Thursday, July 26, 2012
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
The worlds greatest VINYL assassin on MASTER OF THE MIX
VOTE 4 D.J.P #TEAMFLIGHTCASE he needs your help! Head on over to BET and cast your vote for Season 2 Master of the Mix fan favorite! http://ow.ly/7tD0C
D.J.P aka Danny James Phillips of the World Famous Rock Steady Crew. A party-rocking Hip Hop, BreakDancing DJ hailing from Springfield, Missouri. You probably know him as one of the pioneers of "blending", a style now commonly referred to as the mash-up. ie. "UNEASY LISTENING VOL1"
Check out www.djpmix.com for more information and to purchase albums and individual mixes, and don't forget to join the D.J.P Army.
Please Head to BET & vote for "P" masterofthemix fan favorite! Let 'em know vinyl is still king! ow.ly/7tCVd
Monday, August 2, 2010
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Tony Ferguson A&R, Insterscope Records Interviewed by Michael Laskow
Tony Ferguson
Where did you grow up?
In London, England.
Were you always interested in music?
I started playing in semi-professional bands as a guitar player right about 13 or 14 years old. When I was about 16, I left school and went with professional bands from London on tour around Europe. I finally hooked up with a band in the '60s called Unit 4+2 and we had a hit with a song called "Concrete and Clay." I was 18 or 19 at the time, and I traveled around the world doing that for awhile. Then I hooked up again as a guitar player with a band called Christie. These were basically one-hit-wonder pop bands out of England in the '60s.
How did you end up in the U.S.?
I was in a number of bands in the '70s, and then pretty much quit the business as far as performing right about 1974 when the oil crisis hit Europe. It hit America, but it hit Europe really hard. Gigs closed down because all those places were oil heated. We had PA systems, and a friend of mine who I was in a band with at the time and I decided that we would rent this stuff out. All of a sudden I became a production engineer on the road. I did road work for a long period of time. Even when the economy bounced back, I never went back to playing full time. In the end, I ended up just by default becoming a sound engineer, and then ended up being a tour manager/sound engineer.
In the late '70s, I worked with bands that ended up on Stiff Records and started bringing those over from England to America. Later, I decided that I had had enough of England. The music business was getting really stale over there, and America was just like this wealth of possibilities. It's a huge country, and a band can tour for the rest of their lives. In England, you do two weeks of shows and you cover the whole country. Coming over with those previous bands in the '60s, I always loved America. So I decided to move over here permanently.
I set up in New York in the early '80s when I was 36 or 37. I teamed up with a guy named Andy Cavaleri, who has since passed away. He was a road manager and had worked with Grand Funk Railroad. He was then doing work with Stevie Winwood and decided to reform Grand Funk Railroad. So we went around the world on the Grand Funk Railroad, part two. Then I did a lot of production work with a guy named Harry Sandler and Bruce Springsteen's people. I worked with Clarence Clemons and the offshoot bands of Springsteen, doing road managing and production. That's how I ended up meeting Jimmy Iovine. Jimmy was Bruce's guy at that time.
How did that association with Jimmy Iovine eventually lead to your very successful pairing at Interscope Records?
I was in New York, and I got a call from a woman who was managing a then fledgling band called Lone Justice. I went out on the road and spent pretty much the next two or three years just working with Lone Justice. We ended up managing them—myself and Jimmy Iovine. Jimmy had moved from New York to L.A., and he called me up one day when the Lone Justice stuff was petering out and not happening anymore. He said, "There's a plane ticket for you to come out to L.A. if you want to come out." I said, "What for?" and he said, "I don't know. Just come out. We're having a great time. L.A. is great."
Jimmy had been hired as a consultant to refurbish A&M Studios in order make it a world-class studio again. About the winter of 1985, I actually flew out there and hung out with Jimmy and met all of these people out here. I noticed that a lot of the creative talent that was in New York in the late '70s and in the early '80s had migrated west. The business and money people still remained in New York, but all of the creative elements were moving west. There was this whole migration going on, so it seemed like the right thing to do. I never went back. I stayed out here, and I moved my family out.
Then Jimmy got a boutique label deal at A&M which did nothing for us. Jimmy was getting tired of the late nights of studio work and wanted to get out of the producer game. He always knew that the power of the music industry was basically at the labels. He wanted to form a label for the longest time. Eventually he met up with Ted Field. Jimmy said, "I'm forming this label with Ted. Do you want to come along?" I said, "Sure. What am I going to do?" It was that loose. Everything was that loose. When I look back on it, fate played an amazing role. I just fell into things. I'm making it sound a little easier than what it was, but it was literally like that. Jimmy said, "Well, what you want to do?" I said, "I don't know. A&R sounds fine." And that's what I ended up doing.
