Issue 23
Volume 1
May 2011
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Issue 23
Volume 1
May 2011 |
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GO CORPORATE IF YOU WANT TO QUIT YOUR DAY JOB By David James
Nobody doubts that the business of music has changed, pretty much permanently. Talk to people involved in the music industry in the US, and the consensus is that record executives are just hanging on as long as they can, relying mostly on back catalogues. There is the smell of death.
REVIEW
Happy Birthday from Mr President By: Robert Gavin, Honorary Secretary MAGA comes of Age  The Guild is the representative body of a highly skilled, but often invisible membership base including Australia’s leading music arrangers, orchestrators, electronic arrangers, music copyists and type-setters.
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HEARING MORE THAN JUST DRUMS By Megan Albany For years Calvin Welch has been the drummer of choice in the Sydney Funk scene, but now the rhythm man who has lent his sticks to such mainstay projects as Professor Groove and the Booty Affair, is beating a different tune. Despite having started out as old school as it comes – gigging in the Motown Era with the likes of Eddie Russ, Calvin is now embracing new technology with a vengeance. He recently started a website, I Hear Music, to allow music enthusiasts from around the globe to find quality Aussie music easily, and for the cream of our crop, to not get lost in the mega-online-store that is Itunes.
WHO SAYS YOU CAN’T MAKE A LIVING PLAYING WITH YOUR VEGETABLES
Not Gene Peterson that’s for sure. This is one young drummer with his head screwed on right (which is always helpful so you face the audience not the backdrop). At only 23, Gene is not only flat out gigging with his own unique drum shows, but he’s now starting his own production company to help other talented musicians finally quit their day jobs. The Dues caught up with the young beat-meister to find out how it all began. Send us your email, notes, memos, random thoughts, trenchant complaints. Tell us about your adventures, strugggles, disasters, disappointments and successes as a musician. We give preference to letters of 200 words or less, but try your luck anyway. We may edit your letters for reasons of space, or possibly because we're just a bunch of interfering bastards. Despite that, we welcome your feedback, comments and observations. You can use a pseudonym if you wish, but please include your real name, suburb/town and, if you are writing from outside Victoria, your state/country. Email us at musosunion@aol.com.
Got a
problem or question relating to the music biz? Ask Uncle Terry. Email Uncle Terry on musosunion@aol.com. Please provide your name and suburb (& state/country, if you're not a Victorian yokel...) Dear Uncle Terry,We got presented with a contact from a venue and it has all this “whereas” and “heretobefore” stuff. How are you supposed to work this stuff out if you can’t afford a lawyer? Ed
In the news CMVH-Bistumishi to release musical wallpaperAfter decades of releasing wallpaper music, European pabulum giant CMVH, in association with Japanese-Mongolian waste dispenser Bitsumishi Sandfly Co, is planning a series of releases of what CMVH executives are calling a “revolutionary” and “irreverent” concept. Welcome musical wallpaper.
NOT ANOTHER DRUMMER JOKE By Megan Albany
But it’s not any ordinary drummers we’re playing tribute to, but instead drummers who show that perhaps, despite the jokes, they are the brains of the outfit after all. We speak to a veteran drummer and a new drummer on the block, who both have their head well and truly screwed on when it comes to the business of making music and what’s more, god forbid even making a living out of their chosen careers. Disclaimer:
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And then there were….. Ubiquitous financial “Holding Company” Citigroup has now swallowed EMI. Private equity firm “Terra Firma” has given up on turning the discery into a profitable business.
Citigroup has massively reduced the label’s debt (apparently
by writing lots of it off since they were the major creditor!) and now
claim the label is ready to make bucks. How they plan to do this in the
current environment isn’t specified. Many suspect that a purchase of
EMI by one of the few remaining “major” labels in the near future is a
more likely outcome.
Part 18 of a series Last time we looked at what the internet can do and concluded that it can basically only do two things: 1. Give you a place to “Hang Stuff Up” 2. Allow you to “Send Stuff” Let’s first consider “Hanging Stuff Up”. This process requires some form of web presence. It could be a stand alone website or a site which is really just pages on someone else’s site. It could be something you have built yourself from scratch or using a template based tool such as “bandzoogle”. It could be pages on this or that social networking site, the possibilities are seemingly endless and that is part of the problem. People often tend to concentrate on the array of available ways to create a web presence rather than to concentrate on what that presence can do. It makes more sense to work out first just exactly what it is you intend to “hang up” rather than where or how. And at the same time (or maybe even before this!) you need to work out how “hanging up” a particular item on a web platform is going to help you. Let’s look at some examples to try to clarify this before it gets any more abstract.
Part 21 in a series by In our last edition we had just summarised four of the six chord families, only two to go now. Let’s press on: |
