Music Industry Archives - TheTranscendenceDiaries

Up all night last night on the phone with our agent. We talked till 5:30 in the morning. He slightly drunk, me thoroughly exhausted. Universal music in New York has a keen interest but wants to see more scans (sales at retail). He met with them for almost three hours and called me to give the details. The good news is that every major label in America is watching and researching us now due to the undercurrent of buzz lately. The bad news is that its not enough to totally sell them on signing us and giving us the big money. None of them willing to sign us on the merit of our music alone. Which we both find frustrating as hell, especially now that we have completed the nothing is cohesive album, by far the purest thing we’ve ever created. We know that somewhere out there is someone who will want to take us on for purely the merit of our music. we just haven’t found them yet.

In all honesty, I would much rather be signed purely on our music than on a “story” like sales or radio play. The former would be much more poetic and honest and pure. But the business does not work that way anymore. [this is why the radio and TV airwaves are so filled with crap lately; because the signings are now almost solely based on sales or some kind of breakthrough story rather than someone’s gut reaction to an artists music. so they’re here today and gone tomorrow and everyone keeps scratching their head asking ‘why aren’t there any really awesome career artists out there anymore?’] But we are willing to go the distance either way. if they want a story we’ll give them one.

Lying in bed, half asleep, I listened to our agent ramble on about how he believes so wholeheartedly in Transcendence that he believes in nothing more strongly. Says he is willing to drop every other act on his roster if he has to in order to see this thing through for us. I love that. he’s just totally committed and enthusiastic. Besides yet another rejection, (hey old Abe Lincoln, where ever you are, you hear that? I’m trailing close behind pal. Coming up fast.) Good week this week though. Radio promoters love us. Publicist loves us. We are receiving a lot of love and support now. The love is floating all over us. But just cant seem to shake the money out of the trees of these larger labels so it isn’t such a constant struggle for us.

They say in interviews that they’re in it for the music. But time and time again we’re told that we are going to have to have bigger sales at retail in order to sign on the dotted line. I understand. Everyone does these days. When the average investment in a major label act in order to break them nationally is 2 to 3 million, you gotta believe in what you’re signing. I just wish we could find that one rep or vp who didn’t give a shit about sales for the time being, at our level, because its obvious we just don’t have the funds, and neither does our label, to push this thing into the big sales arena, and just signs us based on loving what we do. We have a great band right now. and we’re happy as hell doing what we’re doing. When we are together it feels like magic. I hope the upcoming documentary shows that a bit.

There are a lot of people right now in the industry that are so down on the major labels, talking about how bad it is and how much they suck, and how cool it is to be indie. But I don’t agree. I’ve been indie for ten years now, on three different labels, and frankly its fucking hard. I know its hard out there all over in the biz these days. And yeah they’re business people first and music lovers second. But you know, like anything else, music is a business. so thank God for them being that way. or no CDs would get released by anyone at all. And that would suck for all of us. but still…

Its not that I mind being on an independent label. Its not all bad. We gross over seven dollars for every cd sold compared to the less than one dollar that the major label artists receive. That’s a cool thing. So we’re liquid. But there’s just not enough money to be made to promote the band or the cds enough to reach enough people to generate the big sales. That’s the dilemma. What would you rather have? a thousand times 7 dollars, or a million times a dollar? I’ll take the million please thank you. This weekend is a time of reflection for me. After last night’s conversation with our agent, i am even more dedicated to finding a way, the way, to reach more of our potential fans. You know if you have ten or a hundred or a thousand, that you have the potential to have ten thousand or a million if you could just reach them. If they could just know that you are out there. I know as a music fan myself that I’m totally that way. I always heard the name Sam Philips for example, but just had never heard her music. and then one day I did. and just instantly fell in love with it. I bought all her cds the next day. I was so glad as a fan to have discovered her. we already have that now. but its just on a smaller level than we want it to be on.

So as a business man I know that that’s the m.o. at play here. that’s the strategy. Reach as many people as you can in order to connect up with your potential fans/customers. But how? On this level? That’s the question. I wasn’t discouraged after his call last night. I was inspired. I fell asleep with a smile on my face. At least we know we’re getting close. At least we know what it is now. to all of the fans that we already have, thanks for buying. We’ll make more.

Last screening: Identity. Wow. You have to see this movie. I feel fucked up after watching it. What a trip.

In the studio today working on the new new album, temporarily and affectionately nicknamed Slept with you, the Bastard little step brother of Sleep with you. The joke being that Sleep with you hasn’t even come out yet, and fuck who knows if it ever will. (ps—to all of our fans who expected to buy the album on its “official” release date of March 1^st, then April 1^st, may 1^st, and then June 1^st, our apologies. We seriously and sincerely hope along with you that it WILL be out by July 1^st.) But we are so far gone from that project now. We are holed up in Vancouver’s home studio madly passionately insanely and around the clock cutting tracks to this new new album. we have been waiting so fucking long for the new album to get the artwork done and come out so we can start playing and promoting that I think that we were all just going stir crazy creatively and we are so happy and excited to be playing together right now, you know, we’re like little kids, cause we all have the same influences and inspirations so we didn’t even plan this. We just started writing in rehearsal and Vancouver was like “hey why don’t we go record at my house?” and we were like “what? No producer? No real studio?” and so we did it. And then well then, we’re going to post a song on the site for you to check out, cause we are making the sickest album. So now the thing is we’re just lofi-ing this thing and doing whatever we want, all on our own. A few rules we’ve come up with so far: no real studio. No producer. No engineer. No worrying about what is commercial or sellable right now. no thinking about hits or singles. Do whatever songs we want. Don’t worry about beginnings or endings, etc. So we cut our own version of tomorrow,

The McCartney and wings song, and we’re gonna do a Sinatra song. And just write and record day to day, choosing songs as we go.

Right now the Piano Man is recording his keyboard parts while Vancouver attempts to engineer him. Father Bloopy is passed out on the couch. I’m typing, and Vancouver is screaming “this is so exciting. Holy shit. Dudes!” we’re all high-fiving. Because I think for the first time we are actually making real music.

I know for me there was a moment when we were creating this intro to tomorrow that we wrote, that as I was singing, between takes I think, I put my head down and started to cry, kind of more like weeping, only for a few seconds, because it sounded so beautiful, and I was so happy to be making that. no one saw me and I don’t care if they would have. I just feel now that I have all of a sudden started becoming so much me now, so much who I really am, that I am filled with joy all the time. Especially with music, or with who I am as a musician. It just made me cry, cause I’m finally making music the way I always wanted to, the way I always knew I could, its starting to come out sounding like it always has in my head. So it’s a really wonderful thing.

And it’s fun to share that with the other guys. Cause they are so much younger than me some of them and its cool to be with them and to show them that we can just make our music however we want and really go for the FEELING rather than the HITS or the COMMERCIAL appeal, which is what most people do and now after all these years of going through that when I was a really young musician, I think that is what ruins your music. Who knows, that could be what stops people from being really successful or popular at music, cause they’re always trying to fit in with what’s popular or commercial at the time or what some suit and tie is telling them.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
1	2	3	4	5	6	7
8	9	10	11	12	13	14
15	16	17	18	19	20	21
22	23	24	25	26	27	28
29	30	31

TheTranscendenceDiaries

Tag: Music Industry

article 2019-04-29 124622_9.html

Like this:

article 2019-04-29 124619_0.html

Like this: