An Interview with JOE VIGLIONE: A BANG! Magazine #7 Reprint [Late-1980s]

Text by Robert Barry Francos / BANG! Magazine

Intro and photos by RBF / FFanzeen, 2020

BANG! cover from the Internet © Rocco Cipollone

During the first half of the 1980s, twice a year on Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends, I would take a sojourn up to a Boston suburb known as Woburn (Dragon Ct., specifically), to visit Joe Viglione and he would generously let me stay on his couch. While it was great hanging out with Joe and talking music, life, etc., I also took a number of solo trips out to Boston to see bands play at such venues as the Rat, Chet’s Last Call, and the Paradise, and hang out with other Boston-local personalities, such as Kenne Highland, Donna Lethal, and the publisher of BANG!, photographer Rocco Cipollone. Through Joe, I got to meet the likes of Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller [d. 1994], Willie Alexander, Jon Macey, and JoJo Laine [d. 2006], among others.

During that time, Joe had an alter ego, or a pen name at least, by the name of Janis Reed, mixing the names Janis Joplin and Lou Reed, two musicians close to Joe’s heart. As Janis, he wrote a gossipy-news back-page column for the glossy Musician magazine.

We have remained friends over the decades, as Joe has dipped his fingers into local politics, cable television (both in front of the camera and behind) with his interview program “Visual Radio,” as well as keeping involved in music, most notably lately with his “Demo That Got the Deal” compilations.

Sometime after 1985, I interviewed Joe for Rocco Cipollone’s fanzine, BANG!, which is reprinted below. – RBF, 2020

* * *

Back in 1977, when I first joined the fanzine scene, there was a fraternity of editors, among them Mike McDowell of (Ballroom) Blitz, Nancy Foster of New Age, Joe Viglione of Varulven, and myself, of FFanzeen.

Through the years, I am still in contact with many of the editors, including all of the above, and am lucky enough to call them friends. Of all of the above, the one who has been around the longest and probably the most successful in his field as far as a career and influence goes, is Boston’s own self-titled aristocrat, the Count, Joe Viglione.

There’s no phase of “the biz” that Joe Viglione doesn’t or hasn’t had his hand in. His magazine is but a memory, but his music expertise is very much alive and active.

First, there’s the performance end. There have been many versions of his band, from the first recordings as Auguste Phenomenon, through is band’s last recording as The Count.

Then there is the producer, putting out a prolific number of records by his and other bands on his label, originally named Varulven (yes, same as his magazine), evolving into VAR Records, and finally VAR International. Most of note are the series of compilations by local bands.

He also produces records of bands other than on his label.

There are also his caps as production director, record distributor, club booking agent, etc.

Interviewing friends is never easy, but here goes:

* * *

BANG!: Before you got involved in music, you published a magazine called Varulven.

Joe Viglione: When I was sixteen, we decided to get together a fan magazine for fantasy and science-fiction. I was a big fan of Castle of Frankenstein and Famous Monsters of Filmland. Then, of course, there were the BosCon Convention and the NorEastCon.  It went to those, but we had already established the magazine then. It was just the thing to do. It was something I had to do. It’s just a calling. You don’t know why you’re doing it, you just know you have to do it.

BANG!: And slowly but surely it included music, like the last issue had an interview with Jonathan Richman.

Joe: Yeah, the last issue did have an interview with Jonathan Richman. We were doing science fiction, fantasy and rock’n’roll, and that was something. Castle of Frankenstein was very interested in pick up, so the whole premise of our magazine was to go beyond what a fanzine was, and to start picking up writers that would be picked up by major magazines, such as Famous Monsters. So, I wanted to develop people, but I was always into music, so I made that my focal point.

BANG!: Is that why you stopped putting the magazine out?

Joe: Yeah, it was just too costly and it became too diverse.

BANG!: You write for other magazines now.

Joe: Yeah, I write for The Beat. I was writing for Preview (which closed), and I’ll write for FFanzeen when I have nothing better to do. [Laughs] Not true!

BANG!: When did Janis Reed come into the picture?

