Ok, so as a follow up to my “Top Ten Worst band names Ever!” post, here is my top 10 tips to a good band name. I figured it was only fair since there might be a few of you second guessing calling yourselves “I went To The Store To Buy A Grape For Lunch”. Please notice that I am calling these tips and not rules. Why? Because rules are made to be broken. Tips are something to consider. So sure there will be exceptions. I know there are great bands that defy these tips. That is why they are just tips. Not rules. For the most part however, they hold true and should be strongly considered.
1. Keep it short.
Although a one word band name will most likely end up with you in court with ten million other unimaginative losers who thought of the same band name, you don’t want anything too long. Two words is a little more safe, but three words is the limit! Anymore than three words and your band name is very likely a inside joke that will get old very fast and most won’t even get. This will cause most people to just dismiss your band before they even hear the first note. You say the band isn’t serious anyways? Most of the greatest bands around were started off as just something to pass the time. So make sure the band name isn’t something you will think of as a curse when things shockingly get serious.
2. Can You Chant It?
Try chanting the name Slayer. Pretty easy eh? Now try chanting any of the bands from my worst band names list. Sucks, don’t it? Even if you are playing to 100 friends at the local tavern, you will want a name that will remain fun to chant for years to come.
3. Is it taken already?
Check every source you can. Check Amazon to make sure there isn’t a cd from a band with that name. Then check Wikipedia. Then check MySpace music section. If you are a Metal band check Metal-Archives. They have a database of Metal bands that is so big it is ridiculous. Check Cd Baby too. Then check to see if you can get the dot com domain. If you can’t get the dot com website don’t bother. Once you check all of those, grab those spaces as soon as you can before someone else does!
4. What Does It Say About The Band?
I hate to reference Slayer so often, but what does that name say about the band? They are going to slay! You know right off the bat they they are not some wimpy acoustic folk band. There was a local band around the Seattle area in the 90’s called Forced Entry. What does that say about the band? What does Trans-Siberian Orchestra say about that band? With that you know it is going to be some epic music with some really well thought out arrangements. You know that there is going to be some really great orchestral instrumentation. Pick a name that sends the right message for the band.
5. Make sure it doesn’t sound like that other band
So if you have a band name that confuses people into thinking you are another band, you will get some pretty ticked off people showing up at your concerts. Imagine if a band was called something like “Epic Nirvana”? Or how about “Anthrax Exodus”? That last name might be good for a Thrash Metal tribute band, but otherwise it would suck the taint of a dead pigeon (if a pigeon has a taint)!
6. Don’t use any brand names
It might be funny to name yourselves “Microsoft Blue Screen” for awhile, but the joke will get old when the lawyers come knocking at your door.
7. Enough with the name dropping!
I have seen a trend where bands will use a famous actress or actor in their band name. Stop it! It makes it hard for your fans and friends to find you on the internet because all they will find is that actress. It also might land you in court. Plus, joke names get old really quick.
8. No swear words
Notice how many of these rules could be reduced down to a rule of “No joke names”? They get old real quick and create more problems than they are worth. You will have a hard time putting up flyers, coming up in search engines, getting on even the local band radio shows, or even sometimes getting shows.
9. Think about search engines
In this day and age you need to think about search engines. Do you have at least one word that will help your band own that “phrase” in search? I have to say that I thought the band name Arkaea was stupid at first. Then I started putting it into search engines to research for an interview with the band. They always came up first because it isn’t a real word. They made the word up so they wouldn’t have to compete with anyone in any way. Smart guys I have to say.
10. Can fans spell it?
Yes, I know I just gave the band Arkaea points for coming up with a name that gets great Google juice, but I have to look up Fear Factory every time to remember how to spell the damn thing! Your band won’t have that reference, so make sure people can spell it!