This story is going to make thousands of people sick with envy. What happened next?
The label got successful fairly quick. The first year was exciting. We spent the first two months trying to think up the name of the label and finding out where to plug the phones in. Meanwhile, all these bands were passing through our hands because of all of Jimmy's connections. Everyone was excited about Jimmy heading up a new label with Ted Field. Ted's holding company was called Interscope, but nobody wanted to call the label Interscope. Everybody thought it sounded like an aerospace company. But we never thought of another name, so it stuck.
How did Interscope become involved with some of the premiere and most successful artists in rap?
Jimmy always had this affiliation with black music philosophically because, in his opinion, white music—particularly white pop music—always has its roots in black music. Whether it was the blues—bluegrass is a form of that, country music is a form of that—they are all integrated. It's all a complicated web. Black music is where the rhythm and the sexiness of rock and pop music come from. So Jimmy saw a great opening for rap.
At that time, rap was not selling huge amounts of records. It would sell a few thousand. Run-DMC was probably the biggest selling act at the time. Jimmy thought if he could find a great rap act, it could be like Guns N' Roses. You could sell like 10 million, because white kids and black kids want to buy this stuff. It could be packaged, and marketed and done right like it was done in the '60s with Leiber and Stoller, Motown, Phil Spector and all these people. They marketed black music. Historically in the music business, there has always been that involvement of white people with black music. Jimmy had this vision of doing black rap and making it accessible. And he did.
By affiliating with Death Row Records?
He did a very bold thing by teaming up with them. He got Dr. Dre who then introduced Snoop Dogg to him. All of a sudden we were known as this heavy rock and rap label. We were getting this bad boy reputation in the business as this independent label that was rising very fast—in some opinions, too fast. Dolores Tucker with the Coalition of Black Women in Washington, D.C. decided to target us because of the controversial black lyrics and the way these rappers are influencing Black America in a very derogatory way—being derogatory to women, society, street gangs and violence—almost glamorizing the bad things. But Jimmy and Ted stuck by their guns and said, "We're not going out there and signing every rap act under the sun. We decided what we think are the most credible vocal representatives of the society of where rap has come from—the ghettos—with Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Tupac Shakur. We're going to stick by our artists."
But Warner Brothers soon felt the heat from Washington and wanted to basically either terminate their agreement as distributors for Interscope, or else Interscope had to terminate its agreements with these artists. Jimmy sided with the artists. Besides being a smart business move, in Jimmy's eyes, what are we in business for if we can't stick by our artists? He essentially said, "My credibility is as a producer and artist, and I've always wanted to make Interscope an artist-oriented, artist-friendly label. To go against that would be hypocritical." So they decided to stick by the artists, and it has worked out well for us.
What happened then to turn the "heavy rock and rap label" into the fully diversified label that Interscope has become?
We started to get more involved with pop stuff through our amalgamation with Trauma Records, and Rob Kahane and Paul Palmer especially. We got their band out of Hollywood Records called Bush, and that became a big seller. All of a sudden we were in the pop game as well, which broadened Interscope into a full-service company. It was no longer this little independent upstart that was being controversial—we now had this broad spectrum. That was a very pivotal move which happened around the end of 1995 and early 1996.
In the meantime, I signed this young little Orange County band back in 1991 called No Doubt.
Nice going!
At the time, Pearl Jam and Nirvana were breaking, and nobody wanted to hear an 8-piece horn section with a blond girl from Orange County doing ska-retro-disco-metal-funk. But the kids did. I would go to the shows in Orange County and up here, and they were selling out. The Whisky, The Troubadour—they were selling places out. Kids were stage diving to this with Pearl Jam and Pantera t-shirts on. I grew up with ska—being with Stiff Records who had a big friendliness with Two Tone Records and had Madness on the label—so I loved ska. But I was in the wrong place with the right band. All of the bands that I saw around the country that were coming up and doing ska—like the Bosstones, Let's Go Bowling, and all those bands back then—had one thing in common, and that was zero songs at that time. All of them were about the beat and the fun. They were like frat party bands. They could pack a club out on a Saturday night, and you'd have one hell of a time dancing your ass off, but I could never see radio catching on.
