James Moore's Blog, page 92

What Independent Bands Still Don’t Understand About Finances

One thing that makes my life extremely hard on most days is the simple fact that most of the bands I work with don’t understand the basic economics of the music industry. And while yeah, some don’t understand that a band is investment and that you shouldn’t be paying band members until you’re pulling a grand a night, there is a whole other range of issues that you have to deal with as you grow in the music industry. Some of the misconceptions I deal with here are more basic than others, but they all revolve around the fact that you need to be educating yourself about work in a free market that is the perfect representation of pure capitalism, and is terrifying because of it.

5. There is no money

I work something like 100 or so hours a week and I make under what minimum wage would be at a normal forty hour a week job. This doesn’t especially bother me as I feel that I’m building towards something greater, but I think you get the point – it’s not about the money, and unless you get extremely lucky then you are never going to make more than twenty grand a year. I don’t count on making more than that and have structured my life around being perpetually lower class. Some people do manage to crack it, and good for them, but in most cases you’re going to have to accept that the music industry is going to choke you out and leave you to suffer in poverty. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just a basic reality.

4. Seriously, there is no money

I make a little bit of money after working hard at this for five years and having written nearly five thousand articles. Just because you think you’re a better writer, musician or promoter than me doesn’t mean you’re going to get money. I might think you’re a hard worker and smart and valuable, but I don’t have the money to just pay you to do something, unfortunately that’s not how it works. While individuals can and should help each other out, you largely need to build yourself up and then maybe hopefully possibly get a little bit of money, but if we’re being honest you probably won’t get any. This isn’t a reflection on you, but just the music industry as a whole. Of course – this means that when you do get paid you had better be working your hardest to prove you deserve it.

3. Anything Worth Anything Costs Money

IMP does indeed cost a decent amount of money to get started. This definitely alienates people who think that they should be able to get anything they want for free or use digital services to do stuff themselves. Guess what. It doesn’t work that way. IMP costs money because James knows that it is worth something. Every freelancer worth their salt knows that if their product isn’t among the best they aren’t going to make anything, this is most true in the music industry. While there is definitely stuff that is worth doing for free (I still take up the occasional project for ‘exposure’) you should be aware that if you believe in your product then you are wroth some money, even if its only a hundred bucks, don’t feel afraid to charge that if you believe that you are genuinely worth that money. But people can tell, if you’re not worth that money and give them no reason to provide that money then they are simply not going to give it to you.

2. The People Who Are Making Money DESERVE It (Probably)

There’s only a handful of people really making a living in the music industry, but guess what, despite what you might think, despite the fact that one of them was a jerk to you, they probably deserve to be where they are. They have put in the hours, they have worked hard to make themselves figures who people know are wroth the money they are asking for. It takes a lot of sacrifice and hard work to generate any sort of forward momentum in this industry. I haven’t been in a relationship in years because of this, and I have many friends in a similar boat. That’s not to say though that everyone doing it deserves to be. A lot of people still aren’t picking up their phones, setting up stuff they said they would do, and generally being responsible individuals. There’s a lot of incompetents in the industry, it’s just a matter of working to a point where you merit a living and can see the incompetents for what they are. Again though – there’s a lot of good people who have ‘made it’ and that is incredibly rad, ne could even argue that it’s the reason a lot of us are still in it. Because…

1. You Can Become One of Those People

It’s hard to break it in the music industry but it’s not impossible. It requires years of working for free and pushing your bands to the limit if you really want anything from it, but you can still become one of those people. There are no real gatekeepers anymore. There are people who have money, but as that money gets increasingly diversified if you manage to uphold a good profile and a responsible image then people are going to want to work with you. It’s largely a matter of laying down groundwork and proving your mettle. Nothing is stopping you except for yourself, read The Wealth Of Nations I know it’s hard and in fancy language, but Adam Smith gives a surprisingly strong insight to the music industry when he explains how capitalism works. Prove that you are unique and people should want to work with you. Go out, educate yourself and get ready to grow – the music industry itself lies at your feet.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post What Independent Bands Still Don’t Understand About Finances appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

I Was A Teenage Music Snob

The writer during one night in high school.

“I don’t want to feel this way forever”

At the switch of the centuries I can remember the early days of downloadable music. Songs would take full days, two, three, four. Single songs. The computer would heat and hum all night long. Single tracks would only give a taste, forcing you to spend money to own the full, physical album. I can remember downloading songs from Glassjaw, My Chemical Romance, You & I, Saves The Day, Bright Eyes, Racebannon and Thursday before knowing anything about them. It felt like I was given special access to this new music. I felt privileged. I was the prime discoverer and so, felt an exaggerated ownership.

I can remember being especially taken by Thursday and buying Full Collapse, their second album in the early months of 2001. The album became embedded into my psyche like a steak knife through a juicy, raw steak. The songs surrounded my bedroom and left echoing webs in the walls and in the ceiling. It was very special to little old defunct me. My punched and held down emotions came belting from Geoff Rickly’s desperately panicked cries of pain. It felt like he was channeling my own isolation and gloom and that made it okay, tolerable.

When something like that then crosses into the mainstream it becomes like an intrusion on that shared intensity, making it less so. It was difficult to handle in an over-the-top pathetic teenage way. When my favorite band, who’s ill-fitting t-shirts I wore weekly, started to become known, it felt like betrayal, like my darkest secrets were being exposed. I can remember being snot-faced with a curled up frown at the lunch table with my friends and someone, smiling widely, saying that Thursday was my band with a mocking tone. I could only laugh along. It was ridiculous to let a universal appeal ruin something I cherished, but it did.

“Full Collapse” was released April 10, 2001 on Victory Records.

What most likely did me in was probably the debut of their music video for “Understanding in a Car Crash” on MTV. That was the white flag moment. The wall was coming down. I watched the blurred clip with wide gushing eyes knowing that this thing I had held so dearly was no longer going to be mine.

Early on I saw Thursday open for Saves The Day in a room crowded with Saves The Day admirers. Months later, after that video hit, they played the unwholesome basement of the Nile Theatre in Mesa, Arizona. The space was so jam packed with sweaty fans, dried out and thirsty, that I ended up pushed onto the small stage to the right of guitarist Steve Pedulla. Before the show started he politely reminded me, “just don’t step on these pedals.” I probably had no response, shocked into silence, and spent the set dodging the spear end of his guitar. Still one of the best shows I’ve witnessed. Top ten.

