MuseWire COLUMN: Rock and roll allows for a wide range of styles, including music that shocks listeners, attacks social conventions, intimidates casual onlookers, and angers the vast majority of people. A band called Foul Play accomplishes all of those things. Fortunately, they are quite good. And very funny. It is eleven-thirty on a Thursday night […]
MuseWire REVIEW: Mysterious goth band The Catholic Comb created a disturbing smoky concoction in 2005 and then apparently remained underground. Yeah, I hadn’t heard of them, either, but now that I know, I’m a convert. Sometimes a good album goes unnoticed. For a while. This one came to me purely by chance. I say by […]
MuseWire COLUMN: Larry John McNally uses emotion like a paintbrush when creating songs. You may not know his name, but you’ve heard his work performed by Eagles, Bonnie Raitt, Don Henley, Aaron Neville, Joe Cocker, Rod Stewart, Jennifer Warnes, Atlantic Starr, Average White Band and more. When a songwriter emphasizes emotional truth in his songs, […]
REVIEW: From his smooth writing style to his commitment to interviewing nearly every possible source involved with the material, there’s a lot to like about Joseph Vogel’s new book on the King of Pop. In fact, considering the poor quality of much that has previously been churned out on this topic, I think a lot […]
REVIEW: Singer and professional vocal coach Teri Danz decided to put her own private lesson plan into a book with accompanying CD. The results cover less than fifty pages but singers will find something valuable on every page. You can sing, right? You hit all the notes just perfectly, you’re never short of breath, and […]
REVIEW: Playing together since 1986, Dennis Davison and Jonathan Lea have now done the impossible: they have created an original Christmas album that still rocks (well, folk-rocks, anyway). Plus, it covers all the emotions that surround the season, not just the traditional upbeat ones. That the album does so at all is deserving of a […]
REVIEW: Music of the avant-garde is for those who are open to outrage, shock, conceptualized art, and boundary-pushing ideas. If you fit in that category, you will enjoy these tales of pioneers wrestling with the 1960s triumphs of their tragedies. Or perhaps it’s the other way around.
MuseWire COLUMN: Until a few days ago, Nektar was nothing more than a puzzling footnote to me. According to everything I had read, this band was a standout progressive rock outfit in Europe during the nineteen seventies. Not making it big in the United States, their fame remained underground to many stateside music lovers, including […]
Music Industry Newswire COLUMN: Buddy Holly. Songwriter. Rock and pop star. Not a one-hit or two-hit wonder, but a 27-hit wonder, all in about 18 months of worldwide fame. Born September 7, 1936, died February 3, 1959, but his songs will live until there is no more music.
REVIEW: Hearing one of the softer tracks from this album playing in my studio, a visitor dismissed it as “NIN lite.” I hear it as something much more complicated: “NIN expanded to include the invasion and conquest of modern classical music.” A chameleon alters its appearance to blend into its surroundings. A load-bearing wall supports […]
REVIEW: If his name sounds familiar, you are probably already a fan of rockabilly. But even if that genre’s blend of rock and country ain’t your thing, these songs are so much fun that you might become a Burnette-ette by the time you get halfway through the album’s dozen hip-shaking tracks. Perhaps you feel you […]
REVIEW: Before seeing the singer perform live, this album sat around the studio for a few months. After playing it a couple of times at various volume levels, the urge to write about it became too palpable to pass up. While several tracks leave me unmoved, the ones that work are propulsive, powerful and possessed […]
REVIEW: Noisemakers unite! Calling all anti-composers and radical music theorists! That was the idea of a group of wildly unpredictable academics and stars of the experimental music world back in “the sixties.” Cage, Oliveros, Neuhaus, Reich, Budd, Foss and dozens more appear in this collection of pieces originally published in the eleven unusual (and now […]
ARTICLE: You already know that pitching songs to music supervisors can be a good thing. In fact, everyone else also knows it, from players and songwriters to publishers and managers. That’s part of the problem. Too many people involved with music are aware of the excellent reasons for making a pitch, including money, exposure, money, […]
REVIEW: Back in the early 1990s, Randy Poe authored a book entitled “Music Publishing: A Songwriter’s Guide.” Several revisions, editions and rewrites later, Poe returned with “The New Songwriter’s Guide to Music Publishing” (Writer’s Digest Books, 157 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1582978048, $18.99) and I am here to tell you that it’s terrific, informative, helpful, and friendly. […]
MusicIndustryNewswire COLUMN: Quick, take this test: Which of the following names do you recognize? Eddie Kramer. Elliot Scheiner. Matt Forger. Ken Allardyce. Michael C. Ross. Rafa Sardina. Joe Chiccarelli. Brent Fischer. Time’s up. Pencils down. Anyone have some answers? (Anyone, anyone, Bueller. . . ?) Whether or not you can identify those names, it’s a […]
MuseWire COLUMN: It’s eleven o’clock at night and I am being driven down a pleasant tree-lined residential street in Van Nuys, one of the three dozen cities in a section of Los Angeles called the San Fernando Valley. Or just “The Valley,” as it is called. As in “Valley Girl,” the Frank Zappa hit song […]
