The initial motivation happened a few years ago when I got tired of talking and hearing about how bad the music business was. Although it is, and was true, I thought I would try to come up with some solutions as opposed of stating the problem over and over. I would say it has definitely evolved over time but the core functionality was always to syndicate promotional music in a more meaningful way.

Did you try to approach creating the site more from the perspective of a label-owner, or music fan – or both? How does it differ?

TheNewRecord's Bill Armstrong

Both. I wanted an easier way to keep up with the labels, friends and bands I was into. As a label owner I wanted to get our music above the static of open platforms. It really wasn’t different as it had to be useful and fun on both ends.

There’s a lot of action in the digital music space happening again right now, how closely do you follow the developments at other startups, and does it effect your expectations or how you are going to roll out TNR?

I check everything out. Ones I think are good or relevant to me I follow closely, but if its not something I would actually use I won’t spend much time with it. For me it has to be useful as well as fun. As far as my own expectations? “Difficult takes a day, Impossible takes a week” – JayZ

So much is made these days in press about the process of licensing music from record labels for new digital services. While mostly it’s in reference to major labels, how did you find the process of signing up indie labels for TNR to be?

Truly inspiring. 98% of the labels I showed TheNewRecord to understood it right away and really went out of their way to show support for the site and more importantly the communal aspect of it. The labels on TheNewRecord are in my opinion some of the best and most forward thinking Labels in Independent music today – so it was a nice reaffirmation about the project when talking to them. Epitaph, Sub Pop, Anti, Century Media, Daptone, Brushfire, Relapse, Paper and Plastic… and there are 30 more I didnt mention – if you can’t discover anything new and exciting from those labels I hate to be the one to tell you…. you have really bad taste in music, please seek help or always wear earphones. I also had the luxury of having been friends with a lot of these folks over the years through SideOneDummy and already had a really good working relationship with them. It has also been really exciting and inspiring to meet new labels whom I have respected over the years but hadn’t done any projects with too.

It seems like a key aspect to TNR is that it isn’t about sheer volume of music, but rather curated and filtered delivery of music to fans – which is something that is missing from a lot of digital services. Is that accurate to say?

I think that’s fair, I approached this with a less is more attitude. 98% of the music that is out there sucks pretty bad, I think we can all agree on that. I really don’t want to spend too much time sorting through the average to find the gems if I don’t have too. We are really only interested in the 2% that doesn’t suck and so far we are off to a great start.

Daly with Joe Chicarelli and Aslyn

On a sunny morning in Burbank, CA, Mike Daly sits down with RM 64 nitwit Rodel Delfin over coffee and donuts, as Daly shares his triumphs and tribulations playing as a member of critically-acclaimed group Whiskeytown to transitioning his career as a go-to producer/songwriter.

RM64: Thanks for inviting us to your studio. It’s a cool spot. The way we like to start these things is to ask you about your background and how you got started in the biz.

MD: When I was a kid I played piano, but then I quit because my older sister was also taking piano lessons. She is 2 years older than me and she was progressing faster than I was. And I couldn’t stand to be outdone by my sister, so I quit and I started playing guitar. I got my revenge by playing “smoke on the water” about 500 million times. Her bedroom was next to mine, so needless to say I don’t think she ever needs to hear that song again.

I do remember very vividly going to Barnes and Noble and buying a Beatles record. I was listening to “Come Together “and I just remember it blew my mind. I was either in the 4th or 5th grade at the time and not really understanding it, but remember thinking my parents probably wouldn’t want me listening to it for some reason. But I remember thinking “wow this is really cool.”

In high school, I played guitar in a lot of really bad bands, while studying classical guitar. And then I went to Berklee to study music, which was great since it gave me time to sort of figure things out musically. And that’s where I focused on writing songs and thought about the recording of albums and how the pieces fit together more than just focusing on the guitar.

At Berkelee, Julian Coryell (jazz guitarist/singer/songwriter and son of Jazz great Larry Coryell) lived three doors down from me and I was like “ok I’m never going to play as good as that guy,” so I realized I had to figure out my own thing. On my quest to figure things out after a string of playing in bands, I landed with a group called Swales, who were on Bar-none Records. The band never got far and could barely afford Ramen noodles. After that I became a session musician in New York and I was playing with Edith Frost, who was an artist on Drag City Records, and Amy Rigby and a few other people around New York

RM64: How did playing in Whiskeytown come about?

MD: Well, the Swales had some considerable radio airplay in Ohio. Meanwhile, Whiskeytown’s management company, Jackknife was talking to a DJ at WOXY (Ohio radio station) and they mentioned that they were looking to add a member to the band. They wanted someone who can play guitar, organ, steel guitar and all this other stuff. And who wasn’t 50 years old, so the DJ told him, “You should call Mike Daly. His band just broke up, and he can play all these instruments.” Weird, huh? A radio DJ in Ohio hooked me up. I never saw that coming? So that’s how it all started.

Ironically, I got back from an Edith Frost tour and there was a message on my answering machine from a friend who was working at Universal Group Distribution, saying “Hey, I just got a promo for this band called Whiskeytown, this is so your thing, I’m going to send it to you.” I had seen a poster for the band while on tour in Grand Rapids, and I was like “Oh yeah, I’ve heard of them.” Then, I get another message from Whiskeytown’s management, saying they wanted to talk to me about joining this band. They send me the CD, I heard about 3 seconds of Ryan’s voice and I packed my bags for North Carolina.

RM64: The first few months with the band were somewhat tumultuous for you. What happened?

MD: When I joined, I went to North Carolina for a week to meet the band. At that point the group comprised of Ryan (Adams), Phil (Wandscher) Caitlin (Cary), Steven (Terry) and Chris (Laney). Ryan was in Austin with the band’s managers when I arrived and Caitlin was in Raleigh but we never met, so I was hanging out with Phil and some of the other guys. I think we played maybe twice during the week I was there and my “audition” consisted of fishing and drinking. I think at that point they just wanted to make sure that I could hang with them.

I met Ryan and Caitlin three hours before I played my first show at CMJ with them. We were opening for Cracker at the now defunct Tramps. Caitlin walked up to me and said “hey you live here, what’s that street I can buy all the cool shoes?” I told her I had no idea, she rolled her eyes and walked away, I love Caitlin and to this day I’m convinced she’s by far the coolest woman in America.

Then Ryan walks up to me and says “they say you’re real fuckin’ good,” and I said “thanks” and Ryan replies back with “alright then let’s get a drink.” So from there I was the new guy hired to make their live set sound like the record. I played B3, a little bit of steel and guitar.

At the end of the first tour we were playing in Kansas City, and Ryan and Phil had a lot of tension between them. I had only been in the band for about 10 weeks. They had a huge blow out mostly arguing about things I knew nothing about, and the band basically imploded. The next morning Ryan and Cailtin went off to play the last three shows of the tour by themselves and me and the rest of the band got in the RV and drove back to North Carolina then I drove back to New York.

RM64: What happened then?

MD: After that, I returned to New York. I spent the weekend at my girlfriend’s apartment and caught up on some sleep and thought about what a great band it could have been. On Monday, I get a call from the band’s management at 8am and they told me that the next tour is starting in twelve days in Virginia. I said “What are you talking about? The band is over! It blew up!” and they’re like “Oh no, it’s going to keep going” and I was just astounded. On the next tour the line-up changed and the band was Ryan, Caitlin , me and Eric “Skillett” Gilmore, who was the original drummer in the band, Ed from Ohio and Jenny from Grand National. From that moment on it was a revolving cast, but Ryan, Caitlin and I stayed untill the end. At one point, we sold t-shirts that said “I was in Whiskyetown and all I got was this t-shirt”.

RM64: That’s funny. At this point, the band is about to work on their third LP. How were you involved with that album?

MD: Ryan and I always shared a room on tour and were always writing songs. Between tours and the starting of the Pneumonia LP, he and I would spend time in New York demoing tons of songs. When we started recording, the first two weeks in the studio were just Ryan, Ethan Johns and I. Then came Caitlin, Trina Shoemaker and Jen Condos, then later Brad Rice and James Iha (from Smashing Pumpkins).

RM64: What was the writing process like for that album?

MD: One of the things I loved about Whiskeytown was that I was writing a lot. And Ryan and Caitlin were writing a lot. And we wrote a lot together. Obviously, Ryan was the main guy in the band but all of us wrote on each others songs. I think we recorded something like 38 songs for the record.

It’s funny, when we were making Pneumonia, I’d go to the studio early in the morning before everyone else to work out my overdubs for the tracks we cut the night before. It never crossed my mind that being a record producer was a viable job for me. For one thing I didn’t understand what a record producer did, until I made that record. I learned a lot from Ethan and Trina on that project, and when we originally mixed it with Scott Lit. I was there every moment he’d be able to tolerate my thirst for knowledge. One morning, our assistant engineer, Sue Kapa, of Brooklyn Recordings (studio) and I were working on some over-dubs. And I said “Maybe I could be a record producer,” she was so sweet, she said “Why not, you’re ideas make sense and you seem like a responsible person”

RM64: So that was the beginning of being more behind the scenes.

MD: It was something that made sense to me. With Whiskeytown, I was considered the multi-instrumentalist. And when I wasn’t on tour, people would hire me for studio sessions and tell me to bring all my instruments and I’d spend all day playing and arranging. And I finally said to myself “if I was the producer, I could just hire myself to play all the parts.” And I was always co-writing with people on their records as well as playing. I was getting a lot of these gigs. After a while, people started asking me to produce their records. Honestly, I think I got hired as a producer to cut costs. Industry folks and bands were thinking if we hire this guy to produce then we don’t have to hire any additional musicians.

RM64: Whiskeytown is considered one of the most influential bands in the alt-country genre, with Adams later becoming highly-praised by critics and fans for his solo work. Did you ever think the band and its members would become so influential?

MD: I always believed that the band, even with all its faults, had something special, and was something bigger than the sum of its parts. I knew that a special combination of people will make great results. I told Ryan “at some point you’re going make great solo records, it’s inevitable.” And he has. He’s one of the great songwriters of this generation. Also, the tension in the band was positive. Everyone was trying to outdo each other. It was the kind of tension that’s constructive rather than destructive. Everyone was trying to outdo themselves and each other musically. Come up with the best song, the coolest guitar part, on and on. It took it to that next level and when there is that kind of fuel the bar just gets continually raised. Unfortunately, we were on Outpost at that time. The music group was in the midst of being bought by Seagrams. No one knew how things were going to play out with our label and we got sidelined for a year and a half. That’s what ultimately killed the band and it was time for each of us to go onto other things. Ryan was staring his solo career as was Caitlin and I was writing and producing.

RM64: What was your first project as a producer?

MD: After Whiskeytown, I wanted to take a break from touring and I started producing records for a lot of artists without deals. But the first thing I did for a major label was Steven Kellogg’s EP on Universal. It was called “One Night in Brooklyn” and we actually recorded it at Brooklyn Recordings. Then I did a few things for Fenway Records, owned by Mark Kates, who now manages MGMT. I continued with more independent projects and then more new acts on major labels. It’s been a trippy thing for me because I also do so much writing, I’m always balancing the two, when I do a record it’s a chunk of time and that’s what your life is about, which is fine, I love it, but then I crave writing and when I’m writing I long for a record to just dive head first into. Fortunately for me I usually write with the artists I produce either as a straight up co-write or as a sort of “relief-pitcher” to get the songs over the finish line.

RM64: Working with a young artist or band, is there a pattern that you see with their writing that you have to work or tweak on?

MD: When I start working with a band, a lot of what we do is re-working a song to get it to the best that it can be. What I noticed about the creative process for bands is that they get a song to a certain point, and then they don’t know where to go with it, they get frustrated and then they’re over it. They need that outside musical perspective to come in and say “see the way this is? this isn’t functioning well because of this, and this isn’t doing this.” They also need someone they musically trust to show them when you do “X” it’s amazing, you do that better than anyone else but when you do “Y” it’s just not as “special.” I have a strict rule when I write with bands, and that is, songs have to sound like that band, never like me. I know what I sound like and I want the songs to sound like the best version of the band.

RM64: Explain your co-writing process.

MD: With every act I work with, and whatever the genre, I want to hear the song with just vocal and piano or acoustic guitar. If a song is great and moves you emotionally in that form, then you’ve got something. If not, then no additional keyboard line is going to save it. If it is all good there, then the recording process will be fun! But when the song isn’t right, you’re doomed to frustration, and 99% of the time that’s why you can’t get the bass sound right, or the drum part in the bridge etc, etc, etc.. Those are symptoms of a sick song.

I have a diagram that I show to bands. I call it the “Inverted Pyramid of Songs.” At the top, is the song it’s self, right below that is the vocal and way, way, way down at the bottom is everything else. This is what I try to impress upon bands. Music fans remember the song first and the vocals second and usually not much else.

RM64: And before entering the studio, what’s your thought process with recording?

