uglyredhonda

A lot of the huge cost of those 70s records was just straight studio time. Back then, bands would go into the studio with nothing written, then spend their time in the studio writing the songs, recording them over and over again until they reached the final product. (Some bands felt that was necessary to get away from distractions.) In later, more budget-conscious years, bands tended to find their own spaces to write music, in their rehearsal spaces or at home. I can't speak for Greenhouse Studios, but some studios established themselves as being artist-friendly, offering time for cheap. Smart Studios, where Butch Vig earned his pedigree, spent the better part of ten years recording indie albums on small budgets. The reality is that you can make a cheaply-recorded record sound expensive with a solid mixer. A lot of 90s alt-rock bands got around the cost issue that way - spend the money on the mixer. (You'll find a lot of 90s albums mixed by Andy Wallace, who, in my mind, is 75% responsible for the sound of Nirvana's Nevermind.) Btw - that Bleach figure has always been a bit misleading. Five of the eleven songs on it were recorded at different sessions (a 1/88 demo session and the 7/88 "Love Buzz" single session) that were already paid for. (They tried re-recording several of them during the sessions, but preferred the original versions.) So the total actual cost was more than that. I have a feeling Avalanche is the big cost-winner in MG's catalog. It says a lot when you can afford to bring in a full orchestra for your session. :D

For those who never heard the final mix of "All Together" (which showed up as a pre-order bonus on the iTunes version of In a Coma), it did eventually show up on 7Digital. It's different from the leaked version we've had. https://ca.7digital.com/artist/matthew-good/release/all-together-1820484

Some places are sticklers about that, and this is a piece that would be an obvious copyrighted work. Having said that, I'm old enough to remember the days when Kinko's made you sign a waiver before making a color copy of something. :lol: Universal (or Matt) might have bought the painting outright, or at least the full reproduction rights. (It might have also been a commissioned piece.) That would seem like a smart move for labels in general - that way, you don't see "bootleg" (legal) merch of an album cover hanging around.

That's not entirely true. The company that does the canvas printing technically needs permission from the rights holder, and may refuse to print it without it. (They're technically making money producing a product that uses the artwork.) If you can find a place that doesn't ask... Btw: hi-res photo of the LP isn't going to be great. You'd be better off finding somebody with a scanner.

A Long Way Down is on Avalanche. I really hope this means he'll play that song live on the next tour. I still don't love the single choices from Arrows. I suspect he doesn't think as much of "Via Dolorosa" as most of us - he didn't play it all that much on the tour, yet it was the one song from Arrows I kept hearing random people singing after the shows I saw. (I still think "Garden of Knives" is a hell of an opener.)

https://www.facebook.com/groups/MatthewGoodFans/

I'm not sure it ever really worked that way. I can't think of a single major songwriter that got their break by sending a demo to a label. Even the ones that came close to that played shows, sold the demo at their shows, and, at some point, made a connection with someone at a label or in the industry who helped make it happen. And it's a bad method, anyway. You end up putting all of the power in somebody else's hands, and they end up calling the shots. Plus, the labels often have the best lawyers in the business, where you might not have one at all. (A lot of new artists sign the first contract put in front of them, assuming the label has their interests in mind.) A lot of new artists fall prey to producers for the same reasons - the artist believes the producer can get them heard, the producer has all of the power, and you end up with a situation like the recent Kesha / Dr. Luke fiasco. (He was basically responsible for her sound, which gave him power over her career - and then he apparently tried to take advantage of her.) Today is weird, anyway. Twenty years ago, just the cost of getting studio time would be a limiting factor - not everyone could just put together a good demo. But, now, every macBook has software better than many good studios did in the 90s. That means there are literally *millions* of potential songwriters competing for ears. Spotify is loaded with bedroom producers, and most of them have zero plays outside their friends and family. Everybody thinks their songs are great (it's genuinely hard to tell), and your friends will say so just to be nice (but never actually listen to them). It's really worth having people in your life who can be bluntly honest and tell you when they aren't. Playing your songs live is a great way to find out if they're any good. Play as many open mics as you can. If your songs connect, people will stop and tell you how much they like them. I wrote what was really my first "great" song when I was 19. The first time I played it at an open mic, random people came over to tell me how much they liked it. (It shocked me, honestly.) Now as then, there are so many "average" songwriters writing "average" songs - one "great" one stands out. Honestly, just go to any (good) open mic and watch, and you'll see what I mean. Most of the songs will be okay. You'll recognize them as songs, you might even think they're good at that point, but you'll realize later that you don't really need to hear them again. (Some of the songs will be legitimately terrible, but you'll notice the performer has no idea.) But there might be one "holy shit" song in there. Nowadays, it's really worth spending years honing your craft before even really trying to step into a music career. Everybody loves their first songs, then, a couple years later, they realize they can do even better. After that first "great" song, I recorded a demo of my first songs. I knew a couple of industry folks at the time who thought that "great" song in particular had potential, and offered to take the demo to an A&R they knew at a major label. I could not be happier that I said no. The next batch of songs I wrote after that first demo were garbage. It took another couple of years (I was about 24, five or six years into songwriting) to get to where I had an album of songs that I was really proud of - where I had established my own sound (almost everyone sounds like their influences at first) - and that people seemed to enjoy. (Though, admittedly, by the time I got to that point, I'd seen enough friends get treated like absolute shit in the industry that I wanted nothing to do it with it. :lol: ) After a few years you have a ton of songs to choose from to put your best foot forward. I never actually pursued a career - I still write, but I'm 100% content to just record them when I feel like and share them with friends. (Or not - to be honest, I usually just keep them to myself.) And I still love it - one of my major passions. But as Tony was saying - especially in the modern day - create your thing yourself and figure out how to do it yourself. Keep learning, keep writing, keep trying to get better. Build a solid commodity that has value - when you're ready to really do something big with it, you'll know what it's worth, and you won't settle for less. :)

