We'll Take Manhattan

Brandracketeers Chris Parker, Mark Willett and myself (Tim Scanlin) were in NYC September 6 through 10 for the world premier of The Art Of Flight snowboarding film, which we music supervised for the stellar folks at Brain Farm Digital Cinema. The premier was held at the legendary Beacon Theater in the heart of uptown Manhattan. The sold out show was attended by 3,500 industry folks, boarders, and assorted celebrities (wassup, Justin Timberlake?!). Artists featured in the film include Sigur Ros, The Naked & Famous, Deadmau5, Black Angels, M83 and others. What can we say about it? It's mind-blowing, and exceeded all expectations. Thanks to director Curt Morgan and his incredible team for creating a truly landmark film, and for allowing us to be a part of it.

In addition to the Flight premier we also took the train out to Long Island to see the first Quiksilver Pro NYC, taking place in scenic Long Beach. It's one thing to sit in our comfy chairs all day working on Quik and Roxy projects, but it's another thing entirely to get out on the sand and actually watch stuff go down in front of you. Congrats to all the Quik and Roxy folks who worked so diligently to pull this thing off after the event was almost scrubbed due to a hurricane the week prior. Y'all kicked butt.

Most days were spent traversing Manhattan, meeting with assorted label folks, without whom we wouldn't have a business. Thanks to everyone who took time out to have a chat or drink a beer with us. Brandracket hearts you.

Finished off the trip with a stellar meal at Ma Peche, then headed home, totally beat, but rejunivated by all the cool and inspiring people we met. Can't wait for next time. Here's a few shots...

The scene outside The Art Of Flight premier @ The Beacon Theater the night of September 7th. 3500 people in attendance.




The Art Of Flight director Curt Morgan (red baseball cap) introduces the Brain Farm team before the lights go down.


The Quiksilver Beach House, Quik Pro NYC, Long Beach, Long Island

So You Want To Buy A House...

...You knock on the door and say to the owner, "Good day, I'd like to buy this house!" The person at the door says, "Oh, wonderful. You can have the first floor for $200,000, but you'll need to talk to the person who owns the second floor about buying their half." You think to yourself, "Okaaaaay, that's weird." But you really like the house. So you say, "Where can I find the person who owns the second floor?" And the person at the door says, "I have no idea."

Eventually you manage to locate the person who owns the second floor of the house. You say to them, "Hi. The person that owns the first floor of the house says I can buy it for $200,000. So here's your $200,000 for the second floor." "Oh, no," says the owner of the second floor. "I'll need at least $400,000 for my half of the house." And what's worse, now the guy who owns the first floor is saying, "Well, if he's getting $400,000, then I want $400,000!" By this time, you're really PO'd. All you want is a freaking house, and there are lots of other houses, many of which are just as nice but much cheaper and easier to buy. So you go to the equally nice house next door. This time, the entire house is owned by one guy, and he's very excited about selling it to you for $100,000 total. In fact, he really appreciates that fact that you want to buy it, and goes out of his way to accommodate your request for new fixtures in the bathroom and a fresh coat of paint.

Some "houses" are really easy to buy, and some are a nightmare. Rightsholders: are you doing everything you can to make it easy for people to license your music (like, for instance, knowing who the other rightsholders are for the tracks you rep, and quoting fees that are line with going rates)? If not, you're shooting yourself in the foot. It's a buyer's market out there; make sure your houses are in order. We thank you for it. ~ Tim

Running Shoes: Punk As F#@!

Saw Buffalo Tom last night at the Troubadour here in LA. They completely smoked it.

I needed that, coming at a time when I'm so freaking busy that I've damn near lost sight of why I loved music in the first place. You can have too much of a good thing, and musical burnout is a very real occupational hazard in our line of work. The show last night reminded me of why I've devoted my life to this stuff.

I've seen the 'Tom, like, 15 times (I'm no spring chick, in case that hasn't been established by now). And every time I see them, I'm struck by how completely ordinary they are in every way except their musical talent. Bill, Tom and Chris looked exactly like your 3 pals that showed up on Sunday afternoon to help you move your couch. Jeans, button down shirts off the rack from Target (these are working men, with families to feed) and running shoes (?!). There was no hipster irony in these threads, no sartorial snarkiness. It was simply three dudes who've always had, and continue to have, their priorities straight: an incredible workman-like devotion to writing and playing godhead songs with a feverish intensity...and then fashion somewhere down around the 7th or 8th rung. (In fairness, Bill was wearing a rather sporty fedora that looked great on him.)

