Coldwater Canyon April 1, 2009
Posted by coqfosters in All your life, Music business.Tags: checklist, life, los angeles, music, work
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I forgot what it felt like to swear in traffic, to race through a yellow, to commute in anything newer than an R44. So in that sense, Sunset Blvd in the morning has given me a new lease on life. Turning the corner onto Vine with the Capitol tower in the foreground has been an incredible feeling. Walking over the stars of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and more on the walk of fame has been bizarre. And walking into the tower has been remarkable, one of those things that most folks who work there might take for granted.
This is what getting into the business was supposed to be about, that old school record label feeling, the platinum plaques, the studios, the history. LA as a whole is a special but barely tolerable mess, but the tower is the jewel in the crown, a true landmark – one of few universally recognisable landmarks after the Hollywood sign itself.
I have problems doing the ‘tourist’ thing. I only came out here if I could get them to let me work, and I’m not really fussed about doing the things people need to do. Maybe it’s a New York thing, you live in the best city in the country and you start to think that nothing else matters. Driving across America last year taught me otherwise. There’s something special about LA, but the things you have to tolerate and manage in LA are the things that you never think about in New York. And I’m not a beach person.
But I love a good drive. Especially on secluded, winding roads. For all of the money I spent on getting a car out here, I haven’t been able to really drive on any street at any time that didn’t have any degree of traffic. It hadn’t really been enjoyable. So I ran a few errands in town and then headed out for the hills. That’s when you realise: it isn’t so much the things in the city that make the city special, it’s the things this city represents: stardom and seclusion, the ability to buy yourself a palace far above everyone and with a view of everything. To live a life where you’ll be seen more in a week than most people will in their lifetime, and then be able to bury yourself away in the side of a mountain on a street that bends like a contortionist on Robaxin. And some of them are probably on Robaxin.
So I drove up, away from Hollywood and Beverly Hills, to see those things, to get out on the open road, up Mulholland Drive and Coldwater Canyon and other streets which have had films named after them and if they haven’t, doubtlessly will in future. Simply marvellous: Stopping at scenic stopovers high above the smog, where you can see for miles. Getting lost and not knowing which way is which. Having to be careful to make the hairpin turn and not fall off the side of the mountain.
I may not ever get the stereotypical experience but I always want to get the memorable ones. Stopping at absolutely classic diners in Hollywood off the beaten path, ending up in a plainly bizarre used record store on Ventura Blvd in Studio City, keeping calm on the 101 with the new Gomez record, watching the sun set over Dana Point: all things to remember this trip by. The harsh realities of the greatest city await, but before I go back we might try and have a few more nights of unexpected, if memorable, moments.
You Belong To The Gang November 7, 2008
Posted by coqfosters in All your life, Music business.Tags: music, work
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A dawn obscured by a slate sky raining…
November 5th could only be described as the morning after the night before. But this isn’t about an election. We all got into work hungover (from any combination of celebration or happiness), on an overcast day. I passed a Spanish restaurant on my way in that said “President Obama likes tapas.” Everyone was having a laugh!
I got called down just after lunch to be part of a group to go and hear the new Decemberists album as they were finishing it up at the recording studio. So we walked down in the rain, met up with the band, heard about the record, heard the record. It was an incredible experience. I’d never been in a room before listening to music with the person who made it, nevermind before the rest of the world had heard it! It was such a truly special experience. I was excited, I felt like I was part of something – much like many people felt the night before!
Later that night we headed over to Terminal 5 for their gig. They cancelled on New York last year, and they were making it up now. And how. I liked the Decemberists, they quickly became one of my favourite bands on the label after I joined. The Colin Meloy Sings Live! solo album is one of the best live albums I’ve ever heard. I was excited, but completely unprepared for the night to come.
The venue was completely full. I was on the second tier, looking down from the balcony, with probably two dozen work mates. It was full on party mode. The sheer mention of Obama put the entire audience into complete pandemonium. The show itself was incredible. From playing “the first ever guitar solo at Terminal 5 played with a peacock feather” handed forward from the crowd, to passing along a cardboard cutout of Obama which crowd surfed the audience… the night was full of events from the ridiculous to the sublime.
