Front Page

"Record earning" deemed oxymoronic

Can record deals ever be fair?

So who is paying lawyers to negotiate record deals? The band? Or the record company?

Terry Noone and David James interrogate the uncomfortable about the unconscionable.

Indie pop
Smoking kills

The Kills

By Emma Waters

The White Stripes explosion of stripped back indie white blues laid the way for the wider acceptance of bands like The Kills. Our ears are attuned to the simple beats and rambunctious guitar rants, the petulant salty sultry sulk to shriek of the vocals. Our appetite is whetted for the "are they, aren't they, well, what the hell are they then" dynamic, searching to see what it is in that look exchanged, what was meant by that squeaze of the arm, the double-edged comment... but this is an angle The Kills duo deflect, preferring to concentrate on living life as art. In a kind of manifesto written by VV (Allison Mosshart), back around the time of debut EP Black Rooster, she describes herself and Hotel (Jaime Hince) as "our own lawless, left field Bonnie and Clyde" and describes a hungry appetite for running wild and letting go for the sake of art, documenting it all the while. The two legendarily bonded over a complicit attraction to the soar, crash and burn character Edie Sedgewick, one of Andy Warhol's favoured factory dwellers (whenever in New York, The Kills choose to stay in the Chelsea Hotel in room 105 where she lived). The duo continued a trans-Atlantic writing partnership for the following six months. But Florida-based Mosshart needed to speed things up a bit, so bit the bullet and moved to London to join Hince.

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Indie rock

Kittens laid waste

The Devastations
Tote, 17/2/2006

By Emma Waters

The Devastations played their last gig of 2006 at The Tote (Friday Feb 17) to a healthy turnout of smitten young kittens plumply smiling their way. The band are heading OS to try to make a buck with their new record contract and rekindle the fanbase they have begun to build there. The show attracted people who'd travelled from Warrugal and further away, plus a few oft-photgraphed faces bobbing in the crowd. But mostly it attracted those smitten kittens I mentioned before: girls pounding with crushes who wouldn't hear a bad word said against their boys: the Dev Guild. They played some melody-riddled rock-a-by-ballads then kicked into some shimmery showers of sound that hit harder. I'm not allowed to make likenesses to Nick Cave - although Nobody's Baby Now should get you heading in the right direction if you haven't already heard The Devastations.

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Eclectic

Slick Disney mouse mash

Album: The Mouse and The Mask
Artist: DangerDoom

By Michael Haydon

The ever mysterious (but consistently superb) MF Doom has paired up with the now-infamous producer Danger Mouse. In 2004 Danger Mouse infamously mashed up the Beatles' White Album and Jay-z's Black Album to create his aptly named Grey Album". He most recently produced Gorillaz' latest effort Demon Days. MF and DM have created an album based around the characters on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim night time programming block. These characters include Harvey Birdman, Aqua Teen Hunger Force (most notably Master Shake who chirps up frequently), Space Ghost (coast to coast) and the crew of Sealab 2021.

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Metal

No pain, no Gein

Album: Judas Goats & Dieseleaters
Released by: Black Market Activities/Metal Blade Records

By Michael Haydon

While this New Jersey trio’s first release (It’s a Shame..., on HEX records) was a very complex, angry and wet sounding piece of work, this followup is a much heavier and darker beast.

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Indie pop

Ursinus subtractus

Album: Menos El Oso
Artist: Minus the bear

By Michael Haydon

Featuring members of Kill Sadie, Botch and Sharks Keep Moving, MTB play quirky, melodic and touching electronica-influenced indie rock. Tight poppy rhythms lie under technical guitar lines and very Sting-esque vocal stylings. This album sits back a little from their four previous releases due to its obscenely clear production. This isn’t detrimental to their music, but the “louder” and slightly distorted ways of the older releases filled the sound out a little more.