MD: Well, I ask myself, what does this band do great? I often think of a band like a meteor. And inside this meteor, there’s a diamond. You just have to dig inside and find that diamond. Then focus on the diamond and forget the rest. That’s what I always go with, what makes this band special? What can this band do that no one else can do? Then it starts with the songs, that’s always step one.

RM64: If you’re working on a major label project, do you keep radio in mind?

MD: It depends on the band, but as a responsible record maker, you have to say “ok these songs are going to make it for radio and these songs will probably be good for licensing.” It’s important to be engaging with the label and the artist. I want everyone to know what’s going on and how we see this playing out. At times, there is a divisiveness that can be wedged between the artist and their label. I see the record producer’s job as being the buffer, mediator and hostage negotiator between the two. I’m committed to keeping the artist creative, and fostering an environment that satisfies their needs and freedom to create, and at the same time finding a way to give a label what it needs in order to create opportunities for the artist.

I don’t believe in going off on crazy creative tangents (i.e. 9-minute spoken word fuzz guitar microtonal freak-outs) on someone else’s dime, unless that’s what the band is. Conversely, if you’re a label, I don’t think it’s wise to take a punk band from Sioux Falls and put a side-chain-synth sound to the group and decide that they’re going to be a male Lady Gaga after signing them, thinking they were going to be the next Black Flag. It will never work, your band now hates you and you can’t fool the public anyway, so why try.

RM64: What are you currently working on?

MD: I am doing a little vocal work arranging/playing on the Cristina Perri record. I have a week or two weeks before I start the Alberta Cross record, Breanne Duren (keyboardist for Owl City) and I are writing for her next set of recordings. I’m getting together with an amazing New Zealand artist, Gin Wigmore. I’m heading to Australia soon to work on the Cold Chisel reunion record.

RM64: You’re a busy guy. Any final words for our readers?

MD: Just this: it’s the song first, the singer second and everything else way way way below that. As much as it breaks my multi-instrumental heart, I’ve found it to be true. People still want and need great songs regardless of the genre. It’s what people want and that’s what people connect to.

RM64: Good closing remark.

MD: Thanks.

After a decade long tenure helping to build The Syndicate into one of the premier music marketing and promotion companies in the business, Dave “The Rev” Ciancio broke off in 2008 to form a new management company.  Along with fellow manager and Canadian, Adam Mott, the two formed Yeah! Management with their sights set on taking their roster of hard rock and metal artists to a new level.  We recently sat down with the pair to discuss the new company and to figure out what the Rev’s fascination with burgers is…

RM 64: Let’s start with your backgrounds and how you got into the business of rock.

REV: I grew up in Detroit and like all parents, mine hated music and my friends, so I naturally gravitated towards hip-hop and metal because that’s what they hated the most. The day of my high school graduation, my best friend came over and handed me an envelope and said ‘here’s your graduation present. You gotta open it right now.’ I’m wearing a suit…my family had flown in and I’m like, ‘dude I’m not opening this… My mom wants us to have a thing where we open presents, take pictures and say thank you’s.’ He’s like no, you have to open it right now.’ I tear it open and it was 3 tickets to see Clash of The Titans tour with Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax and Alice in Chains…ALL my favorite bands. I was like YEAH!!! But then looked and realized, like in an 80’s movie moment with the close up of the ticket and the eyes pop out of the head, that the show started in an hour. Anthrax was on first and they were my favorite band and if we didn’t leave right then we were going to miss the opening of “Persistence of Time.”

But I knew my mom would freak out. Again, it was just like a movie. I was like, ‘ok, pull the car around the house.’ I run to my bedroom, put on my Anthrax “Not Man” t-shirt, my ripped up jean shorts, my unlaced high tops and I go running out of my back porch. I say, ‘thanks everyone for coming to see the graduation…I’m going to go see Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax, bye.’ I’m running across the backyard I jump over the fence, Duke Boy dive into the car and head to the concert. We get there, we pull up, running down to our seats right dead center, row 23, Anthrax comes on…the “Persistence of Time” and I’m like YEAH!!!

As I’m sitting there head banging and I see these people walking around the stage with laminates on that are handling guitars, checking guest-list or bringing bottles of water, doing things like that, and I said ‘that’s what I fuckin’ want to do with my life.’ I want to be the guy who helps Anthrax rock out at the Pine Knob music theatre in Detroit. A whole bunch of shit happened after that and now I’m sitting in your living room but that was the moment.

AM: I don’t know how I can top that one. I played in a band and did that route… I’m from Toronto, Canada and I started playing guitar at 13, 14 and the next thing you know I went to school one day and I was like, ‘I’m gonna be a rock star.’ When I was I 18 went to another school called Fanshawe College, which was known for producers. Our teacher was Jack Richardson, who worked with the Guess Who, Alice Cooper and on many other records. After that my band got signed to EMI and I continued playing in bands until I was 29 years old.

The Rev (L) & partner in crime Adam Mott (R)

RM 64: What was the name of the band?

AM: Supergarage. We were big in Canada and we did okay in the UK, but we couldn’t get arrested in the states.

RM 64: What were your first industry gigs?

AM: Well I played in that band for a while and the next thing you know some guy calls and ask if I want to be a manager. I was like, ‘are you kidding me? Alright.’ So I did. I started being a manager, started a record company and then met this guy. Where did we meet?

REV: Of all the great places in America, Warped Tour in Camden, New Jersey.

AM: A friend introduced us, and the next thing you know, we start talking and he was like, ‘do you want to move to the states?’ I said yes! So I packed my bags and sold my company and moved to the states and it’s been all downhill since then (laughs).

REV: Mine is a really long story so I’m going to skip most of it… But basically I was in college and couldn’t go home for the summer so I had to stay at school and needed a summer gig. I was moving furniture and one of the guys that moved furniture worked at the college radio station and one day the program director asked if my friend would cover for the heavy metal host who couldn’t be there. My friend didn’t like heavy metal so he came in and asked me, ‘do you want to host the heavy metal show?’ So I went in one day and he was pulling records and asked, ‘You wanna pick some songs?’ I said, ‘yeah I want to pick some songs.’ Hey says ‘do you want to go on air? Yeah, I want to go on air!’ So I did the break and the emergency phone rang in the back and a voice asks ‘who is this?’ ‘My name is Dave’ I say. He asks if I liked metal, and I said, ‘I fuckin’ love metal.’ Then he asked if I wanted to be on the radio, and they end up hiring me to host the metal show the next week. I become the program director of the radio station, start talking to all the promo reps at all the promo companies and record labels and then I graduated college and got a phone call (phone rings in office) and there it is (laughter). I got the phone call, ‘hey do you want to move to New York and be in the music business?’
I was at WDBM, 89 FM at Michigan State University for a year and half. From there I moved to NJ where I worked in radio promotions with Anya Feldman

RM 64: Moving on to the beginning of The Syndicate; was it a slow steady build or did something spark and set things off quickly?

REV: It was definitely a spark. It was 1997 and I was doing college radio promo and some retail promo for AIM Strategies. Paul Yeskel, who owned the company, had started out doing promo but because his business got so big, he had to run the company and not do promo anymore. Eventually he walked in one day and said ‘I love you guys I love this company, but I miss doing promo. I don’t like running a company.’ It was October 17th and he told us December 17th was going to be the last day the place was going to exist. The five of us who were doing 80-85% of the business looked at each other and said, ‘we can do this, we just need to figure out the administration stuff’. And literally December 17th 1997 was the last day at AIM and on January 5th in 1998 we opened The Syndicate, it was almost overnight.

We got a real small personal loan from some family members, and then we were sitting in a warehouse space in Wehawken, NJ with no heat and no lights in the first week of January. All we had was little terminal stations and a phone. I remember sitting there in a wooly cap and gloves calling stations thinking ‘I can’t feel my hands.’ The Syndicate started out of the necessity of finding a job and it was one of those things where we saw a hole in the income stream and we just took it. We went 6 months and not one of us took a paycheck. I was DJ’ing at a nightclub until 2AM and pocketing the cash, but I would go back to work in the morning always excited about doing metal radio promotion.

RM 64: Who were the five original principles?

REV: Tracey Zucatti, Marc Meltzer, Bernie Mueller, Jon Landman and myself. A couple years later we expanded with The Street Syndicate and Chris Elles came to join us from CMJ.

RM 64: After the first 6 months, where did things go from there?

REV: Things were going really well. In a job like that you aren’t creating a product, but providing a service, so since the service was good people kept hiring us. But after about a year and a half of calling radio, I was bored. You’re in charge of a project for 6-8 weeks, and then Iron Maiden doesn’t care about you anymore, but I still cared about Iron Maiden. So I wanted to get into management. At the time I was trying to help a band called Shadows Fall get a deal because they were friends of mine. And when they got a record deal I was just kind of helping or consulting I guess.

It was April 1st 2000, I remember the date exactly, and I’m at a really horrible bar in Queens with the band. They were playing this awful little club on their first national album tour ever, and they look at me and ask ‘we hear you’re thinking about getting into management’ and I said ‘yep, just waiting to find the right band’ and they said ‘so what are you waiting for?’ ‘You trust me to manage your career?’ I asked. They said ‘we don’t trust anybody but we know where you live so give it a shot!’ And so I started managing Shadows Fall and that sort of took off and from there we picked up Thursday, God Forbid and literally within a year I was doing management full time. Within two years there was a three person staff doing management. And it just really became something.

RM 64: What brought about the formation of Yeah! Management?

REV: Ten years after forming The Syndicate, the management division and the marketing division were going in two different directions. I walked into my partners one day and said ‘I love you guys, this place is amazing, but I need to take this show on the road, because my goals are not matching yours and vice versa.’ Two weeks later I called Adam (Mott) on a Sunday night and asked him what he was doing. He said ‘I’m watching football in my pajamas.’ I asked him to come meet me at a bar in midtown. I told him the deal that night and that I wanted him to come with me. The next morning we told Jackie and that afternoon I told my partners. Two weeks later we were gone.

AM: It was crazy. That night we met I figured I’m either fired or we’re moving the company. I had an idea that it might be happening, and when he told me I said, ‘let’s do it.’ We had nothing to lose right then, and figured this could bring things to the next level. It’s been a year and so far so good.

REV: I was literally sitting in a meeting with Artist Arena talking about Thursday’s fan club and ticketing, and Mark Weiss who owns that company and is a good friend of mine says, ‘I really wish I had a management company in my office.’ I closed the door and told him what I was thinking and in two weeks the deal was done. It was totally un-predicated; we saw the opportunity, liked it and stepped through the door.

Now we are a part of Artist Arena, which is great because they’ve really created three great new revenue streams for artists. Bands can sell their own tickets to fans, VIP packages to fans and they’re doing fan clubs. It’s all about enhancing the fan experience that was born from Mark Weiss’ own fandom. It’s a great place to be a part of. Other than bands like KISS or Iron Maiden, stuff like this didn’t exist to most bands, and now it’s available to every band that’s touring or every band that’s putting out records. The company is growing so much especially since we’ve been there. Last year Mark Weiss came up to me and asked if we liked it there and I said ‘I love it here, we’re doing great, we’re in the city and the company’s awesome.’ He told me that the parent company was exploding and he needed some help, so in November Mark made me a VP of Business Development for Artist Arena. We then made Adam a part owner of Yeah! Management. So now he’s on the ground floor running the management business and I’m doing sales for Artist Arena as well as dealing with the management stuff. It was just a crazy year of shit happening.

RM 64: Who are the artists Yeah Mgmt currently represents?

AM: We manage Shadows Fall, Dave’s been working with them for almost 12 years and they’re incredible. We have the Cancer Bats from Toronto who have been around for about 5 years – they have a new record coming out in April. Poison the Well who we’ve worked with for about 2 or 3 years now, and they just finished a couple world tours. They just tour non-stop. We also have Mutiny Within who just signed to Roadrunner Records and has a record coming out in February. A band called Upon A Burning Body who signed to Sumarian Records and has a new record out in March. There is Solitary Sum based out of Toronto as well, one of the members was in The End who was signed to Relapse Records. And our newest signing is a comedian Big Jay Oakerson.

REV: I spent about five years chasing around standup comedians because I really wanted to get into the comedy business. It’s a really really weird business, not that music isn’t’, but literally it’s run by like three dudes with grey hair who don’t even know what MySpace is. I was on top of things way early like Dane Cook, Zach Galifianakis, Bill Burr, the list goes on, and they were all like ‘cool we love your passion, but we want to go the traditional route because it works.’ So after five years I gave up on it, and one day I got a phone call asking if I knew Big Jay Oakerson, and I said ‘oh yeah I love his stuff.’ So he was looking for new management, someone who was more of a modern manager and who does music because he’s a metal head… Jay plays a character on that show Z Rock. He’s a really funny guy and we met and decided to give it a shot. Three weeks later we confirmed him to headline the Rockstar Mayhem festival and he’s also the Jagermeister tour with KoRn. He called me up after and said ‘you’re definitely onboard!’

