7/18/2008
• My what horrible netizens we are, defying the entire twitter generation by repeatedly disappearing for extended periods of drunkenness and larceny leading to widespread rumors and rampant gossip about our shocking demise! Shocking!
• The rumors of a year long WE Fest however, are true! Starting on August 22, The Soapbox and French Quarter will be hosting a monthly WE Fest Friday, hot damn, five stages of music, all for just one single solitary dollar and sponsored by Surf 98.3, it's downright damn amazing.
• Sorry to bail on you so fast, but there's something going on with the software on this laptop that's eating shit. Time to figure out how to update this site without it taking five minutes to add a link, Jesus Christ. Be back.
5/16/2008
• WE Fest is less than a week away! As ever, be there or be rectangular, we do it for the lulz, people.
• Hooray for The Milwaukees for giving Kenyata props! Hooray to Gone Fishing For Blue Skies for playing us in Japan! Hooray for Review Stalker for giving WE Fest props! Hooray for the Star News for giving WE Fest early ink! Hooray to Lazlo and BlowUpRadio in Jersey for interviewing Kenyata and letting him babble randomly for two whole damn hours! I'd link to Bootleg Magazine, but they don't have a website, hooray for them despite the fact they're obviously Amish! Zoom Zippity Zoom Zoom Zippity Zoom Zoom!
4/30/2008
No, we're still not done with the new damn record you bastards, because it's not good enough, and we've also been crazy busy with WE Fest. You want WE Fest to rock, right? Damn right you do! We're just hosting the event (not playing), but come get drunk with us at the end of May.
That being said, we're probably gonna go pretty apeshit if we don't get you some new music soon. All this cool stuff is collecting in our heads and banging from our bandroom, but no one hears it but us. Hmm.
The local rumor mill even suspects that we've secretly broken up because we've been so private for so long, but that ain't so, not even close. In fact, we're just now moving into a much larger bandroom so we can include a piano in the initial songwriting from here on out. As soon as we can find a theremin player, a horn section and a full gospel choir, we'll be good to go.
• Hooray for VideoHIVE, Video Vision, and TVfuntime.com for still playing our video for "Cry", to Lazlo and Blow Up Radio for including us on their online compilation, and also to The Mental Nomad, Nicole, Chris Mezzolesta, etc etc, jeez, this is the problem when I take too long to update this thing, I forget folks who've been great to us and I feel bad.
3/20/2008
• Kenyata is delighted to have just accepted the Music Supervisor's gig for the short film Blue Skies, the latest project from Bad Trip Productions based right here in Wilmington, NC (though most folks don't know it, we're the third largest film community in the USA, right behind NYC and LA. No shit.)
He's also tickled that his buddy Mike Daugherty is gonna be in town in about a week, showing off his metalwork for a new horror movie that features SFX by one of Kenyata's oldest pals, the mighty Will Purcell.
If you check out our video for "Livin' On The Beach" from back in the day, Mike is the dancing cop, and Will is the guy who slaps the flier on the wall and beckons you into the club at the beginning. Both of them are doing great, Will is blowing shit up left and right for the movies (and has just gotten engaged), and Mike is selling replica train whistles for tons of money faster than he can produce them. There's nothing better than when your friends are going out there and kicking the world in the ass! Especially when they still wanna drink with you, even when they're all Mr. Big Shit and stuff. If you've seen the Bukowski inspired movie "Barfly," yell it with us, "To all our friiiieeeeeends!"
• Kenyata is also thrilled to have been asked to join The Atticus, which should be great fun! The Atticus is a small collection of songwriters with ties to the teams led by Butch Walker and Linda Perry out in Los Angeles, so don't be too shocked if you see K's name at the end of the lyrics of a big pop single soon. Seriously, don't go all rolling bug-eyed and indie rock arrogant, roll with it baby, enjoy the ride!
Pop songs are a hoot, it'll be fun to write 'em, kinda like crossword puzzles, doncha think?! Watch out, Diane Warren - before you know it, in addition to the everyday manic emotional and noncommercial political madness of our records, we're gonna be using American Idol stars, pop country icons, and disco divas to absofuckinglutely drink America's Top Forty milkshake. Bee-otch.
Shoutout to Mook since we just dropped the milkshake on ya.
3/18/2008
• Hooray for VIRV Indie Music Television!
• Hooray for Twilight And Thebes!
Mostly we've been working on the new disc, raising money for the new videos, and getting everything together for WE Fest 2008. Busy busy!
3/07/2008
• Thanks to Crackle for spotlighting our video for "Cry"! Thanks also to the new folks who are now playing the video, including Strictly Global from MHz Networks, Video Countdown in Toledo, and iNDiGO TV in NYC.
3/05/2008
• A few days ago while I was working on the next disc, I used the morning of the session to write and record a sad little piano song called "Eminent Domain". If you want to hear it, it's posted over at Culture Bully, along with the story of how it happened.
• Hooray for Star Wars Action News for using "Welcome To The City" in the soundtrack for their annual Toy Fare video episode!
• I'm pleased to announce that we've found the director for the first video from our upcoming disc! His name is Ilias Sounas, and he's a phenomenal animator. He lives in Greece, check out his short film Space Alone. W e can't wait to see what he does with our humble little dance track called "Amphibious Vehicular Love", and it's an honor to be collaborating with him.
2/28/2008
• As many of you know, we host an annual music festival here in our little hometown! Preperations are well underway for this year's event, you should come when the end of May rolls around, here's the skinny:
In 1996, a ragtag bunch of musicians, artists, filmmakers and writers decided that the established events that were constantly hyped to them were bullshit. They decided instead that they would have their own festival, celebrating some very simple things - great music, community, and the independent spirit, as opposed to money, the mainstream music industry, and blind ambition.
While an awful lot of indiespeak gets bandied about nowadays, this was pretty novel at the time. They called it W.E. Fest, short for the Wilmington Exchange Festival, due to the fact that the event was (and is) held in the sleepy southern beach town of Wilmington, NC.
Over the past decade plus, they've managed to intentionally stay homespun and under the radar, even though their relatively small ranks would include an awful lot of people who would become some of the most pivotal and vital contributers to today's modern music scene.
The Dismemberment Plan when they'd just released their first record. Ryan Gentles before he managed The Strokes. Alison Mosshart before she was in The Kills. Lamb Of God when they were still called Burn The Priest. The Mooney Suzuki when they only had a demo tape out. Mae when they were still unsigned. xbxrx when they were still underage and their Dad drove the van from Alabama. Anthony Rossomando before he was in The Libertines and Dirty Pretty Things. Daron Murphy before he was Moby's guitar player. Todd Evans before he was Beefcake in GWAR. Asobi Seksu when they were still called Three Cornered Season. ASG before they were on Volcom. Val Emmich before Sony, 30 Rock, and Got Milk?. Weedeater before they were on Southern Lord. Martha Mooke before her ASCAP award and her stint with David Bowie (not to mention her current gig with Philip Glass), and many many more, all WE Fest.
Cover charge is intentionally small, between $1 and $3 a day. All of the staffers and organizers are volunteers, and once basic expenses are met, the rest of the money goes to the bands. WE Fest intentionally never turns a profit.
People from the mainstream biz are intentionally not invited, though some of them who get what we're doing and are in the know show up anyway, just to have fun. Ernie Brooks from the legendary Modern Lovers graced us with a set. Last year actor Paul Dano (Little Miss Sunshine, There Will Be Blood) and his band Mook surprised us with two sets, and didn't even tell us he was coming beforehand (silly Mook!).
WE Fest is for musicians, artists, writers, and fans, not businessmen. This is why the bands don't suck, and why WE Festers are disproportionally successful, because WE Festers - as a community - truly give a shit.
If you want to join us, our 12th annual event is happening this May 22-26 on all three floors of The Soapbox Laundrolounge in Wilmington, NC. Indie rock arrogance is just as frowned upon as major label dominance. We just want to hang out, listen to great bands, drink great beer, and genuinely get to know each other. You know, just have fun, like in the old days when none of us had an inkling that anyone else might care.
It's good stuff, and if you're into that kind of thing, you should probably find a way to be here.
2/27/2008
• Thanks to Logo for playing our video for "Cry"on NewNowNext!
• Thanks to Lazlo and Blow-Up radio for including us on their March/April sampler CD!
• In non-band news, hooray for my cousin Austin for his work rebuilding coral reefs!
2/23/2008
• Finally, it feels like we're moving forwards and getting this new disc done, songs are getting finished! The process is striking though, especially when I compare it to my early days.
I keep flashing back to when I made my first record with Pandora's Lunchbox. Me and the fellas back then started a band mostly because our friends had a band, and we practiced every day 'cause we wanted to be better than them. Shane and Jack didn't even know how to play their instruments, they learned as we rehearsed. Three and a half months later we made our first record.
We recorded it live to two-track in Thalian Hall here in Wilmington, and I think there are only two splices and one overdub on the whole damn thing. This was back in about 1991, I think? It still sounds great. You can even hear one of the Thalian ghosts contributing feedback (we saw ghosts while we were recording the song "Windowpane", but being really young and pressed for time, we didn't stop playing and just went with it. Curtains started moving, a figure materialized as a haze in the seats, that's true. We were tired and it might have just been our collective imaginations, but it was one helluva ride.)
I'm a bit older now, kinda like grandpa indie rock, and for now anyway, making a record in a weekend just wouldn't be satisfying. Nowadays, it takes a while. Because of money and family, we all record basic tracks together, and then I go back up to the studio whenever we have the money to get things polished and finished up. That's when I do the vocals, and the ear candy, and the extra arrangements. I can't stand the idea of it sounding half-assed and demo-ish, but since I come from a low-fi and punk rock background I'm also always worried that I'm killing the spirit of the songs by being so meticulous about them.
There will always be one part of me that thinks every song should be stripped down and raw, and another part that wants four part harmonies, a fairlight, aand a full orchestra ta boot. I joke with Jerry that this whole record is like Black Flag and Kate Bush trying against all odds to make a happy baby (for you young 'uns, make that Strike Anywhere and Cat Power).
Jerry and I also joke that 90% of what we do in the studio is a failed experiment. Sometimes I change not just the words, but the entire delivery because what I was doing live just sounds wrong when we get it on tape. Even beyond that, sometimes I get a wild hair from a particular keyboard sound or something, and before you know it, I've got a drum machine rolling, and a brand new song is on the way. If the guys like it, they're nice enough to let me stick it on the record. They're kinda the tits that way.
These are the only times I wish we were better known. If we were better known, we'd have the resources to write and record so much faster, we could put out so much more music. But I can't bitch, because we really do have exactly the right amount of fame.
Contrary to popular belief, too much fame can really be a huge pain in the ass. When I make it out to see a show, folks are really nice to me and buy me beers, we laugh and tell stories. Sometimes we enter my own private Twilight Zone and a band will dedicate a song to me, or pull a Majestic Twelve cover out of their kitbag, which always makes my week. Musicians send me nice snail mail and emails to let me know they're listening, or that they're reading all this computer stuff that I usually expect to just slip into the ether.
The other day I was on the phone with my old friend Kristin Forbes up in DC (she's in the delightful Olivia Mancini And The Housemates), and we were talking about how nice (and how humbling) it is to be locally respected veterans, while also being decidedly anonymous to virtually everyone outside of "the scene".
I can't deny that a little money here and there would be nice. I guess we all wish we could just do the work, just write and play music, and not worry about the other stuff . But if I have to choose between rock star or musician/member of my community, I'll take being the guy who works his ass off so he can make music that he loves and gets free beers when he goes out. No crybabying here. My life ain't perfect, but it's some good good shit. To all of you who are actually reading this, I love all you guys.
For the record, those of you who remember our song "I Don't Have A Job" from our first disc can thank Miss Kristin Forbes for that. She was telling me back in the day about a well known punk band she was touring with, and the front man was bitching about what a pain in the ass it was to be on the road, complaining that he was still in the trenches while a number of his friends' bands were getting mainstream attention.
Kristin pointed out to him that he was doing what he loved for a living, and that thousands of other bands would have given their left nut to be in his position, so he should basically shut the fuck up and be grateful for all the love the kids gave him every night. When she told me that story that's when I wrote those lyrics. Despite the protestations of some critics, it had nothing to do with REM, and was supposed to be much more of a whitey appropriation of hip hop, completely due to my conversation with Kristin. I love ya baby, you rock Miss K!
• Hooray for Jack9 for licensing our stuff!
• Hooray for Zillafag!
• Hooray for Angelika at Nova M!
• Hooray (we think) for Pop News in France! Anybody speak French?
2/20/2008
• More video adds! The retail pool DMX Entertainment had added us to their BarFly Hits reel for February, and now they've also added us to their Hot Traxx and Chart Attack reels for March. Since they service over 200,000 retail outlets with video content, it's one heck of a coup.
We've also now been seen on the legendary and venerable JBTV out of Chicago, Studio 21 in San Antonio, and Yale House Rock on Yale University's YTV. Dandy!
2/11/2008
• In addition to being in MTVu's Top Ten this week, we also wanna thank a bunch of other folks who have added the video for "Cry" - Indieist out in Santa Barbara, Indy's Music Channel in Indianapolis, Ruckus based out of Herndon, VA, R n R TV in Baltimore, Point Music TV in Stevens Point, WI, and we've also just climbed to #7 on the Taylor Production Broadcast Retail Pool's Top Thirty Rock & Pop Chart. Movin' on up!
You can also now see the video for "Cry" online at Roxwell. Roxwell are a hoot because our video for "Trapped Underwater" has a perfect rating up there, while the one for "Livin' On The Beach" has one single lonely solitary star - guess Roxwell fans dig the tragedy and hate the irony, eh?
If you want to download the MP4 video for "Cry" , right click and save right here.
2/09/2008
• Man, what a week! First we got slammed by the posh kids on MTVu for "Cry" (naughty posh kids, no more bottled water for you), and then we just barely lost a squeaker to Foxy Shazam in the voting (who rock by the way, big ups to Foxy Shazam). But hold the phone, then we found out that since we had such a strong showing, MTVu decided to add the video the same as if we'd won, and badabing badaboom, the next thing you know we're on the Dean's List, which is MTVu's national Top Ten countdown! Hot tamale!
Many generous thanks to all of you who voted, especially the folks who blogged and posted about it - Chris over at Culture Bully, bashba at the Pearl Jam Message Pit, Aspen Suicide from Pretty On The Inside, Kim Ware at Eskimo Bliss, Billy Maulana at Sound The Sirens, Bambi Weavil at Out Impact, Stephen Bailey Cultural Exchange Advocate, the delightfully sublime Djinbala, brand spanking new tv personality Gaeton, Lazlo from Blow Up Radio and Lazlo's Den, and so many more of you who posted bulletins on MySpace, harrassed your friends into helping out, and voted until you developed carpal tunnel. We are all an army waving pillowcase flags.
• In other good news, I got a check in the mail right outta the blue from my pal Blair Murphy! Lemme tell you a story about Blair, this is fantastic.
Back in the 1990's, he made a self-financed low budget vampire film that's become a bit of a cult favorite called Jugular Wine (which gets slammed on IMDB, but never mind those pricks). Since he didn't have any distribution, he decided to try and sell it to Blockbuster directly, 'cause, you know, he just has big balls like that. When they said "no", he told them to hold on a minute, and go ask their kids if they would rent a vampire movie with Henry Rollins in it. Their kids said yes. Blockbuster bought thousands of copies for their stores directly from our intrepid filmmaker.
That in and of itself is a fantastic story of DIY can-do and victorious moxie, but it gets better! Blair took all that money, and instead of just making another movie like most folks might do, he bought himself his own haunted hotel, and moved into that sucker proving once and for all that this is a guy with style.
