Independent Radio Promotion

In the past I've hired an independent radio promotion company to get one of my songs radio airplay and I really enjoyed the experience. But it was expensive and what I ultimately learned was that unless you have tens of thousands to invest you are not going to chart your record which is the goal.

Is independent radio promotion effective or even necessary? I consider independent radio promotion on the same par as pay for play venues. Who wants to go to a club and pay money to see a band that didn't have to audition, only buy $400.00 worth of tickets in advance (to later sell to their family and friends) or guaranty to bring 50 paying guests (the band pays the difference)? There is no quality control whatsoever and because the only audience is the one the band brings with it the bands are selected in a manner that causes the crowd to empty after each act and refill with a different crowd for the next band. This increases the total attendance for the club that then sells more seats and drinks but usually means that the various bands on a bill are so musically different from each other that it's difficult to go out to hear a night of music without having to put up with some styles you really don't like. If I know a club has a pay to play policy I won't go there to hear music.

Imagine you're a Music Director at a radio station whose job it is to select the songs to be played and you receive a box of CDs from an independent radio promoter. There may be fifty CDs in that box and you know the only real audition any of these acts did was have their check clear or have a high credit score. Clearly you are dealing with artists who are serious enough about their career to spend some coin but it's like taking the local prostitute to your senior prom. She may be good looking but everyone knows she's only out with you because you're paying her. You're not impressing anyone.

Now imagine you're the Music Director and you receive a package from a record label, even a small indie label. You assume the record company only signed the act after auditioning it, have invested money in the recording, the CD art, the promotional material and the promotion person who is sending it to you. The focus is on YOU, not 49 other artists and it appears you have an entire team behind you. As the Music Director whose CD do you want to add to your station's playlist?

If you are seriously considering hiring an independent radio promoter which will start at about $2500.00, see if you can hire a radio consultant instead. A consultant will have the names and addresses of the radio stations and will be able to tell you which stations to target first but you'll have to do the actual leg work such as mailing out CDs with personalized cover letters and follow up phone calls. And if you really want to play on the level of the big boys you might want to get your prom date to visit the stations' music directors personally.

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The Musical Partnership

I prefer musical groups to solo artists. One reason is because in a band there is more competition. Neil Young can put two or three second rate tunes on his solo album, who's going to stop him? He got tired, he needs a couple more songs to round out the album and those are what he has available. But if he tries to stick those tunes on a Buffalo Springfield album Stephen Stills and Richie Furay will say they've got better songs than that, their songs should go on the album. Neil then has to step up his game if he wants to play.

A solo artist doesn't have the "equal" partners to keep him in line and force him to up his standards. The closest thing, other than maybe an opinionated wife (inevitable ex-wife), is a producer. A record producer is to a musician what Jiminy Cricket was to Pinocchio. He many times represents the record company and has the task of keeping both the material and performance as well as the recording as highly polished and professional as the label expects and requires. 

A producer is someone who may do as little as listen to make sure everything is in tune and on time, both musically and in regards to keeping appointments, and decide when a "take" isn't up to snuff and should be re-recorded, to actually writing the songs, arranging the instruments and even playing on the tracks. A producer is not usually a recording engineer who handles the recording equipment and may or may not be involved with the mixing of the tracks.

Without a producer as a partner in the production of a record the artist is forced into a sometimes uneasy partnership with the record company's A & R rep. This person may be the talent scout who first brought the artist to the attention of the record company and is liaison between the artist and the label. The problem is that the A & R (Artist and Repertoire) person doesn't necessarily know how to actually make music. His or her help isn't always constructive and can lead to an adversarial relationship between the artist and the label. Most of the time in successful careers the relationship between the artist and producer is good and long lasting.

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Juliet Piper At The Hotel Cafe

I went to see singer-songwriter Juliet Piper at The Hotel Cafe. The Hotel Cafe has a buzz for being Thee place to play and that more Indie artists have been signed out of The Hotel Cafe than any other club in L.A. in recent years.

Juliet has quite the buzz going on around her as well with getting Facebook Likes and radio airplay from KROQ DJ Rodney Bingenheimer and actually getting her song on the charts (Top 20) on 99.1 in Doble Nueve, Peru.

