Music Man–The Nasal Tone

I partially blame Christopher Carrabba (aka Dashboard Confessional). He had a large hand in starting the whole thing that has since become entirely too common and even predictable in so much of the new music that’s coming out these days, especially among the scene crowd. Nine out of ten demos I receive have it. The thing with Christopher though, is that he, while certainly not the first to sing almost entirely through his nose, connected with fans on such a personal level that they totally overlooked it. His timing was perfect, his lyrics struck a chord, and his word of mouth cult status helped get him to the point where the nasally tone of his voice became his signature sound, it was cool for its time (sorta). The truth is, if you were to see him live back in 2001, you would see a show where the entire audience sang every word to every song, Christopher literally didn’t have to sing, and it was pretty remarkable to be honest. Admittedly I own, and occasionally still listen to “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most” (I didn’t go much further back then that). It’s a solid album for it’s time.
My problem is that since then, it seems every up-and-coming singer to grab a mic has followed suit in the vocal department and wow is it grating. What used to be the exception, has now become the rule. When I come across new music in my daily pursuit, I’m actually relieved when the singer can sing, I mean, come on, shouldn’t that be expected? It’s not. People complain about auto-tune’s over usage in pop music today, which is a topic for another time, but what about the kids who sound like their mouths were sewn shut and their nose was their only outlet?  The minute I hear a singer crooning through the ol’ schaunze, I’m turned off because it sounds (a) contrived and lazy, and (b) like every other kid who discovered a microphone and Garageband and decided to make a record. Carrabba was singing through his nose, but at least it seemed like it was coming from his heart.

*note-in the past two or three weeks I’ve actually come across some pretty great non-nasal singers, all of whom will at some point be mentioned in this blog.

-Jay Harren

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Music Man–Thank You Goodnight

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Music Man–What’s Next?

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Music Man–How It Works

I’m often asked what the process of signing a band looks like, or more to the point, how exactly a band goes from getting the attention of someone that does what I do, to actually inking a deal. Contrary to popular belief, A&R people don’t walk around with contracts in their back pocket ready to whip out to have a band they were just blown away by sign on the dotted line. And believe it or not, deals aren’t made on bar napkins either, not nowadays anyway. Here’s the process in a very small nutshell, at least where I work…
Through various networks that my colleagues and I have created through the years (discussed in an earlier blog), and through a lot of personal listening to some pretty bad music, we eventually hear about something cool that strikes our interest. Often we’ll fly to whatever city that band happens to be playing in so we can get a feel for what the band is capable of (for example, yesterday I booked a trip to see a band in Florida who’s CD is crushing me right now…more on them in another entry). Based on that, and a few other factors, we make decision as to whether or not to take the next steps. And this is where it gets challenging.

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Music Man-You’re Not From Around Here Are you?

I spent the weekend in Nashville attending the Next Big Nashville Music Conference. I saw several great bands from that fine city, but the two that stood out the most were from here in Atlanta. It’s always good to see a band from my town playing in another city because there’s a much different energy to the show. I’ve seen Death on Two Wheels and Ponderosa play in Atlanta countless times, and I’m always impressed to say the least, as are most Atlantans, which is why both bands have become a staple in this city. But seeing them in another town was different.  I tried to put my finger on it as both bands played their hearts out. Maybe it’s the edge that bands get when playing in unfamiliar territory to unfamiliar faces, or maybe it’s the bottled up energy from so much time in the van in the hours and days leading up to the show. Regardless, there’s a certain amount of grit and hunger that these bands in particular, and most touring bands in general bring to the table when they are out of their element. As I watched Death on Two Wheels play to what was at first a very cold, jaded crowd, I saw their drive and determination to win that crowd over increase with every note. I was reminded once again that that is why I like bands to have some touring under their belt before even considering them for a record deal. These guys literally live and breathe their music. There’s a sincerity and passion in both of those bands, and several like them, that is born from a lifestyle that can only be found on the road. When you’re not sure what floor you’re crashing on that night, and when you shop at the Salvation Army out of necessity and not because of the ironic t-shirt you might find, and when you’re depending on Top Ramen and PBR to sustain you each day, your drive to succeed inevitably increases and each show gets better because all you want to do is win over a few new fans in the hopes that one day they will multiply into a bona fide following and eventually a living can actually be made as a result of the hard labor. And by the way, while to a very small degree it might make it easier financially, getting a record deal doesn’t end the grind of the road; in fact it actually increases the need to stay out even longer than before.
The circuit continues, not just here in Atlanta or Nashville, but all over the country. Some bands break through, others break-up, but everyone I know who has experienced the grind wouldn’t trade it for anything.

