15/09/2008 by ville.

 Next in the series of song titles about exotic locations, we are proud to plug this record by Tiny Spark.

Tiny Spark are lovely band from London via Portsmouth with whom we have had the pleasure to work.

I’m liking the vibes here and I hope that you will, too.

The song is about a guy who heads off to Alaska to find himself, leaving his love behind. If that happened in this day and age, the guy would probably end up impregnating one of Sarah Palin’s daughters and drilling the entire state dry of oil. Drill, baby drill - as they chant over there in the US of A.

Have mercy on us all….

Posted in News At Zen | 1 Comment »

01/09/2008 by ville.

I love this record. Esteban perform it. We produced it. You should buy it.

V.

Posted in News At Zen | 1 Comment »

21/08/2008 by ville.

It gives us great pleasure to introduce to you our young proteges Smudge www.myspace.com/smudge

We’re putting out their debut EP StayFeelRegret next month, the guys are headed for a pretty amazing looking UK tour, getting great write-ups, plays on radio and TV - all nice things to come back to from my holiday.

Listen to them here www.theanimalfarm.co.uk/stayfeelregret.mp3

And view the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9m5C47b0Br4

Go see them at one of these

And if that was not enough, it appears that The Animal Farm is nurturing the UK’s next guitar hero. Total Guitar magazine have picked up on Liam from Esteban and are featuring him (and the band) in the current issue. Esteban’s single has excited many in the blogosphere and BBC 6 Music have played it in their podcasts. Apparently their tour of Cornwall’s surf spots caused a few waves (I know, I know…) with packed out venues and CDs selling out faster than you can say Santiago www.theanimalfarm.co.uk/santiago.mp3

 Here the guys are enjoying a quite stroll through Piccadilly Circus.

Check out the wonderful photography of Craig Marston, who took the above masterpiece at http://www.marstonphotography.com/

Rosalita have announced their autumn tour

It’s shaping up to be a busy autumn.

Rock!

Posted in News At Zen | 1 Comment »

01/08/2008 by ville.

In Philip Roth’s book American Pastoral the main character is well to do businessman who in his youth was a high school quarterback, a great looking young buck with perfect teeth and a lantern jaw. His take on irony was that winners didn’t need it. Irony is a get out clause for losers.

A manager I once knew had hung out with Eddie Vedder at a party. His assessment was that Eddie had the confidence of a guy who’d never had to compromise.

Many seasons ago when I entered the building that is the music business, I went in through the door that said “Teenage Rock Bands”. That’s a door you can get through if you’re a teenager in a rock band doing something that people in the building think they can make money with. Many seasons have come and gone and they still haven’t thrown me out of the building. I must be doing something right. Perseverance goes a long way.

Back in those days I would of course dismiss anybody that didn’t have at least stratospheric levels of fame and fortune. Like many others I, too, thought that my music had a divine right to be popular around the world. An artist’s unshakeable belief in the undieniable fact that he was put on earth to create universally popular music is, I believe, the driving force behind the music business.

The other day I was walking to the tube station after a long day at the studio and caught up with my mate Glen who is a fellow musical traveller, a producer with a long career and many records under his belt. Asked him how his day had been. Glen said: “Just when you think the music business has disappointed and hurt you in every possible way, you have a day when it finds yet another way to fuck you”.

Chris Martin of Coldplay was asked how he kept level headed considering the enormous amount of success he’s had. Said Chris: “I listen to The Beatles”.

Bi-annual thought gatherings….

So, here we are, just over half way through the year. Any minute now I’m off on holiday. The first half of this year has been super busy for us. The next half is already booked up with projects. Been a great ride but I can say with confidence that I’m sooooo looking forward to a break from music and a break from squash. (Although, I think I will pack my squash bag, just in case I can sneak in a few games while I’m away)

How do you define being a success in these changing times? Sign to a major label? Hmmm… sign half of your life (=earning potential) away for an advance that is probably gonna be equivalent to less than minimum wage when you factor it all in? Have a top 10 single? Nah. Who remembers what was number one last week? Besides, it’s not even beer money.

