iPhone - making people seem smaller the world over (in this case, Alice in Chains)

I wasn’t sure whether I’d bother going to Sonisphere, it all looked too commercial to me, like V festival. It was also ridiculously expensive. However, since I couldn’t get to Download or Bloodstock I decided to give it a whirl. The line-up on the Sunday was also hard to resist.

The sun had mad an appearance for the first time in weeks and not even the police with sniffer dogs arresting skunk-laden youths and the ridiculously long wait for the festival bus could dampen genial my mood.

Walking past the campsite, was an eerie experience. It was like a ghost town. You usually expect to hoards of youths wallowing in beer cans and piss sodden dirt attempting to dampen their hangover with stale beer. Not here. It even looked fairly tidy!

I turned just in time to catch Lamb of God (7/10). LoG are heavy hitters in the modern metal arena. With over a decade of experience behind them, and some highly acclaimed albums, they should be pretty good at their art by now. The ferocity of their music translates well to the festival environment, and their performance is tight. Randy Blythe has real presence, but his incessant intra-song posturing wears thin after a while. Yes we know you are real metal and your music stimulates circle pits. Yes, the idiots at the front will continue to beat each-other up for your gratification. Shut up and get on with the music!

No sooner had LoG finished than Mastodon (9/10) lumbered onto the other stage. Now, I recently threw my toys in this post about Mastodon’s performance at Islington Academy. I was expecting an abridged version of Crack in the Skye, so I wasn’t particularly looking forward to their set or surprised when they kicked off with album opener Oblivion. I’d also resolved not to be such a cancerous old git this time, so I stuck around. What we were actually treated to was a spirited set that, although was largely derived from Crack in the Skye, also contained some classics from previous albums (although Blood Mountain was entirely absent). Flying through Megalodon and Blood and Thunder, we were then treated to a note perfect performance of this year’s best metal track The Czar: Usurper/Escape/Martyr/Spiral – the whole bloody thing. Crack in the Skye’s title track was an absolute pleasure, followed by the brutal Iron Tusk and March of the Fire Ants from Remission.

Mastodon are on flying form. I saw them a few years ago at Wembley arena supporting Tool and they really seemed like they felt out of place in such a large venue. The band I witnessed on Sunday seemed like they owned the place. Not only are Mastodon recording some of the most original and high quality music in any genre, but they are one of the coolest bands around – these guys a really starting to look like rock stars.

That left me with a smile on my face and wondering if anyone could top such a gargantuan performance.

Metal fans amuse themselves by making themselves dizzy while Machine Head play

The crowd now meandered back to the main stage – the subject of everyone’s conversation: who are the mystery “Special Guests”. The subject of much media speculation since Machine Head acrimoniously pulled out of the festival when (infinitely more successful) Limp Bizkit usurped them out of their original slot in the line-up. Randy Blithe had previously let the cat out of the bag but obviously no-one was listening as they all seemed surprised when Machine Head (5/10) took the stage. Confusing? The word you’re looking for is demeaning. The Brits, never known for their likelihood to forsake a little ironic taunting, were chanting ‘Limp Bizkit’ while MH vocalist gave his speech about “doing it for the fans”. Also, the boasting about the 28 circle pits, or whatever, formed by obviously bored fans during their set, made him sound like a ego bruised 12 year old.

MH’s set was uninspired at best. They never sound good live. Their set was punctuated by long, uncomfortable silences and self-aggrandising rhetoric. Robb Flynn has since been demeaning himself further online by continuing this one-sided war of words, while (somewhat ironically) Limp Bizkit remain commendably reticent. This isn’t David and Goliath, it’s Goliath and some irritating little fly that needs swatting.

Feeder were up next so I wondered off and bought an Alice in Chains t-shirt and got increasingly drunk while I waited for them to finish. The only tracks I saw them play were an ill-advised cover of Nirvana’s Breed, and a rendition of their only good song Just a Day, which was very enjoyable in the sun with a pint of cider.

Next up were the mighty Alice in Chains (9/10). Here’s an occasion that was making many folk nervous. The legendary Layne Staley replaced by some unknown bloke with an afro? You better be sure about this Mr. Cantrell!

