Slick Guys in Suits and Ties with Little Ponytails

[ LiB ]

Slick Guys in Suits and Ties with Little Ponytails

Agent or Not? Manager or Not?

Basically, my experience is that when you need an agent or a manager, one will find you. If you're just starting out, you probably don't need one. And what you really don't need is a well-meaning friend with no business skills or experience who basically wants to be a part of something and call himself a manager. You're probably better off doing it yourself. There are exceptions, and I'm sure that many great managers and agents started out as well-meaning unknown friends of some band , but it's been my experience that these folks can cause more harm than good.

A lot of people who want to be managers or agents don't even know the difference. A manager does not book your shows. An agent does. A manager oversees all aspects of your career; an agent gets you jobs. In California, it's actually illegal for a manager to book you shows. (This is a throwback to a Hollywood studio system thing to protect against conflicts of interest.)

We'll cover getting an agent later in Chapter 16, "Touring."

Figure 14.3. Some of Babyland's gear. Yes, that is an Apple Macintosh SE. (It had a whole 1000K of RAM!) One man's doorstop is another man's sequencer. Photo by Michael Dean.

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"The Deal"

The idea of record deals is sold to the public in a very misleading way: like the company is doing you a favor, and like your life is going to change for the better in intense and immense ways if you get The Deal. Like the fairy godmother, in the form of a corporation, is going to wave her funded -debt wand and whisk you sky high in a tornado of adulation, love, money, sex, and happiness. They even propagate this, literally, with shows like American Idol , where the contestants "win" a record deal. (I'm not sure that's even legal. Isn't that a violation of gaming or labor or even usury laws?)

My old band, Bomb, started in 1986 out of a love of music. We had a blast and we were greatway better than most bands, and we got recognized and built a following quickly. But we would have laughed if you had told us we'd end up on a major label, not because we hated "the Biz," but because no one was signing weird bands back then.

But then the industry changed a bit (because Jane's Addiction got popular), and Bomb was signed to Warner Brothers.

In retrospect, The Label's dealings with us were like a sinister man wooing a simple woman into bed: all love and promises before we signed. Then it was like pulling teeth on a wolverine to get them to come through on the other end and fulfill any of those promises after we'd inked the contract. I even had to pay out of my own pocket to send out promo copies that I had to beg for when we went on tour. Everyone made money except the band: the lawyers , the producer, The Label, the manager, the agent. The members of the band made a sub-McDonalds wage for 12 months and were then dropped without even being told we were dropped. Our lawyer told us we were dropped, and he'd heard it by reading it in a trade paper.

At this point, I felt like the simple woman who is lying on the bed alone, next to her prettiest dress, crying after having just been used by the sinister man. After he's satisfied himself and is on to some younger , prettier girl, I'm lying there, wondering if I'm pregnant, saying, "But he said he loves me. He'll be back."

I became obsessed with the idea of The Deal. I could still write great songs. But my band was breaking up. We were all daunted by the whole ordeal. Before The Deal, we'd been really happy making cool music, putting out powerful records, and rocking the nation's clubs out of a van. After The Deal, I sank hard into drug addiction, and the band said, "It's the drugs or the band. Choose."

I told the band (who were my good friends), "You're all fired ," because I had been told by The Label that I was the star. I figured I could get anybody to be my backup players and rock to the top.

And I found players easily. I started a band called Drive-By Crucifixion. [3.] Nice guys and good musicians (our song "Ivy" is on the CD), but we didn't have the same spark and magic that the first group had. And my efforts were fueled less by the love of music and more by the need for The Deal.

[3.] My mother told me at the time that it was a bad omen to have a promo photo with a gun to my head. She was so right. This was the beginning of the end for me, career-wise at least. Lydia says the photo looks very Apocalypse Now. I agree.

Figure 14.4. Drive-By Crucifixion. Photo by Warner Williams.

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I got my publishing company to give me money, and we cut a demo. I made the mistake of recording 12 songs too quickly rather than three songs really well. I did some showcases for the few industry people who were still returning my calls. They showed up, saw our earnest-yet-slapdash efforts, said "thanks," and left. I sank harder into drugs.

