Subject: Re: Making Hits
I completely agree with your analysis of the music business. They want us all to believe the hot or important music all resides in hip hop or pop music. That simply is the furthest from the truth. It's self defeating. The labels want to make as much money as possible but yet only play in two sand boxes now limiting their earning power. It makes no sense and me as a music fan doesn't get the diversity of music that is out there without going on a scavenger hunt and hours of sifting through terrible music that is now so easy to put out.
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From: Keith Levy
Subject: Re: Album Bundles-From A Promoter
This is a beautifully succinct summary of the forced bundle. Thanks Craig as I will now forward this verbatim to any of my managers/labels when they ask me to tack the forced bundle onto the ticket. Also worth noting, that they almost always ask after the tour is booked, cleared, confirmed, and negotiated, as the agents are usually working further out than the labels when planning a tour vs a release.
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Re: Album Bundles-From A Promoter
From the artist point of view.
We (Melissa Etheridge & Management, who is an OG Concert West guy) looked at this every which way we could. Bundle with the ticket, sell at merch, and bundle in Fan Club package. We purchased BDS pre-scanned cd's from the label. Our thought at the time was to increase chart position, which would encourage airplay, which would encourage ticket sales. The truth was, all the fans already had the disc, which is probably true for those buying tickets to individual shows today. They are already fans, that's why they bought the ticket to the show. It's pretty simple. In my view it is not the artists responsibility to buy (which is as Craig so astutely pointed out) or sell the product. That's why you have a label. It's really sad how the hubris of all those execs let the business fall apart. The really smart ones sold out decades ago.
All the best,
Ken Deans
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Re: Karla Bonoff-This Week's Podcast
Thanks for the shout-out to Karla Bonoff, who deserves all the accolades you gave her. And I'd like to add that her first album was masterfully produced by the late Kenny Edwards, and as you mention, he made the songs and her vocals the center of the record, never letting the production get in the way.
Kenny was one of the under-appreciated secret weapons of the California Country Rock movement of the 70s. An original member of the Stone Poneys, he went on to a long career as a session and touring musician. One of the few multi-instrumentalists who could also sing harmony, he was proficient as a bassist, guitarist, banjo and mandolin player. He spent many years in Linda Ronstadt's touring band and is prominently featured on her newly-released live album.
His affiliation with Karla, however, may have been his most important contribution. They were both members of the band Bryndle along with Andrew Gold and Wendy Waldman. I saw them many times at McCabe's and other venues. Their harmony singing was amazing.
Kenny encouraged Karla's early attempts at songwriting, produced her albums, and up until his death, toured with her. I remember seeing the two of them at a club in upstate New York. Kenny opened the show and then provided instrumental and vocal support for Karla. It was one of those deliciously intimate musical evenings I won't forget.
Best,
John Boylan
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From: Rob Meder
Subject: Re: T-Mobile/Sprint
Agree agree agree. The importance of 5G cannot be overstated.
I cannot wait to cut the cord and stop paying Spectrum $200 for a bundle, bulk of which I don't use, just so I can have decent internet to the home. No other options where I live and that is a recipe for disaster with the net neutrality laws in tatters.
The Fins say something along the lines of - we never protect the job.. we only protect the worker. so if your job is going away - they don't prop up the industry. They invest in the worker so that they are prepared for the future that will happen no matter how hard we try to resist it. And they actually do it, real training, real investment. Works like a charm.
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From: Jeff Hanna
Subject: Re: Will The Circle Be Unbroken
Really enjoyed the piece on Jackson Browne, Get Lit and The Ash Grove Foundation. I've got great admiration for Jackson as an artist and as a human being. And yeah, he's funny, as well!
The Ash Grove was a huge part of our musical development. We'd hitchhike to Hollywood from Long Beach as kids to see folks like Doc Watson and Mississippi John Hurt play. Ed Pearl would use NGDB as an opening act a couple years later for Merle Travis and Lightning Hopkins among others. Great guy, Ed. Heard and met the Chambers Brothers there as well. Phenomenal..