Since then the hotel has become a hub for artists, photographers, musicians and writers. Oh, and vampires, too. Ever going beyond the call of duty, Blair also hosts the annual Kerouac Fest, and proves on a daily basis that he is one of those rare people who actively drives the underground we all relish and enjoy, as opposed to just marvelling at it from afar, or leeching from it's more lascivious fruits. Blair Murphy, my good friends, is a scholar and a gentleman.
So anyways, it's always great to hear from him, and this time was even better - he asked if he could use our song "Busy Work" for the opening sequence and end credits of his upcoming film "Coolsville", which is a documentary about his Kerouac Fests. And he sent a check for the rights ta boot! We would've let him use the song for free (and I'm pretty sure he knew that), so that was downright classy. He sent us a cool frisbee, too.
• OK, let's see, news, news.... we're still working on the new disc, blah blah blah. It's making me nuts that it's taking so long, but I can only get up to the studio to mix and do vocals a few days each month, and I'm an anal retentive little prick. My punk rock friends pick on me.
We also had the first production meeting for the video for "Condoleezza, Check My Posse" , because we finally had a good idea for the damn thing! We're shooting to have it done in six weeks (and we damn well better come close to being on schedule since Bush will be gone soon, thank God.) So, yes, despite the late date, we plan to continue making fun of George Bush and his administration for as long as he continues to soil the Presidential office with his foul incompetent soulless zombie stench, down to the very last day. The man's still a dick, and humor must continue to ensue.
1/28/2008
• Hey, starting at 11 AM today, we're on MTVu's THE FRESHMAN this week! The other bands are all good, but we hope you'll vote for us anyways! Good times.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PS - Keith Hopkin (the drummer in Asobi Seksu until about a year or two ago) says they were on The Freshman and it was good stuff, so hey, rockin'! He has a new band he made just for fun called Blue Album Group, which is a performance art project that will be playing Weezer's "Blue Album" in it's entirety. Don't call 'em a tribute or cover band, it's art you bastards, go dig it henceforth.
PSS - Mark in Scotland begs to differ with our opinion that all the bands are good, and says that Jack Penate is, and we quote, " one of the current wave of NME-sponsored fake indie idiots who sing about life's seedy realities without ever having LIVED any of them... check out his video where he's running along Brighton seafront really fast. every time i see it, i hope maybe THIS time, he'll drop dead. plus, he looks like david gedge's younger, retarded brother. i DETEST him! see also, lily allen, kate nash and loads more. the TV coverage of last summer's festivals was FULL of this sort of shit when they could've been showing GOOD stuff like the hold steady, bright eyes, etc."
We, being uneducated Yanks who've never heard of Penate before, cannot authentically verify our good friend Mark's opinion, but is was such a fantastic rant we had to add it as an addendum. Now excuse me while I go Google David Gedge. Oh yeah, Wedding Present!
When I myself watched Penate's video, I mostly just thought he must be a big fan of Paul Weller circa The Jam, or perhaps John Wesley Harding with really really happy happy feet, but these are fine things to like, eh? I probably won't watch it again, but hey, I'm a picky little bastard. What the hell do I know, anyways?
It's worth noting that Pinate is just one letter away from Pinata, which rhymes with Kenyata, which on second thought isn't worth noting at the least.
Keep the cool mail coming! I'll be locked down in the studio for the next two days working on the new disc, but will be back here to blather on about your emails and much other somesuch, posthaste. As ever, keep talking to us, because we dig it! You rock!
1/23/2008
• Thanks to everyone playing the "Cry" video, you guys are fantastic. Online we've now also been hooked up by Blank TV, and VH1, and MuchMusic, and Spike TV, and Roxwell, and Crossbones TV, kickass.
Also, huge thanks to a bunch of video shows across the country who've been playing it - fine folks like Class A TV out of Jamaica, NY, Capitol Chaos from Sacramento, Eye Music Network from Atlanta, Video Countdown in Toledo, Raw Shorts from Bloomington, Video Hits from Rochester, Videology from Columbia. Not to mention the retail pools that have stuck us on their reels, including Retail Entertainment Design (which means it's been seen in every Virgin Megastore for the past month), ScreenPlay (irritating unsuspecting shoppers at Macy's, Ikea, etc), Rock America, and WYA Retail (women's clothing stores AND tattoo parlors - no shit!)
• We're back in the studio this coming Monday and Tuesday working on the next disc, hope to have it out to ya soon - keep your fingers crossed for a speedy and transcendent mix. We have two new videos in pre-production right now - a short film for "Grandfather", and, finally we think we have a concept for "Condoleezza, Check My Posse" that can fly, so hey, wish us luck on all that stuff.
1/21/2008
You doubt the awesome kung fu skills
of The Majestic Twelve?! Prepare to die!
Kenyata's one year old daughter proves
that stubborn indie rock combat runs
in the family (photo by Kate Falconer).
1/03/2008
• Happy New Year! We want to say thanks to all the folks playing the video for "Cry", in fact if you live in Rhode Island, you can watch it tonight on Bad Taste Music TV.
Fuel TV have also gotten on board, which is great since my 8 year old is going to surf camp this coming summer - here comes the newest grom on the block, coming to a Fuel show near you soon! They're showing Valient Thorr right now on The Daily Habit, excellent, Carolina boys, I saw more than one great show from them back in their early nightclub days, they rock. Go give some love to Valient Thorr.
We also wanna thank Power Play Music TV out of Newark, Split TV out of Atlanta, Playing @ A Theatre Near You in Michigan, Video Diversity in Omaha, the 9:30 Club in DC, and also a couple of retail pools - EVision (which means it'll be seen at the House Of Blues and on Princess cruise lines) and VME Media's Pulse TV Network.
And it's popping up all over the web - in addition to Blender.com naming us a Blender Breakout Band, you can also see it on Stim TV, Rockdirt, AOL Music, Singing Fool, Yahoo, and of course it's popped up on YouTube several times now and it's on MySpace, plus a few other places that I'm spacing at the moment. We've only just begun the promotion, if you're a video programmer, hey, jump on board! Let us know what format you need, and we'll see you get it asap.
Thanks again to the miraculous J.R. Stauffer at Broken Wings for directing a great clip, even taking money out of his own pocket to get it done when it went over our meager budget, and to everyone at Hip Video Promo for always having our backs, despite the fact that we don't have the money or machinery of a record label behind us. All of you mean more to us that we can say, we appreciate your faith and your work more than you can know, thanks for believing in us. Onwards and upwards.
• I have to apologize to all of you fine folks for us not getting you a new CD in 2007! The songs are all written, basic tracks have been recorded since September, I just haven't been able to do the vocals and finishing work because of family stuff.
However, the good news is that I'm back in the studio starting Jan 14th, and we're gonna get that sucker done as soon as we can. In fact, cross your fingers, we might be able to get you a full length PLUS a bonus low-fi EP tacked on the end of the disc in a few months if all the puzzle pieces fall into place - wish us luck!
And yes, it will be free, just like the last one. It's always gonna be free, that's just the way we roll. Don't forget to tell Radiohead we did it first.
12/21/2007
• Blender Magazine named us a "Blender Breakout" band on Blender.com this week. Merry Christmas to us!
• Thanks to Mackenzie, Oliver, Lexi, Wayne and Steve from UNCW's film studies program for making this student film video for Condoleezza Check My Posse!
• Someone sent us this photo of something a teacher at Brunswick High School in Leland, North Carolina stuck up on the school's wall:
We're starting to pop up all kinds of cool places, huh?
12/12/2007
• I just realize I know how I change when I'm drunk, and it's all thanks to blogging! I usually update this when I'm loaded, but when I wake up in the morning, I read it and fix it so it better represents what I really mean. Because of this, I've been able to figure out what alcohol does to me, how it changes my personality, which is a pretty cool observation.
1. I get more aggressive. I'm not talking about getting more violent, just more aggressive, more interested in courting controversy than civilly figuring things out. I also use more profanity, but that actually merges into #2.
2. I overemphasize my position, basically saying the same thing over and over again, searching for the most emphatic way to say it, instead of just saying it well one time, and leaving it at that.
Now this is hardly a revelation about drunkenness, everyone knows that drunk people can be more aggressive and say the same thing over and over, but hey, now I have evidence that I do that myself! That's valuable info. Hopefully I'll be mindful of that, and be a better drunk in the future (I'm drunk now, how'd I do?!)
Oh, and I also overuse punctuation, and unnecessarily and repeatedly utilize internet abbreviations, fuck me, lol!!!
• As some of you know, we sell our stuff on eBay in order to pay for all of our projects, and have done so for a number of years (we highly recommend it).
On top of that, I have a New Year's Resolution to clean out my house and get a bit more Zen, so by the end of 2008, the goal is to have everything in my home (which is fucking huge) either have it's place, get sold, get donated, or get thrown away.
Part of this means that I'm selling off a lot of my audio archives, archives including some very rare music from the underground of the past twenty years, and it's led to some pretty interesting correspondence! I thought I'd share with you this exchange between me and a noise fan, who actually clued me in to the importance of a certain cassette I had up for auction.
From Hicham Chadly (a writer for Blastitude, who first got in touch when I first started listing the archives)):
" hey again =
what about this?
noise cassette ~ CULVER/TOTALL, HEAD, DRAG SENTIMENT
is it TOTAL??? matthew Bower??????
thanks
hicham"
MY REPLY:
" hey Hicham (writing you from my private email, not the ebay one),
Jeez, I don't know if this is Matthew Bower or not - it's definitely British though, Culver made the first modern noise that really opened my eyes to the
genre, and he/they/it, definitely from the UK.
It's one of those tapes with handmade cover and labels, and no contact information whatsoever. If I remember right it's more along the lines of
ambient noise, found sounds, organic stuff, as opposed to Merzbow or more bludgeoning noise, but I could be wrong about that.
shit, hold the phone - I checked his Wikipedia, and it has to be him. Culver is Lee Stokoe, who plays in the ressurrected Skullflower's live show.
Son of a bitch.
I was really active in the underground and cassette culture back in the day, and still have some 500-600 cassettes to go through, wonder what else might
turn up. You might have a lot of fun over the next couple of months, no doubt there's some stupid rare shit in these boxes. I also kept all of my
handwritten mail, though it hasn't been sorted. I probably have letters from most of these folks, talking about their daily lives, and why they made
this or that. Just found a letter from Britt Daniel where he talks about joining a band called Spoon (not "starting", but "joining"), that made me giggle a bit.
The internet is great, fantastic, but I can't lie that I miss the days when it took such a commitment to be a part of truly underground music. It was much more personal then, and more free. Nowadays because of all the available choices, people seem to pigeonhole their tastes, but back then, the boundaries were much more broad. Altrock bands like us were
cross-pollenating with death metal bands, noise bands, pop bands, country, scum, dance, backwoods cajun, disco, pretty much everyone who wasn't being
heard in the mainstream. We were all listening to and learning from each other, hi-fi, low-fi, found sound experiments, whatever. It was just a
really exciting time, where on any given afternoon you could have all your preconceptions challenged (and also reaffirmed) in wonderful ways, just from
a trip to the mailbox, where several different tapes were waiting, and you knew that no matter what, no matter the genre, no matter the quality even,
the people who made those tapes truly gave a shit. MySpace just isn't the same.
I disappeared from the cassette culture pretty abruptly when my Grandma had a stroke and I needed to take care of her full time, so I kinda went from being ubiquitous to flat out vanishing from the scene, so the best thing coming from cleaning out the archives has been musicians on those tapes emailing, "wow, how are you?"
And that's something else, ya know? No one is gonna email me 15 years from now saying, "Damn, you commented on our MySpace! Did you ever get married, or what?", lol -
sorry to babble, I just get nostalgic, it was a great time for me. a time for conversations instead of soundbites, openness instead of dogma, and
absolutely no rules as to what music could or couldn't be, whether that meant a great pop song, or a soundscape that changed your mood like a silent
film, slowly eroding you from that shadow in the corner of the room you barely even noticed before. it was really something else."
The reason I stuck this up here is that I really do miss the days when death metal bands and singer songwriters would correspond and make friends. If you're in a band, and you like us but you do something that's completely different from us, don't think that'll turn us off. We wanna hear you, we're not clones, we listen to everything, we just love good music, good sound, no lemmings here.
• On the eBay tip, if you wanna buy our stuff in general, click here.
And if you're really just interested in the rare music cassette archive, here ya go, there really is some spectacularly rare stuff here.
12/05/2007
• It's December, hooray!
Every time Christmas rolls around, I'm delighted to hear from someone out there who's googled me to say that he's getting drunk with his buddies and listening to "Pass The Fucking Egg Nog", and this year has proven no exception - thanks Rich, carol on, you rock!
What, you say? You've never heard Pass The Fuckin' Egg Nog, you say?! Well shit, here's the original version with my old pal Simon Spaulding on fiddle, or if you prefer, you can find a version we recorded with a bunch of our friends for fun at a Christmas party in 2003 right here. Download one or both versions, and you go sing that sucker to the rafters (heck, record your own version, that would be sweet!)
MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE MAJESTIC TWELVE!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PASS THE FUCKING EGG NOG
Merry Christmas, ho ho ho
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Get real drunk and piss in the snow
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Hooray for the beer man, the keg is tapped
Time for bed for Timmy, all his energy is sapped
We got too drunk and he was accidentally wrapped
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Merry Christmas, ho ho ho
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Poison all the turtledoves with mistletoe
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Old Uncle Arthur is asleep in his chair
We took away his hearing aid
And packaged it with care
We put his hand in water and he wet his underwear
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Merry Christmas, ha ha ha
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Twelve lords a leapin' to Christmas ska
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
All the Rastafarians are staring at the treef
Toking really long on a really big spliff
The tree looks like a giant bud,
They stare in disbelief
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Merry Christmas, ho ho ho
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
We dosed Aunt Bertha and she passed out in the snow
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Santa's late and his heart gives way
Mama Claus gives CPR and dumps him in the sleigh
But we don't care, we're tripping
On the fireworks display
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Merry Christmas, ho ho ho
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
People sing carols on the street down below
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog...
Jingle bells, shotgun shells
Grandma's gotta gun
Someone please disarm her,
'Fore she ruins all our fun
The singers wait patiently for wassel and food
Myron yells out, "Just wait there, dude!"
We pour our boiling wassel on the goody goody brood
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Merry Christmas, lights in the town
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
The Rastas tried to smoke the tree and burned it down
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
The stupid little carolers called the police
The cops found little Timmy, and gave the boy release
The keg just floated so we throw it in the street,
and yell Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
Pass The Fucking Egg Nog
11/27/2007
• The new video is done, hooray! It's for the song "Cry", hooray for J.R. Stauffer and the staff at Broken Wings Productions who've done another bang-up job. In the next week or so, our good friends over at Hip Video Promo will be promoting it all over North America, wish us luck! It's not officially released yet, but you can see it here.
You can also see it as part of a promo for the upcoming third season of Port City P.D, which will be featuring a lot of our music in upcoming episodes, which of course, is pretty much the tits.
• Manuel Gonzalez and his friends down in Texas rock! They made a short film called Los Zapatos featuring our music, go check that sucker out.
• Want a preview of our next disc? We've donated a rough mix of a song that's going to be on our new record to a compilation put out by Bootleg Magazine that's raising funds for two childrens' funds here in Wilmington - Dreams Of Wilmington, and The Carousel Center. Our track is called "Dance With Me", you go and buy that sucker, it's for a good cause. We're on Disc 1, but buy 'em both if you can afford it. A lot of our friends are on both discs, it's good stuff.