Okay, since I was never more than a footnote in the grand scheme of the history of music, the above story is the closest to a "Behind the Music" I'll ever see, but it's got value for you. The moral is: Put the music and your friends first. The Deal should be the last thing on your mind.

Remember that this was all back in 1990 when they were handing out deals more easily than today. Nowadays, file sharing has decimated the industry, and the economy is bad anyway, so they're extremely reserved with bringing on new talent. The major labels are, with few exceptions, only signing people under 24 who are very cute, have very catchy songs, and have already sold 10,000 records. But if you can sell 10,000 records on your own, you don't need a major label! You can run your own ship, do it tight, tour, develop a fan base, and keep all the money. And you'd probably make more selling 10,000 records yourself than 100,000 on a major.

I have to refer here to the article, "The Problem with Music," by Steve Albini [4.] (www.electrical.com), reprinted with permission in the appendix of this book. It shows why you shouldn't bother. I love this. Steve knows what he's talking about. He's engineered some hit records, including Nirvana and Bush.

[4.] Steve Albini is an independent musician and record producer who played in the band Big Black (and helped create the "hard industrial" sound that is making millions for others). He produced Nirvana's "In Utero" record, but turned down a Producer credit because he feels that elevates the engineer above the band. He did this knowing he would have made several million dollars in royalties just by allowing those two words "produced by" to be added to the record cover. He used the term "Recorded by Steve Albini," instead.

NOTE

Keep receipts for everything. All equipment, all travel, even buying videos , tapes, CDs, books (including this one) may be able to be written off if you make money at some point.

I look at the media in general (movie companies, book publishers, magazines, TV, and major labels specifically ) as a pipeline that needs to be filled. In this business model, the pipeline is important; what you fill it with isn't. The only thing that matters is that it gets filled.

This pipeline can work really well if you're trying to sell something. They have amazingly aggressive and effective mechanisms already in place to be all ready to pump their sludge into every home in the world on a few days' notice. It can also work horribly if you're an artist. They don't care how you want your art to be

Figure 14.5. Energy 2. Photo by Michael Dean.

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Figure 14.6. Singer in An Albatross (cool indie band). Photo by Michael Dean.

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presented and represented, although they'll lie and tell you they do; they care how it will fit into the existing template that they use to sell stuff.

The nature of a pipeline is such that it costs an incredible amount to construct, but the price is amortized across all the billions of barrels of oil pumped across it each year. In the real pipeline world of oil, this means that you need to keep people burning oil. Thus, all the car commercials and wars to keep that machine going.

You've probably heard all the stories of the scientists who occasionally come up with a carburetor that yields a hundred miles to the gallon. They are all allegedly bought out or murdered by the oil companies. Who knows if this is true? I do know for a fact, however, that Los Angeles used to have a great public transportation system, but the light rail was bought up by General Motors (with help from an oil company and a tire company), who in turn ripped up all the tracks and destroyed the system so everyone would have to buy cars .

This is the same logic running most of the major labels. The problem is they are operating on an old business model, one that was put out to pasture by the advent of online file sharing. They just refuse to let go.

It is also my opinion that they treat artists like shit.

NOTE

I think American Idol and anything else with a "battle of the bands" mentality is stupid. I think that people who would do anything to be famous are idiots. That's not art; it's insecurity. True artists are capable of being insecure , but they don't let it get in the way. We just make art. We are so busy creating that we don't get involved in petty squabbles.

There's enough room for everyone with talent. You don't have to destroy anyone else to get heard. You may not end up a rock star, but you can make great art and maybe even make a living.

Cities used to have a style. There used to be Boston-style hardcore punk and D.C. style and LA style and Orange County punk. Now, every city, every mall, every kid, it's all pumped through the pipeline of the media and the associated companies owned by the same conglomerate. They can tweak the formula 1.82 percent and have the new record/video/outfit/cologne in every town literally overnight.

