Don’t Come Back as a Hologram

New single by Kurious “Much Higher”

The new single from uptown NY legend, Kurious. Produced by J. Cosell and myself for Team Demo and recorded and mixed by yours truly at Depth Charge Studios. The single is circulating through promotional channels now and will be available for digital sale at the end of April. Below is a stream of the clean version so you can play it for the kiddies.

http://player.theorchard.com/orchardplayer/player/viewplayer/type/artwork/id/917

Why I’ve Never Fully Bought Into the Image Thing

In my early days as an artist, A & R record industry types always had a lot to say to me about image.  I understood its importance in the music business, but I didn’t put nearly the weight on it that the they did.  My primary concern was my art, creativity and the execution of my craft.  I believed, and still do, that those things matter much more to people than appearance and I believed this because that was always the case when it came to the music I purchased and enjoyed.

When I was a kid, I almost always heard a song before ever seeing the artist behind it.  MTV was in its infancy and radio was still the primary outlet for new music.  I made up my mind whether I liked a record or not before ever seeing the artist.  When I finally would see the video for the record, it would either reinforce my enjoyment of the song, or it wouldn’t.  I can’t think of a single artist or record that I liked but then stopped liking it when I saw the video or a picture of the artist.

I remember really liking Prince’s music, but when I saw him for the first time, my pre-teen mind couldn’t appreciate the androgynous image.  Simply put, I thought he was a sissy.  But that didn’t make me stop liking his music or from buying “Purple Rain” on cassette.  It just made me think he was a weirdo.  When I heard Big Daddy Kane for the first time, I had no idea what he looked like, but I loved his music.  When I saw his album cover and videos, I thought he was a bad ass.  This reinforced his music with me but I still had my objectivity.  When Kane began making some records I didn’t like, his image was of no consequence to me.  I did not buy the records because I did not like music. As Kane’s sales declined, some record executive I’m sure got in his ear and updated his image.  Out came Kane in a hoody and bandanna- a complete 180 from his prior dapper approach. He looked pathetic but more importantly, the music was still in decline.  Had the album been good, I would have bought it despite what he was wearing. But it wasn’t and his image shift only made him look desperate.

When I was in grade school, my partner DJ Dialtone would get records shipped to him every week.  His cousin got him a subscription to a record pool so we were getting access to new music often times months before it would hit the airwaves.  One day I remember we pulled out a promo record in a plain jacket.  The label simply read, Vanilla Ice, “Ice Ice Baby.” We had never seen the artist before and knew nothing about him. We got two-thirds of the way through “Ice Ice Baby” before Dialtone took it off the turntable and smashed it into pieces.  Why? That record sucked.  When the video hit MTV a month later, we were both together and we busted out laughing when we saw him.  The guy looked like a total tool!  Now one might reply, “yes Wise but he sold something like 11 million records.” This is true.  But given the path his career would take immediately following the success of the record, I prefer to look at it as he fooled 11 million people.

And that’s really what image in the music business is all about isn’t it? Fooling people.  It’s why most music is marketed towards a small demographic of younger people who are more susceptible to being fooled.  It is far easier to those with either no musical talent or understanding of it to take mediocre music and trick people into liking it rather than putting together a quality product that sells itself.

Now, as an older music professional and CEO, I still hear the same image spiel from industry insiders and from artists complaining about them.  Hell I’ve probably been guilty of it myself ( if I have it has only been due to a quiet contempt for the music buying public that resurfaces every now and again when I see them falling for some bullshit, but I quickly stifle it.) I want to think that most people, especially those a little bit older with more discretionary income, choose their music by how it hits their ears and not their eyes.  I loved Amy Winehouse and Adele’s music long before I ever saw what they looked like.  It just doesn’t matter what their jeans size is.  I liked Aaliyah’s music when I was a kid, but her being beautiful only made me want to have sex with her, not buy her record.  I believe most people know the difference between those two desires and I believe when it comes down to artistic merit, those who make the best music will sell regardless of their image.  It is only in the vast sea of mediocrity, where the goal of the label is to fool a specific demographic into believing something is really good just long enough to get their money, where image actually means a damn thing.

The First 14 Years of My Career on a Shelf

Digital & analog Tracking tapes, DAT Masters, 3.5 inch Floppy discs & video footage representing 1989 - 2003

I try to keep everything I have ever worked on.  In the days before music could be easily stored as hard drive data, a busy music professional could build quite a collection of media.  This is my new Ikea bookshelf in the lounge at Depth Charge Studios.  I purchased it to store & present my collection of works from the first fourteen years of my career.  The bottom three rows contain double stacks of ADAT track tapes.  There are more than 100 completely filled sets each containing an average of 10 songs each.  That’s quite a few records.  It is also important to note that most of my clients had their own tapes, so this stack only contains all of my company’s productions and recordings along with recordings by studio clients who rented tape from us.

