Inspired by an Annoyed David Bowie: My Solemn Oath as a Host, and an Interviewer

 

OR:

‘I, Pallas, Do Solemnly Swear . . . Never to Ask Stupid Questions.’

 

I had hoped to one day interview David Bowie . A girl can dream. Now that day will never come, but the wish was not entirely pie in the sky.
I began producing my own radio show ‘Pallas’ Dutch Invasion’ in the Spring of 2015. My initial intention was to feature successful, and also up and coming, and even underground Dutch bands. I’ve had the honor of featuring the internationally successful Dutch bands Taymir, and Birth of Joy, among others.
However, my show took a rapid and unexpected twist, and before I knew it, I was interviewing inconic musicians such as:
Jazz great- Lee Ritenour, Fee Waybill-front man of The Tubes, Tony Levin – King Crimson/ Stick Men (Official) bass and Chapman Stick player, Pat Mastelotto-King Crimson/Stick Men drummer and session player, Markus Reuter -touch guitar player of Stick Men and his solo works, and legendary Progressive Rock guitarist , Steve Hackett of Genesis, and solo works, to name a few.

Interviewing these legendary musicians is an honor as well as being a daunting undertaking. It is also a great pleasure, but not without pressure.
Preparing for an interview requires much research if it is to be done well.

I promised myself, to never ask dumb questions. I’d be damned if I were to bore my subjects, or make myself look stupid.

Viewing this compilation of interviews of ‘David Bowie Gets Annoyed’ (see Youtube link below), solidifies my commitment to research my subjects deeply, and to always go in well prepared. It’s the least I can do. It’s a sign of respect, it sets the subjects at ease, and, it hopefully makes for great journalism.

As a die-hard David Bowie fan since the age of 13, I was thrilled, when as a professional dancer, I came very close to having had the opportunity to work with him in 1987 on his Glass Spider Tour – choreographed by Toni Basil. I was one of the last two in the running for the ballerina role, but, sadly, I didn’t book the gig.

Now, with my new endeavor as a host, interviewer, and producer, I’d dared to dream, and hoped to create an opportunity to interview David Bowie perhaps for Pallas’ Dutch Invasion and elsewhere on radio and film. But sadly, that too shall never come to pass . . .

If I ever feel myself getting lazy or distracted while preparing for an interview, I’ll whip out this film of ‘David Bowie Gets Annoyed’ to remind myself to keep the bar high.

Until now, I seem to have done well, having received the following encouraging feedback:

Vicky Jenson, Director at Dreamworks Animation:
‘You project a knowlegable professional persona, worthy of interviewing these giants of music’….
‘ ….. In the interview (with Steve Hackett) Pallas’ understanding, preparation, and experience, allowed her a nimble poise and facility with her subject, putting the legendary musician at ease.

Tony Levin:
‘Thank you for not asking any trite questions!’

Lee Ritenour:
‘That’s a great question….These are hard questions!’

Steve Hackett:
‘I hope you don’t mind that we’re going off the page of your prepared questions.’
Pallas: ‘No! It’s great! Let’s keep going with the flow’

So, by virtue of writing this short piece, I wanted to make a commitment, in writing, to YOU, my dear listeners, readers, and followers, as well as to my future interview subjects.

I, Pallas, do solemnly swear, to never ask stupid or trite questions. Amen.

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This is the second of three pieces I am writing inspired David Bowie. The first from a dancer’s perspective, this one from the point of view as an interviewer, and next, will come a piece about how David Bowie, the man and artist has touched and inspired so many of us so deeply, and with such longetivity.

After writing the third piece, I think I will be able to join so many friends and colleagues, and finally allow myself to mourn his passing fully.

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This article was originally published on

January 13th, 2016 on PALLASDOTCOM

Mantis Evar – Indaba Music

5:15 New York City Lord Mantis in your radio back out.

Tony: I had the great fortune of running into a really interesting dude named Mantis Evar.

Mantis: My name is Mantis Evar co-founder of Indaba Music.

Tony: He has quite a list of accomplishments which you can check out at mantisevar.com which includes playing bass, sound and recording tenures, producing and working for a few record labels but the reason I was interested in talking with him is his latest project indabamusic.com.