RM 64: So tell us a little about what’s going on with Artist Arena?

REV: Our parent company is Artist Arena. The easiest way to describe what they do is, presale ticketing, VIP / Enhanced ticketing and operate fan clubs. So if you’re a band going out on tour, you call us and we sell a certain amount of your tickets for you directly to your fans. Our fees are cheaper than Ticketmaster, so you can sell them at lower prices to your fans and you can also sell them exclusively. Rather than a public on-sale you can do it just for your fan club or just on your website, super serving your fans. We do VIP packages, so maybe 20 tickets a show those fans get a meet and greet with the band or early entry and a tee shirt; it sort of changes from band to band. The whole premise behind Artist Arena is really enhancing the fan experience, about making it better. It’s a great company, we represent everyone from Lynard Skynard to Kid Rock to Mudvayne to Killswitch Engage to Cobra Starship to Nickleback to Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez, and the list goes on and on. If you’re selling tickets to your fans, we can help make you more money by giving fans a better experience.

AM: I think a lot of managers are starting to figure out that it’s an actual way to make revenue for their artist while providing a better experience for your fans.

REV: It’s fun for me coming from the management side, because I understand what you can ask a band to do and what they’re not willing to do. And I’m also used to coming from the position of a manager calling another manager asking for tours, favors, etc. where now I’m calling managers and saying ‘hey, can I make you some money? Can I make your bands touring business better?’ People are excited to get those calls.

RM 64: Is there a particular kind of artist these services work better or worse for?

REV: You can do it with any artist, but it works best when the artist participates. It has to be a band that’s excited about what they do and making the experience of their fans better. ‘Yes we’ll do the meet and greet, yes we’ll do the video blogs, yes we’ll do exclusive merchandise.’ They’re giving back to the fans that helped them get there.

RM 64: We always like to ask people to give us their take on the state of music and what they think about where the business is headed. What’s yours?

REV: America is very commodity based. Make as many as you can, sell as many as you can for as cheap as possible and keep all the money. I think the country has hit the apex of that economy. I think it’s the same with the music industry. You could put out a song to radio ten years ago and just print money. It doesn’t work like that anymore, so you have to be the best at what you do or you have to have any interesting twist. It can’t just be a great guitarist and bass player and they write great songs. Okay now what. There has to be something other than I wrote this song and put it on MySpace. I think the direction the music business is going is weeding out the difference between that and those that are interesting personalities – and people like what an artist means to define their life. In the anonymity that is America, I think people are starting to actually develop personalities. I know that’s easy for us to say in Los Angeles or New York City, but when you go to the middle of the country it’s not just one big white MacDonald’s anymore. People are starting to learn that you have to be something and mean something. They’re looking for artists that reflect their personality and you have to mean something to somebody and that’s the future. Not just being an anonymous artist.

RM 64: Many people know (and now even more) that you are somewhat of a hamburger connoisseur. What are your top two favorite burger joints in L.A.?

REV: I would have to give you three. The Apple Pan is my favorite, you can’t argue with the old school. It’s outlasted all of us, which is the same reason I’d still see RATT in concert. Then there’s Father’s Office, which is like voting Republican – here is the burger we want you to have the way we want you to have it. And third is The Counter that is like the opposite, the extreme left – you can have it any way you want, however you want it. It’s like voting with both parties.

RM 64: Have you found a favorite burger in all of America?

REV: Until December of 2009 I wouldn’t have had an answer for you, and then something changed my life. Righteous Urban Barbeque (RUB) at 23rd and 7th in Manhattan has a secret burger menu that they only serve on Monday nights from 6-9pm and you have to know and ask for it. I got invited in for a tasting and they made us two of the different burgers and it is the best burger I’ve ever had, hands down. No stiff competition. Go to Burgerconquest.com you can read all about it.

RM 64: We’re definitely trying it. Thanks for chatting with us today.

REV: Anytime.

The Viper Room is one of the most recognizable and famous nightclubs in Tinseltown. Actor Johnny Depp was among one of the owners of the club when it opened, and the venue quickly became a celebrity hangout. It received worldwide attention when actor River Phoenix died outside the club on Halloween night in 1993. Throughout the years, the venue has seen many transitions in L.A.’s live music scene, while a host of the biggest names in music got their start on the Viper Room stage. And for many years it has been an industry hotspot to check out new talent.

While the music business has changed dramatically in recent years, the club has transitioned as well with new faces and a changing atmosphere, particularly when restaurateur Harry Morton purchased the venue in 2008. An effort to return the venue to its prominence and influence during the club’s heyday seems underway. Current Viper Room players Nathan Levinson and Sarah Berkowitz, who handle marketing and promotion, stopped by RM 64 headquarters to share what’s in the works.

RM64: Tell us what it is you do at The Viper Room and how you came to be there?

NL: I came to The Viper Room last February. Before that I was a senior ad executive at the alternative news weekly in Salt Lake for 3 years…Salt Lake City Weekly is just like the L.A. Weekly here.

I needed to get out of Salt Lake and came here in pursuit of a screenwriting dream but needed a job. I saw an opportunity for a marketing position at the Viper Room and started doing a bunch of research, for instance how Harry Morton had purchased the company the year prior.

I had a lot of experience in nightlife marketing because I ran all the club stuff in Salt Lake for the news weekly and did a lot of club relations on the advertising side as well. I’m pretty savvy in the digital world in my own efforts and they were looking for someone to launch a heavy digital campaign. In terms of online or digital at the time, there wasn’t much going on here. Sarah was completely overworked and that was part of what she was trying to launch, but the manpower just wasn’t there. Around the same time, they were changing out a lot of the staff, particularly to try and have a friendlier atmosphere. There was a presence starting to be built there, but it wasn’t what it could be and that’s when I came in and started working closely with Sarah.

SB: I started working at the Viper Room as an intern and was hired on when I graduated. I started as an all around assistant to special events, talent buyers, operations managers and basically did a little bit of everything. When Nate came onboard, the duties were able to shift and he focused more heavily on the marketing and I was able to move more into event coordination.

NL: About a month after I had been at the Viper setting up the digital landscape, Casey our national talent buyer came on. He is extremely digitally savvy as well so it was a great match. He brought in Chelsea our local buyer a month later, which completed our team.

Looking to the future: Viper Room's Sarah & Nathan

RM64: Where does the Viper Room see itself going as a venue? World-class club and smaller destination for larger bands wanting an intimate show, or is it a neighborhood bar that happens to have a history?

NL: I would say it’s both. It’s clearly a destination club because of the brand and the name, so there’s always the tourist element – those who want to go there to say they’ve been there. Internally we care about the quality and experience of the music, and also the building of the community vibe. We want not only music regulars to love it, but also the locals who want to come hangout at a great scene, and it helps that we’re blessed with an amazing staff. A lot of them are in bands or television shows, and it’s really a talented and dynamic group of people all with wonderful personalities.

SB: At the same time, the music quality is absolutely our focus.

RM64: Tell us about Viper Room’s Friends and Family list that you guys recently started.

SB: We have live bands every night of the week. There is a lot of industry that come out to see bands every night. Instead of constant guest list requests, we wanted to open it up. Provided that it’s not a benefit show, an outside promoted night or it’s sold out, you can come in free plus one. It’s free entry and drink specials.

NL: The Friends and Family list was a big turning point for us in order to get the industry back in the room and saying good things.

RM64: Is that list now closed?

SB: For the moment it is.

NL: We did a good job with saturating the industry really quickly.

RM64: What are some of the things you’re doing in terms of being more artists friendly? It seems like a place more people want to play now.

SB: For starters our production staff is amazing. Our production manager wants every band to have the best time and gives them everything they need. He has instilled that in the rest of the production staff too. So everyone works really hard and we constantly get emails back saying, ‘we had a great time. Your entire staff is amazing.’ That’s the first part, because bands talk to other bands and if they have a great experience at a venue, they’ll tell other bands and the other bands are going to want to play. The other part is the marketing.

RM64: Take us through the steps once a show is booked. What are you doing differently to promote shows and help your artists do the same?

NL: Once I receive the confirmation of a booking, I immediately I send out a marketing advance. Our marketing advance essentially provides as many tools as possible to the artist themselves to help promote themselves and the show. It also helps them align their marketing efforts to our specific digital network. Beyond that, the tools we provide can be applied way beyond the Viper Room to shows they play in the future, I guess you could say it’s an open source mentality. In addition, we provide all the artists with a media list that is broken up into local influencers like music bloggers, major media, etc.

An important part of all this is tying the artist’s efforts into our own digital push that we have built up to be very strong and far reaching at this point. We try to create conversation about the Viper Room and our artists at all times. Conversation nowadays is how virally we spread information very fast and effectively. It’s word of mouth on steroids these days. So if you can stir conversation, it’s very influential.

RM64: Are there any bands locally that you can point to in the last 6 months that really learned how to promote and draw fans well?

NL: Bands like Purple Melon and Saint Motel are two absolute models for what bands should be doing these days. A big factor in that is they’re producing video content. As a band online you can’t just be talking all the time, you have to provide some kind of content. Not only are they making sure links and info are out there, but they’re also putting out promo videos with performance footage and the dates, the club and a list of all the other artists on the lineup. Then they give me a tool like that, and I give it to every other band for that night. Everyone is promoting it with this same great content. It works.

RM64: It seems like you guys are very friendly with the other clubs on the Sunset Strip, particularly the Roxy.

NL: Definitely, and even places like the Comedy Store too. We’ve formed alliances with other businesses that are working just as hard online and a lot of things fell into place. It also speaks to the multiple types of community building efforts that we’re making. We have a community with the artists, our locals, industry, tastemakers and also surrounding businesses. The strip is an amazing place and has a lot to offer.

RM64: Do you think the recent closure of some of Hollywood’s well-known music venues has had any effect on the Viper?

NL: I don’t think it’s going to hurt, but I don’t think it’s going to help us either. They had their own scenes and I’m not sure there’s that much crossover other than geographically. Situations like that are unfortunate; you never want to see a venue in the community close.

RM64: During your time at the Viper Room, what are some of the most significant changes you’ve seen in the L.A.’s live music scene, for good or bad?

NL: When I came to LA, I was taken aback by the divisive nature of the local music scene – the whole eastside vs. westside thing. When I first got here it was very much eastside domination in terms of popularity for live music, but I think it’s transitioning back to the westside as well. And I think a lot of that has to do with the social networking and community building online that we, and places like the Roxy have been doing.

SB: The economy has obviously been a huge factor in the live music scene. It’s hard for someone who goes out to see music multiple times a week, to pay a cover, parking, drinks, etc. We’re combating that by creating a community of locals and industry.

NL: You have to have economic sensitive offers, but without hurting your bottom line. Part of it goes back to building loyalty. People are going to continue going out, but just less often. So you want to make sure you have one of the places they visit.

RM64: Thanks for chatting with us. Next show, drinks are on the house?

SB: Absolutely.

Missy at the Artistic License mgmt office

When industry veteran Missy Worth finally agreed to a Q&A session with us, we knew we were in store for some great industry stories. Today she manages prolific punk rockers Rise Against along with indie stalwart Spill Canvas, but she has also guided the early development of artists such as Jeff Buckley, Alice In Chains and OneRepublic, among others. Her career spans a very colorful and exciting time in the business. A resume that includes running labels, concert promotion and artist management, while working with some of the industry’s most powerful and iconic figures —Irving Azoff, Michael Lippman, Donnie Ienner and Sandy Gallin to name a few. Pay close attention. She shares a lot of insight and perspective. You might learn a thing or two. We certainly did.

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RM64: What was your first job in the music business?

MW: I worked at (entertainment law firm) Mitchell Silberberg & Knupp, through a temp agency. I was 17.

RM64: Did you have aspirations to be in the music business at that time?

MW: I did. I was sitting in history class in Northridge and I was ‘what am I doing here?’ I only care about music and movies, anything to take me out of my life. I didn’t want to make movies because I couldn’t compete with my dad, he was just too good at it. I went home and said ‘I’m not going to school anymore.’ My parents said if I wasn’t going to go to school then I had to get a job. I called Apple Temp Agency on Sunset and they got me in as a temp in the file room at MS&K.

RM64: So what happened next?

MW: I meet attorneys Abe Summer, Milt Olin and Peter Lopez who were working in the music division. I suggested that they get a scout because they wanted new developing acts. Then I brought them The Motels and Milt became the band’s lawyer. Interestingly enough it also led to my next job. Michael Lippman wanted to manage The Motels because he had just left Arista Records and wanted a young rock band. So Milt introduced me to Michael and I left MS&K and went to work for Michael’s management company. I told him I was 18 and he didn’t get the band, but he did get me.

RM64: So you lied?

MW: Yes. (laughs) I was still 17.

RM64: What was your role with Michael?