Joe: Janis Reed had produced a Willie Alexander album called Sperm Bank Babies. It took a lot of production expertise. She sat at home with her Advent recording deck and taped it off WEBS. It had Barb Kitson [d. 2006 – RBF, 2020] of Thrills as the MC, who was just a DJ at that point in time. I had let her write for the Auguste Pages, which is our house fanzine for the record company and the band. And then Janis went from the Auguste Pages to Musician magazine, which hired me to do a local Boston column. I did one column and gave it up, and gave it to Janis. From then on Janis Reed wrote it. That’s where Janis came from.

BANG!: You’ve had the title “The Count” since high school, I think it was.

Joe: Yeah, it went way back and it was fun, but it was kinda dumb to keep tagging it along.

BANG!: But won’t you ever miss it?

Joe: Nope.

BANG!: What is your new image?

Joe: My new image is my old image, Joe Viglione. I consider The Count thing something like Myra Breckinridge. When Myron woke up and found out he was Myron, he said, “My  God, I was Myra?”

BANG!: When he woke up back as Myron, in the book, what he actually said was, “My tits. Somebody stole my tits!”

Joe: My cape. Somebody stole my cape! [Laughs]

BANG!: Your new release, “Oh Love, Frustrating Love,” on the last anthology album (Boston Rock and Roll Anthology, Volume 4) has a (writing) collaboration with Nancy Foster from North Carolina. How did you get together with her?

Joe: First, Nancy and I started having long distance sex. We were the originators of phone sex. She started writing me some lyrics and sent them up to me. She sent me 10-15 poems, and I thought they were all great. And two of them – “Oh Love, Frustrating Love” and “Run Wild with Me” – were really super. I put them both to music and I was happier with the music I wrote for “Oh Love, Frustrating Love,” so that’s become a staple of the band, just as “Guitarmaster” has been. It was also The Count’s MOR trip. While all the bands in turn were doing techno-pop and this-and-that-pop, we were fusing punk and rock and roll with MOR music. And people did not like it, but we were being original and we kept doing it.

BANG!: Is this when you were doing “Lejandemi”?

Joe: Yeah, “Lejandemi,” “Oh Love, Frustrating Love,” “Of Yesterday,” and “I Thought You’d Be Mine,” and that pop stuff that you could definitely hear.

BANG!: Why did you release “Oh Love…” now, since you recorded it a few years ago?

Joe: I really loved it, and I still love it. I’m aware that it wasn’t a wise move to put it on Anthology Vol. 4, ‘cause it’s gonna kill any chance of airplay. In fact, it hasn’t gotten one spin and the album’s been getting a lot of airplay up here. The reviews on it so far by the critics have been the best. It’s one of the best cuts on the record. I think the people in Europe will think so too, because Europe’s back into pop.

BANG!: Don’t you think it’s harder to sell a million-unit album if it’s a compilation?

Joe: A compilation won’t sell a million. I mean, it could – you should never limit yourself – but with compilation albums, I don’t use them for that purpose. The reasons I’m using these compilations first is to develop my relationship with the bands, beyond just the club scene, and beyond promoting their records and reviewing them. I wanna get to know what it’s like getting into a contract with the bands for one song, seeing if they’ve got the attitude that I have toward marketing and promoting something. You’d be surprised the gung-ho attitudes you get from certain bands, and then, when they actually realize how much work is in it, they drop out. And then the band breaks up because they don’t want to do all the work. We’re just gonna find the cream of the crop, the real hard workers who are really talented, because those are the bands I think I can bank on.

 

 Dimension 10: Jeff Hill is squatting in front

BANG!: Who’s in your new band, Dimension 10?

Joe: Well, my band right now is my drummer Jeff (Hill), and what I think we’re gonna do is have a revolving door of guitar players, and maybe even a revolving door of bass players, who work on different aspects of Dimension 10.

BANG!: Doesn’t that make it a little confusing for touring?

Joe. No, because we’re going to be going out with people that have the sound – the real sound – that we want!

* * *

Reproduction of the original article on Joe’s blog HERE.

Review: Band vs Brand

Text © Richard Gary / FFanzeen, 2019
Images from the Internet

Band vs Brand
Written and directed by Bob Nalbanian
Cleopatra Entertainment / MVD Video
84 minutes; 2018 / 2019
www.cleopatra-entertainment.com
www.mvdvisual.com

The premise of this film is simple, and explained on the box: “When does a band become a brand?” This refers to when the band name becomes a synergy of its own, until sometimes even the band members themselves have no control. Of course, this is nothing new: for example, there have been groups like the Shangri-Las and the Marvellettes that have been touring for decades with no original members, and it’s a compilation of a pool of “who’s available for this gig?” singers.

