When the Music’s Over, Turn Out The Lights.

Well: the UK music industry seems to have almost completely gone, in the worldwide recession we are suffering / experiencing (depending on your point of view). The collapse of Woolworth’s (a high street chain of stores) recently in the UK has meant one of the most accessible ways of actually physically buying music on any high street in most towns in Britain has now gone.

The ONLY time I see CD’s these days, is if I go to Tesco’s (one of the leading UK supermarket chains) and to be sure Asda, Sainsburys and the other UK supermarkets also sell music in CD format too but it is almost an afterthought- music as “product”, along with the sliced loaves of bread! I don’t want to appear dated or as a Luddite, but music is still important to me, it is not just a lifestyle accessory to be branded along with any bullshit marketing campaign, that some fool at an Advertising agency deems “hip” to appear to a certain money spending demographic!

I personally can’t believe that say, Jimi Hendrix, is now used to sell some bullshit car, like a Peugeot or Honda or whatever. Some of the fault lies with the venality of those in control of the back catalogues. (And I don’t just mean the record labels).
I felt that as soon as music started to be cross-referenced or cross-collateralised into selling other “square” lifestyle or fashion products, I believe it started to lose whatever sacred aspect it was summarily possessing. This cross selling although a record label’s dream, immediately set in motion the decline of music as a mighty counter-cultural force.
When I was a kid, I hated “squares” and now they have repaid the whirlwind of being on the same level playing field as the rest of us hipsters. Everyone is “hip” now, or are they??
As Tower Of Power memorably sang “ What’s hip today, may become passé?” I always wanted to feel I was in a secret club, when listening to music and that’s as natural for any kid now, as it was for me. This is mine- I discovered it….?
I believe that is so much more difficult now as the mass media is so fast, someone farts in New York and I’m aware of it thru YouTube, minutes later.

While I type this, I am listening to “Save Our Children” by Pharoah Sanders (produced by the ubiquitous Bill Laswell), this is to remind me of music’s capacity to change my immediate inner and outer atmospheres and to bestow upon myself a certain remembrance of a deep, almost intangible God-like enfoldment not in terms of material gain aspects but a visceral and spiritual aspect to music’s mighty healing and regenerative powers.

I am also not a music snob, it could be anything I enjoy or hopefully will get to hear in the future; anything from Bill Laswell’s mid-to-late 1990’s recorded output to Marvin Gaye (the fantastic re-mastered double Deluxe CD editions – a perennial favourite) at Motown, Automatic Man’s 1st album on CD re-issue, to the Sly Stone re-masters, to Bobby Hutcherson’s Head On, to Mike Shrieve’s Spellbinder, I have to say I’m on a bit of a jazz journey at present! (But recently I was also listening to the little known and excellent Crack The Sky, Todd Rundgren, Love, the little known superb 60’s UK band The Move, Morrissey’s new CD, Lemar, a UK nu-soul singer and too many to list here!)

I hate the idea that the common “square“ is digging the same stuff as me, I feel sometimes that since listening to music since I was 9 years old that I’ve earned my listening rights, my unalienable rights to absorb many different types of music. As I get older, I am becoming more open to all music and the music I first discovered as a younger person, takes on a new deeper dimension.

Talking to friends I know that are in the music “Industry”, If you can call it that these days, there appears to be a feeling of desperation all around. Meetings may be called but without any money to back up the talking.
Musicians who maybe cleaned up (financially I mean!) in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s with the attendant rise in living standards due to sales, touring and publishing revenue, are now feeling the chill winds of recession, along with us “normal” folks.
The real low level of operational ability at the record labels is ridiculous, even now there are assorted wankers still pretending to have some power at the rapidly diminishing labels. Setting up “deals” that will never stand a chance of happening. The apparent demise of Sanctuary Records very suddenly, was a case in point, in the UK in 2007; it was yet another label to be swallowed by Universal. Woe, is the record industry.
In the UK, all the independent majors are almost completely gobbled up by the mighty multi-corporate conglomerates, such as Universal Records (Who now own Motown, Island and many others).