As the years went on the bleeding heart poetry of Thursday came to be almost comical, an easy target, and the band never made another record quite as powerful. Emo and Screamo music blew up so much to the point that the all-American high school jocks who had once made fun of our ironic t-shirts, unkempt hair and glasses, were suddenly donning Thursday and Jimmy Eat World t-shirts trying to be our friends. But who knows? So, they kind of thought Full Collapse was cool. Maybe they, too, had some darkness lurking that the album could explain. Who was I to take that away from them?

Over a decade later and most of the bands I discovered on KaZaa early on have rose to prominence with a quicker fade out. I have grown a lot since then and so, too, has the culture. Now, we share things. We share songs and albums with total strangers. And that’s okay. Or, at least there’s no stopping it, so why bother griping? All music from all eras is now available to us streaming and downloadable. We can relive the crusty gutter punk past or shake our hips to rare disco b-sides like our living rooms are Studio 54. In my Recent Downloads folder I have, side-by-side, without attempting to achieve any irony, The Misfits’ 12 Hits From Hell and Selena Gomez’s Revival. So, who really am I now?

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post I Was A Teenage Music Snob appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

What Indie Bands Don’t Understand About Branding On Social Media

Branding on social media is crucial to your bands success – it’s just a pity that so few bands understand what it is and how to do it well. While it might seem initially easy to put together your brand on a social media page, it’s clearly a lot more complicated than it looks since so many bands seem to have trouble and don’t fully realize what having a great social media brand implies. If you can take advantage of branding though, you’re setting yourself up for higher social media engagement and a more devout fanbase, which in turn leads to higher merchandise sales and concert attendance.

This is another one of those things where we can’t really look at my beloved DIY bands and instead need to consider the top notch web presence of a band like One Direction or Five Seconds To Summer. One thing that stands out right away about both bands is that they both have videos of the band members talking to the fans on top of their Facebook pages as featured posts. And I checked, they aren’t under the same label or management, this apparently just what boy bands do in 2016. While this isn’t necessarily crucial for you since your band probably aren’t divas, creating that link between band and fans is. It’s a valid marketing strategy to post a lot of videos of your band just being friendly dudes who are grateful for what support they receive. It helps to strengthen the bond between band and fan.

Beyond that – these bands are able to capitalize on their brand by showing that these are people who walk the walk. This isn’t just something that pop bands do (Five Seconds Of Summer’s Facebook page features a recent selfie of a member on vacation) it’s also implemented by the most savvy DIY acts. For example, my perennial favorites, the boys in Full of Hell do a great job of using silly pictures to show that despite their tendency to make brilliant and highly cerebral music, they too understand the beauty of a truly dank meme. Of course, things you post on social media is only the start of using it to brand your music.

A crucial aspect of any social media campaign is how beautiful your pages look. Take a band like Metallica for example. If you go through their pages you will see that they are all beautifully designed and put together. From Spotify to Twitter, Instagram to Facebook the band has been able to use every major social media platform to cultivate their aesthetic. They’ve been able to use social media to cement what their brand is (Playing to huge crowds, over the top imagery, remaining blue collar metal dudes) and thus help to guide their fanbase towards more of their work. It builds the Metallica ‘fantasy’ if you will and people who want to buy into that fantasy join the legions who follow the band quasi-obsessively, which, as we mentioned before, turns into pure revenue.

Fortunately – it is surprisingly easy to establish a similar web presence yourself. Putting together beautiful imagery and well constructed social media sites might very well be something that can be done by the members of your band. If not – it’s not too hard to fin someone able to do these things for just a few hundred dollars. While that might seem like a huge initial investment for something so small relatively speaking, it will pay off dividends in the future and helps to keep the band looking professional – and looking professional is vital in this industry. Your social media platforms are the number one way that people are going to be interacting with your band, so doesn’t it make sense to have them be as good as possible? After all – I now a lot of music industry big wigs who will close out of a page the second they see that it is poorly designed. While you might need them, they don’t need you.

You might want to refute my statements by saying that you’re a DIY punk band and that it doesn’t make sense for you to do this. Well – first off, I just name dropped Full Of Hell as a group you should emulate, if they aren’t DIY enough for you then I don’t know what is. Beyond that though, consider the progenitors of the genre, Black Flag, the Dead Kennedy’s, all of them. Those bands were extremely image conscious. Yes their image was an anti-image, but it was still there. Henry Rollins Get In The Van is basically designed to brand the Henry Rollins ethos. That doesn’t take away from the validity of what those bands did, nor does it take away from the DIY ethos of the band, it just means that they understood a basic component of marketing, that you not only need to have an aesthetic but that you need to make that aesthetic omnipresent and keep it in peoples faces.

Now none of this is easy – I still struggle with this, and truly unlocking the potential of social media branding is one of the most important keys to making the big time. It’s especially weird since social media is such a new thing, and again, none of us really have an accurate understanding of it quite yet, it’s still a bit to early in the game for anyone to claim that they fully understand the impact that social media has on the world. Studies will come out twenty years from now that will blow our minds, but right now we just have to make do with what we got. What I do know though is that for years and years bands have been branding themselves and using their aesthetic to make people sit up and pay attention and hopefully, swing some money their way for whatever projects they happen to be doing. Social media is the next step in this long march and it’s up to you to take advantage of that.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post What Indie Bands Don’t Understand About Branding On Social Media appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Why Spotify Matters and What Your Indie Band Can Do About It

Spotify is endlessly fascinating to me because it has so many layers. There’s a whole lot to this service that I don’t think that people fully realize. Not only is Spotify a great and surprisingly convenient place to market your band and sell your merchandise, it also is perhaps the single most effective service to get your music out to music lovers. This is not a guide as to how to do those things, that particular side of the equation can be found on Spotify’s extremely helpful FAQ. This article is more about what this can mean for you band and ideas for implementing these to the best of your ability.

What’s important to remember is that though Soundcloud technically has a larger user base it’s a lot more diversified, with speeches and podcasts providing a large chunk of the sites content. Furthermore, Soundcloud has an estimated thirteen million or so paid users out of a userbase of two hundred fifty million people. Meanwhile, Spotify has about twenty million paid users and seventy five million total users. I think this says a lot about the power of Spotify as a platform. It shows us that the Spotify userbase is a lot more dedicated and passionate about the music and apparently they are more willing to invest money in it. (Although I would be really interested to see the crossover between the two platforms) Beyond that – it’s a whole lot prettier and provides a range of functionalities that no other single music streaming platform can fully match.