• I'm on the mailing list of a company that does music licensing out of LA, and while we haven't done business with them (we don't give 50 points for publishing, never have, never will), I thought I'd share this correspondence with you.
Just a little industry banter, might be fun for some of you who care about the music "business" and stuff.
From Jennifer Yeko at True Talent Management:
9663 Santa Monica Blvd. # 320
Beverly Hills, CA 90210 http://www.truetalentmgmt.com
"There is a trend that's developed among superstar artists. They're giving their music away for free!
First Prince did it: http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/
commentary/listeningpost/2007/07/listeningpost_0709
Prince also did it at his concerts. He gave every single ticket buyer a "free" CD when I saw him live a few years ago. Those "free" CDs somehow miraculously counted as "sales" for Soundscan (the cost was perhaps built into the price of the ticket?!?)-- so because he had one of the biggest tours of the year, his CD charted so well, even though it wasn't very good.
And then came Radiohead: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/
main.jhtml?xml=/money/2007/10/01/bcnradio101.xml
But, despite the hype, Radiohead decided not to remain completely indie but recently signed record deals to have their music distributed in physical CD format.
And now Moby: http://www.mobygratis.com/film-music.html
Moby is giving away his music for free to independent and non-profit filmmakers, films students and others that need their music for independent, non-profit use.
Yes, the trend is that "music is free" - and if superstar artists are giving their music away, that's fine. They have the right to do that. Just the same way that you do, as an indie artist.
What I don't like is that it sets a precedent, yet again, that "music should be free" to the consumer.
So, no use in fighting it, right? Consumers want their music for free. They'll either go online and download it for free (on some illegal service) or they get it directly from the artist.
The problem is, the artists like Prince, Radiohead and Moby that are doing this can afford to. They have all made tens of millions of dollars when record companies were doing well. They toured like crazy and made a lot of money that way. Tens of millions, if not more. Moby licensed the $#@$# out of his "Play" album.
It makes me sad because I know indie artists aren't in the same position. They don't have tens of millions of dollars in the bank and the luxury of giving their music away for free.
But the future is just that - give away music for free. License it. Tour. Get people to come to a show. Maybe they will buy a t-shirt and CD at the live show, especially if you come out and sign for them after your set.
So, the future for many of you, because of everyone wanting (and getting!) music from superstar artists like these guys for free, is that you will have to figure out a way to compete. You must learn to make music really inexpensively yourself by recording your albums at home. Or in really cheap studios. Calling in favors. Getting producers to work at a reduced rate. Because, at the end of they day, you want to make a living from your music, right?
It sure is hard to compete with free.
But you gotta do it if you want to survive these days.
So my question for you is - would you give your music away for free? Why or why not? (There is no wrong answer here - just curious to get people's opinions). If yes, under what conditions (if any) do you give your music away?
Maybe the future has been here for decades. A great interview with Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters, Nirvana) from the November issue of Spin Magazine: "A long time ago, someone tipped Grohl off about the secret of a long life in rock 'n' roll: It's not about how many albums you sell; it's about how many tickets you sell. Ever since, he's devoted much of his time to transforming the Foos from a solo studio endeavor into a well-oiled stage machine."
"When I joined the band, we sucked live," Hawkins recalls. "And we're still not Rush. We're sloppy, rough around the edges. That's part of our charm. But we've gotten really good, and I think on our best nights, we can take anybody."
And if you think about it, TV shows are free to the consumer. They are entirely paid for by advertisers.
Maybe that will be the future of music.
Only time will tell. "
MY REPLY:
Hi Jennifer,
I rarely reply to your emails, but I thought I would chime in on this one.
I would say that most independent musicians sell so few CDs that the money they get from them has historically been negligible, and that most musicians signed to labels have seen almost no money from record sales either. In short, most of the time, record sales might impact record labels, but they don't really impact artists in a negative way.
Back in the nineties, when I had my first experiences with A+R, it wasn't uncommon for artists to be told that they shouldn't even think of record sales as a source of income. They were told to think of record sales as advertising for their live shows and their merch, because that was where they were gonna really get paid. And if they were effectively promoted by the label they signed to, if the promotional pipeline of the label was applied to them, hey, that wasn't such a bad deal - if they were signed and being promoted, then lots of folks came to their live shows, and lots of folks bought their merch, so an artist could make a ridiculous amount of money, even if financially they were officially in debt to the label at the time, behind the eight ball in record sales compared to the money the label proportedly spent promoting the records, which happened more often than not.
In short, as far as artists are concerned, records have been free for a long long time. Indie musicians rarely earn back the costs of recording and manufacturing their DIY discs, and major label bands rarely earn back enough in record sales - versus label expenditures - for artists to actually get a check for those sales.
This is why we were eager to give our newest record away online, it wasn't even a second thought. And it's been the best thing we ever did - we can't tour right now, because my Grandmother had a stroke, and needs daily care. Am I going to put my Grandmother in a home in order to run around the country touring with my band? Never. But I love music. I love writing music, I love playing music. So if I can't tour, what am I going to do, quit? Don't think so.
I know I can't get people to buy a DIY record made by a band they've never heard of and never seen live, but I also know that record sales are realistically only the tip of the iceberg as far as money goes for songs and songwriting. I also know we're in an era where downloading is rampant, and that's not going to stop.
The last time I made it up to NYC for a visit, I had lunch with a great guy named Barry Bergman - a legendary radio guy, the guy who signed ACDC, the guy who broke Meat Loaf to mainstream radio with Bat Out Of Hell, just a good good dude with a ton of history. We were talking about the RIAA's lawsuits against downloaders (which I'm against), and he said, "Well, it is working".
But the truth is, it isn't. The industry is just not as smart and as fast as the kids who have grown up familiar with computers and the internet. By the time the industry sued Napster, the kids had already moved on to Gnutella, and now they're kneedeep in the newsgroups, and so it goes. From here on out, the industry will always be behind the kids - there are too many of them, and they just work too fast for the bureaucracy to keep up.
While records have been free (as far as artists are concerned) for a long long time, now records are free, period, and labels - and a lot of indie artists - just haven't figured that out and emotionally accepted it yet.
Radiohead gets this, that was a great move by them. Madonna gets this, which is why she signed a 360 deal with a concert promoter. In fact, I would say that in ten years (if not much much sooner), record labels as we know them will no longer exist. But this is OK!
You see, all of this has happened before. 100 years ago, there were a handful of mammoth sheet music publishers who controlled the industry. As a songwriter, you either played by their rules (aka sold your songs to them outright with no royalties later on), or your music didn't get published, and you had no hope of ever making a living as a songwriter. Then this sparky little upstart named Thomas Alva Edison made a weird little box that played music on wax cylinders! It was decried by the establishment as a gimmick, a fad, but that little wax cylinder turned into acetate discs, vinyl, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs. The sheet music publishing industry didn't only lose their stranglehold on the market; they became also-rans in the markets they had previously dominated, because they, like the modern record label industry, were completely unable to leave behind their old processes in the face of a new technology that took away what had traditionally been the source of all their power.
The one thing that didn't change before now though, was the way the industry was controlled. It was controlled via physical distribution of product.
It used to be - especially after regional radio died in the 1980's, and the trend of national "Top 40" became the norm across the country - that if you were an independent musician, you had almost no hope of reaching people outside of your hometown unless you either toured your ass off, or signed to a label that could promote you, and had some sort of national distribution. And a big part of that was the actual physical availability of your records. Why would any radio station play your record, or MTV play your video, when the actual product couldn't be bought anywhere but your hometown record stores?
The answer is, they had no reason to play it (in fact they had they had reason NOT to play it), and they had no interest in playing it anyway, so it wasn't even an option for them. Because of this, bands had to sign elaborate lopsided contracts with record labels, not just so that potential fans could know who they were, but sometimes just so their fans could have the option to buy their records in the first place.
And there's the rub, this is why everything is different now. For the first time in the history of the music industry, physical distribution is no longer an issue, and that's what the record labels seem not to understand - they've lost the main advantage that made them so dominant for so long.
More and more established artists are going to work more and more kinds of deals. The 360 deal (especially for an unknown artist) is going to be the norm, not the exception. Soon, bands aren't going to sign with record labels anymore; they're going to sign with promotion companies, because it's not about whether you can get the record anymore. It's whether you even know that it exists.
So I say to indie artists, hey, give away your record, make it easy for the people who have never heard of you to fall in love with your stuff! Let's face it, you never made any real money selling it anyway, and the kids? They aren't buying the whole "downloading is stealing" thing any more than folks from my generation believed the industry line that cassette tapes were killing the music industry because we made copies of our friends LPs, taped songs off the radio, and made mix tapes for our pals of the music that became the soundtrack to our lives.
As far as our experience, as far as my band, we started giving away free downloads of our CD a few months over a year ago. Without touring, and using only our own money we made from selling our stuff on eBay to promote the music videos made by our friends, more than 50,000 people have downloaded our most recent disc. On top of that, more than 2000 people have bought the CD we just let them download for free, and over 7000 people bought our first disc after hearing the second one (we only give away the new one... for now.)
We're just a bunch of nobodies in Wilmington, NC, but people around the world are making us free music videos, writing about us on their blogs, MySpace made us a featured band, we made 14 critics' "Best Of 2006" lists, we've sold more than enough t-shirts to pay for the recording sessions of our new CD, and more kids than we can count made us the soundtrack of their summer, which is the best of all.
Give it away. Especially if you're an artist first, someone who cares first and foremost that your work gets heard and appreciated.
But even if you're all business and just want to position yourself for a career in the business, seriously, there's no reason not to give the record away, because everything is different now, and the best way to win is to have as many kids as possible know who you are, and care about what you're going to do next.
Do exactly what you love. Be proud of it. Promote it constantly.
And give it away.
Kenyata Sullivan www.themajestictwelve.com
JENNIFER followed up with an email including a lot of responses from various people on her list, including my own response, and prefaced it with this:
"First an email I read recently that struck a chord.
I've often told artists not to move to LA because so many artists move here thinking it wil be easy for them to "make it" once they get here.
Believe it or not, the sidewalks of Hollywood are not lined with gold. And A&R guys aren't just standing around, handing out record deals on the street corners. I believe that if you can't break into your local scene, LA is going to be the same, but with much more competition.
But, never say never, the last artist I told to stay in his home state, moved here anyway, played out like crazy, and is now touring with a top 10 recording artist!
Keep reading for more comments from artists like you regarding the last email I sent out about "free" music.
***** I found this online from the Bob Lefsetz newsletter. I agree, this could indeed be the wave of the future:
"The future of the music business lays in a simple formula: 1 Artist + 1 Mgr = 1 Enterprise.
The artist and the manager are 50/50 partners in the net profits of the enterprise.
In the case of bands, the manager is an equal partner.
He is the CEO, the artist is the board of directors.
The enterprise will control all income streams.
The music will be a free promotional tool, except where packaging or personal bonding compels sales.
Box office success and merchandising efficiency will dictate an acts survival.
Artists will dominate regional music scenes and cross-pollinate with other regional successes.
Hartmann's Law # 8: "If it ain't good live dump it."
As always, most artists suck, every song you write ain't a crystal tear from the eye of Zeus and talent rules.
Bands do not need to migrate to NYC, Nashville or L.A. since they don't want a record deal.
If a band can't make it at home, it can't make it anywhere; if it can make it at home, it can make it everywhere.
The Music Renaissance will be built on an Internet driven cottage industry business model. Or, in some cases a condominium industry.
It is no surprise that the 100 year old record business would die.
The good news is that the thousands of years old Music Industry will flourish and be bigger than ever. Pax. Hartmann" "
I RESPONDED to this idea:
hi Jennifer,
I thought you would just excerpt my email, thanks! you copied the whole thing, that was classy.
I thought I'd follow up a bit if that's ok, just a continuation of the initial dialogue, no need to forward it or anything.
As to the Bob Lefsetz quote, I think he might be missing the mark. I doubt the "one artist+one manager = 50/50 split" model will become the norm. There are so few Colonel Tom Parkers in the world (just one, come to think of it), and it's a huge rarity in the business for a reason. Management teams often function better with more than one artist, and competent artists aren't going to want to sign a contract that gives half of their prospective 360 incomes to someone who has no proven track record, aka someone who doesn't have any other client.
Management get power by leveraging their more successful acts in order to help break their newer acts. If each manager dedicated him or herself to just one artist, more time would be dedicated to building that one artist's career, but there would be less leverage there to actually make an unknown artist successful. Not to mention that the cost of running a nationally (let alone globally) effective management or promotional campaign necessitates having more than one client in the modern industry. It takes a team of people to break a band into the mainstream, there's just too much stuff to consider, and it virtually always takes the revenue from more than one client to pay the bills for an entire team.
Whether it's the randomly flailing tentacles of the major label octopus, or the homespun and focused teams at Righteous Babe or Dischord, no single person can navigate this ocean to the point of deserving 50% of an artist's earnings, especially when lawyers, bookers, concert promoters, radio promoters, video promoters, agents, licensors, and team employees are factored into the equation.
I do agree that music will soon basically be a free promotional tool for the band and it's business associates. Physical recordings will become like t-shirts, posters, and other forms of merch - physical things that express how deeply fans care about the music, and that's cool, i think that's inevitable.
Box office success and merchandising efficiency will certainly help to dictate an artists' survival, but let's not forget about publishing and licensing, endorsement deals, sponsorships. Perhaps there will even be a little old fashioned patronage shoved into the mix, and hey, that's not all bad; lest we forget, the Mona Lisa was painted as a commission.
I also doubt that the business will revert to a more regional geographical basis with individual bands ruling their own scenes and networking specifically to expand each others' fan bases. In my experience, these bands don't often help each other. In a perfect world this would happen, but in a perfect world, musicians as a rule would care more about music than they do about drugs, girls, and their own egos, and we all know how that usually plays out.
Regionally successful bands are always in competition with each other, even when they're friendly. Bad blood can happen overnight. It's definitely not a model you can depend on.
Not to mention that in the internet era, I would say that regionality is virtually unimportant. And a band who can make it at home can make it anywhere? Most bands who rule locally never ever ever are going to be heard from anywhere else, you know this. Good enough to win locally is just not the same as being good enough to win nationally. It might be a nice plattitude, but it isn't true.
So what's it gonna take for a company win in this new economy?
1. Great ears. And I don't mean great ears for what's instantly a hit today. If you're going to do 360 deals, a 360 industry will not be financed longterm by disposable pop hits. In a 360 era, the company that wins is going to learn from what I've heard applauded as the 1970's model of true artist development. The winning company will not only make great choices, they will stick with those choices and promote them even when the artist makes a weird left turn. Note to David Geffen: don't sue Neil Young. Let him go through his Trans phase, it's ok.
In any case, this is one thing that won't change - being able to identify great talents from the pool of chaff. That will always be the first step to winning. It's just that now the body of work is going to be more important than the single in the long run.
Some people argue that now, in the MP3 era, the single is more important than ever, but those people are fighting over small potatoes, they're still thinking small and miss the big evolving picture. From a business standpoint, in an MP3 era, why would a competent businessman do hundreds of deals with bands for just singles that may or not make money in an environment where if you only have one great single, everyone is going to download that one for free and then be done with the artist? It's a sucker's bet, a gambler's bet. Most will lose, because most of the artists who create those singles will have no longterm impact on gig attendance, merch, or publishing opportunities. Think long term, with multiple potential revenue streams as the company builds the "brand" of an artist who can repeatedly create good work, build a real fanbase (even if it's a niche fanbase), and create longterm financial sustainability.