Thanks for the shout-out on Will The Circle Be Unbroken. That record was life-changing for us.As you pointed out, that song has an amazing effect on people. We still sing it every night, and it always moves people. Power of song, indeed.
Thanks again, Bob
Jeff
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From: susan werner
Subject: Re: Will The Circle Be Unbroken
Bob -
I had the good fortune to get to open a few shows for George Carlin in 2007. Sitting backstage I said to him, "There aren't a lotta people who still mean it out there. You know? But you still mean it when you go onstage." He said, "Yup." I said, "Who else do you think still means it?" He answered, "Well, Tony Bennett." Then he thought a minute and said, "And Jackson Browne."
Susan Werner
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From: David Jensen
Subject: Re: Go Where You Wanna Go
Great stories...and here's more facts...as a hobby I find lost royalties for deserving musicians...alive and dead...about a year ago, I fell into some for Chuck Day...but who's Chuck Day???...turns out to be the Baby Daddy To Mama Cass...and he lived out his final days in an apartment atop the music club 19 Broadway in Fairfax up north here...it's a great story all around including gay husbands evading the draft and all...and eventually I got the lost royalties to Mama's daughter Owen...that's what I do...
You know how much the musicians have been screwed...this all needs more publicity...every State as the same system of Unclaimed Property...in Cali, it's the California State Controllers Office...Sorry, I never learned to cut and paste...Stevie Wonder has LOTS of lost monies in Sacramento...is he really that hard to find???...
Cheers, DJ
SF
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From: Charles Driebe
Subject: Re: Political Lessons
Bob -
The legendary gospel group Blind Boys of Alabama, who I have been managing for the last 20 years, have been 'standing their ground' for decades.
The late Clarence Fountain, who led the band from 1944 until a few years ago, used to tell the story of how he and the Blind Boys were in the same studio as Sam Cooke in the 1950s and were offered the same deal as Sam if they would 'cross over' to popular music. Clarence and the Blind Boys refused.
Since I have been managing the band, they have declined offers to sing their deep harmonies on songs with the biggest names in the business when the band determined the material to be insufficiently spiritual - in particular love songs. As the last original member and current leader of the band, Jimmy Carter, says 'If the song has the word 'baby' in it, it's not for us.'
When George W. Bush was in office, the band was invited to perform at the White House and they accepted out of respect for the office. But when they were later asked to sing at the Republican convention for the biggest fee they had ever been offered, they declined.
The Blind Boys of Alabama have principles and they stand up for them!
Best regards,
Charles Driebe, Esq.
blindambitionmgt.com
facebook.com/BlindAmbitionManagement
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From: Richard Foos
Although we've known each other for over 40 years? And I've read "the Lefsetz Letter" off and on ever since you started, I've never written you until now as I thought your column on Politics (6/4/2019) was so sad and true. Specifically the following line: "You've got to be able to say no. That's one thing a musician is no longer is capable of. If you're willing to pay, they'll show up. They'll even sing for dictators. There's no endorsement they won't sign on to. The whole enterprise is built on cash, and everybody wants some, in fact they want more." And I see this as particularily relevant because except for some country artists, Ted Nugent and Kid Rock, I've never heard of a musician who supports Donald Trump. Yet, according to a number of sources Warner Records owner Len Blavatnik donated a million dollars to Trump's inaugural campaign as well as 3.5 million to various McConnell PACS. And of course Mr. Blavatnik has every right to donate to whoever he wants and is a very generous philantrophist giving many millions to worthy causes, but just wondering how aware the artists on the various Warner labels are of his support of Trump and other prominent Republicans and if so how true the above comments you made are.