At one stage Colin grabbed someone’s phone out of the front row and called someone randomly and sang Culling of the Fold down the phone. Valerie Plame was dedicated to the outgoing administration and gathered a massive cheer. For the trainspotters, Colin dropped Dracula’s Daughter into the bridge of O Valencia! Hilarious! I know it’s so predictable, but I sang every word on The Engine Driver and We Both Go Down Together, my two favourites.
And if you don’t love me let me go…
The main part of the set ran about 2 hours. No one left. They came back for an encore. Sons & Daughters was tremendous, the perfect send off. The crowd moved together, sang together, clapped together, the band wouldn’t continue until we all snapped together as well. We watched the crowd filter out from above into the night, still soaked by the rain. These nights are special when you realise you do ‘belong to the gang,’ when an experience can be so moving and fill you with so much hope and joy. I said this wasn’t about an election, but I suppose it’s probably about that too.
Lady’s Bridge November 2, 2008
Posted by coqfosters in All your life, Music business.Tags: europe, life, music, work
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The idea of an album about a place, whether in name alone or in actual execution, is always incredible. I’m listening to Richard Hawley’s Lady’s Bridge right now, the album which takes its name from the bridge of the same name in Sheffield, linking the Wicker with Waingate. Fantastic sounding places, but you can find that out on Wikipedia.
Obviously the cross-section of listeners who can directly relate is always going to be limited depending where the artist is from (even if it’s a place like London or New York which are like outer space to most people who live in those cities’ respective countries). And I’ve never been to Sheffield. But Lady’s Bridge creates a magnificent association, it makes you want to experience what inspired Hawley. He’s one of those artists that I never really listened to as much as I should, despite his being involved in what seems like scores of projects from artists I always loved, particularly most Jarvis Cocker projects.
Tonight just seemed like a perfect night to put this album on. I look forward to nights in more than nights out. As much as I love an exceptional night out, there’s still nothing better than listening to a great album. It’s why it’s so hard for me to succumb to logic and leave the music industry – I could be doing so much better elsewhere! But the availability of great music always makes it worth the punishment and masochism involved in working in an industry run by know-nothings and do-littles, hell-bent on architecting the demise of art as we know it. Listening to Lady’s Bridge on the weekend makes the week tolerable. It’s not a record for the train, lush soundscapes that would get lost in the hustle and bustle (is bustle ever used in a sentence without being preceded by “hustle”?) of every day life. He must owe much inspiration, as his mate Cocker does, to Scott Walker. Roy Orbison is channelled here as well. It’s wonderful listening.
Every so often I do get the feeling that I should have done more when I was younger, in the same way I wonder whether in the future I’ll feel like spending the time in on the weekends now will feel like throwing away the best years of my life. A good record takes all of that away. It eliminates any undercurrent of negativity. It’s the only real relevant anaesthetic and certainly the cheapest. A good record makes you feel like things are possible.
Like Lady’s Bridge, I used to love writing about places, once I got over the idea of writing about frivolous things that generally get you worked up when you’re a teenager. Everyone wants to write songs about love but when there is something concrete in the shape of geography that can be attached to feelings and ideas, the result is so much more real. There is more romance in that than there is in love itself, a vacant concept.
Speaking of which, it looks like Paris is becoming a very real thing, pencilled in for 2/19 at the moment. It feels like an album release date, you just try to get everything lined up ahead of time and hope it doesn’t have to get pushed back for some reason. I’m excited, probably more excited than I’ve been for a trip in a long time. The transcontinental trip in May was amazing, but much more spontaneous. It will be great to have time to think about all the things I want to do ahead of time. If nothing else, it’s justification for staying in on a Saturday night to plan the next adventure. When you have the soundtrack and the inspiration, all that’s left to do is execute. It’s time to make a date with Air France.
