Horace and Dave's Excellent Adventure Finale

[horacejesse]

Horace And Dave's Excellent Adventure, Part III July28-29, 2007I mentioned this in a reply to someone else's post but it's definitely worth mentioning again. At the far end of one side of the office there's a room with an entire wall of shelves containing boxes, one box for each of the listings for the snail mail submissions. The vast majority of submissions are online but there's still a lot of CD submissions. Some even from outside the US, which really surprised me. Anyway, on the front of each box is the listing itself and also written on the front of the box is the company that is running the listing. I had no submissions and wasn't doing any for the listings at that time so there wasn't any conflict of interest and I didn't get any "inside" information. I didn't look at each one in specific detail but the reason I started to look at them at all was because I saw a group of listings with names from "The Big Four" record labels for a variety of listings. As I started looking and reading I was pretty much seeing nothing but label names, publisher and music library names I recognized as being "high end" type companies. I'm not saying that every single listing is high end. What I am saying is that when I stood back looking at everything overall, I saw a "picture" of a company that deals, on a regular basis, with high end music opportunities. What I didn't see was a wall full of low end starter companies running the listings. One of the new things I learned about the regular listings is that a few of the listings are run as kind of an "open ended" kind of thing. In other words, certain companies place such a huge volume of music into film and television and are ALWAYS looking for new music. Basically they say to Taxi, "Don't wait for us to tell you we need music because we always need music. We're ready for new music whenever you want to run a listing". In my own efforts outside of Taxi, I have that same situation. Most of the submissions I do are for something specific. There are several places where I have an open ended arrangement to send music pretty much whenever I want because they always need new music. Regarding Taxi, some people might take the information about the few listings that do that the wrong way but the reality is that certain companies aren't going to send an email every two weeks saying "We need music" over and over, month after month, etc. Those listings are just run periodically and sometimes help to balance things out. They're not more or less important than any other listing but for purposes of understanding the nature of the listings and the variety of situations under which a listing is run, I thought it was good information to know that a few of these are like that. This would be one but only one of many reasons why sometimes it takes a year or longer to get a deal following a forward. Still, a deal is a deal. Parts I and II pretty much cover my experiences and observations from the first day. The second day was a very full day, early morning to late evening and really was the meat of the whole trip where we were immersed into being "Screener For A Day". Obviously as only a one day training, it was a view from 30,000 feet up and not the same detail as a regular screener (where the process extends for weeks) but that short experience was really an eye opener.A residual benefit of my trip to Taxi Land is a new interest in song de-construction. Two events inspired this. First came the excerpted chapter on that subject from a Brahaney work , which is required reading during screener training.The other event was actually two events and those were the live critiques I received from John and M.When it came to form, both screeners went to the same college, they used the same jargon.Lo and behold! When I recently went to listen to some current country on the tube, I found myself critiquing the songs a la Brahaney and using their jargon. And it made me listen differently. I saw how so may songs are formed almost alike, fast songs in one pile, slow ones in the other.It gets downright scary how similar most of the hit songs are on that level of abstraction. I am talking about songs that get played on the biggest country stations. They are all built the same. Sad but true.With this in mind it becomes obvious why Taxi screeners often find fault in the form of high bar submissions. Ninety-nine percent of the songs that make it big in country follow a predictable route. Those that do not can be heard over on channels like On The Edge Of Country with the other songs that won’t cooperate. Some really great songs over there. But those songs all insisted on doing things a little differently.Mostly those other songs do not “grow big” during the chorus. “Get big,” “soar,” these are the words we constantly hear. Yet we know very well that all the stuff we love and want to hear does not do this. Tell me when White Christmas gets “big.” Where does “In my Life,” by the Beatles soar?Anything considered a fault can be overlooked if the rest of the song is great enough.A writer cannot re-tool everyone of