The Mosh Pit 1.11.08: Barbarians At The Gate

Posted by Dan Haggerty on 01.11.2008

411Music’s Dan Haggerty takes a look at the 2007 concert year and asks where the new super stars are? From The Police to Van Halen, the old guard keeps delivering the goods, but where is the young blood? They’re at the gates – Only the labels don’t want you to know it! Also on tap, we prepare for the great 2008 metal rankings chase and take a forgotten classic to see the Priest. Plus, Nile is in the house tonight!




Welcome one and all to another Friday. Big things are afoot in the industry, here on the cusp of another exciting year in music and celebrity meltdowns, and I'm here to provide my patented if eclectic mix of commentary, music spotlights, and album reviews. That's what a mosh pit is for, right? Various forces slammed against each other for entertainment purposes. So grab a coffee (AM), Dew (Afternoon), or a beer (PM) and enjoy today's show!

And todays show itself is brought by a little passing blurb I caught in an article on concert sales this year. Overall, tour receipts are up (for the ninth year in a row). In fact, I pitched the idea that this was proof positive that the music industry is doing well to the participants in this weeks Fact or Fiction. Mikey Migo and John Nagel nailed it out of the park, of course, writing some great responses to go with the ‘Fiction'; obviously there are larger issues with the industry. What's cool with the concert data from this news report, and how it ties into other concert reports, is how it shows what the industry is doing right. But we'll get into that below.

Finally, as mentioned last week, I've added the 2008 Rankings section. If all goes well, I'll not only be ranking the metal releases this year, BUT I'll also be ranking the metal releases as provided by you in the comments section each week. If we keep ourselves organized, this will provide a really awesome use of the comments feature and give you a chance to sound off on the albums you liked (or didn't!) through the year. Now we just need the new releases to start rolling onto the shelves to get things moving.

OK… Enough talk. Refill that drink and let's get to it.



Tonight's Show: Barbarian's At The Gate



Another story caught my interest this week and I think it's quite telling on the state of the music industry. And when I'm talking about the music industry, I'm talking about the major labels and corporations collectively; this doesn't necessarily apply to the smaller labels or even every major outlet. From previous columns, you know my opinions on what the industry is doing wrong in how it spends its money, how it views its fans, and the battles we don't see behind the scenes. This little news blurb reveals another trend I'm sure the beautiful people will ignore, or at best refuse to understand. Here is the story:

Veteran performers The Police produced the biggest-selling concert tour in the US last year. The band, with Sting as lead singer, led the list of top-grossing acts, ahead of stars including Justin Timberlake, Celine Dion and Bruce Springsteen.

According to figures released by music industry magazine Pollstar, The Police - who reunited to tour last year for the first time in more than two decades - generated 133.2 million dollars (£67.5 million) in gross ticket sales. The band also sold the most tickets, 1.2 million, at an average price of 111.99 dollars (£56.76), Pollstar said.

Successful concert tours helped drive ticket revenue industry wide to a record 3.9 billion dollars (£2 billion). The figures represent about an 8% increase over 2006, when North American concert ticket sales totaled 3.6 billion dollars (£1.8 billion), and the ninth consecutive year the industry posts record gross revenues, the magazine said.

The top 20 tours combined saw a 15% decline in ticket revenues compared to the top 20 tours from 2006, which included outings by the Rolling Stones, Madonna and Barbra Streisand. The total number of tickets sold for the top 20 tours combined also slipped, declining 18%.

Still, overall concert receipts were up because smaller tours did better business than last year, said Gary Bongiovanni, Pollstar's editor-in-chief. One example was a tour by veteran metal rockers The Scorpions which hauled in 2.8 million dollars (£1.4 million) last years, up from 2.2 million dollars (£1.1 million) in 2006.

So here's the deal. Concert receipts are at record highs, but the top selling acts are down. So what concerts are doing so well that they created a record breaking year? Small tours are driving concert sales. Small label bands and underground acts are many and plentiful, their numbers collectively outpacing the biggest concerts of the year. "So what?" you say, "I'm sure some small time band would still rather have the sales of The Police!" The "what" is in the trend, as business is all about people voting with their dollars. The Police might have received more votes than anyone else in 2007, but you and I as a whole voted more often to see the smaller acts. In effect, we spend more time seeing the smaller shows than the big ones. Just think about that for a minute, not only are we deciding to buy less CDs from the major labels then we use to (and yes, this is a problem with the bigger labels. Interviews with reps from small labels show they don't have the "downloading problem"), but to prove that you're not just blowing off the CD to get it illegally you have also voted to blow off the tours more often as well.