Mantis: Indaba Music is a social network for collaborating musicians. Our community is comprised of over 900,000 musicians from 200 countries around the world. Indaba Music is a free service. Musicians do not have to pay to be a part of the service. Our mission at Indaba Music is to actually put money into the pockets of the musicians rather than take money out of the pockets of the musicians.

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Tony: So this is a large social network for musicians where they can communicate with each other and also collaborate on the writing and recording process. You can submit songs for licensing opportunities and there are also things like remix contests and other sponsored opportunities. On top of this, there are some really cool resources for song writers, producers and DJs.
I asked Mantis how the licensing side of things works. Can any musician just upload their catalogue of songs for consideration in a licensing opportunity?

Mantis: Absolutely, and we have a non-exclusive agreement with our members. It’s essentially a bucket and they drop all the material into this bucket. We built a division called Indaba Sync which is our licensing program and we built this platform to where music buyers can go in, narrow down the fields, narrow down the genre, pinpoint this particular mood or whether it’s an instrumental or if they want something with lyrics, they can go through our database and narrow down their choices and then select a piece of music by clicking a button. It’s a very, very easy licensing platform to use.
When a song comes through Indaba Music, we actually run it through our staff and we sit there and we do the meta data and we’re the ones that determine what key it is, what tempo it is. If a vitamin company for example wants to come in and download a happy song they could put in their BPMs, they could put in their mood as jovial or happy and it would be narrowed down to a certain group or whatever material is applicable within those metrics. They would be able to just purchase it in a click of a button.

Tony: One really cool thing I’ve learned about this platform is that they provide a sample library that artists can pull from free of charge.

Mantis: We launched this product a couple of weeks ago and it’s called the Converse Sample Library. What Converse wants to do is they want to pay back the musicians community for supporting Converse all these years. Converse hired Indaba Music to build out a sample library and what we did is we went out and we contacted our musicians’ community which includes many, many greats. We have The Roots as part of this sample library, Vernon Reid from Living Color, we have the legendary saxophone player named Gary Bartz who used to play with Thelonious Monk and Charles Mingus and then we have Jack White’s Band that went in and provided a bunch of samples. They all signed the agreement to give the material to Indaba Music . They understood that they were going in there to create these samples to give them away. Let’s face it for many years as musicians we have all been swiping samples from the 70’s, 80’s to 90’s and now it’s time for us musicians to give back and there’s a whole group of people that feel this way.

Tony: That sounds really cool! You can just logon and browse through all these samples and see if there’s anything you like, throw in your song and you won’t even need to worry about licensing.

Mantis: Let me throw this in there too…for the Converse Rubber Tracks Sample Library, seeing we used these fantastic musicians and the musicians understand that they’re giving it away for free, they also understand that they could possibly be credited on new works. For example, we could have a remix or from anywhere in the world or a song writer from anywhere in the world create a new song, take one of these samples from the sample library and they can actually credit and tell that they have The Roots as a part of their new song.

Tony: Man, that is huge. You can actually work with famous musicians without having to worry about the red tape or licensing or any of those headaches and you get to brag about it on social media, like, ”hey look who I just worked with!” Hahahaha! That is social media gold, I love it.
If you would, instill upon us some words of advice for upcoming musicians and artists…

Mantis: Yeah let me put it this way, I think this is a wonderful time to be in the music business. I think it’s a wonderful time to be a part of the music community. When I was younger, you only have a couple of outlets to go through. You had to go through major record labels. They were the ones who had their grip on radio. They were the ones who had their grip on the press. But nowadays with the new technology that’s out there, and the changing landscape of the major record labels, this time that we’re living through right now presents a lot of opportunities for today’s musicians. I encourage all musicians nowadays to check out all the technologies that are available to them. These are the tools that we have to work with to promote ourselves and to get our music out there. Whether you are a touring musician, a recording musician or if you’re looking to license your stuff, if you do jingles, there’s plenty of places for you to turn to. Come to Indaba Music, see what we have and become a member and we’ll take it from there.

Tony: Thank you Mantis Evar of IndabaMusic.com.

Find the Converse Sample Library at www.conversesamplelibrary.com

Totally let me know if you seem to have any of those samples and any songs or tracks that you put together, I definitely want to hear that. My name is Tony Coke, you can hit me up at bandsrising.com.