In the meantime, I recommend: Richard Hawley – Tonight The Streets Are Ours
The Gloves Are Off October 5, 2008
Posted by coqfosters in All your life, Music business, NYC.Tags: checklist, life, music, new york, work
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Growing up is all about figuring out where you stand. I felt like I found it harder than most folks, because I got tired of what I was being fed in the media a bit quicker than anyone I knew. It seemed like in high school you liked Nirvana and Nine Inch Nails or you liked Biggie and Pac, or you liked DMB and Phish, or if you had particularly unfortunate taste, ICP and Limp Bizkit… and that was pretty much that.
But I liked Blur and Pulp. And everything that spirals from there. Eventually I read in the NME that you can’t really love a band until you see them live. Out of defensiveness I contended that point – and I still will – but experience has shown that when you see a band you really love, it’s a special moment. Friends would go and see shows (shows I should have seen but didn’t care about at the time), and I would wonder if I would ever get to see MY bands perform. But they never came to Michigan.
Eventually you get to the point where you can borrow the car and drive to Detroit or Chicago. Surely everyone had to come to Detroit or Chicago. But even then, after high school or during college if I was lucky enough to get away, you’d see your band in a 500-1000 capacity venue. And while it was intimate, it wasn’t always right for the music… and certainly not for thinking you were a part of something BIG. I wanted to be a part of something magical.
Last night I went to see Hot Chip at Terminal 5. When I was younger I would want to be the first one in the door so I could stand right down the front and be as close as possible to my heroes. These days my line of work affords me the luxury of VIP passes so I can get the best view in the house and not come away from every show with banged up ribs. It’s amazing how your priorities change the older you get. Anyhow I digress – as I was standing on the balcony looking over the 2,500+ crowd on the floor, I was amazed at the reception, the energy, the fervour for such a niche artist. Here in New York, on this night, with this artist, was what I always wanted to experience growing up. It’s what I never thought I could be a part of, what I never thought I would see: one of MY bands, playing to a more than receptive audience, everyone’s hands in the air, everyone dancing. Part of me felt ashamed for not being right in there amongst it all.
The music was immense. I’ve only had a handful of concert experiences like it, ever. I said to someone at the show, they’re the only band of this generation that can touch what Pop Will Eat Itself was trying to do in the early 90s, before they went industrial, when they were a fun loving pop band of ugly guys doing wacky instrumentation and crazy antics, and drew a hardcore devoted following as a result. Hot Chip are one of those bands too, where everything is so bizarre, so out there, but yet so pop and so accessible and so human that it can’t fail to move you. It was tribal. Everyone in the room was part of this incredible experience, everyone walked away happy, everyone was moved.
I’ve been starting to realise the older you get, the more you think about the opportunities you missed when you were younger, how important it is to live with immediacy, to try and accomplish as much as possible. Terminal 5 is a long way from the shitty venues I grew up with, and being able to look around and seeing so many great friends couldn’t have been further from the old days of begging people to go with me to those shitty venues. The event was a proper celebration we all shared, but privately, and perhaps most importantly, another ambition realised. One I hadn’t thought about for years.
Think Tank September 7, 2008
Posted by coqfosters in All your life, Music business, NYC.Tags: foster kids, life, music, new york, work
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If we stop dreaming now, lord knows we’ll never clear the clouds…
Today, again, was marvellous on account of simplicity. I feel like I’m rediscovering weekends, even if it’s impossible to actually do most of what I want. I still think weekends should be three days: Monday should be replaced with FUNDAY and the work week proper should start on Tuesday, which is appropriate because ever since school, Tuesday has been by and large the most shit day of the week.
I had this feeling I had to listen to Blur. 1992 had been in my head, so I put it on my headphones as I walked on to the train. What an amazing song! Not at all relevant to my life right now but there was a time it was, and as someone told me years ago “Blur is the band that soundtracks your experiences growing up.” They’ve been my favourite band for well over a decade now as a result. I hadn’t meant to listen to Blur all day long, but I just kept listening, kept rediscovering hidden parts of songs I hadn’t fully appreciated before. That’s when you know you love a great band.