Where have all the good times gone? asked Ray Davis of The Kinks. (David Lee Roth of the mighty VH reiterated this point on the fifth VH album. Highly recommended listening, though not their best work…)

I read an interview with Paul Simon, one of the all time greats. His dad was a musician, Paul grew up in soundchecks and studios. His take is that back in the day a musician was a guy who earned his daily bread by playing music. He’d go out gigging at night, go out on tour. Do a season here. Move on when the season was over. It was a lifestyle centered around the art of playing and performing music. It wasn’t about this pirate attitude that “we’re gonna raid the business and by June we’ll have our own line of designer flipflops so that we can retire on an island in the Caribbean and eat steak twice a day”.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve been poor. A quite literally starving musician. Now I’m not poor anymore it feels much better. Making money is great. But the point is this: guys whom I consider my peers will make music for a living even if that livelihood is a bit patchy during some seasons. We make it because we have to. Nothing else will do.

If looked at in the right way, this new music business that is unfolding in front of our eyes is a place in which you have the tools to do your thing, build a business and help it grow. You don’t need to sell half a million records straight out of the box. You don’t need to be on R1 to make a living. And I bet most artists want just to make a living out of making music.

Here’s an interesting idea that a mate of mine, who does a&r at one of the majors, had. I think he was just as surprised as I was to hear him say it. He said that maybe it’s good for artists to have something else in their lives besides music. Maybe if they just supplemented their income by making music, if it was kinda like a glorified hobby, we’d get better music made, artists would be happier because they weren’t on the treadmill of having to deliver commercially plausible records, which so often means records that sound like other records that have already been successdul.

This ties in nicely with another mate’s ideas. He’s a life coach. Goes around businesses telling people how to be happier. His message is: lower your expectations. As in, dude at so-and-so plc is unhappy because he’s only pulling in £100k a year. He kinda sees himself as a Richard Branson or in the very least a Duncan Ballantyne. My mate goes in and says things like: “Why waste your time worrying about stupid shit like that? Lower your epectations and you’ll be happy.” Though, to be fair, he does it way more subtly and eloquently than that.

I know I know. Most people, like me, who’ve got the rock’n'roll bug, want to get ring side seats and we’ll do everything we can to get them. Maybe the hunt keeps us happy.

These are my tips for happy and fruitful hunting:

Be a great craftsman. That means: practise, do scales, learn about your instrument. Explore it.

Say something interesting. The world doesn’t need just another song by just another band. But it sure as hell could do with a fantastic song by someone captivating.

Be a great entertainer. You are the entertainment. The audience is there to be entertained. It’s not a swear word, you know? If you entertain them, they will keep coming back to your gigs, season after season.

Make great recordings. Here’s the truth: when you put something out into the public domain, such as myspace or something, you are in competition with everyone else that’s out there, including Coldplay. If your recording sounds like shit, you don’t stand a chance of entertaining whoever is listening. They will spend their listening time on someone whose stuff sounds great.

Work hard. That means doing those gigs in front of 3 men and a dog in dead end towns. You have to get out there and campaign. Find fans one at a time if necessary. Real fans. Imaginary friends on digital networks are nice, but Real People in Real Life feel much nicer if you get lucky enough to find a place to stay… especially in dead end towns! ;-)

Do anything to make it. Take that literally. None of that Meat Loaf stuff of “but I won’t do that.” You really must be prepared to put everything you have into it. The other day, a band who approached us about a production said, after a few meetings, that they couldn’t afford to hire us. That’s fair enough, but when the conversation moved on to their cool holiday destinations, I thought: ”Er… remind me again, how important is this music lark to you?”

Enjoy the ride. Have fun with it. Challenge yourself artistically. If you get stuck in a rut go back to whatever it was that made you want to pick up music in the first place. That’ll soon remind you how cool music is, how exciting it is.

And then you can find some new things to get into. Last night I watched a program about the songwriter Randy Newman. I laughed out loud when he discussed his song Sail Away which is written from the point of view of a slave trader who is trying to convince Africans that the good ol’ US is a brilliant place to go to. Check out the lyrics http://www.randynewman.com/tocdiscography/disc_sail_away/lyricssailaway 

He also wrote the song Leave Your Hat On, with which Joe Cocker and Tom Jones had hits. Randy wrote the song from the point of view of a complete moron, so he says, and was surprised how sexy the two singers managed to make his character.

I’m going to get into Randy Newman. He had so many cool things to say about writing and music. Just the kind of thoughts to take away on R&R….

Posted in News At Zen | 1 Comment »

21/07/2008 by ville.

51 Breaks’ debut EP is out now. Check it out at

http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?id=285874851&s=143444

Rock!

Posted in News At Zen | 1 Comment »

19/07/2008 by ville.