Now I know that if you try to think of a band name that fits all these tips you will drive yourself crazy. That’s ok. A little insanity has done Ozzy well, right? Seriously, if you have the imagination to write great songs this should not be a problem. I remember a few years ago people started complaining that all the good website domain names were taken. Since then my wife and myself have grabbed RockMyMonkey.com, HeavyAsHell.com, QueenOfCheese.com and many others. If you have the imagination it will happen. If you can’t pull off a good name, you don’t have what it takes to write great music anyways. This is the first test. Will you pass?
A band name is a tricky thing I know. First off you need something that hasn’t been taken yet. The best one word band names were taken a couple decades ago. Slayer, Bitch, Overkill, Motorhead, and many more. A band with imagination however can still come up with something cool. Look at Goatwhore! That has to be one of the best band names in history and they have only been around since 1997!
So what makes a great band name? Look for another top ten list coming very soon to this blog! Until then here are the Top Ten Worst Band Names EVER! In case you think I made any of these horrid names up, I have linked to the websites of each and every one of them. Enjoy?
1. Iwrestledabearonce
Ok, I have no issue with the gay connection. Rob Halford is gay and one of the coolest people I have ever had the pleasure to interview. But that is more like a sentence than a band name. Try and chant their name for a few seconds and then try and chant Slayer and see which one roles off the tongue better.
2. Scary Kids Scaring Kids
Why not just be Scary Kids? This name is just plain retarded. It shows zero imagination and that is something a band might need people to believe they actually have.
3. Horse the Band
Ok, so the band name Horse was already taken? Why not something like “Horse Rider” or Horse Trainer” or “Horse Lover”? Now that last one I might be able to believe.
4. I Set My Friends On Fire
Really? Now this could be used as a cd title and no one would have said anything. Sure it’s about as stupid as it gets but it sounds like a cd title. Not a band name.
5. Attack Attack!
Ok, so if a band name you want has already been taken, just repeat it until you can claim it as yours? If this band was talented at all they could have come up with a better name.
6. The Devil Wears Prada
Now I interviewed this band a few weeks ago and even they regret the name. While many may get the message of anti-materialism, most will just think they named themselves after a stupid chick flick.
7. The Number Twelve Looks Like You
I understand that this is a name taken from the title of an episode of the The Twilight Zone. But it is still lame as hell. This is another one that might pass off as a really weak cd title. As a band name it just smells like yesterdays diapers.
8. Circle Takes the Square
Seriously? They named themselves after a cliche from a game show my grandma used to watch? A band name should make a statement and this band obviously wants you to know they both suck and blow.
9. See You Next Tuesday
Yes I know that this is a reference to C U Next Tuesday. Which spells out the word you never call a female unless you really want to piss her off. Most of the bands on this list have a band name that would make a worthless cd title, this band name would have made a great cd title. It’s just a bad band name.
10. Starring Janet Leigh
Have we run out of ideas this bad? Really? Do I even have to say why this band name screams a lack of the same imagination that is required to make good music?
So there are several podcasts I listen to religiously. I think I should start blogging about the best ones and tell you people why I care about these shows. Many of the readers of this blog will have no clue who @jason is or why he is so damn important. Well, he has kicked off tons of tech companies and made more money than most of us will ever see. He is addicted to starting new companies and kicking maximum ass. He is also just as addicted to helping others gain the level of success that he has. He is never one to hold back information, tips, and tricks to us dreamers. Unlike 99% of the people who like to spew advice, he actually knows what he is talking about! I have learned a ton from listening to his 2 hour weekly (sometimes twice a week) podcast This Week In Start Ups. If you see me use the hashtag #twist on Twitter, that is what I am talking about.
Grain Of Salt
He is more about tech companies that have tech product, so not everything will apply to you bands and music industry types that read this blog. However, a ton of it does! It is about doing business on the internet. His advice centers around helping people create the next Google, YouTube, or Facebook type company. So doing the Hard Rock and Metal websites I end up releasing don’t fit everything he says. But because it is about doing business on the internet a ton of it can be used. In fact most of it should be heard by anyone trying to run any business on the internet. He tells people they have to move to Silicon Valley. Well, that is one of the rare things I don’t think fit me. My “start up” is more of a music site than a tech site. Silicon Valley can’t give two shits about Hard Rock and Metal. Honestly there is probably only a few other things that he says (on a regular basis) that I dismiss.
