So friends, our theme for NXNE this year is see something you haven’t seen before! We have 2 venue picks for Thursday, June 16th for you. We were looking for SOLID line-ups (to avoid venue jumping) and we also tried to pick cool venues with bands that didn’t play CMW, or bands we haven’t seen gig around Toronto.

VENUE PICK #1: Lee’s Palace

Lee’s opens with Chris Velan a singer-songwriter with teeth from Montreal, Quebec. If you miss him, he’s playing Friday and Saturday as well. The bill just keeps getting better with Evan Dado & Juliana Hatfield, two nineties nigh-legends now sharing a stage, cult Lemonheads frontman Dando and Blake Babies and Some Girls’ Hatfield duet each others classic songs.

KEVIN SECONDS

Singer of hardcore band 7 Seconds gone acoustic singer-songwriter? Could it be? I didn’t want to like Kevin Seconds.. but it’s legit and all the way Sacramento, California. NXNE said it best, think Billy Bragg

LOWER DENS

Lower dens are from Baltimore, MD. There is lots of buzz surrounding this band. First thing I heard when I played this record was MUSTANG… and oooohhh gosh I love Mustangs. You’re hit with a beautiful wave of distinct, single coil noise accompanied by whispy specter-like vocals. Check them out!

WASHINGTON

Don’t be fooled by the name! Washington are from Melbourne, Australia. Wanna talk about guilt-free pop? THIS IS IT! Think American Apparel and a 50′s Diner. As soon as I heard this band I became an instant fan. If you didn’t catch them last night, they are playing the Verge (XM) rooftop party today at 4:30PM (private) and Lee’s at 10PM. See ‘em now because we think Washington is going to be a huge star.

Venue Pick #2: Yonge Dundas Square

DESCENDENTS! FUCKED UP!… Fucked Up en plein air at 8PM! Do I need to say more? Ok ok, I will – Mettz, OFF! and Rusty. Just go, you won’t regret it. If you miss Fucked Up at the square, they are also playing Wrongbar at 1AM.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: The Boat (Bravestation and Cavalier) and The Garrison!

I planned to see a lot of concerts this summer.  I see a lot of bands every summer, but this summer is particularly important. It’s my last summer of freedom before entering the working world F O R E V E R and having to get a real job.

NOOO!!! Why?! NOOO!!!

So, I look to see what concerts are coming up in LA. I see a few I’d like to check out and…………… BOOM. Ticketmaster SHITS on my awesome concert summer fun time.

Most major label promoters use Ticketmaster. Lets be honest, their are few Ticketmaster competitors. If you want to debate about whether Ticketmaster has a monopoly, read the antitrust suit between Pearl Jam v. Ticketmaster – I’m not going to talk about it here. Y U SO BORING?

Everyone blames Ticketmaster, but there are BIGGER culprits – like the bands, promoters and labels you know and love.

I keep reading this statistic online from the Rasmussen Report that says 70% of Americans think concert ticket prices are too high and only 35% have attended a live concert in the past year. I don’t know if the stats are accurate (because its the interwebs) but, who knows! The stats wouldn’t surprise me.

You might wonder, as I often have recently – why are ticket prices so ridiculously high? Who comes up with the ticket price? Where is all this money we pay going? What are people smoking when they decide to buy these tickets? Where can I get some?…….. I digress,

Well, look what I found for you!! (and me, probably mostly me)

For more cool stats, visit this site click.

To make it even easier, I’ve broken the anatomy of a ticket down into 3 major components (4 if you include tax):

1. TAX:
Tax approx. 5% ok – unavoidable, the government is gonna tax your life.

2. TALENT FEES:

Typically,  “talent fees” work like this: Scenario 1 - a promoter will secure an act (music, artist, whatever) and the promoter will pay the act upfront (this is called a “guarantee”). In this scenario, the act will not get a percentage of ticket sales.

Scenario 2 -  promoters will offset the upfront charge/”guarantee” to the consumer who pays a “talent fee” as part of the ticket purchase price.

That means, if you buy 4X tickets to see the Backstreet Boys and New Kids on The Block this summer, you are paying the “talent fee” FOUR TIMES, instead of just once. (That makes sense? Right? NOOO wtf!?).

3. SHOW COSTS:

Honestly, I am not sure who collects from the show costs. I think it’s based on the details of the contract between the band/promoter/venue/unions.  Often musicians put on their own production entirely and hire union workers. One thing is certain though, big concerts are EXPENSIVE. Very EXPENSIVE. Chris Brown light shows and P!nk hanging from the sky isn’t cheap.

4. SERVICE FEES:
According to the ever-accurate Wikipedia, Ticketmaster does not make any money on the advertised ticket price. They make their dough on ticketing fees. So if you believe that, Ticketmaster’s service fees are $14.

