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A fine rant on the Music Business

I subscribe to a few music related email lists and this fine rant showed up on one of them tonight. It is a wee bit long but it is worth reading if you think about the quality of music coming out these days.

I don't want to get off on a rant here but.......... Originally I wouldn't pick on these little turd heads, I assumed they would eventually get better on their instruments and maybe grow up a little and just shut their little cake holes. No such luck.... Just the other day a friend of mine from Washington DC moved to LA. He proceeded to try to join a band. The little fascist, elite, snob, douche bag members of the first band that he auditioned for, told him he couldn't join their band. He was playing a Hamer Californian. They said he was a great player and easily good enough but he would have to cut his hair and play a Les Paul if he wanted to join their faggy little gaggle of idiots band. My friend happened to also own a white Les Paul custom that he had for close to 20 years. He never played it much because it was too heavy and he couldn't reach the higher notes easily. In fact it was short 5 Frets from his Hamer Californian which is a 27 fret guitar. Imagine the size of the balls of these people. It's unbelievable. My friend told them to pound sand up their asses and promptly sold his Les Paul. A similar story happened to a friend of mine from Toronto last year in LA, Only he had a BC Rich Bich. Here's Ed Roman's theory. The Record Companies... Yep that's what I think is to blame for this type of ignorant attitude. In Los Angeles there used to be a great music scene, This scene happened coincidentally in the 80's, Baby Boomers were in their late 20's and early 30's. Great bands played everywhere every night and life was good and music was good. This eventually ended just like the Disco craze of the 70's did. When the 80's ended there was nothing there to take it's place. The 50's had excellent Rhythm & Blues, Instrumental Bands and Doo Wop, The 60's started with the Surf Music and ended with Zeppelin, Hendrix, Cream the Doors Mountain Jeff Beck & Woodstock and somewhere in the middle came The Stones, The Moody Blues The Who and oh yeah the Beatles. The 70's were a bit weaker but you still had Southern Rock, Grand Funk, the Eagles, KISS and The Stones, Moody Blues and the Who, the 80's came and all Hell broke loose, There were so many great guitar players you couldn't keep track of them all, Van Halen, Lynch, Schenker, Rhoads, Vai, etc etc and of course you still had the Stones the Moody Blues and the Who, When the 90's arrived Rap had started taking hold of the younger kids, there was a short time there when playing guitar wasn't even cool anymore....... s#!t! Why am I blaming the record companies? OK read this carefully and maybe you will understand what I am trying to say. Prepare to be slightly deprogrammed......... The record companies exist solely to make money, they are cruel heartless people who if they didn't work for a record company they probably might work for the tobacco companies as a spokesman or something. It is my firm belief that the record companies do not want the musicians to make it, They do not want to create any more super groups or superstars. Understand that once an entertainer reaches superstar status he can write his own ticket. Just like a professional athlete can command 80 million a year to run around a field knocking someone down and/or get knocked down himself. An entertainer the likes Mick Jagger or Elton John doesn't need a record company they can snap their fingers and start their own record company. Record companies don't want any more Mick Jaggers or Frank Sinatras or Elvis Presleys or Jim Morrisons or Jimi Hendrix, They want bands like Hootie and the Blow Fish. They want bands that will never make it past their third album which usually doesn't even get released. If a band has a great first album they usually don't make squat, All the money goes to the record company. After all they paid for the original promotion, the actual recording and, oh yes those magic advances that they waved in front of your face to get you to sign the contract. The only trouble is no one in the band is keeping track of where the record company is really spending the money. For all the band knows the record company could be recouping promotion costs from 5 other bands that didn't show a large profit. Remember the day the band went down to that Great Big Music Store in Hollywood or NYC and bought all that vintage incredibly expensive garbage that the record company paid for. It's payback time! Your guitar player says he doesn't remember that 59 Les Paul costing $45,000.00 in fact he thought it was much less. That's right....... there are all kinds of kickback sweetheart deals with many of the bigger music store chains and the record companies. In fact one chain of music stores actually has an artist relations department. These people are paid to go out and pitch record companies for their business... I wonder what they say to them to get them to buy.... Can you say, Kickback? How do I know about this stuff, Because I have been in this business for 30 years. My first taste of it came when some guy walked into my store and bought an Eventide Instant Phaser. I was selling it for approximately $500.00 or so dollars, He told me he needed it for a recording session, the producer wanted one and they had been looking for one for a long time. He told me he wanted to insure it for a real lot of money because it was discontinued and almost irreplaceable. He needed a larger receipt so I obliged him, I think it was for $2,000.00 or something like that. Curious, I asked him who the producer was he told me, Phil Ramone who was currently producing the Eagles new album called Hotel California. Cool....... Several months later I heard "Life in the Fast Lane" for the first time... s#!t that Eventide Instant Phaser was so incredibly predominant in that song. I will always wonder what the Eagles paid for that strange new effect they were using (I think Eventide made the very first Phaser ever). Ok, I didn't mean to segue into that story. Let's get back to how and why the recording companies are trying to hold you back. Start thinking about it, there are no more super groups, there are no more Eddie Van Halens No Jimi Hendrixes. Because the record companies are purposefully spewing out bland garbage to sell CD's and next month they want to sell you something totally new, forget that other band... listen to this great new band.... In this way the poor mindless lemming consumers never really get to be staunch fans of any band. No more Grateful Deadheads, well maybe, there are some benefits after all... Just kidding. So here we are in the 90's and Country and Western is Kickin Butt.... My theory is because, it's all about the pickin' The rock bands today are usually flash in the pan barely memorable carbon blobs. Who remembers Hootie and the Blowfish. Lets face it dudes. If ya' wanna make it for real ya' gotta practice the damn guitar, If'n you don't learn how to play it.... no matter how retro cool you think you look with your baggy shorts and dirty messed up hair you ain't gonna make it. This is SHOW BUSINESS that's two words, SHOW and BUSINESS.... It's about the SHOW If you want to be remembered you better learn how to play and put on a good show and oh yeah, look the part. It's about the BUSINESS, If you have limited talent, and you can't play real well, Keep pluggin' you'll get better, look at KISS they barely could play when they started. But they got better and they gave their fans the shows of their life and even though Gene Simmons is a hard guy to like, He has my vote as one of the best businessmen in rock. Gene discovered a lot of bands and is responsible for a lot more than most people know. So what can we do about this s#!t...... Hey don't look at me, I don't have all the answers, just the questions.... One of my favorite sayings is "resistance is futile" (I also like to use the word "cromulent" but that's a different show). Fender has recently assimilated Jackson, I hear they are talking to PRS also..... Maybe if we started to think for ourselves, maybe if we ignored all the media hype, maybe if we didn't blindly believe everything we read in a magazine that accepts advertisers. Maybe just maybe.............. Naaaahhhhh, Resistance is Futile Locutus of Borg

Posted by DaveH at February 27, 2005 9:28 PM