Of course, when we made the first No Doubt record back in 1991 and 1992, the band wanted us to go to radio. We tried it, and radio just went, "Are you crazy? Who is going to buy this?" But we sold over 25,000 units in California. We kept the band on the road touring all the time. We didn't spend a lot of money on the band, but we kept their touring base. They are the smartest people I know. They took care of themselves. They put their own merchandising together. They got their website together. They got their fanbase together. I mean they were very, very motivated in keeping the fanbase together. It was growing all the time.
So it was really the band doing it even more than their management?
Oh, absolutely. We just supported them. They would come in here with boxes of flyers to mail out for their shows. The mailroom guys would cringe because it would take them all day to mail them out. There were literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these mail-outs, and their fanbase was getting bigger. From about late 1992 to 1995, we made the second record, Tragic Kingdom. Matthew Wilder, God bless his heart, chewed off more than he could take because that was a hard record to make. We had tried various producers that didn't work. We had to beg, borrow and steal studio time. We didn't really have enough in the budget to keep going in. We would have gone broke. The studios were very good to us giving us their downtime. Matthew Wilder would drive down to Orange County every day on the 405 Freeway and work with these kids. They rose to the occasion as well. For someone to come in and start messing around with the arrangements of the songs—a lot of artists have a problem with that. No Doubt did have a problem with it, but they got into the spirit of it as well. Finally, we finished the record, and I delivered it to Interscope. Again, ska was not happening yet. Sublime was coming up, and 311 were just starting to percolate. There was a percolation going on out of Orange County. Trauma Records had just broken Bush, and I played the stuff for them just to get their opinion. As luck would have it, somebody at KROQ was present when I played it. They knew the band from old because KROQ had done a "Loveline" show with them. Being from Orange County, they had supported the band in the past, but didn't have a reason really to actually put them on the playlist. The track that we played was "Just A Girl," and they though it was great. Then I took it to Interscope and they said, "Well let's reciprocate. We're doing a deal with Bush which came through Trauma. Let's do a deal where No Doubt comes from Interscope, and Trauma will help us develop the act." And it went great. It just fucking took off. We were in the right place at the right time. That's not to downplay everybody's involvement, because the band put a lot of work into this, as did Matthew Wilder. A lot of people worked their asses off on that record big time. But still, there was a shitload of luck. It was just at the right place at the right time.
How many records have they sold thus far?
We're up to almost 15 million worldwide now.
Did Jimmy and Ted support your efforts with the band?
Yeah, Jimmy and Ted gave me money. There were always questions about what we were going to do with this band, because rock was still in this alternative grunge thing. Here we had this ska-influenced, pop-ish hook-driven band with a blond girl singer. You've got Alanis Morissette, who is the epitome of the angry woman, and here we had Gwen Stefani, who is a little bit more of the antithesis of that and is just enjoying herself. But music is the same merry-go-round. Trends go round and round and round, but every time they come back around—whether it's metal, or rock, or pop, or disco, or dance music or whatever—there is always a new twist. There are always the new influences. There is always an amalgamation of influences that have come before. That's why everyone is kind of at the moment waiting for trend number whatever to come up.
I think it has had a very good effect on the industry, though, in that it has opened the industry up to almost anything that is just plain good right now.
I think it's great. In the late '80s when you had those "hair" bands, there were very few to no women. So when the boys pretty much became a parody of themselves because the talent pool was drained completely dry, they went the way of the dinosaur. They just went downhill. After the Winger/Warrant episodes, there was nowhere else to go. That's why when Nirvana and Pearl Jam came up with this much more direct, real, organic, in-your-face kind of street, dirty sound, it was a breath of fresh air. These other bands had just parodied themselves to death. The difference now with grunge and alternative is that it is still infiltrating all of the other areas, and that's especially interesting because women are involved. I think these last few years when the boys dried up, and the Pearl Jam wannabes were in danger of again becoming a parody of themselves, all these women bands came up with a new fresh approach lyrically on what to say from the woman's perspective. Alanis Morissette, Tracy Bonham, Jewel and the whole list of them—they picked up the ball and ran with it. It kept the whole alternative scene going a lot longer than what it would normally have done if women weren't in there.
The girls were all over the map stylistically, too. Even Donna Lewis, who had a big pop hit last summer, was certainly a harbinger that pop was back and that it is okay to be pop now.
