Marketing OneOH!One: Break On Through To The Tangential Side

When I interview interns for the Ted Kurland Associates program, which I oversee here at TKA, more than a few want to know if they are going to work directly with the agents, or with management, as if the marketing side of it were tangential to their education, not only as an intern at TKA, but as a whole to their career. Of course, working with the artists is more interesting than working with the pictures of the artists; getting into the thick of the business of music is really the key to their understanding of the booking process. I know that, which is why I try and give them face time with the agents.

Artists just starting out, you may have a real career where you can afford to shave off a nice percentage for a manager; a manager who understands all this tangential business kind of stuff and can honestly oversee a marketing crew who can use all the bleeding-edge tools-of-the-minute in order to shoot your career into the stratosphere, and, even more important, keep it there. Before you get there, here is one basic term you need to understand. It’s not too hard to get, though I am perplexed when starving artists don’t even have this tool tucked under their belts. Perhaps that’s why starving artists are starving?

The marketing term for today is AUDIENCE.

As in those people who want to hear your music. To get gigs, you must have a loyal fan base. Clubs want to fill their rooms with paying customers so those customers can buy drinks, eat food, pay for all the stuff that gets labeled as “overhead.” Don’t even expect to be considered by a promoter at a large club unless you have an audience that can minimally fill his room.

Mud Folio, Almost Here

It’s been a hard slog to get this sucker, THE MUD FOLIO, published in book form. A real book, with spines, a cover, cut to size, even an ISBN number and a UPC code, not the PDF download that’s up there now.

Why? Well, while I figured out a nice looking layout for an 8.5 x 11 page print-out LULU prints their trade paperbacks at 6 by 9 inch, a bit of a different ratio. If I wasn’t so anal, I’d just change the page dimension in InDesign and be done with it. But, I had to tinker, then the tinkering didn’t look right. Then life got in the way, and now, just about THREE FREAKING YEARS later, I am ALMOST done. Not yet, but almost.

We’ve had a few hiccups along the way as well. I added them on a timely basis — updates as they happened rushed to print, “copy, boy!” — to The Mud Folio page on Facebook, which I know you’ll “like” ASAP so you can get all the up-to-the-minute info on publication dates, and news and reviews, and future attempts at humor. (I sure hope we get us some reviews. I sure hope you can get the humor.)

Now, all in one place, here’s what’s happened to us to throw us off course, delay publication, fray nerves, and otherwise make us ready for those many Fridays when just one beer would not do. Though not first in the long list of detours, that Okie Poetry Slam was perhaps the hairiest of all.

BOOK BURNING

A Letter Each From Yoko, Hunter, & Sublette

Yoko Ono, yes that Yoko Ono. I was her product manager at Rykodisc and worked intensely with her over the course of releasing the Onobox and her solo albums (and those duo Unfinished Music albums like TWO VIRGINS that she created with You-Know-Who). And yes, Robert Hunter, lyricist for the Dead. And yes, Sublette, Ned Sublette. Who? Look him up. When Rykodisc was being pulled to NYC by Chris Blackwell, I decided to get a raise and a better position instead of going back to the Big Apple with no raise, no cost-of-living increase, and no moving allowance, and in the lowly position of PM. Lowly, as they were trying to de-Rykodisc Ryko at the time with tighter marketing budgets and other de-naturing parts of their new Palm/Ryko bidness plan.

On Innovation, Flying Deloreans & Explosions In The Desert

Innovators are a strange breed. What makes them move ahead against all odds? Especially hopping over the road blocks and avoiding the potholes placed there by zealous department heads who are managing according to company policy and frameworks, plans, etc. The very fact that a plan is notated and written places it firmly lying down in the past, while the innovators are working in the present, edging toward the unknown of a future.

Jed & His Mighty Camaro & Other New Art Werks

A while back, Jed Drake, an old friend of mine from New Canaan, where we grew up among the high and mighty denizens of corporate-land, asked me to scan in a picture from our Senior yearbook so he could, I’m projecting here, luxuriate in the wayward youth of his high school years. New Canaan, for all of you not really interested in such things to know these facts already, was the home of Watson and Watson Jr, both of IBM fame, Noyes, who gave IBM, Mobil Oil and Westinghouse their look and feel, Johnson, he of the Glass House which is also in town, and Symington, Senator Symington to you, bub. Letterman lived there for a bit, Jack Paar too. Harry Connick Jr is a resident, as is Brian Williams, Glenn Beck, Paul Simon and Anne Coulter. Now there’s a group I’d like to see pull up to MacKenzies for the Sunday paper at the same time and bash it out with their views on the weeks events. Hey, I saw Letterman pull up there one Sunday, so it could happen.

