Okay, I know I said we’d talk about publishing deals this time out, but I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about what I call “Fallout from the alternative revolution” and I want to talk to you about it.
Hark back to the Eighties with me (yeah, I know it hurts): remember staying in your room playing your guitar for hours? Remember turning on MTV and having your choice of either M.C. Hammer or Paula Abdul? Remember wondering why everybody looked so stupid and why everything sucked so much? Ah, but do you remember Metallica, that huge but somehow underground band who brought hard rock back? Remember Jane’s Addiction, the deranged genre-busting art-metal band who sparked off Lollapalooza? Do you remember the first time you heard Nirvana on the radio?
It was pretty exciting in the late eighties/early nineties when things started to change and real bands started to get exposure. The utterly fantastic concept of making music that you wanted to make, being who you really were, and actually getting signed because of it became a reality. Now, at the end of ’96, a lot of people who “got with the program” during that time (Let’s record with a big-name producer! Let’s spend a lot of money on the video!) are bitter about the choices they made. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve heard, “we kinda got screwed,” “there was no time to think” and even, “it sort of made me hate music.” I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again (especially now that labels are snapping up everything they can get their hands on): think about what you really want.
I’m not saying that getting signed to a big label is an expressway to hell or that you’re guaranteed to lose all control-my experiences have generally been pretty good. What I want to get across is that you don’t have to automatically assume that it’s the right thing to do, or that all bands on small labels (or who do everything themselves) are suffering while they dream of their chance to work with a major.
Consider the nutty punk band NOFX: they play packed clubs wherever they go; they make their own merchandise and sell tons of it. I haven’t seen an NOFX bank statement, but I’d be willing to bet that by eliminating the major label middleman (keep reminding yourself: a record label is like a bank-anything you receive money for is recoupable, i.e. a loan to be paid back out of your royalties), they are not hurting for cash.
There’s a trade-off here: because do-it-yourself bands, well, do everything themselves; they keep a much greater percentage of their profits while actually selling their records for a lower price than stores would. With the giant overhead involved in making, promoting and selling a major-label record, oftentimes an indie band can make the same money selling 200,000 copies that a signed band would make selling 1,000,000! Of course, an indie band without the benefit of the aforementioned label machine will have a much harder time selling records at all: no MTV, no promo people to get the songs on the radio, no distribution company. Selling your records to distributors, doing mail order, producing your own recordings, booking your own tours-I’m not saying it’s easy to do these things, just that it may be more satisfying, and in some cases even more profitable to control your own destiny.
That’s my thought for the day, now let’s get back to normal and into some stuff that sucks
Here’s something else to think about: along with hiring a lawyer (we talked about this a couple of columns ago), you may want to hire a manager. This is another area where there is no “right way” to do things, and a lot depends on where you want to go. If your aim is to get signed and conquer the world, you may want to employ the services of a professional manager. Hooking up with one can happen in a number of ways-through your label after you’ve gotten a deal, through your lawyer, or sometimes even from soliciting a management company yourself (remember, though, what we said about sending out tapes. . .)
You don’t necessarily need to hire a professional. If you’ve just started gigging, the jobs that you, your roadie, and your manager do are going to be pretty similar. A friend who wants to help out, has a lot of common sense and can deal with problems (and can’t tune a guitar to save his/her life) may be the someone to make part of your team and to grow with. If you want to know what it’s like in the “big leagues,” pay this person 20 percent of everything you make-it sucks, right? Get used to it.
At first, your manager will probably be doing things like booking shows, basic tour managing, writing the rent checks for your rehearsal room, things that you could do but would rather leave to someone else so you can concentrate on your music. This doesn’t mean that you should call anyone who hangs around and puts up a flyer “manager.” Along with your roadies and your lawyer, your manager will at times be like an extra member of the band-someone to grow with you, who you trust to represent you.
There are a lot of bands who are self-managed, even big groups on major labels! It all comes down to how much work you’re willing to do yourself and how much control you want to keep over your own career, versus using (or maybe being used by) the giant network of labels, managers, publishers and lawyers known as the music industry.
Here are the next eight bars of the “I Am Legend” (La Sexorcisto) intro (see FIGURE 1)-some real “clawfinger” chords. Next month I promise we’ll talk about publishing. See you then.
* The first 4 bars are the same as the last 4 bars from last months lesson, minus the opening slide.