2. Efficient management and oversight of employee expenditures. In this new era the company that wins is not going to rely on a windfall from a mega-selling artist in order to cover all the wasteful spending accrued by company representatives on a hundred other bands' tabs. Because when those other less promoted bands inevitably don't sell enough records, the bands get screwed, the company gets screwed, and the wasteful employees still don't have to repay those exhorbitant fees from the cash bar at the Marriott and the plane trips to see their bands showcase at CMJ. Tighten the belt, weed out the leeches, and narrow it down to people who really care about music, AND the company. You want brand loyalty for both the bands, and the business. You want people who are lean, mean, dedicated to both their artists and commerce, and proud of it.
3. Effective promotion. Instead of trying to find bands that best fit the company's established pipeline, find employee reps who are eclectic, well versed in multiple genres of music, and versatile in public relations. In addition to that, have a well-oiled in house staff that daily keeps up with, and understands all media - tv, radio, print, and web. There should be no more promoting pop punk to a radio station that's mostly playing hip hop as of six months ago, no more trying to sell a singer songwriter to a metal magazine. It's a waste of everyone's time and money, and with modern effective data collection and an up to date staff, it's absolutely unnecessary.
4. Have absolutely no in-house on salary A+R. The current A+R culture has become utterly corrupt, and they're scared to death that the changes in the industry will make them get real jobs. Right now most A+R sign to impress other A+R and/or to take points off the top for a quick financial bump, not to help either the company, or the bands, but just themselves. Cut 'em loose. All A+R should be freelance, and paid in small points, not money off the advance. That way they only bring you stuff they really believe can make money for the company - not just themselves. It also gives them a long term vested interest in helping with the careers of the bands they've initially promoted, as opposed to the current way things work.
5, and this is the most important. Because you are now a 360 company, you will be judged more extremely by every artist you choose to work with, because you will be taking a lot more than artists are accustomed to giving up. It is no longer your job to just sell records. It is your job to first find artists who you truly believe can consistently create great work over an extended period of time, and then find as many opportunites as you can to generate income from that work, utilizing an efficient and eclectic workforce who knows how to sell all kinds of music in all kinds of ways. Even as some of those artists give you challenging projects to work with, you need to have a staff who knows the ongoing daily culture so well that they know exactly where you can sell whatever your artists give you - you need to know how to sell the crazy stuff, as well as the hits, and find revenue streams from all avenues.
It is your job to put together a well educated team that can find a way to make every record you receive from your handpicked artists profitable. It is not your job to spend tons of money trying to make every record you promote sound like something you've already made profitable in the past. It is your job to know how to promote the work done by the artists you have painstakingly chosen and decided to ally with, whatever that work may be, and in a best case scenario, to try and make it part of the popular zeitgeist in some way shape or form so that it will continue to generate nostalgia revenue for the company even in the distant future.
Contrary to popular folklore, most artists want to be heard and accepted by a mass audience, even if they're doing experimental work, and there's placement for everything that's genuinely good if you look hard enough. If you can do this successfully, not only will you make money, not only will you build a catalogue that will sustain you for decades, but you will also attract all the best talent in the world over the next few years as the word of mouth spreads, and you will dominate the industry as it evolves into it's next stage of the ongoing 360 artist/business evolution.
just sayin', is all. kenyata
I SHOULD MENTION that the reason I rarely reply to Jennifer's emails is because her advice seems to repeatedly groom musicians not to be true artists, but rather to be good little industry performers, so basically, yuck.
But I do believe she's sincere. I think she's really trying to help, she just has a completely different worldview from me, so I mostly keep my mouth shut.
Shit, did I say that out loud?
09/29/2007
• It's been a while since we checked in, and lots of folks have sent us stuff - these pictures are from Afghanistan. Come home safe, fellas.
06/20/2007
• Hooray for Jungle TV, RNRtv, Travis Moore's MetroCast, Videology, and Indigo TV who are all now spinning the video for "Break It And Breathe"!
06/14/2007
• Thanks to Performer Magazine for giving Kenyata props in their June issue!
• Hooray for Coal Cracker Radio!
• Hooray for Music Video 8 in San Francisco!
• Hooray for Lazlo from Blow Up Radio for blogging about all five days of WE Fest!
• Hooray for Jim Testa right here, and right here too!
06/13/2007
• Now that this year's WE Fest is over, we've switched gears and are really focused on recording the next disc. As usual, our old pal Jerry Kee is engineering and co-producing it at Duck Kee Studio in Mebane, NC, and we think it sounds pretty good so far if we do say so ourselves - wish us luck!
• Mark your calendars, the next show is booked: Tuesday July 31st at The Soapbox with our old pals (now on Polyvinyl) xbxrx and our newer pals Beer Wolf, right here in Wilmington, NC. Expect us to play early! As you know, we think it's much more fun to get the set over with and drink beer while digging our friends' sets, so plan to come early and stay late, work be damned. It's a helluva bill! Cover is a mere $6.
• Thanks to all the folks who've been playing the video for "Break It And Breathe" (Hip Video Promo's one sheet for the video is right here) - hooray for VidDream, Power Play Music TV, Video Vault on DUTV, 360 Music Television, SacXtra!, Stim TV, eaTV, Video Jam, Channel Zero, PhatDV, not to mention the fine folks screening it at the 9:30 Club in DC and the great folks who included us on the ScreenPlay retail pool June Nightlife Reel!
• Thanks to our pal JR Stauffer for putting some production photos from the "Break It And Breathe" video shoot online!
• Massive thanks to our amazing friend Nina57 in NYC who actually built us a three foot high fully functional puppet of one of the robots from the video! Needless to say, she is now pretty much the coolest person we know. It's pretty astounding.
• Thanks to the production crew of Nights In Rodanthe for sticking their catering tent in Kenyata's backyard and helping us pay for the new disc!
• Thanks to Bog Gob for their review of Schizophrenology in issue #36 - you should subscribe, we are! Support print zines!
• Thanks to Eartaste for sticking us on their CD Sampler #2!
• Thanks to Gone Fishing For Blue Skies in Japan!
• Thanks to Tattoes for the great review!
• Thanks to Memoirs Of A Manic Depressant!
• Thanks to The Beat for sticking our song on their myspace page as a representative for Wilmington music! Check it out, our pals in Barnraisers (who are absolutely delightful) are on the cover.
06/06/2007
• Well, hot diggity, tons of news! Let's start with WE Fest XI, which was an absolute blast, jeremy christmas you guys are fantastic - many hoorays to Jason Glastetter for blogging about we fest on CMJ's website, and to Jim Testa from Jersey Beat, and to the great folks at ILMatters.com for the great shout out and also the phenomenal photos from day one, day two, and day three, and to Thomas Gilbert and the amazing folks at Fanboy Comics, and to Shea Carver and Encore for the fantastic interview of Kenyata (plus they gave WE Fest the cover, holey moley!) , and to Shawna Kenney for her story on WE Fest for Currents, and to Brian at Bootleg Magazine, and so many more of you!
• The video promotion for "Break It And Breathe" has a great first week, many thanks to Blender.com for making us a Band Alert! And thanks also to Grouper.com for making us a featured video, not to mention the fact that we've been added by a ton of other outlets - I'll get all that caught up tomorrow.
• Hooray for spacey*kitty at wakilmafm in Oregon!
• Check out Skratch Magazine's Indie Sampler V.6
05/21/2007
• WE Fest 2007 is less than a week away! Tons of work, but it's all been well worth it. If you're within driving distance of Wilmington, NC and you're actually reading this, by gum, you need to get your ass to The Soapbox, 255 N Front St, from May 24-28, because if you're reading this, that means you're one of us.
Three stages of cool ass shit every night with only ONE DOLLAR cover charge, over 70 DIY and indie bands, plus independent films, zines, comics, visual art, improv comedy, small press publications, a complete celebration of DIY culture, practically for free.
This is really happening. Right now.
• The video promotion for "Break It And Breathe" has officially begun! Hooray for Andy and our good pals at Hip Video Promo!
• Hooray for Grouper.com for making "Break It And Breathe" a featured video!
• Hooray for Lazlo from Blow Up Radio in New Jersey for interviewing Kenyata!
• Hooray for Bootleg Magazine for interviewing Kenyata! Not to mention, great choice of Jim Carroll's "People Who Died" as your soundtrack, we can sing that shit in our sleep, 1980, bring the trenchcoats and the fisticuffs, fucking excellent.
• Check out JR Stauffer's Video Vinyl entry, we're in that sucker! Vote for him!
• Hooray for Twilight And Thebes!
• Hooray for Mike SOS and 3:16 Productions!
• Hooray for Mickey.TV in Asia!
• Hooray for Michael, and boobs!
• Hooray for John and The Best Way To Have A Good Idea Is To Have Lots!
• Hooray for Josh Hechinger and Desperate Irrational Exuberance!
• Hooray for the Traverse Area District Library in Michigan for requesting our entire catalog to be in their permanent collection! Watch out culture, here we come - one library at a time, you fuckers.
• Hooray for The Rover!
• Hooray for Serendipitous Reflections (May 9)!
• And hooray for you. 'Cause seriously, you're the tits.
Thank you.
05/08/2007
Wow, I had no idea so many of you actually read this stuff! For the record, if you ever want to know if folks are paying attention to what you're writing, have a few beers and ramble out a diatribe about the current state of "indie rock". Maybe I'll rant more often, your emails have been delicious -
On with the show!
• WE Fest 2007 is almost upon us! 95% of the bands are now confirmed (though the schedules at both our home page and the Soapbox's page need to updated), and we're now getting our film schedule finalized. It's gonna be a great year, hope you can join us! We're playing the first day on Thursday May 24. Cover is just $1.00.
• Hooray for Culture Bully and BC Goodie Bag for blogging about the new video for "Break It And Breathe" before we've even started officially promoting! Kickass!
• Hooray for Wikipedia! We're now mentioned in their entry on The Majestic 12, which is pretty cool. And if you've ever wondered why there aren't twelve people in the band, here's where we got the name.
• Hooray for Amplifier Magazine!
• Hooray for Fabulist!
• Hooray for Liquid for doing this cool Majestic Twelve image manipulation!
• Hooray for CMJ for writing about WE Fest!
• Hooray for Migraine Man and Hope Mountain Radio!
• Kenyata has a Last FM profile now, though he never listens to music on his computer and doesn't what the hell he's doing. There's a cool picture of him with his kids up there though.
• Hooray for Get Jacked!
• Hooray for Gustav Bertha and Way Past Bedtime!
• Hooray again for Bryan D Brown! Tell Jennifer we apologize, we're getting sick of us too.
05/06/2007
OK, so I'm sitting here listening to Don Campau's fantastic Cassette Culture compilation Rewind And Pause Volume 1.
Meanwhile, Interpol's universally acclaimed first disc reeks unapolagetically of Ian Curtis' dangling corpse , and Silversun Pickups' single is a paint-by-numbers Smashing Pumpkins song. One of the gals from Sleater-Kinney described a lot of modern popular "indie" music as "Gang Of Four if they sucked."
While I disagree with that overall kind of dismissal, I have to admit, I know where the vibe comes from.
When I think about the body of work that belongs to someone like, say, R Stevie Moore - wow. How is it that everyone knows Robert Pollard and Guided By Voices, but almost no one knows who this guy is? R Stevie Moore is a fucking god and has been for thirty years. But you've never heard of him.
Historically it's nothing new to see great musicians ignored, but we're in the internet generation - right?
We can't blame the critics anymore, we all have access to almost everything, and now it's up to us. Now it's truly about whether we're listening for ourselves or not, but most of us aren't wandering outside of the box. Why not?
Well, I'll tell ya why. For most of you, you'd rather be spoonfed and suck up to whatever Pitchfork tells you you should be listening to than actually take the time and make the effort to think for yourselves. Clap Your Hands. .. are you fucking kidding me?
My apologies, because I have friends who are friends with those guys, but are you fucking kidding me?!
And this is what really pisses me off. All my life, the underground was made up of people who thought for themselves, and that's what made it exciting. You wanna listen to Britney Spears AND Meshuggah?! Kickass! Because I don't wanna hang out with a bunch of people who are listening to the same music, wearing the same clothes, having the same political opinions, and just high fiving each other because theyre (ahem) rebelling against the system, shit yeah! Woo hoo.
Bright Eyes is about as underground as Coca-Cola, but maybe that's what the "underground" is today. Maybe it's a bunch of people who find a nice comfortable niche, ignore their own instincts, and just wear the right shirt so they fit in.
If so, then fuck the underground.
Be awake, and be alive, and truly be yourself, or seriously - you should just shut the fuck up.
03/20/2007
• Hooray for DJ Whoselistening? and KTRM radio, broadcasting from Truman State in Kirksville, Missouri! Be sure to listen to them online this Friday night (Saturday morning technically) from 2-4 AM for their on-air Schizophrenology listening party! Yep, they're gonna play the whole damn thing. Big ups to Kirksville's Tru Alternative 88.7 The Edge!
• Kenyata's new idea will change the world! Though nobody else seems to think so. Fools! We will show them all with our high powered electrical mouse farms.
• Hooray for technotiger and Stripes of me...!
• Hooray for moggers JCsuperstar89 and watchbatteries!
03/15/2007
• Hooray for Neil Young and Living With War Today!
• Hooray for PapaMatt and Irregular Joes for playing us on his podcast!
• Hooray for obcordateleafgatherer! This lovely piece is of Kenyata and his wife.
• Hooray for Bootleg Magazine for reviewing Scizophrenology in issue #20!
• Hooray for The Beat magazine for writing about us!
03/11/2007
Okie doke, I'm gonna try to get in the habit of updating this a lot more often - the culture section as well, we've been seeing and hearing a ton of cool junk lately.
• Hooray for Christina Breitenfeldt for quoting Kenyata in her paper on downloading! That makes him, like, an expert and stuff.
• "Break It And Breathe" is going to be on the next Skratch Magazine CD compilation, Indie V.6 - it's the one they're giving away at Coachella.
• Hooray for Crud Cast!
• Hooray for WMCR in Monmouth, Illinois for having Condoleezza in their top ten right now, and also to KTRU in Houston, Texas which had Schizo in their top 35 through February - all these months later and we're still charting here and there. Amazing.
• Hooray for whoever included us in this January Indie Rock torrent!
• Hooray for Sheffield's Real Indie Night and The Breakdown!
• Hooray for A Sign In Salem (the post is older, but we just now saw it)!
• Hooray for Spirit Soul at KZMU in Utah!
• Hooray for GeeseAplenty and Inspected by Number 57 on Vox!
• Hooray for Coop41 at New Wave Outpost!
• Hooray for YoSET on Melodysoft Salamandraforo!
• Hooray for gravedigger at Bleed Cubbie Blue! After all, the most subversive pleasures in the world are the guilty ones.
• Hooray for joe_ at Zaan Zone!
• Hooray for Evolving Artist eaTV for continuing to show the "Trapped Underwater" video!
• Hooray for Mickey.TV in Japan!
• Hooray for Power Play Music Video Television in New Jersey!
• Hooray for Olive's Brain Indie Radio!
03/10/2007
Hey peeps! Lots has happened, so I guess I'll just jump right into it -
• One of you guys has apparently been posting both of our discs up to every known group on usenet - shit yeah! Keep going, if you see this, we're 100% behind it. Stay on topic though, we don't want your service provider to go all wacky on ya.