Richard Foos | Chairman, Shout! Factory
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From: Rich Waters
Subject: Re: WWDC 2019
Hi Bob,
I'm at wwdc. It's fun to see your enthusiasm about the keynote. I'm not sure I completely agree with everything you said, but you nailed it with:
"As for the iPad, it now has its own OS, but it will never be a desktop replacement"
I think there's a disconnect between who's actually using iPads (my 80-something mom) and who Apple wants to use iPads (people who care about multiple windows)
Aside from that, FWIW, the real excitement here among developers is about something called SwiftUI. There might have been more people at the "SwiftUI Essentials" session today than were at the keynote. Every seat was filled, and there were multiple layers of standing room. All developers.
Thanks,
-Rich
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From: Joel Silverman
Subject: Dean Torrence
Hi Bob,
I was a good friend with Dean's sister KT.
I'm sad you didn't talk a bit more about her.
She and her husband Keith Barr founded Alesis after they left MXR. They destroyed the commercial studio business with the invention of the ADAT. That product enabled musicians to record with the same or better quality than the gigantic 24-track machines. Studer even did a deal with them and came out with a Studer branded product.
KT was very talented artist that had to live in the shadow of her big brother.
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Subject: Re: What The Web Has Wrought
You are right on point again Bob!
Outside of my world of music, and unlike any piece of gear, computer or anything else I own that gets obsolete and runs slower with time, my Tesla is the gift that keeps on giving, the best money I have ever spent, comes with the best sound system and with every update the car gets better with more insane stupid funny stuff ( who would think of the "Santa Mode" or the "More Cowbell" mode!!!) but also it gets safer to drive and FASTER! And puts a stupid grin on my face whenever I summon it to drive to me driverless, or floor it on the highway and leave just about anybody behind with their foreign gas guzzlers or drive on autopilot to pick up my son in San Jose State University, stopping at a supercharger that looks like an airline airport club and the charge is free while I sip my espresso! Sick and tired of all the crap I read about Tesla or Musk.
As Neil DeGrasse Tyson says, he is the closest thing to Thomas Edison we got!
With all my best.
Philippe Saisse
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Subject: Re: News/Best Eric Clapton Album-Sirius XM This Week
I don't claim to be a know-it-all but do believe George Harrison (L'Angello Misterioso) played the rhythm guitar part at the beginning of the bridge on Badge (the C-G-D progression after the second verse). The beginning part played through a Leslie. He continues playing this part through the bridge while Clapton sings and then proceeds to play the lead guitar solo over Harrison's part.
Peace,
Rick McClanahan (and a few others)
from George Harrison's Facebook page:
George recorded "Badge" with Cream in late November 1968 in LA. George plays the main rhythm guitar. Written by Eric and George.
Guitar Player Interview, 1987:
Q: I always wondered about, speaking of collaboration, "Badge," the bridge part where the guitarist played through the Leslie. Is that you?
GH: No, that's where Eric enters. On the record Eric doesn't play guitar up until that bridge. So there was Felix, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and me. I played the rhythm, the chops. And we played the song right up to the bridge, at which point Eric came in on the guitar on the Leslie. And then he overdubbed the solo part later.
Q: Did he write all the music?
GH: I wrote most of the words. Eric had that bridge, definitely. And he had a couple of chords I think. He called me up saying, "look, you know we're doing this last album and we've all got to have our song by Monday," or something. He came by and I think he had the first couple of chord changes, and then I joined in and finished the verses off. And then he had the middle bit already. I think I wrote most of the words to the song but he was there, and we bounced off of each other.
www.facebook.com/georgeharrison/posts/10153916284551345
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Re: The Universal Fire
It's important to note that some labels were more responsible than others and stored their masters in secure, fire and earthquake proof locations and to this day still do (Sony/BMG for instance). Fortunately the Blue Note catalog, though now part of UMe, was stored downtown L.A. in a very secure location. Those tapes, mostly Scotch 111 sound as good as the day they were first recorded.