Blast from the past 

The other day I was searching for drummers for a project we’re developing and came across a website for drum tuition. To my surprise I saw the details of the drummer with whom we put together Snowdogs, the band Mat and I were in back in the day. Way back. The drummer, Gaetano Di Giacomo, ended up quitting the band while we were in full flow and I didn’t hear from him since. That was many years ago.

So I fired off an email and we reconnected. We chatted on the phone and a lot of memories came back. We travelled, ate and slept together: first in a Ford Escort, then in a van and then on airplanes, did the £50 a night gigs in front of 3 men and a dog, did big festivals, starved and slept on floors when necessary, ate sushi at the Tokyo Hilton when possible. Gaetano had quit playing the drums when he quit the band. But 3 years ago he had picked it up again because his heart and soul wasn’t in the IT business into which he went after he stopped working with us. I realize that most everyone who’s in an unsigned band will go “duh! why would anyone want to exchange being in a professional band for working in IT?” but let me tell you for nothing, being in a band for a living is harder work than you think.

Gaetano is back playing with some jazz and latin bands. He’s also a drum teacher now. He is going on to study percussion at a Conservatoire. Has a drum room in his garage. How cool.

Probably the best times that I ever had as a musician were during the first few months when we got signed. We didn’t have to work for a living, we could play all day. Over to Scream Studios http://www.screamstudios.net/ in Croydon we went every day for a 11am start. Played the set once, then jammed for 3 hours solid. No plan. Just winged it on these wild improvisational flights of fancy. Threw in everything we could think of and ended up doing stuff we would never have dreamed of. It was pure musical bliss.

Football anthems 

Speaking of jamming… when the footie World Cup was in Germany a few years ago, the publisher who controls Bob Marley’s catalogue was approached by someone who wanted to make the Marley track “Jamming” (we’re jamming, we’re jamming, I hope you like jamming too) into the official German World Cup tune. They proposed recording a version of the song with new lyrics: We’re German, we’re German, we hope you like Germans, too!

Unbelievably, the publisher declined.

Artistes in the studio

We’ve just spent a couple of days in the studio with Ejectorseat and Rosalita. Got some cracking, cracking new songs in the can. We also hosted The Amateurs www.myspace.com/theamateursuk whose new EP we produced. Really cool Steely Dan-esque kinda Bruce Hornsby type vibes, almost overshadoed by the fact that they formed a local covers band with a rather legendary singer: Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin. All for charidee and the guys said the ride was worth it. If you can think of a more legendary rock singer, answers on a post card, please.

Another band worth a sly mention is Alpha Road www.myspace.com/alpharoad . The Cambridge youngsters are receiving a bit of the ol’ a&r heat at the moment. Summery vibes, great high-life style guitars and pop choruses. We’re lovin’ it.

51 Breaks www.myspace.com/51breaks did an interview for Tom Robinson on BBC 6 Music. The campaign has only just started, and the reviews are coming in thick and fast. The good people at Manilla PR www.myspace.com/manillapr are doing a stellar job. But let’s not kid ourselves: it’s not only who you know, it’s the record you make.

Tom R. is also liking Esteban’s single Santiago www.theanimalfarm.co.uk/santiago.mp3 and check this out: Total Guitar will feature the band on account of guitarist Liam’s amazing finger picking style. Give credit where credit is due: the guy is a grade 8 guitarist with a very cool style of playing. The video for the song is excellent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV5KLvVMbE0

As is this review by the legend that is Toxic Pete:

‘Santiago’ is the debut release from Midlands outfit Esteban. Their relaxed but forceful style, with a touch of Latino here and the odd hint of afro rhythms there, is at times quite exotic - a blend of funked-up indie and straight pop/rock with a twist. Phatt and juicy bass vies with seismic percussion, that sounds like its been set by an atomic clock, as incessant ‘twiddly’ guitar refrains run and flow unerringly across the vibrant rhythmic backdrop but still leave plenty of room for the heartfelt and very effective vocals to shine and get their messages across. Well crafted and beautifully produced, Esteban’s warm and uplifting style gets nicely under yer skin and quickly gets the feet tappin’ along. Esteban keep the pressure on by cramming quite a lot into what space there is but amazingly they never sound cluttered or even remotely over-busy. Generally, the songs here have plenty of light and shade, numerous time signatures and several ‘world’ influences which help to keep the Esteban sound fresh and ‘alive’.'Santiago’ features just four tasty, summery tracks; ‘Santiago’, ‘Say It Loud’, ‘Mass Aura’ and ‘Paperboy’. The Esteban way is simply great at sensible volume levels but becomes a real ‘beast’ when its maxed out and throbbin’! Fantastic music for those balmy BBQ nights but with their mucho singalongability this stuff’s equally fitting for the club or pub scene - Esteban’s music seems to be pretty all-encompassing actually - take it whichever way you like or whenever or wherever you like and its gonna do its job good and proper!

