Rock Star Parents

Band Touring

I just found a blog that highlighted something that every young band should think about if they are going to take being in a band seriously: how to go on the road.

It talks about some of the daily grind in the "Touring Diary with Cloud Cult..." Please make sure you click on the link within the post itself too.

Interesting reading! And it probably romanticizes things a bit because it seems they are on the way up, but it still has a lot of, well, interesting times.

Required reading for all!

Feel free to post your own experiences as well.

RockStar: SuperNova -- How to be in A band...

OK, this show is not just about ANY band, it is about a specific band -- SuperNova, a brand new band comprised of old rockers Tommy Lee, drummer, from Motley Crue; Jason Newsted, bassist, from Metallica; and Gilby Clarke, rhythm guitarist, from Guns'N Roses.

We watched it last season when INXS was looking for a new lead singer as well, but this season I think is even better. For one thing, Jason Newsted is very concerned about the new lead singers pipes, and that means whether or not the person is able to sing the correct way -- because if you sing the correct way, you can sing for a whole concert. If you don't sing the correct way, then bands have to cancel dates, and they don't like to do that. It hurts the bottom line.

There are some really great singers on the show, and a few not so great singers, some have already left and some are still around because of the "gosh, I don't know what they will do next" or they "have a big portion of the world behind them" and they don't want to lose the ratings. (See the Post Supergroup on VH1 for more on this phenomenon.)

The show airs on Tuesday and Wednesday nights on CBS. They also have an additional 1/2 show that delves into the contestants at the mansion where they stay during the entire process. This additional show can only be seen at rockstar.msn.com. (Another sidenote. I HATE, HATE this site! It is full of animations. It is slow. And if you want to go back week after week, it REALLY gets old! I think all rockstar designers just want to make the biggest, slowest, most obtrusive "make you wait site" they can. I, for one, hate them.)

Even if you aren't a lead singer, if you want to learn how to be in a band, then watch the house band. These guys are first rate. They make everything sound right. You can also see how some of the contestants really highlight their talents as well. (Update: More on the RockStar SuperNova house band here. And, according to the most recent episode, these guys will be going on the RockStar SuperNova tour with some of the runner ups from the band.)

If you are a lead singer, watch the performances, learn from them... it is like getting a seminar right on your TV screen!

MySpace can give you viruses

Lots of bands use MySpace. Some new movies only give MySpace urls. (I think this is dumb for a lot of reasons, and it will fade...) One good reason is that, according to the website MarketingProfs: Daily Fix:

Illicit Adware Infects MySpace Users

MarketingVOX: Up to a million users of MySpace and other sites serving up an ad for patio furniture this month may have been infected with surreptitious adware.

Delivered by ad networks, a banner ad for DeckOutYourDeck.com that ran on MySpace and other sites earlier this month was rigged to install up to five adware programs on the computers of users browsing an unpatched version of Internet Explorer, reports PC Mag. When malware security analyst Michael La Pilla of VeriSign's iDefense reported the problem, MySpace had already taken down the ad and was attempting to find the culprits.

For what it is worth, the virus tried to get on my computer when I used MySpace. I didn't know it was the ad at the top of the webpage though. I thought it was some of those stupid vidoes, questionnaires, or downloads that the bands have scattered all over their pages that make it very hard to see the virus. In my case, AVG Antivirus caught it.

Whatever, please update the IE patch (and I have to do this too!) and run a virus scan. (Choose the Start button and then Windows Update if you have 2000. I think my XP computer updates automatically.) This stuff is going to a computer server in Russia, which you don't want!

Mom at RockStarParent

So... should you do a single or a CD?

You have successfully started a band and you have some originals. So, you are thinking about recording. Should it be only digital or should you actually manufacture a CD? Should you do just a single or a slew of songs... well, if you are an indie, the blog Coolfer has an interesting post on the digital music trends:

In theory, indie labels should have a great digital album share than a CD share. In the physical world, limited shelf space and challenges with distribution can hamper access to the consumers. It turns out this is exactly the case. Indies have a 28% share of digital album sales, far higher than the 18.8% share they have of CDs.