Pop now is okay because there have been five or six years of immense influences, and we're now two generations removed from the mid-'80s. They are bringing those more recent styles in—loops, grunge guitars, samples, more direct and real lyrics—as opposed to the "moon in June" and "met him in a bar"-type ideas. It's become much more interesting. So pop is not a dirty word anymore. Pop music actually is somewhat educational now. Just look at the Top-200 songs. There are all kinds. It's wacky. There is such a wild diversity.
Do you think that diversity is maybe telling us that it's going to stay diverse for awhile, and maybe we won't see a "Next Big Thing?" Maybe people have become so fragmented, through so many labels and the Internet, that it has fragmented the marketplace.
I think you're right, because of that communication and technology. I think it would be a little harder for a new dominating, overwhelming wave or trend to come up. But who knows? Who knows what genius is? You go with your best instincts, and you hope you're right. Some people seem to always be on the money, like Clive Davis and people like that. Their whole focus with the artists is about the songs. Always go for the songs and work backwards from there. Develop the artist, develop an image, blah, blah, blah, but always go for the songs. Rightly or wrongly, people think another rock band of some form is going to come up next—whether it's a mixture of, I don't know, Guns N' Roses meets AC/DC meets the Doobie Brothers with a new twist. In going to some of the clubs around the country, particularly in the Midwest up through Chicago and down through Texas, there are some young bands—teenagers and early 20's, that have these influences. You'll get a singer who is like Ozzy Osbourne twenty years ago, with a guitar player like Jimmy Page, with a drummer like out of Pearl Jam and ska-influenced bass player. You just get this whacked-out amalgamation. They come together and make this music, but they are bringing all of their little individual influences. I think something like that could happen. There are quite a few people out there that are waiting for a rock band to start a new trend. There aren't that many rock acts.
Talk to me about artist development.
It's always hard as a band to get going with something that is a little out of sync with what is currently happening. It's hard for a label as well to find where the audience is that would recognize it and gravitate towards it. In this age of technology and instant communication, we want instant gratification. Attention spans are very short these days. Get the hit now. If the first release isn't a hit, it's over. That's the thinking a lot now. What happened to artist development? We've had three major instances here at the label of artist development. One was No Doubt. The first one was a band called the Toadies, whose record was out 18 months before we got a Florida station banging it. They were touring bars, criss-crossing the country, playing in front of three people and their dog. That was the audience. And then suddenly it broke, 18 months later. We've got another band out on the road that we're working now. Again, they are musically out of step with what is going on right now. We're doing the same thing with them. The record has been out a year, and it's just starting to get some percolation.
What makes it start?
People championing the cause. Some people within the industry, but not label-connected, hear the record and start a buzz through word-of-mouth. Word-of-mouth, regardless of the technology and all the charts and all the magazines and stuff, is still one of the best, most credible and long-lasting supports for a new act. It's not video. Touring is still the base, though. Touring and word-of-mouth mean much more than some whacked-out video, or somebody who writes a little paragraph here and there. That comes later. The initial word of mouth and the touring base is what gets a band noticed and gets them off the ground. That's the first push.
It's been said that the problem with the industry today is that too much is being signed and released.
I'll agree with that. I think some of these acts are signed, and not everything can be a priority at a label. Acts should realize that when they are being courted by a major label, that they are always made to feel that they are going to be the priority. But a major label, upon taking delivery of the record that the act has made, may elect not to make it a priority at that time. That's hard for a band to deal with. I think labels try to push too much product at too high a level and flood the market. I agree. I think too many acts are being signed for some of the wrong reasons. With the success of independent labels over the last 10 or 15 years, the majors suddenly think, well what are they doing that we're not doing? Just imagine if we as a major label did it, we'd even be more successful. So there's a big pressure for A&R people to go out there and sign, sign, sign and sign. It's kind of like that movie Glengary Glenross: Sell those cars! Come on let's go! Make your quota! Sometimes A&R feels like that. Like: Man, I haven't signed anything in eight months. I'd better go and sign something. So the first thing you get remotely excited about, you want to sign, instead of being calm, and selective and figuring out if this band is worth it. Are you signing drug addicts? Are you signing a nightmare? Is it just one hit that they've got, or even a hit at all? What is the potential? But sometimes as an A&R person you don't get the luxury of allowing yourself that time, because suddenly there are five other guys lining up around you with their checkbooks open. Sometimes you have to make a snap decision real fast. I know A&R people, though, who have signed acts that they had never even seen perform and have never met. Or they've phoned the attorney because they have a relationship and offer a blank check. Your odds, at that point, are really against you to break an act. Like I said before, a lot of what we do in this business is luck, but the odds are against you in that case.
How important is an A&R person's relationship with the radio promotion people at the label? Can the record still succeed if the A&R person's heart is into the artist, but the promotion person's is not?
A record can succeed and survive despite that. The radio people tend to respond to their outside relationships. I've seen situations where the A&R person gives it to the radio promotion department, and the radio promotion department is ambivalent at best. But then they've played it for all of the programmers at the stations who get really excited about it. That, then feeds back into the company. All of a sudden, so-and-so at WHFS is nuts about this record. That gets everybody excited again. To be honest, still to this day, even with all of the other technology, you still need radio in order to break a band. Radio is still the most powerful conduit for selling records. The encouraging thing is that some of these big market stations are now going out on a limb with certain records.
What is your take on the Internet? Do you think it's really going to change the industry?
I guess the most controversial potential is the ability to digitally download music. I think it's already changed it, in as much that bands have websites now and you can browse around. The whole fan club thing has disappeared, and it's more like the website fan club. People can just go online and meet the band, or bands can leave messages for their fans and video of gigs. We had one band that was sending back videotape of gigs, where people could download it and see the gig from the night before. The band talked about how they broke down on the road, and this is the club, and here we are at soundcheck. So I think, yes, it is going to change, but I guess the most controversial thing is what happens when the ability to download pristine quality music becomes possible? Where does retail fit in that—when you can actually just plunk down a credit card and download the whole record, and you've got it? If you want to print out the artwork, it will be available, and you'll have your own file of bands.
Why are some record companies falling all over themselves trying to be the actual retailers of their own product? Why not have it more decentralized? You could be a label with only one website selling your product to the public, or you could have 10,000 independent retailers on the Internet all selling your product. That makes more sense to me.
Yeah, except the retailers are all set up with their stores, and staff and everything else. Business can't change overnight, but the industry, technology-wise, has gotten so sophisticated, that it will have the ability to change overnight. That could be dangerous.
Couldn't the existing retailers adapt to the technology and have a ramp-up time to adjust?
They're going to have to, because that day is coming. I think the retailers have got to cozy up with the labels, because that is a reality. If they don't catch on to the technology and figure out a way of utilizing it for their own good as salesmen, they are going to be out of business. Then all you'll have left is Blockbuster with video rentals. CDs are going to be a thing of the past if they're not careful. They've got to figure out a way to adapt in the not too distant future to the ability to download music. I don't know, though. How many people worldwide have got computers and will have the ability to do this? I think the technology is almost there, but the actual hardware and software in every home for people to do that is not going to be universally utilized. Not everybody has got all of the knowledge, let alone the technology. It's going to be like it was when CDs first came out and stores split their sales up between vinyl, cassettes and CDs. Eventually CDs took over. You're right, it's going to be a ramp—some kind of crossover time period. The technology is practically there. We're getting to the stage now where we don't want to use FedEx or messenger services to listen to mixes. I could be here in my office, and I could have a record being made in Australia downloaded over the phone lines into my computer, and I could hear the finished master. It's going to be a brave new world, that's for sure.
What advice would you give to a young person who aspires to be an A&R "weasel?"
The only real way of getting into the A&R game is to associate yourself with an artist that all of a sudden gains notoriety, and you come in on the coattails of that artist. Or you're in a business that is affiliated directly with a record label, and people trust your taste, and your ears and your ability to fish out young talent.
Any sage advice for disenfranchised young bands or artists all over America who would love to get their tape heard by somebody in the music business?
Again, the technology is there. They can make a tape and get it to the right person. Bands are getting remarkably sophisticated in their presentation these days. I don't necessarily think bands have to send in a large binder or folder of all the press they've gotten in their local town. It's just a tape of three or four songs—that's all that's really necessary—and a return phone number and a contact name. If the music is there, then we'll want to see all of the other stuff. We've done many seminars at all of these conferences, and it still remains the same: for bands and performers—as opposed to a non-performing songwriter or an R&B artist—the best thing they can do is be in their town and develop their own story, because we hear about it. They don't have to make this big exodus to Los Angeles or New York to be heard. If they are making enough noise in their own town, we hear about it. There are clubs, and bars, and universities, and colleges and coffee houses all across the country. They can still develop their talent there. Ron Sexsmith was a singer in a suburb of Toronto that we heard of. He didn't have to travel to Los Angeles and start going around the companies and delivering his tape. We found him in Toronto.
How did you guys first hear about him?