Esteban’s funky pop stylee is massively up-lifting and extremely likeable - Esteban do funked-up better than most and the pseudo-’world’ undercurrent lifts the Esteban funk to higher levels than many similarly ilked outfits. Tasty work from a very impressive bunch of funksters - radio friendly, commercial and, overall, a damn good vibe!

How ’bout that?

Smudge’s www.myspace.com/smudge recent Manchester date was sold out! And it wasn’t held in a cupboard either. The Music Box holds a fair few people. The fact that XFM have picked up on them over there will not have hurt in getting the numbers out.

Practise makes perfect

Let us move on to more important matters. I have been travelling up to the mighty Blackheath Squash Rackets Club for secret training sessions to improve my schwing… They’re secret in that I daren’t tell my wife who’d give me grief if she knew that I was just “goofing off” (her way of putting it, I call it training) instead of what she thinks I’m doing - making a living in da music biz so that my family get to engage in important projects like eating and paying bills. They’re also secret in that I don’t want my club mates to find out. I’m pretty sure neither party is a regular reader of News At Zen so the secret is safe…

I reckoned that if I was to progress in my squash career I would have to start training. Drills. Drills. Drills. Hit the ball this way. That way. Run back and do it over and over and over again. Some players hate doing it. I actually quite enjoy it. I like the routine of it and the concentration that you have to put in to make the ball do what you want it to do.

Lo and behold (sounds like a firm of dodgy accountants!) I have improved. I nabbed a couple of good scalps in club friendlies, guys I wouldn’t have beaten before. That was a nice feeling.

One of my club mates used to be a professional basketball player, played for England and enjoyed what perks pro basketball affords in this country. Certainly doesn’t compare with the US, but better than most office jobs. He quit professional sport early and trained to become an engineer. He was at a wedding some weekends ago where he met a lot of his old team mates, some of whom were now within their last seasons as pro athletes. My mate said that the vibe wasn’t that great: what with unemployment looming, no pension or financial security to speak of, maybe some kids and a girlfriend - and a wife! It was an interesting insight into the world of professional sport. You know, it’s not dissimilar to the world of rock’n'roll. Desperate men in search of desperate fortunes.

I’ll be damned if I know how on earth Mat and I ever managed to make a living out of being in a band. Reconnecting with our old drummer brought back a lot of the vibes we had back in the day. As great and special as those vibes were, we are fortunate in that we have moved on and found a new phase, a new thing for us in the world of music. And as great and special as those new things are, when Mat and me get a moment to ourselves in the studio, he sits behind the drum kit and I fire up the Marshall stack and we let rip. Pure musical bliss.

V.

Posted in News At Zen | 2 Comments »

04/07/2008 by ville.

51 Breaks are a band from brummieland. One of our recent productions. They are featured in BBC 6 Music’s Tom Robinson Introducing podcast http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/trintro/ and I thought you might want to listen to it. More on the band at www.myspace.com/51breaks

Posted in News At Zen | 1 Comment »

23/06/2008 by ville.

bIG tHING! 

We were approached by an a&r newsletter, you know the kind that says label A is looking for artists. Fair enough, we are always interested to hear from new people, so we agreed to have them include our little thang. We did get quite a few replies, some of them interesting, some less so. Then I got to thinking…

Everyone I know is always looking for the next big thing. That we should separately mention that “oh yes, we are looking” is a bit blah…. that we should or even could specify what we are looking for is doubly blah…. how the hell do I know what kind of artists we are looking for? Good ones preferably.

Obviously, given our background it’s unlikely that we’ll get tremendously excited by some grime artist or an experimental flautist playing jazz instrumentals.

So, we said we’re looking for young guitar bands, indie bands. But, hey, let’s be controversial: that’s not an invitation for every band that fits the description to send in their music.

