Entries associated with the tag "Sharp Darts":

This week's Sharp Darts is my review of the new Catfish Haven record, and you should read it.

I was talking to a friend yesterday and he told me that he couldn't figure out whether I liked the album or not, especially since I compare Catfish Haven repeatedly to Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band. Having grown up in Michigan in the 80s, I have to say that both Bob Seger and a kickass radio station I associate with him, WRIF ("The Riff"), are among the deepest parts of my foundation in rock music.

Maybe you've heard the same story I have about a teenage neighbor of Seger's who went out trick or treating dressed as him. Seger supposedly slammed the door in the kid's face, which suggests that he didn't find the costume nearly as hilarious as I do. I hope he can at least appreciate it when guys like Catfish Haven put on pieces of his sound.

My column this week is on the strange recent phenomenon of big-name artists--Kid Rock, excellent new R & B singer Estelle--keeping their popular singles off iTunes and then finding themselves outperformed on the charts by anonymous studio hacks pimping copycat versions through the service. It's a story I might've missed if it weren't for Chris Molanphy's regular fine-toothed combing of the Billboard charts on Idolator.

He and I recently had a little IM chat about it.

Hey dude. How's it going?

Not bad--a little foggy, getting over a cold . . .

Bummer. So let's talk copycat acts.

Sure thing--will do my best.

So you and I are some of the only people who've listened to the Hit Masters version of "All Summer Long" on purpose. What's your opinion on their rendition?

Basically, I found it credible . . . The vocalist "covering" Kid Rock did a passable bar-band job at imitating the vocal.

I think the vocalist actually gives a better performance than Kid Rock.

By "better," do you mean more on-key? That I could believe.

A little fuller sounding.

Kid's not known for his great vocals. Witness the VMA performance.

But credible showing or not, people who've bought it on iTunes are pissed.

Yeah, the comments have been nasty, haven't they . . . In general, people feel misled, I assume?

A lot of people blame Kid Rock for them wasting 99 cents on a cover version.

In a cosmic sense, I can see their point. It's a somewhat naive accusation, sure . . . But I can see how in a larger sense, it's his fault for "making" them buy an inferior version for less than the price of his album. I mean, you'd think people would blame the cover artists or the no-name label obviously capitalizing on Kid's success with the cover. But instead--in a web-fueled era of "give me what I want"--they (the consumers) blame the guy who didn't allow them to have their 99-cent download.They [the cover artists and labels] are just filling a niche. I'm making them sound selfish/entitled, and to some extent they are . . . but I also feel their anger is somewhat justified in that Kid's behavior defies what is now a well-established norm. ITunes is five years old, after all, and the consumer has (rightfully) come to assume any big radio hit can be purchased there for a buck.

And boycotting it just doesn't work.

Right--boycotting doesn't work, as the Estelle example shows better than the Kid's.

I had to reread the part about the cover song being five spots ahead of the original a couple of times before it sank in.

Freaky, eh? Well, and don't forget . . . That has less to do with consumer preference than it does with the way the modern Hot 100 is skewed toward sales over airplay. Estelle's original is charting entirely on airplay now (or at least until next week, when her iTunes sales return). The cover is charting entirely on sales. The cover's sales trump her (substantial) airplay.

But I'm sure she and Atlantic don't feel too good about being trounced on the Hot 100 by the Studio All Stars.

Maybe. It helps that both songs are outside the Top 40, so less likely to be noticed by the rank-and-file pop fan. However . . . This song-removal has now been so well publicized that numerous media outlets are reporting her performance more closely than they were before. So it's embarrassing for them no matter what--at least a little. But the larger truth for them--and, I suspect, what fueled the reversal--is the album numbers. The sales of 'Shine' *are* up--but they're still pretty anemic. Moving from 4,000-plus per week to 5,000-plus per week is nice (about a 15-20 percent boost), but it's not the result they were hoping for, I think. After all, Kid Rock's album is now moving upwards of 50-100K per week.

Someone big like Kid Rock or Jay-Z can almost afford to avoid iTunes. They seem to make it into a personal battle.

Yeah. A smaller, less popular artist like Estelle seems more vulnerable. Especially since most people only know the one single, and iTunes is perfect for delivering that. Basically, as I said in my special column two weeks ago, Atlantic is trying to repeat various versions of the no-singles policies the labels adopted in the '90s. They tried the "established rock act releases no single" model. Now they're trying the "developing act/potential one-hit-wonder" model--and the consumer isn't taking the bait.

You think it's a failed gambit?

