Musical Advent Calendar - Recap Days 21 - 24
Written by: Hugh Platt
By the time you read this, it’ll be Christmas Day. Music Towers will have shut up shop for a while (at least until we’ve put the finishing touches to our 2008 Almanac), and will have settled down to watch the Dr Who Xmas Special with a big bottle of gin. Later on you will find us wandering the streets, drunkenly singing the four songs you can see below. We might be dressed as Santa, we might possibly just go naked - in either case, it won’t be pretty, but gosh darn it will be entertaining.
Have a very merry Christmas, from all of us here at Music Towers. We just hope that someone got us that White Zombie boxset we’ve been dropping hints about over the last month….
Day 21 - ‘Christmas Is Awesome’ - Rueben
Day 22 - ‘Merry Christmas Baby (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight) - The Ramones
Day 23 - ‘Happy Christmas (War is Over)’ - John Lennon
Day 24 - ‘Oh Come All Ye Faithful’ - Twisted Sister
Zavvi goes into administration
Written by: Hugh Platt
Well, as predicted, Zavvi, the UK’s largest high street music retailer, has gone into administration today. The death knell came when the collapse of Woolworths took distributors EUK down with it - without it, Zavvi found themselves unable to re-stock, and the current financial climate was just too severe for them to survive.
The downside is, of course, that now HMV are the only major player when it comes to high street music retail. Sure, there are still a smattering of independent stores (all of whom will be struggling) and supermarkets (just don’t expect to see anything other than the most MOR of the mainstream on their shelves), but as far as the high street goes, HMV is all we’ve got. Regardless of your views on the players in the retail game, this can only be further bad news for the music industry.
Well, I doubt that’s going to be any consolation to the 3500 Zavvi staff who found out they’re going to be made redundant on Christmas Eve. That’s got to make for a merry bloody Christmas.
Musical Advent Calendar - Recap Days 16 - 20
Written by: Hugh Platt
Have you done your Christmas shopping yet? We have. We’re so up on Christmas like you would not believe. We’ve taken to striding about our office dressed as Santa Claus. Local children are terrified when thye see us struttung up and down the high street like a gaggle of red-clad drunks. It’s amazing.
ANYWAY - here’s the last five days of our splendid musical advent calendar - we really love Joel Moss Levinson’s bitchin’ song we used yesterday.
Day 16 - ‘Last Christmas’ - Wham!
Day 17 - We Wish You A Merry Christmas’ - Weezer
Day 18 - ‘Fairytale of New York’ - The Pogues ft. Kirsty MacColl
Day 19 - ‘All I Want For Christmas Is You’ - My Chemical Romance
Day 20 - Christmas Kicks Hanukah’s Ass!’ - Joel Moss Levinson
Reasons Not to be Christmassy: The State of the UK Record Industry
Written by: David Harrison
Bah-chuffing-Humbug. I my mind, Christmas isn’t a time of merriment, it’s a time to reflect on how this year was a bit crappier than last year, and how next year already looks like it’s going to be bloody awful.
Christmas TV these days seems to kick off with a teenager saying
“I have been through so much to be here’
If I hear one more, I will have to start burning effigies of Simon Cowell in Trafalgar Square. This year I was unfortunate enough to watch about 8 episodes of the blimmin’ X-Factor. No longer content with being an X-Men spin off, they ditched all the original characters (The Beast, Angel, Marvel Girl, Cyclops) for a bunch of sniveling cretins.
It is an endless guilt trip of how they will commit suicide/murder a puppy/murder the rest of their family if they don’t get to put out a flaccid Christmas single before fading into annonimity again. Maybe with these reality TV shows they should just skip the singing and dancing and have a crying competition.
For the fifth year on the trot, an X-Factor contestant has done a smaltzy cover and bagged the Xmas number one. Simon Cowell has single handedly ruined Christmas. Again.
Christmas in musicland is also ruined by the annual realisation that the industry is smaller, more disparate, more desperate then ever before. As my tax return deadline comes into view, I notice the shrinking of clients budgets in glorious excel spreadsheet technicolour.
While Alexandra Burke cries ‘Halleujah’, I’m taking stock of 2008 and am finding it a miserable experience. Some of the major players are struggling to exist, with the infrastructure of the UK recording industry crumbling faster than Zimbabwe’s economy. It seems like we’re approaching the tipping point.
The UK’s largest independent distributor, Pinnacle, and previously largest-cheesy-pop-that-goes-in-Tesco’s distributor, EUK, are both in administration. Past giants in retail are now minnows, with Woolworths, the biggest retailer of music of the 90s, twitching in its death throes. This time last year we had Fopp and Virgin Megastores, but now there is just a struggling Zavvi and a loss-posting HMV. It’s got to the point where the music industry can’t sell enough records to support a single high street chain.
