Shandon Sahm and Curt Kirkwood

Cris Kirkwood and Shandon Sahm

Me as DJLance

Yo Gabba Gabba!!!!

My Namesake in Music

Todd Rundgren, 60 years on and still rockin the house! His band at Alexandria, Virginia's Birchmere club last night included drummer Prairie Prince from The Tubes, bassist Rachel Haden from That Dog, and longtime Rundgren associate keyboardist/guitarist Kasim Sulton. The show was loud and wonderful. They played some Todd hits and a complete performance of his newest album called Arena.

Another of my music heros

Martha Davis rockin the late oughts!

The Motels were a favorite of mine in the mid-eighties. Their new album This is actually as good if not better than anything they did back in the day. So right on to Martha for coming back with great songs. Her career in music started in 1971, so she's been at it for a long time.

Kristen Hersh is my kindred spirit

Kristen's new online project is CASH, which stands for Coalition of Artists and Stake-Holders....read about it here. and here's what she recently posted on a MySpace bulletin:

My latest song from "Speedbath" is here. It's called "Around Dusk" and I hope it treats you well.

Now that CASH is a viable entity and not just an amorphous blob floating around in our heads, those of us who work here are becoming increasingly aware of its quieter gifts. I knew this construct was necessary in order for us all to share interesting music, but intangibles like political implications are now sneaking into my world view. I've always believed that what I do has more in common with the field of research than the field of entertainment. Of course, from the beginning, I knew that in order to reach people with sound, I had to make records and play clubs. Sounds simple, gets ugly.

In order for someone like me, (The Artist) to reach out and grab the Music Business Experts who in turn, reach out and grab someone like you (The Audience), they ask you in not-so-subtle ways to play by the "rules" of the entertainment industry. These rules are not mysterious, nor are they difficult to follow. In fact, there's only one real rule: be attractive. If you work in the recording industry, you must play attractive music, you must be an attractive human. If you work in the film industry, you must make attractive movies, you must be an attractive human, etc. The definition of attractive is where we all fall down.

Healthy people view it as a melange of sensory, intellectual and emotional input. Healthy people are attracted to music and film -- and humans -- that move us. The wildly unhealthy entertainment industry views attraction as: easy. That's it. Just like high school! This is how bimbos happen and I don't just mean the Barbie doll kind. Male bimbos, female bimbos, musical and filmic bimbos...a bimbo is anything one-dimensional enough to be taken at face value with no potential for insight or growth on the part of the consumer (oooh...scary...insight!). Every time Nothing is wrapped in Fashion and sold to the Public, a bimbo is born. Bimbos always make someone money. They're e-e-e-e-easy.

I've watched musicians I loved buy into this insidious phenomenon. The idea that to bring their music to more people they'd need to dumb it down. Whether they believed in their own success or their own failure didn't matter, the end result was the same: something imaginary killed their art. The "experts" ask, are you a bimbo? If your answer is no, then you flunk the music business and eventually you disappear. If your answer is well...I could be...here's a picture of me 'looking cool'...here's a flimsy song... then you're allowed to share your music with the public. But what music? You dumbed it down! Why bother?

For twenty years I lived with this quandary. Thank you, CASH people, for removing me from that ugly world, for taking our amorphous blob and running with it. I make records, I play clubs, I'm in the music business, but I no longer have to answer to some vague idea of a "market" or demographic. I no longer have to play by the crap rules of the entertainment industry, I only have to answer to my stake-holders. Now my job is to throw myself, body and soul, into my research and share it with you.

Love, Kristin

Note: As of this writing, Kristin's CASH subscribers come from 12 different countries on 5 different continents.

Burn Your Barbie

In late 1992 my former band Adulterous Woman was brainstorming ideas to get more people to come to see our live shows. We were based in Tempe, Arizona, home of Arizona State University. Despite the college campus population being all around us, we still had a rough time interesting people in our music. The bands that were most popular were the middle of the road bar bands playing covers or weak, unimaginative originals. We were used to only having about 20 people at most of our gigs, so we decided to put our minds to it and try to improve the numbers.

After throwing out many ideas, we finally hit upon a couple that seemed likely to work. First we decided to try to make our shows accessible to all-ages, even though that would mean talking club owners in to the idea. Secondly, we decided to have themed shows, the idea being that it would be easier to interest local press in a show that was an event rather than "just a few bands playing another gig". We approached a club called Hollywood Alley in Mesa, AZ about it doing the all-ages shows and they were agreeable to letting us host one night a month. Fortunately we had a good relationship with the club, had played there many times, and they liked that we were taking our gigs seriously.

Burn Your Barbie wasn't our first all-ages theme show, but it was the most successful. The idea came about thanks to a then recent news item about the Barbie Liberation Army. After playing the first show in October 1992, we scrambled to quickly organize the elements of Burn Your Barbie and to start our pre-show preparation for the date in November. We took photos of a burning doll (not a Barbie unfortunately) and made flyers and homemade t-shirts. We wrote a press release and sent out packages to all the local papers for which we could find contacts. We typed and copied flyers with pro-Feminist information on them to leave on tables at the club. Everything was falling in to place.