Jed, back then, never did luxuriate in anything; he was passing through too fast to do any such thing, unless he had too many beers. Which was few and far between, as Jed never met a six-pack he couldn’t handle. But now, as a high-powered exec with many minions to handle and keep in line, including kids, I’m guessing he wanted to have that picture around to remind him of those 1970s. I got around to the scan too late — already on vacation, good scanner still in the office, time was not on my side, etc. — and so Jed got his wife to do it, which I didn’t know when I did finally scan it in at high-resolution and took the time to tweak the image a bit so it would look all dandy in his nice corner office.

That’s Jed there in the shadow of the window, huge freaking smile. Who wouldn’t what with that car, those cheerleaders, in that town? Yeah, yeah, it’s a Chevelle SS 396 w/ Cowl Induction, as Stu Young commented below, not a Camaro, as a handful of guys have since corrected me, not a Camaro. Like I knew cars back then? Or now? I could tell you who was in The Mothers Of Invention, that Max Ernst called his painting style, frottage–sexual innuendo embedded to disrupt the art establishment–and knew the words to Yes’ “Roundabout”, but don’t ask me what they mean. (While I could now ask Mr Anderson, as we rep him at Ted Kurland Associates, some youthful enthusiasms that I thought profound then should best be left unquestioned.) I could also tell you that since this was a bright sunny day, the shutter speed for this picture, if it was shot on Plus-X, was probably 200, with an f-stop of f16 or smaller. But cars, as you see, I knew a little more than squat. Which is one reason I’m taking the picture and Jed is in the picture. With the girls. Cowl induction? Sorry, but not in this kid’s lexicon.

Listen To Your Parents And Then…

Full disclosure here: I’m a parent. My eldest is currently at Boston University and another one who will be college-bound in a few years. I would love for both to land a job directly from one of their internships; with their freebie work acting like one long interview process. That would be very cool. And it happens. I’ve seen articles outlining the successes, where to apply for these programs and how students should consider doing that very thing in order to streamline their career path. I also know parents push their children to look for internships at prestigious companies with this very idea in mind. Don’t do it. For a whole cartload of reasons. Or at the very least, don’t expect anything and carry on like you will never get the carrot of the job they are dangling in front of you. Because you might not.

You Don’t Know Anything and Your Ideas Are Worthless (No, Seriously, Get Used To It…)

In your first job (out here in the business world) there will be times when people are not going to listen to you. Many times. Or worse, tell you how wrong you are to your face, if not in an all-caps email that gets circulated throughout the company. Get used to it because it never ends, even when you get that so-called “experience” under your proverbial belt. For whatever reason, and there are multitudes of them that I could not possibly list here and stay within my allotted 400 words. Let me just say the personal successes and failures of your co-workers and, most importantly for today’s blog, YOUR FUTURE BOSSES, gives them their own specific, personal tunnel-vision that you cannot expect to fully perceive, much less fathom.

Kerouac-Kicks Joy Darkness – article for Borders’ Magazine

Kerouac-Kicks Joy Darkness is a spoken-word tribute with music to the writings of Jack Kerouac through readings of his material (including a few previously unpublished pieces) by such Beat luminaries as Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and William Burroughs; alternative music figures such as Michael Stipe, Eddie Vedder, and Patti Smith; and actors like Johnny Depp and Matt Dillon. Here David Greenberg, co-creator of Rykodisc’s Voices spoken-word recordings series, describes some of the special circumstances that went into the creation of this landmark recording.

This Is A Dangerous Album

Alan Douglas licensed Rykodisc the rights to re-release Leary’s You Can Be Anyone This Time Around album in 1992. Originally, it was recorded at the heyday of Leary’s popularity in the late 1960s, but the full truth about the album sessions had to wait thirty years in the future, when we were allowed to put the full artist listing on the album. Jimi Hendrix played bass on one track! Okay, not earth shattering, but pretty wild to me, at least. Since Hendrix had long since passed and his record company—Warner Bros.—was not going to sue the ass off of Douglas for recording Hendrix outside of his contract and releasing an album with an illegal performance, we added this rock history factoid to our release. “Finally,” Jon Sebastian thanked me after sending him a slew of copies. “Everyone thinks I’m lying when I say I jammed with Jimi.”