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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Tue, 28 Jul 1992 09:55:00 GMT
From:         "OUT,
              OUT - YOU'LL NOT FEEL THE FALL-OUT..." <OLIVOTTO@ITNCISCA.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: Crazy Fingers

Michael H. Bloom <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET> gets statistical and says :)...

>My second thought was that the list simply doesn't have the numbers to make a
>difference. When I was a kid, the Byrds could sell 100,000 copies of a record
>and it would be considered a hit. Ten years later, Byrds founder Roger McGuinn
>got his Columbia recording contract dropped for only selling 100,000 copies.
>Economies of scale have only gotten more extreme since then: _Nevermind_ sold
>4 million so far. (The best selling debut album by a new artist to date was, I
>believe, the first Boston album, at something like 8 million.) How many of us
>on the list are there, anyway? Even if you add in friends who might trust us
>enough to buy a pig in a poke, it's still not enough.

        It isn't in fact. We poor mortals who really can have trouble putting
out as few as 1000 CDs, feel something shake under our feet when we read that
Def Leppard spent FOUR years in a studio (which is beyond any belief and any
human logic, IMHO) and their breakeven point was something like 1,500,000 al-
bums. *My* breakeven point is 500, and this means 3000 times less - which sim-
ply goes to show I am definitely not Def Leppard (thanks God).
        But, what else should we expect? The Record Company appears to us as
the machine which produces music. Which is true, of course. But, more than
that, it is a sort of team of jugglers, except they handle money instead of
balls and rods: you put $100,000 on the right plate, and $100,000 come back
on the left plate, plus something more, possibly.
        Which brings up the thread about "musicians expressing themselves in
first place", which someone started a week ago or so inside the censorship
debate. Of course, it SHOULD be so. But if someone comes and tells me that
Michael Jackson or his little rapping friends with clothes reversed are ex-
pressing themselves, I may laugh forever - but it's not the case to start
another war, I'm afraid.
        Open eyes, brothers, open eyes (and, most of all, open ears). That's
the only rule I recognise: listen without prejudice, keep what's good to you,
discard the rest. But it's not as easy as it seems, really. In any cas, your
own intelligence will provide you a way to choose between the good and the
bad in music - that is, separate culture from crap.

>My third thought was, how on earth are we ever going to agree on a record? I'm
>always trying to get the list to buy Fred Frith records, and n.n. is equally
>persuasive on the topic of Allan Holdsworth, and I haven't seen either of them
>in the charts lately. I think the Sharrock thread was our greatest promotional
>success so far, maybe a dozen additional records sold...

        We ain't ever gonna agree, Michael: there is TOO MUCH good music around
to agree about any title...

>Yup, lotsa deserving folks right here on this very list. Beer's on a CD, John
>McIntyre's band has a cassette (plus there's a solo cassette, is that right?),
>I'm in two bands that have product to peddle, ROTCOD ZZAJ has a whole catalog
>of underground productions... and I bet we all thank our lucky stars for day
>jobs that allow us to finance these grossly unprofitable activities.

        I remind all those who may be interested that I am more or less res-
ponsible for John's tapes  (one of which is not a solo project - but a dif-
ferent band) since he was so crazy to give them to TNR for trade (oops, Mi-
chael something tells me I should have kept silent this time :) :) ).
        Well, no jokes - if you are interested drop me a line through per-
sonal e-mail.

        Ciao, Marco

olivotto@itnvax.cineca.it
OLIVOTTO@ITNCISCA
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