David Fisher : What is Noise Blog

I was hoping to have the Y34RZ3r0r3mix3d vinyl album by today. No such luck. I got an email from Insound, who said that there was a delay and they have just gotten it in and are sending out ASAP. Hopefully by Friday.

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I’m trying to get into the habit of reviewing more music as soon as it comes out. I guess I know where I’ll be on most Tuesdays (Newbury Comics first thing in the morning). I just ordered the new NIN remix album, Y34RZ3r0r3mix3d, which in case you can’t tell is a remix album of Year Zero. I won’t have it for a few days, since they are shipping the the vinyl (would have gotten the MP3, but I’m a sucker for vinyl still). Vinyl makes me do ‘intentional listening’, which I find is far better for actually getting the most out of an album. I will admit (and Trent I have a feeling won’t hate me for this) that I’m probably going to go and download the MP3 version from The Pirate Bay or something. I’m already paying nearly $40 for the vinyl damnit! Yes, that’s my rationalizing here, and I know that less vinyl is being pressed these days, so the price is up. But there’s no way in hell I’m going to pay another $9 for the MP3 download. Yes, I’m a sucker that will pay 4x as much for an album just to have that 10% difference in audio quality. 

Speaking of the MP3, iTunes has the album (with DRM) for $9.99, and Amazon has it (sans-DRM I believe) for $8.99. Amazon sounds like a better deal imho. I still need to order the Radiohead In Rainbows vinyl, but the dollar keeps tanking and it keeps getting more expensive. I wonder if Newbury Comics will have it in a few days.

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I ran across the band Emilie Autumn.

It’s some pretty interesting and unique sounding things. Their stage theatrics fit them in with the Dresden Dolls crew (and I’m pretty sure they have played/toured together some), but if you like the Dresden Dolls this is a little bit less ‘heavy’ and more electronic sounding (somewhat in the Postal Service way, but not so contrived sounding). Most of the lyrics are fairly dark and brooding, but it’s some really good stuff.

I’ve just listened to a few songs on Youtube, but I’m going to get one of their CDs soon I believe.

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Every day that I was at Berklee College of Music, I was a party to or at least overhead a discussion on ‘where the music industry is going’. Basically it was a lot of students that knew they were dropping upwards of $120K on school, and shit scared that there would be no jobs for them afterwards. It really got old after a while.

Aftering being out of Berklee for a while, listening and observing the world around me, I have figured out where the music industry is going. What you’re about to read isn’t anything earth moving, because honestly it just makes sense.

First of all, it is very important to separate the “Music Industry” from “Music”. 99% of people who play, write and make music in their lives never get anywhere near being able to live off their music, or even recoup on their costs from playing music. Yet they persist. The same is true for poets. We all know that you can’t be a respected poet until you are pennyless and dead. If everything that resembled a money-making venture from music went away tomorrow, there would still be music. I am convinced that if the world was about to end or the human race die off some of the last sounds that we would make would still be music. And yet, after us there will still be music in nature. Music will not stop due to downloading, copyright isses, the RIAA, industry change or nuclear war.

But that still doesn’t answer the question of, “Where is the music industry going?”. The audio recordings will become free, or rather it will be optional to purchase the music. But wait! How are the “record companies” going to survive? Well, the record companies (that are smart) will start tying the record contracts recoupables (and profitability) into tour support contracts. They have done this with a handful of artists already (I think Robbie Williams had such a contract). Universal Music has the Universal Tours division with their own tour support. Virgin Music has a new site that is heavily focused on touring and festivals.

So will records be recorded? Why will they be recorded? If there’s no money to be made from them, what is the point? I am a heavy poster to the professional recording forum Gearslutz and this is one thing that really worries a lot of engineers. Budgets have shrunk and the artists are able to record a great deal at home studios. That’s a totally separate issue, but still the fear is that music will be ‘free’ so that the people to make the albums won’t be needed either. The “Record Companies” (let’s call them Music Companies from now on, as records  aren’t where they will make money) will just chalk it up to a promotional expense for the tour.  They spent $200,000 on radio spots, $250,000 on print ads for the tour, and $125,000 for recording the album that will push the tour. It becomes another fixed expense for the tour. The record companies will take a huge cut of the tour (whereas right now they get nothing for the most part) and money will be made.