My local high street has more Sushi bars than stores where I can listen to or buy music. The last 8 years have trained a whole generation that music is something to be had for free. Electronics outfit, Maplin’s, sell a terrabyte hard drive for £70. Who needs Peer 2 Peer? Just pop round this afternoon and take ALL THE MUSIC THAT WAS EVER RECORDED on one hard drive.
The recent industry conferences in London all seemed to be called things like ‘We are all really feckked - does anyone have any ideas?’ or ‘Can we get someone a bit famous to charm an MP, maybe that will help?’. Nobody did have any ideas, but the MP was a bit charmed by it all, so maybe there is hope. Although the sea will rise before there is a music tax included in the license fee.
Oh, but the live scene is booming you say? In 2008, the live scene reached the apex of a ten year boom; from here on in it is down down down, so grab a decent bobsleigh. In the last 12 months the UK has been lucky to have a pretty strong pound, $2.1 to £1 this time last year, to just $1.4 to £1 now. This means that those dollars you pay Kings of Leon for their umpteenth miserable festival appearance might just double.
Most of the profits from the last few years has been shipped out of the UK in the form of giants Live Nation or AEG. And I can’t remember the last time a live events company put any money into developing acts, as instead they’re saving all those pennies for gut-busting deals with Madonna or Jay Z. As our money goes stateside by way of those colossal artist fees and share dividends, UK acts, and in turn those medium-sized shows, dry up. Big tickets get more expensive, and control in in fewer and fewer hands. Across the board, old hands get let go as younger, cheaper, and easier to shag command staff get hired.
With the country approaching two million unemployed, I think punters’ casual spending on a round of £4-a-pint beers might be replaced with a renewed vigour of smuggling in some booze. People will start skipping behemoths like Glastonbury, as it is rubbish and a bit samey anyway. We spent most of the festival at the campsite watching people trying to do handstands.
The long and the short of it is that during a time when more than ever before, more music is being created, listened to, carried, watched and moshed to, never has it been more impossible to make a living from it.
Which, unfortunately, was what I did up until up until now. Bah Humbug.
Musical Advent Calendar - Recap Days 11 - 15
Written by: Hugh Platt
OHMYGODTHERE’S
JUSTTENDAYSTOGO! No, we don’t know why Christmas makes us so exicted here at Music Towers. Maybe because we know we’ll be getting that White Zombie boxset we’ve had our eye on for the last few weeks. Or maybe because there’s a Doctor Who special on TV. Or maybe because of the vast amount of mince pies we’re going to eat. Or maybe it’s the mulled wine. Or the mistletoe! Or the fact we’re going to get dressed up like Santa and ruin someone’s office party. Or that we’re going to hire a snow machine and set it off in our garage.
Or maybe it’s because the best is still yet to come on our amazing Musical Advent Calendar? There are some real gems coming up in the last ten days. In any case, here’s the last five entires, which you may have missed if you’ve been out Christmas shopping or something.
Day 11 - ‘We Wish You A Merry Christmas (Rave Mix)’ - DJ Cool
Day 12 - ‘It’s Christmas And I Hate You’ - Paloma Faith & Josh Weller
Day 13 - ‘Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End)’ - The Darkness
Day 14 - ‘Jingle Bell Rock’ - Girls Aloud
Day 15 - ‘Someday at Christmas’ - Stevie Wonder
ALBUM: DeadMau5 - ‘At Play’
Written by: Shokrates The Finger
Dance music hasn’t always agreed with everyone at Music Towers. To this day, I still believe that whenever I go clubbing it fucks with my bodyclock.
I wake up the next day with a hangover as fierce as a pride of pissed-off lions, even if all I drank was Red Bull and over=priced bottled water. I get constipated for days. There is a residual throb that’s in my sinuses that that feels like someone’s going at my nostrils with an industrial milking machine, set to “udder buster” level.
But At Play by DeadMau5 makes me want to feel like I’ve gone through my personal clubland assault course. Listening to it makes me long for a mouth that doesn’t stop feeling dry even after 3 litres of water, for eyes that feel like we’re rubbing them with sandpaper every time we blink. It makes me want to stay up for four days straight, so stuffed full of cheap pills that we make a noise like a pack of tic-tacs when we walk down the street.
Listening to ‘Hey Baby’ is like having your best mate’s boyfriend whisper dirty talk in your ear when she’s in the same room as you. It borders on the pornographic, and no matter how much it gets your juices flowing, there’s something wrong about it. Whether it’s a case of “so-wrong-it’s-right”, or “plain downright wrong”, is something I can’t make up my mind on.