I think that all people are equal, but I love the differences that make them unique. We're all headed away from that, to a place where we're all equally bland .

Fight this.

Figure 14.7. Left to right: Michael Dean, Tony Fag, Hilsinger, Jay Morgan Crawford . Promo photo of Bomb by Ann Stauder.

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Figure 14.8. Another promo photo of Bomb by Ann Stauder.

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These photographs are two of a series that contained a different (but similar) shot that was used by Warner Brothers as our promo photo. The poster of this was used in the movie Demolition Man as decoration on Sandra Bullock's character's office wall. Not only were we not paid for that (it was in the contract that they could "exploit our image" in any way they saw fit), but I was not able to get use of that image for this book. And I wasn't even able to get one song of our music, which I wrote and sang, to use as an example on the CD of this book. When I contacted them, some new lawyer (who was 12 years old in 1990 when I was on The Label) told me, "We can work out a deal to lease use of your music to you at a reasonable rate." So I just used the stuff we did on indie labels, which we still have the rights to.

So how do we not get screwed? How do we do it right? Well here's something that worked for me:

The Art of Business

An excerpt from my last book:

How a nobody negotiated without a lawyer to get a good literary agent on his own terms (a parable for any negotiation):

When I was finishing up my first movie, some kid heard about it. He wrote me an e-mail and said, "I wanna make movies too. How do you do it?" I spent about an hour writing everything I could think of and sent it to him. I kept a copy of it.

A few weeks later, someone else wrote me and asked me how to promote a movie. I spent about two hours writing everything I could think of and sent it to her. I kept a copy of it. I expanded it into a Web site called 99CentFilmSchool.com. People read it, but no one went to PayPal to pay the 99-cent tip I asked for.

I decided to expand it into a book with a CD-ROM. I expanded the Web site into the first two chapters of the book and took the Web site down. I called the book-in-progress $30 Film School .

I studied online how non- fiction is sold. I realized that it is often sold with only a proposal and a sample chapter or two written. I wrote a 28-page proposal following this format exactly. It included my "credentials," which basically were nothing more than an interview on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner and the fact that I had made one film, had booked a shoestring tour, and had a lot of moxie.

I wrote a two-page query and e-mailed it to 40 agents that I found from online research. Most never wrote back. Ten wrote back and said "Not for us." Six wrote back and said "Please send us your proposal." I wrote back and said "e-mail or snail mail?" Four said e-mail; two said snail mail. I sent them all out that day.

Two days later, one e-mailed back and said "We love it and want to represent you." They attached a contract. I checked them out online. They didn't have much of a track record, and I considered them a last resort in case the other five said "no."

I e-mailed the other five agents looking at my query and said, "So-and-so sent me a contract, but I wanted to talk to you before I signed it. Have you had a chance to look at my proposal yet?" The ones who had opted for e-mail all said "No, but I'll look at it tonight." Knowing that someone else was interested lit a fire under them.

I looked at the last-resort agent's contract and noticed that they wanted me to sign over my entire literary career, forever: non-fiction, fiction, screenplays, articles, everything. I e-mailed them back, "I have a lawyer who is acting as my agent for screenplays, so those rights are not available to sign over. As for everything else, I would be much more likely to consider this if you did this on a project-by-project basis, rather than everything I write. My old agent did this for my novel." (This is true. But he never sold my novel, and we went our separate ways. I self-published my novel , D.I.Y. style. I didn't tell them that he didn't sell my book, but I wasn't lying.)

Three of the five other agents wrote back and all said, "We are interested in representing you. All three sent contracts. The two who didn't reply were the two that had insisted that I send it by snail mail rather than e-mail. They had just gotten my stuff and were not operating at Internet speed a common problem with people in the publishing industry still stuck in an all-paper mindset. They lost out because of it. One later sent me a contract, two weeks after I'd already signed with my agent.

