what transpired instead of thinking and planning their own innovation.

If you want to grow and prosper as an artist you need to be thinking ahead all the time. Not only do you need to keep pace with your fans’ expectations, but you also need to position yourself to identify and make the most of the opportunities when they arise.

Focus on “WHY” you create music rather than simply focusing on ‘WHAT’ music you deliver. This is an important message. The why is the message that your fans would connect with and follow. It is your vision. Your belief.

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

I Want My M.P.3.

The last cinema movie I watched was “The Hobbit” back in December. I decided to give Captain America, and Spiderman a miss because the kids were little pests and I decided that even though I wanted to watch the movies, I wasn’t going to go without my kids.

Anyway, they have been good little boys, so I decided to have a movie weekend with them recently, while my wife stayed home with our two and a half-year old. So over the weekend, I had my son’s birthday party on Friday, had kids football on Saturday morning, watched “X-Men Days Of Future Past” on Saturday night with two of my boys, had more kids football on Sunday morning and then watched “Transformers – Age Of Extinction” on Sunday night with my boys again. Plus I took in the Brazil vs Chile game and the Colombia vs Uruguay game.

As is the norm with any Marvel movie these days, we hang around until the end credits scene appears and once that scene finished, there was a notice that said something like, 15,000 people contributed to the making of the movie. And I thought to myself, this is typical of the Movie Picture Association. Treating the people who legally watch a movie like criminals and hitting them with an anti-piracy statement.

It was like when I purchased a DVD at the start of the piracy epidemic and I was hit with the “You Wouldn’t Steal A Car” advertisement that could not be skipped. Yep, I am sure that the people who pirated the content kept those advertisements in their pirated release of the movie.

Everyone with a decent internet connection has dabbled in getting their music, TV or movie content via peer-to-peer downloading. Even the ones that work for the Copyright Corporations have illegally downloaded.

Because as successful as Spotify is in fighting piracy, or iTunes is at converting digital mp3 pirates into customers, people still get want their mp3’s for free courtesy of a favoured supplier. And it turns out that the pirate versions of the legal commercial offerings far surpass the simplicity and ease of use of what the Entertainment Industries offer up. That is because the pirate versions offer everything, in any format a user prefers and they do not geo block, so there is no way that a person will get the stupid “not available in your country” message.

Basically the amateur sharers of culture and knowledge are miles ahead of the Entertainment industry. The Pirate Bay is over ten years old. Name me one Record Label technological start-up that has reached a decade.

The kids of today just grab stuff from where it’s easiest. That is why YouTube got traction. While the record labels procrastinated about licensing Spotify, YouTube slipped under the radar. The only thing that YouTube is missing is the free mp3 version that fans of music still want.

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

The Classic Game Changer Albums

Is there any artist or band out there that can totally wow us like the first time that bands like Dream Theater, Motley Crue, Metallica, Guns N Roses, Pink Floyd, Rush, Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Van Halen, Twisted Sister, KISS, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Blizzard Of Ozz, Rainbow and so many others did.

Don’t get me wrong, I hear bands that are good all the time and most of those bands sound like the bands that I have mentioned however they still do not make me feel like when I first heard those classic bands mentioned above.

I know that people will argue the point, however they really need to put themselves back into that head space of that era.

Just think about it.

Put yourself back in 1983 and Metallica is on stage. You are watching this band play a hundred miles a hour and they are in your face. Then think back 10 years from that point and pick anything that resembles what Metallica does on that night in any shape or form.

The same for Van Halen. Imagine it is 1978 and you are there watching Eddie Van Halen on stage and he is ripping up the fretboard with hammer ons, legato runs and finger tapping. He isn’t doing it as part of an extended jam or a guitar solo moment, he is doing it as part of the songs riffs and leads. Then think back 10 years and find another guitarist that resembled what Eddie Van Halen is doing on that night.

Of course, people will argue that Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix were all doing the rounds in 1968. That’s a decent argument. Then I say go back another ten years from then to 1958 and then you will see what a massive change was happening during that twenty year period.

Hell, the sales of guitars jumped astronomically from the fifties to the eighties. That should be proof enough of the change that was happening during that time as music started to cross boundaries and become worldwide.

There is no doubt that music has played a vital role in our society. We listen to it, we play it, we create it and we use it for almost everything.

Regardless of where people’s loyalties lay when it comes to their favourite artist, the truth is this; there are only a handful of truly great hard rock albums from start to finish that will stand the test of time. Of course there there are albums with a handful or just one truly great rock songs that will stand the test of time.

Since Metallica is in the news a lot with their request by fans tour happening, the new song “The Lords Of Summer” doing the rounds, plus all the petitions in place to kick them off a festival, lets kick off with them.

There is no doubt that the “Black” album is their TRULY Classic moment. One album that encapsulated and re-defined and re-classified a genre. A game changer in every sense.

What about the albums that came before the Black album?

“…And Justice For All” had two defining songs in “One” and “Harvester Of Sorrow”. Other songs that on any given day could be up there or are up there are “Blackened” and “And Justice For All”. The album wasn’t a game changer in any way as it just built on the three albums that came before it.

“Master Of Puppets” is a pivotal album in Metallica’s career for two reasons. It was the first Metallica album that was a true Metallica album, written by the band and it was the last album to feature Cliff Burton before his tragic death.

The one two knock out punch of “Battery” and “Master Of Puppets” is undeniable. However the next two songs, although good are mere imitations of songs 3 and 4 from the “Ride The Lightning” album. “Disposable Heroes” picks it up, while “Leper Messiah” is a foreshadowing of the “Black” album style. “Orion” is a great instrumental to fans of instrumental music like me and “Damage, Inc.” is jarring and in your face, which people either dig or detest.

The first four Metallica albums could easily be packaged into one GAME CHANGER album.

1. Battery
2. Master Of Puppets
3. For Whom The Bells Toll
4. One
5. Disposable Heroes
6. Harvester Of Sorrow
7. Creeping Death
8. The Call Of Ktulu
9. Seek And Destroy

Same deal for Motley Crue. Their first four albums could easily be packaged into one GAME CHANGER album.

1. Live Wire
2. Shout At The Devil
3. Looks That Kill
4. Red Hot
5. Home Sweet Home
6. Wild Side
7. Girls, Girls, Girls
8. Too Young To Fall In Love
9. Too Fast For Love
10.On With The Show

Here are a few more game changer albums from the Eighties;

Bon Jovi – Slippery When Wet

It gave Jon Bon Jovi a career that he is still doing victory laps on almost 30 years later.

Guns N Roses – Appetite For Destruction

It gave Axl Rose a career that he is still doing victory laps on it. It also gave Slash and Duff a springboard to go solo.

Def Leppard – Hysteria

“Pyromania” got the ball rolling and “Hysteria” after laying dormant for a year went viral.

Motley Crue – Dr Feelgood

Sobriety leads to a lot of clarity and groove and a number 1 album.

Van Halen – 1984

The definitive statement of Californian Rock, launching David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen into every household of the planet

AC/DC – Back In Black

It launched the band world wide and solidified the growing reputation of a young producer called Mutt Lange.

Twisted Sister – Stay Hungry

It gave the band two cultural video clips and when they reformed in 2001, it was the launching pad for the next wave of SMF’s.

Ozzy Osbourne – Blizzard Of Ozz

It re-established Ozzy by giving his solo career a real boost and it gave the world the talents of Randy Rhoads and the lyrical writing talents of Bob Daisley.

Judas Priest – Screaming For Vengeance

It paved the way for metal to burn up the charts again in the U.S that no one saw coming.

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A to Z of Making It, Music, My Stories

Bands: Do You Want To Know What It Is Like?

This one gig forever lives in my memory.

After slugging it out in our regional area, we finally had a decent buzz to get a show in the City. Now this venue is renowned for its metal and rock nights so people of those genres always ventured to it. However, it’s location was a deadest nightmare. Without being able to stop in front of the venue due to it being a no stopping zone, our only option was to find a parking station which was a decent 10 minute walk. The venue was basically at the corner of two main streets in and out of the city.

So yippee we had a gig in the city. Great.

We drove two hours to get there. Double Great.

We parked at a parking station that charged us $52 dollars. Triple Great.

We walked for 10 minutes, carrying amps, guitars and drums. Quadruple Great.

We played the show. We got it filmed via the venue and paid an extra $150 for it. Multi-Great x Five.

I never had an image in my head that music was a way to meet chicks and travel the world. My image was one of writing and playing. However on this day, I really needed to reassess the whole playing live part in my life. As this wasn’t fun anymore. And the reason why it wasn’t fun is that the venues just didn’t respect music. Having a venue in the middle of the city with no loading dock for musicians shows that disrespect.

All the years of hard work doesn’t prepare you for the crap you need to deal with in relation to venues and other bands.

It doesn’t prepare you for the sense of elitism between genres. Our style was Progressive Metal. The other bands on the bill were Death Metal bands. Having a chorus that soared melodically was frowned upon because the singer could actually sing. The other bands just screamed and growled their way through.

The years of practicing and writing do not prepare you for the realities of the music business. To me the big one is the sense that bands just can’t get along. Because the odds of success are so rare no one wants to give an inch just in case that inch was their chance at making it. It got to the point where fans of one band were told to wait outside while the other bands played, just in case some magic record label rep was in the audience and saw people having a good time.

I started to see band members from other bands admonish their fans for enjoying our performance. I started to see hostility around start times and set times between bands. For example, the opening band started late but didn’t cut their set which meant the second band got squeezed.

We played one show in Melbourne where there was a management company and a record label A&R dude there. We had no idea that they would be there. Even if we did, I do not believe that it would have changed our performance. Musically we delivered a killer set. Vocally I could never tell, because on stage I couldn’t even hear the vocalist. The in-house monitors just didn’t cut it.

After the show, the Record Label A&R rep and the management team introduced themselves, we went and had dinner and they said that they are interested in the band but a few things need to change.

“The singer was off-key the whole night”, said the prospective manager.

They mentioned that right in front of the singer.

Then they mentioned that they had a singer from another band that would be a perfect fit for our style. Again they said this right in front of our current singer. It was their way of destabilising the band and getting their own guy in.

I said a flat-out NO.

I said that we will fork out the cash to get proper ear monitors for the current singer and work on that as the on stage monitors just don’t deliver when it comes to independent bands.

The drummer looked at me with dagger eyes. This was his chance to make it and I was getting in the way because I stood up for the singer. But the drummer didn’t do anything about his animosity towards me because I was the songwriter in the band. And this upset the drummer to the nth degree.

But this is a reality. There are always people there, ready to push their own agenda. In this case, the manager and the label wanted to push their vocalist into the band that I formed. The drummer and the bass player were happy for it to happen. But for me, it didn’t sit well.

So what happened after that?

Within four months I had left the band because the arguments of holding each other back got to the point of fisticuffs.

They then got a fill in guitarist and within six months they burned everything that I built up over the last two years down to the ground.

And that’s what its like to be in a band.

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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, Classic Songs to Be Discovered, Music, My Stories, Unsung Heroes

Emphatic

I was listening to the new album “Another Life”. Yeah I know it was released in 2013 and in today’s terms it is old. However once upon a time an album under 12 months was still classed as a new album.

Anyway, i am listening to it and i am not really getting into it. Then a riff that reminds me of the pre-chorus of the song called “Zero” by Smashing Pumpkins blows into my head space. The song in question is “Take Your Place” and I am hooked. It is track nine on the CD.

The only reason why I went this deep into the album was because the same experience happened to me on their previous album.

And finally the album is rocking.

“Forbidden You” comes after and the song “Pretty Handsome Awkward” from The Used comes to mind.

Then it gets even more aggressive with “Remember Me”. It’s got this Disturbed meets Black Label Society groove that is just the way I like it with a flourish of some shred. I had no idea it was the lead single when I listened to it. I found that out after I did some Googling on them.

It’s got a great line in it.

“When the stitches don’t hold and you start to bleed ‘Remember Me'”

It reminds me of the “Unto The Locust” theme from Machine Head, about how people come into your life and end up messing it up, before they leave and move on to another victim.

My ex-drummer was like that. In my mind I tried hard to help him but he kept on making the wrong choices and in the end he made his life difficult and everyone else that was around got dragged into his cesspool of trash.

And then the album ends.

The piece d resistance are the last three songs and I guarantee you that they will go unheard because if someone stumbles across Emphatic due to a playlist algorithm, they will be given the songs that a A&R person believes in. But the audience always has a different viewpoint. We make our own favourites.

We make our own soundtracks and our own memories. So after hearing the last three tracks, I decided to give the other eight tracks a re-listen. Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention. But I wanted to pay attention because of the story. You see, Emphatic has a story. And like the best TV shows out there, it is a good narrative.

Emphatic had a record deal with Universal which fell apart. They then recorded their album “Damage” with producer Howard Benson and they were set for a major push in mainstream rock with Atlantic Records behind them.

Then everything changed. Emphatic’s lead singer at the time,Patrick Wilson injured his larynx in a bar fight. No one is sure if someone hit him in the throat or tried to choke him. And timing is everything in music. In this case, it was the worst possible time, with the band starting promotion for their brand new album at the time.

Atlantic Records and Indegoot stuck around. They waited for Wilson to get better however he didn’t and Wilson officially quit the group and Atlantic then dropped them. Guitarist Justin McCain fell into a depression becoming the same person that Wilson became. Then came Toryn Green, formerly of Fuel via a Facebook reach out and eventually a new label in Epochal Artist Records came knocking.

This is how “Another Life” was born. They hooked up with Revolver Magazine (the standard Corporate Deal) to stream the album before it came out.

So with my renewed interest, I started to enjoy some of the other songs like “Time Is Running Out”, “Lights”, “Something’s Never Die”, “The Choice” and “Another Life”.

As I was doing more research I saw that Toryn Green is now out, due to the good old “creative differences” excuse.

And just recently, they signed to Pavement Entertainment and are set to release their new album in late 2014. It’s like the days of old, when bands released an album each year and musicians jumped from band to band.

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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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