[image error]

Beyond that though, Spotify makes it relatively easy to put your content on an easily accessible platform and one that caters explicitly to music lovers. If you want to get the most out of the Spotify experience I strongly recommend doing two things. First, go to the Spotify FAQ for artists and take full advantage of every service they provide. Not all of it is convenient or easy to immediately execute (In fact, a lot of it is pretty confusing) but it is very important and will help to construct something greater further down the line. Furthermore, as you design your Spotify page be sure to check out the Spotify pages of major pop artists, the type of people most likely to be taking full advantage of Spotify. Regular readers recommend that I normally suggest checking out respected DIY bands for this, but I was very disappointed to see that a lot of the bands that I really admire for their resourcefulness and marketing savvy where not taking full advantage of all that Spotify offered.

Here’s the thing – a lot of this stuff is time consuming to set up – but as far as I can tell pretty much all of it is free to initially establish. No other platforms have this level of versatility and class. Spotify is rapidly becoming the most viable entertainment company in the world for a reason – and I can guarantee that your band is not capitalizing on this as much as they could be. Why, Spotify even has some really awesome advertising deals that I can guarantee are a lot better than Facebooks. Think about it, with a single click brings potential fans right to the music rather than pussyfooting around some fan page.

[image error]

Now, while many of these things don’t require start up cash what some of them do need is two hundred and fifty Spotify followers, which certainly might seem like a hard task. But then think about it – how long did it take you to just get two fifty Facebook fans? Probably not too long. Be that guy. Harass your friends, it will only take them a second and have practically no impact on their Spotify experience but it will make yours a whole lot easier. If that’s not working out for you remember that Spotify has a whole page talking about how bands grew their followers. While I’m not totally convinced on all of their methods I definitely think what they say is valid. Simply put – though ads on Spotify are effective a twenty dollar Facebook ad should also be able to help draw enough followers to start unlock some of the cooler aspects of the Spotify experience.

Is Spotify the panacea to your cares though? No, it is only one tool in a long path on the way to triumph in the industry. You shouldn’t put all your money into it, but it’s certainly a platform that could be making you a lot more money than I think any of us realize. Sure, the streams don’t pay very well at all, but guess what, the merchandise sales that you can generate totally will. Spotify can be clunku and doesn’t integrate as well into websites yet either, but the key word there is yet. The service has drawn the attention of some serious big league investors in recent years and if you think that their in browser plug ins are going to remain clunky then you are very misguided my friend. There’s a lot of inefficiencies right now, but Spotify is growing fast, and if other streaming services are any indication this means that soon they are going to be clamping down on artists and starting to really hurt them. Yet a lot of these services won’t impact you as much if you’re grandfathered in – so hop on board as soon as possible and take advantage of all that this great service has to offer. If the brands unique success is any indication soon you won’t have a choice.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post Why Spotify Matters and What Your Indie Band Can Do About It appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Independent Industry Figures: Tomás Doncker

Independent Industry Figures is a weekly column at IMP where we do a feature on a different music industry figure every week who defines the independent music ethos and try to better understand what they’re all about. With each installment we try and get a better sense of what it means to make a living in the music industry and how people can get involved. After all – what can we do but work hard and try to help each other live the dream?

Tomás Doncker is a longtime IMP client, his entire label has always been extremely kind towards us, and he has always impressed us with his clearheaded comprehension of the music industry. With an incredible pedigree and a history playing with legends like Yoko Ono, Madonna and Bonnie Raitt he has learned a lot in his years of hard work. It only made sense then that we would pick his brain about his label, True Groove Records, one of the most hip and happening independent record labels on the New York City scene right now.

He also fronts a successful band of his own, bearing the name Tomás Doncker an the True Grove All Stars. Though we don’t gt into the record in the interview, it’s certainly worth checking out. It stands as a highly educated and refined statement on the status of race relations inAmerica and the struggles we are going to have to face if we wish to move forward as a society.

Find True Groove Records on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TrueGrooveGlobalSoulMusic/?fref=ts

Find Tomás Doncker on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TomasDonckerMusic/?fref=ts

So what’s up Tomás?

It’s an honor to get to talk to you guys and be interviewed by the legendary Matt Bacon, AKA the Baconator. Obviously I am an Independent Music Promotions artist and IMP handles all the PR stuff for our label and they are excellent. Oh and happy new years man!

What’s going on in the world of True Groove Records?

Lots. I recently read an article that you wrote about the value of labels in today’s music industry. I understand why an artist might feel that a label isn’t necessary because the money is hard to find these days. Still, we try and distribute, promote and develop artists like any good label should. Of course a lot of modern labels have stopped developing talent. I never really understood that, I thought that was what labels were for.

Nonetheless, True Groove Records isn’t just a label, it’s an entertainment hub if you will, a beehive of activity. WE don’t just develop artists and release music. We put together shows. We do a lot of work in theater and films now and developing musicals and plays. We are finding new ways to incorporate music into the world of entertainment. It became very clear to me about six years ago that the actual dollar value of music was going to disappear.

Vince Gill put up a post about a year ago about how he had a new single out and his label was telling him he literally wasn’t selling anything. This is Vince Gill! He’s not only an amazing artist, iconic and a hitmaker and he was like “What do you mean no one is buying it?” and they told him, “It’s really great but people just don’t buy music anymore!” He ended up writing this really great post about how an app that creates fart sounds was selling more than his new single and I saw that very well written and thoughtful piece, he was not bitching and moaning about it, but at the end of his post he said ‘We live in an interesting time.”

So I realized years ago that the value of music was going to become nil. However, as soon as you interface with it and connect music to something else, a TV commercial, a video game, a movie, a cartoon, a play, whatever, all of the sudden the power and value of music is immense. True Groove has always been about that, finding ways to connect our music and our artists to other kinds of entertainment medias. For the past two years or so we’re starting to see some really great successes in those areas that make it possible to keep making music.

It costs money, no question about it. Just existing costs money. Nothing that’s worth anything is for free. There’s a whole lot going on though!

