I love teh interweb.

Way Out Junk is a great source for all things weird and wooly. Blasts from the past and the like. But, today the writer and director of Hawaiian Punch: Sonic Adventure "Boxed In" happened to come upon the upload of his work through TV Squad's recent article (it's how I found them as well) and commented on it.
Just one more reason the internet is really really great...

A standing O for Evil Dead the Musical

I read too many blogs. I am full on pop culture entertainment dude now. I wish I could say that I am wasting my time. But, the other day, I was reading homercat at http://homercat.blogspot.com/. Now you gotta understand, homercat is responsible for instilling in me a newfound love of The Osmonds and his poker game mix tape was brilliant and had me and my mother in law !!! dancing to "strokin'" in the kitchen.
So, when Homercat hipped me to the new show, "Evil Dead: The Musical!" I was intrigued. I grabbed the tunes he uploaded and promptly told some friends who would be interested and filed it under Try to remember this when the show comes to town one in the overloaded memory cache that is my brain.
For the first time since I started doing commercials for A&W they changed the location of our shoot. We are always based out of Vancouver and then drive to whatever restaurant we are shooting at. But this time it's different. They are going to show a little of my character's homelife. And for that we need a nice town. Well, not for that, but for the fairy tale depiction of the bed time story I am reading my daughter in the spot.
For that we need Toronto!
I flew in from LAX, great flight, made easier by the episode of Dr. Who my friend John at Last Visible Dog wanted me to watch. It's called Blink and it's terrific. And, when I landed they asked if I would mind coming straight to the studio for wardrobe. No problem. If I wardrobe on Wednesday and shoot on Friday I get the entire Wednesday night and Thursday all day to do whatever I wanted.
Wednesday was spent picking up scalped tickets to the Dodgers/Blue Jays game at Rogers Center. Not a bad deal. Right Field. Good visibility. Showed up at the top of the second inning. When I sat down it was 1-0 Jays. I ate my dog looked up and five minutes later it was 4-0 Jays. Then Frank Thomas hit a grand slam. 8-0 in the second. Two innings later the Jays hit back to back homers. It was a great game.
And the hotel was only 5 minutes away by foot.
Today was something even more serendipitous and special. See I wanted to go to a restaurant for lunch to work on my lines for the shoot. I called down to the Concierge and she scoped out some places where I would also have wi-fi. And, of course, being a concierge at a 4 star hotel, she sent me to the most expensive place in the neighborhood. Had I remembered that concierges (conciergi?) always do that I would have requested something more to my liking, a bistro or lunchy coffee shop. But, no, I walked out the door, made a right and, damn if at the end of the block, not 100 yards away was The Diesel Theater. The theater where the Toronto created Evil Dead: The Musical is playing. With the original ASH!!!
Tickets were definitely available and even cheaper in the front row, the Splatter Zone! Oh, yes, I bought em. Oh, yes, I was excited.
So, after a light dinner I headed over to the theater and sat my ass down in the very front and stared at the oversized book of the necronomicon that waits on the stage, looking menacingly.
Then the lights went down and the curtain went up.
I'm not gonna review the whole show. The cast was exceptional. The blood and mayhem is a freaking gas. There are lots of sight gags, broad comic acting and a ton of meta humor. When the woman arrives from her flight and complains that the movie was Spiderman ("who directed that?") I groaned. When the sister, the first killed and trapped in the cellar, keeps popping up with pun after pun after pun I alternated between guffaw and yawn. It was like a bunch of college kids decided to write a musical. But, you know what? That's fine. Because, before I knew it, the first act was over.
I got recognized in the lobby, not to my face, but as I walked away I heard them mumbling about A&W. And I bought a hat and the cd. Because by now I was completely caught up in the mayhem and joy and, to be honest, I was humming the tunes. (Haven't done THAT in a while...a long while.)
What can I say? If you get a chance to see this show, I highly recommend it. It's not Avenue Q. Or Little Shop of Horros (the original off b'dway show which I saw at the Orpheum in 1982 NOT the broadway production which I saw with liz 2 years ago and was...eh. It's more like Hairspray. fun. big. Ambitious. And a blast.
Go.

Snapshot: Los Angeles

In the alley in Santa Monica behind The Easton Gym.

Indie Rock? Classic Rock!

It seems like anybody whos anybody in the blog-o-sphere knows about the Hold Steady. And yet, when I am talking music with my real live friends they have no idea who I'm talking about. It almost feels like The Hold Steady is the world's worst kept secret. Admittedly they're name sounds like a 60's garage band, but, in truth, The Hold Steady is pure old, good time classic rock of the highest order. If they were around in the 70's, without a doubt they would be compared to Springsteen and the E Street Band and labeled "corporate rock".
Journey, Springsteen, Boston and The Hold Steady. And yet the IndieKids wouldn't be caught dead listening to, let alone, admitting they enjoy any of that crap. Unless they were being retro and ironic.
So, for your listening and viewing pleasure I present my favorite video of the year. It's part concept, part performance and slightly meta.

The Hold Steady. "Stuck Between Stations" From the album, "Boys and Girls in America."