I listened to most of 13, Blur and Think Tank along with the associated b-sides. Black Book is a track I couldn’t fully appreciate when I was younger, but what a stunning song. The fact I can still get so excited about a band after so many years and years is something I’ll be eternally thankful for – this band gave me everything, opening my ears to new bands along the way and, eventually, my career.
I was standing on the platform at 145th on my way home, waiting what felt like an eternity when Out Of Time came on. This was one of those great moments. Damon’s vocal on that track is arresting. I paid more attention to the words… if we stop dreaming now, etc. Things are changing in my life. It’s one of those periods where you can feel things changing bit by bit and it leads you in an altogether new direction.
This week I decided to start my own label – Foster Kids. It was evident – this was the moment to capitalise on my newly recaptured creativity and enthusiasm for music. I believe in music, I believe in bands, I believe in the industry, I believe that people want to buy it and I believe I can give it to them. That’s not really happening at work and hasn’t been for some time, should that stop me? I say no. I can’t say how long it’s going to take to get started. I’m targeting January 2009, could be sooner, could be later. I’ve been working vigourously on all manner of details that need to get sorted out, vision, branding, business plan, logo, packaging concepts, artists, deals, meetings. It’s very exciting.
The weekends have been playing out at a fairly routine pace, not sure if that is good or bad. It’s a ritual for me to head down to Beard Papa for refreshments, and lately walk across Soho to look at clothes and furniture I largely can’t afford but will someday and then stop off at Kid Robot to buy toys. Sometimes meeting up with friends, sometimes for a movie, sometimes not. I’ve been obsessed with the Me! I’m French Dunny series at Kid Robot and there’s a new series that’s just come out this week. I got some crayons to create my own Munny, I feel like I’ll want to create quite a few. The beauty of Blur in all of this is that it’s music that inspires nostalgia and creativity and, in the midst of all the chaos elsewhere (mainly the workplace), gets back to my ROOTS. I say it time and again, I sound like a broken record: there’s a reason you come to a place like New York and that’s because you want to become an even bigger fish. For every person that comes from somewhere else, it’s inevitably because they’re living life in a goldfish bowl and can’t grow any more. Drawing on toys obviously isn’t a part of that but recapturing the process of creation is what it’s all about. It’s symbolic.
There’s going to be a lot happening, the label is one piece of the jigsaw puzzle and the others are going to start falling into place. It feels very much like the end of a chapter, with a new chapter up ahead. Which there has to be I suppose, otherwise you die – literally or figuratively – and there isn’t much to the story. At the end of the day, I guess one goes and looks at furniture in and for houses they couldn’t manage to live in because they aspire to comfortability, they look at clothes they want to wear but can’t for the same reason. The only thing I can’t get is more hair, other than that, everything is attainable. If I didn’t walk out of work every day frustrated and angry I might have more… but I guess on the other hand I wouldn’t be able to reproduce the ambition that is the most valuable commodity right now.
If You Walk Away August 6, 2008
Posted by coqfosters in Music business.Tags: music, work
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The subject of CD packaging seems quite topical as the debate rages on as to what it is people really want. I don’t think anyone knows – everyone wants something different! The powers at be at work have just launched their new packaging scheme, time will tell how that pans out. There always seems to be this debate over whether more is actually more. I know this much: fans don’t want to get ripped off. Why is a “deluxe” package deluxe? Is it just not more than the shit version? 8 page booklets in jewel cases are for the same type of music listeners who are abandoning the CD format. I guess that’s just my opinion.
To me, if CDs need to be saved (and, by the numbers, they do), then this creates two clear solutions: Make them super cheap or super awesome. I know that’s dumbing it down, but frankly people don’t really think on levels that are much different than that, do they? Because I work in the industry, I do… but even I have my moments where I think about these things on a very base level.