This Week In Start Ups
Cut The B.S.
There are several that prefer to dismiss him as an arrogant ass, but I think they do this out of insecurity. Jason is a man who will make you feel a little insecure if you do not have your shit together. If you have not done your research he will call you on it! He pulls no punches and some misconstrue that as arrogance. But think about this. If there is someone who knows a ton about business and is willing to guide you, how would you want them to act? Would you want them to spare your feelings? Would you really want kid gloves? Not if you want to succeed! He is brash, harsh, and sometimes over confident about things. In the end though, you know where he stands. People talk all the time about how they want to cut through the bullshit, but when someone does they call them an asshole. Jason cuts through the bullshit and you know where he stands. I respect that.
So why should you all start listening?
I don’t care if you are a band, webzine, record label, music press agent, or whatever else. You run a business! He talks about business. He knows what he is talking about. If more people in the music industry listened to guys like Jason the music industry would not be having the problems they are. So please just listen to a few episodes and see what you think. His podcast feed seems to be the slowest download on the net, but it is worth it. It also seems to kind of mess up when using some podcatchers. My podcatcher keeps trying to download episodes I listened to weeks ago. But it doesn’t download a single byte. It just lists it as trying to download it. Small price to pay for such great content though. Highly recommended to anyone doing business online. As with all the podcasts I listen to, it is free. There is also a great video version that is even better if you have the time.
In this era of the Internet many bands are trying to do their own everything. I think this is pretty awesome and I encourage it. Sure it’s great if you can afford a few grand a week to hire some powerhouse press agent. The biggest value they have is in relationships they have with journalists all over the place. There have been times that a press agent will forget to send the email to the BCC (blind carbon copy) and expose their entire email list. I can grab that info and use it to send out my next press release. This will not do me near as much good as if I pay to have the exact same press release, sent to the exact same list of people, with everything done exactly the same way. Those contacts do not have relationships with me. So I will not get the same results as Chipster, Mazur, HerPR, HelloWendy, or any of the dozens of PR firms I work with on a regular basis. But if you can’t afford the money, have the email lists, and really need to get a message out do it yourself (DIY)!
There are a few key things to remember though. First off, the very top should have “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE”. Yeah, I know it looks silly to do that in all caps but it is one of the many music industry standards none of us seem to have the power to stop. Put the date directly underneath that. Both of those should be in standard size text.
Second thing is to put the headline in bold and in larger text than anything else. Keep it short, sensationalistic, but honest and factual.
Third, put the body of your message. Most press releases I read blow so many proverbial flowers up the artists butt that I can’t help but dismiss the entire press release. I only read about 10% of the ones sent to me at best. So try to keep yours interesting, but full of information about your band. Most of the press releases contain zero information about the band. It drives me nuts!
Fourth thing is to put three pound signs (the tic tac toe symbol that is on the number 3 key) at the end of the information you want made public.
Lastly you can put any other information you want only press people to see. Like if you have a website to download the cd, get high rez images, or anything else. Under all of that put your name, address, phone, fax (if you have one of your own), an email address they can contact you at for further questions.
Keep your press release short, but detailed. Make it clear right away what style of music you play. In the world of Internet journalism your press release will hit the trash bin quickly if you don’t make it clear right away that the artist fits their format. We don’t want to tread through a ton of weak adjectives to find out the band plays polka. Don’t just describe the sound! That makes us think you are trying to hide something…like they play polka. Don’t tell the band’s entire life story, but cram in the important facts so they fly rapid fire when the press release is being vetted. Add links to video, graphics, and whatever else that the press can use to “pretty” up the posting.
