GOOD. LORD. -CDJ

It seems that once you establish yourselves as a viral music video band, you’ve got to go bigger/more complicated and creative on each video to keep getting the hits. Nicely done Ok Go, this video is pretty slick… paid for entirely by Chevrolet? Does it matter? Not to their fans.

• Ok Go set up over 1000 instruments over two miles of desert outside Los Angeles. A
• Chevy Sonic was outfitted with retractable pneumatic arms designed to play the instruments, and the band recorded this version of Needing/Getting, singing as they played the instrument array with the car.
• The video took 4 months of preparation and 4 days of shooting and recording.
• There are no ringers or stand-ins
• Damian took stunt driving lessons.
• Each piano had the lowest octaves tuned to the same note so that they’d play the right note no matter where they were struck.

For more information and behind-the-scenes footage, see http://www.LetsDoThis.com and http://www.okgo.net. Many thanks to Chevy for believing in and supporting such an insane and ambitious project, and to Gretsch for providing the guitars. -Ok Go

Music Consciousness
Voyno

If you were listening to the radio or watching MTV in 1997/98, you probably heard the band Fastball…a  lot.   You might not remember the band name but the song “The Way” was a huge hit that helped sell over a million records.

I stumbled on a video with guitarist/vocalist Miles Zuniga on Gary V’s Wine Library TV internet show of all shows (apparently he loves wine).  It was totally random but I couldn’t stop watching because the stories that he shared about going were so entertaining.

1. Getting a record deal  in his early 20′s and then being dropped
2. Realizing how important promotion is to a record
3. How working in the wine room of a restaurant was the best job he had
4. A chance meeting with Gregg Allman (Allman Brothers) on the plane who told him to start a new band-Fastball
5. How the accountant of the record label gave them the approval (after the president got fired) to make the big 2nd record after their first record tanked. They should have been dropped, but chance worked out for them
6.  How the radio promoter at the label knew he was getting fired so he took the fastball record by chance and flew across the country and called in favors to help make the record as big as it was.

It’s worth a watch if you got some time to kill.

Here’s the song that did everything for them.

Oh by the way, if you got a Kindle, get the Updated and Revised version of  The New Rockstar Philosophy already!!

Music Consciousness
Hoover

Paul McCartney is 69 years old.

Paul McCartney is touring Europe and plays for approx 3 hours every night with a full band.

Paul McCartney is 69 years old!!

We were fortunate enough to catch Macca’s show in Milan last week as part of our International Book Tour (we will be showing you more from that soon). I was blown away by his energy and how he looked.  He definitely looked middle age but I wouldn’t have pegged him as 1 year shy of 70 years old.  The guy played like he was 25!  I couldn’t believe it. He was hitting his high falsetto and he moved around the stage like a boss.  He had this modest child like quality about him too. Unbelievable.

I was hoping for at least 2 hours but wasn’t sure if an old man like him could do that. He did that and more. He played two encores and everyone in that stadium left satisfied, guaranteed. Since he was touring to support his most recent album, the Fireman, I figured he’d play more new songs than old. To my surprise I only think he played one new song, the Coldplayish single from the album.  The rest were pretty much all hits.

That’s what people want to hear when you’re at his level. The hits.

McCartney knew that people paid a good chuck of change to hear the big songs from his long career.  The show was sold out (this in a country that is facing an economic meltdown too).  He delivered the goods big time.  He played Beatles’ classics like “Hello Goodbye”, “Paperback Writer”, “Day in the life”, “Hey Jude”, “Black bird”,” Obla-di-obla-da”, “Let it Be”, “Back in the U.S.S.R”, “Helter, Skelter”, “Golden Slumber”, and “Yesterday”.  He went into the Wings’ catalog and played “Live and Let Die”, “Maybe I’m Amazed”, and “Jet”.  There were many more songs.. just sooo good.

The point is McCartney is thinking about the audience more than pleasing himself by playing mostly new material. Imagine what it must be like playing songs he wrote years ago night after night. He’s doing it for the crowd.  As much as music is an expression of yourself and you do it to please yourself, there is no career without the audience.

Here are some vids I took at the show. Enjoy!

McCartney compilation of tunes from the November 27th gig in Milan, Italy:

McCartney does Blackbird (full song)

McCartney does Yesterday (full song)

Music Consciousness
Hoover

We arrived in Milan on Wednesday at Midnight, so essentially Thursday.

We had one last full day in Amsterdam so we made the most of it and checked out the Cup.  We bid farewell to our new homie J.Didd and knew we made a good choice to check out Amsterdam before we hit Italy.