SPECULATION *skip if you want:
There is some speculation* (and I say speculation because I’m really not sure how true any of this information is) that Ticketmaster pays a fee to venues or promoters for every ticket sold. This is called “promoter profit.” Why would they do this? Some people say they do this to secure long-term relationships with promoters and venues. However, in today’s market, paying third-party promoters doesn’t really make sense, especially considering that Live Nation (big promoter for many acts) merged with Ticketmaster in 2010. (Legally, mind you). Live Nation also owns House of Blues (big concert venues all over North America). If Live Nation is the venue, promoter and ticket seller why would they pay out to a third-party promoter?  It doesn’t make sense!

Also, there is some speculation that a certain percentage of tickets are set aside for a third party to sell once the concert “sells-out.” The third party could be the promoter or even the artist themselves! Once tickets sell-out online, the third party goes out and sells/scalps their own tickets by them to the public at an inflated cost. This is still speculation in my opinion because I haven’t heard of anyone getting caught for doing it. BUT if this is indeed occurring, it is the acts fault and the promoters fault. That’s what contracts are for!

ANYWAY, speculation aside – we have two things outside ticket service fees that make up a huge chunk of ticket prices: Talent Fees and Show Costs.

Back to a few of my points: I think that a lot of people don’t realize how ridiculously expensive it is for P!nk to hang from the rafters, for Madonna to have those ridic. screens that pop up Justin Timberlake during her shows and so on… Expect to pay more if you want to see that kind of show.

Ask yourself, do we really need that kind of spectacle?

I’ve seen P!nk live so close I could touch her with no frills and just a backing band. Trust me, she doesn’t need the circus act to blow you away. Dave Matthews band sells-out tours all over and keeps ticket prices relatively low compared to other top-selling concerts. Don’t believe me? Read this. How does Dave Matthews afford to do this? No-frills shows.

What can bands do to minimize ticket prices?
To minimize ticket prices, bands can play less expensive venues or smaller stadiums. Bands can play more shows in one area and peripheral cities along with main cities!

Bands can lower their “talent fees” and can ask for less of a guarantee. They can demand that their promoter or venue put a max on service fees that are allocated to the promoter or venue! (This can be done via contract).

Why aren’t bands doing these things right now? Because WE are VOLUNTARILY PAYING a ridiculous amount for tickets!

Supply / Demand, Supply / Demand.. Supply (Greed) / Demand!

CASE-IN-POINT: COACHELLA
This brings me to Coachella. If you haven’t heard, Coachella has added another weekend to their event (**cough** GREED **cough**). I recently read (from people like Bob Lefsetz) that music critics DON’T think Coachella is even about the bands anymore. Some music critics are saying that people pay ridiculous amounts for passes because of the “EXPERIENCE” of Coachella, click here for an example.

NO! No one wants to be in the dry desert-like heat (so hot you can’t get drunk because you sweat out all the beer you drink), camping with little access to necessity, in the DIRT/dust to try to see bands over a sea of fans and SOME TALL DUDE who.just.won’t.move.

Coachella 2011

Coachella 2011 VACAY!

Music fans go to Coachella because instead of paying $50-100+ bucks per ticket to see bands like Foster The People once, they can pay a couple hundred bucks to go to Coachella and see ALL THE BANDS THEY WANT IN ONE PLACE.  Us music fans think we are SAVING MONEY!

Our problem, as consumers, is thinking that $100 bucks to see a band like Foster The People is normal. It’s NOT normal. Remember when shows were like $15 bucks!? I do, and it was happy summer fun concert time. Instead, we have bands with one EP release selling tix for $50-100 bucks and Coachella profiting off our hard earned money for TWO weekends!

In sum,  maybe we can blame Ticketmaster when Live Nation, which now has a record label (with Lady Gaga, Madonna, Jay-Z and our very own Canadian embarrassment, Nickleback) signs all of the great bands and each band has a ridiculous “talent fee.” Ticketmaster competitors are even popping up, the man who built Ticketmaster is now set to create a competing company… but until then we can only point the finger at ourselves if we do nothing.

So tell the majors you will NOT pay $100+ bucks per ticket to see them! Write letters, e-mail your favorite bands. Hassle their label and booking agents. Tell them they need to make ticket prices more affordable and find other ways to make up the profit margin lost from CD sales.

Raise your fist and ***Shakkkkeeee*** it and DONT buy $100+ dollar tickets to see Ke$ha, just DON’T do It!

Cheers,

Daniela Oliva, Executive Producer

On October 28th, 2010 at a press conference in New York, Gibson dramatically unveiled the new Gibson Firebird X. Very soon, we suspect within the next few months, the so-called “revolutionary” robot guitar will be available at a Gibson retailer or a Best Buy near you! YAY? Well, what the heck is it?