Many of the great entrepreneurial owners like say Chris Blackwell at Island must have seen the writing on the wall. Selling on before it became more of the free-for-all it has become today. Many of the other independent labels like Stiff, Chrysalis have long been absorbed in the gigantic all-conquering maw of the big corporations. But surely the labels that are always moaning about piracy and the downloading of their increasingly execrable “product,” are to some large degree responsible for the so-called lack of interest now in music.

Recent figures show that the music industry continues to blame downloading and all for it’s supposed continued woes. Many artists have been royally fucked by the recording industry, few are they that command exceedingly good royalty rates and usually there are the Stings of this world, that can take up to six or seven years to release increasingly mediocre albums.
Apparently, sales are UP in the UK for 2008 over the prior year (0.9% actually). Digital sales are up by 65% while actual CD sales are definitely down by approximately 3.25%, which is not bad during a crushing so-called worldwide recession.

The only way of getting signed these days in the UK, appears to be by the all-enveloping load of manure, that is Britain’s Got Talent or The X –Factor, both overseen by the increasingly powerful Simon Cowell, on both sides of the Atlantic. Over the pond you have the execrable American Idol (which our own Carlos Santana appeared on recently, with Karl Perazza in tow)
OK! So Randy Jackson was a well-known (ish) bassist (playing with Journey, among many others) but the sight of the mentally challenged Paula Abdul on the USA version, while in the UK, we have the loathsome ex-editor of The Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan, an ass-kisser extraordinaire plus the plastic, botoxicity of the “other judge” Amanda Holden, beggars belief. The show in the UK has also featured Dannii Minogue, sister of Kylie, who also appears to be completely without brain tissue, an over-egged pseudo-personality who has little in the way of discernable personal talent.

The music industry or the entry level for aspiring acts has been reduced to the level of travelling carnival sideshow, a free-for-all freak parade, over which these non-entities preside. I have no problem with Simon Cowell making as much money as he wishes, great!! It’s just as a creative force he is negligible, a porous vacuum from which nothing of any import will ever emerge, or if it will, it will be a darned miracle, in spite of him.

How many more freaks can we see spewing out Nessum Dorma? How many more pretty boys fluffing out opera-lite to the masses? What amazes me is how much the UK public over here, swallows up this shit. The whole thing is a great scam in terms of its spin-offs for Cowell and company. The acts are usually tied into recording and management deals with Cowell et al. Many manage a single release, possibly followed by a CD album, and many simply sink without trace. Getting a chart position in the UK CD singles chart is NOT what it was anymore.
The actual sales figures can be quite low. It is hard to get verifiable figures due to the “confidentiality: aspects of the industry around sales and chart positions.

It has recently been reported there is a collapse in Illegal share filing and a rise for example in peer-to-peer sharing, such as the excellent Spotify over here in the UK for example. As yet I don’t believe you have that in the USA? However it seems that even Spotify is not on course with its revenue projections.
It is primarily marketed at present in Western Europe, although I believe it will be rolled out throughout the world further. Also an I-Phone application could be imminent. Although some acts like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin are not at present allowing their music to be represented on the platform, it is an excellent easily downloadable program for the computer that accesses millions of music acts and neatly gives you most of an act’s recorded output for free.
Santana is well represented for example, with most of the recorded output on the site including a prompt upload of the “new” Woodstock Experience double CD. You can order what you want with a click of a button and also get a premium service for about (US) $18.00 dollars a month. It has totally changed the way I listen to music, for starters it “keeps” it all in one place. I have an almighty collection of vinyl, cassettes and CD’s but was starting to feel pretty nuts about having to actually buy more stuff – it begins to take up way too much space!

So, it is an exciting but perplexing time for the music industry, where the main corporations have seemingly concentrated on aspects of hardware and peripheral devices in favour of actual recording and development of new artists. Many of the main
artists who happened in the 70’s and 80’s would not get the development that they received back then. U2 springs to mind as just one example. Development seems to be a thing of the past- Springsteen, The Police etc- would they have succeeded now? It’s ultimately hard to say but possibly extremely doubtful. Universal in a new move are to offer subscribers unlimited downloads inclusive of a monthly fee, perhaps we’ll see music packages offered in the same way as pay-per-view or HBO packages.

The music industry business model is in a big state if flux, as established methods of getting music out or released are seen as non-money making models. The recently acquired EMI by Terra Firma and their boss Guy Hands speak of the 360% business model or ad-revenue sharing, in which, in return for advances, the artist will have to give up revenue percentage on merchandising, touring and other cash flow streams, along with actual CD or other methods of music sales. 360% deals or models (as evinced by the Madonna/Live Nation deal) hope to share in all aspects of the artists’ career. If the companies weren’t fucking you already- they are certainly more blatant about wanting to do it now! They will be looking to the rights to the recordings but also touring receipts, the merchandising, etc, etc.

Record labels, historically complacent and greedy corporate monolithic structures – seemed unprepared for the digital revolution, stuff such as Napster. The entrepreneurial spirit has vanished, with many of the old guard gone or dead. Perhaps Clive Davis is one of the few older guards left in the business and even he got fired from Arista the label he nurtured at a high level for over two decades. A&R departments seem to be a past glory. With the result that talent was not being signed and being developed plus the corporations were over extended due to buying up record labels but not holding onto the talent that actually made them the ripe cherries financially they became
that was bought up by Universal etc.
They had all the financial overheads with little of the pizzazz and love of music that built companies like Atlantic, Stax, Motown, A&M et al in the first place. It lines up with the current economic crash as evoked by the huge banking houses worldwide that ever-rapaciously over extended and sold dodgy mortgage and sub prime packages with little acumen based on very murky business practices.

However, for most people (aspiring musicians etc) the best they can hope for nowadays is to get their (usually awful) music up on My-Space or You-Tube, these are free platforms but with no revenue applications. It’s a lot of bullshit really – these platforms have opened the door for a morass of people’s recorded junk which I guess at one time would not seen the light of day.
The geeks have inherited the earth or at least in cyber-space!

A new world awaits but perhaps for many these days (including the most talented), self released CD’s and a more realistic approach to getting your music heard is the staying position until a new paradigm is realised. It will be interesting to see that as usual this will not come from the increasingly top-heavy corporations with their out-dated pyramid style structures but will inevitably come from some bright spark dreamers with the same love for the art form that made it such a viable, seductive, deadly, pleasurable and financially thrilling ride for those who made it and for those who loved it as the music loving audience.

See an earlier post by colleague Ron Sansoe on dealing with
Malo’s publishing and his connections with the music industry.

© Jim McCarthy
East Sussex
England
July 2009

Tags: Bill Laswell, Decline, Jimi Hendrix, Music Industry, Pharoah Sanders, Tower Of Power

This is the show which taped in LA last November.
Check your local PBS schedule:

“Latin Music Legends,” a musical variety show hosted by and starring Palm Springs resident Trini Lopez, will air as a national public television pledge break special in August, its locally-based produced have announced.

It will debut Aug. 14 on KVCR, broadcast to 5.5 million households in Southern California, and then air on PBS stations across the nation.

The show, taped at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, is produced by local executive producers Dan Bohlmann, Robert Alexander of the Motion Picture Hall of Fame group and Mitchell Sussman of Raven Productions.

Besides Lopez, it will feature Julio Iglesias, original Santana lead singer Gregg Rolie, El Chicano, Tierra, Thee Midniters with Little Willie G, and Palm Springs resident Mark Guerrero, who performs a tribute to his late father, Lalo Guerrero.