One thing that I’ve always admired True Groove is that you only want the best of the best and you’re not willing to cut corners, how did that attitude come to be?

To be honest with you man, without naming any names or pointing any fingers the catch all conversatin that people have been having is ‘Why isn’t music good anymore?’ and that’s not really true. If anything if you don’t stand for something, then you will fall for anything. We love music, it’s that simple. As Frank Zappa said music is the best. It is the international language and great equalizer. Without going int oa whole discussion about where the world is going we just figure that for our own entertainment what if we were about quality and integrity without question or fail. No excuses. What if.

That’s how we developed our platform. We get a lot of enjoyment out of it. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Everyone on our team works extremely hard to hold up their end and to encourage, support an enlighten the rest of the team. People come into contact with us about that without fail. If you’re not about that then you’re not True Groove. When I came up with the name I thought, “If I had to stand behind a shield, a powerful brand name, then True Groove is what it is.” It’s that simple. All of our records, all of our artists, there are no wholes. We don’t release anything or associate with anything that has holes. It’s that simple.

It’s not complicated at all. Is it hard? No. It’s not hard because it’s what we do. I invite anybody to check out our roster and know that across all the different genres there is nothing that has a real hole. I don’t think you can find any artist on our label that you can say is not well done. I really believe that.

You mentioned team members a couple of times, what are you looking for in a team member?

Obviously a skill set is important, a unique skill set, something that crosses over different areas. A forward thinking brain is the most important thing though. A member of our team does not need to be an expert or have a long resume, I don’t really care about that. They just need the ability to take information, and I do highlight that word information as opposed to content, because not all content has information. People nowadays often make that mistake. We try to take information and fuse it into our ethos

For example, not to get too long winded or broad skulled but I can watch a Martin Scorcesi movie and find information that I can use towards writing a song or making an album y looking at how he did it and what kind of elements he brought in. We look at all kinds of art forms as a singular experience. It’s all part of the same conversation and we should be able to fold all of this hopefully useful information into something that will make us grow Unless your point is something completely valid, like if you want to erase thought from your brain well there’s plenty of that out there. For the most part whatever you take in should be good.

It’s like McDonalds. Why would you ever eat McDonalds? There is literally nothing good about it. Yet people do it all the time. They don’t even think about it and then tey wonder why they are overweight and don’t feel way and why their kids are obese and the answer is obvious! They eat McDonalds four times a week! A team member needs to be able to take specific information and bring it into whatever their skillset might be.

Integrity is paramount as is work ethic. It is without question even. It is probably the most important element. Odds are, whoever it is in any endeavor doesn’t necessarily come to the table knowing everything. So what do you do at that point? You start bullshitting your way which will only get you so far, or you dig deep and figure out how to do it properly. Those are the two choices you have, not just at True Groove but in life. It’s not for the faint of heart. Digging deep is a painstaking process. We do our best to only associate closely with people who roll like that and of course enjoy it. You’ve got to love it. As you said in your article about labels there isn’t a whole lot of money in this game. There are better get rich quick schemes. That doesn’t mean there isn’t money out there to be made, but you’ve got to really love it. Those are the prerequisites to join our team.

Why do you think that in the music industry and the world at large we see a lack of a work ethic, and furthermore, how does this lack of a work ethic impact you and how do you deal with that?

Like I said before, if you don’t stand for something then you fall for anything. Part of the mess we made on this planet comes from this lack of work ethic. Life is hard man, life is hard. So what? Since before Jesus Christ life has been hard, but life is also beautiful. One of the things that we in the music industry know is that you get out of it what you put into it. There is no pretending that you don’t know that. Every one in a while fortune smiles on you, you step in shit but then bam something great happens. Then the next day you get hit by a car. It’s called life.

One must at all times put their best foot forward. I have found that finding like minded individuals and institutions, who truly believe in that and don’t just say that are few and far between. That’s not a problem, I’m not complaining When I was a kid my mother said, “By the time you’re grown if you can count all of you real friends on one hand you should consider yourself lucky’ Now here I am a middle aged guy and I know exactly what she meant by that. Not everyone ins that kid of individual or institution. That’s okay fr them, for us it’s not okay, its inexcusable. We do not operate that way. Why Because we love music and appreciate is power in so many ways. I could go on for two hours about what music does.

Therefore, anyone who doesn’t feel this way and doesn’t display this sensibility, we do our best to stay away from like the plague .I mean that literally. Sometimes you meet someone who says something because they think it’s cute even though they don’t have the means or the will to execute. People say all kinds of things that they don’t mean, lately more than ever. Just look at the presidential race. Guys are saying stuff that’s just like, really? Do you really mean that? Or do you just think it’s a nice thing to say?

It’s not just the music business, it’s across our entire existence perpetuated by the growth of media. There is at least the same amount of disinformation as there is real information! You can google something and find results for just about everything on our planet. One day coffee is bad ,the next day it will make you live forever. In this day and age we seem to think that everyone’s opinion is valid. I don’t think that way, I am going to call bullshit. If someone, a person or institution is willing to walk the walk and have fact as and show results no matter what their opinion is whether I Want to interface wit them or not I will respect that fact that they did the work.

Nowadays there are so many people who are famous for doing nothing. I’m not going to name any names, but you know who I am talking about. There is one family in particular that trends twenty four hours a day and they don’t do anything. The patriarch of that family was a famous lawyer, he did something. The rest of his family didn’t. They can generate large amounts of money though on the fact that their dad was a great person. I don’t get it. When I was a kid I thought you had to do something to be respected and well known, anything form being a guitar player to being a doctor or a garbageman. IF you do it well people in our community and sometimes outside of your community then people will respect you for the work that you do. Nowadays that doesn’t seem to matter.

We at True Groove do our best o not have anything to do with that. I don’t know if it’s cost us money, power, fans or whatever, I don’t care. I can sleep at knowing tat we are about the right thins. I hope that answers your question on some level.

Their is a quote of yours that I use relatively regularly, “Everyone is full of shit until they are not.”

