Five & Five on Friday, 10/27/2023
More gigs and sub-optimal music biz news
Happy Friday! Congratulations on making it to the end of the week. As you head into your weekend, here are five recommendations and then five micro reviews of albums from my high school CD collection. Maybe you’ll find something new to read, listen to, or do this weekend. See you next week!
I found this article by Patrick St. Michael about Olivia Rodrigo’s promotional campaign in Japan fascinating. Not because of Rodrigo (I have childhood memories of Bill Clinton getting impeached, I’m too old to weigh in on her) but because of the overview on how Western artists’ relationship to the Japanese market has changed over the last few decades, specifically how streaming and social media led some artists to abandon the ground game that could have crossed them over.
Back in the states, well, one of them anyway, I have a bunch of fresh gigs coming up! Let’s do a quick roundup: First, Dan Rico takes Manhattan on 11/3 at Home Sweet Home, hopefully this time it won’t rain so hard the trains break down. The next night (11/4) I’m playing with Model Child for the first time at Alphaville, I’ve had a blast learning Danny’s tunes and this should be a good one! Next, on 11/8 I’m playing drums for Told Slant, I’ve been a fan of Felix’s music for years and I’m so psyched that they asked me to play this gig. Tickets are low for this one, so act fast! Finally, though we are no longer playing in Midtown tonight, Laughing Stock will be back on 11/10 at Windjammer in Queens!
Well, with the fun news out of the way, let’s do a roundup of Bad Music Business News: First, BMI, one of the largest performing rights organizations in the world who collect and distribute royalties for a ton of artists you’ve heard of and even more that you haven’t, decreased their payout percentage to rights-holders after becoming a for-profit company, likely in advance of a potential sale. That means that radio play, commercial use and syncs will pay out less than ever. In a similar act of penny-pinching, Spotify have announced that they plan to de-monitize tracks that fall below a certain threshold of plays. This might actually work out to a higher cut for middle class artists, who will get a slightly bigger slice of Spotify’s streaming revenue, but this basically shuts underground music out of the business. Now would be a great time for smaller artists to look into alternatives, too bad the head of editorial at the current best option is an anti-union schmuck.
Last week Frank “Friend of Music” Meadows invited me to see Killers of the Flower Moon, the latest from the legendary American filmmaker Martin Scorsese. Movie slaps outrageously hard, the 3 and 1/2 hour runtime is a feature not a bug! If one super-long movie about the rotten soul of America isn’t enough for you, check out this list the man himself made on Letterboxd (!!) of “companion films” for his whole body of work.
Now, onto the five micro reviews. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in late 2020, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.
Train of Thought by Dream Theater (2003) - Progressive Metal
My CD is signed by bassist John Myung and drummer Mike Portnoy. Thanks guys! This is Dream Theater’s “dark and heavy” record, which in the early 00s meant distorted vocals and bounce riffs. Also, some of the most outrageous instrumental sections of their whole career. I have very strong memories of listening to this album a lot the week of the Virginia Tech shooting. I remember it raining nonstop in NYC. I don’t think I saw the sun once that week. So while it would be easy for me to crack jokes about the parts of this record that don’t work, I have trouble untangling them from a dark and dreary stretch of days. Life is weird. [Editor’s Note: HOLY SHIT MIKE PORTNOY BACK! I’ll have more to say about this soon!]
Origo by Burst (2005) - Post-Hardcore
A record that I saw a lot of hype for on the Myspace group “The Mosh Pit” and pretty much nowhere else. I spent a lot of time trying to get other heavy music fans in my life into them but it never stuck. The vocals were a tough sell. I still think this is a really creative record, maybe a bit too long, but each tune has its own identity and the band never sound like tourists. Their next one is even better though, taking all of these ideas and pushing them to their limit.
Morbid Tales by Celtic Frost (1984) - Metal
Being into this band got me a lot of cred from old heads at comic book shops and metal shows. I caught the bug from their reunion record, but this ugly little album sealed the deal. This is where your favorite down tempo hardcore bands got their best riffs. This thing is nasty, almost more of a punk record than a metal one at times. Classic.
Young Team by Mogwai (1997) - Post-Rock
Of the Mogwai CDs I own I’ve listened to this one the least, in part because the huge dynamic range makes it next to impossible to hear on public transportation. It’s really quite lovely, great melodies and, with the exception of a few huge explosions, very laid back. I think their later records improved on this one by tightening up the length of their compositions, but this holds up great!
01011001 by Ayreon (2008) - Progressive Metal
An all star cast of metal singers hired to perform in a scenery chewing contest in the form of a prog rock opera about immortal fish aliens who gave birth to humanity by sending their DNA across outer space. 100 minutes of music. Everything about this is preposterous. The opening track is actually pretty sick lol, but the only thing I could think about for the rest of the album was how high the budget must have been. Were InsideOut handing out huge advances? Is this guy independently wealthy? What from? Why are there so many prog albums about the end of the world???