But the focus of this documentary is in the metal genre, starting with the post-1992 media ecological age of the Internet with some rear-view mirror thinking, and it’s overarching effect on how music is purchased, downloaded, and how media streaming companies are bypassing the record companies.

Much of the story here is broken up into chapters, separated by titled cards, the first being “Logos and Merchandise,” or as Minutemen’s bassist Mike Watt famously coined it, “Merch.” Usta be in the1960s and ‘70s, independent tee-shirt sellers at venues like Madison Square Garden would flash their wares. Now, that’s pretty much a thing of the past, and the bands themselves sell their own merch with their logos inside the arenas or even clubs. In fact, many make more money of their paraphernalia (stickers, lighters, CDs, bandanas, etc.) than they do on the concert tickets. That’s why you see people with Ramones shirts who never knew they were a band, or were unfamiliar with their music. The brand became as – if not more – important than the band.

I remember right after Guns N’ Roses appeared on some award show, with bassist Duff McKagan wearing a CBGB tee-shirt, and suddenly people were buying them. CBGB owner Hilly Kristal made a small fortune with his logo. This is irony as my first Blank Generation crowd would go out of their way not to wear brands, and then CBGB was the brand.

With “Standing the Test of Time,” the film – and musicians – attests that no one with longevity has the merch power of KISS, with over 10,000 products that they sell. It’s rare for bands to last past a few years, and it almost seems like if they can pass a certain point, they can gather enough attention just from their endurance to become a brand through cultural osmosis.

One of the interesting aspects of sections like “Classic Rock” is listening to the seasoned musicians such as one of Nik Turner’s Hawkwind, discussing how, for example, (and I’m paraphrasing) that the Who would be less legitimate with Daltry and not Towshend than with Townshend and not Daltry. It’s true that bands have a history of being taken over by its singer, such as Diana Ross and the Supremes, or Buddy Holly and the Crickets. It’s not a new situation, but when the musicians themselves start talking about the distaste of that, I find that interesting. There is a moment where Ross the Boss talks about the post-Dictators’ outfit, Dictators NYC, that is close to my heart of the 1970s New York era.

I also find it interesting that the bands that are interviewed tend towards the older side, so when they discuss “Technology & the Internet,” for example, it’s mostly doom and gloom about quality and the anyone can do it attitude, but DIY is solid punk rock mentality because it was put out by the fans and musicians themselves. Certainly I am not arguing with the fact that most of the music now is overproduced, but so was arguable Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the products of Yes, ELP, and many of the late ’60 and early ‘70s rock (now called Classic Rock) that needed a whole sea of technicians to set up and play in arenas, as opposed to the plug and play of rock’n’roll.

This rightfully leads to “The Changing Industry,” which, again, is nothing new, but still fascinating. There’s a great book called The Mansion on the Hill: Dylan, Young, Geffen, Springsteen, and the Head-on Collision of Rock and Commerce by Fred Goodman in 1998, that discusses how the music industry went from being sold by music lovers to corporate entities who cared for nothing but the bottom line. Much of this chapter looks at how the fans approach music differently than they used to, which drive the bands to approach their music in dissimilar ways, which also affects the way products (both bands and their music) reach their market.

Not everyone can have the touring power of Rolling Stones or Paul McCartney, so when discussing “Live Performances” this documentary correctly posits that bands have had to change the way they tour, be it package tours with other bands (though I do remember seeing a Foghat / Montrose / Black Oak Arkansas show at the Beacon Theater in NYC in the mid-1970s), or play in casinos, on cruise ships, private corporate shows, or more and smaller venues on a single tour (for example, I saw Johnny Winter play at a college bar in Saskatoon in 2011).

