I just opened up Peel after a week and discovered some new music that I enjoy very much. Reservoir is the band Fanfarlo’s debut album and reminds me of Arcade Fire a little bit, but much more up beat musically.
The Fuel Friends blog has three mp3s to listen to and a video for you to watch, but the whole album is worth listening to at least once all the way through.
Download our album “Reservoir”‚ for one dollar until July 4th.
Hello. Because we want everyone to hear our album, and in the spirit of “why not”, we are now letting you download it, along with 4 exclusive bonus tracks, for a mere one dollar until July 4th (or, if you like, Independence Day.) After that, the madness will end and you will be able to get the CD, the vinyl and a beautiful new special edition at normal prices.
if you’re trying to write a hit song, you’re doing it wrong.
Write songs, release. Rinse, repeat. A song becomes a hit because people love it enough to listen to it over and over and over and tell their friends over and over and over until it breaks through the inner consciousness of the entire planet, as seen in the movie Interstellar 5555.
Recorded in the presence of Carl Orff, the 1968 performance of his masterpiece, O’Fortuna, is one of my favorite musical recordings. In one of the most powerful performances of the piece, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau arguably provides the best baritone performance of any recording of O’Fortuna to date.
Here’s a sample:
“II In Taberna / Estuans Interius”
[download the mp3 if the player isn't working]
Despite the awesomeness of this performance, Dietrich Fishcher-Dieskau’s more famous work revolves around Franz Schubert’s work, especially Die schöne Müllerin and Winterreise.
Doves is my favorite band, and unsurprisingly, the music I listen to most. Their latest album, Kingdom of Rust, does not disappoint. While I’ve only just started to listen to the album on repeat, there are a few tracks that have gotten more love than the rest. The song “10:03″ has been stuck in my head and I find myself humming random bits of the lyrics.
Like the last
Of those fires
You shall burn, into the night
Like a moth,
To the flame
I will turn back again, I’m coming home
The album closer, Lifelines, has also gotten quite a bit of airplay wherever I play music (car, imac, ipod, or cd player).
Sometimes it’s hard to see things straight
Trying to make sense on this single page
Sometimes you seem to spend your life trying
I’m just looking for my lifeline
Gene and I hit it off immediately. We’re both a little sarcastic, both think fairly highly of ourselves, and both work as hard as we can to be valuable to those that hire us to do a job. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Oh our meeting wasn’t by coincidence. The company I was working for at the time hired the rock band KISS to come to a Sports Collectors convention that we were having in Atlantic City, New Jersey in the summer of 2003. At the time the company only had four full-time employees (of which I was in the top 3), two or three part-timers, and had hired at least 20 people to help out with this event. So I got an inside view at the hiring, negotiating, and managing of KISS – and I learned a lot from that process. But I really learned how to make the best effort I could in a situation by working with Gene Simmons for the day.
Not that Paul, Peter, and Tommy weren’t amazing guys themselves, but Gene clearly steers the ship. And rightly so.
Hiring KISS wasn’t an easy task. The negotiation, if I remember correctly, went on for weeks. It wasn’t only about the dollar amount either. Things like amenities, time spent, marketing, transportation, personalities involved (we also hired the KISS Demon wrestler and, believe it or not, there is a conflict in there somewhere), etc. However, the moment we got the entire deal solidified with KISS’ agent at the time, the legendary Doc McGee, Gene immediately jumped into our corner.
It was pretty amazing. Gene would do anything and everything he could to see that we were compensated properly for hiring the band. He wouldn’t make any more or less money based on his efforts or even if we were profitable in hiring KISS – but I could tell immediately that he didn’t care about that. The moment he was happy with what he was getting out of the event, he worked really hard to make sure we got what we paid for. I remember when he showed up to the venue, five days in advance of the event, to do a press junket. He arrived with his arms wrapped around 3 women. Not one, or two… but three. We did not ask him to do this. He rolled up in a limo, got out (sans make-up) clad in a white suit, and immediately the air around the entire event changed. It went from the average sporting event that happened every single year, to one that we knew would change the face of the industry. He walked up to the podium and gave a few statements (completely unrehearsed with us) and knocked it out of the park.
On the day of the event, the day I was formerly introduced to Gene face to make-up-covered face, he continued to put our interests above his own. He made sure we got the shots we wanted, the video clips we needed, and got the crowd more involved than we had ever asked. In fact, most of us were relatively inexperienced with working a crowd from a “rock ‘n roll” perspective. We had done large sporting events in the past, and they have their own feel, but this was something different. Gene walked out of the back room to see a crowd of a few thousand people in a building and managed to completely shift the focus of everyone in the over 1,000,000 sq. ft. building to him. The crowd went pretty crazy. At which point Gene turned to me and said; “Wow, you’re a popular guy huh?”. You had to be there.
During the entire event Gene and his band KISS were more than courteous with us and with everyone that paid good money to see them, get their photos taken with the band, and have their various items signed. We had people that flew in from all over the United States, some toting their entire instrument-collection to have signed, and I don’t think anyone was disappointed that they came. KISS stood for photographs and signed for hours in full make-up, 2-foot high boots and all.
At one point, about an hour into the signing session, Gene wanted to get rid of his gum. He, as any of us would, went seeking out a piece of paper to spit the gum into. When he did that, he signed it, handed it to me and said: “I bet that gets like $30 on eBay, email me if it doesn’t.” He was right. $32 after 12 bids. That may not seem like much money, but as I said, hiring KISS cost our company a pretty penny and the entire band did everything they could to make it worth our while.
I have always had the same philosophies, for better or for worse, as Gene. If someone hires you to do something, first be sure you’re happy with what you’re doing and happy with what you’re getting for doing it, and then try your best to make hiring you for the job the best choice that company could have made.