Alexander said “Latin Music Legends” will air nationally on for 11 months and then “be taken to retail outlets and syndicated internationally.”

The show will air at 9 p.m.

Tags: El Chicano. East Los Angeles, Gregg Rolie, Julio Iglesias, Lalo Guerrero, Latin Music Legends, Latin Rock, Mark Guerrero, PBS, Santana, Thee Midniters, Tierra, Trini Lopez, Voices of Latin Rock, Willie G

Rain Dance is a new live CD taken from the same performance filmed for a potential DVD release (which has hit some technical buffers at present). The live CD is available to buy and download from Amazon.com and from the soon-to-be-revamped Gregg Rolie web space and also at Rolie Band gigs. There are some minor backing vocals overdubs but apart from that it’s the raw deal, as was played at the concert.
It is an independently produced item and Gregg’s son Sean Rolie handled the remixing chores. As Gregg states” I hired him because he’s good at what he does, not because he’s my son??” The CD was given the final production by Gregg and Ron Wikso.

It is initially released as a limited edition run of around 2000 copies. The CD is a document of a 2007 performance at the Sturgis Motorbike Rally concert. It features many of the old Santana favourites from the first three recordings. And there is one cut from the Abraxas Pool CD and which was re-imagined again on the Roots CD, which is Going Home. Give It To Me is also culled from the Roots CD recording. There are two newer songs Bailamos El Son and Across The Water.

The Santana back catalogue is well represented by Jingo, Soul Sacrifice, Black Magic Woman, Gypsy Queen, No One To Depend On, Oye Como Va and Evil Ways. The early band’s version of Albert King blues favourite As The Years Go Passing By with its Latinised double tempo burnout is also included. The CD timing totals around the seventy minutes of music mark.

Talking to Gregg on a blazing hot Texas morning found him reflective of the current state of the music and wider markets and wanting to represent the Rolie Band sound to fans at gigs as well thru the dwindling outlets now present for recorded music. “ We are doing around ten gigs this year and we are actively looking for more. The recent gig at the Hard Rock Café was great, they showed the original Santana band at Woodstock doing Soul Sacrifice from the film, projected on a screen in front of the stage and during the conga solos, the screen lifted and we went straight in picking the song up, where they had left it.”

He also reflected on the Gregg Rolie Band, “The band are great, because we all really enjoy each other and I think the sound reflects the fun we are having. We subtitle the band; “Santana- the way you remember it” And at that gig in New York recently, we had half of the original Santana, that’s about the closest you’re ever gonna’ get, to seeing that band together again!
Michael Shrieve came down and sat in and it was fantastic!
He is such a lyrical player and he makes me smile when he would do a certain thing or a fill and I’d remember his playing style, very on the jazzier end but just so stylish. Ron Wikso my regular drummer is heavier and a real solid player too.”

He remembered the recent remixing and augmenting of the Woodstock film re-mastering by Eddie Kramer. “Carlos redid his rhythm guitar parts as they was a lot of leakage in the sound. And there was a lot of tuning problems that day- the guitar was out of tune and the tuning stuff was difficult for everybody. Carlos’ solos were great and there was no problem there. Mike Carabello and Adrian Areas did some fine tuning on guiro and the timbale cowbell patterns as well, due to the leakage during the original set.”

Rain Dance is out now and a must for Gregg Rolie fans, Hammond B3 enthusiasts, Latin rockers and Santana completists.

Tags: Gregg Rolie, Michael Shrieve, Rain Dance, Ron Wikso, Santana

© Jim McCarthy July 2009

The new Stephen Soderberg double DVD/Blu Ray film formats of Che Part One and Part Two has hit the stores in the UK and the two films are a breathtaking achievement. The first film concerns specifically Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s first campaign, along with Commandante Fidel Castro in the late 1950’s in Cuba to overthrow the imperialistic USA linked government of tin pot dictator General Fulgencia Baptista. The second film concerns Che’s attempt to lead a guerrilla insurrection in Bolivia in 1966 and 1967.

