Making It: Then vs. Now

There are so many great things about being in the Modern Age of music-making.  SOOO many great things!!  And yet…there are also lots of things that I think I miss from the "good-old-days" of labels, A&R guys, the works.  Here's a smallish list of the differences between Then and Now, from an Iron Fist standpoint.

Then:

Okay, so you've formed a band.  Way to go, mate!  You write yourself some spiffy tunes and head out to conquer the club circuit.  With any luck, you'll only spend a year or so in crummy little dives before an A&R guy (that's "Artists and Repertoire") catches your act and says he can make you into the next Boston.  Or, whatever.  Point is, this is the guy whose job it is at the record label to go out to said crummy little dives and scout out talent.  He'll rep you to the label, work with you on your artistic development, and hopefully land you a deal at the company he works for.

Now:

Same deal, you've formed a band, yadda yadda. Maybe you're still out playing the clubs. Trouble is, there AIN'T no A&R guy coming to see you.  With the coming of the digital age and the "downfall" of the record labels, these guys were some of the first to go. In the Modern Age, you practically need to be born fully-formed…there just isn't the time (or the patience) to wait for any sort of "artistic development."  And there certainly isn't any brass-ring "record deal" waiting at the end of your rainbow.

Then: 

You need a record deal.  A band might - MIGHT! - be able to self-finance a single to sell at shows, but the only real distribution method that exists is for a record company to sign you, front you the costs of recording your album, and then put you out on tour.  The label sends your record out to the stores (Tower, Camelot, Wherehouse, etc.), and hopefully promotes your album to radio and the buying public.  The A&R guy who discovered you is of inestimable importance during this process: he's the one that went to the label president and said "Their THIRD album is going to go platinum!" Bon Jovi is a great example of this…who, besides me and, like, 10 other people, bought the first Bon Jovi album in 1983?  Same thing with "7800˚ Farenheit."  If anything, that album was WORSE than their self-titled debut.  "Slippery When Wet"?  Beyond successful.

Now: 

Great news!  You don't need a record deal!  In fact, chances are high that you'll NEVER get one.  No one gives a rip about your band except YOU, the members.  It's up to you to promote yourselves, record your album, and make it available on the web (cdbaby, Bandcamp, iTunes, etc.).  The cool thing is that you get instant world-wide exposure for your product.  The bad news: the market is FLOODED with acts doing the exact same thing. These days, there's no room for the 3rd-album-is-platinum scenario.  If you can't jump into the Billboard Top 10 right outta the box, you're dead in the water.  

Then:

When it comes time to record your album, the label pays for studio time.  It's only an advance against future royalties, but you're young and dumb and all you care about is HOLY CRAP WE HAVE A RECORD DEAL AND WE'RE RECORDING AN ALBUM!!  There's a producer, an engineer, a soundboard, and lots of mics and amps recording to analog tape.

Now: 

No A&R guy means no label, and no label means no up-front money, and THAT means no studio.  The best part of this process is…you hardly NEED a studio anymore.  All your instruments can be plugged directly into a laptop, and for the price of $FREE you can record straight into Audacity.  Spend a little money and you get a great soundboard and tons of editing features, right on the screen in front of you.  But, with no engineer and no producer, you have to rely on your own ears to tell you what's what.  Sure, DiskMakers will master the recording for you…for a price.  It takes a LOT of up-front money to do it this way, and again, the only people who give a rip are the band members themselves.

Then:

Hey, you're in luck!  The label released your album, and there's a surprise late-summer hit on it that radio is starting to pick up.  People are trickling in - not flocking, but it's a start! - to buy your album.  BUY.  Your album.

Now:

Buy?  Ha!  You must be JOKING!  All that money you seeded, it's gone, baby.  Gone on the wind.  Sure, you have a product that you KNOW is great, that you KNOW will appeal to a certain kind of audience that's practically built-in…but, someone ripped a copy of the .mp3 that sounds just as crystal-clear as the master mix, and they're emailing it willy-nilly to all their friends.  "Hey, dudes, check out this great new band!"  "Awesome, man, I'll add it to my 'Sitting Around Doing Nothing' playlist!"  Remember when you used to hold a tape recorder up to the speakers…you know, the kind that you pushed down the "Play" and "Record" button simultaneously?  You'd be mad because the damn DJ was still spouting off about the weather, and all you wanted was a copy of "Livin' On A Prayer."  Nowadays, a copy of a copy of a copy to the Nth power still sounds as good as the original.  So, no one is buying your awesome album, and you've got a barn full of new music…that you have to pay for all by yourself, all over again.