Ultimately, yes. I mean, (a) they've already reversed themselves, but (b), for the reason you've just cited, it's not a tactic well-suited to a developing act.

Are labels and dudes like Kid Rock going to have to suck it up and admit that they have to work with iTunes?

Dunno about Kid Rock . . . I think he's heading into Eagles-AC/DC territory--a loyal following by a rock-loving, album-buying crowd. But the labels? Yeah, probably. iTunes commands literally 20 percent of the *entire* U.S. music-buying economy--that's everything, physical, digital, etc. You can't afford to cut that off entirely.

It's become a behemoth.

Totally. Y'know, ten years ago, when the U.S. economy was booming and the CD had no competition, the labels could push the idea that the album was the smallest, or only, unit of measure for music purchasing. Even for acts with a single hit, like Lou Bega or Eiffel 65. But for the Estelles of this world, ten years later--and I like "American Boy," and I hope it's not her last hit, but still--there's a competing medium, and it's too big to ignore. For the labels, there's no way to cut out iTunes.

Yeah, Estelle's good. I hope her label doesn't fuck it up for her.

Me neither! I don't know how powerful her management is, what kind of pull they have at Atlantic . . . but put it this way: Mathew Knowles would never tolerate his daughter's music getting pulled from iTunes, unless Beyonce's label made a damn good case that she could see a Kid Rock-like boost in album sales as a result--AND not antagonize her fans. Maybe Estelle's management told Atlantic, "Enough!"

This is the type of situation that makes managers explode with rage.

Yup! Becuase the fan complaints filter back to them. And the artists hate looking anti-fan.

Not too long ago I talked to Justin from Walter Meego for my column, and pretty much every answer he gave to the questions I asked about the band's relocation from Chicago to LA included a reference to the pool they now have in their backyard, how kick-ass it is to have your own pool, and how many pool parties they were planning on having in their own personal pool. I just saw on Bigstereo that WM has a new video for their summerweight disco-pop jam "Forever," and unsurprisingly, poolside partying plays a major part in it. 

I gotta say, it really does look like the pool party is those dudes' natural habitat.

Something strange just happened that allows me to follow up on two of my recent column subjects at once: Perez Hilton has endorsed the 1900s.

In the high-quality prose I expect from him, he says: "When I Say Go is perhaps our favorite song of theirs. It's SO good and authentic-sounding, you'd swear it was a cover!" Whatever that means!

Also, dude completely jacked the Hayley Murphy photo that ran with my column. He didn't even bother to credit her.

In my current column on new ideas about music-making interfaces I talk a bit about a crazy contraption called the Reactable that frankly fills me with indecent techno-lust. This morning I got an e-mail from one of the device's creators, Sergi Jordà of the Music Technology Group at Pompeu Fabra University, telling me that they're installing one permanently in Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry on May 15th. I am very much looking forward to making a bunch of next-level electronic jams on that thing with a bunch of kindergartners.

I don't know if it exactly fits the theme of my column on crowdsourced videos and remixes, but it definitely fits the broader theme of fans applying their own creativity to the music they love: here's a video of the Blue Ribbon Glee Club singing "Waiting Room" synced up to old footage of Fugazi performing the original.

My column last week, "In Praise of Selling Out," on the advertising industry's adoption of indie rock, has generated probably the most mail of any piece I've written so far. Unsurprisingly, most of it's been negative. People, and especially people from the glory days of the DIY movement, don't like seeing the bands in their scene show up on a commercial for burgers or something. Also unsurprising—to me at least—is that every positive response I got came from musicians, who are looking at a future where making a living off the former staples of album sales and touring seems impossible. And actually, a couple of them have popped up in articles since then. Last Friday, Little Steven Van Zandt—who's doing more than maybe anyone else right now to promote independent music—dropped a pro-commercials piece in Billboard, arguing with only slight exaggeration that, "If you don't have a song in a TV commercial your career is over." And yesterday AdFreak pointed to a recent interview with Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney where he called commercials a way to pay the rent.

While I can understand the opposing viewpoint—I came up in the DIY indie/hardcore scene myself—a typical response like this one over at the Beachwood Reporter (scroll down to "Sell-Out Secrets") offers a lot of outrage, and nothing in the way of real solutions. (Google ads? Really?) I wish small indie bands weren't in a situation where selling their songs to sell burgers wasn't the most attractive career path. But I'm also starting to understand that a lot of people are expecting bands to hold up their end of the DIY contract while bailing out on their own responsibility to support the music. Given the number of indie releases up on OiNK, I'm willing to bet it's more than just a few.