-jay harren

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CD Review: Built to Spill — There Is No Enemy

Built to Spill
There Is No Enemy
Warner Brothers

By Al Kaufman

The good news is that Built to Spill, the godfathers of the indie rock scene, are back in fighting form after a few meandering missteps. The bad news is that few seem to care. It's been about 10 years since Built to Spill put out a truly great album (Remember Perfect from Now On and Keep It Like a Secret?) and during the interim, upstarts like Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, and even the entire indie-rock supergroup Monsters of Folk have filled the vacuum. So Built to Spill's great new CD was tossed onto the masses with nary a whisper.

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Music Man–Don’t Call Me Norm

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Music Man–This Question Is On Repeat

As I sat to write this blog I was approached by a friend who asked me the question that I was going to write about in the first place. I get asked it all the time, probably once a day. I’m flying to Boston tomorrow to sit on a panel at the Boston Music Conference, and the main subject of the panel revolves around this same question. The question is “how do I find the music or bands that I want to work with?” Or from a band’s perspective, it’s “how do I get the attention of a label?” The answer is there really is no specific or easy answer. I find music the same way most music listeners find music: on-line, word-of-mouth, press, radio, conferences, whatever.

For example, a producer friend of mine whose taste I trust and respect told me about a band he recently worked with in the studio. Without hesitation I listened to the songs and loved what I heard and I’m now seriously considering working with the band. Another example that I’ve used in this blog before is the band I met at the Atlantis Music conference a couple of years ago, who I ended up signing (Hey Monday). Or another band I work with, Manchester Orchestra, had created such a buzz and such a legitimate following that literally every label in the industry wanted to be a part of what the band had built. Or more recently the local support that 99X gave to The Constellations which, along with hard work on the band’s part, lead to their recent signing to Virgin. There are many ways to find the bands; we just have to be alert.

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Music Man–The Atlanta Sound?

The recent, well-deserved signing of Atlanta’s The Constellations to Virgin records made me think about the Atlanta music scene. On a national and international level, Atlanta is known best for its thriving hip-hop scene, and what an incredible scene it is. Within a two mile radius of my house there are a plethora of world-class studios owned and operated by legendary artists and producers like Outkast, Dallas Austin, TI, and Akon.

But what about rock? One of the many things about the current rock scene here is that, while it’s not necessarily infamous like say Athens in the ’80s, Seattle in the ’90s or Brooklyn now, it is actually much more diverse within the rock genre itself than any of those cities.

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Music Man–Less is More

I got an advance of Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 album recently. It’s actually pretty solid throughout, but that’s not what this is about. The album has fifteen tracks on it, and like I said, it’s pretty solid but it seems to me that fifteen tracks on any album is too long these days. Jay-Z can get away with it because well, he’s Jay-Z after all, and people will listen through the entire thing at least a couple of times until eventually boiling it down to their favorite tracks which will then make their way onto their iPod. Or, if it’s mind-blowing from start to finish, which some albums definitely are, and some may consider The Blueprint 3 to be, the whole thing makes it to the player. The point is that in the year 2009 with media so readily available to anyone at any time, new bands/artists should release their music in smaller quantities putting out only the best of what they have, no filler. This obviously isn’t a new idea, people have been doing it for years, but it seems especially important now in an era where competition isn’t only with other bands, but with other forms of media entirely, it’s a lot to expect a new listener to sit through 12 or 15 songs at a time when they haven’t previously even heard of you. This isn’t to say people won’t listen to an entire album, I do it regularly, it’s just that it’s harder and harder, given the state of music availability, to get people to spend that much time with the unknown.

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Music Man–Hitting the Road and Learning a Lot

I just spent the last week on tour in England with a
band I work very closely with, Manchester Orchestra. This is a band that
regularly spends two hundred to two hundred fifty days a year on the road, so comparatively
what I did was nothing, but it was enough to get a peek into the lives of
people who we as an industry, and more accurately we as a label, completely
depend on. If I had my way I would insist that everyone who does what I do for
a living experience what I just did. Not because it’s cool to live the rock n
roll life for a few days, although it definitely was, but because we should all
know and understand first hand what band life is like. We all grow up with the
perception that being a rock star is the easiest, coolest job on earth, and
don’t get me wrong, it definitely has a very large upside, but it also has a
side to it that we tend to forget about. The absence of family, friends,
stability, comfort, and overall familiarity with whatever place you happen to
be in, can weigh heavy on anyone who experiences this on a daily basis,
especially when the return is paid off in potential,
not immediate earnings.

When I got home I reviewed my Tweets from my time over there
and thought I would re-post some of them here with some expansion as they
capture fairly well what we did over the past several days, starting the first
night in London (Tweets in bold).

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Music Man–Getting on the Radio

I spent almost nine years of my life working for 99X radio here in Atlanta. It was a great gig. The majority of that time was spent as music director (MD) for the station, which means that I, along with the program director (PD) would, among other things, choose which songs made it to the air, and which ones didn’t.