MuseWire COLUMN: Not in my house! How many kids have heard that phrase from an outraged parent who is nearly apoplectic over the latest sonic creation of artists in rock, pop, rap, modern country, goth, death metal, etc.? From the Andrew Sisters’ “Rum and Coca Cola” to recordings by The Fugs, Cee-Lo, Prince, NWA, Ornette […]
MusicIndustryNewswire COLUMN: Some songs sound special. There are recordings where there are licks that are tasty and satisfying every time you hear them. Recordings with such a powerful groove that you dance even if you’re sitting down. Recordings where the atmosphere or the feel is unique or even majestic, and the songs never lose their […]
MuseWire COLUMN: For the first twenty years of rock ‘n’ roll, brand names were not often associated with band names. The prevailing view was that corporate sponsorship represented crass commercialism. But by the time of The Rolling Stones 1981 tour, things had changed. Jovan, manufacturer of Musk, was prominently featured in most aspects of the […]
COLUMN: There are friendly battles between many organizations in the music industry. Competition brings that out. There are also some interesting love/hate relationships. You know, like when companies want to fight Apple, but only when they’re not trying to get into bed with them. So it is interesting when an organization can bring together such […]
MuseWire COLUMN: Ahh, the Stupor Bowl, that great annual montage of violent sports and commercials. Sixty minutes of football, obliterating nearly four hours of running time. Sixty-eight commercials, obliterating all vestiges of credibility and good taste. True, there were some fine-looking spots and some good laughs in some of the others. But by and large, […]
MuseWire COLUMN: You cannot teach someone to write good song lyrics. That’s just how I feel. And yet, I kind of changed my mind after reading “The Art of Writing Great Lyrics” by Pamela Phillips Oland (Allworth Press, 260 pages, $18.95, ISBN 978-1-58115-093-3). First, she has the idea that a friendly attitude and a tell-all […]
MuseWire COLUMN: Imagine a world in which you receive money every time your music is played. There are firms that appear to be working to make this dream a reality. Representatives of Soundmouse, Landmark, ASCAP and APM spoke about the intriguing possibilities on a panel presented by the California Copyright Conference. Titled “Digital Recognition Technologies: […]
MuseWire Column: While I tend to cheer for whatever team is competing against the USC Trojans, I have to admit that the University of Southern California campus is magnificent, as is their annual Institute on Entertainment Law and Business, co-sponsored by the USC Gould School of Law and the Beverly Hills Bar Association. The event […]
MuseWire COLUMN: When BMI announced they were teaming with Digital Hollywood to present a day-long conference entitled “Content, Copyright & Commerce,” a few thoughts popped into my head. First, it seemed that the title was a brilliant and concise description of where we stand in the evolution of the music industry. Second, while the business […]
MuseWire COLUMN: Unlike the USA, music lovers in Europe are likely to embrace multiple genres and styles. As international music artist Anand Bhatt puts it, “The tastes of music buyers in Europe aren’t as dependent on what’s piped through major media. They’re much better at thinking for themselves, and therefore they make more eclectic choices […]
MuseWire COLUMN: The title of this article is the same as the title of a book that should be owned by every songwriter and music publisher. That book is: “Music, Money and Success: The Insider’s Guide to Making Money in the Music Business,” Sixth Edition, by Jeffrey Brabec & Todd Brabec (Schirmer, $24.95, 524 pages, […]
MuseWire COLUMN: The answer to that question is “no” because we all hear differently. This is not a big deal for most situations in life, but it can be critical in the music industry. Your music moves you. My music moves me. But do we like each others sounds, and why? Every time a song […]
A lot of people listen to current hits and familiar oldies. They stream them, play them, download them, hear them in clubs, and sometimes even buy them. They embrace them to such a degree that any unique music is virtually excluded from their lives. True, new artists and new songs are played, but the music […]
MuseWire COLUMN: Let’s say you want to make some money in the music business. Let’s also say you have no scruples about how you get the cash as long as it looks somewhat legit. There are many dark alleys down which you can run, but there’s also a brightly lit pathway that is a relatively […]
MuseWire COLUMN: Getting information about songwriting and music publishing is easier than ever because of the Internet but the problem is that the Internet presents more information than anyone can assimilate. Compounding the problem, some of the information is just plain wrong. That’s one reason it is so helpful for songwriters to affiliate with one […]
MuseWire COLUMN: Ted Cohen is considered a visionary in music and technology, and I agree. After all, he played an important role in devising the licensing agreements that helped create the Rhapsody subscription service and the iTunes Music Store. He got started in computing in 1979 with an Atari 800 (“8K of memory tricked out […]
