For the most part, the band is under a tremendous amount of stress, because the band members have been living on their advance money, and each of them was quickly running out of that money. At first, I was taken aback by this news. Two million dollars--the reported value of the deal--was a lot of jack to piss away. Of course, I don't really know the details of how that money was disbursed, nor if the budget for the record was included in that figure. Then, of course, there are any number of whacky accounting practices that go on at record companies. Regardless, the more I considered the possible costs of taxes, possible down payments on houses, musical equipment, and two years of no income in a city with one of the highest costs of living in the US, this was NOT that surprising. When I think about how much of my own money goes out the door from living in L.A., the scenario was not that hard to imagine. On top of all that, I'm sure the band never dreamed that it would be writing for two years before it would be making a record. I'm sure the band members thought they'd be touring by now and making money playing.
The label was taking a "tough s**t" attitude with them, which was exacerbating the situation. Allegedly, the label has been pretty shitty with them all along. Last week, Yore was telling me that their previous A&R reps (since fired) were total assholes to them. The way it was described to me, it was as if the label was psychologically torturing them. This somewhat explained to me the constant depression that Paulie Yore was in, although it didn't make hanging with him any more pleasurable.
It's not like the band didn't have good songs when it was signed. Quite the contrary, I've heard the songs that they had when they were signed, and in my opinion, they're great. I can even understand why this band was a bidding-war band. Labels don't give a s**t anymore if there's a weak player in the band. Everyone just assumes you either fix it with a computer or get a session player on the project. The only thing that labels are interested in is a song that they can break to radio. That's it, nothing more, nothing less. Everything else can be fixed.Besides "Willy Show", in order to keep everyone's identity secret (not to mention Mixerman's!) he used a variety of pseudonyms, some of which had more than a little raunch to them: Dumb Ass, the group's sloppy, soon-to-be-axed drummer, Fingaz, the young, lily white editor who thinks he's the second coming of LL Cool J, and of course, "Bitch Slap", which is the fictitious name Mixerman creates for the group itself. It's got to be second only to Spinal Tap in the pantheon of great fictitious rock group names.
Article comments
1 - Jim Carruthers
I followed Mixerman's site until it trailed off, where does the book end?
My favourite observation from the original posts was that it is much cheaper to treat a band like millionaires than it is to make them millionaires.