MW: Well, first I was his receptionist. Then I became the production assistant for Ron Nevison and Harry Maslin helping with producer duties, like booking the studios , watching the budgets, getting food for them, very glamorous. I also worked with Eric Carmen and Melissa Manchester as kind of their day to day assistant. I worked for Michael for a long time, he taught me the business in a way I’m very lucky to have learned. He taught the big picture, record company, publishing, imaging and touring. If you knew that you could manage, if you didn’t, you had to learn it all. Nothing has been more valuable to me.

RM64: So you became a day-to-day manager?

MW: You didn’t call it that then. None of those fancy terms came about. You were paid no money. You didn’t get a TV. You got phones thrown at you and you helped throw their parties. There weren’t any ‘day-to-day’ managers or anything like that. You were their assistant. And you did whatever you were told to do. There was no entitlement, that started in the 90’s. And you were really happy to do it. I remember I got Eric Carmen the wrong blow dryer and it was a disaster. Literally, he kicked me out of the apartment. He was screaming ‘how am I going to do my hair now!’ I don’t know if you know anything about Eric, but his hair was perfect…

RM64: Quaffed hair?

MW: Yes, but it was perfect and it took him like an hour to do and I got him the wrong blow dryer. I almost got fired for that!

Eric Carmen with his perfect quaff

RM64: That’s funny. Back to management…

MW: Yes in today’s terms you would call it being a day-to-day manager. Back then you were just the assistant and you were really happy to be learning. But you could read all the contracts and deal memos that came in. And all the phones had mute buttons. It was awesome because you were on the phone taking notes for your boss, but you were really learning an immense amount. You were hearing how they manipulated the whole situation and how they negotiated and how it all worked by hearing both sides of it. Now I think people don’t even sit in the offices with their assistants. And they certainly aren’t allowed to make phone calls for you anymore or any of that stuff, but that’s how I learned everything. I sat on the couch across from Michael and I was on the phone all day.

RM64: That’s so true. That’s how you really learn the business.

MW: Yeah, and you did letters, you dictated. There was no e-mail.

RM64: Okay, so 5+ years with Michael, what happened after that?

MW: I went to work for Sandy Gallin.

RM64: Another crazy manager…

MW: I have worked for Irving Azoff, Donnie Ienner, Sandy Gallin, Michael Lippman and two equally as crazy people in the television world. I only worked for crazy people. Super crazy! (laughs) I mean… not that I was sane.

So I went to work for Sandy. He was looking for an assistant and I needed a job, I think Michael had fired me, probably for throwing a phone at him or something.

RM64: Okay (Laughs)

MW: I think Michael Goldstone helped me get the job with Sandy because he was right above on another floor at Chrysalis Music with Jeff Aldridge. So I worked for Sandy and Ray Katz as their assistant. It was like a weird conglomerate of actors and very little music. However, they did have Dolly Parton who was very big for me. I sort of worked a little bit with everybody, helping wherever I could.

RM64: How long did that gig last?

MW: Maybe 3 years, then I went to work at William Morris in the television department as an assistant. I was an assistant for everyone for literally the first 12 years of my career, which is how you did it then, especially as a female. I worked at both ICM and William Morrison television. I actually became a television agent at ICM as a matter of fact, and that’s when I placed Johnny Depp in his first movie. John Harrington introduced me to Johnny. We went to go see the show…(pause) You’re totally confused!

RM64: No, we’re just really enjoying this story.

MW: John Harrington brought Johnny Depp to LA to play and help him get signed. The show was at the Music Machine, and was great. So I brought him to ICM and the person I worked with thought he was perfect for Nightmare on Elm Street, he became an ICM client after that.

After that run, I started working at Universal Amphitheatre as Jim Guerinot’s assistant where I felt I shouldn’t be, but where he thought I should (laughs). We became best friends, but fought like cats & dogs about anything. I did parking and tickets and worked with Jim. You had to call me to get those parking spots behind the backstage, at the time there was only 15 so you had to be nice to me, and I got to know everyone in town that way. When Jim left, Irving Azoff, who was the head of MCA Records and Concerts at the time, and Larry Vallon, who booked the Universal Amphitheatre, needed to fill the role. Jim had taught me how to make a deal, and how to make the band and that manager feel like nothing else mattered but their wishes for the show. He’s the one that made the first Apple sponsorship deal at the Amphitheatre. It was brilliant! We gave them like 20 tickets a show, and we got Macs galore, for free. It was really innovative to go to Apple at the time. He left a lot of good teachings and a legacy.

So the first show I booked on my own was Keith Richards and the New Barbarians. I stayed there for 15 years and it was the best job I ever had to this day.

We took the seats out of the pit to get rock bands there; we called it Party in the Pit. We got to do a lot of interesting things, like when Lou Reed played, we put a New York city scene in the background, or we went to the haunted house on the Universal lot for a B-52’s Halloween show. Everyone wanted to play the Greek at the time, and nobody wanted to play the Amphitheatre. We really tried hard to make it a great rock venue and I think we succeeded in changing people’s perception of the venue. We did the first KROQ Acoustic Christmas there, and it’s still playing there.

RM64: What would you say was the most important thing you took away in those 15 years at the Amphitheatre that helped advance your career?

MW: I learned how to market when I was there. At that time a promoter had to market. You weren’t handed a show with 3 acts and a marketing plan and a radio station. Back then, I would get on the phone with the artist’s manager and agent and made a marketing plan that worked for the market, not for the country. It was not corporate, and it wasn’t cookie cutter. You got to be creative, inspired and really think.

RM64: Let’s get back to the timeline. What was the next transition after the Amphitheatre?

MW: Well Warrant was playing at the Amphitheatre. The show was not doing well, so we papered it and did what we did. Donnie Ienner and Michelle Anthony were at the show. Michelle and I were friends and she introduced me to Donnie. He said ‘there are no kids at this show.’ And I said ‘yeah I know.’ I didn’t know who Donnie was at the time. I was a promoter and record companies didn’t mean anything to us. They didn’t help. ‘Well my band deserves more’ he says. Then he goes to the sound board and says ‘this room sounds like shit, it’s not a rock room,’ and I said, ‘would you like to mix?’ Then he says ‘I like you kid.’ Two days later Michelle called me and said ‘we really want to talk to you about hiring you.’

So they brought me in to do tour development for both Sony labels (Epic & Columbia). My job was to teach the artist development and distribution people how to help with touring and how to make sure our artists were packaged together. The agents didn’t like this, but we got a lot of bands really good tours and developed a lot of artists this way. And the agents came around of course!

Then another label head offered me to run their west coast operations for them and I wanted to learn more than touring, but Donnie wanted me to stay and said, ‘why don’t you work at Columbia and learn the label?’ He made me Sr VP of the West Coast, not that that meant a whole lot at the time, there was like 6 of us, but we had a lot of good bands like Alice and Chains, Suede and Jeff Buckley. Our job was basically to get the albums to 200,000 and then Donnie and the East Coast would take over.

RM64: Sounds like they gave you a lot of freedom to develop artists.

MW: I don’t know if I thought about it when Donnie offered me the job, but it made sense. I had already developed bands as a promoter so when I went to Columbia I learned the label, how radio and distribution interacted, and naturally incorporated what I had done previously. I also never stopped to think, ‘I can’t do this,’ I just did it.

RM64: What was the most important thing you learned at Sony?

MW: Sony was Harvard for me; it was like going to college. I hate to say it, but I think I learned more of what not to do while I was there. I wouldn’t be as effective of a manager if I hadn’t worked there. You learn how managers worked the company well or not well. And I really cared about breaking those acts, it was important that they didn’t fail because of us.

RM64: From what we recall, after Sony, you went to work with Irving again, right?

MW: He called me and asked if I wanted to come to work at Giant Records. I had already worked for him so I knew what I was getting into. Working at an Irving label is like working for a Rick Rubin label. They’re both brilliant at what they do and they don’t run it like a typical label. They care about the artist and the promises given to them.

Once in, I started putting together a new staff, and Berko (current RM 64 knucklehead) was my first hire (laughs). We signed some great bands and some not so great bands. A small label at that time, it was creative, inspiring, difficult and political. Our first year we did great, but it was really hard after that. I learned what it’s like to have an entire staff of people working for you, and how difficult it is to run a group of people, in any job. To look at people from the perspective of how they work together rather than just how smart a person is was really different.

RM64: And there was a somewhat dramatic end to your time there, right?

MW: I was there for 3 ½ years. My dad got sick towards the end of that time, and with Irving you know when the end is near. I took some time off and decided I never wanted to work for anyone again. What I didn’t know is what I wanted to do.

RM64: So then what happened?

MW: I didn’t do anything for at least 6 months. Then I decided to manage. What happened was Stabbing Westward needed a manager, and I had signed them to Columbia and helped them get managers throughout their career, so I was working with them. Fast forward a couple years later, I met Beno (Velvet Hammer) and we were talking at a party. He said he had office space and so we tried out partnering on some projects. Around the same time a couple different people told me that I should manage the band Rise Against. I went to see a show and knew this was the band that would inspire me to care –luckily they liked me and I got hired. At the time Rise was just off of Fat Wreck Chords and had signed to Dreamworks Records. When Dreamworks folded into Interscope we were assigned to Geffen, where Ron Handler had signed the band. We had an amazing team with Paul Kremen, Paul Orescan, Brenda Romano and we wouldn’t be where we are without these people and more. It was a group of people emotionally invested in this artist. Everyone including the band was fighting for the same purpose and the right purpose. It proves what team work does for a band.

Rise Against

RM64: But it was not an overnight success…

MW: It was a gradual process all along. When the first record was out, we gave radio everything we had and told them they could play anything whenever. Regardless of the single or cycle, and when they did play it, people reacted. There has never been that big ‘ah ha’ moment. There have been little moments along the way that were awesome and humbling, like the first time they heard their song on Q101 in Chicago which is their hometown, or the first time I heard the song on KROQ, or moments like 5 nights at the Troubadour, selling out Red Rocks, The Forum or 3 nights at The Congress in Chicago. The band has never taken anything for granted and are completely humble and appreciative of what they get and they work their asses’ off.

RM64: You said recently that you have the itch to take on a baby band to develop. Meanwhile, we see the same managers circling around the same established acts when they’re open for management. We rarely see established managers take on new developing talent. What makes you want to work with a new act when it’s such a difficult process?

MW: There is nothing like watching every step of the way in breaking a band. I’d like to make a million dollars from a band like My Chemical Romance (who recently went through a management derby) just like any other manager, and there’s something enticing about the money, but the artist I work with needs to inspire my soul. Music saved my life when I was a teenager, and I want to be able to do the same for other people. I haven’t been able to find that other band. When I saw Rise Against, I realized that I wanted that guy (frontman Tim McIlrath) speaking to the masses and I wanted to be a part of that. I want to find something that’s inspiring to me and therefore to other people and hopefully money follows.

RM64: What advice would you give to music executives who are making the transition out of record labels into a new role/endeavor in the current climate?

MW: Well the best I could say is, know what you do best. Paul Kremen is one of the smartest executives I’ve ever met and he took that and made a company out of it. He’s like a mini-record label for people who need it and want it. First people need to take time, step back, remove their ego, and then figure out what they do well and take that and run with it. Take what you know and turn that into a company.

RM64: Looking at the tea leaves, what do you think the role of a major label will be in the future?

MW: I don’t subscribe to the notion that majors aren’t your partners and are going away. I think they have to be willing to honestly try new marketing techniques that aren’t just about how their bottom line will benefit. I wouldn’t be averse to a true partnership 360 deal, where we aren’t just giving new pieces of income and they are taking the same money, but I need to know that they aren’t going to just be a bank. They need to bring opportunities and new ideas and follow through to the table along with the band and manager’s hard work. Radio is still the best way to get your song heard and it has the biggest voice and visibility. You need great songs and they need to be heard. Retail in whatever form it’s taking is still a major label game and I like having those partners for my bands – they are smart and I want to use that for my band’s best advantage. That’s my job, to put the ego’s aside and put the artist first.

RM64: What’s a scenario where you wouldn’t manage an artist and why?

MW: If I really believe there’s something there, I would take any band on whether they’re on an indie label, major or no label. But they have to have a lot of conviction. I’ve learned that a band has to have conviction and a viewpoint, if they don’t have that then no one knows what they are working towards. This all begins and ends with the band and their songs and their story and we all need to remember that.

RM64: Well said. Thanks for sitting down with us and sharing some great stories

RM 64 on deadline...

After Myspace Records’ Jason Reynolds stopped by the RM 64 offices for our interview with him, we uncovered an interesting tidbit left on tape during the post-interview banter. The off-the-record discussions and gossip from our interview sessions have been quite eye-opening. It makes for good industry fodder to post when our editorial staff is feeling lazy or in this case, are nursing a hangover. So we hope you enjoy a little inside story concerning the signing of a certain Australian rock act that went on to sell millions of records. We start with Mr. Reynolds and RM 64 poser-journalist Rodel Delfin reminiscing about their shenanigans and what started out as a bet.