Through publishing, funny enough. Publishers were very into his songwriting. About two or three publishers were really hot on this guy. The industry talks. The industry is all about relationships. We all talk to each other. "What have you been listening to?" Even though we're all in competition with each other, we all talk about it. Basically, anyone who is in the business for any length of time is a fan of music. We love to talk about music.
What is your most embarrassing industry story?
Two immediately come to mind. The first one was passing on Nirvana. That was an embarrassment. Mind you, I didn't hear "Teen Spirit." I would hope in my heart of hearts I would have recognized that "Teen Spirit" was a potential hit record. Another one is that very early on, a band phoned me up and said, "What did you think of our show last night?" and I said it was great, even though I didn't show up for the show. They said, "Well that's funny, because we didn't perform." So I make a point now of always being honest. Those are the two most embarrassing moments. I learned that long ago, so I always go to shows. If I can't make the show, I always tell the band if I can't make it, or else I'll try and swing by and at least see one or two songs. But the days of bullshitting are over.
If you could start all over, is there anything you would do differently?
Oh my god, I don't know. I've often thought about that. I don't know if I would do anything different. I'd like to think that I would have been smarter. If there is anything I'd like to have been more different, it would have been a change of character—and that's more or less impossible to do. A few acts that I really, really hungered for and really believed in, I should have been more intense about. I'm not a very good used car salesman. I should have been more intense and dogmatic about signing these acts because my intuition proved to be right. On the other hand, I've signed acts that have been dogs, so it balances out. No, I don't know if I would have done anything differently in retrospect. I'm happy to have hit one out of the park. I would like to hit another one out of the park. Jimmy Iovine always said, "The first one, you're lucky. The second one, maybe you're onto something." So I'd like to hit another one out of the park, like a big one like No Doubt before I roll over and die.
What is your favorite part about what you do for a living?
Making records. I love making records. I love the process, as frustrating as it can be. I love getting into the philosophy of the dynamics and the subtleties of making the record—the arrangement, the music, putting it all together with the band or the producer and listening to how it sounds. Just the slightest adjustments on levels of drums, guitar, strings or whatever can have the most profound effect on how it supports the musical integrity, and the lyric and how it all feels. I remember when I first started engineering, I knew what my ears wanted to hear, but my body was not making it happen. Eventually my ears could recognize what was 2.5k and what was 3.25k. I would actually test myself with other engineers and say, "Let's bring up 400 cycles and take back 250," and I would say, "Oops, you're off by 100 cycles." I love playing around with sound. You hit that emotional high when you get that mix just right—when you know that it's the best that it can be. I love that process. I've always been into the sound quality of records. I've always been a pop music guy. I've always loved pop music all the way through Motown, to the British Invasion of the '60s, to the grunge stuff. I've always recognized why people are buying something. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out why people are buying it. What I like to do is, even with Madonna records and stuff like that, to think about the way they're made—the dynamic quality, the reverbs and the echoes that they used. I just love immersing myself in those kinds of sounds. I like going in there and cranking stuff up.
Interscope is a great label to work for, in that Jimmy has always maintained that artist-oriented friendliness. He always admired of the early Warner Bros., the early Geffen, the early A&M—those three labels in particular were very artist-oriented. It's a shame that in the '80s, some corporations got a little too big for their own good. Jimmy quite recently was at some Florida meeting with a bunch of record execs and businessmen where he made a speech, part of which was about the fact that the industry still is so business-oriented. There is a need for that, but it's also an emotional business. We're not selling tires. We're not selling soft drinks. We're selling emotion. The people in the business that have that creative talent to go out there and make that emotional piece of product have to be disciplined with the business, but the business should not overwhelm that ability. I think that's a very good point. I think some labels are beginning now to realize the importance of that creativity within the business. It was definitely in danger at some corporations of being lost, particularly in the mid- to late '80s. A lot of it is the bottom line. It costs so much to break a record. Just to walk a record out of the door on a major label deal is anywhere between $200- and $500,000 dollars. That's a lot of commitment. That's what I mean when I say it's the closest thing to the stock market and Las Vegas. It's a gamble.
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Tuesday, August 4, 2009
"NOLITA NIGHTS" mixtape by: Pittsburgh Slim & DJ BIZZY
Friday, April 10, 2009
DJ Gigahurtz - SELECTRO v.1 - 2009
Download Here: http://tinyurl.com/sel
Thursday, March 5, 2009
DJ Spair - Whats Pop'N' - Club Mix
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=ed184
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