The Most un-excellent things

Everyone knows that one of the more successful niches of the recorded music sales industry in the last 5 years is the teen jaugernaut genre. From High School Musical to Demi Lovato to yes of course the two reigning champs Ms. Hanna Montana and the brothers Jonas. It is undeniable that the sheer magnitude of marketing power of the Disney Channel, Disney radio and internet have been able to reap unbelievable sales of discs and files.

Having a 12 year old daughter, I find myself in the whirlwind of this media blitz and frenzy in almost every 24 hour news cycle. this has led to a few very interesting conversations with the young fan that she is. Does she really like the songs? What is is about it she likes? Does she think they are writing the songs? Does she care?

Now I am totally into the guilty pleasure of great mindless pop music every so often. Simply great pop is an art form unto itself and was probably most recently perfected by the likes of the Back Street Boys for one. But something about the shiny, perfect sounds coming out of the TV, Radio and Computer in the new teen scene is starting to wear thin for me. I appreciate that is has more melody than a lot of Top 40 songs which are mostly beats these days. But it just isn't a real musical meal. As XTC wrote in "Funk Pop A Roll" - "Every thing you eat is a waste, but swallowing is easy when it has no taste". And that was 26 years AGO!

For one, the productions are uniformly the same. Kind of pop/rock with guitars and drums and enough vocal pitch fixing to be modern. Lyrically, what can a 16 year old credibly sing about other than school, and crushes and TV and parents. So you get all of that over and over. When they try to reach to far and do a "change the world" type song it just comes off as a television commercial written for them which they cannot really put forth with any real conviction.

I guess that's the point. This kids are primarily actors. That is what they are doing ACTING like they think a cool pop star should. It has no depth, no reality. Just like the millions of hours of sitcom shtick they do on TV. This is what our children are taking in by the hours. And most of them WANT to be musicians when they grow up.

Shouldn't we expose them to more hours of real musical art? The next Joan Baez, Jonatha Brooke and Amy Mann aren't going to come out of that cookie cutter, plastic pretend music world. Play your children music that matters. They will respond and hopefully keep the dream of the power of great music to change society alive.

One to One

There is no better way to make a fan for life than to actually shake a persons hand and thank them for listening to and supporting your music. Despite the internet and the ease to send files around the world to try to get people to get on your band wagon, the reality remains. It is about the hard core fan.

I had coffee with the manager of a very successful group on Warner Bros. Actually it is a Joint Venture with Warners in which the band and management have a ton of say on how they will approach their career. This is a good thing.

For 2 years this manager tried to get some support for an old fashioned take it to the streets type bus tour BEFORE the concert tour, just to meet fans and play them the new record BEFORE it went on sale. Finally, when the local promoters and the label could not see the benefit in spending 150k on this the manager underwrote the first half of this and finally got the label to kick in the other half. Here is what happened.

As they rolled into each city which they will play on their upcoming fall tour, they would take a party bus into a mall parking lot and having invited the most hardcore fans (sometimes only 6 in any city) they would hang with them on the bus, play them the record, do photos with them and of course sell tshirts, front of line concert tix and re-release copies of the record.

The result has been a phenomenal groundswell of good will towards the band and those hardcore fans have by word of mouth, begun to help sell out the tour. Again this is without any other promotion from the label, no radio single yet, no local concert promotion yet.

What a great concept! Hey actually go cultivate the hard core fans and let them help you win over new converts. This model obviously doesn't work yet for unknown independent bands who are just starting, but if you get one rung up the ladder, you could start doing this on a cycle around your region and beyond.

The money spent will naturally be limited to how far you go and thus it is completely scalable.

I am excited to see where this goes in the future. Yes the internet is an amazing tool to promote and share music, but when a true fan shakes the hand of their favorite artist, it simply is not even comparable.

is the music in the medium

I was thinking about all the music I have devoured and loved over the course of the first 46 years on this planet. I got to remembering the old record stores, (like the one I worked at in Daytona Beach when I was 18) the CD big box stores and the advent of Napster. I really see a correlation (a complete generalization mind you) between the medium the music was delivered on and the status of the music industry and very essence of the music creation machine itself.

Go with me if you will. In the late sixties and seventies we had vinyl. Black and rich with large canvases for musical works and graphics. The large space and dark rich texture of that medium seem to be infused into the creations of the times. Warm and dark recordings made in small places with history and tradition and devotion to the muse. Abbey Road, Hitsville, the Record Plant and others. Dark and deep and full of sounds and wonder. Think about the music we love from that time regardless of genre and maybe you can see what I mean.

Then came 8tracks and cassettes. The first ever truly portable music. For the first time we would only listen to something until WE were done doing something ELSE at the same time - driving somewhere. For the first time we did not allow the records to dictate our time spent with them, but we controlled them and set them to a backseat. I believe this changed how music was conceived and created.

When the hard and shiny plastic of CDs became the medium we got hard shiny plastic music. Calculated by some bean counter in a high rise to extract the most dollars out of consumers. Hard and cold and digital. So often, with no soul and no connection just like the new heads of labels who were no longer really music fans and record men, but accountants and lawyers.

Then came the Internet age and now we have bits. Digital pieces scattered all over the world which represents the exact state of the industry. Scattered all over the place, stylistically, economically and while completely accessible, no longer a collective social experience. Millions of songs made by millions of people, mostly available online. Some are great expressions of art like back in the glory days of vinyl and some are calculated and cold like the CD era. It's up to you to discover them and make your own mind up.

I don't long for the past at all. In fact I have found and enjoyed more new music in the last 8 years than in the previous 20. Not as formative or classic, but then again I am not a teenager or even under 30. It's o.k. We are were we are and in a lot of ways it is back to the very earliest days of recorded music, with little known about the future of distribution or monetary compensation. It's all about the music again I hope.

I am excited about bands going out and changing the world and making some new friends along the way. Thats why we are helping get bands to fans! see you on the road.