akoolstik

“I am astonished by the wonderful power that you have created, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever.” – Arthur Sullivan, to Thomas Edison in 1888 after seeing a demonstation of the talking machine.

1. The primary reason most bands break up is money.
2. When they use terms like ‘creative differences,’ what that usually means is that the singer wants to write songs so they can get more of the royalties, and the guitarist says no to that, because the singer is there to sing and not to pen crappy songs.
3. Bass players are the best interviews.
4. About the best compliment you can pay to a song is that it’s got a great beat and you can dance to it.
5. Everything punk should swing.
6. Everything in EVERY genre should swing.
7. If it ain’t fast, it ain’t heavy metal.
8. Sit on the lawn when you go to see the jam band in the summer, because you’re gonna need all the grass you can stand in order to make it through the show …
9. Bands outside the mainstream are frequently just as boring as the mainstream acts, and often way more pretentious. (This is the Mekons rule.)
10. If your band hasn’t hit it big, the most likely reason for this is that you aren’t very good, so stop railing against “The Man” that is the recording industry and learn how to play.
11. Don’t ask me to feel your pain.
12. I’m also not interested in how much you hate your dad.
13. Death is usually a good career move.
14. There is a BIG difference between stretching your musical boundaries and playing anything that you think will sell a record. (This is the Maroon 5 rule.)
15. Likewise, releasing multiple versions of songs doesn’t make me swoon over your musical breadth. It makes me think you’re a moneygrubbing whore. (This is the Shania Twain rule.)
16. Stop trying to sing like Mariah Carey. (This is the American Idol rule.)
17. I’m all for covers. In fact, it’s never a bad idea to cover a song by Bob Dylan or Willie Nelson, since they’ve probably already expressed whatever it is you want to express, and done it better than you can.
18. But make the cover uniquely your own. Put your own stamp on it. Don’t just regurgitate it note-for-note. Points for creativity. (The Clumsy Lovers country rendition of AC/DCs You Shook Me All Night Long immediately comes to mind, along with the entire catalogue of Lounge Against the Machine.)
19. Along those lines, playing note-for-note-just-like-on-the-album songs in concert doesn’t impress me. Improvise and get out there, take some risks. You’re musicians, people, not robots.
20. Rock ‘n’ roll can, and maybe even should, be funny.
21. I really don’t care who the “next big thing” is in rap or contemporary R&B, because the mediums are entirely producer driven, and the artists are pretty much interchangeable.
22. Think REALLY LONG AND HARD before you include that organist in your band.
23. Do not hang around Michael Stipe for too long, as this often leads to astonishingly bombastic delusions of grandeur.
24. Most Unplugged sessions remind you why the artists should be plugged.
25. Corporate product is not inherently bad. Remember, record companies are responsible for making available most of the greatest music we’ve ever heard.
26. But that doesn’t mean you should shill for the RIAA. They can sue plenty of people on their own. (This is the Metallica rule, aka “Master of Sockpuppets.”)
27. Take away the hot pants and the cocaine, and a lot of the actual disco/funk music from the 70s really isn’t all that bad …
28. When a band becomes less known for their music and more known for the (ob)noxious, cult of clueless rabid fans who assemble at their gigs, it’s time to consider a career change.
29. People who badmouth the blues, James Brown, or The Beatles are idiots. EVERYTHING you hear on the radio comes from one of those original sources.
30. Don’t write songs about how hard it is to be a musician. (I’ll let Cypress Hill off the hook for this one, since they were most certainly stoned out of their insane membranes when they did it.)
31. Always be open to the notion that there is GREAT music being made all over the planet, and not just in a few wealthy enclaves of the Western world. Listen to all of it, and let all of it influence you.
32. There is a BIG difference between being a musician and being a rock star. No shame in being one or the other. Just pick one, and be aware of the consequences.
33. Anyone who thinks the music today is “worse” than before is naïve. There were lots of utterly horrific recordings in the 50s and 60s. There’s just more now, since the technology is more easily accessible, and more frequently abused.
33 1/3. Stevie Wonder is god. Don’t argue.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ul7X5js1vE

i rest my case