So I think it is time to start calling out the Twitter spammers. Now some may think this is to embarrass them, but this is not the case. Not all Twitter users are tech savvy enough to know that what they are doing is wrong. Does the band The Destro know that this is a total douche thing to do? I would guess not. In fact, they may not even know that their account is sending out these obviously spammy messages. Their account may just be hacked. Also please keep in mind that most bands do not run their own social networking profiles. Normally it is run by someone in management, the label, or even a wife. So calling them out for being a dirty spammer might get them a response of “Holy crap, we had no idea! Thanks for letting us know this was being done.” Calling someone out for being a dirty spammer can help them if they come by the mistake honestly. So this is NOT a witch hunt!
However, if they are actually a dirty spammer this let’s everyone else know not to trust the account. Now there are several other things you can do to help stop spam on Twitter if the person gets out of control.
1. Forward the message to @spam on Twitter
2. Go to their profile and click the link on the right side of the screen that says “Block” or “report for spam”. This is in the “action” section of the side panel.
3. Send a public message to the person that this is being done. Why public? Because the person may not see it, but their friends might. Imagine one musician getting a text message from a friend letting them know their account is being used for sending out spam. Artist then calls person in charge of account and spew fire. You did them a favor. Also, if they are a true dirty spammer they need to be flogged publicly.
Now of course there will always be a debate on what is spam. I send messages promoting interviews, reviews, and photos I post online. Some follow me because of those messages and some think of it as spam.
A few of the messages in the screen shot above are from people playing Twitter games. This is a pet peeve of mine and I hate it. It gets in the way of why I sign up for Twitter. I only want conversation and have major issues with these games and what funds them. The entire funding structure that supports these types of games on Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace is to trick people out of their money. That’s dirty. So to me it is spam, but people that enjoy them have no clue it is looked on by most as very slimy. There are options on most of these games to NOT send out messages to people you follow. If you play games like this please check these options or you risk really pissing people off.
The last type of spammer listed in the screenshot above is barely a spammer at all. It’s just annoying. This is the person who sends a DM to thank you for following them. Again, this floods the persons inbox with messages that get in the way of conversation. I understand that this is the most innocent of all the douchey things people do on Twitter. So this is more of a warning that it is NOT something you should do. Many find it annoying and it will get them to unfollow you or even report you as a spammer.
No hard feelings if you are on the screenshot above. Just a public request to stop doing it. I will soon be unfollowing these people and deleting their messages from my DM inbox so I can get back to just conversation. But hopefully I don’t have to do this. My hope is that they came by this with honest intentions and just stop doing this. Please re-tweet this if you hate Twitter spam like I do. Thanks.
UPDATE: This just in. Just seconds before this blog post was to go live, @radiochick1620 sent me a message letting me know she was hacked, her password has been changed, and I again recommend you follow her. Since this is the whole point of this post I claim victory! This is how it is done people. This is how you kill Twitter spam. Let people know!
As a metal loving geek, I am always asked what Gnomedex is and what bands are playing. Ok, first off Gnomedex is not a festival and no bands are playing. So why do I care? Because I am also a geek. Gnomedex is an annual tech conference in Seattle Washington (USA). It’s main focus is the social aspect of the internet. More then anything it helps put a real face to social networking. They have speakers get up and talk about things that social networking geeks are interested in, but where I learn the most from is just from talking with the other people there. The attendees always teach me more than any speaker could.
So why should Metalheads go? Because if you are in a band, work at a label, are an online music journalist, or just a fan that wants to help promote your favorite bands, this conference will tech you how to use sites like Facebook, Twitter, and FriendFeed smarter. It will show you how to get the word out on what ever it is you are trying to push. I have found that people in the music industry are either frighteningly behind the times or horridly misguided. Going to this conference will teach you how to do things right and stop spinning your wheels. Do you like wasting time? I don’t. So I go to this conference so I can learn from people way smarter than I am.
