Baton Rouge Show + Ramblings
Tue Jan 12, 2010 6:43 pm
CLICK THE LINK FOR TICKETS TO THE SHOW.
This Show. Many or exactly none of you might be asking - "why do a show right now?... or why do this show when there's all this other important stuff I'm sure you're doing although - we don't know what the h_ll that might be since no one is saying anything and to be perfectly honest, it's kind of weird..."
Simply, a promoter in Baton Rouge persisted (since way back when we were out w/ SA) and we finally accepted. FACT: Louisiana got totally passed over on every Eisley headlining tour since 2005. We had an unexpected international gig conflict...then hurricanes came, levy's broke... then agents weren't booking shows because of the sad path of destruction in New Orleans, etc. We figured we were past due on an La. show.
Now, if you're in Montana, yep... we dissed you too, but there aren't any Eisley fans in Montana except the Marlboro Man. He is real and he is Chad Kroeger's dad. He is a fan, as I said, but he rides his horse all the way to Boise, Idaho for Eisley shows... so we don't need to tour Montana. Maybe a few other states will complain. If they do, I am prepared.
btw - the openers are local to Baton Rouge and seem vibey and soft and musical and quirky. I think this will work. The promoter seems cool and wants us back on our next tour. New markets, here we come. Some of you Texans should make the trek... or how about some Mississippians.
Again, if you want to go: http://tinyurl.com/yf47nd7
Sherri shooting a Wes'/Jes' shower
What is going on?! Everyone already knows: a double wedding. If that isn't enough, I don't know what is. It certainly is enough. And if anyone has is dark-sided or distrusting enough to think that the band is over their band simply because there's some hitchin' goin' on, think again. You should read the emails, hear our conversations. The inactivity is driving them bady... bonkers... whacko. They are chomping... no for real - like actually 'chomping'... things like sticks and even those chewy dog bones in the back yard. It's pretty bad. But it's better to have this delay happen now then to have an album out and not be able to tour/promote it, right? Ok.
Oh, and plus - we had those holidays after that long tour... and now it's a few weeks before the wedding. Soon we'll be on a faster track.
Gumbo lures church folk to afternoon showers for both couples on different
dates. The first was a huge success. Kim's S. Louisiana Cajun gumbo rules.
Even Paul of Mute Math said it was the best he'd ever tasted. He's from New
Orleans. The man knows his gumbo. So do I.
Being in a band - I recently tweeted a stat I read in RS magazine: "In a year when the last major retailer, Virgin Megastore, shut down, CD sales sank another 19%...". The rest of that long quote read: "...and even though the long-booming touring business started to slide, the music industry got a much-needed boost from a couple of it's biggest-ever acts: Michael Jackson and the Beatles. After his June 25th death, the King of Pop sold 7 million albums, 10.2 million song downloads and 1.3 million DVD's, not to mention more than $72 million in tickets for his movie, This is It. The Beatles followed in Sept. with... 2 million records... 1 million copies of Rock Band. but to many in the industry, this was foreboding news. "The music these artists made has stood the test of time, "... The bad thing is there aren't new artists whose careers have transecnded the changing habits of consumers."
My comment is not so much about why other artists are not transcending trends or surviving 50 years... it's that CD sales dropped another 19%. Try lopping off 20% of your body parts... then go get a check up. You're in bad shape... but to get a real diagnosis you have to subtract more other limbs; remember there has been high loppage happening for years now... percentages taken away from that 100% whole. You're barely alive.
But you're actually doing fine. Because the "you're" in this story isn't you... or even bands... it's labels. Remember - they still have to sell those physical plastic compact disc thingies... well, unless they're one of the majors who have shifted their business model to the 360˚deal... which is nearly 100% of them. I'm quite sure those labels think everything is back to normal... that everything is fine... that they'll get big chunks of everything that bands make... and they'll survive. But I don't think they will.
Found this on line. Appears in several sites.
"The Re-tooled Industry". This is not going to be profound; it's old news... but I'm always thinking of a way to articulate ideas that seem easy to understand but lack profoundness. Music has always been accessed by a tangible/physical thing but for the first time since the evolution of music storage (cylindrical Edison recordings > vinyl disc records > tapes > cd's) the tangible has been replaced - not by a new thing - but by a distribution method. The mp3 is just X's and O's. It's a digital thing, not a tangible thing. With the birth of the mp3 and iTunes, labels lost both the tangible thing to sell and the distribution to sell it. Apple put the tangible case into the hands of every music lover on planet earth... then they sold the intangible to that audience. Labels could have grabbed up this real estate but couldn't see it.
All they're doing now is trying to recover from a fatal mistake. They were accused of taking too much from the artists they were stealing from... but now they're taking way more. In my opinion, this is just another cycle... it has a fuse and a timer.
This is one of my favorite quotes: "we literally come into the office every day, scratch our heads and try to figure out how to compete with free". No source but it's an accurate paraphrase from the president of a major label.
Gotta get back to work. Stay tuned.
bd
20 Comments