Some Useful Bloggage

[mojobone]

From Craig Bickhardt's blog, Ninety Mile Wind, Six Tips For Surviving a Nashville Trip:http://ninetymilewind.blogspot.com/2008 ... ow.htmland another great post on Nashville lies:http://ninetymilewind.blogspot.com/2008 ... ville.html

[ottlukk]

So which artist was Diane Warren referring to? The same one that was noted in American Songwriter a while back?Ott

[mojobone]

I'm gonna take a wild stab in the dark, here, and presume chromehead was referring to this, or something like it.http://www.songwritingtipsonline.com/bl ... at-song/or maybe:http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19940398/from/RS.4/Isn't Google amazing? none of this is new, btw. Chuck Berry is still trying to get Alan Freed's name off the songs he wrote, but, in fairness, it's highly likely no one would have ever heard of Chuck, if it weren't for Alan Freed. It's payola, pure and simple, but when you're new, a mega-selling artist has the power to put your stuff in front of millions of listeners, and a hundred percent of nuthin' is still nuthin'.I checked out the samples on Jimi Heath's site, and one of the things she mentioned in her blog was that they can always tell when a song is by an out-of-town writer; her own work bears this out, her songs developed a more "Nashville" vibe after she moved, the change was subtle, but definite. Frankly, I didn't see it as an improvement. The songs were more polished, but less fresh and engaging. If I were an artist in Nashville, I'd be looking for songs from outside Nashvegas with a vengeance-you travel in those circles, you become that cookie-cutter caricature the true country fans hate. I find Bickhardt's comments about how everybody in the business in N-town these days hates country music and never listens to it outside of work to be rather telling, though I think he may be overstating the case, a little. If I did country nine-to-five, I might want to relax to something different, too....

[ottlukk]

Michael Kosser, in his "Street Smarts" column, American Songwriter, Nov/Dec 2007, Title: "Does A&R Get It?""Oh, and which one of you thought up that idea of inviting a few songwriting teams to your offices, giving them an hour or two to get a song sstarted, and then sending the artist around to see which team wrote something the artist can "help" finish. That's dishonest. It's contrived. It's delusional. Don't you know that?"