Artist Empowerment

I am a Star Wars fan (Episodes 4, 5 and 6, not the new ones)

In fact, I am a die-hard Star Wars fan.

When I was three, I would watch the Star Wars movies every day and that is how I learned to speak English (at home, my family exclusively spoke Armenian.)

I would get scared and cover my eyes whenever the Emperor was in a scene. Even though I had already seen the movies dozens of times, I would ask my older sister why Luke didn’t just use his “Light Saver” when he first walked into the Emperor’s chamber (with a heavy Armenian accent, of course.)

A few days ago, I saw John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl and the highlight was actually right after intermission.

The crowd knew that the Star Wars Theme was coming…

Just before John Williams came back on stage, the house lights dimmed and all you could see were a thousand light sabers spread throughout the crowd, pointed to the sky.

When the orchestra played the Imperial March during the second encore, the light sabers were waving up and down in perfect rhythm…it was beautiful.

John William’s music has been a huge part of our culture over the past 30 years (Jaws, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, etc.) and it was amazing to watch him conduct the hits from his vast catalog.

It was also reassuring to see that I wasn’t the only Star Wars geek in the audience; in fact, there were more than a thousand people there who were bigger geeks than I am.

There is good ego.

And there is bad ego.

A healthy, balanced ego gives us self-confidence, fuels our drive to succeed and keeps us motivated.

Unfortunately, good ego is a rare find and bad ego is all around us.

Here are several characteristics that you may find in artists whose egos are out of balance:

1) They think they can and should do everything themselves. In their minds, they are great at everything and don’t need others to achieve their goals.

2) They usually don’t have many close friends…after all, who wants to hang out with an egomaniac?

3) They are often unclear with their intentions. They might temporarily make you feel like you are a part of a team, but in the end, it is all about them. Time always reveals people’s true intentions.

4) Because they are so self-absorbed, they are poor conversationalists. Unless the conversation is about them, they aren’t very interested and are very easily distracted.

5) They are socially awkward and need a few glasses of alcohol or other substances to enjoy themselves.

The saddest part is that many of these artists are incredibly talented, yet their self-absorbed nature makes it very difficult for them to accomplish anything significant.

As artists in the new music industry, it is critical for us to understand this distinction and to embrace the concept of teamwork as a prerequisite for success. Egomaniacs aren’t team players.  However talented they are, they will bring the team down.

I saw Radiohead at the Hollywood Bowl last night and I was blown away…

Here are several things that I found interesting/remarkable:

1) Radiohead fans are hard-core and that is an understatement!  Right before they went on, the fans all around us were arguing the specific date/venue of the last public performance of “Creep.”

2) More smoke emanated from the audience than from the smoke machine on stage.  I don’t smoke the kind herb but I think everyone in the audience left with a bit more haze than when they came in.

3) The sound was close to perfect and the stage/lighting enhanced the experience tenfold.

4) Just when you thought the show was over, they played another song…and they played…and they played.  They must’ve performed at least 25 songs!

5) The fact that they didn’t play “Street Spirit” and “Paranoid Android’ was my only complaint.

As artists, we should all strive to reach that standard of entertainment.

Everyone in the corporate world talks about how critical leadership is for the success of an organization.

People rarely talk about leadership in the context of a musical act.

I’m not talking about a Band Leader in the traditional sense, I’m talking about the leader of the commercial enterprise that is your band.

The leader is ultimately accountable for the success of the band.

She understands the vision and can rally people around it.

She knows that 4 or 5 heads are better than one and involves her band members in the decision-making process.

She embodies everything her band stands for and is willing to put her ego and personal agenda aside for the greater good of the enterprise.

She works hard to cultivate her leadership abilities knowing that effective leadership is a never-ending cycle of self-reflection, study and learning in action.

I can’t stress how important leadership is - think long and hard before you decide who will lead your band!

Two night ago, I saw a sassy grandma with a deep, rich voice feel herself up on stage at the Hollywood Bowl.

Very strange, indeed…

At the age of 70, Etta James still has it.  When she sings in her lower register, she has a resonance that I have never heard in a woman’s voice.

Her voice literally engulfed the space of the entire 16,000 capacity open-air venue, which is no easy feat.  Even when she spoke between songs, you could feel the boomy bass in your bones.

Her X-rated antics were another noteworthy aspect of her performance.  A friend of mine had warned me that she was sassy and sensual but seeing a 70 year-old feel herself up on stage was definitely a first, something that one cannot prepare for.

What made it even more bizzare was the fact that her two sons were performing on stage with her!

An incredible talent like Etta James can get away with a lot on stage, even at the age of 70 when half of her audience is terrified, red-faced and unsure whether to laugh, cry or cover their eyes!

Five years ago, one of my previous bands, Beat & Path, was approached by someone claiming to be Stan Lynch who was the drummer and founding member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

My first cousins are jewelers who work in Downtown, L.A. After one of my concerts, my cousin Vic asked me if I was interested in working with Tom Petty’s drummer, Stan Lynch.

I said, “Of course! How do you know him?”

“He’s been buying jewelry from us for the past 2 years and I gave him a copy of your CD. He’s very interested.”

Intrigued, I went to their booth in downtown to meet with “Stan Lynch.” He was a short, strange-looking man who claimed that our song “Poor You” was one of the best he had heard. He wanted to get us a record deal and talked our ears off about his industry contacts.

He said that he would invest $50,000 to take the band to the next level if my cousins would be willing to match his investment.

We said that we were interested but wanted to take some time to think it through. We went home that night and researched everything we could about Stan Lynch on the web.