What about bands that can’t tour? Some simply amazing albums could not be done live. Well honestly, they will just have to be smart and find other ways to make money. Unexpected revenue sources like Ringtones, or licensing to films will have to be how the money is made. When recordings first came out some musicians feared that they would no longer be needed since not as much live music would be needed (this fear still persists today on Broadway).

You should think of music as “content” on your blog. The content is what brings people in. You give it away. The content isn’t how you make money (if you’re monetizing your blog). Think of it as a subscription basis vs ancillary incomes and alternative monetization.

The “major” labels have already undergone consolidation to a huge degree, but there will be more M&A ahead still. Touring companies will be merged in, arenas will be purchased, etc. There is still huge money to be made in music licensing and ringtones (publishing companies are doing great). Merchandise is also very hot as always. Musical instrument companies are posting some good profits, and places like Guitar Center are posting massive profits. There is money to be made! You just have to be smart about it. I for one am not worried.

As a short recap: Records as we know them will be free (or optionally free) and the Music Companies will support them still, because they will chalk them up to an advertising/promotional cost for the tour.  Music will continue. It might be harder to make money at times, but so is life.

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Between my time at Berklee, guitar stores, and various studios (and working with Taylor Barefoot) I got to play some freaking cool guitars in my short time (ok… 15 years) as a guitarist.

Here’s a few highlights of ones that I’ve had the pleasure to have played, and a little bit about them. If I say a year of the instrument, then that’s the actual year. No reissues unless mentioned.