The middle row contains VHS and Digital 8 video tapes of our shows, music videos, making of music videos, various studio sessions etc.  This is one of the few libraries I consider incomplete.  I am missing a lot of video footage from over the years which I would love to have.  If any one has any old Team Demolition or Lower Life Forms concert footage from back in the day, please let me know.

The next row up contains floppy and zip discs storing mostly beats I made on the ASR-10 from 1993 – 2003. The top row contains more than 75 DAT master tapes (digital tapes used to store the final mixed and mastered stereo mixes of records) and more than 60 four-track analog tracking tapes which contain my crew’s early work from 1989 – 1994.  It is pretty amazing to stand back and look at this knowing it represents such an enormous portion of my life.  Thanks to hard drives, my work from 2004 to the present is stored on a couple of machines no bigger than a typical paperback novel.  While the convenience of that is fantastic, it doesn’t look quite this cool.

Recording Studio Etiquette – Lesson 1

This will be the first of a probably never-ending series within my blog that will outline proper recording studio etiquette.  As the owner of a commercial recording facility for sixteen years, I believe I am as qualified as one can be to speak on this subject.  Hopefully, you will at least be entertained and perhaps learn from my observations and analysis.

Since this is lesson 1, let’s start at the beginning.  Real recording studios operate like doctor’s offices and law firms, not fast food restaurants.  Recording studios see clients by appointment and will most likely be unable to accommodate you walking in off the street.  It is totally unprofessional to show up at a recording studio, presumably while staff and clients are in sessions, and ask for a tour or worse, try to buy studio time on site for immediate use.  This happens at my facility at minimum once  a week.  Someone calls asking for our hours and informs us that they will be coming by in a little bit to do some recording.   It’s even worse when they show up at our door wanting to use the studio.  These are people who have never used our facility before and have no history with us.   I then have to  explain that we are booked for the day and that they have to call and set up an account before booking sessions.  Busy studios like ours usually book a week to ten days in advance.  Even if no one were using the studio I can’t just work with someone I’ve never met who walks in off the street.  I have seen a couple of ragtag studios attempt a fast food business model and almost all of them fail because inevitably, people either go to real studios and see that is not the way the business is practiced, or worse, the studio gets robbed and eventually closes because they can no longer obtain affordable insurance.

I once had a new client call the studio to inquire about using the facility.  After a nice conversation he told me he wanted to schedule some time so I began to take down his information so I could set up a new account for him in our system.  When I asked him for his name, he gave me a nickname.  I told him I was cool calling him that but I needed his legal name for liability purposes.  He told me he didn’t give out his legal name to anyone.  I told him that we would be unable to do business together. He got angry.  I explained to him that we can’t have people using our $100,000 + facility without a responsible party attached in the event something is stolen, broken etc.  We need to know with whom we are doing business.  I told him I’m sure his physician and lawyer knew his real name and if he wanted me to be his engineer, so would I.  He gave in under the pressure of the logic of my argument, but I was almost upset with myself for even making the argument in the first place.  How likely would it be that this person would make a good client if he’s that unprofessional?  I should have just told him to have a nice day and hung up the phone.

So in summary… Studios aren’t restaurants.  You need an appointment and you need at least a semi-formal business arrangement.  If you don’t want a copy of your invoice, that’s fine.  But it will be in our system and accounted for.  If this is unacceptable to you, I believe there is a so-called studio in Northeast being run by undercover cops that would gladly accept you walking up to the door and knocking.

That’s Entertainment

Part of the business of entertainment is taking advantage of the inexperience and narrow frame of reference of youth by presenting things to them as unique and exceptional when they really have been done a million times before and don’t require much talent to produce.  The reason why the vast majority of media is marketed towards the youngest of all demographics is because they are not nearly as picky and discriminating as adults.  An adult has much more discretionary income than a teenager, but that same adult is typically more difficult to entertain; simply because he has lived longer, experienced more and has a much greater bank of wisdom with which he can compare and contrast what one is selling.  Therefore, the smarter business move is to market to the less informed demographic where chance of monetary success is greater.  As each generation ages a few years and acquires more knowledge of the world, they usually figure out that much of the things they enjoyed weren’t really as good as they once thought, and this realization not so coincidentally occurs right around the age they are leaving the target demographic.   When unique high-quality entertainment does occasionally emerge on the scene, older generations gravitate to it like a well in a desert.