Right. Everyone has their elevator pitch, a thirty second sound byte that they use to hopefully get someone to engage with them. In our times there is more work being put into a pitch than the actual thing that you are pitching. It’s part of our existence now and that seems to be okay. Thats not okay with me. It’s just not. I have developed a radar if you will. I won’t say that I have a hundred percent chance of sniffing out but I still have a good sense of it. The most valuable commodity that we have is our time, at any price. If I consider you someone I want to spend time with doing something then there is nothing more I can give you. When I commit my time I commit my time heart and soul, I’m not counting the dollars. I have agreed to do whatever it is because I think it has value. Whatever it is that we are working on ultimately has value as well and that’s a good thing. Whether it makes money or not is not the point, good is good. People know that. I don’t know why they choose to act like they don’t but they do.

There’s a massive amount of poison poured into the collective kool-aid of our consciousness and I’m not afraid to stand on it. I’m not selling a million records. No one will call me up from the label threatening to drop us. Fuck you, I am the label. Me and my team give blood to push it out onto the world. I can do whatever I want because I believe in integrity. We all need to be different. Regardless of how I was raised and the values that my parents instilled in me early on. I dont want to seem like a dinosaur, fuck it. We will base everything off of integrity.

There are other people doing it, there are like minded organizations that have the strength and tactical fortitude to continue.

Could you name some of those?

The first that comes to mind is Daptone. I think they are a good organization. The have some really good stuff that they’ve done and they have grown it. It doesn’t matter if you like it it is what I I, it’s a soli organization. They deliver quality entertainment their way.

Bill Laswell should be first, he does things in his own way. He does his thing without question.

And of course IMP. We got involved with IMP almost four years ago. My partner and fellow artist on the label Marla Mase were brainstorming. I had jt been robbed by a publicist which is for the most part what happens. You give them a lot of money and then they go out in the world and if you’re lucky you pull down an interview or two. Finding a good publicist willing to help you move forward in a real way is the holy grail in this business. That’s what we felt that we wanted and deserved and we weren’t going to spend any more money until we found that person.

Within a week or so though, she got a great review from this guy James Moore in Skope Magazine. She was writing back to him to thank him for the review and she researchd him and saw that he ran a PR company and had writen a book. She contacted him and basically tried to engage his services and he said, to paraphrase, “I could take your money to promote the record but you could get more bang for your buck with a new release!” He walked away from money! That’s unheard of in this business! We were ready to give him money because we liked him, but we were blown away. He said “Call me for the next thing you put out, let’s do it in advance and do it properly.”

So we went back and did a deluxe edition of the same album Speak and out of that we ended up going to China and touring Europe! James blew that up. Every True Groove artist since then has been handled by IMP. That’s the example of an individual with integrity who walks the walk and talks the talk.

To head towards the end, do you have any words of wisdom for me?

Live long and prosper! A really smart guy with pointy ears once said that!

I just think that coming into this new year 2016, I have always believed that there is magic in new beginnings. We have a chance to start over every day. The fat lady hasn’t sung yet. We can back up and do things the right way if necessary. To give one another and ourselves a fresh start is important in order to contribute something vibrant and positive to this world.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post Independent Industry Figures: Tomás Doncker appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

The Most Important Article I’ve Ever Read – You Are What You Do

THIS article is among the most important pieces of writing in my life, if not the most important. Yes, I have a tendency to wax poetic about how Kerouac changed my life or how TS Eliot ‘Really gets it man, you know what I mean?’ but neither of those authors, nor any of the others I claim to be obsessed with, have directly impacted my life as much as David Wongs two page article he wrote for Cracked back in 2012. The point being, you should read it. It’s the article that made me say ‘Fuck it, I can be a professional music industry person.’ In his piece David Wong hammers home what essentially the main point of all this entire blog, and I think that it’s important to take a look at it in the face of a New Year.

Wong is saying basically the same stuff that I have been exhorting you guys to do for a while now – he just does it better. Essentially it boils down to the idea that ‘You are what you do’. This is a key lesson, especially in the music industry, which is basically what I want to talk about today as we collectively seem to be taking a few days off before diving into all of the madness that 2016 is sure to bring us. After all, rock and roll is a hard life, and any sort of edge that you can get is crucial if you want to move forward.

In his piece Wong mentions how he has dozens of aspiring writers contacting him who strive to make a living off writing and know they have the heart of a writer but don’t actually do anything. In other words, they claim to be content creators, but create no content. In the music industry you’re going to find no end of people who act exactly the same way. There are thousands, if not millions of musicians out there wondering why they haven’t ‘Made it’ whilst simultaneously not being willing to put in tens of thousands of hours into their craft. It’s not a complicated formula, and a huge part of what I love about Wong’s article proves exactly that. If you put time into something you’re eventually going to get good at it and end up having no small degree of success. That’s just how life works.

The reason that people on higher levels don’t respond to you is not because they’re assholes (Usually) but simply because they are too busy out doing stuff, and if you were doing stuff that was of significance then they would take notice. If you say that you just can’t do anything unless someone at a higher level asks you to do it, then you’re just misguided. There are plenty of people above you, and it will always be that way. That doesn’t matter though, it’s the twenty first century, you don’t need to ask permission anymore! (If you click around the main page you should find an article I wrote about this the other day) Don’t pussyfoot around with excuses, you have the entire internet at your fingertips. In his article Wong encourages you to go out and learn a skill, and that’s really important, I strive to learn new skills every year, largely in part due to his article. However, I want you to do one better. Most of you reading this article are already musicians, you have a skill, so I want you to go out and create.

Like Wong says, people are going to hate your creation and make fun of you – even your friends. As a matter of fact, most of my friends still DO make fun of me! But the only way you’re going to get better is if you keep putting stuff out there. If you’re doing stuff people will get scared beause tey know that you are taking active steps to advance your career, leaving them further back in the dust. Creating is the only way forward in the music industry though, and I’m using the word creating in the loosest possible sense. Book a show? That’s creating. Record a demo to throw up on Bandcamp? Creating. Organize and execute a killer ad campaign for your band? Creation. Boom. There’s a lot of way to approach this and to really get into the world of music, but again, like Wong says over and over in his piece, you are what you do, that’s just how it goes.

A lot of people are going to whine about this article, like they whine about Wongs article (Although y’know, way more people read Wongs stuff) because this isn’t what they want to hear. If you keep googling ‘Top ten ways to make money from music’ though, you’re not exactly going to find anything new. Everyone else who wants an easy ride in the music industry is googling the exact same things as you and taking away from valuable time when they could be creating content that actually matters in this world. There’s a whole lot of competition out there, but once you start to actually go out and do you’ll find that this whole thing is a damn sight easier than you might have expected.