The biggest reason you should go this year is because they have greatly reduced the costs. For $300 you can get a full pass for both days. This includes includes two very classy lunches, seating in the main Auditorium, and access to your very own power outlet to keep that laptop running all day (internet connection included). If you feel cheap you can do just one day for $100, but once you pay to get there you might as well do the full experience. Plus that $100 only gets you the conversation in the lobby. Sure that is (in my opinion) the most important part of the conference, but there is not a ton of people to talk to when we are all in the main auditorium. So get the full access pass. It’s well worth it.
Who will be there? Well last year I met people from CNN, Google, Microsoft, and a ton of very high profile bloggers that are a hundred times more powerful than I am. The face time with these people combined with being able to pick their brains for knowledge was priceless. This year I notice that there will be people there from Intel, Jeff Barr from Amazon, Verizon Wireless, Network Solutions, CNN, Microsoft, RealNetworks, T-Mobile, Expedia, University of Washington, Go Daddy, Discover Magazine, Eric Schmidt, and tons more. Most of those are not speakers, but they are still there to talk to and learn from. Many of the people there you have not heard of, but are full of information that can help you.
My wish has always been that people in the music industry would get more tech savvy. I think this would be the best start. Plus it would really freak out all those Radiohead loving geeks if a bunch of us rivet heads showed up. I bought my tickets months ago, so who is going to meet me?
A couple days ago I was asked why I became part of the team behind the “Tweet #metal Chart“. Well to be honest my entire purpose was selfish. I wanted a way to find my target audience. I have found that the best way to find a ton of people that are in a very small niche group is to provide a free service for that group of people. Give them something that they will really want and they will come in droves. It always works and almost always works well. So I continue to provide tools for the hard rock and metal community. Why? Because it is the best way to find the highest quality people within that category. Now of course they are using me as well. That’s the whole point. If I always do my best to make sure they get the most out of what I do, I get what I want. The Tweet #metal chart can of course be used by anyone who wants to find these high quality people just as well as it can be used by me, but it would not have been as useful of a tool if I kept it all to myself. Helping others helps me more than being totally selfish.
Now there are some that are always trying for the quick and easy. The local bands that are happy to play the same clubs, screw the same local groupies, get paid the same crap door money, drink the same crap beer, and somehow expect a record company to somehow find out about them and hand them the world. There are the promoters that will book bands, put up a couple flyers in a few windows, draw the same crowd, and pretty much go no where. Everywhere in every part of life you will find the status quo. You will find that the majority of people will either just be really lazy or they will go for the quick scam. All it takes is one out of every few million to gain from this line of thinking to keep people buying into it. Look at the lottery. My wife and I call it “The idiot tax” because you are being an idiot if you think you are going to win. We still play, but we at least joke about it being the “Idiot Tax”. So even we are guilty of this small minded way of thinking at times. Almost everyone is, but what can we learn from that and when should we go the extra mile to get out of this rut? How do we get out of this rut?
Well, I have found that just about anything you can do will put you above the majority. Take a look at how far everyone else is willing to go. Then go twice as far to win. If the standard local bands are putting up a few flyers and updating their MySpace page, then you should do that and then some. Buy radio and newspaper ads in the local area. A few thousand dollars investments will put you way above the pack. If your band members are all spending their hard earned vacation time from work to do a mini tour, advertise! You are on a national tour, so advertise as such. 3 grand at FixionMedia.com will kick things in high gear for an entire month. Two weeks before the tour starts and for the two weeks during you will be impressing local clubs around the country. Labels will start to wonder why they keep hearing your name. If you can afford a few thousand to toss at IndieClick.com as well you are getting close to pro level marketing for a tour.
In fact I will make a deal with any band out there. First UNSIGNED band to follow the following directions exactly wins a full year of advertising on all three of the sites I am connected to. These sites are MarkCarras.com, RockMyMonkey.com, and HeavyAsHell.com. I will give said band a banner at the bottom of all three sites (pretty much every page and at least the highest traffic pages) for the term of one year. They can change the graphic of the link connected to the graffic once per month.