While not in this order, the chapter “Hologram” could easily have followed the “Live Performance” one, perhaps called either the “Dead Performance” or “the Lazy Performance.” This is where a hologram of the artist – dead or alive – is used in the act. The idea of this drives me crazy. ABBA is currently in the process of being digitized as their younger selves and going “on tour.” For me, I’m not paying $100+ a seat to essentially watch HDTV; hell, I’m probably not going to pay that much for an actual live one. To see the two surviving members of the Who for $350 (pre-fees for the ticket processing)? Not going to happen; got to see the full band in the day for $8.50. I’m a fan, but I’m not rich. This has seriously affected my going to live shows, which I used to do quite often. I’ll just watch it on YouTube now, which refers more to the “Branding & the Fans” chapter.

There is no getting around this is a negative topic so it’s hard not to be cynical either watching it as a viewer, or from the musicians’ standpoint onscreen, but director Bob Nalbanian keeps it interesting and flowing. Considering the musicians involved here – and this is just a small touch – from bands such as Dio, Angel (who really do have the coolest logo ever, and the story is included in the documentary), Plasmatics, Megadeth, Slayer, Keel, and Saxon, along with some I’ve mentioned previously (and you can see a bunch in the trailer, below), this is obviously geared to an older demographic who are probably less comfortable with the modern tone of the music biz.

The extra are two of this film’s trailers, and for three other music documentaries, including the Damned.

While it’s sad it’s come down to mere merchandising sometimes more than the music, it’s also been part of the legacy of rock’n’roll from the beginning. It has, however, picked up momentum along the way. Fans of my generation remember ticket prices to big shows being under $10, no glare from cell phones recording the concerts and being distracting (I used to sneak in cassette recorders sometimes), and an excitement level that led to dancing rather than egocentric moshing.

I’m not trying to say this is either good or bad; it’s just the way it was. That it is different now is the point of this documentary, sand Nalbanian presents some of the top veteran musicians in the field to successfully prove his point. Worth the view.

 

ABBA in Heaven and Other Considerations [1983]

Text by Anni Ackner / FFanzeen, 1983

Introduction by Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2017

Images from the Internet

This article was originally published in FFanzeen, issue #11, dated 1983, by Anni Ackner. Normally, ABBA is not a band I would have published anything about in my fanzine. It’s nothing against the music, which I found non-harmful albeit vanilla, it just didn’t fit into the format of what I imagined the mag to be at the time, but was tricked into publishing it by the writer, whose name was a pseudonym for another writer who tended to focus on British and other European pop artists. Yes, I was duped, and I was not pleased about it.

Looking back at the piece, I think it is an interesting work of free association via run-on sentences, despite all the whoo-ha. It is also important to note that ABBA was more at a cult status at this point, before they became what “Anni” calls “legitimate.” While I don’t agree with some of what’s written here, it’s still a pretty amusing commentary on the state of the music industry at the time, although on some level some points still stand. However, on some punk level, the more “legitimate” (accepted) a band becomes, the less legitimate it stays (i.e., “I saw them back when…”). – RBF, 2017

Celestial Scenario: Phase One

Someday, as will happen to us all, ABBA will die and, Sweden being a tolerably Lutheran country, journey to Heaven to be met at is outskirts by the Keeper of the Gates, envisioned, in this instance, as one of those Grown Up music critics who hang around at One University and write long dissertations on Rock’n’Roll as an Art Form. There will be several tense moments as the Keeper of the Gates polishes his Chameleon Sunglasses, snorts a little cocaine through a discarded angel’s wing, and decides whether to let them all in or to send them to the place where the really bad pop stars to, which is either hell or a disc jockey spot at the Peppermint Lounge.

Eventually, Frida will get in because she did an album with Phil Collins and so bought herself a piece of rock’n’roll respectability. Agnetha will get in on the theory that anyone who bears that strong a resemblance to Malibu Barbie could not possibly have led a sinful life. Benny will get in because with all the negative reviews, bad criticism, and just plain nasty cracks ABBA has received over the years, no one has ever been truthfully able to say that he isn’t an immensely talented musician. There will then be a certain amount of hemming and hawing and buffing of the fingernails when it comes to Bjorn. Bjorn – reasonably good guitar player, reasonably good singer – nothing terribly askew there – but – ah ha, here we go – the one generally assumed, rightly or wrongly, to be the perpetrator of Those Lyrics. You know Those Lyrics. “Superficial” is probably the nicest adjective that’s ever been applied to them: “saccharine” seems almost too kind. There will be serious doubts as to whether a man capable of inflicting “The Winner Takes All” upon a mass audience ought to be allowed into the same Heaven that will, at least theoretically, harbor the likes of Pete Townshend and Bob Dylan. Ultimately, however, mumbling under his breath about the Need for Escapism in a Complex World and People Writing in Second Languages, the Keeper of the Gates will let Bjorn in, a bit condescendingly, somewhat impatiently, and with a hint of embarrassment, but in nevertheless, as long as he keeps in mind the extreme tenuousness of his position, and the great honor that has been accorded him.