Indeed, many of the artists that sent stuff through from this particular newsletter were premature in putting forward their projects. Almost everyone’s got potential. And those who have it should take their project beyond a “potentially good” stage before approaching the business. Information is a good thing and to spread it about is even better. But, newsletters that encourage artists to approach a&r are just adding to the cacophony of mediocrity that is filling inboxes everywhere in the world.

Just the other day we lunched with the head of music of a well known radio station. Even he was saying that the trouble with the world these days is that because there are so many artists putting out records on so many labels, it is very difficult for media outlets to decide which projects to back. One of the a&r guys at a major label was saying the same thing. Only he looked kind of panicked because he had no idea what band to sign.

I had a couple in mind, but modesty prevented me from suggesting either of them.

The digital revolution has brought with it an overdemocratization, should such a thing or word even exist! What I mean by that is that too many people are having a go.

My favourite description of the kind of act an a&r person would like to sign came from one speaking on a panel at a conference some seasons ago: “I’d like to sign great artists that make records that sell lots of copies in many territories.”

No shit.

My favourite description of what the raison d’etre for an artist is: “a plausible mission for artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit.” I didn’t think that one up. Kurt Vonnegut did. So it goes. http://www.vonnegut.com/

Hits Only!

We, in turn, subscribe to a couple of songwriter newsletters. They tell songwriters which artists are looking for songs, give a brief of what kind of song is being sought. Some briefs are very specific. They say things like “we want electro/rock with big soaring choruses with memorable hookline and lyrics that feature ideas like strong, majestic, adventurous; strong riffs, can be danceable, 85% programmed drums, 15% live guitars”

A couple of questions:

If 15% of the guitars are live, how do the other 85% of the guitars appear on the track?

Or, do you mean that out of everything that is audible, 15% has to be live guitars? If so, how does one calculate it?

Which 85% of the drums do you want programmed? The hi-hats? Bass drum?

Once we have navigated our way through this minefield of questions, we send in our demos and hope for the best - along with a million other songwriting hopefuls. Sometimes we get a cut, most times we just add to the aforementioned cacophony.

Writing songs for other artists is hard work. No one needs pretty good, pretty strong songs. Most people can write them on their own. When you’re a jobbing songwriter you gotta come up with “top drawer singles, hits only”.

The cool news is that we hooked up with our very dear old friend Ian Curnow to write something that perhaps would fit the description above or others like it AND be a hit record. Ian used to work at PWL as a producer. PWL were, of course, the pop powerhouse of the 80s with Kylie, Jason Donovan, Rick Astley, Sinitta, Sonya and a host of others on their roster. When Mat and I moved to London in the early 90s, Ian and his then partner Phil Harding were working out of Strongroom studios as a production team in their own right with massive success with E17 and others. We set up shop with them. Learned a helluva lot. You could say that Ian and Phil were our early mentors. It’s great to reconnect with Ian now to find a new phase in our collective careers.

It was with a certain amount deja vu that we learned that Ian shares a room at Strongroom Studios with the near legendary Tony Platt (no, he is not the guy who missed that big penalty in that footie competition ages ago, when England still pretended to rule the waves…). Good ol’ Old Street and surrounds. I will tell you this for nothing, the area ain’t what it used to be…. progress has been made.

If I’m not mistaked Ian has a degree from the Royal College Of Music. He studied french horn or something like that. He is a wonderfully gifted musician with a superb knowledge of the nuts and bolts of music. There is some serious talent, skill and application at work there.

Production Magic!

Speaking of producers, the legendary John Leckie spoke at a seminar we attended quite a while back. He spoke about how musicians these days don’t know how to play their instruments. And have little desire, it would appear, to want to learn. At the same seminar, the very legendary Nile Rodgers said pretty much the same thing. In addition to being an uber producer in the 80s, he was the guitar player in the disco era band Chic. Everyone knows the song Freak Out! He was saying that back in his day, they were shit hot players by the time record deals etc. were being discussed. Now when a record company sends him a demo of a new band they want him to produce, his reaction is often “YOU got a record deal…?” (Inject serious amount of disbelief in tone)

Maybe these old codgers are onto something. Goddammit! When was the last time we were working with a band whose guitar player was better than me? Seriously. Mat, who started out as a drummer in his teens, then gave up on the instrument for years, and recently bought a drum kit for the studio, is now, after a few months’ sporadic practice, a better drummer than most drummers in up and coming bands.

How fucked up is that?

 And just how did this happen on the left??

