Happy Xmas!

20/12/2007 by ville.

Let me welcome you to our new blog with this topical if unoriginal greeting. In this blog I will try to comment on stuff that’s happening at The ‘Farm. Feel free to comment back on anything and everything, link to your heart’s content, promote your goods with all possible gusto. Do remember to excercise taste and a degree of sophistication. Do refrain from foul language. As one of the characters in a Kurt Vonnegut (the tombstone below is his work) novel said: using swear words only gives the listener an excuse not to listen to what you are saying.

The end of the year is nigh. A look back at 2007 reveals quite a successful year in the annals of The Animal Farm. Back in January we witnessed a most humongous scramble to sign our young proteges One Night Only (www.myspace.com/onenightonlyonline). It was Vertigo what won it in the end. The boys’ debut single You and Me did admirably in the charts and the lads may look towards to future like most of us: none of this music lark means a thing once this global warming excrement hits the air conditioning.

In March Ejectorseat (www.myspace.com/ejectorseatband) did more than admirably crack the Top 40 on Itunes with their track What Do They Care? Quite a lot, it would seem.

Rosalita (www.myspace.com/rosalitaband) won the Road To V competition and shared the stage with Foo Fighters and assorted other celebs. It’s good work if you can get it. NME said that their song Manga Girl is a hit in waiting. Let’s hope they’re right.

And right at the very end of the year Shortwave Fade (www.myspace.com/shortwavefade), who released a couple of singles on Shifty Disco, came up trumps on slicethepie (www.slicethepie.com) which means they get £15.000 to record their debut album. Nice.

Somewhere along the way we teamed up with Safta Jaffery, the renowned producer manager whose roster of stellar producer talent now includes us (www.sjpdodgy.co.uk). Safta, if you didn’t know, is also Muse’s former world-wide manager. He put out Muse’s first three albums on his label Taste Media.We’ve set up two new companies with him. One to manage artists. Another to publish them. It’s an exciting development of which we are proud. We’re even prouder to announce our first signing: Ejectorseat.

We’ve had the pleasure of working with some truly wonderful, talented and inspiring musicians this year. Esteban (www.myspace.com/estebanuk), Dead Bells (www.myspace.com/deadbells), The Brent Flood (www.myspace.com/thebrentflood), Halflight (www.myspace.com/halflight), Smudge (www.myspace.com/smudge) and The Muvs (www.myspace.com/themuvs) to name but a few.

We hope to be releasing records with some of these acts on our new label in the new year.

We wrote a bunch of songs with artists like Jack McManus www.jackmcmanus.co.uk/ (Universal) and Tara Blaise www.myspace.com/tarablaise (Spokes/Warner). We remixed The Cavaliers www.myspace.com/thecavaliersuk for One Fifteen, www.onefifteen.com Pink Floyd’s management!!!

Man, we’ve been so busy this year it’s a small wonder I’ve had any time to devote to my new found passion: squash. It’s without a doubt the greatest sport on the face of the planet. I play at the mighty Blackheath Squash Rackets Club (www.blackheathsquash.fsnet.co.uk) where I get to play for the team on occasion. Away matches and all. It is an amazingly addictive game. I start getting cranky if I don’t get on court 4 times a week. Had you seen me back in my punk rock days, you wouldn’t have easily guessed you’d find me doing this excrement now.

The music business is changing.

I make a prediction: it’s gonna change some more next year. And then some more after that.

On a million and one blogs and websites digital gurus talk about how artists should navigate this changing digitised landscape. Most seem to advocate a cottage industry approach to being in a band. Not a bad idea at all. Building a band is like building any business. You gotta start somewhere. Even Apple started in someone’s garage.

DIY

The DIY model is all the rage. I like doing a spot of DIY at my house. But when I need something done well, I call in the pros. It costs money, but at least I know the shower cubicle will do what it’s supposed to do. Incidentally, the reason they’re pros at fitting shower cubicles is because they’ve been doing it for years, they’ve practised it. Just because I have a chisel and tube of Hard As Nails, I’m not a builder.