Then we discovered a glitch in our plans. The night of our show, which was November 15, ended up being the same night that the Ramones were playing in Mesa with Social Distortion supporting them. We momentarily thought we were sunk. Then we found out that the Ramones show was actually beginning early in the evening and supposed to be ending around 10PM or so because it was at an outdoor venue and the city of Mesa had strict noise ordinances. So we kept up our pre-show planning and hoped it wouldn't be a problem.

The press releases were a success. Several smaller papers mentioned our show. And the ASU Campus paper, called The State Press, wrote up a full page article about the show, taking info from our press release packets. Even Phoenix's city paper, The New Times Weekly, had a mention and a picture in their "things to do that week" calendar section. We didn't stop our promotional efforts there. The evening of our show, we headed over to the Mesa Ampitheatre and flyered hundreds of the Ramones/Social D fans' cars before being asked to leave by security (they also asked us to go and remove all the flyers, but yeah, like that was going to happen). We billed our show on these special flyers as a Post-Ramones/Social D. Party.

The other bands that we asked to play for Burn Your Barbie were selected very deliberately. We knew an all-woman hard rocking band called Burning Bush (they even had fire in their name!!!), and had played with them before. They were a perfect choice so luckily they were totally in to it. The other band was from Tucson and were called Crotch City. I recall that they were recommended by someone, perhaps Hollywood Alley door man Steve Metz with whom we were friends. Crotch City were beyond punk rock and bordering on performance art, with on-stage dancers and other antics. One of the male dancers wore pink furry briefs and for much of the show nothing else. The drummer stepped out from the drums on selected songs and played trumpet. They were pretty amusing.

Our set went very well, and by the time it started we estimated a crowd of about 125 people. Hollywood Alley was fairly packed, and it was all of our effort that got people there. We felt pretty proud. After our set ended we were approached by a staff member of Hollywood Alley asking us about possibly using our equipment to have a jam session. He said he was friends with a couple of guys from Social Distortion and they wanted to play a little. We were floored! Members of Social Distortion actually came to our Post-Ramones/Social D. Party. It just goes to show you how hard work can pay off, i guess.

End of the Blog Posting Month

well i actually did it....i posted every day of November for National Blog Posting Month. It was hard some days but it was also fun to find new ideas for posts, and it was good to excercize my brain.

They made badges available for the end of the month celeb-log-rations. But like Julian Cope says, "Badges! Badges! We don't need no stinking bagdes. We're cissified and civilised, I want to be a savage!"

Ok so don't look at the right column of my page where i have my NaBloPoMo badge.....

Brian Eno talks about Hugo Largo

I have this promotional tape, called "Brian Eno Wants You To Hear Something"*, which i got when i worked in a record store in the mid-80s. It's of Brian Eno talking about the band Hugo Largo on the eve of the release of their second album, Mettle. The fact that he made this recording at all is a testament to his immense interest in, and support of, the band. It's certainly not the kind of thing he would do in support of his own records. At times he sounds a bit uncomfortable, especially while laughing at something he has said, as though he was speaking to someone while recording it. But mostly he is sincere, eloquent, and insightful. His remarks touch on many interesting areas regarding music as an art form.

*If the copyright holder of these recordings wishes me to remove the excerpts i've posted i will do so.

Eno on Mettle 1
Eno on Mettle 2
Eno on Mettle 3
Eno on Mettle 4
Eno on Mettle 5

Who Can It Be Now?

I had dinner once in 1987 with Colin James Hay. He was the lead singer for the 80's band Men at Work for those of you who don't recognize the name. It wasn't just the two of us, it was a record company dinner for him as he passed through Phoenix on a radio tour supporting his first solo album Looking for Jack. Instead of touring with a band and playing gigs, he did interviews and played acoustically at radio stations.

My then boss Mark at Tower Records asked if I wanted to go simply because he could bring someone, and he had only been told about it that day...so it was a last minute kind of thing. I thought, "free dinner, sure", and off we went. It was in Scottsdale at a upscale Italian restaurant whose name i can't remember.

I ended up sitting right next to Mr. Hay, even though I was just somebody's guest at this thing. We talked about music mostly (No! Really?). I remember a lengthy conversation about Frank Zappa, and another about life in Australia. He was very nice, and he even chatted me up about my then band Fine Science once I brought the subject up.

The most memorable thing about the whole evening, though, was when we left. Colin and I walked out together, still talking, and as we stepped outside it was snowing. He said something like, "Hey, look at that?", and i replied, "yeah, this doesn't happen in Scottsdale." Of course it didn't stick, it just melted immediately, but it sure was beautiful.

Julian Cope Q and A

Some dumb questions just have to be asked, i guess.

Q: Would you ever do another Teardrop Explodes gig?
A: Would you ever return to having your mother wipe your asshole?

Roxanne Shante is so Smart

She gave a big corporation a taste of their own bad medicine, only she made it good medicine because she's not evil for doing it, but rather she's a frakkin' genius. Thanks to Kelly for letting me know about this, and the Star Wars one as well. She in turn found the Roxanne Shante one here.