RM64: Jason, a friend asked me the other day about Jet signing to Elektra Records several years ago. He had heard that you and I were somewhat involved with stirring that up. It was definitely a fierce bidding derby. I recall the band was starting to garner a lot of industry attention in Australia, where the band is from. I was the A&R Editor at Hits Magazine at the time, and you and I would talk about new music and bands coming across your scene. And I remember you handing me the Jet demo. How did you come across them and what was happening at the time?

JR: My friend David Vodicka, who was running Rubber Records, also ran a company called Media Arts Lawyers in Melbourne, Australia. Basically, he had found Jet and told me that I need to know about this band. It was one of those things, when I was listening to the demo –like ‘oh holy shit.’

RM64: It’s funny because I pulled the demo from my old archives, and it had “Are You Going to Be My Girl?” and “Cold Hard Bitch” along with four other tracks.

JR: Yeah, it was basically half of the album and actually all of the songs that ended up being singles. It was definitely one of those no-brainer situations.

RM64: So you had it. What was happening in Australia at the time?

JR: All of the majors in Australia had heard about it and approached it. And I know through a couple of those labels it had filtered out a little bit overseas. Then David had contacted me to talk to people over here. He and I had that kind of relationship where I would help him connect the dots with A&R people in the states. And that was it. Then you became my conduit because most of the A&R people weren’t taking my calls.

RM64: Haha, that’s funny. That’s when you sent me the demo.

JR: I want to say that the one person who I think was on to it earlier than anybody else was an A&R guy at Hollywood Records.

RM64: There was definitely a couple of people on it. Hollywood was on it early –to give them credit. And Leigh Lust at Elektra had known about the band early on. Leigh along with Josh Deutsche at the label eventually signed the band. But you passed it on to me and I played it, and thought… ‘shit man there are three singles on this demo!’ I was consulting for a number of major labels at the time and we sent the demo to a flurry of A&R folks. It kind of became our joke and we had a bet of how many A&R reps we can get to fly to Australia to see the band.

JR: These people were on a flight the next week too. I mean it was literally like, ‘holy shit the band is playing next Wednesday! I’ve gotta talk to my boss so I can get on that flight!’ I think I was the only one who didn’t get to fly there in fact.

RM64: I sent it to a few people and you sent it to a few and next thing you know it was circulating through the A&R community. I think at the end of the day there was something like 16 US label reps flying to Australia.

At that point it turned into a full-blown US bidding derby, a number of record companies were putting in big offers, and it ended up coming down to 3.

JR: It was Elektra, Capitol and Island. Capitol thought they had it, because of the Vines connection. The management for the Vines was also involved with Jet, they were co-managing.

RM64: And then the money kept going up and up. I remember Island decided to bring in their UK component to step-up their offer. At the time, of those 3 labels, Island was on fire and considered one of the hottest record companies happening. And Elektra was considered the dark horse.

JR: Capitol had done pretty well with the Vines on their first album, and at that point Elektra had nothing like that, and nothing significant in terms of alternative sales. The label’s strong side was in the Pop and R&B world, so Elektra wasn’t at the top of the signing list if you were an alternative rock band.

RM64: Surprisingly, the band ended up signing to Elektra Records.

JR: You have to respect their decision. They decided there’s nothing else on the label like their band, so they figured they would get great treatment since they didn’t have any competition. As goofy as it was at the time, I can’t say that they would have sold any fewer albums anywhere else. It was an interesting exercise too, because even beyond us, the people involved never thought that Elektra was where the band would end up. Capitol and Island thought they were the only two really in play.

RM64: The band ended up having a big platinum album and worldwide success.

JR: Yeah, and they still owe us plaques…

In our most enlightening Q&A to date, BigChampagne CEO Eric Garland shares his insight on the issues facing the music and technology business in the last 10 years. It’s a must read for industry insiders in the online and offline world. He recently stopped by RM 64 headquarters to sit down with office janitors Berko Pearce and Scott Sheldon where they also discussed the finer points of Joe Fleischer’s hair.

RM64: Can you give us a little background on yourself and how you got involved in the music & technology business?

EG: I’m a kid from Texas, most of the family is still there and I’m the one that got out. I take great pleasure in turning SXSW into like a three-week boondoggle and visit every distant relative and hang out on the lake. I played in bands unsuccessfully, knocked around Texas, then did the whole fraternity/sorority circuit for a while when I got out of school. I went to work as a management consultant and got the bug, being entrepreneurial, that is to say basically having a paycheck but not having a boss. So when I got really restless at that, I realized there was no less legitimate place to go, you’re already a consultant, so you can only go to unemployment. So I decided to start a company, what would become BigChampagne really. It was sort of set off like everything was in music and technology at that time, with the explosion and popularity of Napster. Napster happened and we thought there has to be an opportunity here for artists.

BC's Eric Garland, nice white teeth

RM64: Did you use Napster?

EG: Um, I had an occupational interest in Napster (smiles).

RM64: Strike that from the record.

EG: No, no, no, that’s actually a good story, the one part of my personal story that’s worth telling. I was helping out artist friends who had been helpful to me when I was trying to be an artist. One of my friends at that time, a great artist named Glen Phillips who had been the front man for Toad the Wet Sprocket, was starting his second career as an independent artist. I was sort of quasi-managing Glen, helping him a lot and I launched his first website. He wanted to do the whole e-commerce thing and sell his first solo record on his website, this is late ‘90s or early 2000’s. We were sitting around in the bar at Largo long after closing one night after he had done a little solo set, and he said, ‘What do you make of Napster?’ I said, ‘Just between you and me, I think it’s really cool. Does that offend you?’ And he said, ‘No! And that’s my problem.’ Everybody was so upset about Napster. Lars is going on about it, and Hillary Rosen is banging the drum and everybody’s threatening lawsuit. And he said, ‘As a guy who used to be in a band that people really loved, and as a guy who’s trying to draw some attention to what he’s doing now, I just wish I could let those people know that I’ve got a record and that I’m coming to town, or that I have a T-shirt that comes in lady’s sizes.’ You know, and his take was just so different. He was like, ‘I just think for most artists the first reaction should be that this is a community and it should be a tool set for me, and how do I exploit it to my advantage?’ And I was like, ‘that’s kinda cool.’

So I went and found this computer scientist buddy of mine and said, ‘what do you know about Napster? Tell me everything about Napster?’ Just by total chance he had met a group of other developers who had been working in this area of peer-mediated computing. He said, ‘Well, there are a lot of things we could do…’ And I said, ‘I’ve got this artist friend who really wants to find his fans on Napster and let them know what he’s doing now.’ He said, ‘let me think about that.’ Twenty-four hours later he tells me ‘I think I have something for you. I’ll have a prototype tonight at 7.’ Sure enough he showed me this amazing thing that he had very quickly thrown together. It was essentially a search engine that was collecting information about what people were searching for on Napster, what people were downloading and which artists people were adding to a playlist. Then we could segment that for purposes of marketing. So we did this little pilot with Glen Phillips where we approached Toad the Wet Sprocket fans and said, ‘hey, it’s Glen from Toad. I have a new record out and I’m giving away some mp3s, I have a tour calendar, and here it is.’ The conversion rate was unreal, it was getting like 20-25 percent conversions, we sold thousands of his independently released CDs off of glenphillips.com, a website that I was maintaining at that point out of my apartment in Fairfax. We just thought, ‘this is it. This is the future of the music industry.’ Little did we know that 10 years later that would almost be true. We were very eager and excited about what that first 6 months would hold, which was mostly pain and suffering.

RM64: So how did BigChampagne come into being?

EG: We did a few more of these experiments with artists after Glen Phillips. There was this sort of word of mouth thing in the artist community. Along the lines of, ‘these guys are doing this crazy stuff with Napster and online marketing.’ Then we started doing a lot of them. We worked with a whole bunch of L.A. bands, Bay Area bands and we got some press for that, and it was like, ‘hey these independent artists have a different attitude about Napster and they’re working with this technology start up.’ At that point there was still no name for it, you know, it wasn’t BigChampagne. It was just some guys.

Then I got a call from Jim Guerinot. And Jim said, ‘we get it, we think Napster is amazing.’ The Offspring wanted to put out their new record on Napster. That did not end up happening for reasons that had nothing to do with Guerinot or The Offspring, which I’m sure you know. But it started a really good conversation, and we did do some stuff to market and promote not just The Offspring, but a bunch of different bands of Jim’s. And through Jim we met the lawyer, of course. They always march the lawyer in, and that was Ken Hertz. He was effectively my co-founder, in that he was the one that looked at this little experiment of ours and said, ‘let’s turn this into a business, let’s build this. This could really be the path for the music industry with respect to Napster. This could be a better approach.’ And so it is, in a roundabout way, Kenny’s fault that I met Joe Fleischer.

RM64: Now at the time did you know of their (Ken & Joe) work with mp3.com?

EG: I was doing real-time research. I was Googling furiously. I guess this is before Google, so I was Yahooing to try to find out what I had fallen into. And yes, I was aware that they had worked together with varying degrees of success in the past.

RM64: Was this right after mp3.com?

EG: It was, it was virtually the same time. It’s when all these companies were falling through the door, were pouring into L.A., mostly from Northern California. And I will say this, completely unabashedly but also un-cynically, it could have gone so badly for us. This is the thing I think back on more often than anything else, you had a couple of smart geeks that had an idea and a little bit of technology. We basically showed up in Hollywood and said, ‘does anybody want to buy a watch?’

In hindsight, we could not have done better. We sort of fell into this little Largo community, where people loved music, were passionate about art and were all friends and invested in one another. That was great and really lucky. Then we caught the attention of slightly more powerful people in the business. During that time we sat down with everybody. And they were dazzled and wowed by the possibilities. It was cool to be knowledgeable and valuable to these people who were legendary. Who were we? We were somebody who knew something about Napster and that was a real currency, the elevator definitely got off on the top floor.

Kings of Pop: BC's Joe Fleischer (left) & Eric Garland (right)

RM64: Let’s go back to Joe Fleischer for a minute.

EG: He’s Joe Fleischer. We met a lot of guys who were similarly impressive and we didn’t know who Joe was, so I don’t think in any way it was a forgone conclusion that we would work with him. We presented the opportunity to a short list of individuals, but when we offered the opportunity to Joe, he leapt over the desk and gave me a huge embrace. I couldn’t get the words out fast enough for him, he was already saying yes.

RM64: Has BigChampagne’s ‘mission statement’ changed over the last 10 years? If so, how?

EG: When people ask us ‘why are you still here?’ – usually in that spirit of why haven’t you gone away, I think the truest answer to that is what you just said. We’re only here because we had a really strong stubborn vision for what we wanted to do in building the company, and despite being given plenty of reasons to change that ‘mission’ at points along the way, we never have.

In my first conversations with artists 10 years ago, the vision was somebody should really provide insight and connectivity to these new internet audiences. At the time we were looking at Napster, but we knew there would be many more. The one element of the original proposition that I think was really just thwarted by big-business’s response to Napster, was the two-way communication aspect. The idea was about connecting artists with fans in a push and pull relationship. Now most of what we do is passive measurement, collecting information and insight rather than the marketing piece. That’s because for so long the legal squabbles made it impossible to communicate with fans. Napster had to disable all their communication tools. Setting that aside, 10 years ago our idea was to provide insight, analysis and measurement in this space that companies like Nielsen have always provided offline. Somebody has to do that online and we should be that company. We’re still here and basically that’s still the mission.

RM64: When broadband is fast enough, will music be streamed instead of downloaded? And what does that mean for the future of P2P networks?

EG: Increasingly it already is. By far the fastest growing mode of enjoying music is net-connected online streaming. There are a lot of variations on that; looking at things like Spotify, which is now caching temporary downloads. I think Spotify in a way is a turning point because it’s such a damn good product. It is in that rarified iTunes state of just working really well, it’s so clean and word of mouth is going to be unbelievable because it’s really that good.

RM64: So if the practice of streaming music is increasing, does that mean downloading is decreasing?

EG: The expectation was that with the proliferation of broadband and with more and more music being available to you wherever you go, and for free, that proportionally people would just stream more and download less. And we are seeing that increase, but the curious thing, or what we didn’t expect is that there are two things happening right now in tandem. One is the volume of music people stream rather than download is growing dramatically, the other is the volume of music individuals are downloading is also growing dramatically. That sounds a little counterintuitive because you think those two practices might be competitive, but in fact I think the growth of both is being driven by similar forces. New technologies don’t just affect the quality of streaming media, they affect the quality of downloaded media. And it is simple now.