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Death of a grindcore legend

Album:
Grand Finale
Artist:
Nasum
Released by:
Final Relapse Records

By Michael Haydon

Mieszko Talarczyk of Nasum was a force in the extreme music scene. His style of writing grindcore guitar, and attitude towards his form was impressive to say the least. He managed to inspire such grind greats as Napalm Death, who admitted in the late 90’s to writing one of their albums based simply on how Nasum writes their music.

Hailing from Sweden and taking their name from the Latin word for "nose", the double team of Talarczyk and founding member Anders Jakobson, together with the various other bassists/guitarists that Nasum ushered in and out of their lineup over the years, created striking, raw and brutal grindcore, breathing new life into a genre at a time when most thought it a spent force.

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Our early music world-class

For those who believe there is musical life beyond the Three Tenors, John Griffiths ponders the rise of early music in his own life and in Melbourne.

By Peter Haydon.

Part Two of a two-part interview

In the first part of this two-part article (see Issue 8 of The Dues), Professor John Grifffiths gave us some idea of just what early music is, and how it differs from other forms of music, and its similarity with cutting-edge modern music. In this second part, he talks more about his own discovery of early music, the guitar, the vilhuela (a lute-like instrument) and his ground-breaking group La Romanesca.

A word about the many elisions in this transcript. On listening back to the interview (taped on an ancient cassette recorder) I found a godawful buzz surfing over the top of every word of the interview. I went to the recording I had made simultaneously on my notebook computer - no good, that had cut out after the first minute. Foiled by both old and new technology, I went back to the cassette to see what gems I could glean from the audio mud. The following transcript is product of many painful hours. Hopefully there are not too many figments of imagination in it, but there are a number of gaps where, try as I might, I could not determine the words. I apologise to John, and to you, dear reader, if anything precious has been lost or distorted.

PH: How did you first become interested in early music?

JG: Simply, I started playing guitar as a boy, classical guitar. And I started doing it because my daddy did it. And I liked it and I wanted to do what he did.

PH: Was your father a performer?

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Alternative

Jed Rowe: Peak experience

By Emma Waters

Jed Rowe is set to launch his debut EP Life, with a string of shows in Victoria and NSW early this year, but it wasn't so long ago that he was studying to be a mathemetician, with no plans to record music at all.

Rowe grew up on music in the laid-back, sub-tropical hills of Byron Bay. He'd been writing songs with guitar since he was ten, but wasn't convinced that a life in music was for him, until he found himself a decade later, sitting in the Rocky Mountains of North America without a guitar, putting down song ideas on a dictaphone.

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Song-writing

Helen Begley:
You can't stop the Music Lover's Night

By Emma Waters

I was looking for music, but I found a crime scene.

I'd been invited by a friend to attend a low-key performance called the "Music Lover's Night," described as an eclectic showcase of songs and workshops. The venue I was given was 33-35 Harmsworth St. As I counted the numbers up to thirty three, the street name became all the more poignant. Blue and white tape flapped, caught in the early evening sun of late December, and there, cordened off neatly by police tape was Harmsworth Hall, yep, number 33-35, sitting subdued beneath the looming council high rise above. A gathering of cops share a joke together as they map out the crime scene. A couple of kids are estranged on either side of the hall for questioning. Though physically flimsy, the blue and white tape forms a barricade as sufficient as a wall. The power of symbols and the law demonstrated effectively. Thwarted, I look around for signs of song-writers. Along the edge of the street, I see them, huddled in the gutter with pots of food and the silouette of an acoustic guitar evident.

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Darren Percival :
A cappella fella

By Michelle Le Cornu

Trying to interview Darren Percival is like trying to catch a grasshopper with chopsticks.
The nervous energy, the leaps and bounds of thought and the constant verbal interplay with his cohorts makes it nigh impossible to secure a quote or comment to capture the essence of Darren Percival- the man and the musician.
This freedom of spirit also makes Darren Percival a very engaging and seductive performer.

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Send us your email, notes, memos, random thoughts, trenchant complaints. Tell us about your adventures, strugggles, disasters, disappointments and successes as a musician.