Contrast this to the many hipsters that I encounter at my fave Eagle Rock lunch spot, The Coffee Table (so tasty!). I suspect that many of these people are in bands, and I also suspect that many of them are mediocre to lousy. Because most people who put that much time and effort into looking the way these people look are not spending nearly enough time and effort writing and recording godhead songs. Yes, there are exceptions to this rule, and some people -- The White Stripes, Joy Division, The Velvet Underground, Bowie, Nick Cave, Tim Rogers from You Am I, my Eagle Rock homegirl Best Coast -- are able to achieve the magnificent feat of looking incredibly cool and writing godhead songs.

The Buffalo Tom dudes are not among this group, or else they would be significantly more famous and well-off than they are now. But I get the feeling they don't care, and that's part of why I love them. They put the music first, and discerning listeners and show-goers like myself don't give a hoot if they're not wearing v-necks and rolled-up jeans. In fact, I'm REALLY glad they're not.

Another reason why I heart Buffalo Tom? Because Bill Janovitz has blazed a major trail in the straight world, just as I'm attempting to do. Dude has a very healthy real estate career in full swing. Guess what, kids? It's possible to write classics like "I'm Allowed", "Velvet Roof" and "Sunday Night" and go on to have a respectable career that your mother-in-law can be proud of. Who knew??

As someone who's followed the exact same path as these guys (albeit one of much less renown) -- band dude for years, then "real career", wife, mortgage, kids -- I'm really in awe of what they've achieved. In short, these guys are badasses. They can wear whatever the hell they want on stage -- even running shoes. They're allowed. ~ Tim

Roxy Chicken Jam 2011

So instead of ranting and raving this month, I thought I'd spare you and just go with some photos of our recent trip to Mammoth, California to help out with Roxy's biggest event of the year: Chicken Jam.

We booked Grammy winner La Roux to perform and were generally responsible for making sure she and her party of 8 arrived safely from the UK and were well taken care of during their stay.

After a last minute road closure that required the band to stay in Reno for the night, they made it to Mammoth in one piece and proceeded to tear up the slopes almost immediately upon exiting their vehicles. A very nice group and we got along swimmingly.

Due to blizzard-like conditions, the concert was moved from the outdoor plaza at The Village to the Canyon Lodge. Hats off to Roxy and XL5 Productions for making a drab cafeteria into a kick-ass, 1500-capacity club by showtime. The free gig was packed within minutes and went off, with Elly (aka La Roux) proclaiming it one of the best they've ever done. Smiles all around, and then it was off to Hyde Lounge for the after party. After shutting the place down we ended up back in our suite for a fairly epic after after party that ended at 5:00am with me and Mickey, La Roux's hilarious keyboard player, discussing our mutual love for Ian Brown. I think the fact that we watched Hot Tub Time Machine, like, 5 times during our stay inspired us to do a little snow-bound raging of our own. That movie rules (and better it than The Shining...).

Congrats to Roxy for an awesome event, and thanks to everyone who helped make it happen. We love the snow and all, but next year let's do it in Maui. :)

A few pics for your perusal...

The view from our suite the morning after arrival. Lots and lots of snow. The La Roux show was supposed to take place in that plaza down there. Not so much.


Setting up for the show.


La Roux dressing room, adorned with a sign hand-crafted by our very own Mark Willett.


La Roux going off. Yes, she played "Bulletproof" and yes, it was awesome, including the story about how she told Jimmy Iovine to stick it for telling her that it wasn't a single. You go, girl.


Unnamed Brandracket staffer sleeping off the after party. The drive home was a bit...rough.

See ya next year! ~ Tim

To Sir (Geldof) With Love

I'm definitely not missing being at the circus that is SXSW this week. Like others, I contend that it's largely a waste of time (and I've lived the fantasy/nightmare enough for several lifetimes, thank you very much). But based on this report, I am bummed to have missed Sir Bob Geldof's keynote speech, in which he apparently echoed what I've been lamenting for a long, long time: that nobody is saying anything worth hearing, and that there's a distinct lack of, as he puts it, "disgust" in the proceedings of this thing we call popular music. Here's a choice quote (bolding is mine):

“What’s music got to say about it? I don’t hear it. Maybe I can’t hear it. Maybe this hyper democracy of the Web simply gives an illusion of talent. You can download a studio. Download any instrument. You can pick up any instrument for nothing. You can make, cut and paste to create fab artwork to make your CD. Everybody has got the means to say anything they want, but nobody has anything to say. We need to talk about it."