The example that springs to mind is with The Beatles. It is simple now to click once and download and permanently own an unauthorized, free, uncompressed copy of the entirety of The Beatles re-released re-mastered stereo catalogue. I think it clocks in at several gigs worth of data and it is probably easier to click once to acquire the complete work of The Beatles that way, than it is to purchase it. It’s certainly easier than purchasing all those CDs, feeding them into a drive and ripping them using iTunes. So what we’re seeing is people are clicking once and downloading vast stores of music, and the kicker is more and more of it they never even listen to. More and more evidence suggests that people are hoarding and streaming. Storage is so cheap now that people are just grabbing everything and creating local libraries that they might not even listen to. It just all speaks to the point that whether you call it streaming or downloading, music is becoming so commoditized, it’s becoming so cheap. I don’t mean cheap in terms of 99 cents vs. $15 dollar CD, I mean in our minds and estimation. Music is just everywhere, its not scare, it’s cheap.

RM64: Does streaming affect BigChampagne’s business or how you look at things?

EG: It doesn’t. Our mantra is music-is-music-is-music, data-is-data-is-data. I remember very clearly being asked 10 years ago, almost to the month, are you guys going to be affected by the shuttering of Napster? What does this mean to your business? And my response then would be my response now, which is that as long as people continue to consume media online and off, there’s a lot of work to be done for companies like us. Because what we’re trying to do is create a manageable and comprehensible distillation of an increasingly complicated media landscape. It used to be pretty simple, you could listen on the radio, watch on MTV and buy a disc. They were effectively tracking all the key metrics that affect the business. Now you and I could sit here and get into a discussion about dozens of things that we would agree are key metrics now. Social networks, streaming, paid download, free downloads, etc… it goes on and on and on. So I think it’s always our goal and our mission to stay on the leading edge, to know about Spotify before anyone else knows about them. To continually incorporate new information early about music on the next social network, the next platform, the next retailer, that is our business. We don’t have to be overly concerned if it goes in the direction of streaming or downloading, whether proportionally more music becomes paid for or vice versa, we’re focused on the audience and how are they engaged and how are they consuming.

RM64: With tens of thousands of records being released each year, in many forms, filtering seems to be more and more an important concept. Can you speak to that?

EG: It’s the future of the business if there’s going to be a real viable and lucrative opportunity for what I call the ‘middle men,’ which is sort of an ugly but accurate way to describe all of us who sit between artists and fans and try to carve out a living. If there’s going to be a role for the rest of us, it has to at some level be tied into creating value along a filter. We’re now at the point where we all experience this personally; you don’t have to look at data to appreciate this. There’s just more information than we can deal with. It’s so hard for me sometimes at 3:15 in the morning to slap close the laptop, because the flow of information is still coming! We can’t manage what we already have in front of us, and that is already heavily filtered. We’ve gone to great lengths to filter and still it needs a filter. I think more and more as a music fan, not even someone thinking about it in a professional capacity, I wish I had better tools for helping me get to the stuff I really like. It still happens to me in that wonderful but accidental way all too often, when I come across some new music and it’s like wow! But the thought that follows right on the heels of that great feeling is ‘why didn’t I know about this?’ Why didn’t the many systems that I’ve put in place hip me to this? It’s all about the lack of a truly great individualized and personally tailored filter.

RM64: In your mind what is the simplest, smartest, most effective solution for people to have music in mass quantities, while at the same time having it monetized so artists can get paid?

EG: It very much depends on what you think needs to be fixed. If you ask music fans, most of them would probably tell you ‘it ain’t broke’. I as a music fan have never been happier than I am right now in my decades of being a music fan. Because there’s so much great music, so many ways to discover it, fall into it and share it with friends. A lot of artists will tell you the same thing. The many evolutions in technologies and culture have really benefited the bands and the fans. But I suspect what you’re asking is, how do we get so much of the money that was in the category and has now gone out, back in the category.

RM64: Yes

EG: We love paying for things. This is the thing that is so nuanced that I think a lot of businesses, especially those with a long history of selling something in a particular way, struggle to appreciate. It is not difficult to separate Americans from their money. We hate being aware that we’re paying for things, we hate thinking about paying for things and contemplating whether or not we want to pay for them. We spend so much money passively on things that are fleeting in our conscience but very real in terms of our pocketbooks. Gym memberships, premium cable, car payments, etc. and once something becomes part of your monthly nut, it sort of disappears and the only thing you’re tracking are changes to that nut. The hardest thing is to get someone online to reach for his or her wallet. Even Amazon doesn’t do it, they get you to do it once and ever since they’ve been trading on the fact they have the information and you don’t have to reach for your wallet. The toughest thing is now we’re at a point when individual unit value of music is terrifyingly diminished, the lowest it’s ever been. When you start doing qualitative research on this, people value music not at a dollar a song, but something more like 10, 15, 20 or maybe 25 cents a song. So that’s terrifying, we can’t eat, we can’t live, but the category has greater value than it’s ever had. So I think the trick is to find more and more ways to passively monetize music. And that’s consultant speak, because it’s easier said than done, and what does that really mean.

RM64: So are we headed to an all-you-can-eat music ISP music subscription system?

EG: I think this was an idea that traditional music companies were really resistant to for a long time, for all the reasons we talked about. Particularly not wanting to devalue music or create a low per-unit price for music. Increasingly though music companies are excited about this concept, but the problem or challenge is very much in the details. The carriers or those who would actually be implementing these additional charges for so-called all-you-can-eat music downloads, don’t necessarily have the same vision as music companies do. I’ve sat in the room many times when you’ve got on the one side ISPs and on the other side traditional music companies, and there’s just this vast trench, this huge gulf between the two sides. I think partly it has to do with the fact that music would be just the beginning, so people who maintain the networks are concerned that their networks would be so burdened with additional intellectual property that it would be too much. Suffice it to say, I was and remain a huge proponent of the notion that we have to find ways to collect money for intellectual property and not just use it. However when my feet are really held to the fire, I’m hard pressed to find an easy path to implementation of that broad concept. It’s not by any means an easy fix.

RM64: What is the thing that makes it most difficult?

EG: One word answer—fear. I just think that the incumbents, the traditional businesses that were built on selling music in a very different way, are wart about what that will do to the bottom line. Remember, we all, they all, bet wrong several times in the last 10 years. Thinking okay, at the expense of this traditional business that has been so good to me, I’m going to start laying the groundwork for something new, transition. Those transitions have been unkind. Every time we let go of some of the business we’ve known and done so well by, we lose another step, we lose ground. So what you’re talking about is sort of the ultimate transition, dramatically away from the notion of music as widgets that we purchase one by one and stack on a shelf, to music as water or air.

I think because the last 10 years have been so unkind to some of the biggest businesses in music, they’re terrified of that. Having said that I think it’s inevitable, because it’s already a present day reality. Music does move that way, it is not scarce, people consume as much of it as they want and in as many different ways as they want. They are exploring independent music in an unprecedented way, and people have more exposure and access to a greater variety of music. So that’s not forecasting it’s not the future, it’s the present and in fact it’s the near term past. We’ve been living in that world. I think because of that, it can only become the economic platform that changes, there’s no other outcome. However, it’s still at this moment very much at odds with the business objectives of some of the biggest and most powerful music companies.

RM64: You mentioned that music would be just the beginning in this scenario. In what ways do you see it spreading to other forms of intellectual property?

EG: The fascinating thing about this question of why can’t we do it this way, is that we already engage with so many different kinds of content in this manner. I recently got back from the International Television Festival in Edinburgh Scotland, and there we sat and talked with an industry that is just starting to entertain these questions that are kind of long-standing questions for the music business. These guys are like babes in the woods, they are just starting to think about what happens to their business, which has been a great business for a long time, when all of this internet stuff comes crashing in. There were a lot of people who are just TV viewers in attendance at the conference raising hands and asking versions of the question we’ve been discussing. ‘Can’t I just pay a little more to what I already pay for so I can just watch the shows when I want and put them on my phone, etc?’ It was exciting in a way to watch these deer in the headlights, these executives contemplating for the first time how far apart their traditional business and the wants of the consumer are. So the good news for music is that we’re veterans, we’re inching closer to this. Other industries like film and television are not even beginning to appreciate how profoundly all of this that has already happened to music, is going to affect them in the future.

RM64: We recently mentioned the TEDx music event that was held here in Los Angeles, and I know you participated in that. Can you tell us how you got involved and elaborate on the focus of these events?

EG: Like everybody, I’ve been a fan of the TED organization and a student of the TED presentations online for a longtime now. I was lucky enough to attend some of the events in the past, but I’ve never been involved as a presenter until recently. The reason we were invited to present is we now share a wall with TED in one of their offices they’ve opened up in Los Angeles. So we came to know them and they came to know a little bit about what we do. What you know about TED if you’ve watched any of the videos of the presentations that they sponsor is that they’re all intended for the rest of us. What you usually get is a conference full of neurosurgeons and one of them will get up and speak to the rest about a new technique in neurosurgery that’s frankly lost on anyone outside of that room. And we do that too. We get together and have a conference to talk about narrow issues that are very inside baseball and it would not be interesting to anyone outside of the industry. TED’s rule is essentially, you know something that maybe other people in the world don’t, explain it to them. Not to your colleagues, explain it to the rest of the world, as you would have to at a cocktail party with none of your work friends there. So what they asked us to do is explain the impact of all these new technologies on traditional entertainment media, both in terms of a short history lesson about what has happened over the last 10 years and the implications for the business going forward. So it was kind of a cool talk for me because it forced me to be very disciplined about not taking anything for granted.

So we got together a couple of weeks ago, I did this broad-based presentation, most of the people who were in the room found it remedial because it was very broad, but the people who will be watching at home will appreciate that part. And then we just had a really open discussion about issues in the business and tried to create a climate where anybody could talk about anything they wanted. And the format for this particular gathering called TEDx, which takes place outside of the TED conference, worked really well. We had a couple performances and an open discussion forum and then chalk talk. Ken Hertz who hosted it decided he wants to repeat it and make it a regular event.

RM64: What was the main reason behind holding an event like this?

EG: I think the TEDx event was partly a reaction to what a lot of us view as pretty uninspiring recent gatherings of people in the music business in particular. It feels like a lot of enthusiasm and imagination has gone out of the room, not without good reason. It’s a tough time for the business, people are focused on fundamentals and not as dazzled by new ideas, but at the same time it’s really important that the conversation stays alive and new ideas are generated. The goal was to try and create a conversation in a venue people are a little more excited about and not the same old scenario. And I would say on that point we did okay, we all left with a lot of clear ideas of how we can do better. As long as that remains the goal, it will be an event worth repeating. As soon as we’re just getting together because it’s been 60 days since the last one, we’re in trouble. Right now I think everyone’s really focused on how to create a regular gathering with a rotating group of people, and a forum where people come in and out and get a lot of new ideas. For the moment we’re feeling really optimistic about what we can do.

RM64: Is there an ultimate event or change the music business is heading for? If so, what do you think it could be?

EG: I think the singular event is the mirage in the desert, and I’m speaking as a guy who has been crawling toward it for a decade now. We used to explicitly talk in those terms, ‘next year will be the year’, as if something watershed were coming, but I think that’s now been definitively proven, at least to me, to be an expectation that is only in our heads. What we’re talking about is a continual change-over, things are evolving and changing in small ways over the hours we’ve sat here talking. They’re not always and in fact they’re almost never easy to visualize. iTunes was a big deal that everyone can point to. There are very few things that have been that way over the last 10 years, and in fact even iTunes in hindsight was a very gradual evolution. They’re now the largest retailer in the market, but it took a long time getting there. I no longer think there’s a point on the timeline where something catastrophic or monumentally revelatory is going to happen. For better or for worse, we’re just talking about sands running through hourglasses or whatever bad visual metaphors I can employ here. The likelihood is that we’re going to wake up at certain points along the way and appreciate in subtle ways how much the business has changed when we weren’t paying attention or appreciating the gradual change. I don’t think you can say its next year or 3 years from now. It’s now, its right now, the business is changing dramatically. Companies will rise and fall, but not all on the same day and there probably won’t be a really satisfying moment. We used to talk about the bang, then we talked about the whimper, and now I don’t think it’s either. I think it’s really just the ever-evolving story.

RM64: We couldn’t think of a better line to end with. Thanks for sitting down with us today. It was a lot of fun.

EG: Any time.

Notable Music Founder Cy Coleman

**UPDATE 9/01/09: Notable Music and IODA announce new partnership, read the press release HERE

With a diverse and impressive publishing roster that includes music legend Cy Coleman and an amazing Jamaican music catalog, the crew from Notable Music is marking their territory in the new music landscape. The boutique pubco’s Damon Booth and Tom DeSavia recently sat down for a little Q&A sesh with RM 64 knuckleheads Rodel Delfin and Scott Sheldon.

RM 64: Before we get into the inner workings of Notable, share with us your industry backgrounds.

DB: I’ll start considering the guy who moved me to LA from Chicago is sitting right next to me. I started my career working for ASCAP in their Midwest office and Tom (DeSavia) was my boss. When he left to work at Elektra Records in the late 90s, ASCAP moved me to Los Angeles and I took over Pop music membership at the PRO. From there I went to EMI Publishing where I was a Creative exec for a few years and then crossed over to the label side, doing A&R at Warner Brothers Records.