their songs to fit the most popular formats without some damage here and there. Some can be re-tooled easily, some cannot be. Some songs just are not meant to soar. We all write some that are like that.Sometimes you might feel neglected by the screeners. You might feel they are missing the point. Your song is a great0 song that happens not to follow the same old format.But do you even think of the points you may have missed? It was you, after all, who submitted this song to a Nashville high bar listing. Perhaps you were unaware of the assmbly line nature of country songs these days. Perhaps you were merely stubborn and wanted to take a $5 chance on something not made with a cookie cutter.Screeners on the other hand are finely attuned to current industry standards. They know the forms and they know them well. They are not saying your song can never make it, they just know that 99% of those that do make it follow a few molds, and that yours has less of a chance right out of the starting gate because of its irregularities.Taxi does not create the industry standards, they are simply responsive to them. They are almost a perfect mirror of them, which they would have to be in order to be successful over the long haul. They know what the people on the other end are looking for. They have a feeling for what the listing party will be responsive to and what they will not be interested in.It is okay to take chances and sometimes send your irregular stuff in to high bar listings—okay as long as you realize the circumstances and what makes this song an extra risk. At some point, something new has to crack through. Maybe it will be your song that turns the trick.I will re-tool some of my songs, leave some as they are and continue to submit them, write new stuff with the contemporary templates in mind, and continue to write stuff where I simply follow the muse as I have in the past. I am not dropping anything from my game, just adding some new twists.Positive aspects of my experiences in Taxi Land are already spilling over into my recording and songwriting.My example of "sky's the limit" is the Vonage "Woo Hoo" song. As music goes, critiquing for uniquness of chords, structure, melody, and lyrics, it gets a 1 out of 10. The recording isn't very good but it does have a lot of energy so I give it a 2 out of 10 for production. But it was dead-on perfect for the Vonage commercials. So really, if the Woo Hoo song can have this kind of prominance in a film/tv placement (national commercial), the sky truly is the limit. But that's the exception (by a long shot) not the rule.More towards the center and getting into something that's unique but not in a bad way is a track called "Strict Machine" by Goldfrapp. I don't know about timeless but (a) it's a cool (electronica) track musically and (b) apparently a lot of big name opportunities in film/television found it to be useful. Here's a quick partial list from Wikipedia:· "Strict Machine" was featured in a short Game Boy Advance commercial in the United States· In 2003, the song was featured in a television advert for the fragrance "Night" by Armani· In 2006, the We Are Glitter Mix of the song was used in the film Miami Vice· In 2006, Verizon Wireless began launching a new phone named "Chocolate" and the song "Strict Machine" is featured on the commercial and website· In August of 2006, "Strict Machine" was prominently featured in one of many promos for season four of the US television drama Nip/Tuck· "Strict Machine" was used by the WB Television Network show Charmed during the opening sequence of the episode titled "The Courtship of Wyatt's Father" which aired 2/22/2004· "Strict Machine" was used in the CSI: Miami episode entitled "Going, Going, Gone" in November 2006Will "Strict Machine" still be making waves five or ten years fom now? Probably not but it's making the best use of "now", that's for sure. I haven't yet been able to succesfully identify or even give a good example or definition of a really timeless track. Matto will have to chime in for that one. I don't know the name of the song but the lyrics are something like "Feel the rain on your skin...". That thing is in all kinds of placements. Maybe not timeless but generically very useful in a wide variety of situations. As far as "timeless tracks", I'm not greedy... I'd be happy with writing a "limited time appeal" track like "Strict Machine".[ I finally wanted to say something about Taxi’s front line. These are the guys on the phones. You could not find better people for the job than what Taxi already has, which speaks volumes again of Michael’s abilities and instincts. If you can find politer (is that a word?) people, I might give you a refund myself. David Laidlaw and Craig Streaman may not look like they play offensive and defensive line for a major league team, but in fact they do, and they are all stars. Michael is a great quarterback and coach. But without great linemen a quarterback is lost, sacked, and a coach can’t make it all work. One reason Taxi is successful is that all positions on the team are filled with strong players, and everyone really does work as a team