Everything he said seemed to be true except for one small issue: there was a recent picture of Stan Lynch online and this guy looked 20 years older and 2 feet shorter than the man in the picture.

When we met with him again, my cousin brought up the discrepancy. “Stan” got teary eyed and said, “I can’t believe you guys are implying that I am a liar. I have been battling cancer for the past 5 years. That’s why I look much older than I did in those pictures.”

We left the meeting more confused than we were when we came in. We felt guilty, uncertain, excited and perplexed, all at the same time.

The next day, we decided to call Stan Lynch’s publishing company, Sony/ATV Tree, to try to get more information. When we told them the story, they said that Stan Lynch hadn’t been to L.A. in 15 years!

A few hours later, Stan Lynch called us from Florida to ask for our help and said that the Police were after a guy who had been stealing money from artists and investors, claiming to be Stan Lynch.

Immediately after the conversation, we called the cops and gave them an address that “Stan” had given my cousins months before.

The address turned out to be a hotel room where he was staying and they busted him there the following day!

“Stan’s” real name was Ralph and he was a convicted felon who had stolen and fled with almost half a million dollars from other bands, claiming he was Stan Lynch.

When they arrested him, they found a box full of Stan Lynch CD’s, biographical information, and pictures…

Moral of the story: Do your research…often, people in our industry aren’t who they claim to be!

Here’s a link to the re-post of the newspaper article published in 2003:

http://tompetty.infopop.cc/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/1176042321/m/5216051903

The same object, feeling, experience, argument, task or opportunity can be framed from a number of different perspectives and some frames are better than others in helping us achieve our goals as artists.

According to Encarta World English Dictionary, a mistake is an incorrect, unwise, or unfortunate act or decision caused by bad judgment or a lack of information or care.

An experiment, on the other hand, is a test carried out in order to discover whether a theory is correct or what the results of a particular course of action would be.

When things don’t go how we expected or hoped they would, we have a choice:

• If we view what happened through the “Mistake” frame, we often get discouraged and lose hope.

• If we perceive the same event through the “Experiment” frame, we are not as negative and see it as an inevitable part of the process of finding our way.

I have founded many bands and have learned so many invaluable lessons along the way. I view each of my previous bands as experiments and as such, I am wiser, more self-aware and more positive than I have ever been.

Artist Empowerment isn’t a perfectly smooth ride, it is journey with peaks and valleys ultimately leading us toward the apex of our potential.

How we frame our experiences and how quickly we learn from them is critical to our success.

We all know how much time kids spend playing video games, but what amazes me most is the growing percentage of adults who spend their time battling Paranoid Androids.

And I’m not just referring to adults in their 30’s and 40’s, I’m talking about adults in their 50’s, 60’s and older!

One of the biggest reasons why video games are so popular is because they are interactive, meaning, players can affect the outcome. Add the collaborative nature of gaming to the interactivity and you can see why people have no problem dishing out $60 for a video game.

Music and movies, on the other hand, aren’t interactive in the same way. They are linear, one-way experiences; they are pre-determined journeys that take us from a beginning to an end.

So, as artists in the music industry, what can we learn from the popularity of video games?

Though you might not want your fans deciding whether you should go into a chorus or a third verse after your bridge, there are plenty of ways to incorporate the idea of fan interactivity into how your fans experience your band.

• Let your fans vote on the set list for your next show
• Let them determine the design of their next T-shirt
• Let them determine which song you will release next

We can learn a lot from paying attention to other industries that are booming (Gaming) in addition to industries that are failing (Major Label system.)

Feel free to comment with other ideas of how we can incorporate interactivity into how fans experience our band!

A short while ago, I met the guys who founded Taltopia - a free, fast-growing social networking site geared toward helping independent artists get exposure, build a fan base and stay connected to fans.

A challenge that all artists face when they are ready to present their art to the public is finding avenues of exposure. While there are many places to promote your music in cyberspace, most sites are over-saturated and have already lost their luster and credibility as places to discover new talent.

When I met the founders Allen and Anthony, Taltopia had around 5,000 members.

In a matter of months, that number has rapidly grown to over 25,000, which is a testament to their incredible work ethic and dedication to helping talented artists find their audience.

Taltopia has contests with valuable prizes, ways for users to rate content and several means of networking with industry professionals. I am the featured Music Producer on the site and they have since partnered with several high profile companies to extend their reach.

Allen and Anthony are really good guys who have created something very exciting which has a lot of momentum.

I highly recommend that you guys check out www.taltopia.com, set up profiles and interact!

A few posts ago, I wrote about how an artist needs a core message, a clear answer to the all-important question: Who are you and what do you stand for?

Here are 4 criteria to keep in mind when defining your core brand message:

1) It needs to be (at least somewhat) original.

I’m not suggesting that every artist needs to reinvent the wheel and come up with an earth-shattering concept that defines her, but you should be creative. At the very least, describe what you believe from a slightly different perspective than everybody else’s.

2) It should be authentic.

You must truly believe your core message because if you don’t, people will catch on. There is nothing worse than artists who try too hard to be something they are not.

3) It has to be something that people will care about.

If your brand message is irrelevant, your art becomes irrelevant. When people can relate to your core message, they will become true believers in your brand.

4) The concept should be simple.

“The metaphysics of the universe viewed through the lens of another reality” is too complex, unless your core fan base is comprised of only philosophy professors at Ivy League Schools. Make sure your message is simple and can be articulated in a way that is easy to understand.

Follow these general guidelines and you will be well on your way to crafting a message that people will care about!