All three of the contracts wanted me to sign over my entire literary career, forever: non-fiction, fiction, screenplays, articles, everything. But two of the agencies were heavy players with huge batting records. One was my absolute number-one choice of allWaterside. They are one of the most powerful agents for non-fiction how-to tech books in the world. They even agented HTML for Dummies , which I bought in 1996 and learned Web design from.

I wrote back to all three and again said "I have a lawyer who is acting as my agent for screenplays, so those rights are not available to sign over. [5.] As for everything else, I would be much more likely to consider this if you did this on a project-by-project basis, rather than everything I write. My old agent did this for my novel. And right now you and three other agencies (I named them all) have all sent me contracts, and one has agreed to do it only for this project. If you did that also, it would likely sway me in your direction."

My number-one choice wrote back and said "Okay." And sent an amended contract. (I wanted them so badly I would have signed their original contract, but played my cards right.) I read the contract for a day, thought about it, signed it, and faxed it to them on a Saturday, e-mailed them confirmation, and snail mailed them the signed contract.

So, this is how I got a great agent, on my terms, in a week. In all of this, I was humble and calm, not cocky, and I didn't lie. Everything I told everyone was true, and I got what I wanted. This is a good working model for negotiations. But the only way you can do this is if you have some kick-ass art to back it up.

Figure 14.9. An Albatross. Photo by Michael Dean.

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Keep in mind that negotiations aren't always events. They are sometimes conversations. And these conversations can happen in one sitting, but usually happen over a period of time. And people are more into negotiating with people who respect them than with people who are trying to "play them." Always go for win/win, my friend, win/win.

Figure 14.10. PatRosemary's Billy Goat. Photo by Newtron Foto.

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[5.] It's a good idea to use different agents and distributors . If you have a monopoly in any one area, you can get screwed. If they mess up, you're stuck with them. Remember Prince writing the word "SLAVE" on his cheek for photos because he said that's what Warner Brothers was treating him like?

NOTE

Here's more advice on conducting business, and this goes with the "sell what you know and love" logic and also the "let it flow through you" thing: Business needn't be a glum, cheerless affair. I chitty chat with people I do business with if they're into it. And it's not just "How's the kids ? The wife? Good, let's rip each other off now." It's genuine interest in a fellow human being. For example, every time I e-mail my Canadian DVD distributor, George (from Analogue Media Technologies or Amtech ), we chitty chat about everything from the weather (usually me teasing him I'm in LA, he's in Montreal, it's often 70 degrees Fahrenheit warmer at my house than at his house) to parenting, punk rock, whatever. I've never met him, never talked on the phone, can never remember his last name , but he genuinely seems like a real friend. There's more than just money slipping between us. And he's one of the most reliable, punctual businessmen I've ever had the pleasure of dealing with.

When you have an agent or a manager, it's standard (and probably in your contract) that all checks that come in go to her first, and she writes you a check after taking out her 15 percent. Hopefully, they will do this promptly. My literary agent FedExes me my cut the day after she gets a check. This is unheard of cool. Most people take up to a month.

Be on top of getting paid (corporations often misfile stuff), but don't hassle them. If a check is late, make a polite call.

So, if you make something stellar that can sell on the first try, get several people interested, and sweetly and politely and humbly play them against each other, you can get what you want and get a deal that is equitable for the artist and not just the un-artistic old fat man who owns the factory.

You can use my example above for ideas on how to keep your soul and some of your cash.

The State of the Business of Art

Music and art have become devalued. First, there are simply many more people making art, and most of them are not very good. This is true everywhere, but more so in America, especially in Los Angeles. Everyone in LA is trying to "make it," and it makes it hard for people like me who just want to make good art. I'm currently booking a tour for my film in Europe, and there are some gigs with me playing music. It's easier to book a show in Europe, sight unheard, than to get a gig in my own town! And chances are, more people will show up at the shows in Europe!

Another reason art has become devalued: The same aspects of being able to digitize art that make it so easy to make and move around the globe the way we want to also make it easy to copy without paying. And there's nothing we can really do about it. We have to embrace this.

