The Music Biz: Most Frequently Asked Questions – Asking the Right Questions

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: In the music industry of today, the more questions that are asked more frequently will help artists make the smarter choices. There are a great deal of people out there that know what they are talking about, just as there are truck loads more than are fakes. The more questions an artist asks before they decide on a plan, a producer, a manager, a label or any person or invoice, the better the chances of the right decisions being made. Dig in and ask the questions. Go after the clarity and look for the red flags and the stumbles. You do not need to be an industry expert, but with the more you ask, the more you can find out if the person you are working with is or isnt. Ask for examples, ask for proof, ask the who, what, why, where, when and how of any...

Posted on 17 May 2012 | 10:40 am | Read more...

Fleecing Indie Artists: The Music Conference

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: You say you want to make money in the music business and you don’t care how. Let’s see if you’re ready. Greedy? Check. Ruthless? Check. Predatory? Check. Okay, you just might be well-prepared to screw artists by putting on a music conference. Indie musicians dream of many things. Fame. Fortune. Somebody playing one of their songs. Despite the realism of that last point, a great many indie artists are so naive that people can sell them a load of hooey if it’s called something like “the tools you need to succeed” and packaged in some important-sounding music conference confab clusterfrack event. After enduring too much verbiage from all these affairs, I wanted to react in an appropriate way. By screaming, of course, but also by exposing a lot of the telltale signs that indicate you are about to be fleeced. So, here are the steps that an immoral...

Posted on 14 May 2012 | 2:27 pm | Read more...

Force of Nature and Act of God: An Appreciation of Solomon Burke

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: In blending soul, R&B, gospel, and rock, Solomon Burke had the ability to reach from the stage and shake listeners to their very core. The might and majesty of Burke is honored in this updated version of a review of his 1997 stage show. It is just before midnight and I am standing on the tacky floor of the Sunset Strip tourist trap known as the House of Blues, wondering about my purpose in life. Why am I in this oversize dive, I ask myself. The HOB has long been a clip joint where every surface has a layer of grime and every employee has the haunted look of a carnival grafter looking for ways to bilk the next mark, the next rube, the next chump. At last, the background music fades out, the house lights dim, and the soiled curtains part to reveal a tuxedo-clad conglomeration of...

Posted on 5 May 2012 | 1:09 pm | Read more...

Guitar Shorty: Long on Talent

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: David William Kearney is a guitar slinger who will happily do axe-battle with you using blues, R&B, or rock. He’ll take on all comers with sweet toned ballads or psychedelic frenzy. And as this long-lost nineteen-ninety-eight article shows, the man has incredible roots. Oh, and he’s still gigging. From the band’s first few notes, it was clear that the packed house at Cozy’s blues club was in for a treat. We just didn’t know how big a treat. The opening numbers featured nifty solos from Terry DuRouen on electric guitar and James Davis on electric keyboards, plus tight rhythm from Howard Deere on bass and Danny Pucillo on drums. Deere, Davis, and DuRouen each took a vocal, and they were smoothly soulful. If these guys had kept going on their own, it would have been a fine night of entertainment because of their tasty chops and a background that...

Posted on 6 April 2012 | 11:35 am | Read more...

Getting the Right Guitar Tone – version 113.5

Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: It’s a rainy day in Southern California so I decided to fool around with one of the things I like doing best … experimenting with guitar sounds. I must confess I used to be pretty promiscuous with tonal experimentation. I went through your EL34s, 6L6 and KT66 power tubes, your Amperex, Mullard, Telefunken and Brimar pre-amp tubes, different combinations of speaker cabinets, etc. The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard would have called this the despair of too much possibility; or, the dilemma of the aesthete, faced with the rotation principle. There’s simply too many options. It’s analogous to fuzz/overdrive pedals. At one point I had a couple hundred of them. Then I realized – how many do you really need? I wasn’t using them, anyway. So off they went. In fairness to them, however, the converse also can be true; different tools elicit separate emotions and invoke disparate...

Posted on 27 March 2012 | 1:00 pm | Read more...