• We're just finishing up the video for "Break It And Breathe" right now (we should have the tweaking done in the next day or so, and will be promoting in about two weeks). In addition to that, we're starting work on a quick and dirty animated video for "Condoleezza, Check My Posse" that shouldn't take long at all (knock on wood) - mad respect to Joe Stauffer and Broken Wings Productions who are making all of this possible, that crew is no bullshit. They're doing the new Breaking Benjamin video as well, how's about them apples?!
And a very big thanks to Chris for getting us access to shoot the newroom footage in the actual WECT studio, that was fantastic and unexpected, and was the tits.
• WE Fest 2007 is on, bitch! The illustrious Sanders Hall is reworking the website from the ground up to make us look all fancy and stuff, and a whole new team is being built to organize. Already on board to help us get all this shit together are The Soapbox, Gravity Records, Bootleg Avenue, the great Jim Testa from Jersey Beat, the phenomenal Kim from Eskimo Kiss, etc etc - it's gonna be a good damn year.
Okay, time for a bunch of hoorays, holy shit we love you guys -
• Hooray for The Anxiety Society in Fredericksburg, Virginia for the cover of "Condoleezza Check My Posse" on myspace! For the record, we actively encourage any and all of you to do whatever the hell you want with our songs. Love it.
• Hooray for Don Dilego, and also Julian 5Roses for saying we made one of the best records of 2006!
• Hooray for Bolt FM for playing our shit in the UK!
• Hooray for The Mental Nomad, Audio Pandemic, and Eartaste podcasts, and Jesus, lots more I don't remember, being drunk sucks. damn!
• Hooray for Bryan D Brown for sticking "Soylent Green" in his top ten!
• Hooray for the review from Silverfish Magazine!
• Hooray for the folks posting about us at Arsclan.net, Eartaste, OF Refugee Camp, XGen Studios, Problem Attic, Metacritic, etc etc!
• Hooray for the Backseat Film Festival for requesting our shit!
• Well, fuck me, that's what comes to mind at the moment, all the folks I missed (and I know there are a bunch, I feel like a dick), feel free to bitch slap me - we're just knee deep into making the new disc, and we're thinking it might not completely suck, so I gotta admit I'm preoccupied. But please wish us luck anyway, we are paying attention and we're gonna try to do ya right.
02/02/2007
• You know who we wanna say hooray to today? We wanna say hooray to YOU.
As of today, over 20,000 different people have downloaded Schizophrenology.
Even more amazingly, despite the fact we're giving it away for free, more than 1000 of you have bought the disc from us through the mail anyway, just to show your support. Not to mention that we're sold out of t-shirts again, and so many of you have also bought our first disc (Searching For The Elvis Knob) that we have fewer than 25 copies left - that makes us just shy of 7000 copies sold, which ain't no small potatoes, especially in unsigned band indie rock land, and even more so since we ain't on tour!
This is pretty unheard of, and we can't thank you enough. Please keep spreading the word, and we'll keep working hard on the next disc. We hope to be giving it away to you in a matter of months (though make no mistake... we will pimp no disc before it's time). As always, we will continue to strive hard not to suck, and you all mean the world to us. No shit.
Thank you.
02/01/2007
• Hooray to Comcast cable networks for making our video for "Trapped Underwater" available On Demand via Havoc TV for the past month! If you haven't already, go check it out (it's available until the 5th).
• Thanks to Sean from Organ magazine over in the UK, both for the review and the blog! One day we're gonna get him over here on our side of the pond for WE Fest, you betcha.
• Be sure to check out the February issue of Southeast Performer - hot diggity, we're invading the print media! They've even got our name on the cover, cool
• Thanks to Yorgos Vakoufis and Rodon 95 FM radio in Greece, Truck On The Radio, Kaflooey, Willie's Off-Brand Web Journal, the Politpunk podcast, Podcast Pendulum, Ziggyspop, Visitronix Radio, Audio Pandemic (in fact, thanks to a lot of you podcasters out there - because of y'all we currently have two tracks in Podshow.com's Political top ten), IndieBOOM, s3co, bluelizzie1, nadzeya, crono_zero, Wolfgang D, and pitamagoito!
01/25/2007
• Well, looks like Yata's opened himself up a damn can of worms with 366shirts - while not many folks are leaving comments on the site, they sure are sending emails! One of the coolest things is that people are volunteering to make their own shirts and photos for future MP3 postings, fantastic - feel free to get involved if you like, drop us a line.
And after seeing the site, Lazlo from Blow Up Radio has extended the very kind kind offer for Kenyata to do a "song of the week" feature for his show, and if K can figure out a way to record his introductions, he's gonna do it, hot damn!
• The Twelve can now be heard on XM Satellite Radio - hooray for Billy Zero and The Radar Report!
• We also wanted to give a quick shout out to Larry Winfield and the Sundown Lounge Podcast out of Los Angeles, and also to Charlito and Most People Are DJ's! Check 'em out, give 'em props.
01/21/2007
• OK, now this is the tits... we just got an email from one of the game designers of Guild Wars Nightfall, and they named one of the new characters KENYATTA! While the name has Jomo Kenyatta's extra "t", he was straight up that the character was truly named for the lead singer of The Majestic Twelve, and wanted to give us a heads up. Can you get more badass than that?! I think not. The specific quest is "The Show Must Go On", and apparently our valiant virtual reality leader is a drunk with writer's block... shit, that sounds familiar, dunnit?! Ha!
• Speaking of drunk, Kenyata's daily MP3 blog is at 366shirts.com. You want rare and obscure? We got your rare and obscure, you bet your smoldering hot diggity.
01/16/2007
Wow, we suck! Over two months and no updates - did we break up in a terrible squabble over paper vs plastic, lose our internet connections because we spent all our money downloading camera club Betty Page bush pics, or go missing during a spiritual expedition to the nether regions of the South Bronx, the South South Bronx?
Nope! We've just been busy as hell, and hallelujah for that - here's the skippy:
• Kenyata went and had himself a beautiful baby girl! He and his wife Grace are proud to present to the world little baby Anne Elizabeth Sullivan, born December 22, 2006. And she's downright gorgeous, which says a lot because let's face it, most babies look like Winston Churchill.
• Kenyata also started a daily MP3 blog on January 1st, but we're not gonna tell you where it is - we're just pricks like that, ha! We'll break down and tell ya eventually, but for now it's fun to keep it on the DL - from lost indie techno to country music odes celebrating domestic abuse, K's having a great time going through the archives and anonymously pimping the obscurities collection.
• Big ups to Marc Hirsh and National Public Radio for making "Break It And Breathe" the NPR Song of the Day today! And unexpected as it is, the timing is great, as we're gonna be pimping the video for that song directed by Joe Stauffer from Broken Wings in just a few weeks, so hey, bonus. In the video, NASA cuts funding and we're forced to explore outer space on the city bus. Dig it.
• Against all odds, a number of critics have stuck us on their "Best of 2006" lists, kickass! Hooray for Jersey Beat (both the magazine and the podcast), Culture Bully (who not only said we made the 2nd best record of 2006, but also let Kenyata rant like a drunken rabid monkey about discs he liked last year), I'm Just Sayin Is All, KAOS In Wonderland, Lazlo's Den, BigglesTh9 at LastFM, smashingjj at Netphoria, groovesinorbit, and let's certainly not forget the Italian music site KWMUSICAwho said we were the number one top dog "La rivelazione" of 2006. Now THAT's badass.
• Hooray again for the critics! We're talking about Brad Walseth at concertlivewire (who says we're "perhaps the best unknown band in the US today ", woo hoo! ), Indie Launchpad (here's the review, here's the podcast), Robb Loving at Indie-Music.com, RocknetWebzine, etc, so much love right back atcha, we're truly blown away.
• Hooray for the video programmers! Big ups to MTV Latin America (?!), PASTE MAGAZINE for making us video of the day, BLENDER.COM for not only making us video of the day, but also choosing us as part of their Zune promotion (kickass!), Roxwell, Rockamerica, Stage 6, and tons more, gonna catch all you guys on the next update (sooner not later, promise!)
• Hooray for the kids, bloggers, and podcasters! Like -Pisces-, AJL7, blubrry, Dylan And Molly, TameBear Radio, watchbatteries, whoever wrote us a LastFM Profile (thanks!), Contrast Podcast, Zaldors World, Not Quite Art Not Quite Living, Sacxtra!, Podcast Junkie, Bovinecrobalistics, Hey You! Hooray!, Inside My Mind, Truck On The Radio, qpodder, Pogo A-Go-Go, Seriocity, The Good Show, Criznittle at Demonoid, Sheffield's Real Indie Night, and tons more of y'all - don't think we aren't paying attention, we're all about it, and appreciate it more than you know. Happy face emoticon.
10/31/2006
OK, wow, I haven't updated this in forever, a helluva lot of news! So now, on this drunken Halloween, forgive me if it's a bit of a laundry list, and also, if you wrote about us, played us on the radio, or hooked us up, and you aren't mentioned, hell, drop us a line! We'll pay ya respect pronto, you betcha. On with the show, punk!
• Amen to the folks who are giving us good reviews! I'm talking about Performer Mag, and PLAYBACK stl, and the fine folks at Midwest Record, and kickass Bob Aubrey at The Vail Trail, and Amanda and Mohan at Openingbands.com, and Starr Tucker at New York Waste, and Geert at Rockezine, and Dagger Zine, and Kathryn at Sure Shot, the very together Ben Squires at Music Spectrum, etc etc.. beautiful! Spread the word!
• And kudos as well to the bloggers who have taken the time to write about our sorry asses - Boub at Jachere Party, Anthony at The Sincerest Agilent, not to mention New Frontiers (a Donald Fagen reference? we'll never know), A Decouvrir Absolument, and jeez, tons more... I know, I know, drop us a line, we suck.
• A big hell yeah to the Paste Magazine Rock N Reel Festival! Vote for us, bitch!
• Mad respect to Angela Lovell for using us as the theme music to her August Whorescopes!
• Extra bonus points to Sanders Hall for giving us the big ups on MSNBC.COM!
• Wanna hear a radio interview with Kenyata when he was half asleep? Here ya go! Thanks to Jared and WRSU!
• Hooray for Jon Sobel at blogcritics.org!
• And hooray for the podcasters! We're talkin Special Delivery Mark, and WTFWJD, and High Orbit, and Iguanas Indie Artists, and jeez, tons more! kickass!
okay, that's just off the top of my head, if I've missed ya, and I probably have because I'm an idiot, give me a holler - there's tons of other stuff, we've finished shooting the video for Break It And Breathe and are editing now, we've started recording the next disc, etc etc - but I'm drunk, see ya later! Shazam!
09/19/2006
Man, so much news - our trip to NJ and NYC was fantastic, thanks to everyone for being so great to us! We played to a great crowd at Club Midway on Avenue B (in fact, a helluva lot more people showed up than we were expecting, and we're thrilled to have had a chance to hang out with old pals, and also make a bunch of new ones - Jim Testa from Jersey Beat stuck some photos up here). Special thanks to Andy and Hip Video Promo for putting the band up for the first two nights (he stuck some photos up as well), and thanks to Paul from Organic Entertainment for letting Kenyata crash for several days after that! Plus extra bonus points to Jim Santo, Carole Filangieri and their delightful kids Niall and Allegra for letting him stay over the last night, and getting him to the airport on time. Salud!
While the band went back the day after the show, Kenyata got to stick around for a few more days - he even got himself that book deal (what the hell?! hooray!), so look for his underground history of indie rock to come out at around the same time our new disc drops. He also got to be a part of Keith Hopkin's 100 Meals art project, took in a fantastic show by his pal Dolce's band Rene Risque And The Art Lovers, heatedly discussed politics after hours with Morgan, Matt, Matt, and Shawna (thanks Morgan, it was great fun hanging out!), took the subway once by himself (a big deal for a little country mouse in the big smoke), did half an hour of radio with our old friend Jared from WRSU Rutgers radio plus 2 full hours of radio with our new buddy Lazlo at Blow Up Radio, had much pleasure talking music industry politics with Eric from Music Dish, got a kickass tour of the CMJ offices from Chiba after getting to meet Moose and Kenny (good fellas!), and even had the opportunity to enjoy a four hour lunch with legendary industry guy Barry Bergman, and jeez, so much more . All in all, this was one damn swell trip!
In any case, thanks so much to everyone, hooray! We're gonna try to get back up there once or twice next year, don't miss us now, ya hear? Now, on to the regular news!
• Radio just keeps on kicking! We're still in the top 200 nationally on RIYL's charts - #125 weighted, #149 not weighted. Amazing.
• The video for Trapped Underwater is jumping right out of the box - already it's been added as content on Blender.com and Maxim.com, you can download it from CMJ's site, you can see it on the next episode of Jungle TV in Florida, it was just blogged about by Culture Bully and Your Friend Maximus... good times, onwards and upwards.
• And on top of that, the video for Livin' On The Beach just keeps on rolling! In just the past week, we've learned that the video was added to Virgin Megastore's instore DVD. It was also was made available by Union On Demand, was voted in for airplay at MVSpy, and played on Rawtime in Austin.
• Fuel TV just licensed our stuff for their programming, huzzah!
• While Joey (an avid surfer) was over the moon about Fuel TV wanting our music for their programming, Kenyata has a victory of his own this past week - Condoleezza Check My Posse got played on the Dr Demento Show! One of the first records Yata ever bought with his own money was Dr Demento's Delights back when he was in junior high - it has always been a dream of his to write a song that was on the esteemed Demento program, and now that dream has been realized. Victory, sweet victory! Extra thanks to our friend Shoebox who encouraged us to submit it, without you, there would have been no Demento love. Pac Man and mullets forever!
• And Mikey had a victory, too! It seems we're actively being shared on Limewire - I used to have a theory that your band wasn't worth a shit until you had a disc in the cut out bins - Mikey thinks your band isn't worth a shit until you're being traded by people you've never heard of on Limewire. Kickass!
• Hooray for Hannah and the print zine Pool Toy! Not only did Schizophrenology get a 3 out of 4 star review, she did a great interview with Kenyata - send her an email at h.antalek@yahoo.com and ask how you can buy issue #1!
• Hooray for another print zine that gave the disc a rave and interviewed Kenyata, Hiroshima Yeah! made by Mark Ritchie in Scotland! Email Mark, and buy that sucker. Support print zines!!
• Hooray for Rob's World!
• Hooray for MusicClub! Anybody speak Italian?
• Hooray for Modern Fabulousity!
• Hooray for Cut-Up! Anybody speak Dutch?
• Hooray for Flesh-Eating Zombie Radio!
• Hooray for Radio Crystal Blue!
• Hooray for Siren Rebellion!
• Hooray for this guy who actually changed his myspace name to Condoleezza Check My Posse! How badass is that?!
• PS - we finally have Majestic Twelve t-shirts again! Send us your address, shirt size, and $10 OR a picture of yourself naked, and we'll get ya hooked up. Thanks for your patience!
09/06/2006
The Majestic Twelve are heading for NYC on Sunday!
No, not for good, just for about a week (and if Hurricane Florence is a pain in the ass, we might be there for even shorter than we think). But we have all kinds of fun things planned - a heavy night of drinking with the HIP Video Promo crew, a meeting with our publisher/musician pal Jeff who's thinking about publishing an indie rock memoir book by Kenyata, a party at Mike Errico's house, a bottle of Glenlivet with the magnificent Jim Santo, an evening of debauchery with our friends Rene Risque And The Art Lovers, plus lots of radio and press stuff, and hey, oh shit, WE'RE PLAYING A SHOW! How'd that happen?!
Come see The Majestic Twelve at Club Midway in NYC, going on early at 7:30 PM. It used to be called Scenic, it's between 2nd and 3rd on Avenue B. It's sponsored by Music Dish and Organic Entertainment, in coordination with Drink Liberally, and it's free - what's not to love? We'll be playing with Blow Up Hollywood, who are quite the bomb. Huzzah! Be there or, er, be rectangular.