You have to be really, really good to make a living, and basically work two jobs. You need to spend six to eight hours a day, six or seven days a week making art, and six to eight hours a day, five or six days a week promoting that art to make a living. You need to not rely on the idea of someone "discovering you" and just do it yourself. You can still avail yourself with managers and agents when the time comes to need them, but you will still have to do a lot yourself. And you still might not get to quit your day job. And if you do (I have), you have to know it may not last forever. Sure, I make art for a living, but I haven't thrown away my suits and ties. I know I could have to go back to temping in offices any time.

About 20 years ago, Robert Fripp (who has sold millions of records and still makes a living at music) said that the way to make sure you make a living in the 21st century as an artist is to still do your own laundry.

Figure 14.11. MikePigmy Love Circus. Photo by Newtron Foto.

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Making a Living

Part of the way to make a living is to give up the idea of waiting for that corporation to hand you a huge cash settlement for all your hard years of being a artist and a dreamer and a genius. The rest of the formula is to diversify . Most of the people I know who make a living at music, even the ones you've heard of, don't just play or sing in a band.

Check out my friends interviewed at the end of this book and other people I've worked with: Peter DiStefano, who played guitar in Porno for Pyros, does soundtrack work on (big- and small-budget) films from his home studio. He still plays gigs, but he has a family now, and it suits him better to work at home so he can be close to his family, and it allows him to make a living on his own terms and still make cool music. My friend Warren Huart is a great guitarist but works as a record producer. Janis Tanaka gets excellent touring work playing bass with the likes of Pink and L7, but still has to go work sometimes at an office job between tours . Ian MacKaye runs a record company. Eric McFadden gives guitar lessons. Michael Woody subsidizes his real work by producing sound design for theater companies and flashy GUIs for self-congratulatory corporate intranets .

If you keep your day job and like it, you never have to compromise. Storm Large is a bartender. London May is a pediatric nurse. They both dig their jobs, and both make great music and never compromise.

Contracts

I do nothing on a handshake for the same reason I do nothing any more on a long, bad contract or a short, bad letter of intent.

NOTE

A "letter of intent" is a pre-contract contract that major labels use to screw bands. It is basically a one-page contract that says "The artist agrees to sign a longer contract at some later point, and the terms of this longer contract are up to the label." A&R ( artist and repertoire guysbasically talent scouts) keep 'em in their pocket at all times.

I do everything on a short written agreement. Even between friends. And no one's ever sued me. Or had reason to. Be honest, get it in writing, keep your word, keep your side of the street clean, and you cannot lose.

My contracts are short and to the point, and they cover both parties. Some examples are on the CD.

NOTE

Again, I have to tell you that nothing here constitutes legal advice, but I will say that I've done better as my own D.I.Y. counsel than I've done paying entertainment attorneys $400 an hour.

My problem with most contracts is that they are very one-sided in favor of the corporation. And needlessly complicated and long. Of course they are. They are written by lawyers who get paid by the hour.

Many contracts are written in a way that's impossible for the artist to understand alone. You have to pay a lawyer (often a guy secretly on the side of the guys who wrote it) to basically say "yes" or "no" to you. And you have to trust him.

Lawyers should charge by the pound rather than the hour to write contracts. My band's contract when we were on a major label was 75 pages long! And it was written in a way that I almost gave up reading it before I got to the small print hidden on pages 56 and 68 where I gave up all my rights.

And a lot of these contracts, especially those from large corporations, are written in a very punitive tonevery Angry God: "We, The Corporation, are all. You, the lowly 'artist', are lucky to have us." It's built up to make you feel bad. And contracts don't need to be this long, complicated, or mean. The relationships they define aren't that complicated or sacred.

Some corporations basically rip off artists by appealing to a combination of vanity and the need to be seen. And it isn't personal. It's business. But it feels personal when you're the artist. Artists have a need to be validated , because they rarely are. We also have an innate need to have our work felt and seen by the world, even if we are not credited for it. That's why we make art. We make things that we feel the world needs to see, and we will sometimes sell out many rights and most money to get them seen.