It's also true that when vinyl "went away" and the mastering houses in Europe closed down along with many studios, masters and multitracks were simply tossed into dumpsters! It was mass insanity/hipnosis! I interviewed the great recording engineer Phill Brown (Talk Talk, Traffic, Small Faces etc.) who told me one day he got a call from someone who said "Hey mate! There's a dumpster in front of Trident full of tapes, and I noticed your name on some. Better go fetch them before they are landfill". And he did. But so much was tossed then too! Plenty of blame to go around.
Also, a great deal of the MCA/UNI/UMG/UMe catalog had been backed up to 1/2" 30 IPS safety copies and sent over to Universal's Hanover, Germany vaults (now located in the U.K.). I visited back in late 1990s and saw it. A friend reissued some A&M stuff a few years ago and was able to get those back ups for his all-analog reissues and they sound great. But losing much of the Chess, Impulse and Motown catalogs is an unbearable loss.
Also the Times story contains some inaccuracies. The Buddy Holly masters for instance, were not lost in the fire. Also at least four Skynyrd albums said to be lost are not…. and some Chess titles and others were out for vinyl remasters when the fire struck and those were saved (like "Muddy Waters Folk Snger").
Ironically, the best available sources for much of this lost material resides in the grooves of clean original pressings. The labels should be requesting high quality needle drops and UMe should stop trying to defend itself from bean counter stupidity. So lame. Fess up!
Michael Fremer
editor analogPlanet.com
Stereophile senior contributing editor
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Re: The Universal Fire
You haven't even scratched the surface of this story. There are companies that really try to care about their masters, such as Sony. Yet, there are enough horror stories about EMI and Universal (pre-merger) and their handling of assets to fill several books. Most of these stories have been on the street for years and are true.
Tom Cartwright
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Re: The Universal Fire
IN THE LATE 80'S"+ THEY STORED TAPES AT BEKINS!!!!
John Klemmer
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Re: The Universal Fire
I somewhere once downloaded a multi track of Stevie Wonder's Superstition. The absolute best part was hearing the horn players tapping their feet and talking to each other, like "Ok this is the bridge coming..." etc
I can't imagine what moments are lost in that material
Tears in the rain...
Chris Stein
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Re: The Universal Fire
THANK YOU.
I have a copy of everything I've ever mastered, and made sure the artist has a copy.
I've done a lot of studying on archiving...what lasts (e.g., tape stored properly), what doesn't (e.g., tape not stored properly). I digitize everything on Blu-Ray, even though most people don't get why it's an outstanding archival medium. (Well, at least it will be until you can't buy something that can read the data...)
Just remember: Digital data is not real until it exists in more than two places.
Craig Anderton
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Re: The Universal Fire
Not to excuse Universal but many artists have lost their Masters, good thing the recording studios had safeties..
Another artist who insisted his Masters be returned lost them in a fire! Safeties once again at the studio.
So, luck of the draw.
Sally Grossman
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Re: The Universal Fire
Billy Squier masters just might be safe. Unless mistaken, it seems Universal acquired EMI (and hence Capitol) in 2012, which of course would be post-fire. Thank god.....
-- Greg Debonne
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Re: The Universal Fire
I trained under Jack Richardson in Canada. First thing he taught us was make duplicates of your multi tracks and keep the copies.
When the label couldn't find the Guess Who's master tapes, they came to Jack and had to pay. Best advice, I've been making copies since day one.