During this period I was introduced to an amazing songwriter who later became my brother-in-law, named Cy Coleman. He was also an independent music publisher as he had never sold his publishing and he had this great American Songbook collection. We ended up becoming very close.

When Cy passed away suddenly in 2004, I left Warner Bros. to keep his little boutique company, Notable Music up and running, thus keeping it a family business. I’ve been doing that for three years now and we moved the company from New York City to Pasadena, CA two years ago. And I was fortunate enough to have Tom come on board earlier this year as VP of Creative.

TD: For me, I started as a music journalist for a publication called Cash Box. I was later asked to interview at ASCAP. I got the gig and ended up staying there for seven years before going to Elektra Records where I did A&R for six years. After that I went back to ASCAP for an additional eight years, heading up the West Coast membership staff.

Over the years, Damon and I have been such good friends that joining him at Notable is really like a kid’s fantasy. To have the opportunity to work together after so many years is amazing.

RM 64: On to Notable, how did it start?

DB: Notable was started in 1962 by Cy Coleman. He was widely considered one of the last of the great American Songbook legends. He was the baby of that group which included Cole Porter, George Gershwin, as well as contemporaries like Sammy Cahn and Stephen Sondheim. He had a couple of huge hits during his early 20’s and wrote for Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., collaborators who at the time were much older lyricists than him.

A lot of the writers he was working with didn’t want to sign their publishing away to someone they didn’t know, so they signed with Cy. And he kept signing writers that loved him and that he trusted. And they trusted him.

Cy could identify talent really early, but he wasn’t trying to sign anyone and everyone. His philosophy was, ‘I’m a songwriter, I’m going to take care of my own songs and other artists who I trust and want to work with.’ But he had a career writing and performing everyday. And you know, even though the songs were standards, you have to work them just as hard as a new project because they will fade and people will forget them.

DeSavia (left) & Booth (right) circa early 90s, with their spiritual guide, Francisco (middle)

RM 64: What were some of your goals when taking over the company?

DB:Things weren’t going the right direction when I came in, so we took over the catalog and moved administration through Chrysalis Publishing, who has been amazing partners. Right away they brought up the idea to do a tribute album of Cy’s work. I thought it was a great idea. They introduced us to Dave Palmer, an L.A. based producer, arranger and musician, and we brought in some contemporary singers to do Cy’s songs in new arrangements. The idea was to present something new to these standards so people wouldn’t expect what they heard. We’re trying to bring in a new audience to match the name with the music and keep the legacy going. The tribute album which will be coming out via New West Records features Fiona Apple, Patti Griffin, Ambrosia Parsley, Missy Higgins and a variety of great artists who knew and loved Cy’s songs.

One of my goals for Notable when I started was for it to be a full-fledged music company. We’re publishers primarily, but if our songwriters need to make a record, then let’s get a record made and find a home for it. Let’s connect music to its audience like we’re supposed to and not be just music publishers. We’re not trying to be bought by a hedge fund and then flipped into something else or be merged into another company. We want to hand this down to Cy and Shelby Coleman’s kids someday. We aspire to do what Jerry Moss and Herb Alpert did with Rondor and A&M Records. What Mo Ostin did at Reprise when Frank Sinatra came to him. We want to follow our heart musically.

RM 64: Where has that led you so far?

DB: We’re a little bit all over the map because we like a lot of different kinds of music. We jumped on an opportunity to work with an iconic reggae catalog from Treasure Isle and High Note that hadn’t been taken care of and had slipped into obscurity in the 80s. We administer both masters and publishing for this amazing and influential reggae music. Our primary job is to collect the catalog’s revenue, clear the samples and solve the big copyright disputes and any pirated-use issues. We’re also working on some remixes, tributes and events to get those two labels to be living, breathing entities again.

We’re also talking to several label partners regarding box sets and vinyl reissues. We’re going to do it the right way from the original tape recordings. We can geek out as A&R guys on the masters, liner notes and help select these really rare songs. It’s a nice balance to the Cy Coleman catalog. There are a lot of artists who are huge fans of his music and now we can give those stems from the multi-tracks and their rehearsals and just go crazy.

TD: Outside of the US, particularly in the UK and Europe, this catalog is really well known. But in America it doesn’t have the same kind of awareness. We almost stopped saying to people, ‘reggae’, even though that’s what it is, but the term ‘reggae,’ especially to Americans, means Bob Marley. These Jamaicans started in the early 50s hearing basically the Platters and Doo-Wop music, and tried to do it themselves, incorporating their own instrumentation and rhythms. It’s incredible. It’s really just Jamaican soul music.

DB: What blew me away about the Jamaican catalog as well as Cy’s, was that both are of such high caliber and very diverse. The careers of the artists in these catalogs span so many years that there are so many pockets within each decade that we can work with, and it inspires us musically. In addition, the catalogs are nothing like each other, so we’re not competing with ourselves. It doesn’t conflict and it’s a nice outlet for not only us but the music that we love.

RM 64: It sounds like there’s a lot of creative freedom and flexibility being a smaller boutique company.

TD: Yeah, the next thing we sign might be an iconic punk catalog or it may be a young singer who we think is great. Damon said to me when we were talking about working together, ‘it’s going to take you awhile to get use to the idea that we can do whatever we want.’ We can just pursue new endeavors that pop up. Both Damon and I get really excited about new ideas and projects. We have this thing between us where we get…’we’re going to do it! we’re going to get this!’

DB: The one thing we want to do that wasn’t always feasible at our previous jobs was when we sign something, we make good promises. We make a commitment to it and if we don’t follow through, it’s absolutely going to kill us, so we have to follow through with what we promise. We are trying to stay nimble and focused and not take on too much too soon. And stay a family-run independent company.

TD: It’s going to sound cliché, but any writer we sign is going be based on that we can’t live without it. Not the fact that it’s been out on radio or it’s a hype thing. Damon and I are constantly turning each other onto different things. It’s premature to talk about it, but the writers that we’re currently looking to sign will not appear to be an obvious play, but I think industry folks who get what we’re doing will respond with…‘oh ok, that makes sense.’

RM 64: What are some of the advantages and disadvantages of being a boutique publisher?

TD: Our goal is in no way to become the biggest company in the world, but we want to be one of the best. Working with music we love, I know it will get as big or small as it’s supposed to be. What we can offer is the attention and the time. It’s something that you can’t do at a big company. As we grow, it will evolve naturally, but for now I think the thing that made us do this was the desire to be a fully functioning company where we can have something that is manageable and do what we say we can do. We’ve seen the best of it with some people who we’ve been fortunate to work with. And we’ve seen the worst of it at the corporate level, where artists get signed for the wrong reasons and/or are just not paid attention to.

DB: I think in general, publishers are in a great position in this climate. If they can do be smart about their role, they can help an artist do anything they want to do. The problem I saw while working for a music corporation was that the different divisions inside the company didn’t understand each other. The record division and the publishing arm didn’t communicate with each other. It was a little bit of a turf thing. There has always been talk of synergy, but I rarely saw it take place.

Running a boutique, we can move fast and we don’t have to wait and be in the back seat to let things happen. And a lot of publishers are being more pro-active and doing development deals (i.e. working with management companies and emerging talent directly). At a small company, you’re not getting bogged down as much. A team working with the same vision can deliver a lot to a roster. I hope Tom and I don’t ever loose sight of that.

At the RM 64 Office (from left): Scott Sheldon, Rodel Delfin, Tom DeSavia, Damon Booth

RM 64: What happened with publishing catalogs over the last few years? It seems like valuation multiples for catalogs went out of whack and things cost much more than what they are worth. How did that happen? And what’s the landscape like now?

TD: When investment money was readily available during the recent boom years, investors drove up the price of catalogs when several high-profile deals fetched astronomical numbers. It was a reflection of what was happening in the economy overall. Just like the housing market, publishing values were getting inflated. In addition, some catalogs were being purchased primarily for market share.

DB: When the publishing-buying frenzy got so hot and hedge funds started circling in, some of the music companies who were selling had to shed some of their other publishing holdings for the bigger deals to get approved by the likes of say the European Commission. So there was inventory for sale and it fueled the buying even further, thus raising prices. But what I think the big difference between music copyrights versus say, real estate, is that publishing will not increase in value because it sits in your catalog. Value will only increase if the work is licensed and placed regularly.

TD: There are some amazing publishing companies who are doing it right. But we’ve seen some other companies who buy just to hold. I compare it to the last scene in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the ark is boxed up in a giant warehouse among a million other boxes. And so, there are some publishers who don’t even know what’s in their catalog.

We’ve come across some individuals who have gotten really big offers on their publishing, but have said, ‘I’ve got enough money; I’m not selling it like a baseball card. I just want someone to work it and make good revenue from the catalog.’ And I think that’s what we have. Our pitch as a company is that an artist who signs with us will know that we’re not just collecting and putting things in a vault. Anything we sign will be a lynch pin for our company. Anything we sign will reflect what the image of this company is and what we’re all about.

RM 64: What’s your take on where the music biz is headed, particularly on the creative side?

TD: In all honesty I think it’s one of the most exciting times for music. The rebuilding has already begun. The crash hasn’t finished but the rebuilding has begun. Everyone is talking about how music is not important and ironically I think it’s the exact opposite. It’s just that it’s taken on a new life. There is a generation that is not concerned with buying it. But regardless, it’s just as important as it ever was.

DB: One thing I see happening is that the music business is starting to listen to the consumer. And I think some music companies are now better at listening to their artists. That’s how music companies grew and thrived decades ago and it seems like we are going back to that. Which leads to the question of how do fans want to experience music now and in the future? The recording industry is obviously trying to figure this out. I think there will be a more direct communication than there has been. That’s definitely the most positive thing happening and hopefully it continues.

TD: However this business is going to survive, in whatever form, I don’t think any of us will know exactly what is going to happen.

RM 64: Are you then optimistic about the future?

TD: Yes. In a weird way, I think we’re headed back to a time where there is more emphasis on artist careers and a long-term vision. Back in the day, music was a long-term business and decisions were made from people who were music fans and creative entrepreneurs. There was thought put into writing the song, production and album packaging. And I think that’s starting to happen again. Every format has a promising independent movement and it’s exciting. For example, there’s a cool indie jazz movement happening right now, as well as an exciting indie rock scene.

DB: I worked with a lot of bands early in their career that became platinum-selling artists, in addition to working with established, hugely-successful acts. Meeting Cy, who I consider a genius, was really inspiring. He had it all, but even at 75 years old, he never lost that drive and excitement for the next project. He always had five balls up in the air at one time. He never lost the optimistic spirit of creating something. It just flowed out of this guy, no matter how much success he already had. Years ago he could have just sat around and reminisced. But he never did that. He always wanted to focus and concentrate on the next thing. If I ever lose that, I would stop what I’m currently doing. Again, that thing about Cy was mind blowing to me. And that reinforced the belief of never losing that drive.

RM 64: Amen! Well, that was a very informative and fun session. Thanks for stopping by. And next time, don’t forget to bring some donuts.

DB: Thank you, and yes, will do.

TD: We’ll have Josh Briggs at ASCAP pick up the next tab.

RM 64: Yes sir!

MySpace Records has been busy behind the scenes establishing a new unsigned artist development program called the Friends & Family Network.  The initiative provides marketing for all participating artists across the MySpace Music platform to promote releases, tours and videos.

The label has also begun a new series of live shows in Los Angeles called Online [Offline], which features artists from the Friends and Family Network.

We recently sat down with MySpace Records’ Jason Reynolds to get the details.

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MSR's Jason Reynolds in signature shades

RM64:  To start off can you tell us a little about your background?

JR:  I’m originally from Australia where I used to run a record label putting out a bunch of indie rock records. Later I was worked for Shock Records in Australia, which also distributed Sub Pop, so I got to know a bunch of people there.  When I lost my job at Shock, I got a call the day after from Jonathan at Sub Pop and he said, ‘What are you going to do now?’  And I said I don’t know, and he said ‘Come work for me in America.’ So I moved to Seattle in the 90’s, started the publishing company for Sub Pop, and then sort of migrated into working in A&R and doing product management.  I signed a bunch of artists like Damien Jurado, Saint Etienne and The Jesus and Mary Chain.

In the late 90’s after leaving Sub Pop I did a stack of stuff like writing for the NME, music supervision as well as some musicology jobs, and then ended up in management.

I never really intended to become an artist manager, but I was always helping out the artists I knew; anytime there was a problem they kept calling me in to fix it.  The first real client that I had was this kid Patrick Park.  He was just a singer songwriter that I found at Genghis Cohen but he totally blew me away.  He was like a modern day soul singer.  So I ended up managing him and developing it from the ground up and subsequently sort of became the artist development-management guy.