If you ever have the chance - I grab iTunes gift cards when I'm up in Canada. Apple doesn't seem to mind about country restrictions as long as you have an actual Canadian address on your account. (It has to be a separate account from your US one. I use a hotel for the address.) It's helped for the MG tracks that haven't ended up in the US store.

MG opening for Our Lady Peace (one date)? http://upstateconcerthall.com/calendar/our-lady-peace/

[EDIT: Posted some idle speculation, felt a bit wary about it.]

PS - the demos discussion doesn't belong in this thread. This thread should stick to the new album. Just create another thread for it.

Bigger thumbnails: http://web.archive.org/web/20130525044839/http://www.flickr.com/photos/unicornsof911/sets/72157594309847731/detail/ I thought I had saved some of these, but I only found a couple. However, I'll use this as an excuse to post my favorite (which was made into a postcard). #500thpost #onlytook12years

Ha - I was standing right there, too. :D Everything was amazing, except for the 6am flight back home. Matt definitely looked exhausted. I actually wondered if this tour schedule might have been a bit aggressive, given how hard he has to drive a lot of these songs. But I'll freely admit that his effort paid off - I felt like several of the common BM songs (particularly Time Bomb) sounded better here than in much of the solo era. Maybe it's the context? I think this was my 15th MG show since 2007, and this one was especially surreal. Nobody in my daily life knows who Matt is, and couldn't identify a single one of his songs. To be surrounded by so many people singing along at the top of their lungs (to the album tracks) - it's like an amazing alternate reality for me.

This is turning into an amazing year for shows. MG, Radiohead, Silversun Pickups, Muse, and Incubus - plus I'm really psyched to see Midnight Oil. I really didn't think I'd have that chance. Btw - with Everclear - Art's voice is kinda hit and miss these days, but the current band seems pretty tight. It won't be 1997 again, but this seems like the right time to see them. Always this. A couple of years ago, I accidentally-ed myself into seeing something like 17 shows in 40 days. (I went through a rough patch a few weeks prior - I was grabbing tickets as they went on sale, more or less as a pick-me-up, without realizing where they fell on the schedule. My friends just laughed at my constant, "Sorry, got a show that night.") Only two of them were anything less than great - and it was two of the ones that I thought would be among the best. (One of them was The Who, who I'd never seen before. The crowd around me was so terrible that it ruined the evening for me.) I think my faves were the ones that I went to on a whim, even if I didn't really know their music that well.

The commentary on "Rico" might be my favourite thing on that entire DVD. The moment where Matt calls Bill an asshole... :D

Three of the songs from Duncan's recording were released on iTunes. Two of them are the two Live Acoustic bonus tracks on Vancouver. The third was a pre-order bonus on that album ("99%"). At the time, MG said there was an issue with the union rules about Massey Hall (something that I assume would have been cleared in advance of the recording of the 2008 live album) that made a full release difficult. I'm not sure he was that fond of the performance on the whole, either - though I think a lack of a full release of the show was more about logistics and timing than anything else.

Weirdly, I've listened to Jeff a lot in the last couple of days. :) I actually wonder how Jeff would sound now had he survived Memphis. If you listen to those 1994/1995 performances - he was really hard on his voice. (And a smoker as well.) Eventually, that kind of falsetto starts to deteriorate, especially with smoking and screaming. The recordings we have of Jeff are these perfect now-unbreakable moments. We're never going to hear him as a fifty-year-old trying to recreate that. I'm a smidge conflicted about the BM tour. I've loved how Matt's shows have reflected his history while continually moving forward - this is probably the first tour he's done where it'll be a direct A/B comparison between the past and now. And that's not an easy ask. I'm actually hoping/expecting some reinvention - I definitely don't want him trying to do FTRT exactly like he did when he was 28. (I'm not worried, honestly - I fully trust Matt's instincts.) By sheer luck, I happened to be at the show this year where Pearl Jam played VS in its entirety. I've been conflicted on Vedder for a while - his voice is not what it used to be for all of the expected reasons (age, overuse, smoking). But something about performing that album - he didn't sound exactly like young Vedder, but he made it work that night. I never imagined they were still capable of sounding so close to how they did in the 90s. He knew his limitations, too - he backed off and let the crowd help when it came to parts that he really can't do anymore. But I'll admit - that night was especially amazing because it was completely unannounced. There were no expectations.