• 1968 Fender Telecaster- Taylor has one that is a custom color green, with a factory Bigsby on it. It’s got to be one of my favorite guitars ever. He always hated me playing it, because it was a guitar he always liked to play and the acidity of my hands makes strings disappear in a day no matter what I do.
• Pre WWII Martin- I wish I knew what model it was, but I was too young at the time to have really ‘gotten’ the Martin numbering scheme. I was having a guitar lesson with John Firesheets back in the day and it was a nice day so we were having it outside on some wooden gardening beams at the garden center next to the music store. This woman that John knew, Tammy I think, came over and talked to us. She worked at the garden center, and said she had her guitar with her and wanted to show us. She brings it over, and hands it to me, and I start playing it while she’s talking. It ends up that it was some pre-WWII Martin that her father or some family member had bought and that recently people had offered her upwards of $45,000 for it. All of a sudden I froze. I had never in my life held anything of such monetary value, and I was like, “Take it… I can’t hold this”. I was terrified that I’d break it on the next strum.
• Les Paul 59′ Historic RI, and a fake one: Taylor was on a Les Paul kick. He bought two 59′ LP Historics (not the Murphy one though). He also picked up a metal body one with a Rosewood neck from some other company (which was freaking cool, but showed fingerprints like nothing else). Now we didn’t know that one of the LPs was fake. As far as we knew we had two real LPs and a really killer metal body copy from another company. But something was wrong/weird. We were wondering one night how close the guitars sounded to each other, and thought that maybe it was just the pickups being the difference. One of the RI’s had Burstbuckers and one had Antiquities. But the Metal copy also had Burstbuckers. We sat down and blind compared the guitars with our backs turned to each other… trying to guess which was which. Oddly enough (I think we even swapped the pickups at one point to test) the metal body clone, and one of the LPs sounded FAR closer (like nearly exactly the same) to each other than the two LPs did to each other. We couldn’t figure it out. We took it as, “Well, I guess that shows that variation in wood matters for a lot”, even after we swapped around the pickups. Years later, for whatever reason he placed a call to Gibson to ask about something on the guitar that was suspect. They said, “That’s not our serial number”. It ended up that upon really close inspection that some tiny tiny details of the guitar weren’t right either. It was a fake. A damn good fake and it played decently, but it’s neck wasn’t ever quite perfect and it wouldn’t stay in tune the same. We couldn’t pinpoint what at first, but our ears did. It does show that you can actually hear the difference between the real thing and a fake.
• 1964 Firebird V Yet another Taylor purchase. Yes, I was able to live vicariously through living in the trail of his guitar purchases. Sure saved me money on guitars for years, but left me with a taste for the best. This guitar was a beast. He was on a Firebird kick for a bit, and had a III, V and VII. This was an awesome guitar. It was huge and had sustain in unreal ways. It really did remind me of driving a massive big-block engine car. It was loud, angry, a bit difficult to handle, but it did feel so good.
• Froggy Bottom Acoustics- This was a mistake on my part. I had played Taylors, Martins, Breedloves, etc before. Taylor made a suggestion to try out a Froggy Bottom, as he had gotten to play some of Will Ackerman’s during the recording of one of his CDs. So when I was in NYC a few years ago I thought, “What the hell”. I went into one of the stores in NYC that had them (can’t remember which, but it might have been Mannys?) God, these are nice acoustics. They range from around 6-15K or so, and they don’t make many a year. There’s more rare acoustics out there (actually a guy in Greensboro makes less than a dozen a year which are becoming hot quickly) but these are really really nice. I often wonder why the same care isn’t put into making guitars as is put into making cellos and violins. Froggy Bottom does just that. Well worth it. Now I’m spoiled on wanting them, but all I have are my crap acoustics. Oh well, some day.
• 1956 Les Paul Junior- That’s right. Not a reissue. I went to go visit friends of the family in Portland early in ‘07 and it ends up that they had two “closet gems” that a grandfather had left them one of them being this and another being a 40’s Gibson jazzbox (can’t remember which one… ES-175?). They were in perfect condition, down to having the original paperwork and tags in the case. It felt almost wrong to play them, but I’m convinced that instruments must be played. Are they worth the excessive amounts that people want for them? Ok, maybe not quite… but there is something a bit special about a guitar that’s my father’s age.
• 1963 Gibson ES330TDC- I am still pissed at Taylor for selling this one. I loved this guitar. It was one of the few 330s I’ve played that didn’t feedback out of control when put in front of a moderately gained amp. It had a neck repair, which killed it’s “collectors value” and it had a Bigsby put on it. I loved it. One day I came in the studio and he had sold it and bought another guitar or two. I almost killed him. I wanted to buy that guitar from him, but for whatever reason another guitar caught his eye and he had to flip it.

Interesting Amps:

• Vox AC30HW- I simply love these amps. I’ve tried to buy one a few times, but when I had the money I got a Minimoog Voyager instead.
• Germino Masonette and Rockgrinder- These were super early in Greg’s building days. I think they were SN #7 and 11 or something like that. Had to use a hot-plate to not kill yourself (and now he’s building even higher wattage amps) with the sound, but they were rocking amps.
• And as for two that I want but haven’t been able to play (but won’t be able to afford for a long time) would be a Divided by 13 amp, and an original Trainwreck (good luck finding that!).

And a really concise list of other neat ones, without descriptions:

• Too many 1985-1996 PRS guitars of all types
• 1958 strat neck with 196x body.
• 1963 Gibson SG
• Handful of other 58/59 LP Historic/Murphy reissues
• Tried every vintage Fender Mustang I see, don’t like em
• 1964 Fender Jaguar
• Various 60’s and 70’s strats and teles
•  1896 Mandolin
• 68′ Fender Jazz Bass
• One of Tony Levin’s 70’s Musicman basses
• An ARP 2500, many ARP 2600s
• A Moog Modular 55
• 1968 Gibson ES335 (hated that guitar)
• and more than I can even remember.

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