Going straight for the nuts with Angry Chair merging into Man in the Box the crowd’s tension dissipates. AIC sound massive – heavy and assured. New guy William Duval gives his own spin to these classics. He’s no Staley, but then who is? He sings the tunes faithful to the originals but doesn’t try and ape his distinctive predecessor. He’s got a strong voice and is very much his own man. He still lacks a little of the stage presence needed to really command a festival stage, but he’s strutting his stuff with the best of them.

4th track in and Duval broaches the subject of the new album before launching into Looking in View. Several folks around me (who clearly hadn’t heard this new track) were audibly nervous about hearing new AIC tracks, but were blown away by the tracks slow, heavy doom genius. AIC are really back!

The band saunter effortlessly through Dirt‘s Them Bones and Dam That River and the crowd are getting really animated. We’re then treated to a second new track, the much jauntier Check My Brain. Like a perkier Again, this track has a really memorable chorus.

The closing salvo of crowd pleaser Would? and the haunting Rooster has the crowd singing at the top of their voices as the sun sets. Perfect.

So, fired up and raring for more top grade metal, the crowd once again makes the merry trek up to the main stage for Nine Inch Nails (3/10). This supposedly NIN’s last ever tour. They’ve had a long and distinguished career, and countless, memorable tracks that the majority of the crowd would surely know. So did they rattle of a greatest hits set for this rapturous audience? No, like the petulant and self indulgent tosser he is, Trent Reznor ‘treated’ us all to a set comprised of mostly ambient and barely audible arty numbers. I can’t even be bothered to track down what was actually played. Every time a track finished (it was kind of difficult to tell one track from the next) you could hear an audible intake of breath from the crowd hoping that the next sound would be the first few notes from Closer.

They closed the set with a note for note version of their (now) best known track Hurt. This seems entirely out of place as the crowd mumble along dispiritedly with the Jonny Cash version in their heads.

I’m a big fan of NIN, but this display was nothing short of offensive. Not appropriate or impressive, just shit.

I’d like to tell you all about Avenged Sevenfold, but they’re shit, so I didn’t watch them. I got through about 3 songs of Metallica’s set before James Hetfield, clearly taking notes from Robb Flynn’s earlier waffle, decided to indulge in some sycophantic crowd wooing. I saw then live, and much closer, a few months back, and I had a long journey home ahead of me. There was no way they would top AIC and Mastodon, so I left Hetfield wittering on and went home.

It’s not coincidence that the vast majority of the bands and musicians we see most frequently are also pretty well off financially. This privileged clique has billion pound corporations behind them, huge record deals, they get money for just turning up places. They are conspicuous because they have a load of money to promote themselves (and experienced professionals to help them do it) and from this they make more money. They also represent a tiny fraction of all recording artists, the vast majority of whom make little or no money from their art.

Perhaps it’s the lure of big bucks that leads unsigned bands to assume that they should make money from their efforts from day one. It’s just as likely that they’ve shelled a bunch of money for demo recordings and they need to cover costs. This is fair enough, but it’s also a very short sighted view. Let me explain.

Ever since serial smug twat Trent Reznor had his say on the matter of unsigned bands giving their stuff away for free I’ve been pondering the problem of new bands being able to support their art. This week journalist and industry observer Cosmo Lee had his say on his blog Invisible Oranges. Both these guys make very compelling points, but still I see dissent among unsigned bands who see it as only fair that they can recoup their investment.

Now, I’m not in a band, I don’t even work in the music industry. I do however work in the business arena, and from that perspective this attitude seems absurd. I’ll start out by saying that bands are NOT businessmen (for the most part) and should not be expected to be. Their job is to make music. To be able to continue doing this, and not end up in crippling debt, they need to have some income to support this. Having a job on the side is not usually enough – a lot of these kids want to make a career out of making music. This is a noble cause, and they should be commended for it, but it’s not easy to do so.

So, despite the fact that the primary motivator is, and should be, music, some consideration should, in most cases, be given to making money.