Here is what you need to do to win:
1. Buy $3,000 of advertising from Fixion Media, $5,000 of advertising from IndieClick, and $2,000 from Blast Beat with all campaigns starting on the same day.
2. Have this all connected to a two week tour with two weeks of advertising before the tour starts.
3.Contact me before the ad campaign starts so I can track it.
4. Do this before June 1st of 2010 because after that this deal has to die.
Deal? Why am I doing this? Honestly it serves me if a band “makes it” because they followed things from this blog doesn’t it? What would happen to my traffic if some band makes it big and they go around telling people they made it because of advice from this blog? My traffic goes through the roof and my word is then respected. Now I could just go around ripping bands off, getting them to sign shady 360 deals, and probably make a quick buck and get out of town before anyone knew what hit them. This is how the music industry is done most of the time. But that is short term thinking and I would rather do what I love for a very long time. To do that I have to keep it honest. I have to actually help bands. That is the long tail vs the short tail. Call my bluff. I dare ya!
This is another post that although written with bands in mind, it will help many non-musicians as well I think. Facebook is a very busy site. It is full of what many call ‘noise’ and if you are a busy person it can be very annoying. However, there is a way for the busy person to survive the noise of Facebook. If you go to my profile on Facebook I have a notice right at the top that says I reject all the garbage. The problem with Facebook is that it is made for people that need “busy work”. They need brainless time killers to pass the time. If you are one of the people that spend tons of time with all this busy work, you are not a busy person. Seriously, if you need tons of time killers…you have time to kill. I however do not have time to kill, so do everything I can to reject every single time killer. I don’t have time to kill.
It is very tempting to get caught up in the brainlessness that is Facebook though. It ends up being a game in and of it’s self to kill all the time killers. One thing you must understand though is that Facebook is designed to play on your guilt. When a friend sends you an invite you end up feeling like a total jerk for not accepting the invite. Don’t! The truth is that your friend probably doesn’t know they sent you the invite, didn’t intend to send you the invite, and has no way to track who reject the invite. When they go to set up the app for themselves, it sends an invite to all their contacts by default. Most people feel bad about it after it is sent anyways. No friend wants to fill your Facebook inbox with unwanted messages. We all hate spam, but Facebook by default love what sending that spam does for their network. So don’t feed the spam monster and just reject everything.
A few of you by now might be wondering why I am on Facebook if I don’t want to take a quiz to find out which member of the Back Street Boys I am, how big of an American Idol fan I am, or which wanna be vampire from Twilight I most want to see ‘glow’ in the sunlight? I ask those people what is so wrong with just plain old conversation? Share a photo, share a news article, or just ask a question. Do we need an app to tell a joke? Do we need an app to post a poll question? Facebook can be a great networking tool, but it can also be the most evil time killer around. So please take a stand with me for true interaction, conversation, and networking. Reject every single poll, quiz, survey, app, game, and invitation. We no longer have time to kill!
Ok, I talked about this once before, but I didn’t go into direct detail about why the 360 deal is so bad and anti artist. Last time was more about opinion. So here I will try to not only explain it all, but maybe show a more clear picture of why this is so bad for artists. First let me explain how things used to be done.
The old way record companies would do business was to sign a new band to a record deal where they would a huge advance and give the band a percentage of the profits for their cd sales. Sounds good right? Well, it does until you really look at what that means. Say for example you are given a loan of 500,000.00 for your business. Now let’s say that instead of you taking that money from the bank and spending it on the things you think your business needs to become profitable, the bank spends the money. They spend your loan and you pay it back. Pretty weak eh? It gets worse. The band’s not only have to pay back money the label spent, but while the label keeps 90% of the profits the band pays back the loan with their 10% cut. So out of that $20 a fan pays for a cd, the band gets nothing until they pay back every penny the label spent to promote them. Because the loan is being paid back with only ten percent of the profits, it takes decades for even well established bands. In the old days a great majority of bands would never see a single penny from any cd sales. It just didn’t happen. Unless a band went multi-platinum they never got a slice of that pie. Sometimes even bands with hit videos being run into the ground every day on MTV ended up in debt to their label.