By spending less money on the industries top performers, across the board, you are basically voting down the top performers, across the board. Remember, we're talking averages here. Obviously, people still like some of the music being put out, and are going to these shows. I, myself went and saw the Genesis reunion show (and it was a good show). What this shows is that the industry as a whole interests people less than it use to – That the product the labels put out as a whole interest you less. They can try to blame downloading on CD sales, but that excuse doesn't fly for the concerts. Fact is, your spending more money on concerts than ever before, your just not spending your money on their concerts.

Here is an interesting news bit for you. The Top 10 concerts last year were:

01 The Police
02 Kenny Chesney
03 Justin Timberlake
04 Celine Dion
05 Van Halen
06 Tim McGraw and Faith Hill
07 Rod Stewart
08 Genesis
09 Josh Groban
10 Rascal Flatts

And to that we can add what AEG live president Randy Philips had to say on the subject:

"Yes, a 19.2% decrease in attendance is very disturbing, since it reflects that the consumers are not really supporting breaking and mid-level talent… If this trend continues, who will be the headliners of tomorrow?"

So to the already dismal picture we've painted, we can add to that the high number of older acts and reunions that make up those top sales. This makes the "big picture" even uglier. What money we do spend on top billed arena acts, a significant number of that goes to the bands of yesterday, not tomorrow. Not that there is anything wrong with seeing your favorite acts from the past. Like I said, I did that myself. People will always pay to see their favorite bands and for a piece of the past – That's why they are the classics! What's alarming about this was the very insightful comment from Mr. Philips regarding the lack of "Headliners of tomorrow". And alarmed they should be. Businesses that don't have a product to sell don't remain in business long.

So, we are spending less money on the top albums and the top concerts of the industry leaders. What we are spending our money on, in record amounts too, is the music and concerts of smaller acts and shows, as well as the classics. New –> Down… Older or small label –> Up.

New product from the major labels=Down… Not the new product from the major label=Up.

Again, I'm talking about total umbers here. Don't write to me to point out Timberlake is doing well, or God forbid you took your daughter see Hanna Whoever. The point is there should be more Timberlakes and Hanna… Well, more Timberlakes. The reason is there is less new talent is that we have voted with our dollars to endorse fewer of them, and that is killing business. We're not buying their product; we are buying someone else's product

And still, the industry leaders blame everyone else but themselves for their problems. Not their product, but their own customers. To add insult to injury, they then try to sue them, as if stopping them from defecting to better products will somehow make their product better and worth our money. The dirty secret remains: We are indeed spending the money; we're just not spending it on them. We are going to concerts more often, just not theirs. We are seeing tomorrow's acts more often, just not theirs. We are opening our pocket books, just not to them.

Time for the industry to admit that it knows jack-shit about music, and more importantly how to run a business in today's market. They need new products, and to get to those new products they need a new way of doing business. Obviously, the same tired formula of throwing the trend of the moment at the wall only allows a few investments to stick. Maybe, just maybe, the reason these smaller labels are doing well because they sign bands that have worked from the ground up. Bands that put time in and know the business and fans from the street level. Crap won't survive a small venue for long. We're talking organic growth here, the old fashion natural way. Taking something new and shoe-horning it into pre-approved demographically detailed scene that sold once certainly doesn't cut it. The proof is in these sales numbers. Creating a star doesn't happen by managing it top down.

You would think the simple, 101 Economic principles of us not buying their product would make someone realize it. Imagine if the follow scenario happened in your town: Wal*Mart loses business while a couple of local stores grew larger and reported higher sales. Wal*Mart explains the loss by blaming the downturn on the consumer. It's not Wal*Marts fault that people are going to other stores; it's a small percentage of consumers who steal from them. Do you think that would fly with the public? With the media? It would be a huge publicity debacle for Wal*Mart and the media would lynch them. But some how, and this is a common problem in many businesses or issues, this simple principle gets ignored when applied to a different industry. The music industry needs to wake up and realize that they are part of the same world and the same rules apply, before the small businesses take their place as tomorrow's big labels. Because at the end of the day, the labels can lament that we are not paying to see the stars of tomorrow. The reality is we are; it's just not theirs…


Encore...

Once upon a time, Rome rotted from the inside out, and the barbarian hordes slowly gained greater success at taking the Empire's land from them. Each year, they gained more and more ground. Then one day, the barbarians just ran wild and took the land – What little of Rome was left paid tribute for the token lands they still had, just for the privilege to survive in name. Today, the barbarian's are again at the gates, the media empire is losing ground to the new blood. Time for them to change or get out of the way, because one way or the other, the time for change has come.