Jay Ruston
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Re: Karla Bonoff-This Week's Podcast
I made my first album almost by accident. I'm from Texas, but in the summer of 1996, I was couch surfing with a friend out in Venice, Ca., and ran across an old friend one afternoon on the boardwalk, who happened to be an A&R person at A&M Records at the time. That afternoon she offered to put me in the studio on the A&M lot to do a new demo. The next morning I showed up at the studio with no gear, no songs, no real ideas to speak of. I called a local DJ and asked to borrow his sampler, but he didn't show up until the second day. So I spent the entire first day just reading some of my short stories onto five different two-inch analog tapes. The second day my friend and I spent all day just coming up with random instrumental ideas from scratch, with no real idea what we were going to do with them. At the end of the day, the engineer pressed the button that had been muting my vocal track (on those same two-inch tapes) from the previous day. As it turned out, we had 14 "songs" that had been created this way, entirely by accident. The folks at A&M seemed to love what we had come up with, and for a couple of weeks we went back and forth trying to figure out how to strike some kind of cheap deal. (I, of course, had no manager or lawyer, or any sort of infrastructure at the time.) Anyway, the deal never came together, but cassettes of the sessions had somehow made their way into the hands of A&R folks at Geffen, and also the A&R staff at Irving Azoff's Giant Records. Both were interested… up until the moment that I told them that the masters were still in the vault at A&M. They loved the demo, but weren't willing to buy the masters from A&M. So there I was. Sitting on my friend's couch, wondering, "Did all of this really happen? Did I just make a record that is going to sit in a fucking vault forever? Will anyone ever believe that I had just made this album by accident?" Finally I got the courage to take matters into my own hands. I climbed onto an LA city bus (didn't have a car at the time), made my way into West Hollywood, and then screwed up the courage to try to get my masters back. Waited until after business hours, then walked right up to the front gate, and then lied to the guy at the desk about needing my tapes for a remix that I was doing at another studio across town. Imagine my surprise when the guy watching the vault handed them right over. There were five of them, weighing about twenty pounds each, but god damn if I didn't find a way to schlep them onto the bus back out to Venice. A month or so went by, and obviously no one from A&M ever noticed that the master tapes from my demo had disappeared. I ended up signing a deal with Virgin, did the entire Lollapalooza Tour that year, and went on to release the lowest-selling album in the history of the label. But at least it the damn thing came out.
PS - The album was nominated for a Grammy for "Best Spoken Word Album" in 1997. Hillary Clinton won that year for a Children's book on tape. Ten years after the album was originally released, a former exec at Virgin bough the rights to my album from them and then re-released it on his own imprint. He did it because he didn't think the record got a fair shot the first time. None of that would have ever happened if I had not of stolen my masters from the vault that night.
Jeffrey Liles
Cottonmouth, Texas
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Re: The Universal Fire
I became very good friends with Terry Melcher in the late 80s and early 90s.
I loved talking music history with him. About the 60s and the stories about CBS/Columbia as he brought the label out of the Mitch Miller Era and into the world of Rock.
While growing up and approaching my teen years, Dick Clark's Where The Action Is was in every weekdays on ABC and provided my insight to the world of rock. On the show, Paul Revere and the Raiders (along with Herman's Hermits) were essentially the house band. To me, that made both groups more important than they most likely were in reality.
As a result, I purchased virtually every Paul Revere and the Raiders albums at the time.
In the early 90s when CBS released the Paul Revere and the Raiders Box CD Set, I was dumbfounded to find many of the songs, such as "Let Me" (surprisingly their first Gold Record) was in mono. I knew I had it in Stereo.
As Melcher had produced so much of the early CBS product such as that and the Byrds, to name a few, I asked him what was going on with the Mono recordings.
He told me the story of how CBS/Columbia hired interns from UCLA/USC a Decade or so after his time.
Now today, with the Department of Labor and sue happy lawyers everywhere, the intern programs are very strict. Someone must constantly be overseeing interns as they cannot be doing real work unsupervised (at least in theory).
Not so back then.
Apparently these interns were told to clear out an area and, according to Melcher, a tremendous amount of Masters were thrown out by the interns. This may or may not be associated with the Billboard story from July of 1997 written by Bill Holland about CBS/Columbia cutting up metal tape reels and selling them for scrape metal. As Melcher has passed on, I cannot follow up with him.
Regardless, he told me I might be in possession of the only Paul Revere recordings in Stereo as apparently Sony/CBS/Legacy could not find ANY source for them while searching to make the box set.
Now Paul Revere and the Raiders might be arguably less important than some of the other artists you mentioned (and were in the NYT article), but one can only wonder what other masters were thrown out by the College Interns? And was the scrape metal story even accurate?