Legitimacy and How it Gets That Way

or

How I was Mick Jaggered Into Submission

There’s a lot of justification floating about the music criticism circles regarding ABBA. Periodically, articles (or perhaps it’s the same article – they always do seem to be called ABBA-Dabba-Do) crop up in places like Creem or Trouser Press in which the writer admits, sheepishly, that he likes the band, goes on to list 20 or 30 good reasons why he shouldn’t like them and then, striking a literary pose vaguely reminiscent of the belligerent six-year-old gallantly defending his teddy bear against the taunts of the neighborhood gang, reiterates that he likes them anyway, and if you don’t like it, you can just lump it, that’s all. It’s a curious cultural phenomenon. No one, after all, feels called upon to justify his fondness for, say, Pete Townshend, even allowing for “All the Best Cowboy Have Chinese Eyes,” but then, no one has ever referred to the Who as “the most pointless band in the world,” a superlative invented for ABBA by a Grown Up music critic whose name, after a great deal of effort, I have managed to forget.

“I know it’s only rock’n’roll
But I like it” – The Rolling Stones

“It’s got to be rock’n’roll

To fill the hole in your soul” – ABBA

The most interesting aspect of the previous superlative, to my way of thinking, is that rock’n’roll, just in general, is pretty much beside the point anyway. To defer to the Pioneer Corporation, the music matters, but not all that much. Rock’n’roll, painful as it may be to admit, is simply rock’n’roll. It does not cure cancer. It does not end discrimination. It maybe the soundtrack for a revolution, but it does not bring about the revolution, as Paul Kantner once discovered, and it was never meant to do any of those other things. All rock’n’roll was ever meant to do was bring a few moments of pleasure to a lot of people, and make a lot of money for a few people, which are not inconsiderable tasks in themselves, but any pretentions it has to being either an Art Form or a Great Social and Political Force were thrust upon it by the Grown Up music critics, many of whom seem to feel slightly ashamed of themselves for reviewing independent label releases for Hit Parade rather than small press books for the Sunday Times. As such, given that criteria, there’s really no more inherent point to the Clash rocking the Casbah than there is to ABBA metaphorically refighting the battle of Waterloo.

Of course, there’s good rock’n’roll and there’s bad rock’n’roll, but what is or is not one thing or another is basically a matter of taste. You either like something or you don’t – in spite or because of – its supposed technical aspects or, at least, that’s the way it is ideally. Which brings me to:

Subheading Number Nine Number Nine Number Nine

or

It’s Hard to be Hip and Think Johnny Lydon Walks Funny

There is an insidious but observable – well, “prejudice” is no doubt too strong a word; let’s say “leaning” – at play in the minds of the Grown Up rock critics that can be summed up most easily as, “Some bands are legitimate, some bands are not,” or paraphrased another way, “It’s cool to like some music, it’s shit to like others.” The criteria for legitimacy are changeable, but always strict and well-defined. A legitimate band always comes from a legitimate place, currently for instance, New York, England or Berlin. A band may then cement its legitimacy by being the first to be recognized as performing in a certain way – the Beatles weren’t the first to do “Beatle” music, but they were the first that anyone noticed – by sounding legitimate – an indefinable quality that has nothing whatsoever to do with sounding meaningful. Pete Seeger sounds meaningful. The Police sound legitimate – or by becoming the pet band of a rock critic who himself has legitimacy, i.e., Lester Bangs and the Velvet Underground.

A good way to become legitimate, particularly for a solo performer (who normally has a harder time obtaining it than do bands), is to die. Harry Chapin was on no one’s legitimate list until he happened to meet up with the wrong end of a truck. The most passive way to achieve legitimacy is simply to hang around so long that you begin to look either basic or venerable – vis-à-vis the Monkees – but no matter how you attain it, it all boils down to the same thing in the end.