NOTE

If you can help it, don't let The Label cross-collateralize royalties. Cross-collateralizing is when if one record fails and one does well, they pay themselves for the one that fails out of the successful one before you get any money.

Look in the folder contracts_releases_and extras on the CD. There are a few actual contracts and dunning letters to and from attorneys. People I know donated use of them to show what to do (and in some cases what not to do) with regard to contracts. (I censored out the names of the parties, but trust me. These are some big bands. You probably have some of their records.)

Artists are usually treated with distrust . They are a necessary evil of the film, music, and publishing industries. But we have wild hearts and tend to be less predictable than the suits who run and profit from those industries. The people running these industries often have never created anything, and they feel fear and jealousy at our ability to create. The people who own the means of distribution know that they've got the artist strung out on the services of the corporation and can charge drug-pusher percentages in exploiting the artists.

People who run a major label have usually never written a song, have no ability to, and feel small and impotent when confronted with true creatives. However, the lower echelon people, the A&R folks who actually deal with the artist and present a human face to get the artist to sign the horribly one-sided contract, are often former musicians themselves. This is how they hook the artist in.

Media corporations (all of them: film studios , TV networks, book publishers, record labels, ad nauseam) should be a lot less one-sided in dealing with the people who create the content for them. Copyright laws (including fair use) and patents were created by our founding fathers to encourage artistic and scientific progress. They knew that this D.I.Y. self-starting ingenuity is what would make America strong and great.

It's un-American (in the original Jeffersonian definition of what America was to be) and piggy to do otherwise . Treating content providers poorly is seditious and borders on treason.

What's good for the artist is good for America.

Media corporations perpetrate this "we're-doing-you-a-favor" sweatshop mentality to keep artists scared and hungry. It's kind of like how male society at large pays women less and keeps women down so women are hungry enough that they can be paid to take off their clothes and have sex.

Think "Whitey buying Manhattan from the Indians for $24 in beads, some smallpox-filled blankets, and a few pipes of tobacco ."

Most artist management contracts basically say somewhere in them that the manager is actually required to do nothing and that the artist can never sue the manager, and that if the artist does dare to sue, she has to pay the legal expenses for both sides ! This is common in label contracts, too.

Take, for example, music publishing deals. The publishing companies pay a ghetto-rich amount to a starving artist, usually when he gets signed, in exchange for half or more of the future "publishing" rights (the payment a songwriter gets every time a song is played on the radio, a juke box, used in a movie, and so forth). The publishing company is often a subsidiary of The Label signing you. Which gives incentive to The Label to give you a low advance. So you'll be hungry enough to give more of your soul to the monster.

Bomb was on Warner Brothers. Our publishing company was Warner-Chappell, a subsidiary of Warner Brothers. Fancy that.

Some would say that this might constitute an illegal conflict of interest. Not me, though. It might not be legal for me to say that.

It is my opinion that when you deal with these people, you're screwed. And a lawyer won't help much. There are only a handful of big media corporations. No matter what he tells you, a lawyer isn't gonna fight too hard for an unknown artist and piss off a conglomerate that he has to deal with all the time. (Even many of the "indies" are somehow connected to either Sony, Bertelsman, Time/Warner/AOL, Vivendi, Newscorp, Viacom, Disney/ABC, GE/NBC, Hearst. And this includes music, film, books, magazine, and TV. See "Who Owns What" at www.cjr.org/ owners /index.asp. Also check out www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html.

NOTE

Lloyd Kaufman says that for most stuff where you need a lawyer, you don't have to pay $400 an hour for an entertainment lawyer. You can pay your family lawyer $125 an hour to look over and approve or change a contract. It's all the same stuff. The entertainment guys don't necessarily do a better job, but they do charge way more.

I think the music publishing deal idea might be based on that dude in the Old Testament, Esau, who sold his birthright (future inheritance plus all rights as firstborn son) to his brother Jacob for a bowl of soup when he was down and out. (Genesis 25:29-34) In this analogy, Esau is the artist and Jacob is the publishing company. And the mother who set up the scam would be the entertainment attorney, I suppose.