Then again, anyone who knows anything about tape knows that tape from roughly 1985-1990 had a defect that caused the lubricated backing to come off after a number of years. With the way they were wrapped on reels, this caused the backing to stick to the other side....the magnetic playing surface...of the tape.
Sadly, between tape defects and pure carelessness, I wonder how many masters have really been lost for the ages.
Randy Kabrich
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Re: The Universal Fire
I've been the owner or co-owner of four (4) Indie Record labels since the mid 80's. Acts like Valerie Carter, Vonda Shepard, Mary Karlzen, and all the session players who back up the headliners on the road and in the studio were my clients. I did it for the love of the music and the people I was working with.
My policy from day one was the Masters ALWAYS belong to the artists. There were exceptions, most often when artists had taken so many draws against the "next release" in some cases I begun writing "personal loan" and writing the check from my personal account as opposed to the label account. But that's both an exception to the rule and me digressing.
In the late 1990's I invested in a company called Y&T Records out of Miami Florida. There were 4 partners each contributing in their area of strength. Rich Ulloa, the best A&R man I've ever worked with on an indie label was 1 partner. Don't believe me? Ask Raúl Malo and The Mavericks who Rich found in a dive bar in Hialeah. Four Cuban- Americans playing traditional original Country Music for 20 people. Joel Levy, who owned Criteria Studios before he sold it to The Hit Factory. Yes, THAT Criteria, where Clapton made 461 Ocean Boulevard. This allowed us 100's of hours of studio time at no cost although it was mostly from 10:00 P.M. to 10:00 A.M. A local attorney, Steve Goldberg provided all legal services gratis. My job was to provide financing and my L.A. connections.
We had a well known local female singer / songwriter, Mary Karlzen. We got her music in front of some L.A. players and the result was an album entitled "Yelling At Mary," produced by Kevin McCormack, keyboards by Belmont Tench, Bob Glaub and Mark Goldenberg on guitar, the multi-talented Scotty Thurston, Greg Liesz on strings and Luis Conte played percussion. This was basically Jackson's touring band at the time and yes Jackson sat in on a song so we could advertise "Including a duet with Jackson Browne."
The album was picked up by Atlantic which was a division of Warner in 1995.
We were forced to break up the partnership due to the sale of Criteria as not only was it "our" recording studio but also Y&T's "offices."
Assembling all the Masters to insure each artist had theirs Rich realized Atlantic was holding the "Yelling At Mary" Masters. Although our partnership was technically dissolved he asked me to please lay out the funds to BUY the Masters back to gift to Mary. I never hesitated and wrote the check even though there was nothing in it for me except doing what I felt was the right thing by Mary.
That album has been released twice more since then including currently being available on Dualtone but Mary owns the Masters.
Of course artists should own their Masters with the exception of some extreme cases. Sorry for the excessive verbiage but you have to know the "backstory" for the point to make any sense.
Rob Halprin
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Re: The Universal Fire
The 2008 fire was indeed, to take Don McLean out of context, "the day the music died." I licensed a TON of masters from Universal back when it was MCA and the latter day owner of not only the expected Decca stuff but a vast array of smaller, now defunct labels. I was forever asking Universal/MCA for tracks I knew they owned but did not realize they had -- such as the pre-EMI 1960 Beatles recordings ("Ain't She Sweet," etc.) On one hand it was an advantage to license from Universal/MCA because I could get the output of many labels (A&M, Mercury, MGM, Uni, etc.) from a single source and thus get a bit of a quantity discount when assembling multi-label CD box sets. . But at the same time their growing near monopoly of masters worried me for two reasons. One was that Universal/MCA could easily take advantage of the vastness of their holdings and jack up their licensing fees. The other was -- WHAT IF THEY HAD A FIRE? Losing the archives of ONE label would be bad enough. But if what Universal was holding in mostly a single location went up in smoke, the enormity of the disaster would be staggering. Turns out -- it was and is.