Bands which are not legitimate come from places like Los Angeles and Cleveland and, then, at least at the moment, compound this crime by playing soft rock – on the grounds that anything that doesn’t deafen you can’t possibly be worth listening to – or heavy metal – on the grounds that anything that deafens you that much can’t be any good either – by looking too clean (real rock stars don’t take baths) or too pretty (real rock stars are weathered by Life), by lacking a sense of humor or having too much of one, or simply by being a singer / songwriter who doesn’t have the right music fans in his back-up band, or who uses no back-up band at all. Again, getting there is none of the fun. When you’re hot you’re hot, and when you’re not you get a bad rating from Robert Christgau.

From whence cometh:

The Goat’s Head Soup Syndrome

The Goat’s Head Soup Syndrome, in its entirety, states that a legitimate band cannot make a bad record. When the Rolling Stones released Goat’s Head Soup several years ago, it was obvious to everyone whose hearing had not been damaged by prolonged exposure to tapes of the campaign speeches of the 1972 Presidential candidates that this was a Bad Record, a painful listening experience, a Real Stinkeroo, and had anyone except a completely legitimate band like the Stones (the Cadillacs of legitimate bands) released it, it would have been consigned to the 99¢ bins where it belonged, inside of a week. However, as it was the Stones, the album not only sold very well, at full retail price, the reviews, rather than being damning, ran along the lines of, “Although this is not up to the Stones’ usual standards, it is still better than 90% of the music released today.” A clear case of praising with faint damns.

The Goat’s Head Soup Syndrome, almost of necessity, carries with it:

The Maurice Gibb Corollary

Which states, in its entirety, that if the Bee Gees were to suddenly turn around and release the most stupendously good record ever heard since the invention of the diamond needle, no one would admit it. No one would buy it, the AOR stations wouldn’t play it, MTV wouldn’t show the videos, and the Grown Up rock critics would give it awful reviews. Once a band has been declared “not legitimate,” it’s very difficult for it to achieve legitimacy. It just about takes, as has been stated, death, or venerability or, short of that, teaming up with a songwriter or bass player or producer who comes equipped with his own legitimacy, as Fridadid with Phil Collins.

Which brings us, in a roundabout way, back to:

ABBA

ABBA has always been not legitimate. To begin with, they come from a silly place. Unlike England, Sweden is not legitimate. England has working class angst; Sweden has meatballs. England has the dole; Sweden has the welfare state. England has Benny Hill; Sweden has pornographic films. You see how it goes. And it gets worse. ABBA plays soft rock. They are most awfully clean. They have not one, but two (three, if you’re in the mood to count Bjorn) pretty lead singers, and they use their own musicians, rather than the ones Todd Rundgren had on his last record. And then, of course, there are Those Lyrics, about which much can be said, and probably will.

Since ABBA does have a few things going for them. They have catchy little tunes, terrific harmonies, and clean productions. They’re fun to listen to, and even Billy Altman likes to have fun. There are still Those Lyrics, but by the same token, not everything Bob Dylan writes is a little gem either. And lately, ABBA has been making some minor stabs at respectability, if not legitimacy. There’s Frida and her good friend Phil, and that last record – actually a jazzed-up Greatest Hits album, but what the hell – got a great, live, bona fide rave from Rolling Stone, no easy ravers, and now Bjorn and Benny, the wonderful folks who brought you “Dancing Queen,” are teaming up with Lloyd-Weber and Rice, the wonderful folks who brought you Evita, to write an opera about Soviet chess players (well, okay, but I bet a musical about singing kitty cats didn’t sound lie a hot idea either), so you never know.

And so, the Grown Up rock critics sneak about, hiding their copies of “The Visitors” (not a bad little record by itself, by the way) in the closet behind the old Nehru jackets, and justifying their taste as though it were a particularly bizarre sexual predilection. If ABBA’s new-found respectability grows any larger, there may be a lot more repetitions of ABBA-Dabba-Do. In their case, it probably won’t bother ABBA, who will someday, as will all of us, die.

Celestial Scenario Phase Two:

After journeying to Heaven, ABBA is met at its outskirts by the Keeper of the Gates. Frida will get in because she made an album with Phil Collins. Agnetha will get in because no woman with 32-inch hips can ever be conceived of having led a sinful life. Benny will get in because he is a consummate musician. And then there will be Bjorn.