Ernesto “Che” Guevara De La Serna, born of middle class Argentinean origins, was to become one of the most iconic faces of the 20th century. His strikingly handsome face is to be found staring out from tee shirts, Cuban tourist advertising, protest march banners, civil rights movement graphics and multiple photographic images.

Che Guevara and Fidel Castro liberated Cuba in late I959.
The Cuban Revolution totally changed the island from a satellite of “corrupt Yankee imperialism” to the exciting, decaying, musically invigorating, forlorn “Communista” based country it is today. Che went on to fight in the African Congo and after this campaign, with a small guerrilla army in Bolivia, eventually being captured and executed on 9th October 1967.

This immediately conferred an iconic Christ-like status on “Che” and ever since his visage has been used to represent, freedom, insurrection, pop stars looking for a brush with greatness, street art and the ubiquitous tee-shirt imagery.

Both films start with a gradually developing map (the first film is of a map of Cuba, the second, a map of the complete Latin America, which highlights at the end Bolivia. It is represented as a simple, rudimentary geography lesson to set the scene and the pace. The maps gradually and determinedly reveal the district names of Cuba, such as Matanzas, Havana etc, the city names and the mountain ranges (Sierra Madre) etc. This is Soderberg’s way of bringing the viewer into the tempo and rhythm of the films. To slow you down for what is to come. To empty the viewer of pre-conceptions- this device is almost jarring but it works and is highly unusual. The films are a non-sensational and revealing look at the campaigns with a detached, dispassionate and documentary style approach to the guerrilla’s campaigns.

Che Part One leads all the way up, to the run up to capturing Havana. Before this event we see the weaselly Batista making good his escape in plain clothes. The cinema verite feel is enhanced by Benicio Del Toro’s astonishing portrayal of Ernesto Che. He more than resembles him physically and facially and in body heft. Del Toro inhabits the person of Che completely. He was “rewarded” by this by winning Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival (with Sean Penn on the judging panel). The recognised Che expert, John Lee Anderson
(Who wrote the so-far definitive Che-A Revolutionary Life) reinforces this point in the extras section of film two.

The films are told in truncated but seemingly real time, they capture both the idealism and the tedium of the guerrilla’s life in the Cuban plains and its mountains. Benicio Del Toro convincingly portrays Che’s asthma attacks worsened by the rainy weather and the gruelling conditions, particularly in the higher altitudes of Bolivia in Part Two. The films are greatly helped by being almost entirely in Spanish with English sub-titling. The alternative of the main leads speaking in English with Spanish sub-titles would be too awful and absurd to contemplate. It is a major tip of the hat to the filmmakers who went outside the USA to finance the film, to achieve this completely necessary use of the mother language.

The two films are both an inspiration and a creative triumph. Soderberg brings his uniquely dispassionate and slightly clinical style of direction to the proceedings. We don’t get much more of the inner life of Guevara but the films do fill in many gaps in the knowledge of his campaigns and their details. Which for many are shrouded in myth and basic iconography.
These films will re-introduce Che to a whole new world, so much different from that world of only forty years ago. It is startling to realise how much was done with so little in the case with the Cuban revolution and how those limited resources worked badly against Che and the guerrillas in Bolivia, South America. The CIA backing counter forces in the country wanting to stop him in his tracks did not help either. They were two very different campaigns with two ends of the spectrum in terms of outcomes.

Another Soderberg triumph, both in terms of the weightier than usual content and his subtle and reflective use of layered dialogue and superb mixtures of camerawork, in terms of
colour and in the overall tonal palette of the two interlinked but contrasting films.

Tags: Che Che Guevara, congas. Batista. CIA, Cuba, Cuban music, Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, Havana. Salsa, Latin Rock, Latino musica