• Hot damn, we just re-entered CMJ's national top 200 at #182, and are climbing RIYL's college radio charts as well - currently #138 weighted, #141 non-weighted. What the hell, as an unsigned band with no money, two months after the disc's release we're still charting?! You radio folks are the tits. Seriously.
• Hooray for Cornell's newly launched SlopeRadio for making us the artist of the week!
• Hooray for Vlad at KLSU for his interview with Kenyata this afternoon! It was twenty minutes of joy in the bayou.
• Hooray for Lord Ronald!
• Hooray for Culture Bully for blogging about the Trapped Underwater video!
• Hooray for DiscoBlog! Anybody speak French?
• Hooray for Totoro! Anybody speak Norwegian?
09/01/2006
While Ernesto did indeed make landfall right here in our stomping grounds last night, don't get all worked up by CNN - it was just a big rainstorm, no big deal. Thanks for all the nice phone calls and emails though, it was great to hear from all y'all!
• Hooray for Brian Birnbaum and The Daily Vault! Review soundbite: "The Majestic Twelve have struck solid gold... a near perfect album."
• And hot on the heels of that, we get our second full fledged hatchet job! Unfortunately, it's from Mark Donohue, and getting a bad review from him means about as much as getting a good review from Chuck Eddy (witness his take on Of Montreal), but we still think it's great fun - see him get all googlie-eyed about how much we suck right here for Nude As The News! We expect that when he hears the next one, he might burst a blood vessel.
• Hooray for The MacCast, who went all the way back to our first disc and "I Don't Have A Job"!
• And hooray for all of you who are playing us on the radio! According to RIYL we're still in the top 200 nationally (#186 on their weighted chart), which is completely unexpected. Amen, and pass the ammunition.
08/29/2006
Hey, go buy all our crap on eBay! Not a bad way to make a living, eh? We've got lots of rare crap, go buy it so we can finish this new damn record! Especially if you're into rare science fiction hardbacks and marine science reference books, we got a lot of those up right now.
• Be sure to listen to Kenyata's interview on Lazlo's Den at 8 PM EST tonight!
• The video for Trapped Underwater is out! You can see it right here, or download it to watch on your pc, mac or ipod from our Stimuli section. Many thanks to Thomas Lien and Martin Braathen for making this happen, you guys are fantastic.
• Hooray for kwmusica! Anybody speak Italian?
• Hooray for Pete and Ickmusic!
• Hooray for Jenna Crivelli and The Aquarian for giving us a B+ (even if we aren't as good as The Clash, and let's face it - we can't really argue with that, eh?)
• Hooray for Indiehype and Sure Shot magazine for sticking us in the top 20!
• And hooray for Johnny Chiba from CMJ for sending us the dope Shaw Bros kung fu DVDs, kickass!
08/24/2006
Sorry I've been away so long, lots of new stuff!
• Our radio numbers are still hanging in there! CMJ has us just hovering outside of the top 200 for the second week in a row, but RIYL has us CLIMBING again... as of this morning, we're at #120 weighted and #111 non-weighted. What does this mean? Heck if we know, but it sure is fun!
• Hooray for David Barnes at fakejazz.com! Review soundbite: " Schizophrenology is not only amazing for an independent release, but will be considered by many as a must for any best album list of 2006."
• Hooray for Captain's Dead!
• Hooray for Ian Sway!
• Hooray for Dfactor and Waved Rumor!
• Hooray for LUKE1588!
• Hooray for RoxAnn Digital!
• Hooray for Tom 'Tearaway' Schulte and the Outsight Radio Hours!
• Hooray for the Bald Guy Show!
08/15/2006
• It's been a busy day for interviews! Thanks to Chris at Culture Bully and also to Dori at URH University Radio Hilo in Hawaii for letting Kenyata babble incessantly. It makes him feel all special like! You can read the Culture Bully interview here, and while it's not archived yet, one day soon you can hear the archived URH radio interview here. Until URH have our interview posted, feel free to scroll down and listen to our WE Fest pals Billy's interview instead!
• New reviews! Many thanks to Alistair Fitchett over at Tangents in the UK, in his column Manic Pop Thrills who writes, "Schizophrenology has the potential to be one of the surprise hits of the year."
• Thanks to La Chance au Coureur for spinning our stuff, and also putting up a great scan of one of our muppet discs!
• Thanks to Ginger Coyote from Punk Globe! Joyce says you're cooler than sliced bread, and three cheers for White Trash Debutantes!
08/14/2006
• Hotdiggity, we got reviewed in the most recent issue of CMJ New Music Report! Since it's a print magazine (and I doubt if they'd applaud me linking to their online, industry only PDF file), here's what they had to say:
"The second record from Wilmington, North Carolina's Majestic Twelve is aptly named, as 'schizophrenic' is the only way to describe the stylistic roller coaster of this scathingly political album. Gliding effortlessly from the demented 'Love Shack'-style party jam/Bush administration critique of 'Condoleezza, Check My Posse' to the delicate pianos of 'Grandfather', the rootsy twang of the Tom Petty-ish 'Whispering' and the faux-Bosstones almost-ska of an album closer 'Are You Ready?', the band embraces disparate genres with as much passion as they reject the current administration's policies."
Holy crap, CMJ NMR actually wrote about us! Watch out bitches, we might just accidentally get ourselves famous, and then we could really cause some trouble, eh? ha!
• And there's another new review, huzzah! This one is from Grave Concerns E-Zine ~~~ (the direct link to the review is here). Hooray for Joshua!
• And talk about above and beyond the call of duty - Stephen Bailey not only wrote up the disc, but also made us a kickass banner ad that he stuck in rotation on his site! Do we owe that dude a twelve pack? Damn, we definitely owe that dude a twelve pack.
• Hooray for Pacdude and Pacdude Games for giving a shoutout to Condoleezza!
• Hooray for ARC Overnight on WNCW for sticking us in heavy rotation!
• Hooray for Special Delivery Mark and Special Delivery Radio for spinning us on his podcast!
08/12/2006
• Hooray for WWPV for naming us one of the "summer's hot records"!
• We finally got around to sticking the "Schizophrenology" tracks up on the PodSafe Music Network, ergo...
• Hooray for Green Dragon and GD's Bite Size Bonus!
• Hooray for Lockjaw and The Podcast Junkie!
• Hooray for The Rusty Dagger Podcast!
08/10/2006
• Another radio station has us at #1, hot damn! Big ups to WUVT in Blacksburg, VA!
• We're still hanging in there in the top 200 nationally according to RIYL (#166 weighted, #169 non-weighted)! Hang in there, baby! (insert picture of a kitten in a tree here)
• Don't miss Kenyata's live on air interview this coming Tuesday August 15th with his new friend Dori on URH University Radio Hilo (Hawaii) ~ it'll happen at 2 PM EST (8 AM Hawaii time), and promises to be a hoot! Will Kenyata be drunk by 2 PM on a Tuesday? Will he randomly babble about music industry politics to the point of being an utter annoyance? Will he attempt to drunkenly play an acoustic song about a bear while raving about how major labels suck?! Enquiring minds want to know!
• But of course, all of this is not nearly as amusing as the fact that we got our first bad review... and wow, it's a doozy! In fact we can't even play our favorite game show MEDIA WHORE, because the author (Chelsea Beyer, critic for the Fayetteville, NC local paper Up & Coming) gave us absolutely nothing to go with, she hated absolutely everything - good on ya Chelsea, gotta love the consistency! There's a little link where you can "voice your opinion", so have fun kids. But play nice!
08/08/2006
• New review at Soundmag.de! Erm, anybody speak German? We're pretty sure it says we're cooler than beer and that you should all give us money, but we've been wrong before.
• Yet another radio station has us at #1, hooray! Big ups to URH in Hilo, Hawaii!
• We slipped just a little bit in the national CMJ rankings to #170, but gosh darn it, we're still in the top 200! Since CMJ is reviewing the disc in NMR, and the first video for "Schizophrenology" is about to come out, hopefully we can keep things movin' right along and get that number back up. Wish us luck!
• We're gonna have a track on Magnet's end of the year sampler CD - we don't know what song yet, though. Any suggestions?
08/04/2006
more reviews!
• hooray for Chris and Culture Bully!
• hooray for Paolo and komakino!
• hooray for Chris and Houmidity!
• hooray for Free Albums Galore!
• hooray for my old friend (and fantastic songwriter) Dan Cray!
• hooray for Kyle and I'm Just Sayin Is All...!
• hooray for Homegrown Radio NJ for writing us up as well as playing our stuff!
• hooray for my fellow WE-tard Daviso, aka the Review Stalker!
• And thanks to all you guys, radio just keeps getting better and better ~ CMJ now has us at #158 in the nation, while RIYL has us at #101 on their weighted chart, and #92 on their non-weighted chart.
Hell, we're even charting #1 at CHLY in Nanaimo British Columbia, and we're also #1 at WCFM in Williamstown MA (though their website isn't updated during the summer) - number one?! holy crap!
All you folks are the best, keep it up! We're doin' pretty good for a bunch of little brokeass nobodies drinking beer here by the water, doncha think? Hot potato!!
07/29/2006
more news! zeep bop a loom bap bap!
• New review! As many of you know, our favorite gameshow here at M12 Central is the much beloved MEDIA WHORE, zoom zoom zoom zap balaam! What this means is, we condense every review to a media friendly soundbite that makes us look like we're the tits, even if the reviewer hated us. And so far, we've dodged the bullet and nobody's actually kicked us in the balls... but will the trend continue?!
You have to go read the whole review to find out, because even if we include the soundbite in our press materials, well, quite frankly, it doesn't mean shit! We'll lie to you, dammit! We'll lie without thinking twice just to distract the lemmings and the snarks, huzzah!
So.... is this soundbite from IndependentsOnly.com an accurate reflection of our review, or just a blatant manipulation for our own benefit? Write down your answer now, no cheating:
"The Majestic Twelve... are the new face of rock."
Click here to find out if we're full of shit!
ps - if you guessed wrong, you have to drink! unless you're straight edge or pregnant, and then you have to run around the block naked. And take pictures and send them to us. Seriously.
• The new RIYL radio airplay numbers are in! And amazingly enough, in just over two weeks we've gone from not being on the map at all to being #102 nationally on their weighted chart, and #101 on their non-weighted chart and building steam. There are so many people we need to thank in radio that we can't even get started, but we appreciate it more than you could know. And that's no media whore bullshit.
There's actually more news, but I'm off to see a few of our friends play some music, so it'll have to keep.
Be back soon!
07/20/2006
you want news? we got some damn news!
• Blender.com senior editor Mike Errico has chosen us as one of his top five picks for August
• We just heard from CMJ that we will be debuting this week, charting nationally at #188 on the top 200- almost unheard of for an unknown band with very little advance press. They're reviewing our disc for the next issue of CMJ New Music Review, and we're gonna have a track on both the upcoming retail and radio CMJ discs.
• Future Snowboarding Magazine is using some of our music on their upcoming DVD.
• After MySpace made us a featured band, our number of plays soared from 10,000 to over 170,000 in just 8 days. We entered the top 50 unsigned myspace bands chart.
• and most importantly, Joby from Wisconsin wrote us this dope rhyme:
yo, majestic twelve...
i spit these rhymes like toys on old shelves
these fools don't know me i'm from wisconsin...
but they need to come up and share our johnson...
ville brats, cause they are tasty....
just like this sweet band TMT they aren't hasty....
about spreadin their lyrics to all boys and girls...
come on myspace users give them a whirl....
kickass!
07/12/2006
• Holy crap. They made us a Featured Band on MySpace!
07/06/2006
• Thanks to James McQuiston at Neufutur for reviewing the new disc!
MEDIA WHORE SOUNDBITE: "So much more than just a bunch of songs tied together loosely to make an album, (Schizophrenology) is a symphony... their two last albums easily being the equivalent to any prize fighter’s 1-2 blow, there is little that the listener can do to stop from being floored by this act. "
• There are new remixes up at Tapegerm (go there if you want to mangle our tracks into your own creation!)
• Hooray for Gone Fishing For Blue Skies!
• Hooray for LipanConjugal!
• Hooray for IndieJake!
• And hooray for my old pal Kramer! We bumped into each other on myspace after not being in touch for several years (he produced a Pandora's Lunchbox EP for Shimmy-Disc back in the day), and right now he's in London working on the new Dot Allison CD, but don't be too surprised if we find a way to bust out a quickie EP with him later on this year at his new studio in Florida.
As a side note, lots of you know we're trying to create a bit of a new economic model with this here project - after watching bands rise and fall for all these years while the suits at the labels stay the same, well, we wanted to find out what the suits were doing right that the bands were doing wrong. We ultimately landed on the idea that it was absolutely paramount that whatever we did, we would retain ownership of our masters, and also never sign away our publishing. We would work our butts off at our jobs and then work our butts off on the music at night and sell all our stuff off on eBay to finance promotion, and do whatever we could to make music we really believed in, and then get it out there, so we could find the other people who believed in it too.
And dear friends, the genesis of that concept - in it's actual execution - was Kramer.
Pandora's Lunchbox was supposed to have a track on the Empire Records soundtrack waaay back when, we were gonna be part of their big promotion - "a movie about the little indie record store that fights the system! and we found this great little local indie band right here where we're filming in Wilmington, NC who personify that, we're giving them their big break to help them FIGHT THE MAN!" get it?
Anyways, they kept asking about our "publishing". I didn't know what that meant exactly, but they seemed so damn interested in it, I called up Kramer and asked, "why do they keep talking about my publishing? Isn't that just, like, sheet music?"
"Hell no!" yelled Kramer, "That's your money, they're trying to get you to sign away your fucking money! Don't just say no, you say no and hit that fucking motherfucker in the head with a fucking brick!"
Gotta love him.
And t hat was the first time I started really paying attention to the way the music industry works, as opposed to just living out a well-meaning, but uninformed DIY "screw the man" rhetoric. It was the beginning of an education that's led us, well, right here.
And hopefully it will lead us, and many others like us, much much farther as we work to build a repeatable model for unsigned bands in a new music industry economy that no longer relies on commercial radio airplay, mainstream acceptance, or the physical distribution of product (especially since folks are gonna be downloading that product for free, whether any suit or suit-friendly musician likes it or not).
And it goes beyond the simplistic "indie" vs "major" argument. God knows, it's soooo much more complicated than signing a deal that guarantees "creative control" (don't get me started as to how that usually plays out).
What's it about then? It's about fair contracts vs unfair contracts. It's about owning the things you create, and having the work ethic to finance your own stuff instead of trying desperately to find someone who'll own all your shit just so you can play "rock star" a little while.
It's about independence - not "indie" - but real independence. Doing what you love for a living, without compromising what it is that you love. And that's it.
PS - we told the Empire Records guy "no" to publishing, and he never called us again. The story actually continues from there, as I met the guy who's band took over our slot, but that's a story for another day. It's a good one, though.
Learn to say "no".
07/04/2006
Happy Independence Day!
• RADIO MARCHES ON! New converts include CHRW, CIBL, KRSC RSU Radio , KTSW, KUOI, KWLC, KOTO, KUNM, KAOS, KLSU, RLC, Altrok (where we just got pumped up to "Grinder" status), Velvet Elk Radio, WWPV, WICB, WMPG, and WMUH.
