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PostPosted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 10:43 am
  

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Yep. They are inflexible about that.

There is no going back on the downloading and the new acts that are being signed to label deals are increasingly coming from YouTube (eg, Bieber). The complaint coming from one part of the industry is these acts are subpar. On the other hand, the role of the industry is to make them sound and look better than they would be without them. The industry actually has to contribute more than front money. For me and thee, it barely matters. Once out of your teens and early twenties, you are off their radar for pop and now country (if you can any longer tell the difference). The cycle time for the acts is faster so it's a raw deal unless you grab control early which means you need a very good music lawyer ready to renegotiate early.

The Monkees weren't an aberration. They were the template for a lot of what follows. Even Badfinger was mostly a studio creation. Again, as Arlo noted at the GC, it's a good deal for the indies who can actually make something happen without having to go begging to the labels. Money may not fall from the sky but you can be heard.


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PostPosted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 3:26 pm
  

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Amen to all of that, Len. Hell, late in his life, Johnny Cash couldn't even get a record deal until Rick Rubin signed him to his then new label. There are a lot of elder folk artists but they're either established or they have a circuit that they play. I don't know how good a living they make but it probably follows the old joke, "How do you make (gross) a million dollars in the music business? Invest three million!

"Not exactly. Nothing works just as you hope." ...Capt. Jean Luc Picard


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PostPosted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 4:12 pm
  

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I was running sound a few weeks ago for a well established(25 years or so) folk act that I will leave nameless. Not big names, but established.
They have had a change in personal because of death and retirement, and at least one of the three members does this as his only means of support. We were talking and he told me in terms of getting gigs these days, he went from telling venues what they charge, to asking how much they could pay. A sad sign of the times on more than one level.


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PostPosted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 4:24 pm
  

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Yep. A good friend of mine was Johnny's road guy, stage manager, chief make sure it runs for him and the Highwayman. He said Rubin was gold and their proudest moment was buying the billboard with Johnny giving Nashville the flying fickle finger salute.

Ya gotta be creative. Doc Swenson on Facebook asked how he could deal with the coyotes on his farm. After a long attempt at humor a friend suggested I tell him to call the coyotes in Arizona and have then deliver a truck load of undocumented road runners.

Cheap but funny. :wink:


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PostPosted: Thu Aug 05, 2010 10:27 pm
  

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Larry wrote:
Get out and listen to live music,like I do weekly, then ya ain't gotta worry about it! Real digital music is played with the fingers!:D

....And if you can't get out to hear live music play some of your own music at home. If you're not musically inclined then humm or whistle. Get some friends or starngers together, sit around the campfire and have a sing along. Ahh the good ol days.. :)


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PostPosted: Fri Aug 06, 2010 10:23 pm
  

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If the room is still in business...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/magazine/08music-t.html?_r=3&pagewanted=1&hp&adxnnlx=1281106838-ZfyKqKTV425UxpWGwAEn/A

Sigh... not many rooms in the middle, and it's hard to have much sympathy for the overlords as long as they are willing to hurt the little rooms with the kid in the corner playing old songs and originals so the guys at the top can fly private jets and elevate LadyGaga.

I love music. I loathe the business. When I shuffle off, a lifetime of songs will go with me. Sad but so. :cry:


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 07, 2010 2:29 pm
  

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len wrote:
Yep. A good friend of mine was Johnny's road guy, stage manager, chief make sure it runs for him and the Highwayman. He said Rubin was gold and their proudest moment was buying the billboard with Johnny giving Nashville the flying fickle finger salute.


And here is that ad!
http://www.savingcountrymusic.com/johnn ... dle-finger
I love it! Read somewhere that Steve Earl has it framed and hanging in his studio.

And talk about turnabouts, I had a venue offer me more than I asked for! Go figure!


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 07, 2010 9:49 pm
  

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Yep, that's it. :lol:

Now be careful. Pretty soon you're gonna have a tour bus full of women and stuff and you'll be stuck trying to live up to your legend.

Meanwhile, got to rehearse for my solo at church in the morning. It's a pretty Pepper Choplin piece, Reap What You Sew. Then back to the battle with The Burns Sisters. Gotta love the Internet. Where else can you make enemies of people you've never met but hope to. 8)


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 2:00 am
  

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Good luck with your church solo. I've played in church before. Mainly piano, organ, autoharp, dulcimer and canjo. I get stage fright bad so I don't do it much. Funny thing is I can play just fine in the bluegrass jams with folks watching us. Think it's cuz there's a group of us playing for fun and not just me... :)


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 4:18 pm
  

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len wrote:
Pretty soon you're gonna have a tour bus full of women and stuff and you'll be stuck trying to live up to your legend.