Death of the Music Model

the record industry is crumbling. (http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/15137581/the_record_industrys_decline/1). Leakers are being attacked and revolting. (http://thoushallnotleak.blogspot.com/)
And I'm not sure I have anything to add to the debate. Except this. Maybe it's a good thing.



As a musician with a band I have often been looked at with a skewed brow by my peers. How could I possibly put my band's songs up for download on my personal site? (http://allenlulu.com/Throttle_Back_Sparky.html) What about the lost revenue? (um....almost none) What about supporting other bands, blah blah...
I learned somehting very quickly being in Throttle back. The only way....wait, one of the only ways to make money in the music business is to tour. Tour and sell t-shirts. And sell our cds at shows. Oh. And tour. tour tour tour.
And get your song on the radio. But, pushing 40 with a daughter in the hospital and now another one and a mortgage, this was not possible. I'm not 22. I don't want to live in a van and fuck barflies (well...)
But, is there a way to make a dollar as a band? Forget making a living. Just ekeing out a little dinner cash? Unless you sell a song to an advertiser or get placed in some movies or tv shows, I really don't know.

But I also don't know how bad I feel about it.

I mean, I feel bad, but then again I don't. Let me explain.
The cost to make a CD. It's negligable. Let's say we paid good money for our producer. (One of the better rock prods in LA, btw). let's SAY we paid him....oh, I dunno, $1000 a song. That's a good rate. Doesn't take all that long to record and mix one song. So, $12000 for the mixing and the recording? Then let's SAY we paid for the artwork (the one that was licensed to us, for free, by the creators of The Pro comic book). I don't know, I know a couple of good artists....okay, I will commission Jana Christy to do our cover. (we decide to go Tegan and Sara Indie Pop for our next release, I guess). I think I can get her to do something nice for a grand. And then we press the CDs. We're only at $13000 for the album. (that cost us less than $1000, by the by).
The cost to us to press em was about $1 a pop with a thousand minimum. $1000. I am hard pressed to believe that the record companies pay anything more than twice the cost of CD manufacturing. I don't think reproduction can possibly cost them more than 25 cents per. And i'm probably over by half.
What are they going to press, 100,000? So, $25000. Plus the hard outlay? $40000 for the whole kit and caboodle not including shipping? What is that worth in retail dollars? at 15.99 about 1.6 million in retail sales. the performers get about a buck per sale and the store gets, let's say, $5. So, $10 of profit goes to the record company. A $960,000 profit on 100k sold.

As Queen once said "It's a rip off" (Flick of the Wrist, Sheer Heart Attack album, 1974)

Now, the $10 model that itunes offers is a weird little conundrum because, well, albums cost $9.99 in 1982. And the dollar was worth a lot LOT more back then. So, what does a record company do? They can scream inflation all they want, the bottom line is, people don't want to pay more than about a buck a song. Not in 1982, 1962, or 2007.
But you gotta market this shit, right? you gotta get people to know about it, to buy it. You gotta grease some hands, put it on the coffee racks, shove it down some TRLers throats. The price can't keep up with the times, but it doesn't need to because the cost to produce the product is smaller.

So, I don't feel bad for the record companies. Do I want them to crumble? Not really. I just want the model changed.
I put our album up on Soulseek and offered it over and over again. After a few months I noticed that there were more than a few people that had it but didn't get it from me. It had become just a little bit viral. Not enough to buy me a swimming pool, but enough to validate my work.

For a while I was going on and on about how MP3s changed one very vital aspect of the record company model: the reissue. We all HAD to replace our vinyl with CDs when that became the new delivery system for music. But the computer allows us to just rip em, so there's no need to get a new copy of Born to Run if you got it 20 years ago when it was issued. That's a big chunk of change the labels couldn't count on anymore.

And then there's the conundrum of p2p. People SAY that if they download something and like it, then they will buy it. But, that's just not true. Who wants to pay for the whore a week after they fucked her? "Oh, you know what? I liked having sex with you so much last month, that I keep dreaming about it and decided to pay your for it." Not gonna happen.

The bloggers are really the true revolution. I subscribe to about 30. If something catches my attention, I listen to the tune. If I like it, and I like what the writer has written (the review) I buy it. Well, I used to.
But, since I got Peel. (www.getpeel.com) I don't HAVE to read the post. I just stream the song and then if I like it, I download it and if I like it again (Mika, The Cat Empire, The Fratellis) I buy it. Trouble is, when I wanted The Fratellis, because someone had blogged it and I heard it, I couldn't find it because it hadn't been issued stateside yet. I was fortunate enough to go to Amoeba and pick it up as an import. And it was my soundtrack for the fall. But, what to do about the Hold Steady? So much of the album had been blogged that I found myself already owning it. (It's now in my BMG queue) How do I spend $18 bucks on something I already have? And, if I go to Amoeba, damn straight if I don't mak a beeline for the used section first. It's always more packed than any other part of the store.

What's the point of this?

Nothing. Except that we are on the cusp of a very big transition in the music world. And when it all shakes out, we may just have a new model. Don't be afraid. We'll all be fine. We might be listening to unsigned bands but, when all is said and done, writers write, actors act and musicians...um....muse. they have to. We will all benefit. It'll just be a little different.