So how did the band’s survive if they never made money from cd sales? For decades band’s survived strictly from touring and merchandise. Without those two sources of money most of your favorite bands would have never made it past album one. We are talking about less than one percent of the band’s that get that ever elusive record deal would have never made it without touring and merchandise money being all theirs. If a band made it over that hill to where they did make money from the cd, it was called “artist development”.
The 360 deal changes that! The 360 deal says that the poor record company isn’t making enough by taking every penny of 99.99% of every cd sale. Now they get a good chunk of the merchandise and touring as well. Artist development is now thrown out the window. If a band doesn’t become a major break out success right away they just disappear. The label own their ass until they pay off that “advance” (that’s really a loan), so they can’t do anything until that happens. It used to be that a band could at least tour like crazy if they wanted out of their unfair contract. Just keep touring until the label is willing to negotiate. Now even playing a show is under the contract. So the only thing they can do is break up.
So please encourage your favorite band to never sign a 360 deal. I hear Fat Wreck Chords like to talk smack about the 360 deal, so I love them for that. If you know of a label that is willing to stand against the 360 deal please let me know so I can love them too.
What your band can learn from the swine flu hysteria!
This weekend CNN posted one great article about the over blown hysteria over swine flu (along with probably 50 very irresponsible articles fueling the insanity). We have all seen people go nuts over this for very little reason. The World Health Organization said that as of the writing this article there have only been 20 deaths world wide! There are probably more people that die from a smack upside the head every day. This is proof that people have zero interest in facts. We have become so addicted to being controlled by fear that we will latch on to anything hyped at all. It’s as pathetic as a worst case heroin addict.
So how can bands use the knowledge on this to benefit their band? Well, like most lessons, it is something anyone paying attention would have learned many times before. It’s always about hype. When advertising something it is never really about just letting people know about the event. You can have millions of people know about your show and still have an empty nightclub. Why? Because if it doesn’t seem like an out of control hype of hysteria people just don’t care. People always want to be part of something big. On Twitter people are going nuts posting articles supporting the paranoia over the swine flu. Why? Because they want to be part of the big party of everyone over reacting to the swine flu hysteria. When you have a show you want to create as much hype about the event as you can. You want to make it look like it is the event of the year and the club will be packed.
I stopped reading press releases many years ago, because the press agents pile on the B.S. a mile high. It’s like the bands that keep talking about their livers going on strike because they are such wild party maniacs. The truth is that most of them barely drink at all. Not too mention that that line has been over used to pathetic level. The press agents for metal go on and on about how the cd they are promoting is the most brutal thing to be recorded since the dawn of time. They find several ways to repeat the same thing Ad Nauseam. They are trying to hype the band to the point of hysteria because they know what that is worth. So even the pros do it, so why don’t you?
Now of course the press agents do several press releases a day and get so bored with the project that it comes off with zero integrity. You have way more time and can put more passion into your campaign. This is also why you should not play a city more than once every three months. Part of making the event hyped as much as possible is to make it special. How is it special if you are playing the same clubs, in the same city, every weekend? In fact, I have seen bands do very well if they don’t play within an hours drive per season. Starve your local scene! The other thing you do is to save up as much money as you can so that you can advertise on radio, print, flyers, internet, and whatever else is available. Bands that spend their own money to promote a show end up with opening slots with the majors.
Like anything else, you will get out of it what you put into it. Expect things to just fall into your lap will get you no where. Work your royal ass off every second you can and you will see a difference. If you don’t see a difference you should have worked harder. Or maybe your band just sucks? That’s ok. I hear we will all die of swine flu within the week anyways if the media hype is to be believed.