Basically, publishing deals are you betting the company that you'll fail. Only if your record is a commercial flop do you win the publishing bet. If you sell a million records, they win.

NOTE

Even if you give your music away, say to a cool indie film by your friends, you should still do a contract, like they can use it in the film but have to pay royalties if they do a soundtrack record or whatever. It's okay (and good art karma) to give music away sometimes, but don't do it in an unlimited way (or all the time). Limit it to the project at hand. Otherwise, it might hurt you later if you want to sign to a label (or any number of other possibilities and scenarios). And at least get it in writing that everyone in the band gets credit, a link on their Web site, and two DVDs of the final project without having to ask for them.

Someone told me that the reason labels "have to" screw the bands is that so many bands "fail." I replied:

They fail (to make money) because:

  1. The entertainment industry is fraught with waste. A huge amount of money was spent by five labels just flying from LA and New York to San Francisco to check out/ court Bombfirst-class airline tickets, first-class hotels, expensive meals, unlimited expense accounts, lawyers, cocaine, and more; all this to sign a band, not promote them, and sell 10,000 records. For that money, Touch and Go Records or Dischord Records could have signed 20 bands, paid the bands better, and promoted them, and half of them would have sold 75,000 records and all made a profit.

  2. A&R people have tin ears. They don't know what people want. Only one in ten bands signed gets their contract renewed for a second record.

I don't measure success only by sales, but I'll bet you I could pick five bands and three of them would be hits. And I'm just a fan.

Like I said in my last book, "The Universe doesn't care how many records you sell. The Universe cares how sweetly you sing. Art helps people. So, pass it on."

Don't misjudge me. The last few pages of screed spiel is not typical armchair commie "The-Capitalists-will-sell-us-the-rope-we'll-hang-them-with" Berkeley Luddite-with-a-vengeance rhetoric. I do actually value free enterprise, and I really dig a lot of the fruits of corporate technology (like stuff that enables art and communicationlike computers and digital video cameras ). I just think "they" could toss "us" a few more doggie bones while they screw us out of our money and our style.

A True Cautionary Example

I was recently talking to a talented singer in a really cool band. I thought this band could benefit from being on a major label. I rarely think that, but they had great songs, looked cool, had a powerful stage show, a charismatic and striking singer, but had no audience. These and other factors made me think that they would be a good candidate for The Deal.

I know one person who works at a major label. I used to know a lot, when I was on a major, but that was over a decade ago. I told this singer that I was going to call this label dude up and invite him to see the singer's band. The singer thanked me, but seemed a little bitter at the mention of a label. Probably because he had already had three major label deals, lost them all, and was broke. And he's now 40, which severely lessens the chance of a fourth deal.

The singer said, "I totally appreciate that, Mike." (You can tell we aren't really close, because my real friends all call me Michael.) "You're a true friend." He took my hand and shook it. He didn't let go. He added, "But you know what I'm gonna tell that guy when I meet him?" He held my hand tighter and pulled me close so no one else in the room could hear what he was saying. He hissed through bad beer breath into my frightened ear, while not releasing my hand, "I'm gonna tell him, 'I'd love to be on your label, sir. But if you screw me, I'm gonna kill you. I'm gonna kill your wife. I'm gonna kill your children. Then I'm gonna kill your dog.' That's what I'm going to tell him."

Needless to say, I decided not to invite the guy from the label to see the singer's band. The singer's level of insanity is toxic and indicative of personality streaks in humans that I live to avoid, even if it's all talk, which it quite possibly was in this case. But the hatred that had festered in him for decades does prove one thing (other than the fact that rock music tends to attract unstable, chemically dependent people with low self-esteem and huge egos): Relying on corporations causes frustration. You will most likely not get your way.