 

Photo courtesy of http://mantisevar.com

Paul Young Interview

Tony Coke:
While at the Music Tech and Features Summit recently in Nashville, I had the pleasure of befriending Mr. Paul Young, actually, Dr. Paul Young of the University of Southern California.
He teaches primarily about the business of music including music publishing, record companies, monetizing music creations and performances.
I jumped at the chance to ask him a few questions about the hardest thing for me to understand in the music industry, which turns out, is also one of the toughest subjects for his students, and that is licensing.

Music Licensing – There’s a lot to it

Paul Young:

You know, licensing comes after you understand the basics, and I think one of the things I run into teaching an intro class about the music industry is: I’m weeks into it right now, this is week six for example, and I’m still having to remind them that a song is not a recording. That kind of thing.

It seems obvious when you start off in week 1 and you say that, especially if they are a musician, but I have people that are, or not, musicians in the same room. I have the popular music performance person, I’ve got a business person, and then I’ve got a music industry person and they have different backgrounds, so some of them will get it, but when they first turn on the radio among their friends, or go to a party, and they say “Oh, I like that song”, and I often will have to say “Maybe you like that song, but maybe you like that recording”.

And so, I’ll have to go through, and then they’ll get me in the beginning when we’re talking about that. But one of the most fundamental things that they’ll get into is just that there are so many rights. You can get into name and likeness rights, you can get into video, and those kinds of areas. And video itself could be separate from the recording, separate from the song.

And so just getting to understand what these properties are, that are actually separate. Once you understand that they are separate and what they are, there’s entire businesses built upon the fact that, this is covered by this kind of copyright, this one’s covered by this kind of copyright, and this one is maybe a publicity right, or privacy right, this one is a trademark right, and those kinds of things.

So, just getting: Oh, now that I understand what that property is, now i get that a music publisher really isn’t a sheet music company, it’s a song exploitation business, it’s how do i get that song placed in any way i can.
And that song is not a recording, so it has it’s own path. So the recording has it’s own path with record labels. Or if I sync, it could be either one of them. Am I synchronizing my recording, or am I synchronizing my song, do I have both those rights? Or are they separate?
The song itself could have cowriters, then copublishers, that are separate from the record company.

When somebody comes up, especially since many of my students are coming up in electronic dance music, and they see someone that is performing as that kind of an artist, it’s even harder for them to really understand the difference because the creation process
wasn’t separate like it was when there was an, Irving Berlin wrote the song and Frank Sinatra recorded it, that kind of thing. That’s simpler to understand, you know.

If you don’t get those fundamental differences of the properties then you can’t get to the next level of how do I market this, which is not that, or I want to market this, but I can’t, because this thing’s in it, that’s not mine.

Tony Coke:
If you don’t yet know or understand each avenue of licensing, you’re not alone.
It’s a system that was created early last century, before most forms of media we use today were even imagined.
There is good news though, organizations are working to simplify and unify licensing in the coming years that should make things much easier for everyone involved.

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Paul Young is also an accomplished trombonist.
Photo courtesy of PaulYoungMusic.com

Marketing is the what artists need to learn most

Next, I asked what the most important subject is that artists need to educate themselves about in the music industry.

Paul Young:

Marketing. Since I came from a record business background, although I wasn’t the marketing guy myself, as I mentioned, I was more of a licensing guy, Marketing is the one thing that I think survives before and after the digital era. It’s done differently, but it is the keys to whether or not your going to actually get above the noise floor.

Because now that the barrier to entry is down, so many people think that is a great thing.
If you are starting off, it does feel like a great thing.
Because now i don’t have to be a package deal that is ready for a record company. I have so many other avenues. That avenue is still there, but that’s for a specific purpose of mainstreaming, a specific goal, and that’s different than I just want to make a living on this, or I have my own way that I want to do it, or I want to do my own thing and either go regional, or go into a specialization or cross over into business products.
Marketing is the one thing, if I were just to chose the word, I would say hasn’t really changed, it’s what’s most necessary.

So whether I’m going through social media, whether I’m hiring an independent marketing company, or whether I’m going to the tried and true record label to get what they do out of that in exchange for giving up my recording, I take money, but it’s not just the money to make a recording, five to ten times the value of that should be what are you going to do to raise my profile in a way that I can’t raise for myself?