I left Reader's Digest Music in 2002, having licensed material for some 300 mostly box sets over the previous 20 years which cumulatively sold in excess of 39 million copies. In some cases having the multi-track masters available proved essential to me as a box set compiler. An example was when I put together the "Carpenters: Their Greatest Hits & Finest Performances" 3 CD box set. I had Richard Carpenter go in and pull out of their "Now and Then" LP multitrack mix several annoying fake DJ overdubs. That allowed a string of favorite oldies the duo covered to be heard in full out in the clear for the very first time. Such a remix would not be possible today as all the Carpenters multi-track master recordings were burned up in the 2008 fire. After creating some box sets independently for other clients (like Guideposts), I finally stopped licensing tracks altogether in 2011.
The only saving grace in this disaster is that copies of the released music still exists in one form or another -- on CDs, LPs, 45s, 78s, etc.. However, copies are always inferior to first generation master recordings -- and it is those first generation masters which perished in the blaze. Why did Universal not take better care of their masters -- or at least get the fire out minutes after it first broke out?
It simply wasn't a priority. They didn't care -- which is so typical of the entertainment industry which always focuses on new material Be aware when you see a clip retrospective of vintage television that the clips you see are, as often as not, all that remains of the TV series they represent. When Jim Aubrey took over at CBS, he discovered his network was "wasting" valuable storage space filled with old black and white film and video. He ordered all of it destroyed -- and he wasn't alone. John Guedel, the producer of "You Bet Your Life,": once got a call from the foreman at the NBC archives in New Jersey. Guedel was asked if he wanted copies of any of the episodes as NBC was burning them all up. If he'd just pay the shipping costs --- which John gladly did. When the crates of film arrived on his doorstep, Guedel had Groucho come over with a 16mm projector. After watching a few episodes, Guedel said, "Well, Groucho. I don't know. They're old and black and white. Do you think anyone would want to air these shows again?" Groucho didn't know -- but he did have a friend over at Golden West Broadcasters (Channel 5) in L.A. he could ask. The guy at Channel 5 told Groucho that as a test he'd run episodes for 13 weeks but wouldn't pay anything for them. Groucho said fine and the shows aired. By the second week "You Bet Your Life" was #1 in its time period and wound up getting syndicated to more than 100 markets. But it came THAT CLOSE to bring lost forever. I told that story to Steve Allen one day and he said, "Do you think NBC burned up my old 'Tonight Show' episodes?" I said I didn't know -- and got to watch as Steve phoned NBC in New York and was told that, sure enough, NBC has incinerated all of Steve's episodes. (They also burned up Johnny Carson's early years on the show.) Pat Boone told me the only reason he has copies of his "Chevy Showroom" series is that an employee of ABC called him on day to report that all the "Chevy Showroom" episodes were out in a dumpster. After the death of Ernie Kovacs, ABC began erasing all of his shows -- until Ernie's widow, Edie Adams, stepped in and bought from them the tapes. How did Edie raise the money? By becoming "The White Owl Girl" in a long string of TV commercials. Soupy Sales and Metromedia were 50-50 owners of "The Soupy Sales Show" episodes for ten years -- after which all rights were to revert to Soupy. On the day Soupy walked in to pick up his tapes, he was told that Metromedia had recorded over all of them long before. Soupy then spent the rest of his life tracking down the lower-quality kinescopes of his shows syndicated to stations which did not have video playback equipment. He only found a few. Nearly all the recorded programming seen on the Dumont television network was dumped into New York's East River in 1971. There are tons of stories like these.