If you never deal with a corporation to sell your art, you will never end up wanting to kill the family of people at that corporation. This is just one more reason to do it yourself . "Deals" set up expectations, and expectations are appointments with resentments. And resentments hurt us. We don't suffer because we make mistakes. We suffer because we defend them. Most self-improvement ideas are based on changing your thinking to change your actions. I'm into changing my actions to change my thinking. Don't hold on to your hatred. Forgiving people frees up mental space to live and create. Resentment is fun for a minute, but it'll kill you.

The Antidote

To continue the story about my band, Bomb that we started earlier anyway, somehow my band got signed, and suddenly we had a manager. He was big on giving us pep talks. It is my opinion that he was better at that than at business, actually. So he told us about when he managed Jane's Addiction how a lot of bands get lazy when they get signed, but not Jane's. Most groups feel like they've "arrived" and their days of paying dues are finished once they've inked the contract. Jane's Addiction looked at this as being the opposite . They'd always worked hard, but once they got signed, they worked harder. They hit the streets more, put up more flyers. They still set up and promoted their own warehouse shows and tried to make it more than just a rock show, even adding circus-like attractions.

Years later, a friend of mine, Candacy, told me how back in 1988 she was working at a small record store in Columbus, Ohio when some guy named Perry Farrell called her up and chatted for a long time. He had a new record out on Warner Brothers with some band called Jane's Addiction. She'd never heard of them. By the end of the conversation, she felt like they were friends and she was willing to do all their local promotion, from setting up radio interviews to taking it to the streets with flyers, to playing their record non-stop in the store.

Getting any kind of deal doesn't mean you can now you can just lay back, cruise down Sunset Boulevard in the back of a limo and snort coke off a supermodel's breasts. Jane's Addiction did several grueling tours in a van, opening for everybodyBig Black, Love, Iggy Pop, The Ramones, X, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Love and Rocketsafter getting signed.

When you get a deal of any kind, it just means you have a job. The work isn't over; it's just begun.

If Jane's Addiction had sucked, they wouldn't have taken off. The fact that they were amazing, both on record and live, made it possible for this type of hypnotic moxie to work. And the band had the personal touch. Without that, and without their work ethic , they might not have taken off.

Our manager told me that Madonna took a similar approach when she got signed to Warner Brothers. She made up press kits and spent a week going to everyone in the corporation, from the CEO to the mail room, and hanging out with them. Smart. And remember, the guy in the mail room could be the CEO some day. Or you could just want to make sure that your packages get where they're going. No one is too small to help you. And it's just good karma to not overlook the little guy.

One of my favorite scenes in my D.I.Y. or DIE film is Ian MacKaye [6.] saying that Fugazi was offered a million dollars by a major label and they said "No" because it "Just wasn't something that was for sale."

[6.] Are you sick of hearing about Ian yet? I've mentioned him a lot, but I just think he really has a good thing going, and that it's worth looking at. And I first met him and saw his scene when I was 20 and looking for something that made sense. And I found it. And no, despite what one article said, I don't worship him. I don't run everything by a WWID test, either. I just think he's a swell cat.

Ian owns his house but hasn't painted the front porch since I met him in 1984. He wears the same ten-dollar tennis shoes I do. His priorities are about his work, not outward appearances . I think that's cool.

One thing I love about Fugazi that ties in with this is they say they don't feel that everyone in the world has to like their band, or even hear them. Contrast this with major labels, or with Nike and Coca-Cola. McDonalds offends me because they destroy the rainforest, but they also offend me because I feel that they are culturally bereft and have to be every gosh darned place I look.

Conclusion

Act the way you'd want to be treated. Business needn't be a "screw you before you screw me" state of affairs. When done the $30 Way, it's a win-win exchange. More of a conversation than an event, and everyone should end up happy. Work at making this happen every time.

Art and commerce can coexist without compromise. There are many valid ways to do this, but it all pretty much comes down to this: Don't be piggy. Don't stockpile. Just let life, fame, money, whatever flow through you. There's enough of all those resources in the Universe for every talented and driven person in the world to have as much as they need .

[ LiB ]


[d]30 Music School
The Angel Experiment (Maximum Ride, Book 1)
ISBN: 1592001718
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2006
Pages: 138

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