The competition is fierce for female acoustic folk-pop these days and Juliet opened the show for two other young ladies. So the question is how does someone like Juliet stand out in the crowd. She is a very good (catchy pop melodies) songwriter, a competent musician (guitar and piano) and an engaging performer and is very attractive, but so are a lot of other performers.

What sets Juliet Piper apart, immediately, can be described in one word; CHARM. Other female performers have onstage personas and musical styles that are individual and unique such as being moody and atmospheric or giddy and girlish or vampish and vixenish and that works for them but Juliet Piper is simply happy and charming. Now if that sounds to you to mean insubstantial and shallow, your sense of perception is limited. She actually stands out due to her confident, pleasant and easygoing demeanor and stage presence. It's one thing to be easy on the eyes but to also be easy on the heart and spirituality uplifting is refreshing in these days of The New Depression, and I mean Depression in more ways than one.

A great example of the vibe she exudes, even when she's not physically present, is her video for her song We Loved, animated by her and a friend using the garden gnome in her backyard. As an animator myself I find this video both delightful and extremely impressive.

We Loved - written, performed and animated by Juliet Piper.

In the case of Juliet Piper, if I were a record company and was wondering how to market her music, I wouldn't. That is, I wouldn't market her music, I'd market her. She represents, or could represent, such a positive role model for young girls that her music could be sold as just another product under the Juliet Piper banner along with any number of merchandise products such as clothing, perfumes, books, jewelry and yes, even garden gnomes.

Visit Juliet Piper HERE.

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What Do You Mean WE, Kemosabe?

Does anybody think it's ironic that the new movie based on the Fifties TV series The Lone Ranger stars Johnny Depp as Native American sidekick Tonto yet the original series starred an actual American Indian named Jay Silverheels?

Back in the 50s most Indian parts, and there were a slew of them as it was the Golden Age of the Western, were played by Italian American actors. Eventually people protested the lack of actual Indians in Indian roles and the movie Last Of The Mohicans got a lot of press by employing real Indian actors and that was in the 90s. It seems that here in the 21st Century we've gone beyond dressing up white actors in "red face", even though there seems to be an epidemic of English actors portraying Americans, even Superman!

Here it is, 2013, and we've got Johnny Depp playing a Native American. At least Robert Downey Jr. played an African American as played by an Australian and that was in a comedy where all was played for laughs.

I haven't seen the new remake of The Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp (starring as the sidekick?) and I doubt I will since no one could ever replace Klinton Spilsbury in my mind as the quintessential Lone Ranger.

I'm kidding about Klinton Spilsbury who was a bigger train wreck than the actual train wrecks all Lone Ranger movies feel is mandatory.

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Late Night Voodoo

I was listening to George Noorey on Coast To Coast AM and he had as his guest Rizwan Virk the author of Zen Entrepreneurship. Basically, the universe is sending you clues about what you should do or what you should be doing and getting in touch with this hidden world will help you acheive success in the more obvious one.

One of the things that the book Zen Entrepreneurship teaches is to notice what Riz calls "glitches in the matrix" or weird feelings you get about something, some place or someone for no apparent reason. These could also be strange coincidences or what my late brother used to refer to as "voodoo". What he said on the air was intriguing enough to make me download the free sample for my Kindle which had enough information that conformed enough to the books I usually read to make me feel the info was coming from the same place, so I bought the ebook version. I almost immediately recognized a bit of "voodoo" when the author said that his first company was called Brainstorm Technologies. My first company name when I was accepting freelance work was called Brainstorm Studios. Voodoo.

After the initial interview George opened the phone lines to calls from listeners. One of the first calls he received for Riz was from an older guy who wanted to know how his band could "make it". Their lead singer had died about a year ago and the band decided to carry on but what should they do? He got a surprising amount of personal and specific questions from callers that night who evidently mistook him for a psychic or a fortune teller. But the fact that the first caller I heard was someone in my place (an old rocker) who asked probably just what I would have asked (if I was talking to a fortune teller). Riz's advice was not mystical but practical: just try to get a small fan base in your local town and start from there.