Watch DeadMAu5 perform live at the O2 Wireless Festival from this summer:
Then there’s the flat-pack instructo-techno of ‘This Is The Hook’. Oddly charming, it manages to keep the right side of toe-tappingly addictive without being overpowered by its vocal schtick - a disembodied Stephen Hawking-voice dissecting the various parts of a dance track.
The rest of the the record is chewy with house basslines and nightclub sleaze. Normally we’d find the juvenile lines of a track like ‘Afterhours’ (sample line: “Throw me down on the bar / should we do it in the car?” Urgh) too laughable for us to really mesh with DeadMau5‘ album, but it’s party season and common sense has deserted us. We just want something vivid and full of vigour to distract us from the prospect of having to spend a few days in the company of our closest relatives, and At Play does that and more. Pass the disco biscuits and get over here.
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More reasons to be Christmassy
Written by: Hugh Platt
Did you come to the big Music Towers ‘Oh Christmas!’ party last night? It was amazing. The police turned up. There was blood everywhere. People danced till they hurt, and everyone who could get sexy, got sexy. Jon Bon Jonas and Death & Glory stole the night with a sing-a-long ‘Love Hurricane’, and John Doran of The Quietus and our faves, Beef Warehouse, kept the tunes spinning till late, late doors. If you missed it, then you are an idiot.
But hey, the real reason I’m bothering you this evening is to let you know of the recession-busting sale going on at Xtra Mile Recordings. They’re knocking a shocking 20% - TWENTY BLOODY PERCENT - off some of their records till December 18. Included in this sweet little Xmas shopping shortcut are Million Dead, Lights Action, Reuben, Jonah Matranga and Frank Turner. That’s him in the picture up there. He’s got a new single out, ‘Reasons Not To Be An Idiot’ which those of you with magic radio boxes might’ve heard aready. We tupping love it here at Music Towers.
Watch the video for ‘Reasons Not To Be An Idiot’ by Frank Turner:
Frank Turner is also touring the fuck out of 2009 - he’s all over the place alternately with The Levellers, The Gaslight Anthem, and Anti-Flag. You ought to buy some ticket - BEAT THE RECESSION!
Musical Advent Calendar - Recap Days 6 - 10
Written by: Hugh Platt
The results of Days 6 through 10 of our Musical Advent Calendar, presented for those who might’ve missed a day.
Day 6 - ‘Christmas Duel’ - The Hives and Cyndi Lauper
Day 7 - ‘Dick in a Box’ - Saturday Night Live and Justin Timberlake
Day 8 - ‘Heavy Metal Jingle Bells’
Day 9 - ‘Christmas Tree’ - Lady GaGa
Day 10 - ‘No Presents For Christmas’ - King Diamond
Are you as excited as we are that it’s NEARLY CHRISTMAS!?!?!?!?!!!
LIVE: ATP: Nightmare Before Christmas
Written by: David Harrison
When All Tomorrow’s Parties started this Christmas Festival, everyone said they were mad: “It’s Christmas time, do people want to go festivaling, what with the financial pressure, the weather, the location? Who wants to go to Minehead at this time of year?”
Well, we do! ATP choose unique artists to curate their festivals, picking their choices for the festival line-up. This weekend is being curated by the Melvins and Mike Patton, and so features a heavy dose of bands on Ipecac, the label owned and run by Mike Patton (of which the Melvins are on). And it’s not just the music that’s getting curated: the chalets everyone stays in have two channels of programmed TV specially picked by the festival organizers and the curators. Everyone I spoke to seem to catch Spider Baby, a very weird black and white film about a family of 60’s hotties gone totally psycho. The soundtrack was delivered wonderfully by Fantomas. Being back-to-back with Rosemary’s Baby, it had me bouncing about in the crowd of bearded men that seems to gather for ATP.
The road to Minehead and the surrounding area actually really gorgeous. For all Mike Patton’s jibes throughtout the festival, the north coast of Devon along the A39 is idyllic. If you ignore the fast food chains and endless slot machines, the Butlins where the festival is based is quite fancy. It has quite beautifully kept flora and forna, the buildings are all kept nice, it’s right on the beach, and although the weather is icy cold, it’s still sunny and all the gigs and bars are inside anyway.
King Buzzo, aka Buzz Osbourne, mainman of the Melvins, wins the award for most amount of times playing this weekend- 3 Melvin’s performances, 2 Fantomas‘ and a Porn (the band, rather then a carnal show) performance, plus a few Astoria shows before and after. His white ‘fro allows the lighting guys to get a chance to perfect the art of lighting his hair.
Isis deliver the 25 minutes of sound that induce both awe and love for them, before the third song reminds you of that there’s a bit too much of a formula going on: enter melody, enter storming riff, and enter a in-need-of-a-Lemsip voice, and one wanders off in search of a beer.