Glad to see that I'm not alone in my concern and my desire to hear someone shake things up. And again, I ask that if you know of an artist that's "disgusted" (as defined above), please let me know. I'd love to hear them. ~ Tim

The Death of the Scene

Awesome story here on The Drive-By Truckers and how they're essentially completely ignored by the Indie Rock Cognoscenti.

I've spent years proclaiming this band the best American rock outfit and, while it's clear that thousands of rabid fans agree with me, it's nice to see someone articulate it so well and convincingly.

I must confess to not having really sunk my teeth into the band's new album Go-Go Boots, but I've watched a few of the video vignettes that they've created to help promote it, and they're a fantastic glimpse into the inner workings, history and general awesomeness of this uniquely American crew.

And they've got me lamenting the fact that regional scenes -- groups of artists and the sounds they create as defined by their geographical surroundings and proximate peers -- are largely a thing of the past.

Ultimately I blame the internet. Yeah, seriously. Because (no) thanks to the internet, some kid in the farthest reaches of God Knows Where can be exposed to every musical trend that's occurring in the world. And that is both awesome and horrible. It's awesome because The Kid can be exposed to all kinds of music. And it's horrible because The Kid can be exposed to all kinds of music. That is, instead of creating his own sounds and songs with limited outside influence, where he's forced to mostly figure it out for himself and create something original, he can just mimic something he sees on YouTube or MTV.com or Pitchfork. Meanwhile, thousands of kids are doing the same thing. The result: homogeneity. Everyone sounding (and wearing and saying) the same. Nobody doing anything that's truly unique or out there.

Yes, there are plenty of instances where exposure to outside musical forces resulted in a new, exciting composite. Keith Richards discovering Chuck Berry, The Clash discovering Jamaican rock steady, M.I.A. blending bleeding edge production techniques with Sri Lankan folk music, Vampire Weekend using African Highlife guitar techniques. In the case of the latter, were they exposed to it in their Columbia dorm rooms via the internet? Quite possibly. Was that a good thing? Absolutely. But these instances are unique in that 1) these artists were fundamentally more talented most of their peers and 2) they took something new and melded it with something else that was their own to create an exciting amalgam. Unfortunately, most artists are not sophisticated enough to do this; they simply internalize what they see and hear and regurgitate the exact same thing.

Of course, this issue of the influence of outside forces on the artist's creativity has existed since the first time someone painted something in a cave however many millennia ago. Someone else saw it and it affected them and their art. But we've never seen it on the totally pervasive, inescapable level that it exists now. There's influence, and there's total saturation.

I'm old enough to remember when different parts of the country sounded, well, different. There actually was a Seattle sound at one point. Ditto for LA, Minneapolis, Athens, NYC, Memphis, San Diego, Gainesville - the list goes on. You could often predict a band's sound by their ZIP code. Not so much anymore, and I miss that. "Why??" someone might ask. "Exposure to new types of music makes things more interesting, more...21st century." But is it better? I'm tired of people talking about how the globalization of music is unequivocally a good thing. Certainly some aspects of it are, but there's also a price to pay, most importantly the loss of truly homegrown music, whether it comes from Senegal or Detroit. Don't forget, regional and homegrown scenes have historically been romanticized and fetishized by listeners (Japanese kids in love with rockabilly; American kids dressing like mods) every bit as much as "global" sounds. Do we really want a world in which everyone sounds like everyone?

I think this helps explain my love for Drive-By Truckers. Because in addition to writing incredible songs, they sound like their surroundings. They're not ashamed of where they come from, nor do they try to hide it or water it down or homogenize it. Instead they embrace it and cultivate it and indeed revel in it. (Another shining example of this that I was recently reminded of is The Libertines, the short-lived and utterly kick-ass unit of Carl Barat and arch fuckup Pete Doherty. These guys celebrated their Englishness and their thoroughly soused way of life in the same way as Blur and Oasis, but on a much more debased, shambolic and sinister level. You could just tell they were drunk English kids happy to be drunk and English, and it made their awesome songs even more awesome.)