That has never really changed, just the methods have become fragmented of how you do it.
So, what is it that you are marketing as your product, how do you intent to do it?
And I think a lot of people feel that if I can then just raise my profile, then the riches will spill upon me, but that’s really speculative and in most other businesses, that’s not a business plan. To say, if I go ahead and gain a lot of attention here, somehow money will just fall upon me. Most people will not invest in that. No, I need to know what your strategy is.
So, still being able to have a marketing strategy of this is what I want out of what I do.
So I don’t just make free music or mix tapes, or sell this at my shows, what is the end game of what I’m trying to accomplish?

If I want eyes on my product, if I make free videos on YouTube as a cover band, then I might get 10,000 to 10,000,000 views on that, what am I doing?
I could have actually lost an opportunity if I don’t know why I did that.
So what is it that you hope to get out of this before you necessarily start making moves towards something, otherwise it’s kind of getting in your car and driving and not knowing where you’re going. First I know where I want to be.

Then, it’s almost like a war plan. I know I want this outcome, and I’m going to make this plan, and then at least since I know where I want to be, I’ll adjust for the realities when my boots hit the ground on this, for that didn’t go well, or that did go well.
Everytime it didn’t go well is an opportunity to learn something instead of saying “Jeez maybe I’m not cut out for this.” A lot of people get beat up when they hear all of the no’s, or “that’s not working out”, “I don’t agree with your vision”, or “you need to retool that”. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong.

Overtime I’ve ever heard no, or my students say, “What should I do? I got a really bad kind of review, or I got checked out by an A&R person, and once they put it to the company, it was a resounding, defeating feeling”, kind of a thing. You learn something from that. Do you want to take that advice? Do you agree with what they are doing? Or do you want to do something different about it?

Tony Coke:
This totally hit home with me.
My band Scary Cherry and the Bang Bangs, when we released our last album, we thought, we’ll put it on iTunes, hire a PR firm, go on tour, and get tons of album sales.
But we really didn’t have a marketing plan of our own in place.

If a song is on iTunes and no one listens, does it really make a sound?

Paul Young:

Making it available doesn’t mean anybody knows it’s there.
We were just at this convention together, you and I, we were just hearing, on Spotify, with the millions of tracks there, about 50% of them have never had a single play.
So just making it available is not enough. What am I going to do to differentiate myself and draw traffic to what it is I want people to see?

In the record business, it’s always been, why do I go to a record company?
I want marketing first, an advance to make a certain kind of record I couldn’t make on my own, and a lot of people can make a record on your own, but do I want that sound? Do I want to work with that kind of producer? do I want a studio environment like this? Do I want sidemen or featured artists? These are professionals along the way and they want to be paid.
So I’m there for marketing, advance, and distrubution.

You could say, I don’t need them for distribution because I can get to iTunes and Spotify through so many other avenues, or just put it out free for myself, and that kind of thing, or on a mixtape site, or i’ll see the torrent myself. That is distribution, but why did you do it?

It could be yet more of the endless supply of things that are, that aren’t actually seen. So distribution would be strategically placed to some goal. That may be money and it might be that that leads to my concerts or something like that. Those three basics, we’re still solving the same questions.

“Let me quote my USC colleague, Prof. Mark Goldstein, when I say ‘The essential question hasn’t changed: {added by Paul Young after interview} How do I create it, market it, distribute it, monetize it.”
In record company world it’s still about, I’m going to them for the advance, distribution and marketing. And if I don’t want a record label, then how am I going to solve those problems, because now, I am a record label and I’m having to do that job.
Now I’m a company of one, you know, doing the same mission.
Do I have all of the skill sets to replace that? Are the tools that great that I can replace teams and staffs that do that?

If you can and you want to, that’s available to you. You might have a difference in scale of where you go.
So, it’s just a matter of what kind of scale do I want, what’s my objective, where am I trying to go.

Tony Coke:

So as a musician, it boils down to how do you create your music, how do you market it, how do you distribute it, and how do you monetize it?

Typically in the past record companies have provided all of this from the monetary advance to the distribution and the marketing, but if you want to do it on your own, these are problems you’re going to have to solve yourself.
Chances are, you’re going to have to start doing it all on your own, before a record company will even take notice.

We can all do it, we just have to arm ourselves with knowledge and think about what it is we really want, and have a plan to get there.

Special thanks to my guest Dr. Paul Young of the University of Southern California, my name is Tony Coke of Bands Rising.