The Abel-Steinberg-Winant Trio delivered a quadraphonic version of a Stockhausen’s avante garde music piece, KONTAKTE, of which out of the seeming improvised (but wasn’t by any means) plinks and plonks the Gong solo was by far my favourite bit. While it was very odd, with lots of chinstroking was in order, it was so good that Mike Patton himself rushed up to congratulate the performers when then finished.
Farmers Market delivered a blindingly complicated folk set, although we were spoilt on the Saturday night when the 10-piece Roma Gypsy band, Taraf De Haidouks, took to the stage. They were making a rare appearance on these shores, and they are so fast and so, so brilliant. What was unusual was instead of the usual Barbican-type audience, they had glowstick-welding circle-pit loonies. The crowd worked the band up into such a frenzy they took the show outside for ten minutes before the security moved them on.
The usually-alternative Melvins came across almost normal, in that they had songs with choruses and beginnings and ends. They seemed positively mainstream poised against the experimentation littered about the rest of the bill. Even with bass player, Jared Warren, taking his wig off and spending a good 15 minutes wandering about the audience, in some sort of tongue talking preacherman mode.
One of the best things about ATP festivals is that the partying never really ends; you only get a break when you can’t hack it anymore. I heard tales, from people holding their heads in shame, of a few bands playing a chalet with a full PA and drumkit, another shindig kicking off with a dry-ice machine. I, however, woke up at 5am, watching Star Trek and facing a cold journey back to London.
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Gear: Korg Kaoss Pad KP3
Written by: David Harrison
Having got the Mini-KP pinched at Glastonbury was an excuse to head up to Kilburn and have a nose at around that DJ kit shop there. The Pioneer EFX 500 was my aim, priced at about £300. But Korg’s Kaos Pad KP3 has just been reduced to £230 - not only is it a bit more flexible, but it has some sampling tools too.
Out of the box, the Koas Pad KP3 is pretty easy, with sending and receiving a breeze through the mixing desk, and - Eureka! - 100-odd extra finger-controlled effects, available in glorious flashing red lights. The first change from the Mini KP is the power of the thing. The Mini KP always required a bunch of compensation on the channel you were mixing to equalise the levels. The KP3 is powered, over-powered if you want it to be, so if anything you’ll need to make sure that you aren’t going to blow away your last track in a spate of finger-powered enthusiasm.
The effects on the Mini KP and KP3 are pretty much the same: Sweeps, Flangers, are both fun sometimes. I find a little to much of the pad is ’swept’ quiet so these take a bit of getting used to. The EQ that appears on the KP3 is totally weird, and is very good at taking out the ranges - it’s too odd to be that useful. Delay is good for making some simple guitar sounds good. Matt Bellamy of Muse has one of these embedded in his guitar for that vert reason.
By far the effect that I most use are the Distortions. The perfect tool for my Lionel Richie/Slayer mix, everyone is reeling from, a one timed electric-storms is perfect for hiding what is lurking round the corner. In fact I love the Distortion so much, I used it to carry an entire set last weekend.
One small bugbear is that when selecting an effect, its default mode is off until the pad is pressed. Without the pad being pressed there is no sound. It needs an idiot-check, otherwise a simple distraction can become a disaster, as you miss your hundredth press down on the hold button.
By directing a track through it, you can sample about 30 seconds using the KP3’s Sampel tools. It’s then possible to take out slices of the section, and remix the track on the fly. This is very easy to use, and is all saved on the standard SD memory Stick.
However, I would of liked the KP3 on start up to remember the last loaded samples and tools, as loading up the KP3 can be a bit fiddly. I have found my workflow disturbed, and have to make a little book of notes to remind me what all my settings were. The actual sampling buttons are a little deep and are not as responsive as an MPC, so can be easy to mis-hit. I’ve been using it to layer up guitar riffs, and the extra millimetre of button seems to get in my way.
The machine has a microphone jack, so you can sing straight into and effect your voice a bit like Mike Patton, and of course it has the obligatory MIDI in and out.
In total, the sharpening of the sampling tools, and maybe some odder FX like pitch or robot, are welcome additions, as it does OD on sweeps and flanges. I wouldn’t mind it doing a couple of things less, but also a little better - either lose the sample function and have a few hundred more effects, or lose all the synth sounds and sharpen up the sampling.
The nearer to £200 you can get it, the closer it is to an utter bargain. And to be honest, the Mini KP isn’t that much of a difference and at half the price it is a total bargain.
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Musical Advent Calendar - Recap Days 1 - 5
Written by: Hugh Platt
What do you mean, you don ‘t read Music Towers every day? Are you some kind of cretin? Man, you used to be cool.