Nile Rodgers, incidentally, was a superbly motivational speaker. He had a great line about producing records: it’s the process of organising mistakes, he said. As in, musicians get together in the studio and start creating, make mistakes that sound great. A producer is on hand to help organise those mistakes into coherent pieces of music. What a wonderful idea! Of course, in order for a musician to be able to be creative and expressive with their chosen instrument, they have to know how to play it. In order for creative mistakes to occur in the studio, those wielding their axes must be able to wing it with panache and fearlessness.

The complete opposite is true so many times. Musicians come in and resist every encouragement to try out new things, new approaches.

Band goes: “That’s not how we’ve done it before!”

Producer goes: “And just how successful has that approach been for you so far?”

“Ahem.. er… yeah, but…”

“Precisely.”

Or, band comes in and says they want the live feel. You set them up to play live. Record it. Everyone listens back. That’s when it starts…. ummm, can we tighten that… autotune this…. splice that into place… sound replace and beat detect this… protool everything to death.

Some of my favourite records speed up and slow down, things are out of tune and out of whack  here and there. But I can’t help thinking that it sounds great. It’s got feel. It’s got emotion. It’s got attitude. It comes from a place that can’t be described.  And it takes you on a journey.

Surely, that is what music is all about.

And let me let you in on a secret: becoming great at doing that is all about the hours of practise you put in. There are no natural born musicians, just as there are no natural born brain surgeons.

Rock!

V.

Posted in News At Zen | 1 Comment »

16/06/2008 by ville.

Ejectorseat in at 16 this week in the UK Indie Chart.

Indie Singles

Week   131415161718192021222324

Covers period from ‘09/06/2008′ to ‘15/06/2008′

Congratulations to the band and thank you to the fans who bought it!

Posted in News At Zen | 1 Comment »

04/06/2008 by ville.

Yo!

Our artistes Ejectorseat and Rosalita have both been added to the XFM playlist this week. Cool. Are we hot and happening or what? Or: are our artistes hot and happening or what?

Both are out on tour, co-headlining a string of dates this month. Go see them, check out the dates at www.myspace.com/ejectorseatband or www.myspace.com/rosalitaband

You can preorder the singles:

For Ejectorseat go to

http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDeta ils.do?ctx=280;-1;-1;-1sku=795585

For Rosalita go to

http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;-1;-1;-1&sku=795650

Right, plug over. Move over to more pressing matters. I bloody lost the summer season’s opening squash game to some junior player barely old enough to ride a scooter. Went down 2-0 before my mind found its way on court from wherever I’d left it earlier. Pulled one back. Then nearly got the fourth game. Had I done that, I believe I would’ve got the whole thing. But at precisely 3/4 of the way thru the fourth my mind went AWOL again. Funny thing, concentration. It goes and nothing goes.

I think I need a bigger squash bag, a manager and a better racket. That oughta do it. I need a manager with contacts in the squash industry. Someone who knows the ropes. Also, I think I need a sponsor to give me the chance I deserve….

Speaking of sport, Euro 2008 is about to start. Check out who’s song is the theme tune to the video game http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_8uHesACVTs&feature=related . Alright, it’s Ejectorseat with their song Attack! Attack! Attack!

Speaking of our artists: a funny if frustrating thing happened to Rosalita on their way to Cardiff. They were scheduled to do a session and interview with XFM Wales. Only, the station got sold last Thursday. The new owner decided that they were going to put all activity on hold until they figure out what to do next. So, the band get a call from their publicist saying there’s no interview because, really, there’s no station to go to.

Just when you think that the music business has hurt and disapponted you in every way possible, it comes up trumps again and shows you just how creative it is in thinking up new ways to do so!

OK. A more uplifting story.

We have been working with the very young (their drummer is 15!!) band Hardly Heroes these past few days. Mat took them down to our cafe for lunch. Who’s in the parking lot but Sir Paul of The Beatles. Mat waves to him to catch his eye (as you do) and Sir Paul approaches our young proteges and starts chatting! Asks all sorts of questions about the band and what’s going on. The look on the guys’ faces was undescribable, at least for a man with my literacy skills. I wonder if Sir Paul knows how much that kind of thing matters to young aspiring musicians. And does he do it because he knows or does he do it because he’s just a sincerely nice guy?

My new second favourite hobby is digging up interviews by KISS frontmen Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons. The guys are so rock’n'roll…. check it out http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfXbMnsk0b0

Posted in News At Zen | 1 Comment »