Not everything that springs to mind about the current music scene, or this blog, needs a full post on its own. Every once in a while, I'll gather up a few quick thoughts about current events.
• Dolly pulls out – Dolly Parton wrote a sweet, perfectly worded letter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame voting committee a few days ago asking to have her name removed from consideration for induction. Dolly’s among the group currently being voted on by the general public and is in fourth place, right behind Duran Duran, Eminem, and Pat Benatar. If she doesn’t slip any lower before the voting stops on April 29th, she’ll be eligible to be part of the top five vote getter’s "fan ballot." My guess is her announcement, based on her contention that she “hasn’t earned the right” because she’s never made a rock and roll record, while totally admirable and in keeping with her public image, will likely cause her percentage of the public vote to increase before the end of April. A Cleveland TV station reported yesterday that Dolly’s announcement already seems to have given her a bump of about 5,000 votes.
The bottom line, though, is that requesting to be removed from the HOF ballot has been attempted before, by a handful of artists, and typically doesn’t make any difference once the nominees are announced and the voting starts. The most famous examples are the Sex Pistols, Ozzy Osbourne, and Axl Rose, who all announced real or imagined disagreements with the selection process. All three were selected anyway, and all three boycotted their induction ceremony (Although Ozzy got over his objections when Black Sabbath was inducted). It'll be interesting to see if the HOF will grant Dolly’s request to be removed from the ballot, but history suggests they won’t. What may persuade the committee in her case, though, is that at the end of the day she’s really, truly, like she said, not a rock and roll artist and has never pretended to be.
• Will Bandcamp become more Epic? - In the current world of digital entrepreneurship, a viable business model is to develop and grow an online site that appeals to a significant segment of global consumers, gains a large following and overall goodwill, and then sell it to a larger, wealthier company. The news that Bandcamp was recently sold to Epic Games is a recent example and one that’s causing no small amount of concern to independent musicians and their fans around the world.
I had heard of Bandcamp over the last couple of years without actually engaging with the site or fully diving into what it is. My opportunity came when I streamed a new album called The Maestro’s Tale by a new Seattle-area prog rock band called What Strange Beasts. I loved what I heard, The Maestro’s Tale is as fresh and fun a take on old-school prog as I’ve heard in decades, and I wanted to add the vinyl version to my collection, it’s ready-made for deep-focus listening on the ol’ turntable. Some research led me to ordering a copy of the vinyl from Bandcamp, the only option. What Strange Beasts don’t have a recording contract at this point, they had copies of the album pressed themselves and are using Bandcamp to facilitate the sales. (It all went very smoothly, by the way. Ordering a copy was simple, and the album showed up on my front porch, in perfect condition, about two weeks earlier than their estimated date of arrival.)
In a nutshell, Bandcamp has provided a home online for up-and-coming bands and artists to get their music in front of the public. Artists and labels can upload digital files to the site and consumers can listen once for free, before deciding if they want to purchase a download in a wide variety of digital formats, including lossless. Musicians can also make physical formats, CDs, cassettes, and vinyl, available for purchase on Bandcamp, as well as merch like t-shirts, concert tickets, and posters. Bandcamp steps in to facilitate vinyl pressing for artists if they want to make that investment, with the artists allowed to set their own pricing for the final product. Compared to streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, which pay pennies per stream to musicians, Bandcamp’s business model sends about 80% of revenue earned through the site to the creators. Bandcamp raised its profile and created a ton of goodwill during the pandemic by initiating “Bandcamp Fridays,” when they waived their cut of artist revenues and sent musicians 100% of all sales one day a week. They also donated 100% of their own profits on June 19, 2020 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund during the protests over the George Floyd shooting.
Whether it was the founder’s original plan or an opportunity that arose, the guys who started Bandcamp just sold it to Epic Games, most famous for the development of Fortnite and Gears of War, as well as a platform known as “Unreal Engine,” used by other successful game developers. Epic doesn’t have a great history of benign leadership, they’ve been to court with Apple and Android over their attempts to uber-monetize their game properties, so I, and most other observers, don’t expect the acquisition to be a good thing for musicians trying to get their foot in the door of an increasingly difficult to navigate music business. Epic will, no doubt, want a return on their investment, and it will most likely come from the only place it can - the musician’s share of the revenue. Right now, independent musicians everywhere are waiting for the next shoe to drop.
• Negative space – I used to write a weekly book review column that was used as a promotional tool for a group of bookstores. I decided early on that I wasn’t going to include negative reviews of books I didn’t like, and not only because they would make for a pretty lame promotional tool for a company trying to sell the titles. I just didn’t think it was worth the time since taste is subjective anyway, and I wanted to use my limited space to boost the books I liked and felt deserved a wider audience. I intend to stick to the same philosophy with Earworm City. I won’t be doing write-ups of new albums that make me lose my lunch, with one possible area of exception. Since the overarching theme of the blog is to make new music more accessible to older music fans, I intend to offer at least a red flag when new songs or records are released by artists who were active during the classic rock era, but aren’t really who they say they are anymore.
On one hand, you have great bands like Cheap Trick, who became famous across the world in the 1970s, and have never stopped being a vital working band. Their most recent album, In Another World, sold well and made a whole lot of music writer’s “Best of 2021” lists in a year when rock wasn’t exactly a dominant commercial force. If somebody who came of age in the classic rock era is a little curious about them these days I’d just say “go for it,” pick any recent album and have a listen. I’ll review new releases by Cheap Trick just like I would any other current band.
On the other hand, you have bands like Yes, the first progressive rock band to make a real charge up the U.S. charts when they released Fragile and “Roundabout” became a massive hit single in 1972, despite its non-radio-friendly length. You may or may not have noticed that Yes released a new album in 2021, too, The Quest. Of the musicians who created and recorded Fragile back in the day, exactly one, guitarist Steve Howe, was involved in the making of The Quest. The current lineup of Yes is not the one you might be remembering, and I wrote a fairly negative review of the new album. Because it’s a weak imitation of their classic sound, and because it sucks.
The Doobie Brothers are another relevant example. They released Liberté in 2021, seven years after their previous album. Not only have there been changes in the lineup over the decades they’ve been together, there are two distinct hit-making periods in their history that don’t sound much like each other. I posted a more positive review of Liberté with the caveat that it was NOT the Michael McDonald-led version of the band that hit multi-platinum sales with Takin’ It to the Streets and Minute by Minute. The current lineup is closer to the original Simmons/Johnston/McFee version that first won them fans with Toulouse Street and The Captain and Me, although, in truth, Liberté didn’t sound much like those great albums either.
Bottom line, if I’m reviewing brand new music on Earworm City you’re only going to get the good stuff, the records that raise goosebumps on my arms. If a classic-era artist or band puts out something new, I'll be here to offer a consumer guide of sorts for the fans who may remember them and have their curiosity piqued.
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