Well, since it IS getting near Christmas and all, we’ll forgive you. And to show that we really mena it, here’s a recap of all the wonderous Christmas videos from our Musical Advent Calendar (it’s up a bit and on your left) from the first five days. Enjoy.
Day 1 - Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer’ - HemorRhage
Day 2 - ‘Peace On Earth / Little Drummer Boy’ - David Bowie and Bing Crosby
Day 3 - ‘8 Days of Christmas’ - Destiny’s Child
Day 4 - ‘City of Christmas Ghosts’ - Goldblade ft. Poly Styrene
Day 5 - ‘NOT the Cliff Richard Christmas Single’ - Beau Bo Do’r, Doghorse and Eclectech
Something For The Weekend: The Tunics
Written by: Hugh Platt
Music Towers got mugged after getting off a nightbus once. We were coming back from DJ’ing at some shindig or another, and had a big box of weird records with us. We got off at our usual stop in North London, and a pair of goodofrnothing thundercunts threatened us with knives. EL BASTARDOS. We later found a lot of our lost recrods in a nearby hedge. Apparently our collection of Shellac records wasn’t what the little oiks were looking for. Perhaps they expected more macho chav music?
Anyway, we’re not looking for sympathy, we’re bringing it up as it meant that ‘The Cost Of Living’ by The Tunics struck a chord with us. The Croydon 3-piece are releasing it as a single on Monday through Manta Ray Music, and we thought it was a perfectly good track for our Something For The Weekend selection.
Watch the official video to ‘The Cost Of Living’:
The band’s debut album gets a full release on January 2nd. Worth picking up when you’re off credit crunching those January sales, we think.
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VIDEO: Joe Gideon and the Shark - ‘Daughter of a Loony’
Written by: David Harrison
Bronzerat Records seem to be really drudging up the best in sleazey lo-fi rock’n'roll right now. They’cw just finished this ace video for Joe Gideon and the Sharks’ track, ‘Daughter of a Loony (DOL)‘. This is the kind of song that makes me want to put a band together, rustle up a video, then just put it out into the world for one man and his dog to look at.
Joe Gideon and the Shark - ‘DOL’
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Office Parties: OUT. Rock’n'roll parties: IN
Written by: Hugh Platt
We love Christmas here at Music Towers. We’re running a video advent calender at the moment up there in the video box - go on, look up and to your right a little bit. Every five days we’re going to collect them all so you can catch any that you’ve missed. Think of it as an early Xmas present.
Speaking of which, Christmas is also the time for parties. We’ve all been to office parties before, and I think we can all agree that they suck harder than an elephant given a bowling ball-sized gobstopper. You get drunk with people you wouldn’t normally socialise with even at the barrell of a gun, eat some stale crisps, get off with that girl from accounts, and pass out on the bus home and are late for work the next day becasue you woke up at the bus station in Ealing with a hangover that rates alongside Hurricane Katrina in the damage-stakes.
Well, we here at Music Towers want to put a stop to Bad Christmas Parties. So much so that we’re throwing one of our own. On December 11 - next week, calendar fans - alongside our friends Beef Warehouse (that’s them there in the picture up at the top) and BigSexyLand, we’ll be throwing a FREE party over at new venue, South Of The Border. It’s right in the heart of Shoreditch, mere minutes walk from Liverpool St Station and Old Street tube. If you’re going to be about next Thursday, drop us an email to david at musictowers dot com to RSVP!
I have a band, a myspace page, now what?
Written by: David Harrison
So you have written some bitchin’ songs, made a MySpace page, and maybe even bought a domain name. You’ve had a few local gigs – but what now? Well, it’s going to cost you a bit of money, and a lot of time.
1. Organise your mailing – even if it is just one from your Outlook Express. Allow people to get on it. You can use a lot of third-party solutions such as Yahoo Groups / Wufoo / Icontact Zookoda - whatever service you feel is suitable for your costs or project.
2. Don’t over-plug your projects - people get very bored if just signed up to you out of politeness. Ask them to add you to their Safe List, as otherwise you’ll end up in the SPAM box.
3. Make your own webpage that isn’t MySpace – you don’t know how?
4. Use blogger.com and post news regularly. Link to friends’ websites, and ask nicely if they will link to you in return. If you feel the need, let a few free tracks to get out.
5. If Blogger does not ‘do’ enough for you – use Drupal and an automatic install of it on Machine Networks for £3.50 a month. Sony use Drupal for their artist websites, and The Onion use it for their very popular news site. Wordpress and Joomla are other alternative free content management systems to consider, this page is a Wordpress page.
6. Install Google Analytics on your page – this will let you find out why, when, and how people use your website. It sounds fancy is actually easy-peasy, and will help you in the long run.