Crack in the record industry

Dues dudes,

A lot of your stuff is about record contracts and lawyers - like almost all you Business section. OK we all know that the biz is tricky and unfair to musos, but haven't you got anything else to write about. And isnt it a bit of one-sided storey? I don't see you interviewing record company execs, and they're the one who pick the bands for contract.

Like most musos, I just want to do the time, get ahead and be ready for a break. I don't expect overnite success. I find some of your stuff a bit of a downer.

Only some, that is, by the way. Love the profiles and reviews. Just find some good business news.

Pete (via email)

Thanks for your mail, Pete. The reason we harp on about this stuff is:

a) David James (who writes most of our Business articles) is an independent journalist. He writes about what he is interested in.

b) But also, there is little about this difficult side of the industry in other media which reports on music. So we try to provide a balance to that. Most media who report on music are dependent in some way on large record companies - usually for advertising. They are part of the "system". We're not. We don't take any advertising that might affect our brief to look at the needs and interests of the grass-root musician and music-lover. That keeps us small, but honest. Ed.

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.
(Uncle Terry is a grumpy old man who lives in a cave in one of the less fashionable corners of the Yarra Valley. He is not a qualified legal practitioner and he does not dispense formal legal advice. Neither he nor the publishers of "The Dues" accept any liability for the results of acting on the opinions, statements or recommendations expressed in his column)

Email Uncle Terry on musosunion@aol.com. Please provide your name and suburb (& state/country, if you're not a local yokel...)

Sticky label questions

Dear Uncle Terry

I am setting up my own record label and haven't yet finalised how to work things financially with the artists. It's a pretty user friendly DIY set up and the label's open to negotiation, but a few legal pointers would be useful. Are there any free music contract templates, for example suitable for artists signing to a label? Also, how do payment set-ups for indie labels, in terms of royalties etc. usually work and who owns the copyright to the songs? Can you point me in the direction of any good free legal resources or music industry websites?

Cheers,
G-force Hurricane.

Dear G-force,

If you were to use the sorts of contracts that major labels use (and "independents" for that matter) you would be treating the musicians excessively unjustly. You will undoubtedly be looking to at least cover you costs but so should the musicians be able to, remember it is their product that you are selling so they deserve a return from all sales.

Royalties on recordings sold as per a contract should be paid to the musicians regularly by the label. Other royalties such as public performance are collected by collection agencies such as APRA and PPCA.

There are two copyrights in a recording, that of the composer and that of the "maker". Since the changes in the copyright act the "maker" means equal shares between all the musicians who played on the recording and whoever is paying for the recording (often the record label). The collection agency for the maker's copyright is PPCA (www.ppca.com.au) but they don't seem to be interested in collecting for the performers. It is now typical for record companies to demand that artists sign away their peformer's copyright as a contract condition and not pass on their share of the royalties collected by PPCA. You could do this too but then you would be a thief.

Composers and lyricists are well advised never to sign away their copyright and doing this is now, fortunately, relatively rare. A considerable amount of further copyright information is available on the Australian Copyright Council's website (www.copyright.org.au). There is also some useful information on the site of the Association of Independent Record Labels (www.air.org.au)

This is a complex area that can't be covered in full detail here, and which furthermore needs creative reform. Please email me if you want further help with this.

In any case, best wishes G-force and may you set up the first ethical record company in Australia!

Uncle Terry

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Money for sale. Good rates. Shop around, you won’t find better. Commonpoverty Bank 1300 101017

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Tree for sale. Large 100-year-old elm. Beautiful foliage. Spotless. One owner. Spayed and immunised against Dutch-elm. Only true tree lovers need apply. We want Johann Sebastian to go to a good home. Reasonable offers considered. 0418 010 112

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Why we are so down on the biz

One of our letter-writers has complained of our persistently critical attitude towards the record industry. What we find astounding is that, in the face of such egregious exploitation of young musicians, no-one else is criticizing these businesses and their unconscionable contracts. Or rather, we don't find it astounding because we understand the reasons for the silence. Musicians who have been burnt still hope for redemption, or fear legal consequences of disclosing "commercial-in-confidence" contract details; journalists work for media organizations that have strong symbiotic links to major record companies. Few people are in a position to speak out.