I’ve narrowed down some of the cool features for you:

• It’s a self-tuning: you can choose the key you want and it will tune itself. Like it literally tunes itself.. the tuning knobs move on their own and everything. It’s creepy as shit.
• You can have 55 custom presets.
• You can change the mini-humbucker pickup configuration for over 2000 types of pickup combinations (EQ, single coil mode, series/parallel etc. with true-noise canceling technology).
• There will be third-party apps, I haven’t figured out what they’d all do yet (i’m assuming patches), but their will be apps! Get excited third party developers! You can sell your apps through the Gibson app store. Chaaa-Chiiinng!!
• You can firmware update the guitar’s “engine hardware” via a computer through the Gibson interface.
• Compatible bluetooth pedals (cableless), the pedals have rechargeable batteries (or AC adapter works too), you can recall patches from the guitar itself
• Revolutionary computer interfacing, basically you can record your badass riffs at a pro-audio level
• The guitar emulates iconic guitar tones with analog technology, not digital modeling.
• Cool shit like a resonator, no more bending down to change settings, and acoustic guitar sounds that are “indistinguishable” from an acoustic guitar’s electric output.

But don’t get excited just yet. The price tag is around $5500 USD (**SUCKKSSS**) and the first run is limited to 1800. I say, don’t run out to get it. Why? The first version of everything like this is a mess. Let Gibson have time to perfect it and take some time to try it out for yourself. A lot of people think it’s going to be a piece of crap. How do you digitally reproduce analog sound? Is it really possible? If it was at this point, we still wouldn’t be lugging around tube amps and pining over vintage single-coil (**SWWEETT***) guitars. Lets just say that with a $5500 price tag and a limited run of 1800, the guitar is going to be bought by collectors only. We doubt that this version (at least) of the Gibson Firebird X won’t be “chang[ing] music forever,” as Gibson’s chairman and chief executive officer Henry Juszkiewicz proclaims.

Gibson is not the first to come out with the ROBOT guitar! If you’re a digital/synth aficionado and are interested in this type of guitar, here are some recommendations from us to you with love, and they’re 1/2 of the Gibson price tag:

Most BANG for your Buck:

Let us not forget the custom Manson M1D1 Mirror (later replaced by the M1D1 Black after Matt smashed the beautiful instrument on stage) co-created by Hugh Manson and Matt Bellamy of Muse.  You can buy Manson guitars with similar features if you can get your hands on them before they sell out:  Manson Signature DL, and the Manson Signature MB-1 Standard (Matt Bellamy series). These guitars are fantastic quality (god-like), and super cool.

The Manson Signature DL has badass pickup configs and various optional built-in effects, can you say mmmmmmmm MXR Phase 90 and Fuzzzzz Factory??

My personal recommendation is the Signature MB-1 Standard, it’s most unique because it has a MIDI control screen/XY-pad which can be connected to a Kaossilator, Kaos pad or similar synth (***YESSSSS!***):

Overview of the features:

or check it out in action (mind this dude’s messy bedroom), watch the vid in HD!:

Best without the price tag:

There is other stuff around and available right now for a grand or less, check out the MOOG Guitar Model E1 in sexy black or red. When it was released it received little interest from the music community, but don’t let that stop you. You can find one around for about $1000 USD used right now, if I found one used I would pick it up immediately. I don’t think they’ll stay at that price for long as I suspect the Gibson Firebird X release will re-peak interest in this kind of guitar. The features are extreemellly cool!

Moog guitar demo:

Other decent MIDI controller guitar options:
Check out the Parker Fly Mojo MIDI, it has great tracking speed. I am ambivalent about this guitar. I personally think it still isn’t as great as the Mansons and it has a $3000-$4500 price tag. I wouldn’t buy it new for sure, but if you find one used for a reasonable price and you have time to fool around with the MIDI features, go for it.

For a comprehensive overview of the Mojo MIDI, and I meaaannn comprehensive check this out.

Happy Robot Guitar Buying and thanks to the great people in the Guitargeek.com community for their opinions on the Firebird X!

-Daniela Oliva, Executive Producer

I had a brief but interesting conversation with my friend Nikki Teen the other day, it went something like this:

Me: Are you going to go to any good shows coming up?
Nikki: I just went to The Kills, bunch of indie kids, You?
Me: I wanted to see Warpaint but they never play LA
Nikki: I saw the Kills two times this past month, but I don’t know… They’re not as good live as on their albums.
Nikki: Blowing up is all about who you know now.

Her comment made me think.. is blowing up, playing national tours and being able to live off your music really about the people you know?

Networking is part of why we play shows and go to conferences, right? BUT,

Who are these people we’re trying to meet? Where do they come from? What do they do?  Is it one person or a group?