7. Find some relevant music blogs, and/or aspiring writing people to review your work. To your face, usually everyone will tell you they like your work. If they have to put their opinion into words with their name in the byline, they may not be so inclined to be gracious.
8. Everybody still loves it? The record is still the best thing the world hasn’t heard? Excellent.
9. Are you sure? If you push your band before you are ready, you can garner black marks next to your name for years, as people remember “oh, that band from ages ago? They suck!”. Oh, still cool you are? Let’s go then.
Don’t hate the Media; become the Media
9. Channel 4 Slash music / Bebo / Trig / Moblog / Sellaband / Slice The Pie / YouTube / Yahoo 360 / Upcoming / Last.Fm / www.scoutr.co.uk / musicnation.com / Facebook….
There are a million social and music networks out there. None will make you famous, but they all can contribute to awareness about, and drive traffic to, your precious project.
Make sure they all link to each other (that’s how Search Engines work). Ideally, if you can use RSS feeds from your Blogger/Drupal page to do that it will save you updating them manually.
10. Post any cool articles about yourselves onto Digg / Shoutwire / Technorati / Del.icio.us or similar.
11. Register with the http://music.podshow.com/ Get any airplay? Blogs say nice things? Quote them on your website. Tell all the Podcasts where they can buy your stuff.
12. Get a mate to write a review on Playlouder.com / DazedDigital / Bizot.ch or similar contributed editorial websites.
13. Register your tracks on www.Last.Fm. Play them a few times. Make sure your friends that use Last FM have copies and play them a few times. If you have a budget you can force a 1000 plays on people for a £100.
14. If you have got this far, then you seem to be taking this whole thing seriously. Well done
15. Sign up for My MCPS/PRS / myPPL / www.catcouk.com / and go get yourself some ISRC numbers (congratulations, you just made yourself a record label). Make sure that these ISRC numbers are in all your records and the outlets that sell send them on, as that is how the charts are made.
16. Want more info about making a label? Check here: http://www.bemuso.com
17. Set up and Indiestore page – put a couple of tracks up for sale, and throw one in for free. Make sure your Myspace / Indiestore / Homepage all have relevant links to each other.
The Dark Arts of Distribution
18. Okay, this is all very well, but we want to see our releases on iTunes and on Amazon. These companies do aggregated distribution for independent artists, and it will cost you a bit more. If you were Radiohead, you could cut a deal…but you aren’t as famous as them, so you’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way:
www.dittomusic.com
http://www.emubands.com/
http://advantage.amazon.co.uk/
http://www.cdbaby.com/
19. Okay, you want your releases in local record shops. Ask them about stocking them on a sale and return basis. Keep an Excel spreadsheet of your distribution.
20. Don’t understand Excel? Find a manager that does, and love him for it. Offer to pay him and hope he says ‘no’.
21. HMV: you want our releases in HMV round the country… erm I must confess I don’t know how to do that.
Some of the distributors that feed into them are: Vital:Pias / Pinnacle / Cargo.
Call them up, ask them questions, and prepare to be ignored.
I know from previous experience, when I have said we are expecting to sell 2000 copies of a release, they still don’t get back to me. It is tough for them. It’s only if you can guarantee you are going to flog 20k records, ask them for an advance.
22. By now your marvellous Record is stocked with main online retailers. Logged with MCPS / PRS / your performances are on PPL. Everything is in place.
23. Read this Radio Play guide: http://www.tomrobinson.com/writing/radioplay.htm and do what Tom Robinson says.
24. Make some printed CDRs in see-through sleeves, with very simple details of the tunes with the release date on it. These are good for promotions. If you want to sell to the public you will have to get some nice ones made (don’t use the Impact font or I will send assasins to kill you).
. Send it to radio stations, hand-picked and hand-written like that Tom Robinson said.
26. If you can’t come up with a suitably controversial publicity stunt, how about calling up the radio and requesting your own track, that you know they have as you sent it in? Just don’t tell them that you’re in the band.
27. Press: there’s a lot to be said about understated presentation. Club together with some like minded bands and pretend you have a press company. Copy the format of this Duffy Press Release (Congratulations you have a Press Company - charge for it!). Politely nudge and convince writers that they like they are onto a winner if they cover this band, and offer to do some interviews.
Find the review writers of magazines, email them and ask for a contact address to send them a promo. Then send on your CDs. Be subtle and charming.
28. Web Traffic: use digg / shoutwire / blogs / if you have a show make sure you are linked too. Get the blogs that cover you to link to you. Ask the indie music sites if they take advertising? Might only cost you £30 here and there.
