So you want to be a Rock star?

[VAXman(Admin)]

Some food for thought...

This link was forwarded to me by my longtime VMS acquaintance friend from .CH (Switzerland).

http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic.html

[VERNIXX]

That Albini article has been out for a while now. But it is still relevant, maybe even more so that when it was published many years back.

As many of you know, I was once in a major label hard rock band, The Toadies. I jumped ship well before the label started pumping money into the band, but I watched a lot of what Albini described happen to people I know personally. Endless touring, poor support in some markets, total saturation in others. No tour support beyond shitty per-diems and the same deli trays in every town. Then I watched them get no support and dropped uncerimoniously. No warning...just a flip of the coin meant they no longer had support. SAME EXACT THING happened to my friends in The Buck Pets. They were all over MTV in 1989-1990. Then dropped in a label reshuffle. With NOTHING to show for it but bitterness and hard experience.
It's a vicious business. I still more than occasionally hear The Toadies and Buck Pets music on modern rock radio (not that I listen to stale boring FM rock, moreover it gets pumped into gyms, mall stores, and sometimes places I visit in my job). Are they getting royalty checks for airplay of their music?!?!? According to them, HELL NO. They signed away their publishing rights for cold hard cash. Not a lot of cash, mind you. Just something to sate a hungry musician. But now, they could still be making some money residuals off the songs they wrote, performed, and took all over the World today. This happens to a LOT of performers, evn happened to The Beatles and Eric Clapton at one time.

After The Toadies, I was in a fast rising electronic rock band called Parasite Lost. We were getting HUGE in Texas, and actually at one point got courted by Capital Records as well as Interscope. Expense-account lunch and drinks, the whole "we are your friends...we are on your side" schtick that I had heard before. We wanted full control of our catalogue and songs, exclusive BMI rights to our royalties, even offered to record our album splitting the buget to do it our way. WE WERE LAUGHED AT. "No one does things their own way in this business, kids." Funny, because now a lot of these hip new bands like Built To Spill and The Decemberists ARE doing things their own way, because the industry has changed with the advent of file sharing and dropping sales. There are bands out today who do everything through e-commerce! Band who do everything their own way!!! And they get popular through the internet without a label even behind them pumping money into promotional campaigns.

Needless to say, my band never signed a deal, broke up in the interim, and I have not played on stage in the last 8 years with a band. The industry is only for hardened people ready to whore themselves for their "art". Way too much for me.

BUT, things are getting better in the industry...but it is a JOB. AND a BUSINESS! Lots of hard road work, endless promotion, and whore oneself is still the norm...

The Byrds had it right all those years ago when they made a Number One song making fun of this business.......

[teermin8r]

Toadies? I didn't know that! I love the Toadies! I think the future in music is bands selling their own stuff through the internet and cutting out the greedy record companies and the RIAA

[Sintetista]

Yea, it´s a tricky business.

I myself have been pooped by the record company.
While on tour in Chicago, I went to a record store and asked for the records of Alux, my former band. They asked me which one of the three I wanted? We only had licensed two albums to the Record Company. That´s where I found out the re-issued one of my records with inner notes in English. Of course they never payed any international royalties to us.

We sued them and of course the big fish ate the small fish. This is a common occurrence here in Mexico.

The following two albums (La Piel and Muros de Agua I) were co-produced by us and two companies that gave us a percentage of the albums pressed. We have no control over reissues, which in theory should give us the same percentage of records.

I produced a third Alux Album and had it remastered. My "partner" the percussion player proceeded to issue it without even telling me.

Finally the second Muros de Agua (free-prog available for listening here in the Moon). The same company that co-produced the first album, said they would produce it. We recorded it in our private studios and they never came through, they just kept saying they would do it the next month. This situation lasted for 2 years. We, Muros de Agua, finally decided to produce the records ourselves. Divided the cost of pressing and mastering between us three and finally payed for the production of the records. This is better cause we have the control, but unfortunately the distribution is only through us, supposedly.

We are now currently composing the music for the third Muros de Agua record. One guy offered to lend us his studio for the recording of the music, we only have to pay the engineering hourly fee. And of course the rest of the costs involving printing, design and so forth.

My point is that if you are waiting for miracles, you´ll never produce any artwork. Use the tools you have at hand no matter how deficient they are.

Remember that all those shiztrecks of the record companies, did not change while the business was changing the conditions, they kept their A&R crap going.

Also, I´ll tell you. I don´t work with people with the Rock Star attitude. I prefer the teamwork outlook.

Keep on progging even if it is swiming against the current.

]Raul Cesar

[Rick and Roll]

Raul, Terry, thanks - absolutely wonderful reads.