I’ve always sort of been a casual U2 fan, and I’m at a point in my life as a music consumer where buying a U2 album feels like such a corporate, unrewarding experience. From a business perspective they are geniuses, but there’s just so little to get excited about! I’ve been turned off U2 since I bought the deluxe version of their last studio album. The art wasn’t great and frankly the album wasn’t either.
But the remastered reissues of their old material gave me a reason to go back. Achtung Baby is one of my favourite albums ever, and 90s U2 is the U2 that I always really loved. Anything before or after I could sort of take or leave. The audio quality on my CD copies of War and October weren’t all that great, and I never bought Boy for that same reason. When the reissues were announced I had a glance at the tracklisting of the bonus discs and weighed up which might be worth my hard earned $20-25. Boy was the clear winner, owing to me not actually owning the record and it having the best bonus material.
I have to say it’s worth every penny.
The release comes housed in a beautiful heavyweight slipcase, and contains a fantastic book bound booklet with great liner notes. The CD quality, especially compared to those early pressings of their other albums, is superb. These releases are generally targeted at the dyed-in-the-wool fan who is upgrading their collection, but this is an album I didn’t even own, and wasn’t even all that interested in! You have to provide value, and people will love it. Now they’ve got me, I’m in the U2 business! I can’t wait for the next record… I want that deluxe edition!
As for the music itself, it was refreshing to hear how a band generally labeled quite derivative at this point in their career could be so fresh and energetic in their beginnings – it’s a sound debut. I Will Follow is possibly one of the best lead tracks on a debut album I’ve ever heard (not that I hadn’t heard it before, being the classic that it is, but hearing it in the context of an album really sets the tone). It’s a solid record straight through, from the live staple(s) An Cat Dubh/Into The Heart – which I’d never heard the album version of – to deep album tracks like The Electric Co. and Another Time, Another Place.
There is always going to be a debate over whether the CD is even relevant anymore. My personal view is that it is. We are not yet at a point where we are able to consume 100% digitally, and physical packaging is still a value-filled experience. U2, or their managers, or catalogue marketing team, or whoever, have figured it out. But within that relevance, it is part of a bigger equation. The digital single download is relevant, the CD is relevant, vinyl is relevant, USB flash drives are relevant, Guitar Hero downloads are relevant, and on and on! They are all pieces of a big puzzle that the music business needs to piece together. Whether the powers that be are capable of doing so, that’s another story.
My experience with Boy, however, I stand by: great music and great packaging are of massive value, and create REAL fans. Now I want all of the U2 reissues! I don’t believe this kind of artist/fan relationship with an artist has to solely exist with artists who are established, career multi-platinum selling musicians. I would be just as likely to buy something fantastic from a new indie band I’m excited about like Ra Ra Riot or Mason Proper, or a major label artist like Duffy, Elbow or Interpol. But with that not looking likely for the time being (we’ll see what the options are for the Ra Ra record in a couple of weeks), I’ll keep digging into this great package from U2.
Dackness July 16, 2008
Posted by coqfosters in NYC.Tags: film, life, mad love, new york, work
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There’s a scene is this new movie The Wackness where the kid and his girl are on the beach and she tells him “I see the dopeness, you only see the wackness.” The film itself was pretty hilarious but I’ve been thinking my life is this constant yin and yang of the dopeness and the wackness and not really much in the way of middle ground.
When I was at university, there was a general if/then theorem for doing simultaneously great and shit at two of the major functions of life:
1) If work was the dopeness, then schoolwork was the wackness.
2) If schoolwork was the dopeness, then girls were the wackness.
3) If girls were the dopeness, then work was the wackness.
It’s a pretty sound theorem and always held mathematically true, for better or for worse. At least life was never boring. However, now, with a ’9 to 5′ and no formal ongoing education to speak of, the theorem is useless.
