Atlanta Music Guide

Music Man--The Nasal Tone

I partially blame Christopher Carrabba (aka Dashboard Confessional). He had a large hand in starting the whole thing that has since become entirely too common and even predictable in so much of the new music that’s coming out these days, especially among the scene crowd. Nine out of ten demos I receive have it. The thing with Christopher though, is that he, while certainly not the first to sing almost entirely through his nose, connected with fans on such a personal level that they totally overlooked it. His timing was perfect, his lyrics struck a chord, and his word of mouth cult status helped get him to the point where the nasally tone of his voice became his signature sound, it was cool for its time (sorta). The truth is, if you were to see him live back in 2001, you would see a show where the entire audience sang every word to every song, Christopher literally didn’t have to sing, and it was pretty remarkable to be honest. Admittedly I own, and occasionally still listen to “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most” (I didn’t go much further back then that). It’s a solid album for it’s time.
My problem is that since then, it seems every up-and-coming singer to grab a mic has followed suit in the vocal department and wow is it grating. What used to be the exception, has now become the rule. When I come across new music in my daily pursuit, I’m actually relieved when the singer can sing, I mean, come on, shouldn’t that be expected? It’s not. People complain about auto-tune’s over usage in pop music today, which is a topic for another time, but what about the kids who sound like their mouths were sewn shut and their nose was their only outlet?  The minute I hear a singer crooning through the ol’ schaunze, I’m turned off because it sounds (a) contrived and lazy, and (b) like every other kid who discovered a microphone and Garageband and decided to make a record. Carrabba was singing through his nose, but at least it seemed like it was coming from his heart.

*note-in the past two or three weeks I’ve actually come across some pretty great non-nasal singers, all of whom will at some point be mentioned in this blog.

-Jay Harren

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Music Man--Thank You Goodnight

I took a road trip to south Florida to check out some bands this week. I travel quite often to see bands, sometimes it’s worth it sometimes it’s not. This time was worth it. I got to see a band that I’m loosely affiliated with through the Manchester Orchestra camp. They’re called All Get Out, and like most bands affiliated with Manchester, they are on the road touring more often than not. They told me they will have played three hundred shows by year’s end. For those wondering, that’s a lot, actually that’s more then a lot, that’s kind of ridiculous really. Their time on the road is starting to show, in a good way, which I’ll get to in a minute. I’ve seen All Get Out a bunch of times, but this time was a little different in that I got see them as All Get Out playing their set of super-infectious original material, but I also got to see them act as the backing band for the other artist I flew to the Sunshine State to see, The Working Title. The Working Title are also no strangers to the road. They’ve been touring in one form or another for a number of years, and like All Get Out it shows. Not only because All Get Out was the backing band for singer Joel Ham, but because there was a sense of confidence shown by both band that only time on the road teaches. 

There were 5 bands on the bill that night. The crowd was sparse but attentive and the bands I was there to see were third and fourth in the line-up; The Working Title (Joel plus the All Get Out guys) followed by All Get Out themselves. I got there in time to see the two openers (whose names I can’t recall) and I’m glad I did, not because they were particularly good, but because they confirmed my belief yet again in the need for bands to learn their chops on the road. These bands were not touring bands, and it was obvious. 

Music Man--What's Next?

I recently asked a group of people who I knew to be true music fans what they thought the next wave of music will be. In other words, what style of music will unseat the current crop of pop music that is selling like gangbusters? Everyone answered exactly the same; they said it’s the one or two-man electronic artists that will continue to break through and catch on in the mainstream ala Owl City and others like them. While that may be true (and wow I hope it isn’t), I couldn’t help but think that that style is what’s partially current right now, but it was The Postal Service who started this sound back in 2003 when they released their groundbreaking record “Give Up," hence spawning many imitators, with only one or two really breaking out. Obviously, that sound isn’t all that’s popular now, but the point is that one band laid the groundwork for others to come and capitalize on, and I’m curious to know who the ground-laying band is right now that is going to pave the way for the next big sound, or maybe be the next big sound themselves.

CD Review: Built to Spill -- There Is No Enemy

Built to Spill
There Is No Enemy
Warner Brothers

By Al Kaufman

The good news is that Built to Spill, the godfathers of the indie rock scene, are back in fighting form after a few meandering missteps. The bad news is that few seem to care. It's been about 10 years since Built to Spill put out a truly great album (Remember Perfect from Now On and Keep It Like a Secret?) and during the interim, upstarts like Modest Mouse, Death Cab for Cutie, and even the entire indie-rock supergroup Monsters of Folk have filled the vacuum. So Built to Spill's great new CD was tossed onto the masses with nary a whisper.

Music Man--Don't Call Me Norm

There’s an episode in season three of the legendary 1980’s TV show Cheers called “The Executive’s Executioner” in which the character Norm gets a new position at his accounting firm that entails him being the person who does all the firing. During his first few attempts at firing the people to whom he was assigned, you see Norm literally crying as he does it. It’s to the point where the victims of Norm’s “executions” end up comforting him as they are so blown away by his empathy and compassion for them, and they want to see him happy even though they are the ones who just got the ax. However, as he fires more people he becomes used to it and in turn more insensitive to their feelings, and he eventually starts enjoying the firings. At the end of the show Norm is laughing at the people as they walk out of his office in defeat. 