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Disclaimer:
Articles express the opinion of authors and not necessarily that of theMusicians Union of Australia. No responsibility is accepted for unsolicited material. The Dues makes every effort to use reliable, comprehensive information, but we make no representation that it is accurate or complete.

Gray on Browne

"All it takes to be a success in television is the ability to fake sincerity." So said Walter Cronkite, quoting satirist Fred Allen, when explaining the art of connecting with a television audience.

Persuade 'em you care, even when you don't really know what it is you're supposed to be caring about. That's the sub-text -- it could even be the credo -- of a great many people working in the various arenas of mass communication, in the media and entertainment age.

Not that faking sincerity has ever been an issue for me, personally speaking. Being sincerely grumpy most of the time, my major challenge in life is concocting the appearance of opposite qualities -- breezy good humour, uncaringness, a certain shallowness of character.

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Frogs bite Apple

By Theo Schulsospekz

French politicians have introduced legislation that will force Apple to make files downloaded from their “iTunes” site readily playable on any digital file player and not just the Apple iPod. This is currently possible, but only by a fiddly process which effectively circumvents Apple’s file encoding. Apple has responded by threatening to close their French iTunes site if the legislation is passed.

The current system was designed ostensibly as an anti-piracy device and could well be the reason that the majors allowed their product to be sold legally through iTunes. Perhaps a more compelling reason for the Apple threat is that they make millions more from selling iPods than from selling music downloads. (see the Intelligence column in The Dues, Issue 8).

...more Intelligence

Short but not sweet

Reviewer:
Dan Oakes
Title:
The Dangermen Sessions: Volume One
Published:
The Age 21/2/2006

By W. Earl D'Moussec

The short album review is a demanding form. The space limitations require a paring down of the analysis of the subject recording to pithy essentials. There is simply no room for waffle. A reviewer writing in this form is on the journalistic equivalent of a high wire in a force 10 gale. The challenge is to fit meaningful comment and coherent argument into under 200 words while somehow giving the reader some of the experience that listening to the recording creates.

On the other hand, some music journalists choose not to take on the challenge. For them 150 words is actually easier than an extended piece. Dan Oakes's review of the album by British ska legends Madness (their first in about sixteen years) unfortunately appears to fall into this category.

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HARMONY
for the
Compleat Idiot

Part Nine in a series by
Holden Fairlane

Welcome back or, if this is your first visit welcome! First visitors are advised to check out previous “Harmony for the Compleat Idiot” columns. (There is a harmony column in each of the eight previous issues of The Dues).

Your homework from last time was to work out the notes in all 12 of the Seventh Chords. Let's look at them in both letter name form and in musical notation (if the term "musical notation" causes confusion or anxiety check the last few issues).
OK, let's go:

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How to get a properly-paid gig

Part VI in a series by
Bellaire Hillock

I suggest newcomers go back to the last five issues of The Dues so they can catch up.

Last time we looked at the vital issue of rehearsal. Rehearsal is not only an essential part of the Preparation stage of our grand master plan, it is also an ongoing requirement to keep the show on the road. We have discussed what is and is not a rehearsal, how to prepare a rehearsal, how to facilitate preparation by the musicians, where to rehearse and how long to rehearse for.

This time we turn the focus around and look at the output of the rehearsal process. Many musicians forget that the reason for rehearsal is to produce something- an output. Last time we defined the output of a rehearsal as "properly prepared material ready to perform". This is a broad definition but a useful one.

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Recording - an adventure in copyright

By Steve Smith

Like so many parents, once or twice a week, I drive my child to music lessons. My child learns flute from a local teacher and has advanced to performing the AMEB (Australian Music Examinations Board) syllabus of works. One of the costs of learning a solo instrument like flute is the cost of a piano accompanist for exams. I got to thinking that I should record some of the piano backings to CD, to familiarise her with the experience of playing flute against a piano accompaniment.

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