They say that money is the live show
29. Can’t get gigs? Book your own shows you will make/lose more money if they work that way. Makes sure you can make them more of an experience and get known for good parties, rather then be on that 8:00pm 20-minute slot where you’ll be playing to the barstaff and that guy sweeping up.
Use wegottickets.com to sell tickets they are independent ticket agent.
There are always ailing pubs that want a few people in.
DON’T label things as showcases – it is very pretentious.
DO build a scene without exploiting your friends.
DON’T stick stickers in the toilet there is an ancient curse that it means your band is sh**t.
30. Approach some promoters of new band nights, and arrange to have a few gigs here and there. Send the listings to Gigs@PAentertainment.com and/or clubs@paentertainment.com . The promoter should be doing this, but they might not. This is the universal organisation that flogs gig listings to the newspaper websites.
31. If you have made a CD or T-shirts. TAKE THEM TO THE GIG AND SELL THEM. Chances are you will make more money from them then the show.
32. But you want to get some good support slots?
For that you need an agent, but they aren’t going to be convinced until they think there is a load of money and success behind it. Generally all agents will only take on a project if a label or significant press is behind it.
Find a band that you would suit a support, and find out who is their agent is, and approach someone in their company, asking if they have any slots to fill - local or otherwise. You will only get £50 though, even if it is at Wembley – but you will sell merch.
X-Ray | Coda | Helter Skelter | Itb | Primary | The Agency | CAA | William Morris will probably cover most bands between them.
33. Try and get on festival bills…it doesn’t have to be Glastonbury or Reading, these days there are a million and one smaller festivals around and they need bands to fill their stages. Approach promoters in advance (not just when it starts to get sunny and you fancy playing outside) – they often book 9 months in advance.
Publishing
34. Registering with the PRS and PPL is the grounding for this. All your monies from Radio Play, TV, Films, etc, around the world will be fed through these guys. If you are not registered, you won’t got anything. It’s that simple.
35. Take PRS forms with when you perform, and send them off yourself. If you know any DJs, get them to include some of your tracks in their PRS playlists.
36. Sync: Now is the time to exploit the family and friends. Use yourcontacts. Anyone work in advertising / TV / Films? Send them copies of CDs, with a concise biog of your press and radio play. Don’t harass them, but do find out if they listened to it.
Now this is possibly the most important one. If you can get your tune on a big advert, you could expect anywhere from £20-60 grand. That is bigger then most record deals you are likely to get.
37. Are you now saying something like “I can’t believe that we did all that and haven’t had any sort of break yet!”
Or maybe “No label is interested / No publishing company got in touch / No magazine ever covered us / No Agent ever replied / we never sold any downloads” or similar?
38. Maybe you are just not good enough. If you did all that, then you should have a press company and a small record label by now and have learnt how to make search-friendly websites from scratch. Maybe your skills weren’t meant for the stage?
39. Maybe your sound isn’t in fashion (it happens)? It took Pulp ten years to get a record deal. Work out how much you are prepared to put into this project, in both time and money, before calling it day.
This list isn’t complete
40. “You left out a lot information about Merchandise / Publishing / Tour supports / Branding / Compilations / Video Promotions / Web Animation….” Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes I get the idea - this list is a work-in-progress, and I have tried to write about things I have done.
LIVE: Airbourne & Stone Gods @ London Astoria - 28 November
Written by: David Harrison
London’s Astoria is on it’s last legs. It’s almost time to switch off the lights and call in the wrecking ball. I was just passing the place and found myself thinking: “Airbourne are on tonight…might be the last chance to go there…” The venue is full of proper old skool characters, the smell of denim and leather and overpriced canned lager. I even saw ‘a’ girl!
First on is Sounds and Fury, looking like every axeman Guitar Hero ever shat out. They really throw their hearts into it, but sadly nobody in the audience can bring themselves to bang their head, or even sway a little bit. They just stand there, wondering when some good music might come over the PA.
Next up on support are Stone Gods, currently sitting astride the rung of their own personal ‘can we headline yet?’ ladder. Coming across one-part Def Leppard and one-part really-chugging-and-hard-dirty-riffage, guitarist Dan Hawkins is the only person all night that doesn’t seem to pretending. He stands, slender in the corner, delivering storming string twizzling while the singer, Richie Edwards, acts like he has ‘arrived’. Hawkins is the star of the evening by miles, and he never said a word, barely looking up from behind his hair.
It’s their second night on the trot here at the Astoria, and Airbourne have almost sold out both. Are we really that deprived of AC/DC here in the UK that these jokers can get away with this? Everybody seems quite excited by the whole thing, while I look on baffled. I swear their last london gig was the Borderline, and it was just an ‘okay‘ show, with their then-support act Skirtbox seeming a more exciting prospect. A more enthusiastic hack enthuses to me that “this everything that I’m about”, while I’m just confused. Has a little brain bug taken over these people’s minds?