I could -- and very well may, some day -- write a book on why the Internet has not always been great for music. (And yes, I completely grasp the irony of saying that as the CEO of a company that would not exist without music on the internet. I clearly have some reconciling to do.) High up the list of reasons will be its deleterious effect on regional scenes as I and thousands of other music fans knew them.

I'll probably be listening to Drive-By Truckers as I write it.

In Control

Here's a typical scenario that we here at Brandracket HQ see on an almost daily basis. The chronology goes something like this:

1. Artist's music is pitched to us by a promotions company - we'll call them The Provider - who, despite being the official rep for the artist during the current album cycle, does not know (or care to ask at the time they're hired) who controls the rights to the actual music.
2. We listen to the Artist and realize that they're a perfect match with one of our clients, Brand X. So we pitch it to them.
3. Sure enough, Brand X really likes Song Z and would like to license it for inclusion in Promotion Y. The all-in fee isn't huge by any stretch - $250 - but Brand X is massive, and the Artist will be credited prominently on-screen and featured on Brand X's blog, thereby exposing them to potentially thousands of life-long fans, some of whom will at some point pay to see the Artist, buy their merchandise and maybe - just maybe - purchase their music through a legal download store (or stream it on Rdio, Grooveshark, Mog, etc). Not to mention, other industry professionals like us may discover the Artist via the Brand X promotion, and offer them additional paid opportunities.
   
4. We hit up The Provider about licensing the track. Sorry, they say, you need to talk to the label directly. So we hit up the label. They're stoked, as is the band. But there's a problem: the band signed a publishing deal recently and while we might have been able to get the song for $250 a couple months ago, the price has now quadrupled.
5. Sorry, we say, Brand X only has $250. We move on to the next band in line, the one that controls 100% of their masters and publishing. They sign the licenses electronically in our BrandsForBands system in literally 2 minutes, and they're up on Brand X's web site two days later being listened to by thousands of kids, most of whom are hearing them for the first time. Love is in the air.

The moral of this story is NOT that big publishers and record labels are evil. We have many, many friends at both, and they are fine, upstanding members of society.

No, the moral of this story is that if you're going to relinquish control of your music, you better be damned sure that you know what you're doing, and that you've been well compensated in the deal. Because it might be the only money that you see for a long time.

Whenever you license, sell or otherwise transfer the rights to your songs or recordings to a third party, you are ceding a great deal of control. You are also ensuring that you will miss certain opportunities (see above).

Now, a person from one of the aforementioned third parties would be quick to argue that by partnering with a large publisher or record label you will be offered opportunities that are sexier, higher profile and more lucrative than those available to you as a free agent. On the cusp of 2011 this is highly debatable. But one thing is certain: you may be held hostage by your shiny new deal. This is not an exaggeration; we see it happen all the time (again, see above).

As we all know, it's a new world out there. There are opportunities galore for artists willing to hustle. But what's the point of working so hard if you're not able to make the final decision as to where/when/how your music is used, and at what price? By retaining control of your music you're the boss, able to cut deals and place your music on literally a moment's notice. And that's good. 'Cause companies like ours and the people we work for usually only have a moment (or less).

If you're savvy, willing to work your ass off to get your music in front of the right people, and - I cannot stress this enough - you have AMAZING SONGS - you will find that the smaller opportunities - the "micro gigs" - will present themselves. And they'll add up to real money over the long haul.

I'm walking proof of this. I was in a band for 15 years. For the longest time I wanted a publishing deal, and I was bummed when we didn't get one. But at the end of our run, when I added up all the license fees and PRO checks that I'd received - for bigger uses like TV shows and shoe commercials, but also a bunch of smaller placements that a big publisher wouldn't sneeze at - they significantly exceeded whatever advance we would've been offered (and most likely never recouped, because we would've been one of 500 artists on the roster).

My advice to young artists is this: if someone offers you serious money for the rights to your songs or recordings - consider taking it, and if you do, spend it wisely. Because as mentioned above, it may be all the money you'll see from that deal 1) ever or 2) for a very long time. However, if someone offers you a small advance, think twice and three times. Is a new van or gear for the band worth forfeiting the control, the opportunities you'll miss and the money you can earn on your own? There are other ways to raise capital, ones that don't involve relinquishing control of your biggest asset - and indeed the whole reason you do what you do: your music. ~ Tim