So in this new year, heed David Wong, he is the most popular writer on the internet for a good reason. I dream of being half the writer he is, simply because this is the man who first proved it could be done and knows that you too can do it. If you keep pushing for your music in solid tangible ways, and remember that your band is what it does, nothing more and nothing less, then you are guaranteed to have success in 2016. It’s not going to be easy and you’re going to have to change your habits. If you’re not willing to change yourself fundamentally in pursuit of the dream then maybe you need to take a step back and re-evaluate what you want out of your art.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post The Most Important Article I’ve Ever Read – You Are What You Do appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

New Years Resolutions For Your Band

New Years Resolutions

New Years is a time for renewed hope, weird hookups, resolutions to be a better person, and perhaps most importantly, crippling hangovers. The concept of a new years resolution is a little bit scary, especially as you start to get up there in years and you start to feel bitter (Or perhaps more accurately – more bitter than usual). That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try and approach the new year with a sense of hope though. Here are a couple of things you can pt your faith in as you move forward into 2016; New Years resolutions that you should consider making as we delve into a brave new world. After all, now we’re closer to 2052 than 1983 and that’s a thought that I don’t think that any of us want to deal with. So here are five resolutions that will hopefully guide your forward in this new year. I’m off to get drunk now.

 

 

5. Go On Tour At Least Once

This one isn’t just to help your band, but also you as an individual. Going on tour, while draining, is a great way to get a whole lot of life experience really fast. You meet a lot of really cool people and find yourself in all sorts of crazy new situations that you will never forget, for better or for worse. Not only that but it helps to bring your band together by forcing you all into a situation where you all have to be professionals every evening. It helps people to see if this is really the life they want or if they should maybe start considering different options. Simply put – going on tour could be the best experience and not only will it be a fun and educational time but you will also get to get your bands music in front of hundreds of new people.

4. Listen To Music At Half Volume.

This is a big one, something I picked up a few New Years’ ago. When I listen to music in my earbuds I try to leave the volume at or below fifty percent. We’ve all heard countless stories from friends and relatives about how loud music will destroy your hearing and after a while these start to ring true (Literally!) I’m assuming you already wear ear protection at shows, this is simply the next step in the process. I knew that my hearing was starting to go from a young age, but when I started cutting the volume on my iPod things started to feel better, even though I started going to more live shows. Maybe I’m just too far gone and I’m just going crazy, but I genuinely believe this is a great way to protect your hearing and make sure I’m building for a sustainable future.

3. Get Really Into a New Genre

2015 is the year that I got really into pop punk after my sister took me to see Modern Baseball a handful of times. This has led to an obsession with bands like Neck Deep and State Champs. Now, as I enter a new job I’m excited about all the R&B I’ve been able to listen to. While I will always be a metal dude, there is something very refreshing about diving into a new genre of music and discovering the great art that has come to define a subculture very different from your own. Growing your musical palette will also help your own art and make your music more interesting. Make a commitment to yourself that you will uncover a new genre of music this year. Even if you think that there’s no genre you’re not familiar with that just means you haven’t dug deep enough. My roommate has been getting into Bosnian protest music for gods sake, I’m sure you can find something. As you learn to appreciate the power of good songwriting above all else it’s hard not to fall in love with music all over again.

2. Embrace the Chaos of the Industry

One of the weirdest things about the music industry is how rapidly things can change and how even if you think you’re on top of things everything can suddenly fall apart without any real warning. This is a volatile world and we all need to start getting used to it. The music industry isn’t a kind place and it’s one that requires you to keep a brave face and drive forward. I encourage you to take time this year to just embrace the madness and realize that it will never make sense and if it ever did make sense some of the magic will be gone. I know that I certainly need to get better at embracing the darkness and blogging is going to continue being my path forward. We all need to work together but accept the fact that until we’re millionaires we won’t be able to dictate how things move forward and that’s okay.

[image error] 1. Create The Next Piece of Great Art

Be it a song, an album, or just a really good mix, for pretty much any artist your primary goal should be to create the next piece of great art. I’m not saying it’s going to happen, but that should be the goal, to reach out your arms further, to run faster and the one fine morning… In this next year you will find yourself facing a brave new tomorrow and the hope for a future that sees you getting the recognition you deserve. Anyone can just about scratch it out as long as they have the tenacity, but few people have the patience and discipline to truly become great. This should be your goal, to drive forward and become an innovator who commands the respect of the masses. And I’m sure that every single one of you dear readers has what it takes to do it.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post New Years Resolutions For Your Band appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

5 Things Lemmy Taught Us About The Music Industry

Lemmy cut an impressive figure in the music industry and it’s beautiful to see that such a wide swathe of humanity is paying tribute to the man. Of course, I’ve been doing this blog for so long that by now when something like this happens all I can think after the initial mourning is “What can we learn from Lemmy in furthering our own path in the industry?” The man was able to be a professional musician for fifty years for a reason and he stands as a fitting testament to all the tenacity and madness that success in this screwed up world requires. I don’t usually do listicles on this site but for some reason it felt appropriate, so here are five things that I think that Lemmy taught us.

5. Have Your Own Look

One thing that not enough people realize is the extent to which Lemmy changed the world of fashion and defined cool. He was this iconic figure who brought together both punks and metalheads whilst simultaneously garnering more than a little attention from the outside world. He managed to do this by having an aesthetic that almost no one else could emulate, though countless thousands have tried, myself included. What Lemmy realized is that as long as you are willing to be yourself then you can help to create something that can bring people together, and Lemmy was nothing if not an iconoclast. Though most people never seemed to think that Lemmy was an especially forceful personality, he wasn’t afraid to be wholly himself, and this helped to make him into a figure who will reign over the world of heavy metal for years and years to come.

4. Don’t Be Afraid To Trust People

In his excellent autobiography White Line Fever Lemmy discusses how in his early years he was screwed over by managers time and time again. Yet that didn’t stop him from trusting in the fundamental good of people. While the book makes it clear that he learned to be more cautious he definitely was willing to have a manager who guided his band almost as much as he did. He knew that he couldn’t do it all and he wasn’t afraid to delegate work out to others in order for him to continue being well, Lemmy. Lemmy realized the importance of having a network of trusted friends to help your band along and he used this as the basis for years of hard work that ended up shaping the community that he loved. He understood that we all need to work together if we want to help build a better tomorrow. Trust is what this whole thing is founded upon, and Lemmy realized that and kept up the faith even in the face of trials and tribulations.