• Oh crap, NEWSFLASH! We just started giving away Schizophrenology earlier today, and already over a gig's worth of info has been downloaded! Subsequently, the link doesn't work anymore, gotta hop right on that and fix it - hot damn you folks rock! Download, burn, repeat, you go, go, go!!
06/23/2006
Holy cow, sorry to disappear for a bit - we're just busy as hell, but it's all good! We're in only our second week of promotion (of both the final video from Elvis Knob, and also the new disc "Schizophrenology"), and we're getting lots of good news; gotta make it quick and prep to hit the road in the AM, but here's a taste. And by the way - t hank you all so much for being here. It means a lot.
• As a major coup, our video for "Livin' On The Beach" is going to be included on the VMS Media Rock/Pop reel - you know how when you go to gamble at a casino at Las Vegas, eat in a sports bar in LA, etc etc, how there are tv's showing music videos in the background? Well, we're gonna be one of those videos. It's a shitload of major label artists - Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gorillaz, Pearl Jam, AFI, Shakira, Wolfmother, Pink, Foo Fighters, Depeche Mode, Prince, Panic At The Disco, Goo Goo Dolls.... AND US. Eat that Mr. Warner Bros.
• Our radio add date isn't until Tuesday the 27th, but we've already either been added or are showing up on playlists at WECS (added at #2), WNCW (added at #2), Bagel Radio (added at #3), CKUT, KHNS, KSYM, WUVT (charting at #16), WBWC, WCSB, WMNF, WMUL, WNYU, KSDB (added #5, charting at #26), WRPI, WSOU, WVKR, KRCL, Outsight Radio Hours, Yellow Beat Radio Japan, No Pigeonholes on KKUP, etc. Good times. Two weeks down, ten weeks to go.
• The video for "Livin' On The Beach" is moving right along as well having been added by eaTV,Video Jam, Isis Television, Power Play Music TV, MHz Networks' Strictly Global, TVtonic's RAWdio, Yahoo Music, Playing @ A Theatre Near You, Stim TV, The Sound Your Eyes Can Follow, Roxwell, The Music Edge, UPN's Make It Or Break It (yep, we crashed the hip hop!), Google Video, BlankTV and more.
• Tomorrow we head back up to Duck-Kee Studios in Mebane and start recording the next disc, which is tentatively titled "We Are An Army With Pillowcase Flags". As usual, Jerry Kee will be engineering and co-producing. We will try hard not to suck.
• And as a side note, we got a really short but very sweet letter in the mail this afternoon from Antony and Richard Soldier from Antony And The Johnsons, and really, all the other news pales in comparison. We're huge fans, honored beyond belief. Thank you.
Yap yap yap, off to make more rock! Be back soon.
06/10/2006
• Three cheers for Stephen Bailey, who just blogged a friggin' novel (with a six page photo gallery) about this year's WE Fest! Hell yeah!
• Special thanks to Jim Testa for playing us during his "Mozart To Motorhead" interview on Homegrown Radio NJ
• Don Campau, a legendary hometaper and "No Pigeonholes" DJ on KKUP in Cupertino, California (as well as Transatlantic Radio Marabu), is curating a CD compilation series to chronicle the history of the cassette culture. Kenyata is extremely tickled that he was invited to have one of his cassette culture songs included on Volume 1. The song that will be included is "I've Done Everything", which also features Kevin Campbell - and if you care at all about the history of self-released underground music, you need this. There's some fantastic history here, and Yata's honored and humbled to be a part of it.
06/08/2006
• Stan Feldman just wrote a scholarly review of Schizophrenology for today's issue of Currents - yep folks, we done just jumped the crick into the world of serious thoughtful music criticism! In an article entitled "Crazy Good", Mr Feldman examines the etymology of our invented word, discusses the way we "walk along, but never cross, the thin line between informed activism and parental condescension," plus, you know, other stuff. It's an exceptionally well thought out critique and a fine read ta boot, check it out! Good on ya, Stan.
• Hokie smokes - we just shipped our radio mailout three days ago, and we already have our first add! Huzzah! If you live in Poughkeepsie, NY, give WVKR a shout out and big ups. You can listen to the station online right here.
06/07/2006
• OK, so get this - video game critic CT Trulove is reviewing this video game called "The Movies", and as his test of what it can and can't do, guess what he did? He made a friggin' video game music video of "This Chevrolet"! Hot damn! He blogged about his creation process here.
Also, we need to give some serious big-ups to the fantastic old school punk band Glass City Colonels from Toledo OH (ex-patriots from Lazy American Workers and Black Eye) who are doing a hardcore version of that same song in their set. All hail the Colonels, the Twelve say the Colonels are the tits!
06/05/2006
• The video for "Livin' On The Beach" is launched! Check out the one sheet here at the Hip Video site, and then go watch it on our myspace page.
06/01/2006
Sorry to disappear, peeps! Had to WE Fest it for a while, wahoo! Here's the new skinny:
• SCHIZOPHRENOLOGY is available to the public! You can buy one postpaid in the US for $12, or postpaid internationally for $14. Just send the dough via Paypal to kenyata@juno.com with the word "Schizophrenology" in the header. We're revamping a lot of the site right now (including our store, which will be just stuffed with overpriced relics as well as new crap), so it'll all be easier soon!
• Great article and pics about WE Fest in Jersey Beat! The wondermous Mr Jim Testa also blogged about it here, and has a WE Fest podcast (including The M12 natch) right here.
• There's a WE Fest photo pool up at Flickr
• Encore magazine gave WE Fest the cover, and four full pages including an interview with Kenyata. Shea Carver rocks! And thanks to Currents for giving us a page as well, John Staton and Shawna Kenney woo hoo!
• Blogger/critic Stephen Bailey gave us some pre-WE Fest props right here!
• We're ready to roll with the promotion for our video for "Livin' On The Beach" from Searching For The Elvis Knob, huzzah! Thanks to our pals over at Hip Video Promo for taking it on, allowing us to rub shoulders (figuratively) with the likes of Ministry, Calexico, and matt pond PA. PS - yep, we're promoting a video from the last disc at the same time we launch the new one. Ain't we a peach?!
• On Friday we're doing our radio mailout for Schizophenology, which will be tracked and pimped by Jared from Organic Entertainment in NYC. So call your local hip radio station and start requesting it.... now! If you know of a station that should get a copy, drop us a line and we'll be sure they get popped.
05/18/2006
• Another nice review! This one is from issue 78 of Jersey Beat. Soundbite: " The M12 couldn't have come up with a better title for their second full length, since schizophrenia runs rampant through this collection of engaging - but very different - songs... a quantum leap forward from the comfy alt-country vibe of last year's 'Searching For The Elvis Knob'."
05/13/2006
• Check out the May issue of The Village Idiot - not only did they stick our name on the cover, there's a three page interview with Kenyata about the new disc, and another two page interview with him about WE Fest. Eric Walls rocks.
• Hooray for Baby Magic and Baby Gremlin at Yellow Beat Radio Japan for their feature on The Majestic Twelve yesterday! Listen for more Majestic Twelve features on Yellow Beat Radio during their May 19 and June 2 shows (if you don't live in Tokyo, you can listen online - the show airs on Fridays at 8:00 PM Tokyo time, which is 11 hours later here on the East Coast of the US - 7:00 AM Saturdays).
05/11/2006
• The song "Trapped Underwater" was inspired by a wonderful 1995 Norwegian short film, "Dypets ensomhet", and we just heard some amazing news from the filmmakers - while they've said no to other bands before, they're going to allow us to use a shortened version of their film as the first video from "Schizophrenology"! We think you're going to love the fantastic work they've done as much as we do, and are truly humbled - hooray for Thomas Lien and Martin Braathen! Look for the video to come out in July.
• Big ups to Mike Malloy on Air America radio for continuing to spin "Condoleezza Check My Posse"!
• Three cheers for DJ Spork and The Review Stalker for posting a podcast of WE Fest 2006 bands! Including The Majestic Twelve and also a lot of our friends, we think you should go and dig it immediately.
05/08/2006
• OK, back around the Summer Of Hate (1991), Kenyata and his buddy Brian Rainey spent a lot of time basically getting drunk and doing stupid shit. And one of the stupid shit things they did was get loaded and draw comic strips - and I'll be hot damned if one of those comic strips isn't a cartoon now! Go check out Brian's animated masterpiece ROBOGUY AND DOODINATOR, which features not only Kenyata's voice, but also an original made-to-order Kenyata song called "Don't Cry, It's Creepy". Seed it and spread it bitches!
05/06/2006
Sorry for not updating this more regularly! I'm a lazy bastard. News news news!!
• A little bird tells us they're gonna play one of our tunes tonight on Indie 103.1 in Los Angeles during the Suicide Girls show (Midnight to 2:00 AM P.S.T.). Keep an ear open - if you hear it, call 'em up and say it rocked!
• Another nice review of Schizophrenology! This one's from LMNOP at babysue.com. Soundbite: "Combining elements from 1980s new wave with the sounds of modern progressive pop, this album is a fun spin with plenty of tunes that are both listenable and danceable... cool underground stuff." rating: 5 out of 6 Baby Sues.
• Another nice review of Schizophrenology! This one's from Mite at thechickenfishspeaks.com. Soundbite: "Majestic Twelve bares their teeth and gets a bit socio-political on this yet to be released gem... another excellent release from this North Carolina band."
• Big ups to Don DiLego at Velvet Elk Radio for spinning some of our stuff!
• Any Pandora's Lunchbox fans in the hizzouse? Director Brian Rainey has posted two videos by Kenyata's old band, along with two television news spots about the filming of "Bottlefly", and a bit of classic footage from the short-lived Dave Kendall music video show "Music Scoupe" (also featuring PLB). A nice little walk through memory lane.
• We also want to offer our finest congratulations to Kenyata's cousin Amanda Garber who is having a baby, and also to his other cousin Colin Gilmore who is getting married! All the best to y'all in Austin TX from us here in Wilmington NC for all the great news!
04/26/2006
• Cystem has done a beautifully frenetic remix of "American Rage" ( "American Rage (I AM)" )
04/25/2006
• Get ready planet - Kenyata's gonna have a baby! Come the end of December/beginning of January, Kenyata and Grace will be the proud new parents of a bouncing baby something. Hooray!
• We are also happy to announce that beginning in May, Organic Entertainment NYC will be handling our publicity, as well as the radio promo for Schizophrenology. They will be working in addition to Hip Video Promo, who will continue to handle our video promotions. Margo, Jared and Paul, good to have you aboard!
• The schedule for WE Fest 2006 is locked, loaded, and posted! Go check it out - we'll be playing the first night (May 25th), which will also be the RECORD RELEASE PARTY for the new disc - c'mon all y'all, and bring yer friends! Cover is only a dollar, and we're gonna try real hard not to suck.
Also on the bill that night, it's a fistful of legendary, baby: JIM TESTA (legendary rock critic as well as punk rock troubadour), TOM HOUSE ( simply one of the greatest unrecognized songwriters on the planet, dare i say... legendary!), REGINA HEXAPHONE (featuring the quite legendary NC songwriter Sara Bell and very legendary NC engineer/producer Jerry Kee), and APE FIGHT (who are legendarily drunk! LEGENDARY!) All those legendaries for just one dollar? Only at WE Fest baby, only at WE Fest.
• Thanks to Tom 'Tearaway' Schulte at Outsight Radio Hours for spinning not just one, but four tracks on his most recent show! Tom did a great interview with Kenyata for Elvis Knob back in the day, looking forward to a repeat.
• Kenyata has a low-fi solo track on the "KAW 100 Compilation" cd, from KAW Tapes in Scotland. The song is "Bark Bark Bark Bark Bark The Cat Meowed", which was previously only available on CD via a local Wilmington NC radio station compilation disc.
• The girl at the Blockbuster thinks we rock. And Shane Shuhart from APA (Agency For The Performing Arts) in LA is being supercool to us, so we think he rocks (even if the girl at the Blockbuster never heard of him). Big ups to Shane Shuhart and the girl from Blockbuster!
04/19/2006
• Holy mackeral! We just found out that Mike Watt played "Welcome To The City" on his most recent (March 4th) podcast radio show. Since the only reason our bassist Mike D even picked up the instrument is because of Mr Watt's work with The Minutemen and fIREHOSE, he in particular is barely containable. If anyone out there has a special container for bassists, drop us a line.
04/16/2006
• Happy Easter! Cystem has a done a new minimalist ambience laden remix of "American Rage" (White Collar Mix). You can visit Cystem's MySpace here.
04/13/2006
• "The Last Summer" is about to be available on Netflix, go stick it in your 'saved' queue. Kenyata was the film's Music Supervisor. Give it a 5 rating while you're at it.
04/08/2006
• Another good review, and a new interview to boot! These come via Mark Ritchie's excellent Sniper Glue print zine, based in Scotland (the website is here) -
REVIEW:
THE MAJESTIC TWELVE - SCHIZOPHRENOLOGY
Kenyata Sullivan - what a guy! From his previous band, the eclectic Pandora's Lunchbox, to his amazing and intimate solo recordings (three
cassettes of which were released by my own Kaw label. There's a CD compilation coming soon called 'You're Soaking in It'), I've been in love with his music since around 1993. His latest band, The Majestic Twelve, put out a fantastic CD in 2002 called 'Searching for the Elvis Knob', which I still play a lot to this day (especially the track 'I Don't Have a Job' -
that one ALWAYS puts a big smile on my face!) Now here's the follow-up and it's been worth the wait.
Spoken-word and militaristic drum rolls lead into
'Welcome to the City', a splenetic and somewhat ominous beginning. You can tell straight away that this is an altogether darker set of songs than
appeared on the band's debut release, and it soon becomes clear why. 'Condoleezza, Check My Posse' throws down some nifty political comment in a
whimsical B-52s/Dead Kennedys stylee, while (later on) 'Thank God Everything on TV is a Lie' ups the ante with lyrics like 'We're winning hearts and
minds with every bullet in Iraq'. 'Break It And Breathe' sounds like the future MTV heavy-rotation hit (like Daniel Johnston before them, the band
have already been played on the channel, despite not even having a record deal (*note from kenyata: while we were added to MTV's Overdrive, we haven't had a video played on MTV proper... yet*) while 'American Rage' showcases some scary primal screaming, before dissolving into a lovely piano motif.
But it's deep at the heart of the CD, when the Majestic ones break out the melancholia rather than the rage, that this release really starts to come alive for me (regular readers will know that I'm a miserable FUCK!) 'Cry' manages to update and perfect the
quiet/loud thing that EVERYONE was doing in the early '90s, whereas 'Trapped Under Water' is plaintive and pretty while still managing to rock.
Naturally, though, my very favourite things here are 'Grandfather', one of those BEAUTIFUL piano ballads that Kenyata does so brilliantly (his voice
cracking with emotion, it's enough to break the hardest heart) and 'Whispering', an impassioned song about family ties which soothes your
troubles away with great shimmering guitar and female backing vocal action (plus some down-home fiddle and banjo-picking at the end).
Finally, here's a quote from the band's website (taken from an interview Kenyata did with a local paper) which neatly sums up why I love the guy - 'Do what you love, do it to the best of your ability, and work every day to do it for the rest of your life. Make records that you can listen to all alone at 3:00 in the morning and smile, whether anyone else likes them or not. And it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, famous or unknown, respected or laughed at -
if you wake up in the morning and get to do what you love, you win.' For more of Kenyata's wit and wisdom see the interview elsewhere in this issue, kids!
INTERVIEWwith Kenyata:
1. How do you go about writing songs? Do you bring complete songs to the band or is it a more collaborative process?
It's pretty different with each song, but right now we're all writing together in the bandroom. My guys are pretty tolerant of me being a demanding little prick, and they kind of let me arrange as we go. It's a
lot of fun, I'm really enjoying the process (aka: they haven't killed me and put my head on a stick yet!) It's been a good while since I brought a complete song to the band, everyone else has such great ideas.