Airbourne’s frontman, Joel O’Keefe, screams at us for bleeding hours. No smiles, no sense of Irony, no thanks that he has upscaled from the Borderline - nope, Joel O’Keefe and his headbanging buddies seem to act like they are actually are AC/DC.
The crowd is happy, outside in the smoking corner. People accept Airbourne are a ‘AC/DC but cheaper’ ticket. Fair point, but I just can’t get any sense of fun out of it. It’s just wholesale rip-off, fronted by a long-haired James Blunt lookalike. Some say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but to me this band feel like a leech, taking every stylistic nuance, and distilling it into a cynical money-making project, aimed squarely at AC/DC fans’ wallets. It’s no surprise that the best track of the night is a cover of ‘Whole Lot Of Rosie’, to which Hawkins returns to the stage to join in.
Go on - watch it if you don’t believe me:
Airbourne might have 8 Marshall stacks on stage, but you can see only 2 of them are mic’d up. The guy screeches a fake, ear-busting banshee noise all evening, even when he talks, not once dropping the horrid stolen veneer. Airbourne are the trade description of pretentious.
pre.ten.tious
/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [pri-ten-shuhs] Show IPA Pronunciation–adjective
1. full of pretense or pretension.
2. characterized by assumption of dignity or importance.
3. making an exaggerated outward show; ostentatious
4. This ruddy Airbourne band that do my head in, I still have a headache.
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VIDEO: The Gaslight Anthem - ‘Old White Lincoln’
Written by: Hugh Platt
Last month we mentioned that The Gaslight Anthem had a new single, ‘Old White Lincoln’, coming out to co-incide with their December mini-tour, but didn’t have a video for it. Well, we do now, so have a gander:
The video for ‘Old White Lincoln’ by The Gaslight Anthem:
Speaking of tours, the band are coming back in February and March for a proper jaunt around the UK, so if you miss them this week, you’ll still be able to catch them in a couple of months time if you’re as taken by their The Boss-esque rock. You want tickets? Then click here, dear readers.
December
3 - Glasgow, Garage
4 - Manchester, Academy 3
5 - London, LA2
February
2 - Portsmouth @ Wedgewood Rooms
3 - Birmingham @ Academy
4 - Manchester @ Academy 2
5 - Bristol @ Academy 2
6 - Brighton @ Concorde
8 - London @ Shepherds Bush Empire (NME Awards Show)
March
2 - Norwich @ Waterfront
3 - Nottingham @ Rock City
4 - Dublin @ The Academy
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ALBUM: The John Henrys - ‘Sweet As The Grain’
Written by: Hugh Platt
Country Music frightens me. You know that scene in Terminator 2 where he walks into the bar, beats that guy up, melts his face on the kitchen hob and nicks his threads? Country music was playing in the background. Not to mention every brain-scarring psycho moment in Deliverance - remember the kid with the banjo? Exactly. Country music is the twangy veneer on nasty things.
Except The John Henrys don’t play up to my self-created stereotype. At all. The Canadian five-piece have about as much darkness to them as an over-enthusiastic children’s TV presenter, locked in Dr Smile’s House of Happy Pills.
The John Henrys play ‘Thought Yourself Lucky’ live:
Their 60’s shake-shuffle and hazy blues might not be enough for me to get over my fear and prejudice of all things country, but in amongst all that twanging I hear an album that smells like the first whiff of a fresh whiskey bottle, rather than the glum final dregs. The John Henrys are Good Time Boys, not Good Ol’ Boys, and foo to you if you can’t enjoy a bit of that.
‘Sweet As The Grain’ came out today on True North Records. For more info, check out their official website and their MySpace page.
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Another Short Call Show: BISHI
Written by: David Harrison
So you can’t afford Manu Chao, but still want some continent-crossing modern masterpieces in the next week? Well, Bishi is playing the Camden Monarch on December 10, and it’s only £4 with a flyer.
The Monarch used to be the Moon Under Water or somesuch, but it will be home to Bishi next month as she celebrates a year that has seen her wangle her way onto Jonathon Ross, The Culture Show and Des O’Conner Tonight. Yes, DES O’CONNOR TONIGHT.
She is trying out her new material on the sssh, so pop along and have a look.
Manu Chao announces surprise London show
Written by: David Harrison
Apologies to anyone reading this that doesn’t live round the corner to the Kentish Town Forum in north London, but Manu Chao has just announced a surprise show there for December 16. The last time Manu Chao played London, he sold enough tickets to pack out Wembley Arena, and for my money they were the was the only band putting in the effort at Glastonbury 2008.
Tickets are here
Tickets are here. I’d get a move on if I were you.
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