Some of the other artists I worked with were The Belles from Lawrence, KS, Forward Russia! from the UK (on Mute), Every Move A Picture from San Francisco who got signed to V2, and then one of the biggest artists I managed was Isobel Campbell – who was previously in Belle and Sebastian.  The first project that we did together was the record that she made with Mark Lanegan, Ballad of the Broken Seas.  Crazily enough it took her from selling 10,000 records, which is what her previous record had done, to having a UK Top 40 album, getting nominated for a Mercury Music Prize and selling 150,000 copies of that record.

A little after that I dropped out of the music business for a couple years to become Mr. Mom.

RM64: So how did you end up at MySpace Records?

JR: I had been helping out the GM of MySpace Records J. Scavo.  Every time he had a question, often times it related to international issues, I answered it.  So he called me out of the blue one day and asked, ‘What are you plans?’ and I said ‘I don’t know’ and he said, ‘I’ve got a job for you.’  A large part of my position was to do international stuff for MySpace Records, but the main reason I got brought in was to run the artist development program that we have which is called the Friends and Family Network.

And that’s what I do on a daily basis.  We have 130 artists signed-up, and what I do is I build marketing campaigns for unsigned artists on MySpace.  The logic behind it being that we could have the next Coldplay, Arctic Monkeys or whatever in the program and we help build them from their 300 friends to 30,000 friends or their 250 plays a day to 70,000 plays a day.  And it’s great.  Now I do artist development and somebody pays me a salary for it.

RM64: So could you give us a little overview how of the MySpace Friends and Family program works?

JR:  So the way that it works is that we dig around on MySpace Music to find unsigned bands that appeal to us, from the charts as well as traditional A&R and various ways you find out about bands through a friend, musician or whatever it is, and we sign them up to the program. The concept is we give them a set of marketing tools, so when they’re releasing an EP or have a tour or a video, I help them market their band on Myspace.  So say an artist has a record coming out in the next couple months, I’ll build a marketing campaign with them.  From there we have various tools to help them really hyper-target their marketing and get in front of users who we, collectively, think might like their music.

We also aid in getting editorial coverage. So if they have a video we will give them a music video feature. If they have an EP or album coming out, we’ll approach the editorial team at MySpace Music to try and find the right “look” for them, or if they have a video we will help with coverage on the music video page, which are amazing opportunities for unsigned artists.  And then we have this one particular music ad that runs on the main music page where we promote tours and things like that as well.  So really what we do is give them a tool kit to say ‘here you go, this is what you get allocated in a year –go crazy’.  And it’s good. We have this particular artist from Long Beach that when I started my job they had 3,000 to maybe 5,000 plays a day.  I would run marketing and see it go to maybe 10,000 plays a day.  And now nine months later I run marketing, and they get 70,000 plays a day.  That’s what the concept of it is, you’re building an artist from a small level to a big level.

RM64:  What are some of the things that artists can do as part of the FnF program to maximize what they get out of it?

JR: They have to be very organized and do a lot of offline stuff themselves as well as being active on MySpace (messaging fans, updating their page with new content, etc).  They’re giving people a reason to come back.  It’s a visual medium that people have to be very aware of.  Take for example Taryn Manning’s band Boomkat. When we would see their plays go way up, it was from these spotlight ads they created that were really engaging and people couldn’t help but click on them. That same band (above) from Long Beach recently ran a great creative that was a spoof on one of those ‘which celebrity is this?’ banner ads, but they used themselves. With all the stuff flashing at you when you’re online, artists have to be creative and do something interesting to catch people’s eye.

I also use the old radio story that it takes someone hearing a song 45 times before they recognize what the song is.  It’s the same thing.  When I run a marketing campaign it’s not all about running 500,000 banners and all of a sudden everyone will discover you.  Its doing a little bit of different things, getting an editorial piece, banner spotlight, etc and hopefully by the 5th or 6th time they’ve seen it, someone will be interested enough to check it out. Meanwhile the band should be doing their own work, online and offline.

RM64:  What have the results been like so far?  Has the program been working?

JR:  It’s good.  There are definitely some artists who use it a lot.  And there are artists that have gotten some real gain from the program.  Iglu and Hartly is one of the main ones that was signed to the program and who got a huge deal out of the UK.  Bad Veins was also in the program, who is now signed to Dangerbird Records.  There is another band in the process of getting signed to Roadrunner Records.  So from that perspective it’s definitely been very helpful.  Then I started having these other ideas, like look at the stuff that you can do beyond just MySpace. MySpace is the certainly the best online music platform, but there are other things that you can do that will help develop an artist.

RM64: Can you give us some examples?

JR: The most notable thing that I’ve done recently was getting an FnF artist, Jonneine Zapata, on the Soulsavers national tour that is happening in September.  A lot of that was presenting a marketing plan to the Soulsavers camp to say, ‘Look, if take this artist out with you, here is how we can support your tour on MySpace.’ As a record label we’re in a unique position that we have the largest music site in the world as a marketing arm to synergize with.

We also have the SXSW showcase and party where we have a whole bunch of the FnF artists play, and now it looks like maybe in late September/October we’ll have a package of FnF artists going out on a tour. On top of that we have this Tank Farm compilation coming out right about now where they will be doing 10,000 hang tags on their summer line of clothing –which is going to Pac Sun and Urban Outfitters.  For that I put together a compilation of 16 artists from the program to give one track away each. People can download the album for free at http://www.tankfarmclothing.com/promo

RM64:  What would you say the main goals of the program are?

JR:  It’s definitely a great branding exercise for us.  MySpace has always been known as a place for unsigned artists who in particular have been the ones helping to build the site to where it is. And from a record label perspective you’re helping artists out, which can sometimes be a rare thing, and you also get to prove to an artist before they’re signed to the record label what a company like MySpace Records can do.  ‘This is the sort of marketing power that an artist can have if they end up signing to a record label like ours.’  There are those people who say ‘shouldn’t you get something more out of it if an artist gets signed to another label?’  But in the end, really the good will is probably worth more than anything else.  It’s a great feeling from my perspective to turn around and help the artist out in this way. Ultimately my attitude is that if one new person discovers an artist as a result of the program, it’s been successful.

RM64: Speaking of other labels, how much are they aware of it?  What kind of reactions have you gotten, if any?

JR:  I don’t know how many people are really aware of it to tell you the truth. Which is funny because we have a FnF page where any person from a record company can actually look at and see ‘oh look here are a bunch of bands that MySpace is marketing right now –we should keep an eye on them.’  I don’t really know how much awareness there is in the music business community as to what we do; which is fine.  I guess now they’ll probably all find out won’t they?

RM64:  So what happens if an artist in the program gets an offer from say, Warner Brothers Records?

JR:  Well like an old school demo deal where somebody gets a bunch of money, we just have a matching right.  There’s a period of time where if we wish to, we can turn around and match a deal.  But we’re an indie label, so it’s hard to compete with a bucket load of cash. However the other aspect is that if we’ve worked with someone long enough and have a great relationship, maybe they don’t even want to take an offer from someone else.  Or you have the edge to where the artist is really happy to sign with us, simply if we’re willing to match that offer.  So that’s the way it works.

RM64:  Who has been the architect behind this program?

JR: I think it really was everyone’s first friend, Tom Anderson, and J Scavo who is the GM of MySpace Records.  I think that they recognized that we have access to a number of tools. They recognized that it was a great thing to be able to do and they had the resources to do it, which no other company does.

RM64:  Are there any plans to expand the program, possibly into providing digital distribution for artists?

JR: Yeah we started doing what we call our ‘Friends Plus’ deals, because we’ve definitely had some people who have turned around and said ‘this is really great, but can you help us with distribution?’  Previously I would just send people to different aggregators, but after a little while we realized we could just do this ourselves.  So we started doing that and have 2 or 3 artists signed in that environment as well. If they enter the Friends Plus deal we throw them even a little bit more in terms of the marketing as well.

RM64: Lastly, tell us about this new series of monthly shows MySpace Records is presenting?

JR: They’re called ‘Online [Offline]’ which is fitting because that’s exactly what we’re doing; taking an online asset and now taking it offline.  We just started doing the series, and it kind of came about as an adjunct to us doing a showcase at SXSW. So now we’ve started doing shows here in L.A. because we have a lot of artists here and it’s a broad spectrum. We partnered up with the Spaceland folks and have the shows at The Echo.  The first one was a hip-hop show and it was sold-out. It was crazy because I’m not a hip-hop guy [laughs].  Next we’re doing an alternative rock show. People seem excited about it, and it’s a great opportunity for building the community of unsigned artists. We’ll also be doing a singer-songwriter night in September and the October show will be a charity event.  It actually also looks like we’ll be expanding nationally, with an Online [Offline] show in Chicago in October too.  So again its part of the additional package when an artists signs an FnF deal with us. We say ‘here’s what you’re guaranteed under this FnF deal’, and then what I’ve done is add all this additional value that will hopefully provide a number of other potential opportunities as well.

RM64: Well we’re looking forward to the next show.  Thanks for sitting down with us today!

JR: Of course, thank you.

___

Tonight (8/13) is the next show in the Online [Offline] series, featuring Burning Brides, Jonneine Zapata and Sabrosa Purr

The Echo – 8:00PM – FREE
1822 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90026

MySpace Records Friends & Family: www.myspace.com/msrfriends

MySpace Records: www.myspace.com/myspacerecords

Complete Control Returns to LA Airwaves

Starting on April 18th at 10:00PM, Los Angeles will have a new reason to turn the radio back on. The Complete Control radio show will be returning to L.A. on Saturday nights now on 98.7 FM.   The show features both new and old-school punk rock music as well as interviews and tons of information on all that is punk.  The show’s creator and host, SideOneDummy Record’s own Joe Sib, was kind enough to chat with us about Complete Control, Indie 103.1 (Complete Control’s first home) and the show’s new home in L.A. on 98.7 FM.

RM64: Can you tell us some of the story behind Complete Control Radio?

JS: Complete Control began almost 5 years ago on Indie 103.1 FM.  Around the end of 2003 and the beginning of 2004 I remember people telling me, ‘you’ve got to check out this new station’.  The first time I turned on Indie 103.1 I heard in one sitting Elvis Costello, Black Flag, The Shins and then some local Los Angeles band.  I immediately wanted to find out who was running the station.   At the time I was handling radio here at SideOneDummy, so I tracked down the Program Director, Michael Steele, and we setup a dinner to talk about the new Flogging Molly album.  From that point on Michael and I started becoming friends, and one time he asked me about classic punk rock and what kind of stuff the station should be playing.  Since this is L.A. I immediately listed off a bunch of classic L.A. punk bands, and I ended up making him a playlist of all sorts of stuff like The Germs, The Weirdos,  Bad Religion and Social Distortion.  A few weeks later I was in my car and I heard some of the songs from my playlist, it was awesome. And that was the thing I loved about Michael, he was the first guy in radio at that level who not only took my call, but also actually asked me questions and for my opinion on music.

So Michael and I were talking one night, and I mentioned to him that there should be a show on Indie 103.1 that incorporated everything from old school to new punk rock. Not for it to be a throwback show just really informative, and when you had a punk band coming through L.A. for a show they would do an interview on Indie the night before.  Really it was based on a show I grew up listening to in San Jose in the 80’s called Vinyl Rights, it aired on KFJC and was hosted by Alex Morgan.  It was on Thursday nights and he was amazing, so full of information.  So I based the idea for Complete Control off of that show and pitched it to Michael.  I pitched it with the idea of getting someone else to host it but before I even got to that point, he said I love the idea, I want you to do it, and let’s start next week.

RM64: What was it like doing your very first show?

JS: I went on the air for the first time in May of 2004. Being in a band I’d been interviewed on-air a ton of times in the past, but this was different.  All of a sudden it’s me in a room by myself with a live microphone and Los Angeles listening.  I remember my very first night on the air, the red light was on, I’m stumbling through my intro and the board operator starts mouthing to me, ‘say Indie 103.1’.  It was a little rough, but the show quickly picked up and became really popular.  During those years we had Johnny Ramone’s last interview, everyone from X came on, Youth Brigade, Keith Morris, Greg Hetson, just tons of great guests.

RM64: Now that Complete Control is on 98.7, will you do anything different?

JS: No, not at all.  That was the number one thing I said.  The show that I used to do on Indie 103.1 is the same that I’m going to do over there.   We’re not going to make a watered-down version, and the freedom to do that was one of the main things that made me say okay let’s do it.  I know there will be some people that say ‘how can 98.7 do a show that’s punk rock when during the day they’re playing stuff that’s really pretty far from that?’.  And my answer to that is, at the end of the day commercial radio is commercial radio, but for them to turn over the airwaves to me for two hours every Saturday night, and let me do 100% of what I want to do, play whatever I want, that’s really cool.

RM64: Thanks for talking with us, and congratulations on the new show. We’ll be tuning in on April 18th at 10:00PM!

JS: Right on, thank you.  I’m stoked to be bringing Complete Control back to L.A.!