The older one gets, the less easily one is impressed.  If you are finding it more and more difficult to be entertained, don’t worry.  You’re just growing up.

My Resolution

The average urban music career is one and a half albums. The average attention span of a modern music enthusiast is about a second and a half. Add these two things together and it is easy to see why so many of the artists I work with have no idea that I was one of them not so long ago. In fact, they would be fortunate to have a career where they made the money my crew and I earned, sold the records we sold, toured the places we toured and broke the ground that we broke. We had videos before there was a Youtube. We were featured in The Source and scores of magazines that have been gone so long one probably hasn’t heard of them either. We were on WPGC when we were in high school.  Our records charted on CMJ and Rap Attack for a decade. Much of our music was available online; in the sense that one could order it from an online record store on vinyl, cd or cassette. (Side note: In 1999, I signed an online distribution deal with a company called CDuctive. We received a $2000 advance for the rights to distribute our catalog. That company was later aquired and then they were aquired until one day, they became The Orchard.)

If you’ve never heard of my crew and our work, I don’t take it personally. A hip hop generation spans about 3 or 4 years. That generation is usually only aware of the generation that immediately preceeded their own, and the one that follows. With the exception of my “Mister Wise Album” which came out in 2010, all of my records as an artist were released independently between 1996 and 2004. Only the few scholars of the current generation know about the Depth Charge label, the Lower Life Forms and the Team Demolition projects (but I digress at the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney.)

Fortunately, there are many from in and around my generation who do remember.  It is the demand of these individuals that drive up the price of our early out of print vinyl and who post our old music on web sites that are designed to spotlight the works of an underground era.  It is these people who have sent me a number of requests to make available our old catalog and unreleased tracks.  And it is in part, them who have inspired to make my New Year’s resolution to do so.

My company only released a dozen or so 12 inch singles and a half a dozen albums in our history.  However, that represents just a small fraction of the material we produced and recorded.  In the early 90s, we recorded our music on 4 Track tape.  I still have the working machine and all 62 tapes which contain more than 250 songs, (most of which never made it to market.) I also have more than 85 sets of ADAT tapes containing our music that was recorded between 1995 and 2003.  We are still cataloging these, but I estimate there are 300-350 songs on those tapes.  I am personally going to be spending my spare time dumping and archiving all of these tracks from both of these formats to hard drives over the next several months.  From there, I will restore, re-mix and re-master all that I find redeemable, and make as many of them available as I can.  I also have plans to take some of this material and re-work it.  (Vocals placed over new music, lost beats remade or completely remixed etc.)

When all is said and done, I believe those who do hear this anthology of sorts will enjoy the creativity, passion, unique ideals and honest artistry my crew represented.  If a youngster wants to have a listen, have at it, but I’m not doing this for them.  I’m doing this for myself.  The digital age allows me to preserve for both posterity and enjoyment, that which was the central focus of my life for a dozen years.  Doing so allows me to truly close that chapter of my life, and have a ton of fun in the process.

HANGING AT DEPTH CHARGE STUDIOS WITH FRED DAVIS

Washington Redskins tight-end Fred Davis has been a client at Depth Charge since his rookie year. 

Proper Credit

I don’t care if listeners know I worked on a record. Most of them are only concerned with whether or not they like the song. Those that do care about credits will do the research and figure it out. I also don’t tag and stamp my tracks. If you use my stuff without permission, I call my lawyer. So long as the people who cut the checks know my work, I’m good. Furthermore, I’ve always found it tacky for producers names or voices to be heard on records. I understand that people don’t read liner notes any more (if they even exist) and so it may be tempting for a beatmaker to have his name shouted on a record, but I make my living doing what I do. For many, that shout out is their only payment, so I don’t begrudge them. But for me, I let the artist shine.

All that being said, if you’re going to credit me, get it right. I would rather you not credit me at all if you’re going to misspell my name, credit someone else for my work, credit everyone else for their contributions while omitting mine, or credit me for something I didn’t do. Errors like these are unprofessional, and I don’t want to be associated with Bush League projects. Read the contract or the invoice. If you have any questions, send an e-mail. Pick up the phone. Do yourself a service and get it right.

Out front of Depth Charge Studios with Nikki Jean

So I'm out running errands when I return to find my wife shooting pictures of Nikki and her new scarf out front of the studio.

I apparently was in a hurry to get back to work (imagine that) and left Nikki hanging for the second shot. Sorry darling.

Nikki's album, "Pennies in a Jar," is available in stores and online on S-Curve/ Universal Records. She is currently on tour in Japan and Australia.