The Keeper of the Gates and Bjorn will look at each other thoughtfully:

“Well,” the Keeper of the Gates will say.

“Well,” Bjorn will say.

“Wrote an opera with Lloyd-Weber and Rice, didn’t you?” The Keeper will say.

“Yes,” Bjorn will say.

“That’s nice.”
“Thank you.”

“’The Visitors’ really wasn’t such a bad song, at that,” The Keeper will say, looking at his feet.

“I always thought so,” Bjorn will say, looking at whatever piece of the sky you can see from Up There.

“But still, most of Those Lyrics…”

“But still, how many songs have you written in Swedish? Or in any language, for that matter?”

“That’s no defense. Other people didn’t write Those Lyrics.”

Bjorn will hum selected cuts from Face Dances. They will look at each other once again.

“Oh, God,” the Keeper of the Gates will sigh.

“So I hear,” Bjorn will say, And he will go in.

The end. Amen.

DVD Review: Welcome to the Machine

Text © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2015
Images from the Internet

Welcome to the Machine

Directed by Andreas Steinkogler
MVD Visual
90 minutes, 2013
www.welcometothemachine.at          
www.mvdvisual.com

 The catch phrase of the documentary is as follows: “The 12 Commandments of music business in one film. Become a star just by watching it!” Okaaaaaayyyyyyy…

There have been the odd times my life where I read some self-help books. They were huge in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and each one had a single point of focus: do this and you will have success. The same is true with philosophy: It’s either “people are good” or “people are bad.” The thing is, there is no one way for anyone, because everything is causal due to both spacial and temporal components. In other words, what happens is effected/affected by where you are and what is happening in culture at that moment. There is no “here is how you do it” primer for success in any media, you just have to plug at it. But this German / Austrian film begs to differ.

The “lab rats” of this is a German band called The New Vitamin (pronounced VIT-amin). The supposition is that by the end of the film they should be big stars if they follow instruction. I have a music promoter friend who is also a musician, and he often tells me “if so-and-so wanted to be a star, he would do what I said.” Well, he’s certainly not a star; does he not follow his own direction? But I digress, though I make a point…

So, The New Vitamin is mix of rock and DJ-fueled techno, so yeah, it’s awful. But that’s not the point, which is whether they get successful or not. As for the States, well, I never heard o’ them, but I’m not aware if it had any success in Germany. Oh, speaking of which, before I forget, this film is in English and German (with subtitles).

But then the film drowns the information by trying to give too much of it, without having any real content. Broken down into different chapters (if you haven’t devised that from the “12 Commandments”), including early live gigs, dealing with the record company, publicity, genres, and using media, from the Internet to music videos.

What is impressive is the sheer number of musicians from around the world of multiple genres that Steinkogler interviews, including (and this is just a small sample, in no particular order) Peaches, Nada Surf, Adam Green (still trying to figure out his popularity), Xiu Xiu, Nada Surf, Megadeth, Steve Akoi, Flogging Molly, the great Suzi Quatro, Kim Wilde, and even anti-musician Lydia Lunch.

Many of these artists tell of their own experiences, rather than saying, “Do this,” which contradicts the whole message of the documentary. Not only that, the film does not even give stories, it’s a 90 minute series of 15-seconds or less soundbites with absolutely no cohesion, therefore there really is no central message on how to do anything, but instead aligns with what I said in the first paragraphs.

One topic discussed, which actually came close to interesting was that as digital music rose in prominence, downloading went way up, but money to musicians went to shit, because of the ease of digital piracy, though the majors are raking in billions (using piracy as an excuse not to pay their artists?). But what does this have to do with becoming successful in the music biz? Dunno.

And The New Vitamin, who formed in 2008? Well, I noticed that their last post on Facebook is dated June 2013. That does not bode well, and it seems they haven’t followed the “advice” of this documentary and played the machine successfully.

Whether you like one of the Legion of musicians here or not, there is so much partial and muddled data that the end result is that there is no useful information in the long run, so this DVD defeats its own purpose by overkill. Pretty to look at, nice to see what Suzi and Kim look like now, but mostly this is an example of a failure of its purpose. Shame, though.

 

Bonus Video: