Tag Archives: Sweden

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

Cervello – A Great Band That Is No More. Find Out What They Could Have Done Different.

I heard Cervello’s debut album today. Released in 2011. And it’s good. Really good.

So I did what everyone does, I went looking for more. And that’s where it all fell apart.

I typed “Cervello” into Google and landed on a progressive Italian band from the ‘70s. Wrong decade. Wrong band. Wrong everything.

Strike one.

Then I went digging. Facebook. Twitter. Scraps of information. Half a story. No clear signal.

Strike two.

By the time I figured out who they actually were, I’d already done more work than most listeners ever will.

And that’s the game now. If it’s hard to find you, you don’t exist.

Here’s the brutal truth: Cervello didn’t fail because of the music. They failed because of everything around the music.

No real website. No consistent presence. No strategy. No signal that anyone was steering the ship.

Just a band shouting into the void and hoping someone shouted back.

No one did. Look at the engagement. Posts with 3 likes. 6 likes. No comments. That’s not bad luck. That’s feedback.

The market was talking. They just weren’t listening.

And then there’s the big one. They made an album. Ten songs. Full release. The traditional play.

But here’s the problem, by 2011, the world had already changed.

This was a singles economy. Attention comes in fragments. Discovery comes in moments. Fans are built track by track, not album by album.

Gotye built a career off one song. One moment. One entry point. Cervello dropped everything at once… to no one.

And look at the competition they were up against. Machine Head. Dream Theater. Five Finger Death Punch. Trivium. In Flames

These bands weren’t just releasing music. They were occupying space. Constantly.

Cervello weren’t even on the map.

Then in 2013, it was over. A Facebook post. A quiet goodbye.

“Internal problems.”

That’s how it ends now. Not with a bang, but with a post no one sees.

Here’s the part that stings. They had connections.

Max Martin. John 5.

That should have been leverage. Attention. A story to tell. But even that went nowhere.

So what went wrong?

No discoverability. No consistency. No strategy. No patience. And maybe the biggest one:

No understanding that music isn’t a product anymore. It’s a service.

You don’t release and disappear. You show up. Again and again. You build something that compounds.

Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: The modern music game doesn’t reward the best song.

It rewards the artist who stays in the game long enough for the best song to be heard.

Cervello didn’t lose because they weren’t good enough. They lost because they disappeared.

And in this era… disappearing is the only unforgivable mistake.

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

Quality Equals Success and Those Doomsday Scenarios From Misguided Artist

Remember a time when people used to fear Doomsday. Back then Doomsday was the end of the world through some act of nature or nuclear warfare. These days Doomsday has gone all up market.

Doomsday now has a three piece suit and it is a trader on Wall Street. Each week, there is a new poll that states, “Doomsday; 98% risk of 2014 stock market crash”. “Doomsday; Critical Warning as 2013 shocker looms”. This is how far we are gone as a race. Our whole doomsday scenarios now revolve around the loss of money. Our priorities revolve around wealth and the accumulation of it.

I remember back in June 2011, Chris Clancy the vocalist of Mutiny Within, posted on his Facebook page (which was then removed) about the labels not making any money from music sales, so they take from the band’s income and after four years of working almost every day, he had only earned $100 in all of that time. There was also a rant about illegal downloads and how the band was dropped from Roadrunner because they sold less than 10,000 legal sales in the US and that their album had been illegally downloaded more than 60,000 times. It is that same argument you get from ignorant musicians, that their music is stolen because the label didn’t make any money of it.

So what does Doomsday and Chris Clancy from Mutiny Within have in common. Clancy’s priorities revolve around wealth and the accumulation of it. So when he got signed by Roadrunner, he must have thought he made it. The cold hard reality is, if he wanted to be paid millions, he should have gotten into banking. Even then, not all the people that get into banking get to make millions. That is life. Some win, some lose, others just do enough to get by. Making money is not the be all and end all.

Quality = Success

I listened to both albums that Mutiny Within did, the one under the Roadrunner umbrella, and the second one, under their own umbrella. In my view, Heartist and Mutiny Within sound very similar. So why does one band have more traction than the other.

THE BUZZ

Heartist took as much time as they could to build up an online buzz for themselves before they played any shows. So Heartist end up playing their first show and Roadrunner was there along with a few other labels. Mutiny Within didn’t build up an online buzz. They did it the old way, by building up a local scene buzz, which then got the label interested. Heartist went cyber world-wide with their buzz. They did it the new way, connecting with fans and letting the fans spread the word. That is why Heartist are touring everywhere and Mutiny Within are not. That is why the Heartist EP has sold a lot of copies, even while it is still downloaded illegally. Mutiny Within when they got signed only had a buzz in their local market.

DO IT YOURSELF

Heartist did it themselves. They kept on writing and creating, on their own time schedules and own budgets. The first Mutiny Within record was a Roadrunner financed record. Heartist was all DIY.

LETTING THE MUSIC TAKE SHAPE (without thinking it will sell)

All artists and songwriters come from a variety of music backgrounds. If you write and allow those backgrounds to come to the fore, each song will end up being different and unique. Don’t stick to one song formula, just because it could generate a hit. Remember the real hits, the songs that last forever are the outliers, the rule breakers, the game changers.

Stop thinking about the RECORDING INDUSTRY and start thinking about the music

Here is a DOOMSDAY scenario for you: The record industry started to collapse when it lawyered up and went to war against technology, beginning with Napster.

So why are artists still playing to the rules set by the recording industry.

In Sweden, Spotify is the king and the queen. Digital sales (downloads and streaming) accounts for 80 percent of music revenue in the territory and remember Sweden is the original home of The Pirate Bay.

Remember quality equals success.

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

Angeline

I like hard rock. It is the eighties child in me that I cannot escape. So I come across a band called Angeline. It is the Life: Volume 1 – EP. 4 songs to impress me. Impress me they did. So I dig a little deeper. There is an album called Disconnected that was released in 2011 and another album Confessions released in 2010.

So I want to know a bit about the band. They are from Sweden. Formed in 1987. Yep, you read that write. 26 years ago.

Initially the band was influenced by Bon Jovi, Europe, Iron Maiden and Queensryche. All bands that I like, hence the reason why the music from the band connected with me.

When the music scene changed, they reverted to a cover band. You need to do what you need to do. It’s not all about the glamour and the fame. There are highs and lows.

Promising line-up changes started to turn sour. You don’t get these kind of stories in the mainstream media. The band is still battling for recognition, 10 years after they formed. The sound also evolved to incorporate more blues. You see it takes time to find your true voice. It takes life and experiences to find that unique light of creation.

Death then came to a founding member. With inspiration lost, they reverted back to the cover band. Most bands break up. Most artists would have thrown in the towel by now. These guys are in it for the long haul. Music is their life. It is their companion. It is the air they breathe.

Then in 2004, friends of the dearly loved founding member, Sigge, who died due to heart complications made a short film about him called Sigge Stardust. This film started to get some traction at film festivals. This was the trigger that got the band to re-unite again.

You see, it was something totally different that started to bring some light to the band. It was a short movie. It was the bi-annual Sigge festival. It was the scholarship offered at the festival. It is not all about writing a song and making millions of dollars. Music is much more than that. Music is life. As Robb Flynn screams in Darkness Within,

Music My Saviour. Save Me.

The opening track Life has that AC/DC vibe in the verse that hooks me. Coming from Australia, AC/DC are gods here.

Time isn’t on our side. And Life, always seem to bring us down

How true is that statement? Time is never on our side. We are always saying, we have no time or if we had time. Life is not meant to be easy. If we could buy more time we would. It goes so quickly and then you realise you don’t have much time left.

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