But indies don't sell single digital tracks as well as they sell digital albums, and not even as well as they sell CDs. The indies' digital track share is only 15.8% There could be a number of reasons for this. The most rational explantion is that indies tend to market their artists around an entire album, not a single. Singles, and the singles chart, is largely the domain of major labels with the resources to make the kind of elaborate videos get considerable airplay, and the means to promote a single to commercial radio. In promoting an album through a single, a label is often promoting just that song, not the artist or the artist's album

Surprise, surprise -- it seems that your music genre also has an impact... read the post to see what genres do better!

Flameproofing a rock studio or how to make a cool practice room safe...

You want a cool practice space. You want to put fabric all over the walls to help diffuse the sound and cover up the holes in the garage or the basement walls or even your own room. Or maybe you want to put up a wall of curtains on wire to pull across the walls.  It is ok to do... if... and this is a

big IF...

you use flame retardant fabric from the get go or you buy fabric and then flameproof the fabric by spraying it. (It is never OK to use regular foam on the walls even if you try to flameproof it.)

This isn't funny. 100 people died in a night club fire because the soundproofing wasn't flameproof.

Thankfully, this is the web, and I can link to a great fireproofing science experiment website where Janyn M did a handy experiment to SHOW people the difference between regular cotton fabric and fabric treated with flame retardant. As her tables show, there is a huge difference in the time it takes untreated fabric to burn versus treated fabric. Imagine being in a room covered with fabric that takes 2 seconds to catch on fire and all the fabric burns rather than 60 seconds to catch on fire and 86% of the fabric DOES NOT burn!

So -- we got cheap fabric to put on the walls of our own garage, (we got cotton at $1 a yard) but we had to flameproof it. Let me tell you, finding flame retardant spray was tough! Especially if you want to cover a whole two-car garage with fabric! I was finally able to purchase it at Backstage Hardware -- they ship UPS! While you can't order online, just call and they will ship it to you! (And all of you Halloween Haunted House flame retardant people looking how to build a Haunted House with fabric and other materials, this usually includes PTA's, PTO's, and camps, you can call them too!)

Depending on what you put on the walls, there are different products to use:

Roscoflamex C26
Roscoflamex C26 is a concentrated flame retardant that works with water absorbent theatrical textiles, paper products, cotton, muslin, canvas, cardboard and other cellulosic materials.

It is approved by the New York City Board of Standards and Appeal under Calender Number 1287-80-SM and has received a Certificate of Test from the Better Fabrics Testing Bureau, Inc.

Roscoflamex S33
A pre-mixed ready-to-use, clear liquid, Roscoflamex S33 effectively flame treats many synthetic fabrics, such as polyester, nylon, acrylic and rayon. It also treats cotton blends including cotton/poly, cotton.nylon, cotton/acrylic, rayon/nylon and rayon/acrylic.

Registered with the California Fire Marshall.

Roscoflamex W40
Roscoflamex W40 effectively flameproofs untreated wood, plywood, cellulose board, accoustical board and corrugated paper.

Registered with the California Fire Marshall.

Roscoflamex P50
Roscoflamex P50 is an additive for water based Rosco Paints. Designed to be added directly to Roscopaint, one 12 ounce jar of P50 makes one gallon of fire retardant paint without altering the the color.

Registered with the California Fire Marshall.

If you have some leftover, put it on some drapes in another room! (Basically, we used a spray bottle to saturate the material.)

Now, you can always purchase the fabric that is already flameproof. One example is to use duvetyn. Duvetyn is a black soft fabric (perfect for at least one wall unless you want to practice in a cave) that is already flameproof. Of course, you can't wash it. You can also get this at $6.99 a yard at Backstage Hardware, or a 50 yard bolt for $271.50 (these prices were current when I posted.)

So, if you are going to rock out in style, please rock out safely!

And, if you are truly looking to build a professional studio and want to build room treatments the way the  pros do, I highly recommend reading Rod Gervais: Home Recording Studio: Build it Like the Pros. He goes into bass traps, reflection control, absortion coefficients -- and fire safety.

(If you have any other ideas for a practice space, I would love to hear them!)