Now, for the sake of comparison let’s look at small businesses. I’ll use an (imaginary) example – Jenny is a hobby jewellery maker (really evil looking gothic stuff with pentagrams and shit). She’s been making stuff in her spare time and selling it on at cost to her mates, mainly for the love of it. One day she realises that she’s selling so much that she could make a career out of this. So she decides to quit her job and start her jewellery making business. Now, with her kit in the garage, she’ll never be able to pump out enough merchandise to support her doing this full time. So she’ll need to invest in some new kit and probably rent some a bigger space to house it. Also, although she’s selling a good amount of stuff now, she’ll need to sell a lot more to make the venture even break even. So she’ll need to promote herself – to advertise in trade and music magazines costs more money. So she borrows some cash from her parents and the rest from the bank. The understanding is that she’ll pay back the bank in monthly instalments immediately, and will start paying her parents back when she starts making a profit – her projections say in 3 years time (taking into account overheads, tax etc.), although depending on sales this could be more or less. In the meantime, she will take a salary of a bit above minimum wage to cover her living expenses.

This is a very common scenario. MUCH more common than instances of bands starting out. Jenny does not expect to recoup her initial investment as soon as she makes it, it will take time.

Now, back to the bands. Music is NOT a commodity any more for the most part – it’s freely available and easily exchanged. Jewellery is tangible and, assuming that the materials are worth something and workmanship is good, is a commodity. Jenny will more than likely receive money for her wares, but her business will not make money (ie. Profit), for a long time. The business will remain in negative equity and she personally will be living on the breadline.

Unsigned bands may expect (and be able) to sell CD’s or even MP3’s, but is this a sensible idea? Without a significant fan base, and their music being easy to exchange, it’s unlikely that they’ll recoup any investment at all. All that they are doing is making it harder for folks to hear their music.

Jenny had to shell out cash to promote herself. For bands, this is traditionally a role that record labels perform. For record labels this is a difficult task, for unsigned bands it’s nigh on impossible. One way of promoting yourself is to make your music freely available and encourage folks to share it. Get people to record your shows, and put them on Youtube. Take any opportunity you can to get your music heard, it is, after all, your wares, not the CD on which it’s recorded.

Once you’ve got a few people at your shows you can start really capitalising on this by selling merchandise, and maybe you can afford to make a really nice digipack version of your demo – something that people will really want to own (they probably already own the music contained therein).

Will you get return on your investment at this point? Hell no! You won’t even get it if/when a record label signs you. You may not even see it after scoring your first Gold record. This stuff takes time, effort, talent (sometimes) and a lot of luck (always).

If you don’t like to think of this outlay as an initial investment, call it a loss leader, a well understood retail tactic of offloading stuff at a loss, under the understanding that this will get poeple hooked in and coming back for more.

I’m not saying that bands should run themselves like a business, but business is in the business of making money, and you would be wise to pay heed of this. Unless you’re the next Artic Monkeys, it’s unlikely that you’ll see that cash rolling in from just being a band, so if you want to survive, be smart and forward thinking.

Join the debate over at UKMU.

When I grow up I want to be in a sandwich or a metal band

I had the violent displeasure today of (part)consuming what may be the worst pork sandwich I have ever had. I purchased this wretched morsel from a café near me that sells nothing else other than roast pork in rolls. How bad can it be? Well the stale baguette (they seem to have perfected the art of making them come out of the oven that way) was the worst bit, then the dry pork (I’m assuming it was pork, hard to tell) was the worst bit too, after the apple sauce (seemingly made be leaving the apples in pool of saliva to dissolve) it all went down hill (or to be more specific, in the bin).

How anyone could treat pig, not to mention food in general, with such disrespect is beyond me. To celebrate this most auspicious of occasions I’ve selected a few tasty pig related tracks for your entertainment.

War Pigs. The Faith No More version here, but there’s a multitude of excellent covers of the seminal Sabbath masterwork.

Piggy, the foreboding industrial ‘ballad’ from Nine Inch Nails’ astounding The Downward Spiral.

Some delightful, nosebleed inducing Grind from Pig Destroyer.

The fantastically silly, Scientology baiting Big Fat Pig from Clutch’s otherwise less than inspiring Jam Room.

May the pork be with you…