So it goes.

Meme Tagged....a change of direction

I have been tagged. John from Last Visible Dog did it. And has now changed the face of this blog. Possible forever.
I had eschewed blogging until Liz was hospitalized and then started the first of many. Unfortunately for the blogosphere, all of them were finite, had an end point, etc.
So, here I am, I came up with a snarky and fun idea, invited a bunch of bloggers to be a part of it....only only some came....
The most important of them is Samurai Frog of Electronic Cerebrectomy, easily one of my five favorite reads (and the first thing I check with coffee in the AM)

As I said, John tagged me and he did it to this blog which might just be the starting point of a new frontier.

Here we go:

The rules for this little meme are:

1. Go to www.popculturemadness.com
2. Pick the year you turned 18
3. Get yourself nostalgic over the songs of the year
4. Write something about how the song affected you
5. Pass it on to 5 more friends

I was a snarky, self righteous music lover back in those days. It HAD to be underground, featured in Trouser Press and hard to find (imports were a bonus) back in those days for me to call it my own. Thank god those days are over as I now can enjoy The Hold Steady back to back with The Osmonds and tossed with a generous helping of Queen and feel no guilt.

Some thoughts on the songs of the year:

#58
Stray Cat Strut.
The Stray Cats
This was the album I should have bought. Peter and I had gone to the record store that was three doors down frommy parents' shop in Bar Harbor. We had just been paid and, for some reason, decided NOT to spend the day eating pizza and playing Defender with a roll of quarters that could last all day. The owner of the shop was a pasty red haired dude who always looked pissed off that he had to be in Bar Harbor selling Air Supply to the unknowing and, yet, he wouldn't engage two 17 year olds in conversation. Prick.
Anyway, the poster on the wall compared Elvis Costello's new release Imperial Bedroom to Gershwin. I was a sucker for good advertising. After the first murky murmurings of Beyond Belief I was hooked. ANd I would listen to that side every day for the rest of the summer.
But, Peter bought The Stray Cats. And he bopped to it all summer long.
And in school that fall it was everywhere. It seemed to be the soundtrack for Senior Year. Almost. And by the time I got to college the next year it was ubiquitous and maligned. The roots rock/rockabilly revival was over. Costello would be crowned a genius but if you wanted to get the joint jumping, all you had to do was put on Setzer and the boys.
It's that way 25 years later.

#66.
Radio Free Europe.
R.E.M.
My introduction to REM was 1,000,000 off the Chronic Town Cd. Actually, I never had the CD since it was impossible to find in the snooty town I lived in and I would forget that I wanted it when I discovered the import of Dirk Wears White Sox in the hip store in Livingston New Jersey.
1,000,000 and U2's I Will Follow were the mainstays of college radio back then and by the time I got to college the indie rock scene had really begun to make some noise.
I am actually surprised to see that this even charted that year.Go figure.
A good friend of mine was an REM fanatic. He swore by Murmur, which this song is on. Declared it a classic. And it is. Although I find it difficult to go back and listen to it in its entirety. The production feels dated, but it's still a fine record.
This is also the very first CD I bought. I was hit with a kidney stone in 1987, our senior year and Richard got me in a cab and took me to hospital. As a thank you, I bought him this CD. Even though he didn't have a player. I just figured if he was ever going to get one (ha! ever.....I'm funny) I would like this to be the first cd in his collection. It was. But I think I stole it.

Finally
#2
Come on Eileen
Dexy's Midnight Runners.
This song was big. Huge. Couldn't escape it. I remember sitting on the windowsill of my high school band rehearsal room, waiting for word from one of the colleges I applied to, Syracuse, talkin with Jeff Z. Jeff was terrified of the CH CH Ch Ah AH AH sounds from Friday the 13th and if you whispered it near him, he freaked out. I mean, like he jumped out of his skin. Jeff was also the first person I knew whom I was sure was gay even though he had "girlfriends". I was right. Go Gaydar!
We both sat on the sill, talking about the future and then this song came on. All I remember is how we were sure that it was one of the dirtiest songs we had ever heard.
"Come on Eileen, Oh, I swear, at this moment you mean everything. When you wear that dress, my thoughts I confess, verge on dirty"??? The guy is trying to get into Eileen's pants, right? He's begging her, isn't he? This is the dirtiest top 10 song since Donna Summer's Love to Love you Baby, isn't it?
Well, that was our little secret. Like the moment when Doug Feiger says "when she's sitting on your face" in the (chartbuster) Good Girls Don't. Our parents weren't paying attention back then. And, while the girls we fell in love with wore leg warmers and spandex, there was just one little chickadee who pranced around in overalls and, through her androgyny and sexuality, brought two friends, just beginning to define their sexuality, to a nexus point and a point of convergence. Thanks, Dexy!

I could go on and on and on about that list. You know, pound for pound, 1983 wasn't all bad.

Now, I must tag.

I choose Homercat, Kristen, Splotchy, Song, by Toad, and Dave Willie. IF they are still reading this blog. And IF they are interested. And if you know what's good for you, you would read these blogs, too.