Genuinely: there is nothing to be upset about as far as the credits go. The publishing only applies to the basic musical structure and the lyrics - everything else is unrelated. Who plays on the song and the arrangement have no relevance as far as who gets songwriting credit. I'll give one example from my last band. The original riff came out of a jam between the drummer and our lead guitar player. (What the drummer played directly guided how the riff came out.) We started jamming on that riff at a practice, and I wrote the song around it (as we were jamming), and later wrote all the lyrics. (The riff survived as an intro and in the bed of the verse, but the music of the final song was completely separate from it - the original riff didn't have to be in the song at all.) I'm not sure that the bass player wrote anything specifically, but his presence helped guide where the song went. It was later credited to the entire band. I could sit down and play a solo acoustic version of that song consisting only of parts written by myself. But I would still credit the full band because they participated in the songwriting - the basic structure of the song would still be the same, and they had hand in that. I would be ripping them off if I claimed they had nothing to do with it. We know "Rico" was credited to the full MGB because it came out of an in-studio jam session. Since "Load Me Up" is the only BM track credited to the entire band, it's possible that the same thing happened. And we don't know who or what made the song happen - it's enitrely possible that Ian, Rich, and Dave all had a hand in where the song went. Now, if Matt did write any of the songs by himself and still credited Dave - it sounds like they had a legal agreement at one time. There are often good reasons for those agreements to exist - songwriting royalties is a dicey field, and bands often break up over them. R.E.M. credited every one of their songs to the entire band, regardless of who wrote it, just to avoid the issue. Every song Lennon or McCartney wrote for The Beatles, together or separately, is credited to Lennon/McCartney. If Matt and Dave did have that agreement, Matt could always ask Dave to rescind it now. But I wouldn't think it was necessary or worth the effort - it really doesn't matter that much. And, again, it's entirely possible that Dave guided the creation of those songs in some way. Also: the new parts are completely irrelevant when it comes to the songwriting credits. If Beyonce covers "Hello Time Bomb" and comes up with a new vocal melody, she can't give herself a credit. (Technically speaking, arrangements generally have to adhere to the basic structure of the published song. If someone massively changes a song's structure, they technically have to ask permission from the original songwriters.)

I kinda dug the whole VIP thing - only because it meant that I ended up scoring really great spots for Matt, Jimmy Eat World, and Death Cab, without really having to wait that much and without getting crushed by the crowd. And Emma - that's exactly what happened - I walked over to Jimmy Eat World, and they were just about to let the VIP folks in. There weren't that many people waiting, and I ended up almost exactly where I was standing for Matt's set. (And, completely by accident, I ended up in almost exactly the same spot for Death Cab.) I don't generally love festivals, but this one was great! (I went to Riot Fest last year, and it was a totally different story.) I suspect it was massively undersold, but I loved not having so many people around. And, despite how I normally feel about festival sets, I really enjoyed Matt's set. I think we were all in agreement that it was great that it wasn't a flat-out hits set. And Emma - it was great meeting you and Kelly! I snagged a couple of pics of you two watching Matt. (I showed Kelly - couldn't remember if I showed you.)

If you had any trouble tracking it down, I threw a link to a decent copy of the livestream into a thread in the NF Lounge.

Emma - if you hadn't seen the update, Matt's playing TURF on Sunday (the 18th). They haven't announced the times yet, but he's third billed, so probably late afternoon / early evening. (If they use last year's schedule, it'd probably be 5:30pm.)

Same as always, but, at this point, you should probably just expect that it has the defect and hope that your turntable can play over it. (Amazon sometimes pulls a listing if they get too many returns for a specific problem. I'm a little surprised that hasn't happened here.)

US mix of "Hello Time Bomb" at the 2:14 mark, Matt says: "Are you smoking lots of grass and eating badly?"

This thread reminds me of things I used to hear when I was a kid, when vinyl was still a thing. :) People used to tape pennies to the top of the cartridge (where the needle is) to put more weight on it when skips like this happened. (This is a bad thing to do - it'll cause the record to wear out faster.) You may just need to make adjustments to your turntable. Depending on the model, you should check the counterweight setting on the tone arm to make sure there's enough weight on the needle. (Google the model to see how to do that if it's not in your instructions.) A slight alteration might get it over that spot. Btw - if anyone else has this problem with BM, don't bother returning it unless you just don't want it. If it's in the same spot, it means the pressing is affected. The only reason to exchange it would be if it was a one-off scratch in a different location.