In a general sense, life has become the new schoolwork. You’re constantly learning new things all of the time and having new experiences and this is not enforced by professors but instead by the unrelenting threat of persistent monotony, which I have realised is even worse than that semester of Special Topics in Native American Anthropology. On top of all of this, if you’re actually interested in your work (which I am), the lines between life (learning) and work become terribly blurred. Highs you would associate with life are all of the sudden caused as a result of work and vice versa, while a situation of intolerable wackness on the job front is almost assuredly not going to set off dopeness when it comes to life and ladies.
It’s all definitely a learning curve. One new rule that I have definitely established is that the more tied down you are to a place in your day to day life, the more attractive life on the road becomes. In the past year that I’ve been in the traditional workplace, I have at least managed to cross the continent by land in search of adventure and spend a week in Sweden at its coldest and harshest time of year. But every minute I am not actually on the road I have been dreaming of it, reading books about folks who lived in Kiribati, watching films about all the weirdos that moved to Antarctica and tv specials about motorcycle trips from Scotland to South Africa, listening to music from Mali and Germany and Norway and Nigeria and… Alpena. I am greedy, enthusiastic and raring to go. And it all means I couldn’t possibly be less motivated to get out of bed every morning and face 25 minutes on the A train.
I do wonder whether it’s the scenery. New York is brilliant but so far in a year I’ve worked with success but not phenomenal success, I’ve lived but I’ve not been overly satisfied with life, and I’ve met dozens of attractive women but very few of whom I found particularly interesting. This all seems terribly obvious but I guess more than anything it’s just good right now to sit back, take stock after a year and realise that in the words of James Dean Bradfield, there’s still a long way to go. And hopefully a bit of dopeness too.
Muxtaposition July 4, 2008
Posted by coqfosters in Music business.Tags: football, health, work
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I met a really fantastic senior music business guy at work yesterday who, on noticing my new Liverpool shirt, told me stories about the great days back in the 70s when he and a few other fans of the game helped bring the likes of Pele and – particularly – George Best to America to compete in the old NASL. I was just stood there thinking “I can’t believe I’m hearing this!”
I’d love to be able to live a day of what the business was like back then, the halcyon days of vinyl when you had tried and true hitmakers, people who were really in on the ground with several platinum acts. Maybe it wasn’t really like that all around, perhaps it’s more just romantic thinking on my part, but I’d like to think it was a bit like the wild west… all of these record business cowboys cutting deals, putting out great (well, maybe not so much in the 70s) albums with fantastic and ridiculous artwork and stockpiling plaques on the wall for young up-and-comers to gawk at as soon as they set foot in the office. Incredible!
That being said, I think there’s something terribly exciting about the turbulent times we’re in now. There are so many ways people want to consume music and so many different things to get involved in that the possibilities really are endless. That’s the positive spin. The negative side of things is that sometimes you do feel like you’re fighting a war… you win the odd individual battle here and there but you have no idea what the landscape is going to look like when it’s all said and done. How is the world going to work?
I always try to put these things into context. No one should feel any degree of pressure because those things aren’t good for creativity, and that’s what these times require most. As much as I tend to resist quoting Jose Mourinho, he said:
“Pressure? Pressure of what? Pressure is millions of people in the world having no money to buy food for their children. That is pressure.”
The same is true here, and that always lends some perspective. I loathe complacency with every fibre of my being but at the same time you have to take a step back sometimes and think how fortunate you are to walk through a door every day and get to hear stories about back when they brought the great George Best to America and filled up the LA Coliseum. Especially while on the other hand I come home and watch a documentary on how kids in Africa are affected by HIV when either they have to live with it themselves or have lost parents and have to look after their own lives.
Watching that documentary made me reflect on the earlier story because so many of these kids have dreams of being that next Pele, Best or Beckham (or on a local level, Kanu, Eto’o or Essien). On the face of it there is little to no connection between the music business and the football pitch but it made me think that if we can ever figure out how to be successful again maybe we might be able to have some part inspiring sporting legends and a whole new generation of icons and heroes for kids – around the world – who have nothing but dreams. And if we’re not, at least I know something I’ll want to work on next.
On a somewhat related tangent, check out this remarkable ad campaign for AIDS awareness in France (link).