2. On the new CD, there's a bit of political commentary on the track 'Condoleezza, Check My Posse'. Why do you think so many US bands are writing politcal songs these days? (Stupid question, maybe?!)
Because we're all pissed off at our dumbass President! There are several political songs on the new one, because it's been on my mind a lot lately.
I think we're living through perhaps the most incompetent and corrupt administration in the history of the United States, and it just flat out
pisses me off. There's a real groundswell here against Bush+company (his approval ratings here in the states are only something like 33%), and I'm
praying to God that the midterm elections will take a lot of his power away. Right now he and his cronies control the presidency, the house, and the senate, so basically all sane people are fucked.
3. If all the members of your band were animals, which animals would they be and why?
My guitarist Alex would be ferret because he's sneaky looking and smells kinda musky. My guitarist Joey is a sloth, but the kind of sloth in the
animated movie Ice Age, not the real kind. My drummer Anthony would be a porcupine fish because he makes funny faces and when he lets his hair grow out it's all poofy. My bassist Mike would be a Muppet. Well, he actually is a Muppet, so that's cheating. He's actually made of felt.
4. There's a deep sense of local pride in many of your songs. Would you ever consider moving elsewhere and, if you did, how do you think it would effect your songwriting?
I don't think I'd ever willingly move - I do have a very real and deep love for my home. I'm sure it would affect my songwriting, but I'm not sure how - I'd probably write a ton of songs about how much I miss it. I just love my little patch of land by the water, I love the storms, I love the rowdy beachside bars and the commercial fishermen. This is a good place.
5. I've been enjoying the TV show 'Surface' lately, about sea-monster type beasties. Have you ever seen one of these things, as I believe parts of the show were filmed in Wilmington?
Seen one?! Me and my buddy Rick Pour from Evolution Digital caught one of those fuckers!
6. A lot of your legendary (!) solo recordings for Kaw Tapes were done on boom-box. Do you ever still record in this very immediate manner or have you gone all high tech these days? Do you ever miss those simple, lo-fi days of long ago (pre-internet, etc)?
Ya know, I'm a big studio guy right now - ironically though, the only reason is that my boombox broke, and I've just been too lazy to figure out how to record at home! I'm sure that will change over time though. I do miss the immediacy, and there's a real magic to recording that way if you really feel the songs you're playing. I miss the pre-internet underground, absolutely - it felt much more hands on, I miss getting crazy mail everyday and wondering what the hell each package was going to hold. I miss the fact that those of us who were actively involved seemed to know each other a little better. But c'est la vie! I'd prefer to embrace the present and future, and
remember the past fondly instead of longing for its return.
7. If you found yourself suddenly transported to Middle Earth, would you prefer to be a baddie or a goodie?
I'd be a good guy! I like being the good guy, I think it's swell. I have a healthy dose of the Andy Griffith Show in me. I'm really just a small town, aw shucks, six-string, twelve-pack, front porch guy.
8. Are you still as involved in the annual WE Fest as you used to be? And what happened to Bessie's Bar?
In '05 we took a year off from WE Fest, but yep, this year I'm at the helm again! You should make the trip! You know, rent a canoe or somethin'. We
have some fantastic musicians lined up already like Eyelight (Jehn is moving to NC in May and I'm hoping we'll make a record together in the next year),
Tom House (who for my money is the best unrecognized songwriter on the planet), Pattern Is Movement, Nuees Ardentes, Meredith Bragg and The
Terminals, The Sharp Things, etc etc etc - it's gonna be a fucking blast.
Bessie's is a bit of a horror story. Long story short, my "partner" took all the money I put in that was supposed to fix up the place, and instead spent it on online gambling and blow. The bar went under, I'm still in serious debt, and it's a pisser. But I learned a lot, and I'll get through it. But there's no doubt that that whole experience left me pretty hornswaggled, I got conned like an all day sucker, and will be paying for it for a while.
9. What are your plans for 2006?
Just more of the same! Make more records (best case scenario: another new Majestic Twelve disc, a disc with Jehn Cerron, a disc with my son Bremen,
and a disc of dirty Christmas songs to sell on late night tv. Plus, I need to finish sequencing my lo-fi disc for KAW!) We'll be promoting like mad,
making videos, all kinds of fun stuff, and selling all our shit on eBay to pay for it all. Viva la eBay! We just wanna keep on doing stuff we like, you know, that's it. Just keep creating things and trying not too suck too bad.
04/07/2006
• Critic and hotshit gamer CT Trulove was kind enough to write about the new disc on truBlog
Soundbite: "Independent music is a place of risk. I will not get some hours back for some of the crap I have subjected myself to. Discs like The Majestic Twelve's Schizophrenology are those rare glimpses of talent that satisfy you so far beyond your expectations that it drowns out those lost hours and makes you glad you keep listening."
04/01/2006
• Kim Ware (who runs Eskimo Kiss Records down in Georgia) wrote a really nice review of the new disc. Kinda long Soundbite: " 'Schizophrenology' is political yet lighthearted, catchy yet challenging, introspective yet carefree, intelligent yet silly. It's refreshingly new yet familiar at the same time. It will make you want to form a band if you're not in one already, but I'll warn you -- if you are in one already then it might make you think you suck. "
We are humbled Kim. You fucking rock.
03/30/2006
NEWS! beep beep beep ta beep beep NEWS!
• Legendary underground figure/home taper/dj Don Campau played us on his KKUP based radio show "No Pigeonholes", which is also broadcast all over the world via the Germany-based shortwave collective Transatlantic Radio Marabu. Don is a hero of mine, so this is the tits.
• My wife bought a new aquarium and two new fish. One of them is a girl fish, so we'll probably have baby fish soon, cause, you know, the fish are probably gonna do it. They call baby fish "fry", which strikes me as totally inappropriate, since all of us who live on the water know you have to throw the little ones back. So they should call them "not fry".
03/29/2006
Folks have been bugging me about not updating any NEWS, so what the hell... here's today's NEWS!
beep beep beep ta beep beep beep beep beep!
• J-Sin over at Smother has written the first review of "Schizophrenology" (I popped an unmastered advance in the mail to him), and hooray, he doesn't think it sucks! Soundbite: "Crafty indie pop with freakin' awesome lyrics... go pick this album up the second it's available to the public." Huzzah!
Watch for (and compare with) upcoming editions of America's favorite soundbite game show.....
MEDIA WHORE! (doot doot doodly doot doot!) Yes, sit back and enjoy as The Majestic Twelve win glamorous prizes by selectively boiling every review down to it's most perfect soundbite! Shit, they'll even take bad reviews and manipulate the quotes to make themselves sound like everyone on the planet thinks they're the complete and total saviors of the earth. Seriously! They'll fuckin' do it!
OK, granted, because J-Sin actually likes us, this wasn't the toughest nut to crack. But stay tuned kind viewers, for the future nonsensical mayhem that will inevitably ensue - eventually I will twist someone's words beyond any rational comprehension, and you won't want to miss it as we try to put the original authors in aggro fits of red-assed monkey rage! Watch as I bend their text like a Uri Geller spoon to my every whim, it's MEDIA WHORE! Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel. It's the shit!
ps - J-Sin, you rock
03/13/2006
• The fine folks over at the Tapegerm collective have stuck up raw tracks from "American Rage" for their members to splice and dice with - you can hear the results of their experiments (plus the results from their work with "Condoleezza Check My Posse") here
03/05/2006
•Kenyata had an interview in the local magazine Encore this week - thanks to Ben Brown for taking the time, you rock! We linked to it before, but the page is gone, so voila -
Here's the unedited transcript:
1.I guess we’ll start from the very beginning. What were your first maneuvers in the music business?
Wow, I'm not sure how to answer that! I grew up around professional musicians (my cousins had bands that were signed to major labels), so I guess I've always been around it. I did my first music zine in 1988, first band in 1991, first cassette label in 1994, first proper indie label in 1995, and first indie music festival in 1996.
2. Who did you look up to when you were first getting involved? What bands were rocking the local scene at the time?
I have tons of folks I look up to, so many people have done such amazing things - early heroes ran the gamut from Henry Rollins to Kate Bush to Prince to DLR era Van Halen, plus West Texas country stuff like Terry Allen and The Flatlanders, late 80's hip hop (Public Enemy, NWA, BDP, Ice-T), Cocteau Twins, Joy Division and New Order, Stooges, the first kings of indie rock were coming into play then (Superchunk's debut, Pavement's Slanted And Enchanted) just all kinds of things all over the musical map. I was also really inspired by the cassette culture and home taping movements, there was so much experimentation going on - it showed me that nothing was against the rules, and I love that. I still listen to everything from death metal to Windham Hill to backwoods cajun to some top 40 stuff to indie rock - I just love music. Locally, when I started my first band, Billy Club Fest were rocking the college kids, All Tore Up were the kings of hardcore, Handful Of Bones had the jangle pop thing goin' on, Brick Bat were just starting out at about the same time (I still have a flier from their first show when they were called Athiest's Graveyard). Back then, Wilmington was a lot smaller, so every local musician was at least aware of what everyone else was up to, and that was cool.
3. Talk about some of the bands you’ve played with, and where they went. Any good stories?
I've really only had two bands in my life - first Pandora's Lunchbox, and now The Majestic Twelve. With PLB, wow, so many stories! We were really active in the underground, so we got around a bit - we played our first out of town show at CBGB's in NYC after Joey Ramone walked in a tape for us (he was friends with my cousin, and was always really nice to us). The Bouncing Souls were on that bill as well, back when they were still "Bouncing Souls NJ" - I ended up making friends with Papillon, and we traded letters and tapes for a couple of years after that. We played another CB's show with Brian Jonestown Massacre, but to be honest, I've never really gotten what all the hype was about with them. It was with PLB that I really honed my grassroots skills - back in the pre-internet underground, it was a lot harder to find music that really meant something to you, so you were always sending out tapes to bands you read about in zines to see if they were up for trading, finding interesting ways to package stuff, doing experiments like finding out if you can mail a bowling ball just by sticking lots of stamps on it, and writing an address on it with liquid paper. This evolved into a huge worldwide network of musicians, artists, photographers, filmmakers, zinesters, mail art people, and we were constantly sending each other mail, and telling each other about stuff that we thought was exciting. Because of this weird process, we ended up in some pretty odd places - Kennedy would randomly say hi to me on MTV, we'd get reviews in languages we couldn't read, and once we were watching CNN, and there was a Palistinian kid wearing a Pandora's Lunchbox shirt throwing a rock at an Israeli tank. We didn't get over that one for weeks! It was really all great fun, and was a direct precursor to founding WE Fest in 1996.
4. Any music celebrity encounters over the years?
Oh yeah, tons! If you're active in your community, especially if you're active globally, it's inevitable that some of the folks you're drinking with are gonna get famous. PLB had some famous folks who liked us, like David J from Bauhaus/Love And Rockets (who was interested in us touring Europe with L+R right when we broke up), or Maynard from Tool (I still joke that Aenima stole some of our vibe and Maynard owes us money - we were really good friends with the bassist for the band that shared their rehearsal space, Woodpussy).
With the cassette label, I put Conor Oberst on his first compilation; the first Bouncing Souls 45 and Britt Daniel before Spoon were also on that same release. And WE Fest has been chock full of future celebrity encounters - The Dismemberment Plan, Lamb Of God (back when they were still called Burn The Priest), Mooney Suzuki, Ryan Gentles (who's now manager for The Strokes), Todd Evans (better known as Beefcake from GWAR), xbxrx (who are now on Polyvinyl), Daron from Philco-Bendyx is now Moby's guitar player, Martha Mooke is in David Bowie's band, tons more - an awful lot of WE Fest alumni have gone on to bigger and better things.
There are also stories about Rollins, Michael Stipe, Dennis Hopper, our Empire Records showcase, etc - but like I said, that's pretty normal if you're around a while. All of us old guys have lots of long rambling stories about brushes with fame - buy us a beer or two, and we'll kidnap you and bore you to tears with the stuff.
5. We long-time Wilmingtonians have seen the scenes shift over the years. What’s your take on the state of Wilmington’s music life versus how it used to be?
Unfortunately, I don't know nearly as much as I should! My grandmother had a stroke a number of years ago, and I take care of her now. So that makes it hard to go to shows, and really get out and about. I can say though, that right now I think the Wilmington music scene is healthier than it's ever been.
We have more and more bands who are really getting out there - ASG are signed to Volcom, Clone Cycle are touring Europe on Sony's dime, Thunderlip are signed to Lucid, He Is Legend are signed to Solid State, and of course, Weedeater are from here, and they're just flat out legends. In fact, I'd argue that they're probably the most important band to ever come out of the Port City. Even more than that, there are more musicians than ever, more genres are being well represented here than ever before, and overall it's more vibrant and alive than it's ever been, it's fantastic.
6. What do you think Wilmington needs to do to maybe improve its game with music? Any tips for local venues or bands?
I don't really have any tips for venues, except that it's always good to give free beer to the bands, we appreciate the hell out of that. I think The Soapbox in particular are doing an amazing job.
I would encourage local bands to not think like local bands. Don't get caught up in local politics, or talking trash, or fighting over who headlines at The Whiskey on a Friday - stay focused on getting better, and getting known outside of here. Don't try to be the biggest band in Wilmington, try instead to be a band known worldwide who happen to be from Wilmington. "Local hero" is fun, but it doesn't pay the bills, so promote like mad and try to make things happen.
7. Who are some of your favorite local bands, currently?
I love a lot of what's going on right now, but immediately The Needles and The Title Ceremony pop into my head. No one rocks like Chad Heye and company, they really are world class and can go toe to toe with any live band in the country. And The Title Ceremony are making music that's infinitely beyond their years - it's beautiful and noisy and subtle and patient and insanely smart, their stuff blows me away. Both of those bands are 100% ready to play ball on a national level.
8. Your current band, The Majestic Twelve, has been busy from what I’ve heard. What’s happening?
Yeah, things have been fun lately! I thought I was retired and done with all this music stuff, but we made a disc as a lark a couple of years back, and despite the fact that we didn't promote it or tour, people just kept buying it. My friend Brian Rainey made us a video last July, and it was added to MTV's Overdrive and played on "The Wedge" on Much Music, making us the only unsigned band to have a video added to both MTV and Much Music playlists, which is a hoot. So we decided, "hell, maybe folks like this stuff!", and recorded a new disc that'll be out in the beginning of April. For the first time in 20 years of doing indie DIY projects, I'm gonna go out there and find out if we're good enough to make music for a living - we're hiring radio promo and a publicist, making videos (thanks to the great folks from Evolution Digital, Cape Fear/Carolina FX, and Ryan Risley over at Provis, who are hooking us up above and beyond the call of duty).
We have this wacky idea that the time is right for some unsigned band to break into the mainstream, standing on the shoulders of the great DIY work done by folks like Greg Ginn, Ian MacKaye and Ani DiFranco. Which frankly is a crazy idea. But that's never stopped me before, and I guess we'll find out in the next couple of years if we're all just fulla crap! No matter what happens though, we plan on having a great time finding out, and hopefully doing some good work.
9. This last one’s all yours. What do you want to say?
Do what you love, do it to the best of your ability, and work every day to do it for the rest of your life. Make records that you can listen to all alone at 3:00 in the morning and smile, whether anyone else likes them or not. And it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, famous or unknown, respected or laughed at - if you wake up in the morning and get to do what you love, you win.