I realized recently that although I’m not tasked with firing people, I do in a lot of ways, have a similar gig to Norm in that I have to let people know that they just aren’t cutting the mustard when it comes to becoming a member of my label’s roster.  In the last month alone I “passed” on dozens of prospective artists for my label. Whether it was my choice or not, I had to make the call or send the email one by one letting people know that they weren’t the  right “fit” or weren’t “quite ready” for a major label situation. Some were responses to people who approached me first, others were people that I had originally approached, and those are the toughest. 

Music Man--This Question Is On Repeat

As I sat to write this blog I was approached by a friend who asked me the question that I was going to write about in the first place. I get asked it all the time, probably once a day. I’m flying to Boston tomorrow to sit on a panel at the Boston Music Conference, and the main subject of the panel revolves around this same question. The question is “how do I find the music or bands that I want to work with?” Or from a band’s perspective, it’s “how do I get the attention of a label?” The answer is there really is no specific or easy answer. I find music the same way most music listeners find music: on-line, word-of-mouth, press, radio, conferences, whatever.

For example, a producer friend of mine whose taste I trust and respect told me about a band he recently worked with in the studio. Without hesitation I listened to the songs and loved what I heard and I’m now seriously considering working with the band. Another example that I’ve used in this blog before is the band I met at the Atlantis Music conference a couple of years ago, who I ended up signing (Hey Monday). Or another band I work with, Manchester Orchestra, had created such a buzz and such a legitimate following that literally every label in the industry wanted to be a part of what the band had built. Or more recently the local support that 99X gave to The Constellations which, along with hard work on the band’s part, lead to their recent signing to Virgin. There are many ways to find the bands; we just have to be alert.

Music Man--The Atlanta Sound?

The recent, well-deserved signing of Atlanta’s The Constellations to Virgin records made me think about the Atlanta music scene. On a national and international level, Atlanta is known best for its thriving hip-hop scene, and what an incredible scene it is. Within a two mile radius of my house there are a plethora of world-class studios owned and operated by legendary artists and producers like Outkast, Dallas Austin, TI, and Akon.

But what about rock? One of the many things about the current rock scene here is that, while it’s not necessarily infamous like say Athens in the '80s, Seattle in the '90s or Brooklyn now, it is actually much more diverse within the rock genre itself than any of those cities.

Music Man--Less is More

I got an advance of Jay-Z’s The Blueprint 3 album recently. It’s actually pretty solid throughout, but that’s not what this is about. The album has fifteen tracks on it, and like I said, it’s pretty solid but it seems to me that fifteen tracks on any album is too long these days. Jay-Z can get away with it because well, he’s Jay-Z after all, and people will listen through the entire thing at least a couple of times until eventually boiling it down to their favorite tracks which will then make their way onto their iPod. Or, if it’s mind-blowing from start to finish, which some albums definitely are, and some may consider The Blueprint 3 to be, the whole thing makes it to the player. The point is that in the year 2009 with media so readily available to anyone at any time, new bands/artists should release their music in smaller quantities putting out only the best of what they have, no filler. This obviously isn’t a new idea, people have been doing it for years, but it seems especially important now in an era where competition isn’t only with other bands, but with other forms of media entirely, it’s a lot to expect a new listener to sit through 12 or 15 songs at a time when they haven’t previously even heard of you. This isn’t to say people won’t listen to an entire album, I do it regularly, it’s just that it’s harder and harder, given the state of music availability, to get people to spend that much time with the unknown.

Music Man--Hitting the Road and Learning a Lot

I just spent the last week on tour in England with a band I work very closely with, Manchester Orchestra. This is a band that regularly spends two hundred to two hundred fifty days a year on the road, so comparatively what I did was nothing, but it was enough to get a peek into the lives of people who we as an industry, and more accurately we as a label, completely depend on. If I had my way I would insist that everyone who does what I do for a living experience what I just did. Not because it’s cool to live the rock n roll life for a few days, although it definitely was, but because we should all know and understand first hand what band life is like. We all grow up with the perception that being a rock star is the easiest, coolest job on earth, and don’t get me wrong, it definitely has a very large upside, but it also has a side to it that we tend to forget about. The absence of family, friends, stability, comfort, and overall familiarity with whatever place you happen to be in, can weigh heavy on anyone who experiences this on a daily basis, especially when the return is paid off in potential, not immediate earnings.

When I got home I reviewed my Tweets from my time over there and thought I would re-post some of them here with some expansion as they capture fairly well what we did over the past several days, starting the first night in London (Tweets in bold).

Music Man--Getting on the Radio

I spent almost nine years of my life working for 99X radio here in Atlanta. It was a great gig. The majority of that time was spent as music director (MD) for the station, which means that I, along with the program director (PD) would, among other things, choose which songs made it to the air, and which ones didn’t.

There were two questions that I would get asked on pretty much a daily basis. They were (1.) Why do you play the same songs over and over and over again? And (2.) How can I get my band on the radio? Although I used to have a very clear cut answer to the first question, the longer I’ve been out of the radio business the fuzzier that answer becomes. In fact, if I listen to radio at all, I find I have the same complaints, unless it’s a band that I happen to work with then my complaint is that they aren’t playing them enough, so I’ll leave that one alone. Today I’m going to address the answer to the second question.

Interestingly, I realized after entering the record business, that my criteria for signing bands is strikingly close to the criteria we used in deciding whether or not to play a band on the radio, so consider this a two for one deal. Here it is in an over-simplified nutshell…