3. Handle Your High

Lemmy’s prodigious drug and alcohol habits are well known and have been documented just about everywhere. Here’s the thing though, unlike many of his peers, Lemmy never needed to go to rehab and no one ever seems to claim that Lemmy was at one point or another ‘out of control’ except of course, Lemmy himself! Despite his incredible appetites all reports seem to indicate that Lemmy did a good job of keeping himself in line and navigating just about any imaginable circumstance with a measure of class that rivaled even his most sober companions. Lemmy kept his head on his shoulders even has he downed bottle after bottle of Jack Daniels and consumed frankly ridiculous amounts of methamphetamines, even into his last days. This is a crucial part to what makes the man so great and should not be forgotten in your own career. While people like to look up to hard parteirs they start to pity them when they turn into bumbling wrecks. It’s fine to use drugs and alcohol, just be sure you can keep yourself in check and for heavens sakes, try and make sure that you’ll be okay in the long term.

2. Stick To Your Guns

Lemmy was a man of, shall we say… controversial tastes. His collection of Nazi memorabilia was world renowned and he even owned a tank. He did a bunch of drugs and was open about it and also wore an iron cross as a distinct part of his aesthetic, just to top it all off. Of course, the man himself wasn’t a Nazi, saying with typical Lemmy grit, “My black girlfriend has no problem with this stuff!” Beyond that – he showed a clear morality, one that left him an outlaw but that also revealed the incredibly decent human being underneath. His inherent goodness allowed him to stick to his guns and push forward with ideas that he knew would work, even if record labels and managers opposed him. He wasn’t afraid to take one for the team if he though it could lead to a better future for the band that he loved. Lemmy threw it all aside for rock and roll, an admirable asset for anyone in a band trying to really make it.

1. It Doesn’t Matter What Others Think

This is the man who wore Daisy Dukes because they were comfortable. This is the guy who slept with just about anyone and said we should all have lots of sex to try to and achieve a vaguely ‘coffee colored’ humanity in order to end racism. Lemmy just didn’t care what others thought of him. He viewed this entire thing as a joke and did what he wanted to do when he wanted to do it. If he wanted to put out a cello driven title track for a crucial album, as he did on 1916, then he did, if he wanted to tell the UK Parliament to legalize heroin he did, the man was simply with it. He knew exactly what he stood for and went forward, not just in the face of adversity, but against people who thought he was just some drugged out old fool only to end up proving that he was in fact one of the smartest and most talented people to ever walk the earth. There’s no reason why you can’t look at his example and strive to do the same.

Lemmy is god, all hail Lemmy.

And maybe take a couple of lessons from him too.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post 5 Things Lemmy Taught Us About The Music Industry appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

Permission? Who needs it!

Asking permission is so twentieth century. In this hyper speed day and age those who sit around and wait to be told what to do or try to get permission to do something are never going to succeed – and between you and me, I think that they realize it. The simple fact of the matter is that the greatest teacher is experience. Sure you can take a course in how to manage a band or how to run a PR company but nothing is going be valuable as actually going out and doing it – and who is to stop you? If you are willing to stick your neck out on a line and try and produce something great, people will take notice and want to work with you and eventually start having to give you permission. Anyone can be a dreamer, it’s the doers who really draw the attention of those in power.

As I look around the music industry and the people I work with and admire I realize that surprisingly few of them ever bothered with any sort of degree. In fact the only ones who actually have music degrees are top flight guitar teachers or professional musicians. Most people who have made a career of this though are the people who said ‘Hey, let’s just fling ourselves into the industry and see what happens.’ It’s very rare to find someone with a business degree really running a business these days. As the industry evolves in the post piracy and post scarcity world I’m increasingly finding that this is and always will be the number one way to go. Why? Because it simply makes sense.

We’ve talked on this blog before about the democratization of the music industry which is, by and large a good thing, especially if you know how to take advantage of it. Now that just about anyone can become famous just about anyone can become an influential figure in the industry too. It is no longer a question of money and college degrees (Although those things can help) What it boils down to these days is largely what you’ve done to prove yourself. Setting up the groundwork can be hard, and it might take a while, but once you stumble upon the right idea the world is your oyster. You need to prove that you are a creator and someone who makes things happen. An easy way in that a lot of people have started using these days is content creation, be it in photography or writing, people use these avenues to start to grow their contact base. Another great way to start proving that you know what’s up is booking shows. You’d be surprised to find out how many top flight venues require no credentials beyond politeness to book at their spot.

Of course, these privileges, while often easy to gain can also be easy to lose, and you need to be careful with how you implement your choices. Though you might not need to ask for permission you should try to be careful with projects involving other people – folks don’t like having their time and money wasted. That being said, much of this industry I based on a throw of the dice and the desperate hope that things work out in the end. I know it sounds hopeless at times, but that’s how it goes. You take advantage of what you can and then you scrabble in the murk until you hopefully manage to reach out and grab the next rung on the ladder. As you pull yourself up though, be sure to try and show some other cats the way up.

Believe you me, I know all about losing privileges, in an industry that relies so much on interpersonal relationships things can be unsurprisingly brutal. Even as you jump in without permission but good intentions, there will be people who jumped in without permission but with different goals in mind, that clash of priorities and ideologies is one of the harsh realities of this industry in the modern context. Not everyone has themselves together or is in it for the community. Beyond that, as great as it might be to be able to go forward all guns blazing booking tours because, guess what, these days it’s just a few emails away, you’re also going to find that we are facing an oversaturation of interested individuals.

As we’ve discussed in the past there is a good and a bad side to this, but in terms of asking permission it means that the few people who have been able to crawl up to the next level find themselves inundated with requests. These people need to sift through literally hundreds of emails from incompetent or misguided people every day. You need to be aware of this if you want to carry on. To demonstrate this I like to show people the example of my email inbox. Sure it’s quieted down in recent weeks because of Christmas, but most weeks I get somewhere around three hundred requests for record reviews. In a world where no one asks permission even crappy publicists can charge a buck and some bands think that they can do it on their own (Which is by and large, not the case) Not needing to ask permission is a dangerous thing, and while it can kick start your career it can also drag you back.