Why are 90% of the silent movies ever made now lost? A key reason was that studios then thought of films they way one might think of today's newspaper. After a short time, it's time-expired garbage. Why save it? So many movies -- including loads of sound ones -- are lost today due to studio short-sightedness and neglect. Why should the owners of music masters act any different -- properly archiving and storing their treasures in climate-controlled, fireproof locations? Well, first of all, they have to think of them as treasures
Imagine a yardstick -- with the earliest recordings ever made at one end and the latest releases at the other. Recordings that speak to and for your heart could have been cut at any point along that yardstick -- and as an archivist, I look at that yardstick's 36 inches full on. Every inch has "good stuff," "OK stuff" and a lot of crap -- right on up to the present day. The music industry itself looks that yardstick so much from the new end only it doesn't even see the other 35 3/4 inches -- and wants the public to view music in the very same way. What's important to them is not how good a recording is -- how well it speaks to and for your heart -- but how NEW it is. That's like having an art gallery in which every painting is discarded a month or so after it was first hung.
I welcome new music -- but stack it up against everything else ever recorded. Is it as good, better or worse? I'm all ears to find out. But if it's only good compared to the tiny sliver of tracks only a couple of months old or less -- well, to quote Shania Twain, "That don't impress me much."
Gary Theroux
"The History of Rock 'n' Roll"
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Subject: Re: Andy Slater-This Week's Podcast
Bob,
I was really moved by your podcast with Andy Slater. When I was around 19 years old, in 2004, Andy Slater told me that I "made the worst decision of my life". It's something that has stuck with me for the past 15 years. Let me explain.
In high school, I was the original drummer for a band called The Pages, that eventually changed their name to The Redwalls. In 2003, we released an album called Universal Blues on an indy label in Chicago. That album, Spotify link below, got the attention of most of the major labels. Soon after, as we were getting ready to graduate from high school, we started getting courted by the major labels and the band eventually signed with A&R rep Julian Raymond at Capital Records.
Along the way, we had many amazing experiences and met with some of the industry big wigs. I unfortunately was too young and naive to realize who was who at the time. We met with Gary Gersh in Chicago, who gave us an early copy of Mars Volta's first album. We flew out to LA with Wilco's previous drummer, Ken Coomer, who helped set up most of the major label showcases and ended up getting a large chunk of the signing bonus with Capitol. We missed our high school graduation rehearsal to play for most of the major labels in LA, one after another in a large practice room at SIR. We even had lunch with Seymour Stein at one of the best Jewish deli's in LA... wish I could remember which one. Might have been Canter's or Art's.
Long story short, I made the difficult decision to attend college instead of sign to Capital and earned a degree in Marketing and Sales Leadership at DePaul. The Redwalls flew me to LA in 2004 to be in their music video for a song called, "Thank You". It was a large production for a pretty basic video. At one point, Andy Slater stopped by the shoot the check in on things. That's where I was introduced to him as the previous drummer who decided to attend college instead of signing with Capital. Andy's response was that choosing college over staying with the band was the worst decision I've ever made in my life.
Hearing that from the President of Capitol Records at 19 years old was devastating. It was an influential time in my life and it felt like he was right. The Redwalls were getting a lot of attention and were on tour opening for Oasis, playing for massive crowds in soccer stadiums in Europe while I was in school. It was a depressing time in my life, however the path I chose has led to some great things and this podcast helped me feel like there's so much hope for better things to come.
When Andy talked about trying to find the reward in life after he went to rehab, and then lost the Smashing Pumpkins management gig, but then found the Fiona Apple demo tape... I got emotional. It's an amazing example that there are good things around the corner, even if you're constantly beaten down.
I've always been torn between the music and business worlds, and it's only been over the past few years that I've come to peace with my decision. I've had a 12 year career in the Salesforce.com technology ecosystem, and I've continued to play drums in multiple bands. I've played in over 50 bands since high school, and still do as much touring and recording as possible with my career in business.
The Redwalls ended up getting dropped a few years after they were signed by Capitol. They never sold enough albums to recoup and ended up breaking up a few years later. I still keep in touch with most of them, and funny enough I play more music than they do these days.
Not sure if you'll read this, but I've enjoyed reading your blog for many years and finally had the courage and reason to write back. Thanks for all of the honest writing and insights you've provided over the years. I've learned a lot from you... in music and life.
All the best,
Jordan Kozer
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