The Set List
The albums on my playlist this week; some new, some old, always good :

With nothing new hitting the shelves, it's been a chance to pull out some classics. So this week the set list goes nostalgic…



Blue Oyster Cvlt - Mirrors

The mighty and mystical Blue Oyster Cult, music and lyrics that is more visions and dreams from the drug-like perception of the bands players. Fitting, considering the band goes far enough to do Michael Moorcock in "The Great Sun Jester" – a Song that swirls with textures but somehow keeps the dynamic of an epic. Hmm… Truth be told, that's probably the secret of B.O.C., the contradictions they pull off in grand fashion as if it was completely natural. Anyway, this album was panned by critics and didn't do well. Many think of it as a sell-out, thanks to the more accessible writing and more importantly, the production of Tom Werman who put the band through their paces (in other words, he worked them into the ground to get it perfect). But I think it's a fine album, from the rocking-poppy "Dr. Music" and spring booze-cruising "Mirror", to the foreboding and guitar rumble of "The Vigil", and even the odd-relationship metaphoric surge of "I am the Storm" with it's reworked Patty Smith lyrics. "The Great Sun Jester" steals the show however, proving to be a grand moment in Cvlt if not rock history.

Van Halen - Women and Children First

I really should just do a forgotten classic on this someday… But it's been in the CD player so here you go. This was the first Van Halen album to not have a cover or joke song on it, and for me it just rocks front to back. The band brings the jam's in-mass, also their most serious effort to date; not to say that Van Halen were not a serious business, just that they always conveyed that party-boy sense of having a grand time you got to participate in - A sort of infectious fun where they laughed at everything and you got to enjoy the joke with them. The philosophy is the same here, but Eddie, Roth, and Co. put their heads down and hand you a dish of musical hard rock edges, crashing percussion, and cranking guitars all mixed into what is one of my favorite spins from the band.

Nile - Festivals of Atonement
The nostalgia trip doesn't necessarily mean just older albums (God it kills to write that about albums I picked up when they were new). This was the first EP by America's favorite brutal crypt delvers, the band strafing the death metal scene with tales of everything that was right and wrong with the land of the mummy haunted sarcophaguses. And we're not talking some cute blurb about Egypt courtesy of Google. These guys know their Egyptology damn well - The good, bad, and ugly of ancient Egypt's history and culture, inside and out. What makes their early material so cool is the total atmosphere they invoke. The newer material, while very good death metal, is more death metal with some Egyptian textures and atmosphere. The older material is dripping in it to the point it feels like the lost soundtrack to one killer Mummy movie. In fact, if they ever make a Mummy III, we need to make a mass write-in campaign to make this the soundtrack.

And speaking of Nile...



Intermission

Nile is in the house tonight! Nothing says storming the gates like some brutal technical death metal.




Nile - Sacrifice Unto Sebek (Video)






Nile - Black Seeds of Vengeance (Live)





Bet you never thought you'd see a Nile video on 411.

"Everybody loves you when you're six foot in the ground." - John Lennon

"A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other." - Unknown

From the Underground
A look at a band on small labels or unsigned.


The Leather Nun – All Your Kin




You can check them out HERE.

An underground doom outfit from San Francisco on the Psychedoomelic Label, Leather Nun is a three piece outfit that does metal the old school way – Heavy riffs, distorted rock, all wrapped around a 70's metal feel that has more in common with jamming out then the signature sounds of modern metal (like double bass or blast beat). When you get down to good metal, it's all about the riffs, which is why you hear me comment on them in most album reviews, no matter if it is a full review or a blurb. They can make or break an album, through their quality or even lack of presence. Leather Nun are students of old school metal and build their songs around classic principles in rocking-out built on the all mighty riff, thus earning great kudos from me for putting together a very good album. If I made a Top 25 list for last year, this would have been on it. Click the link to check out some of their songs.





Forgotten Classic
Time to pull a classic from the collection and give it the attention it deserves!



Judas Priest – Sad Wings of Destiny






Not exactly a forgotten classic, at least if you have earned your degree in metalhead studies 101. By I'm going to go with the assumption that casual metal-fans also read this column, and in the world of mainstream music most people think of later Priest efforts from the 80's or the seminal Painkiller (and don't get me wrong, that is a killer album). That is the real thing that bothers me, as the 70's output is not only the best material the band etched into vinyl, but the same era is the foundation of modern heavy metal. In fact, if I can get motivated this summer (read: You show interest), I should just do a series of columns on the history of heavy metal. At any rate, back to the subject on hand…

Black Sabbath (along with Deep Purple) invented heavy metal in what was to be its first coming. This primal era of 70's metal was mostly a proto-metal or crossover for most other bands, with only a few bands (like Sabbath) keeping on the dark path. Then Judas Priest came along and gave metal it's second coming, sharpening the raw iron of metal into a forged weapon of might. After Priest, metal bands really started to hit the scene, a growth spree that culminated into the hey-day of metal known as the 80's. And the Priest album that started it all was this one, Sad Wings of Destiny.

