Like I said last month, welcome to the club. C’mon in and set a spell! You’ll like it here with us touring musicians-we’re all either crazy, stupid or both. So let’s see… You’ve been on tour and you’ve frozen and starved all over America-in fact, maybe you’ve even managed to starve and freeze in exotic foreign countries! By now you’ve probably been ripped off by club owners and promoters; your van has broken down in the middle of nowhere at 3 a.m.; you’ve been stopped and searched by the cops; you’ve managed to lose seven different guitar tuners. Believe it or not though, these are “the good ol’ days!” Someday you’re going to look back and laugh (keep telling yourself that-it works, believe me) but for now, we have to get into some stuff that really sucks-namely, business.
Believe me, I’m with you. The only business I want to concern myself with is the business of SOUND-making it, listening to it…. hooking 12 stomp boxes together just to see what it sounds like. You know, the cool stuff. More often than not, creative people aren’t very practical, and vice-versa. This is why there’s a long line of sharks waiting for fresh talent to come along. The industry will chew you up and spit you out and that’s the way it’s always been. You have to protect yourself and your music and you really have to keep on top of your business.
Once your band has become a solid “thing”-you write your own songs, you tour, you make a little money here and there and people dig you- you should start thinking about moving up to the next level. For example, you’ll want to start thinking about what kind of deal you’re going to set your sights on: whether you want to press your own CD or vinyl (and maybe start your own record company) or if you want to sign some kind of a deal with an independent company. Maybe you want to concentrate on getting a major label deal. Whichever path you choose, you have to start making business decisions.
I know a couple of musicians that are right on the brink-they’re just getting into dealing with little labels and all of a sudden they’re freaking out. They aren’t sure about what they’re signing and the labels are trying to get them to do things that they don’t want to do. Project one, I tell them, numero uno-the most important thing to do-is GET A LAWYER. Entertainment lawyers don’t come cheap, but there’s really no way to avoid using their services. It takes some of the fun out of it, but if you learn to think of a record label as a bank (they lend you money to record and make videos, and they take a lot of vacations), and your band as a business (you have to work really hard all the time to sell your products and services), then the need for a lawyer becomes more obvious. You wouldn’t want to bankrupt your business, right?
If you’re going to move up to this new level that I’m talking about, you’re going to start having to make decisions that could really screw you later on-that’s where a good entertainment lawyer comes in. As well as helping you to make the right choices and to understand the music business better (make your lawyer explain everything in simple terms; it’s what he or she gets paid for!), a good lawyer can actually help you shop your demo. As I said several columns back, labels don’t generally listen to unsolicited tapes-a single demo tape in the hands of a well-connected lawyer could do more for your band than mailing out two hundred.
Don’t automatically go with the first entertainment lawyer you find. Just because someone has a law degree and specializes in music doesn’t automatically mean that they’re going to be good for you. It’s important to hook up with one that has a good understanding of what you’re trying to do and is hip to the type of music you play-meet with a few before you make your choice.
One of the first business-type things that you’ll want to do is to do a title search of your band’s name. Good names are getting harder and harder to come up with and it would be a shame if, having finally found one you really like, some other group ends up claiming and using it. You’d have to modify yours if you didn’t want to just give up and find another. This happens all the time; have you heard of The English Beat, for example? The L.A. power pop band The Beat were around first, so the English band had to change their name. Other good examples are Wrathchild America, The Mission U.K. and Dinosaur Jr. Also, did you know that in Canada, Bush are called Bush X? It should go without saying that it’s not a good idea to borrow a name that you know is a registered trademark-just ask Redd Kross and the Low and Sweet orchestra! I can’t for the life of me figure out why the bug spray company never came after Black Flag. Lucky for them, I guess…. Anyway, we’re out of space. More on trademarks, copyrights, business, the law and other things that suck next month.
People sometimes ask me to show them how to play the clean intro passage to “I Am Legend” (side two, song one on La Sexorcisto). Over the next few columns that’s what I’m going to do. It’s mostly based around chords I stumbled onto while messing around; FIGURE 1 is the first four bars.
See you next month.