There were two questions that I would get asked on pretty much a daily basis. They were (1.) Why do you play the same songs over and over and over again? And (2.) How can I get my band on the radio? Although I used to have a very clear cut answer to the first question, the longer I’ve been out of the radio business the fuzzier that answer becomes. In fact, if I listen to radio at all, I find I have the same complaints, unless it’s a band that I happen to work with then my complaint is that they aren’t playing them enough, so I’ll leave that one alone. Today I’m going to address the answer to the second question.

Interestingly, I realized after entering the record business, that my criteria for signing bands is strikingly close to the criteria we used in deciding whether or not to play a band on the radio, so consider this a two for one deal. Here it is in an over-simplified nutshell…

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Music Man–30 Million Nickelback Fans Can’t Be Wrong (or can they?) Pt. 2

We’ve
established the difference between music junkies and passive music fans. If you
want to brush up click here to see part 1.

What
I want to establish this week is the reason behind one song’s success over
another. Why do bands like Nickelback continue to have multiple chart topping
songs album after album. Surely even the most passive listener alive has heard
enough by now, right? Nope. In my opinion there are two reasons why people
continue to gravitate towards songs that are otherwise repugnant to the ears of
my junkie pals. Here they are:

 Escapism–The HBO show Entourage is a huge hit. What makes this
show a hit is that those who watch it are given the opportunity to escape into
the lives of the show’s four main characters. They watch attentively each week
as Adrian Grenier’s character Vincent Chase has his way with whatever
super-model he wants, then hops into his Aston Martin and hits a pool party
with Jessica Alba while reading scripts for his next movie which he’ll get paid
twelve million dollars to star in. Meanwhile, his childhood friends and half
brother go along for the ride taking whatever scraps they can get, and Vinnie’s
scraps are pretty solid. It’s escapism at its absolute finest. This is a show
that your average American worker loves to watch because for 26 minutes per
week they get to live vicariously through Vincent Chase and his boys. It’s
magic.

Similarly
when Joe Six-Pack hears Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger sing about having sex (see
the stunner “Figured You Out”—sample lyrics, I kid you not “I like your pants around your feet, And I like
the dirt that's on your knees, And I like the way you still say please, While
you're looking up at me” from the 2003 album The Long Road) he momentarily lives vicariously through a real rock
stars point of view. For better or worse, and whether the listener realizes it
or not, for three minutes and forty-nine seconds he is a rock star doing
whatever he pleases with a stranger, and then it’s back to the grind. The
listener temporarily escapes into the song. He then buys said song (or in
Nickelback’s case the entire album) or requests his local radio station to play
it over and over again so he can live, if only for a moment, the life of Chad
Kroeger (or any other rock star).

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Music Man: 30 Million Nickelback Fans Can’t Be Wrong (Or Can They?) Pt. 1.

It’s safe to say that one of my least favorite bands of all time is Nickelback. I can honestly say there is nothing I like about them. Not one single thing. Nothing. But here’s the problem. Nickelback has sold over thirty million albums over the past several years. Let me repeat that because I don’t think you read that correctly: Nickelback has sold over thirty million albums over the past several years. My favorite bands barely sell over one hundred thousand copies. These are the bands that critics and music snobs tend to gravitate towards, but the general public couldn’t care less about. So is it my taste in music that’s completely off? Am I into the wrong bands? When I try to find bands for my label, am I looking for the next cool thing, or the next big thing?  Can it be both? This has been on my mind a lot lately, and it’s starting to bother me. I’m trying to figure out what causes people to buy the records they buy, and stay away from the records they stay away from, no matter how many critics, bloggers, and music snobs rave on and on about them.

(By the way, yes, I’m aware that thirty million album sold doesn’t mean thirty million different people bought the album when you take into account repeat customers over the course of their discography, but you get my point—If not thirty million, at least one can safely say millions upon millions of people have purchased Nickelback…but I digress).

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Music Man – Time for A Change?

In gearing up to hit the road for a bit, I went to see
several unsigned bands in Atlanta this past week. Some new, and some that have been around for a while
(maybe too long?). It’s the latter of those two groups that have been on my mind
lately. I’ve been thinking about bands who slug it out on the road
either regionally or nationally for several years only to play to the same
small to mid-sized crowd every single time. No growth, no buzz, no excitement, no creativity; just boredom.

At what point should bands in this situation take inventory
of their situation and consider a minor if not major change? Notice I didn’t
say at which point should they consider quitting; I wouldn’t go that far unless it was
painfully obvious that it was time (as it was with my own band in the early
2000’s – and WOW was it obvious). It just seems that generally speaking, more
bands than not get caught in the same rut over and over again, and they don’t
know how to get out of it. In fact, most don’t even realize it’s happening to
them, and that’s the WORST. If you’re a band, and you’ve been playing the circuit for
18 months or longer and you have not seen your fan-base grow
considerably, its time to consider a change. It’s time to start wondering why
your music or show isn’t connecting with people. Why aren’t people spreading
the word about your show, your songs, your merch, SOMETHING?!

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