Had a nice Email from my great pal and 'mentor' Shel Talmy...yep the guy responsible for all those astonishing Kinks tracks and The Who tracks he recently found the original multi tracks of the great legendary sessions and has spent a age remixing them....:

"I've just finished the stereo mixes of The Who things I did, "My Generation", et al for release later this year, maybe September.  It'll be a double CD and the first time any of these have been heard in stereo so there's a lot of buzz over the project."
 
Shel made a great contribution to my latest 'One minute With Dec - The annual'...so I sent him the finished book and the Interactive audio CD's...I got praise from the great man!
 
"I've read the book and listened to the Cd's, and thought, "yes", The Bachelors have gotten it right and anybody who is thinking about a career in music should read and listen to this first."
 
So what have we got this week?
 
Apart from a load of virus attacks from total screwballs...you see, we can tell they are malicious by the addresses used.  It must take some sick brain to spend all that time trying to destroy - instead of spending it creating great music...one is destructive the other is constructive..
 
One adds more anger to the anger within.  The other gives extreme pleasure from the creative act.
 
A Little Warning:
 
I thought, by now, all music guys would understand that MP3, Real Audio and the like have little place in the pro world of music.  Put simply:
 
We Don't Use It
 
Despite what the music press claims.  It is purely an amateur 'fun' medium used for 'vanity' recording.  Most sites now charge for the privilege of posting MP3's.  Again, check out the brilliant 'inside' information re MP3's and all things Peoplesound etc. in the 'Annual'  at www.makehits.co.uk/annual.htm  It's a total eye opener.
 
Well, we have been hit by a few guys, this week, sending music attachments and had our systems log jammed [once for 40 minutes]  Te girls were not too pleased and I was livid...ah well....
 
Moral of the story?
 
How can you ever get a guy to listen to a music attachment when:
 
1. It is unsolicited and most offices and organisation routinely destroy unsolicited attachments [far too dangerous to even look at them]
2. The office system has been shut down while the guy's album downloads [and we've got a fast system!]
3. The quality is going to be cr*p
4. Even if it was good, then how do you bring the toon to that important meeting with the Chairman [he barely knows how to switch the stereo on, let alone load and listen to an MP3
5. The computer in the corner of his office has two inch speakers and distorts with even the slightest lift in volume.

"I have the ability to rub people up the wrong way on e-mail, but what I've learnt is that what sounds okay when you speak it, doesn't always write as good in an e-mail - and sometimes those subtle tones in your voice that quietly say: "I don't suffer fools" - come screaming load in an e-mail............... QED."

Colin is desperately trying to improve his electronic communications.  I feel it's not the writer's problem but the reader's.
 
I contribute a bit to RMMS, probably the best music newsgroup around, because it has such a diverse amount of different type music guys contributing.  Sadly, when I do have the time to enter into any 'discussion', on there, I get a torrent of guys screaming venom at me....they seem to read 'bad' into anything useful that is said.  They even contact me privately by Email and hurl abuse....sad really.
 
In the Music World
most experienced guys try to help - not hinder!

Back to music....an interesting question from one of my members:

"I was reading an article, an interview with Tommy William's. He says a lot of what you do for aspiring songwriters, even though he specializes in Country.

But the interesting thing he said was that there are two types of demo's:
 
1. for pitching at publishers (those who take 50%) - these can be just a piano and vocal.
 
2. for pitching at artists and record companies -the full blown produced track............

This does raise the question of how we afford a top producer to demo that hit toon you're guiding us to write - in that expensive studio.

Is it possible to have a lesser produced version for pitching at artists / record companies? How does this all work in the UK?

Colin."

It would seem that your friend has the experience and 'bin there done it' life that I have had. He is certainly right about the two types of demo...which is part of my 'How To Make A $Million From your Music' course at www.makehits.co.uk/swgintro.htm .

Yes, I do advise: "never go near a studio without the most expensive producer you can afford". I see this tragic mistake every day of my life in the demos I receive.

I also advise never going near a studio unless you have a 'pre-demo' that STINKS of a Top Three Potential Hit...in other words, cannot fail...so it has got to make a Go**amn fortune...are you with me in this thinking?

If you ever go near an expensive studio with anything less, you are contributing to the studio owner's Mercedes fund...does that make sense? At the end of the day, a Hit song is a Hit song which you can yodel into a hand held tape machine [yes! I've had that] or a full-blown, top produced demo in an expensive studio [I've had that as well.]

The choice is yours!

The main thing is to know that you are in a highly professional 'no prisoners taken' business where you can get burned financially, very easily, or you can make a fortune...as I always say: "learn your business...and the manual is on the air 4pm to 7pm in most countries of the world every Sunday!"

The most telling thing from your Email was when you mentioned 'country'!  It is astonishingly hard to make real money in the UK, and increasingly in the USA from recorded country music.  The only country stuff that gets in the charts is the 'quirky', unusual country music [Shania Twain etc.] or the 'country flavoured' stuff like all the 'Westlife' boy band type stuff....all my Hits were country tinged...all the guitar work and the vocal work had 'country' in there but would never be welcome in a 'country' club....I think we would be shot!

So - maybe the way to think of 'country' today is to understand it as a flavour for Pop material...and make it a rule that the song you produce would get you laughed from any 'real' country club....a crazy way of looking at it, but heck, you could have a mighty Hit and at least you won't end up bitter and disappointed by not giving it a shot!  Travis does it....even Stereophonics...think about it. 

"Always do right.

This will gratify some people and astonish the rest."
Mark Twain