Part hard rock, part stainless steel, part metaphor of life, Sad Wings stabbed into the collective conscious of the music culture and societal perceptions with one heaving stroke. Where Black Sabbath gave you riffs that crunched, Priest gave you riffs that ripped, and with it tore open the lid on Pandora's Box of Metal Mayhem. Twin leads might have been brought to the arena by Thin Lizzy, but Judas Priest took the attack and forged it into a weapon of the divine, twin barreled rhythm and solo assaults that would evolve from this foundation onto lands unexplored.

"Victim of Changes" being the all time classic, the sonic atmosphere of history's forgotten tragedies mixed with Halford's soaring voice – hitting ranges no mortal should. "Dreamer Deceiver" and "Deceiver" both deliver the goods (forgive the pun). Side two (long live the record!) gives us the epic intro of "Prelude" that damns us into the hands of the "Tyrant", a combo that hit us back in the day like an anvil up side the head, and the impression is still there. The rest of the album rips, smolders, and smokes through "Genocide", Epitaph", and "Island Of Domination"; 70's hard rock evolving into a smooth metallic machine that was going to storm the safe airways and rebuild the kingdom into there own vision.

Barbarians at the gates indeed!

Ok… Let's see which of you know your old school stuff - Time to guess next weeks Forgotten Classic. It's an old traveler in time that has been with me for all of my life, and that's starting to become a long haul. It's a fine piece of proto-metal and prog-rock history from a group that some claim worked with Sabbath and Purple to invent metal. Is that vague enough? Let's see who can nail it.

2008 Rankings
The albums released for 2008.


The Mosh Pit's 2008 Album Rankings

Nadda!

Its cool catching up on all the music I own, but I can't wait for the new releases to start rolling in.




Readers Choice 2008 Album Rankings

Nadda!

Not only will you get a chance to rate an album on a scale of 1-10 when you post a comment. You can also write in your own albums and rate it. The only rule is that it has to be a metal album - I buy a lot of music, but I still won't be able to buy everything. If this works, it'll be a great use of the new comments feature to turn this part of the column into a true interactive experience.

We're going to make Fridays the Pit to visit, baby!

You mission, if you choose to accept it, will be to comment below on any number of 2008 metal albums each week and I'll track the averages. All comments welcome (unless you behave like a total tool), readers and staff alike. I'm the only one disqualified as I have my own chart above. By the end of the year, we'll see what you, the metal loving public deems the best (and worse) of 2008!




The Merchandise Stand
Always support you local venue and favorite band, so get a drink from the bar and pick up some swag!

A Mosh Pit is more than a hodgepodge of ideas slamming off of each other; it is also the people who make it worth hanging around in the first place. I highly recommend this week's columns by the following people who bring the goods:



Ben Czajkowski starts your week with Everything You Can't Live Without; a news report that provides concert dates, street dates for new albums, and a straight up no-nonsense approach to music news. He's kicking off his third year here, so make sure you stop in and buy him a drink.

Daniel Marsicano asks Whatever The Hell Happened To your favorite albums. He's in the middle of highlighting the big four of thrash, so make sure you don't miss it. If you're a metalhead, this is essential reading (or we're going to have to revoke your jean jacket).

Rob Samuels delivers the Classic Record Review each week. This week he takes on Rage Against The Machine. I must be getting old for Rage to be a classic, but the sad truth is that is indeed the case.

Mikey Migo is the Savage Animal providing great commentary on the finer points of the music industry. This week he looks at celebrity musicians, complete with videos for each one.

Mitch Michaels ends your week with a hard hitting dissection of industry news. He also provides the Billboard album and song rankings for the week, and a review of the finer assets governing the business in the Quick N' Dirty News.



Don't forget to stop in and check out the Music Zone's Fact or Fiction hosted by yours truly. This week Mike Migo and John Nagel swept the series by universally agreeing that the USS Spears can still sink further, Jay Z should hit the road, and Queen (while a great band) isn't the top British Band of all time. The guys delivered some good reading.

Finally, if you have been living under a rock and have missed the completely awesome year end review feature this week, well… What are you waiting for! Honestly, this is the best feature I have seen on the site, both in content and the time/detail that went into the lay-out. Check it out!

Staff Picks for 2007 - Pt. 1
Staff Picks for 2007 - Pt. 2
Review Round-Up (By Genre)
Tributes to the Musicians That Left Us Last Year





Tales from the Pit
Reader Feedback, what's on your playlist, and the great gigs you've seen.


Last week was a comedy piece to kick off the year, so besides a couple of lol's we're starting with a clean slate.


Final Thoughts

Keep it real and play the music you love, even if the band only fills a small hall. Greatness is measured on your standards, and nothing else. And while you're at it, turn it up to 11. If people bitch, then raise the fist of rock and tell them I said ‘Hi'.