Is that why we are all so apathetic? We’re waiting for that person? God forbid that person catches us choking on a drink or looking like this..

or danciiiiinnggg yeah yeah!

maybe we’d blow our chance to meet THAT person… and they just walked on by…..

A few weeks prior to my conversation with Nikki, I read a comment by forwarded by Bob Leftsetz (if you are a musician and haven’t heard of the Leftsetz Letter, subscribe now: CLICK. He will email you more then your girlfriend and ramble more then your grandma, but it’s worth the read).

Anyway, Bob forwarded an email from a well-known musician who claimed that success in music, in most part, is all about if you can hang.

Musicians are notoriously good at hangin’ mmmmk? Don’t tell me how to hang!!!!

BUT Who should we hang with? Who do we impress? Is it THAT person we are waiting for? Other musicians? Friends?

Is it a company?

A sugar-daddy?

A group of people?

If said person happened to arrive and we successfully “hang” with them, what would they do for us? Would they invest in us? Book us? Market us? Help us get distribution? All of the above, (hopefully) and for a simple return on their investment. Right?… So, how do we make them do this?  Do they have to like us? Do we have to have talent?

Does talent matter anymore? Or is everything, including our success, just based on our ability to hang with the right people? ….JESUS, call of this can’t be dependent on our ability to hang, can it?

I personally think that talent DOES matter. And hell, you need a lot of it, or some other kind of appeal because Hey, lets be honest – we’re all competing with this:

…and competing with THAT sucks for everyone. Fuck that!

Between The American Idol franchise, The Voice, booty-shakers, stargazers, and innovators, the music market is rough right now, brutal even. Television networks, producers, and labels are publicizing some of the best talent out there. We got competition man! And you know what?

We’re not only competing with that seasoned musician who’s been struggling for 25+ years trying to make it. Its that 15 year old down the block, with tons of high school friends, who convinced his mom to take him to an Idol audition!

Regardless of what anyone says – FIRST, you have to be good. You have to be talented. You have to be tight, you have to have a cohesive vibe and you have to be personable. How you get to that point is another blog post in itself. BUT, there is more…

If you want this, which every band gigging from bar-to-bar in a does… and if you’re sayin you don’t.. don’t kid yourself!

You got to impress these, and these people are The People You Need to Know:

Oh yeah, no problem! They’ll just flock to your music… ’cause your music rocks.

NO! That’s not how it works! That’s a lot of people to impress and trust me, they’re little punks. Consumers have entertainment at their fingertips. They can vote to see who they want, listen to what they want without commercial interruptions, download what they want, and buy what they want.., and you have a lot of competition! Remember?  So how do we go about impressing The People?

You start with one person:

and if you can get one person to really like you and your band, I mean **GUSHHH** over you like a 13-year-old over a Jonas….. then one will become two, and two will become three, three will become four….

Because, a fan who loves your music will tel al friend, who will tell a friend, who will tell a friend.  Like some giant messed up Ponsi scheme (minus the fraud).  Soon enough, you will have 20 million hits on Youtube faster then Rebecca Black.

And if you’re just too uptight and too cool for school

You can’t get to know the people!

the people want to CONNECT with you. They want exclusive access to you: what you’re doing, where you’re playing, your new songs, what books you like to read, and how many cats you have.

So chill out, take off the sunglasses and hang with your fans. Give them benefits for passing on your music, interact with them, be friendly,…. do it regularly! Think of new and innovative ways to get them involved with your band and your music. ***CONNECT***

Nikki was right, it is about the people you know. Just make sure you’re hanging with and getting to know the right people. You feel me?

-Daniela Oliva, Executive Producer

Tonight is IT! It’s the last night of Canadian Music Fest. Did you let CMF win? Well, if it didn’t and you’re still up for another great show, here are Exec. Producer Daniela Oliva’s top venue picks for tonight!

VENUE PICK 1 – The Horseshoe
It’s the CMF Closing Party at the ‘shoe featuring The Dirty 9s from Ireland, Rival Boys, The Pack A.D. from Vancouver off Mint Records, The Schomberg Fair, RatTails. I would say the closing party is a good opportunity to get in your last chance to network and catch some awesome sets!

VENUE PICK 2 – Sneaky Dees
So you’ve had your acoustic/pop/indie rock fun, make the last day of CMF epic with some serious punk rock at Sneaks. Sorry, but Toronto’s punk scene is dead with the exception of occasional 77′ punk gig at Cadillac Lounge or Fucked Up… yeah, that’s pretty much it BUT you won’t be sorry if you catch Brutal Youth, Skullians, Machine Gun Dolly, Dead City Citizens and The Rebel Spell.

in other news – don’t forget, Janet Jackson also playing tonight!

That’s it, Canadian Music Week and Canadian Music Fest is over, time for SXSW!