We touched down in Milan near the airport and in a dizzy haze made our way to the subway in order to meet Claudia (co-translator/editor of the Italian book). Apparently she had waited 55 minutes and took off because she didn’t know if we made it or not, so we had to find our way to another station where we finally met. She took us to our new temporary home in Navigli, a very cool neighbourhood in Milan.  She informed us that we were to do a 30 minute talk tomorrow when we go to Bologna, Italy.

So we took our workshop presentation and paired it down and took the 2 hour train ride to Bologna, did an interview with a journalist, and did a talk at this cool bookstore/bar.  We met some cool peeps including Jaluca, an indie label owner from Bologna. It was rad seeing the book displayed in the window of this store. Very surreal.

It’s Friday and we have the day to ourselves so we’re catching up on some blogging and getting some more prep done for our workshop on Saturday. Tomorrow we’re flying to Bari to do another talk and I believe we are receiving our award for Best indie book of the year!

Tonight we’re hanging with the guys from Selton, a fun Brazilian band living and working in Italy.

Check them out below

Music Consciousness
Hoover

I recently got into The Weeknd, a Canadian R&B artist who’s got this incredibly moody/atmospheric/drugs vibe to his music.  Part of his image involves associating  himself with American Apparel style models and photography.  I stumbled across a Vimeo video for his tune, “High for this”, which I don’t think is an official video-but it works really well.

It’s just several clips of models auditioning on video put together to the music.  It looks like it was done on an iphone camera or some sort of HD camera that isn’t super high-end but good enough.

It’s such a simple concept,  but I had to watch the whole way through and tell friends about it.

1.The models get to be in a music video as part of their audition so they get promotion out of it.

2. The director/artist probably gets to meet all the models which is a nice bonus.

3.  The video takes a few minutes to cut together and get up on Vimeo, saving time and adding to the on-going promotion.

4. You have a slew of people who will want to see the video before even knowing the musician or the song.

5. It probably cost $0 (minus the time to get it organized and put together). 

Just more evidence that you don’t need a lot of money to a make a compelling music video.

Music Consciousness
Hoover

Coldplay and their amazing colorful set hit Saturday Night Live recently with Emma Stone hosting. Catch the musical performances below.

Paradise:

Waterfall:

Music Consciousness
Voyno

Butch Walker has an enviable music career. Lead singer and songwriter for the one hit wonders Marvelous 3, he’s now moved on to become a songwriter for some huge artists (Katy Perry, Weezer, Pink). Recently Harper Collins published a memoir of his life in the music business. I haven’t got my hands on a copy yet, but it’s probably filled with truth bombs like the 5 industry lessons he gave the Hollywood Reporter:

• Don’t think your first record deal will be the last:  “Be cautiously optimistic and know that, when you get signed to a label deal, you don’t want to put too much precedent on that or rely on it too much for your future. Like most people have this timeline dream — you get signed to a record deal and all of a sudden, people think you’re rich and all your friends think you’re going to be famous and you think you’re going to be famous, so you go out and get your band name tattooed on your body and the whole nine yards. Cut to a year later, nine times out of 10, you maybe make about a grand, your band gets dropped and your tattoo gets covered up. That’s what happened to me. I’m on my fifth record deal.”

• Don’t get somebody’s likeness tattooed on your body unless they’re dead…“Because if they’re still alive, you’re going to run into them and it will get real creepy. Like I have Elvis Costello’s face tattooed on my left arm from way back in the 1990s when he got me through a very dark period in my life. And of course, one time I’m drunk at the Chateau Marmont, it’s midnight, I get into the elevator to go to my room and Elvis Costello walks on. It’s just me and him on the elevator, I’m hammered, looking at him and pointing at the tattoo. He’s, like, hitting the ‘door open’ button going, ‘Oh God’ and I realized at that point that I would never be able to just bro down with Elvis Costello….

• Beware of publishing deals.“Something I talk about in the book is publishing deals, which are basically banks: they give you an advance of money to own the rights to your songs. A lot of people get suckered into doing these deals early on in their career and they give up 50% of the publishing of every song they’re going to write for the rest of their life, basically for a small advance. When they say ‘half a million dollars,’ that’s a huge amount of money to a kid, but it’s hard to know what that really means until you do the breakdown — that taxes will get half of that, management is going to get 20%, the business manager is going to take 10% of that and your lawyer will get a big chunk of it. What’s left is the smallest piece of the pie, and if you’re in a group like Earth, Wind and Fire, where you’ve got 12 band members dividing the publishing equally, well, you can do the math from there. You’d probably get beer money for the weekend for basically losing ownership to half your song. So I try to tell people to hang on to their publishing unless they’re the only person getting the money and there’s not a ton of people taking a piece of the pie.”