[image error]

What this means for you is that though you can do anything you want in the industry whenever you want that doesn’t mean you should. On one end, you have choice paralysis and simply not enough time to cover all of your bases – that’s part of why it’s good to pay people with specialized skills to carry your brand forward in ways that you can not. On the other end you have hyperspecialized markets that can’t really support a stable income, which is why you should be willing to branch out. Be ready to drive forward in exciting new ways and innovate in a world that thrives on it, but also be ready to realize that you can not do everything, and people who think that they can are probably hurting your chances of getting noticed. There’s a whole lot of crap going on out there and embracing it and being aware of all that it represents is perhaps the most important part of surviving in the music industry.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post Permission? Who needs it! appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.

The Last Great Outlaw Is Gone: A Tribute to Lemmy

I literally have no words. God is dead. There is no way around it. Somehow the unthinkable happened. Lemmy was perhaps our last great rock god, the last one who never sold out, who lived the life, never sobered up, never became a parody of himself. This was the man who managed to keep growing his musical palette 50 years into his career. Lemmy holds perhaps the world record for longest running speed habit and almost certainly has imbibed in more liquor than any other person to walk the earth. Oh, and he was in a little band called Motorhead – a band who paved the way for everyone from extreme metallers like Venom, Death and Mayhem to mainstream rockers like Metallica and Nirvana.

When I first got the news I simply couldn’t conceive it. I didn’t not believe the news. News of Lemmy’s poor health has been widely broadcast throughout the rock community for years now. It was easy to believe that Lemmy is dead. It’s impossible to conceive it though. He stood for so much more than any of us can really understand and fundamentally shaped the way that people understand the concept of ‘cool’. Lemmy can’t be gone – it feels like the fundamental fabric of the world has torn and its core nature is all shaken up. And yet despite the widespread belief that Lemmy would never die, he has passed.

This isn’t an obituary, I don’t really know how to write one and I don’t think anything I wrote would do Lemmy justice. Hell – as is I’m having a hard time typing this article, with tears blotting out my vision and a killer hangover pounding through my skull as I sit in an apartment that smells vaguely of peanut butter. I’m not trying to summarize Lemmy’s life either – he wrote a book for a reason, he’s motherfucking Lemmy, there’s more to the man than could ever be summarized in just a few words. I guess if I had to find a word to describe this particular piece it would be that this is a tribute.

Here’s the thing with Lemmy – his image was what made him larger than life – but the thing is, he lived it day in and day out. He put everything out on the floor, from his incredible drug habit to his more sensitive side, including his lost love Susan Bennett and his passion for history. There was a whole hell of a lot more to the man who once claimed to be ‘indestructible’ than I think that anyone realized, and when you find yourself on a pedestal like he did, it becomes increasingly difficult to reveal a more delicate touch when everybody just wants you to be a rock and roll badass.

See – beneath the hard drinking fast living exterior there was a man who was, quite frankly a genius. He was the model for a whole generation of underground kids and metal freaks and he knew it, and acted the part. He embodied Hunter S Thompsons idea that you should “Be an outlaw, just not like anyone else.’ The irony of course being that the last great outlaw ended up spawning a legion of imitators. Yet, Lemmy seemed strangely okay with the fact that he was a role model, and while he didn’t condone the hero worship around him (And often flatly rejected it) he certainly sought to live to a higher standard, something that I think that hundreds of thousands of fans noticed and took to heart.

Lemmy wasn’t a good guy and he didn’t want to be. He loved his son and he loved his women, but he never tried to deify himself, as easy as it would have been. He had a lifestyle that was wholly his own, living outside the law and playing the same fucking poker video game at the Rainbow. I’m not sure how else to put it – this was a man whose entire existence should have been possible. He was one of those weird outliers that probability likes to spit out at us every once in a while to go ‘What the fuck?’ before going back to the same boring bullshit. He, perhaps more than anyone else to walk the face of the earth, was ‘that guy’.

So I sit here, periodically having to take breaks in order to sob a little bit, this is the worst day ever after all. Here’s the thing though, despite my outwardly emotional reaction and the incredible sadness that haunts me perhaps I should be remembering Lemmy the way he would want to be remembered, with a glass of Jack Daniels and a laugh with your buddies. Lemmy is a man who can be honored in ways as multifaceted as he was. Go and read a fucking book and think of him or go out and pick up some sleazy broad at a bar – either way works. Your perception of Lemmy is highly a personal thing that you should never forget.

We’ve all joked about it before, how if Lemmy is God then maybe we should start a church for him, I’ve been thinking, and though the man would probably hate it, I’m sure that at least some folks are considering the temptation. There is something supremely sad about Motorhead, that it should end like this, with cancer. It’s the sort of sadness that will crush your heart and force you to suffer in the sublime darkness that has washed over the world on this fateful day. And while, the story of super aggressive cancer is certainly believable I’m curious to see more details, what manner of creature could fell such a beast of a man?

I saw Motorhead twice in Lemmy’s time on earth and the first time was the coolest memory of my life. I stood side stage at Hellfest in front of fifty thousand screaming fans. I was surrounded by some of the guys from Judas Priest, Billy Idol, and a handful of beautiful women. That is how I am going to remember Lemmy. I will never forget him peering out on the masses, so many that you couldn’t even see the end of the horde and saying “There sure are a lot of you!”

That’s for damn sure Lemmy.

That’s for damn sure.

In the end, I don’t think we should really be that upset, after all, perhaps the mans most famous declaration was, “Baby, I don’t want to live forever.” And he didn’t. Lemmy always made it clear that no matter what other people claimed about his immortality he was fine with death and didn’t feel to concerned about when he would go. Was cancer the right way for Lemmy to die? Not really. It doesn’t matter though – Lemmy viewed this whole thing as a joke and maybe we should too. And while he would often say “I remember a time before rock and roll” we now have to live in a time after Lemmy. The last great outlaw is gone, it’s up to us to carry on his legacy.

Independent Music Promotions’ (www.independentmusicpromotions.com) revolutionary music PR campaigns are the most effective in the industry. Submit your music to us today.

The post The Last Great Outlaw Is Gone: A Tribute to Lemmy appeared first on Independent Music Promotions.