MuseWire – COLUMN: Ambrose Bierce began his “Devil’s Dictionary” in an 1881 newspaper column. His definitions were sometimes funny. For example, he defined rum as “fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.” Many of Bierce’s ideas hold true today, such as his definition of an idiot as “a member of a large and powerful […]
MuseWire – COLUMN: Music revenue is poised to reverse a decade-long descent. Yes, you read that correctly. Despite all the dire news stories of the past several years, there are reasons for optimism in the music business. Slowly, inexorably, the economic picture is going to begin improving for artists, songwriters, publishers, distributors and record labels. […]
You can find a tremendous variety of human behavior on LA Talk Radio (www.latalkradio.com) but it is the most varied on Sheena Metal’s radio shows. With three programs on the air for a total of 14 hours a week, Metal is one of the busiest voices of the station, which is both a live and […]
MuseWire – COLUMN: Reading recent posts by music industry analysts Bob Lefsetz and Paul Resnikoff, you might think the entire concert part of the music industry has gone down the tubes. This is not to imply that the contents of the Lefsetz Letter and Digital Music News are not fair, it’s just that the comments […]
COLUMN: “Why make music?” The question was full of disdain and contempt. Spit out at me by a distant relative, it was insulting as well as irritating. While my girlfriend at the time instantly responded “Why not?” all I could think of in reply was “It increases beauty in the world, something that is not […]
COLUMN: Since I started managing a music publishing company, many songwriters, singers, bands, managers and composers have sent me e-mails asking about decisions they need to make in their careers. One of the most common questions is “Should I sign a non-exclusive agreement with a library that wants to re-title my songs?” If I give […]
COLUMN: There may be a world of money waiting for songwriters, publishers and performers, but collecting the revenue internationally can be perplexing. It is so complicated, in fact, that the California Copyright Conference (CCC) dedicated one of their monthly programs to the topic. The CCC panel called “Music Rights: A Global Perspective” touched on some […]
COLUMN: There was a strange shift in the cosmos in 1999. “That’s when ‘mp3’ first overtook ‘sex’ as the top search term on Yahoo,” notes Tim Quirk of Rhapsody. And why was that change taking place? Because there was “a new piece of software written by a college kid in Boston that let people copy […]
COLUMN: Okay, I admit that those four dreaded letters, DMCA, do not actually stand for a law that prevents copyright holders from making a living. DMCA actually stands for Digital Millennium Copyright Act. And what that stands for is allowing big corporations to make more profits at the expense of the little guy. In other […]
COLUMN: You can find many excellent books about music, songwriting, and music publishing. I know because I own some of them, like “All You Need to Know About the Music Business,” by Donald S. Passman, which is the most entertaining fact-based book on the subject. Although Passman makes me chuckle in almost every section, I […]
COLUMN: How much money have you earned from your songs? At any given moment in time, it is difficult to know the answer to that question. For example, eight of my albums are on iTunes but they are distributed by an indie record company and prying reports out of them is a bit like attempting […]
COLUMN: Right this minute, one of your songs could be playing somewhere in the world and you may not know it. Your composition might be on terrestrial radio, internet radio, broadcast television, satellite radio, cable TV, satellite TV, in a nightclub, at a bar, or a myriad of places where you cannot hear it. As […]
COLUMN: The description on Amazon was interesting so I purchased “The Future of Music: Manifesto for the Digital Music Revolution” by David Kusek and Gerd Leonhard (Hal Leonard/Berklee Press, $16.95, ISBN: 978-0-87639-059-7), not realizing it was written in 2004 and released the following year. Sure, the publication date is on the site but my mistake […]
COLUMN: Music was at the heart of nearly three-quarters of the eleven million commercials that aired during Super Bowl XXXXVMLCDMIIEEEEE or whatever they were calling it. And music was the bleeding heart of the halftime break. Even some segments of the game itself were set to music. For example, the player intros (“Let’s meet the […]
COLUMN: Sure, the magnificent array of musical products known as The NAMM Show was just a teensy bit smaller than in years past, but you would never know it once you were walking through aisle after aisle of shiny, flashy, nifty displays. Could anyone get to see everything? Nope. Could anyone get to hear everything? […]
MuseWire staff editor Scott G reports on his visit to this year’s Winter NAMM 2010 in Anaheim, Calif. While there is always more to see than the brain can always assimilate, Scott has picked out some of the things which called to him from across a crowded room. NOTEFLIGHT CRESCENDO Composing music? Do it in […]
COLUMN: Songwriters need to be savvy about song structure, chord changes, modulation, harmony, and lyrics. A songwriter might know all that yet still remain poor and undiscovered. If that describes you, don’t despair and don’t give up. There are a number of ways to make money from your music. In this article, we will attempt […]