• For every alcoholic beverage you consume, drink a glass of water. “I spend the first half of my day rejuvenating and replenishing everything that I’ve destroyed in my body. If you don’t drink the water, you could end up destroying your liver, becoming an alcoholic and then depression from there… Drinking is more of a celebratory thing for me, but if you use it as a crutch for when you’re sad that’s when the negative side effects come in… In my old heavy metal band, I drank a bottle of Jägermeister on stage — disgusting shit — and then afterwards, an entire bottle of champagne. Somehow, I ended up in the hotel room with the crew giving me a shower because I had caked on rotten cream pie in my hair. …”

• Realize that a lot of times, it’s not about the song; it’s about favors.“When I was worrying about trying to get my own songs on radio and being on a label that solely worried about that, I learned a lesson: it wasn’t about the quality of the song, it was about timeshares in Cabo and the Lakers season tickets…..That’s when I finally realized, it was not about the commerce of art, it was the art of commerce — what can you give me and what can you get from me in return? Not, ‘Wow this song is amazing!’ There are some good people in radio, but I didn’t feel comfortable selling myself that way. Whatever, if I can help somebody else get a song on, then they can go do the pie-eating contest. I’m not hungry for it anymore.”

You’ve probably heard that comedy is all about delivery.

Well timed punch lines delivered in a certain style of expression are what make comedians stand out and be funny.

The same is true of music.

You hear a singer sing and you can tell how much he/she feels what’s she’s singing.  Is she just trying to hit the right notes or is she trying to convey to the full extent-the feel of the song.   The song “Nothing Compares to You” would not be sung the same by Rebecca Black as it was by Sinéad O’Connor. I would argue she does it better than the man who wrote it, Prince.

Even in hip hop where there’s no singing per say. The way an Emcee throws down a verse is incredibly important.  Think of the attitude that Kanye throws behind his lines.

Delivery is important.

Sinéad’s Version of “Nothing Compares to You”

Prince original (live)

Dave Chappelle Bit

Music Consciousness
Hoover

It’s old news, but I just found Rick Ross was a cop before becoming a gansta’ rap star. That’s right, Mr. Boss was a correctional officer in the early 90′s.  Not quite a real cop, but still…

As per wikipedia,

In July 2008, The Smoking Gun produced details linking Ross’ social security number to an eighteen month stint as a correctional officer in a Florida prison facility, along with a photograph purporting to be Ross in his correctional officer uniform.^[23] Ross initially denied that the photograph was of him;^[24] after overwhelming evidence of his past came into the public’s eye, Ross later admitted that he did work as a correctional officer in Florida during the early 90′s.^[25] In a 2008 interview with AllHipHop.com,^[26]“Freeway” Ricky Ross, claimed offense that Roberts used his name and identity when he learned that The Smoking Gun posted documents revealing Roberts’ previous employment as a Florida correctional officer.^[27]

The funny thing is, Rick Ross continues to have success. In my mind, that kind of news would strip any credibility he had and lose him fans.  I’m sure some left, but I think for the most part, people don’t care. Maybe people dig the character even if it’s not really him.  Like a good actor, you’re not judging him as much by what he’s really like as a person.

I go on preaching the value of authenticity and was about to throw in the towel on that idea, but I realized he’s authentic to the character.  If he’s not really himself, he pulls off his character well.  If people can still dig it even if they know it’s not true, they’ve bought into the character enough. That’s authenticity in a slightly distorted way.

I don’t know the guy nor am I a huge fan, but I hope he recovers well. 

Music Consciousness
Hoover

Steve Jobs was already a legend before October 5, 2011.

All over the world, people mourned the passing of the computer messiah who changed the world by integrating culture/art with technology.  Going beyond just providing utility to the customer, he wanted to make something that would make people drop their jaw in awe.  That’s why people anticipated each presentation where Jobs would hopefully blow their minds.

What other company consistently has people anticipating what they’ll do next?  Apple doesn’t have customers.. they have fans.  Fans who’ll pay top dollar for what they release because they trust Apple.  What other corporate CEO says the Beatles inspired his approach to team work? Or dated Joan Baez because she was so close with Dylan (another huge Jobs influence).  What about exnaying committees and operating like a start-up even though they are one of the biggest companies in the world?

Apple gets shit for being so secretive but people dig that even though they might not admit it.  It’s Apple’s method of keeping the mystery alive and well.  You wonder what mad scientist activity goes on beyond the walls of 1 infinite loop, Cupertino, California.  It helps drive interest and curiosity because you know something crazy cool is being worked on.  You just won’t know until they tell you.

Steve Jobs was so insanely into what he did and it showed. He cared about every little artistic detail from fonts, to screen brightness, to how products are packaged.  He was so determined to create a dent in the world that he created a religion in the process.  People believed in his dream and as a result, helped him deliver amazingly cool tech products for the world.

Music Consciousness
Hoover