The Sugarcubes at The Roxy in Los Angeles, 1989

The Music Travesty (aka the Industry)

I must make clear my position concerning the Music Industry. Why? Well, because i just want to and that's what freakin blogs are for, eh?

I loathe the Music Industry.
Enough said.
No, it's actually not enough.
I could write pages and pages and still not say enough.
But i digress......maybe after a few paragraphs........

In my last post, the Skafish review, i pointed out that Mr. Skafish was a fringe artist, and hadn't had any commercial success after his two IRS Records releases. It was not meant as criticism. Actually, it's a fact i find admirable. Not the fact that he wasn't able to continue making lots of music, which i would have loved to continue buying and listening to, but the fact that he continued to be an artist despite the lack of commercial success. Check out the timeline on the Skafish website for a rundown of his career (http://www.skafish.com/timeline.htm).

Many artists have been in the same boat as Skafish, being given artistic ultimatums by Major Labels. Ultimately you have to make choices. Do you dilute your vision to stay signed, or hold to it and risk being dropped. By now most musical artists should know what to expect because so much has been documented about getting the shaft from the Industry. But back in the 70's and early 80's it wasn't just a fantasy that you could make your music and the labels would help you find your audience and everybody would make money and you could have a career making records and touring.

Many artists did, and do, obviously. But if you just don't happen to be commercial enough, selling only a mere 30,000 copies of your release or less, then you are booted out past the labels' bottom lines. And i might add, sent the bill for all of the expenses you incurred as their signed artist; expenses that they swore to you were necessary to make it.

The band Poster Children knew what was up when they refused tour support and continued touring in their own Econoline van, cutting costs to maximize what they would bring home from a tour, knowing full well that their album wasn't going to go multi-platinum. They knew their market, knew their fan base, and also knew how labels operated. They "enjoyed" (perhaps) making four albums and an EP for a major label before being shown the door. They continue to be DIY-ers and are (i can only surmise) much better off for it. Check them out at http://www.posterchildren.com/

Suddenly Tammy has another tragic story. They were a fairly commercial band on the surface (where commerciality counts). They had some really real hooky songs, Beth Sorrentino's voice was soft and musical, they were all top notch musicians, and they even had that piano-instead-of-guitar thing going on in the 90's that made Ben Folds Five such a smash for a while. Sure they were also a bit Artsy and perhaps didn't have the "stage presence" of Coldplay (sic), but still they made two really great CDs and toured with some high profile bands. They were, by all accounts, getting somewhere. Then they made a third record and Warner brothers shelved it and dropped them. They broke up and the fans were left wondering for a long time. It was just the bottom line. They didn't sell enough records for a Major Label to keep them.

I don't understand why labels don't just give these bands less advance money, advise them to record their CDs a little more cost-effectively, advise them to tour in an econoline van, and then still put their records out for them and keep nurturing the talent that they signed in the first place. In other words, they could just scale back their finances to match the amount of records that they can sell. Instead they destroy them, financially ruin them, send them a final bill. It's just short sighted corporate greed. Major Labels are just no places for artists. They're the places for money lusting, vacuous, fame seekers.

Some people, perhaps most people, confuse the Art of Music with the recording, producing, marketing, and selling of it. It's two different things. There are multi-thousands of musical artists creating music that isn't getting heard by very many people, if any. Just because it never goes through the machinery of the Music Industry to become a product with a barcode in no way invalidates it. And by the reverse principle there are lots of songs that get released and become huge hits that i would hesitate to Art. But the creators/performers involved are still referred to as musical artists, even though i'd sooner call them pawns. Of course that's an opinion.....eye of the beholder, et al. I certainly will never suggest that musical value judgements are objective.

For me it all comes down to sincerity. When i like an artist, it's usually because i hear sincerity in their work. Bland corporate drivel vomitted and regurgitated for profit doesn't appeal to me for some reason. Go figure.

I'm so glad the internet exists now, because even fringe artists (and i consider myself one) can find an audience (i'm still working on this) without having to deal with money-grubbing corporations who only look after their bottom line, and who don't care about Music, but rather exploit it in a most crass way. I think the internet has the potential to be the great equalizer for giving musicians the independence to be the artists they want to be, and to express themselves honestly and sincerely. Let's hope that can continue.

This has been Part One (of many).

Marriage is Serious

Some people don't take Marriage seriously. To Celebrities it's just another scheme for publicity, but it's as legal for them as it is for any other straight couple. Yet they go in to a marriage knowing full well that they will be ending it soon at some crucial time: when the publicity is needed, when they are between movies, or between albums. Britney Spears' few-minute-long mariages are fully recognized and legal. And lots of heterosexual people who aren't celebrities have a similar lack of respect for the Sanctity of Marriage.

So why should those people get to shit all over Marriage and take it for granted when there are many other people who would respect it, but who can't qualify? There is no good argument for not giving Marriage rights to Gay people. In fact, with Britney as an example there's no good argument for not giving Marriage rights to kitty cats. There'd certainly be more dignity and respect.