Meanwhile, got to rehearse for my solo at church in the morning. It's a pretty Pepper Choplin piece, Reap What You Sew. Then back to the battle with The Burns Sisters. Gotta love the Internet. Where else can you make enemies of people you've never met but hope to. 8)


Ha, ha! Highly unlikely! My tour bus is a Geo Tracker and I'm also the roadie and sound person. Damn! Nobody to blame stuff on but me! What you said about asking what venues pay is so true these days. I've also noticed that they're still paying most bands what they did 35 years ago. A drummer friend of mine (who makes his own brand of snare drums and has sold them to tons of well-known artists) sits in with a lot of bands and said he was paid a whopping $65 on his last gig! Hmmm .... actually that's less than we got 35 years ago!

Battle with the Burns? Uh, oh! Is that on Facebook? It's easy to get folks riled on there, even when you not trying to!


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PostPosted: Sun Aug 08, 2010 5:53 pm
  

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It went great, Cheryl. That is a very pretty piece. Choplin writes great stuff for choir. Very singable and moving.

65 bucks. Yep. I was getting 120 for solo evenings and about 90 for sideman gigs. It was fun money for me. I'd hate to be a kid out there trying to make a living. My son's band is almost pay to play. The road guys in Nashville are going broke. T-Bone said LiveNation would be collapsing without LadyGaga. It looks like Arlo is doing alright but he's Arlo and going further and further from home although I know nothing of the reasons. It's rough for the groundlings.

T-Bone asked me if I realized he agreed with me (different list) and I said yes, but we have to take different sides to reveal the panorama instead of the snapshot. That way people can get a wider view of the issues and emotions instead of one partisan's rant to the other partisans.

Yeah, FB. The topics of the day, of course. In the 70s we were up to our hips in Iranian and Saudi students in the nightclubs. They made no bones about their superiority or intentions to kick the US out of the Middle East when they got home. We laughed them off until the Embassy was taken hostage. Then we realized it was true that saying it was the truest indicator of intent. Since then I'm a bit wary of bending over backwards to be tolerant when in the presence of those who really will screw me in any position.


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 6:08 pm
  

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I did a gig with a rock group in the 70's where we did a talent contest at the private school I was in. We won it and everyone split the $$$> I made 25 cents! LOL. Thought I was rich. So glad to be back online. The cable modem crapped out yesterday. So my folks and I had to go to Comcast to get another one. We couldn't find Comcast. The only way I found it was I finally called a friend who'd been there before and asked her. Whew! It's good to be back among the living...


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PostPosted: Mon Aug 09, 2010 11:52 pm
  

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ugh...I can remember gigs that cost me money...

len wrote:
It went great, Cheryl. That is a very pretty piece. Choplin writes great stuff for choir. Very singable and moving.

65 bucks. Yep. I was getting 120 for solo evenings and about 90 for sideman gigs. It was fun money for me. I'd hate to be a kid out there trying to make a living. My son's band is almost pay to play. The road guys in Nashville are going broke. T-Bone said LiveNation would be collapsing without LadyGaga. It looks like Arlo is doing alright but he's Arlo and going further and further from home although I know nothing of the reasons. It's rough for the groundlings.

T-Bone asked me if I realized he agreed with me (different list) and I said yes, but we have to take different sides to reveal the panorama instead of the snapshot. That way people can get a wider view of the issues and emotions instead of one partisan's rant to the other partisans.

Yeah, FB. The topics of the day, of course. In the 70s we were up to our hips in Iranian and Saudi students in the nightclubs. They made no bones about their superiority or intentions to kick the US out of the Middle East when they got home. We laughed them off until the Embassy was taken hostage. Then we realized it was true that saying it was the truest indicator of intent. Since then I'm a bit wary of bending over backwards to be tolerant when in the presence of those who really will screw me in any position.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 10:02 am
  

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Quote:
ugh...I can remember gigs that cost me money...


Me too. For some, by the time I paid transportation, strings, meals, and a room for the night, I was definitely in the red. So I quit playing those.

The ones that get to me are the "if you play this for free, you'll get more work" or "you do this for the love of it, right?". My last partner, God rest his soul, was a very popular and extremely gifted player. Every year we were offered a slot in the local Big Outdoor Festival which of course we were told was a freebie. Every year he turned it down because he knew (musicians are tribal and gossipy) that other groups were getting stipends just to show. They used the freebie groups as the walk-ins, meaning they got a half an hour on the big stage as the gates opened to make sound so the crowd could follow the sound and find the stage before the next act which was the act the locals promoters wanted to promote.

Ted pointed out to me that on the three nights of the festival several of the best rooms in town would be looking for acts because the act they had booked would be at the festival either playing or spying and that we could take our pick since we were a) available and b) in the same league. He was right about that every year.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 10, 2010 9:43 pm
  

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Frat and sorority parties always amazed me. You agree for a good wage for a certain amount of time. When the time was up they would pass the hat to get us to stay. It was almost always more than the original amount.


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