I often fall asleep listening to Coast To Coast AM, my favorite late night radio show (since I can't get Headsets with Jim Ladd anymore) but since Coast To Coast AM is broadcast on KFI AM in Los Angeles it means if I fall asleep with Coast To Coast AM I have to wake up with Rush Limbaugh. That's a crappy way to start the day.

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The Lady's Prerogative

I just had an experience that reminded me of something. Years ago I was employed at a major film studio and my supervisor, the head of the department, was a young lady. I had known her a while and she knew I had no trouble whatsoever with working with women.

Although my father was always present and active in my life, he was an only child and my mother had only one sister. My father and two youngish great uncles were outnumbered by their three wives, my two grandmothers (no grandfathers), my aunt, my great aunt and my two great uncles' two daughters each. My aunt had so many husbands that eventually none of them really counted as a male influence. My aunt, an animator, had gotten me into the business to begin with and her female friends in the industry sort of kept an eye on me so I was used to working with women.

My supervisor complained that many of the men in her department and under her authority just didn't pay any attention when she tried to talk to them. One older man from South America was downright rude in how he would ignore her when she spoke to him.

She asked me if it was because of something about her and I told her it was not, other than she was female and young. But I explained why, in my opinion, men do not generally like working with women, if the woman is in charge. It's not strictly a male ego thing but because of the old adage; "A man's word is his bond but it's a lady's prerogative to change her mind." Many men believe that they cannot count on the word of a woman employer. In an industry where lying is standard operating procedure this becomes especially irksome.

I recently talked to a woman who books entertainment for a local coffee house and agreed to book an act I was promoting on July 13, from 7:00 to 9:00. She said she just needed the store manager to call me to confirm. After a few days passed and I called back looking for confirmation she told me that she had said that all the bookings for July were filled and that I could have a date in August. July 13th from seven to nine is pretty specific and I didn't just pull that date and time out of my ass as she seemed to imply. She never told me July was filled, she told me JUNE was filled. She told me I could have July 13 from seven to nine. She just simply "changed her mind." She's smart enough to know that you can't just "change your mind" in business once you've given your word so rather than admit she "changed her mind" she just blatantly lied and said she said something to me that she never said.

This sort of "I said 'No'" (when I previously said 'Yes") and "you can't accuse me of lying because I'm your boss so just live with it (I changed my mind, so what?)" attitude had happened enough to me that I was able to explain it to my female supervisor many years ago. As frustrating it is to have a woman supervisor change her decision and not even admit to changing it but force you to admit to having "misunderstood" and "made a mistake", it must also be frustrating to be a woman in a position of power and have your male employees distrust anything you say. No wonder women get such disrespect in the office and I don't think they're even aware of what they're doing. I've never had a man pull this as a male supervisor will simple say the situation has changed and now we're going to do something different than what was previously discussed. In other words a man will just say. "I changed my mind." I don't think I've ever heard a woman say that.

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Jerry Strull And The Artist Salon

The family hosted a House Concert / Party for friend and auxiliary Tooner Jerry Strull recently. I turned the living room into a makeshift theater with seating for about 25. Jerry did his solo acoustic set under the chandelier and surrounded by candles in front of the picture window. With my sons and their friends who sat on the stairs there were well over thirty people in attendance.

It was a magical evening with Jerry in fine voice and always a master of guitar. His first set were all original tunes with melodies as strong as the lyrics were poignant and his second set were old favorites re-imagined. The experience reminded me of the stories I'd heard of the art salons of Paris and of the evening jams we used to get together for back before we had families.

 Artist Gita Lloyd in front row paints performer Jerry Strull while performing.

Another great aspect of the event was that old friend and former band mate in the Newwave band Wild Oscare, David Nigel Lloyd, came down with his wife the artist Gita Lloyd. Gita likes to paint events in "real time" and has painted author Ray Bradbury during a book signing and other celebrities. While Jerry performed Gita sat in front and painted him. She wasn't the only artist there as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle producer Bill Wolf also sketched Jerry while he played.

 Artist Gita Llyod's Expressionistic painting of Folk-Pop musician Jerry Strull.

David and Gita spent the night and the next morning David got a call telling him he's been accepted in a big Folk Music Festival up North so it was quite a weekend for my artist friends.

Visit Jerry Strull.com HERE.

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