Don't get me wrong: in our shoes, today, Iron Fist can do stuff that we'd never have DREAMED of back in '85.  It's simply amazing: we're shoomping files all over the state, working out pre-production, making demos to leak to social media sites, and in some cases basically finalizing tracks that only need mastering in order to be release-ready.  25 years ago, we were working with a Fostex 4-track cassette recorder, making do with a bass that was just piano octaves recorded with a microphone in a coffee can (for the echo).  So, the Modern Age is DEFINITELY where we want to be!  We're making great music…we'll KEEP making great music.  But boy, sometimes it really is a case of the Devil you know…

Gettin' By With A Little Help…

I was originally intending to do a post about how tough it is to "make it" in the modern music scene, but decided instead to do a more positive post about all the help the band has had since our (re)inception.  Simply put: it's amazing to look around your group of friends, your clan, your tribe (if you will) and find out how many people are willing to work on behalf of your dream.

Since Kiss is my big influence, both musically and professionally, it's interesting to call attention to just how MANY people worked to make the band a success.  We like to give credit to Paul, Ace, Gene & Peter, the original foursome, and certainly without their unique chemistry the band never would have taken off.  However, there were a LOT of people working behind the scenes as well.  Bill Aucoin: Kiss' original manager (no disrespect intended to Lew Linet), saw their promise and, certainly in the early days, worked tirelessly to promote them.  His partner (both business and personal) Sean Delaney co-wrote with the band and was instrumental in their onstage look and choreography.  Neil Bogart, president of Casablanca Records, gave them their contract and worked like crazy to push their product.  Their original crew - JR, Moose, Mick, and the rest - were there night after night, behind the scenes, making each show a knockout.  The band itself may have only been four members, but the team behind them was large, and legendary.

Iron Fist is fortunate to have many, many believers in our corner.  When Rebel and I first set out to fill the roster, I suggested my longtime friends Pappy and Scooby Drew, and they stepped up, making room in their busy lives to become a working rock band.  Hans, a sound engineer by degree, came onboard to both run our live sound AND provide invaluable feedback with regards to our overall musical concept.  As we move forward on the first full-length album, we'll be doing basic tracks at his home studio, with him working the board.  You may only see four guys onstage, but we really consider Hans to be an essential part of the group; without him, we wouldn't sound as good as we could.

There are others, plenty of others, and they're all close.  Al, for instance, is at once our head of security (a licensed CPL instructor), a photographer, and a stage tech.  Chris works a bunch of jobs, seemingly simultaneously: when we needed a backdrop, he went out and had our awesome stage sign made.  He serves in the capacity of chef, cooking our meals while we get set up to play.  He's also a tireless promoter: when we played at our annual Fife Lake camping trip, he went around to all the other campsites and invited folks over to watch us.  His wife Colleen works our merch table, organizing t-shirts, buttons, CDs, and all the concert ephemera, keeping all the money in order.  Carson and Donna are our publicists and resident Fistorians, doing interviews with us and keeping a running history of the group.  The two Pauls are excellent stage techs: need a setlist written up, the sign hung, or amps hauled around & plugged in?  They're the guys.  They make life a little easier for the four of us with instruments, allowing us to say "Set that up there," or "This guitar cord is fried, find a new one."  They also usually man our cameras, filming every gig for (ahem) future posterity.

As time rolls on, and the snowball effect turns our group into a juggernaut, I'm sure there will be other people brought onboard: assistants, wardrobe, instrument techs, yadda yadda…and, I'd like to keep those people as in-house as we can.  Because what we've found is that when you have people in your corner, people who are willing to work on your behalf (often for just the thanks and a few after-show beers), then you're ALREADY halfway there.  So, while there WILL be a future post about the difficulties of "making it" in the modern world, right now all of our believers deserve a shout-out "Holla!" for the work they do.  Literally, we could not do this thing without them.