The Promised Land

Some of these digital gurus would have us believe that there exists on-line a magic door to the promised land… if all we did was embrace change and adopt new world models… we wouldn’t need labels or anyone, we would just make our music, have our cake and eat it, too.

To quote sometime US presidential candidate Walter Mondale http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Mondale : “where’s the beef?”

Seems to me that someone’s conveniently forgotten that the world, digital or otherwise, is largely indifferent to our art unless it’s hot stuff.

We’ve not built value and established trust between the artists and their audience, we’ve made a shoddy record with maybe three good songs on it, we’re thinking: blimey, nobody’s buying our art anymore because of…. this… this digital thing! Then we panic and make stuff available free of charge. For what? A little bit of quick exposure? Over in a click of the mouse, mate.

It’s unsustainable. Besides, if you put a lot into making your art, you shouldn’t accept that it’s worth nothing. It’s negative loserville thinking.

Death of the MP3

No matter how hip it is announce the death of the mp3, you have to accept that even the tried and tested delivery method of the compact disc is still popular. Ask the million peeps who bought Leona Lewis’ new album…  In some countries the mighty cassette is still the real deal.

The Model

If you’re an artist, the only model worth thinking about (apart from Gisele, pictured here) is this: learn to play, learn to write interestingly about things that matter, learn to perform, learn to connect with an audience, make a great record and get out there to start canvassing! Door to door. One fan at a time if necessary. Take the message out to people. If the message is any good, they’ll listen. If what you build is interesting, they’ll come. If you have stellar stuff on display, they’ll love it.

You have to practise a lot and work with pros in order to make sure that your excrement is the real excrement. If it’s just excrement, it’s no good. You can’t connect with an audience by adding people on myspace. A human connection at a venue near you goes way further towards keeping you warm tonight. ;-)

Talent

Music Week www.musicweek.com magazine sent a CD featuring their Hot Tips for 2008.  This sounded good: Glasvegas http://www.myspace.com/glasvegas The rest of it I could take or leave.

You know what I would like to hear on CDs like that? Bona fide musicians, competent players who know how to write songs and perform well. Guys who’ve decided that they want to be musicians for a living. Musicians who are committed to music as a lifestyle, who care about their craft and explore that domain.

What is so… uncool about aspiring to develop your talent and being a committed muso?How can you be a musician and not know what and where C is? To me that’s like being a footballer who doesn’t know the offside rule.

Imagine if a major football team decided to choose their players on the basis of how hyped in the press they were or how well they waxed their chests. How long would they last? Exactly! They wouldn’t even make it into Euro 2008.

I’m just reading about Fabio Capello’s motto: WORK, WORK, WORK.

If you do decide to work work work, one day this may happen:

I’m not referring to the look, by the way…  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsbFIjyfj_I 

In stark contrast to the talent, invention and musical prowess on display above, we have to settle for Joe Lean and his bingobangobongos? They are the bright hope for 2008? No wonder sales are down.

In closing…

Let me make another prediction: great music will never cease to be a source of happiness and inspiration to those who create it and those who experience it. To quote Kurt Vonnegut again: a plausible mission for artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit.

My plans for the new year include learning to finger pick gut string guitar, getting stuck in with our current artists, finding and developing new ones, playing some more squash, trying to establish my place on the team. After a hard session at Squash Club, I promise I shall not try to rehydrate my body with copious amounts of red wine. One glass will do.

Rock!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

Ville 

PS. A funny coincidence: Mat just gave me a xmas present, Al Di Meola’s Greatest Hits (not that he has ever had any hits, commercially speaking…). Al Di Meola is the awesome jazz guitarist I write about in a passage above. Me writing about it and Mat buying it (on CD, may I add!) is a Zen thing. So guess what I stayed up late last night doing…? Learning the intro to the song they play in the video linked above.  

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