Savvant Music - finding the best music never heard

I managed to catch an acoustic set by the up and coming rock band The Answer, an awesome group from Northern Ireland, earlier in the week, and I was really impressed, so Friday night (or early Saturday morning) found us back at Latitude 30 to check out how this group sounds live. The answer is - Fantastic, amazing, electrifying and more!

Cormac Neeson the front man and lead vocals for The Answer, gives incredibly soulful, bluesy life to this band’s repertoire of really awesome rock songs. He is sexy, mesmerizing and he sings with an intensity and grace that just leaves the crowd yearning for more, song after song. Neeson engages the crowd in a personal and entrancing fashion, making each fan feel like the gig is only for him or her.

But this band is a lot more than a great front man! Read the rest of this entry »

Entertaining repartee delivered with scintillating irony was the form of the day as rock icon Lou Reed was interviewed by good friend and music producer Hal Willner. Willner introduced Reed as the man who is to rock and roll what Miles Davis is to jazz, as Lou has literally changed the face of rock and roll two or three times. By way of demonstration, the two discussed the SXSW screening of Julian Schnabel’s film “Lou Reed’s ‘Berlin,’” which documents a recent performance of the landmark 1973 album. An excerpt from this film, the song “Men of Good Fortune,” aptly demonstrated at least some of why Lou Reed has had such an influence on the world of rock music

Reed’s music carries such an emotional impact that you cannot help but go along for the ride as he lulls you into introspection with intensely quiet emotional vocals then drives you to awareness breaking into compelling rock rhythms and sound that bring you to a peak of empathy with his message. Reeds guitar solo yearns for your understanding of the bitterness and hopelessness reflected in the lyrics of the song, but also counters melodically with shreds of desperate hope and understanding gently woven into the music.

“It’s emotional music. One of the things I love about rock.” said Reed, “It’s so emotional.” Read the rest of this entry »

Our musical adventures today started a little after three pm at the SXSW British Music Embassy Party at Latidude 30 celebrating the sister cities relationship between Nashville and Belfast. I went there to see Beth Nielsen-Chapman, who is slated to play in Colorado this fall at Women Rock the Rialto, a fund-raiser for the Women’s Resource Center that I’m helping to plan.  Nielsen-Chapman (who is from Nashville) was wonderful, as always, with energetic rock and her georgeous vocals.

Irishman Foy Vance followed Neilsen-Chapman with his one-man show in which Vance filled the room with a full band’s worth of music through the magic of looping. While the looping gimic has been around for a long time, Vance is a master of putting a song together such a way that you don’t even notice how it’s done. Vance layers harmonies and rhythms during interludes that bring increasingly complex melodies, harmonies and groove. As he builds the background harmony, Vance goes from deep baritone to a beautiful high falsetto climbing another interval after each verse. The result is an ever increasing tension and structure that ends with him down on his knees pleading “please don’t go”. It’s great breakup music. I was so carried away in the emotion of the song that I didn’t even notice that while he was down on his knees, he was shutting down the loops (on the floor) to fade the out the song.

Vance showed he could fill the room with music even without the loop machine with his new song asking “How can you break a heart that’s already broken?” This song absolutely gave me goosebumps. A beautiful melody, wonderful chords and rhythms had me asking to buy a CD with this song on it after the gig (no such luck - it’s a brand new song, so you’ll just have to catch him live, but I still got a CD!).

Finally, Belfast rock band The Answer, just blew the place away in a fantastic acoustic guitar set. The incredibly georgeous Cormac Neeson fronts this band with searing, highly emotive vocals with harmonies and a classic rock groove and smoother melodic acoustic riffs from guitarist Paul Mahon and bassist Michael Waters. Drummer James Heatley was on the sidelines for this acoustic gig, but they’ll be in full force at their showcase this Friday. I loved Neeson’s smooth voice in the earlier songs, then with a rocking gospel sound in “Preachin’”. Late in the set they apologize for their lack of experience doing an acoustic set! Huh? The Answer was awesome, and I can’t wait to see them again and in full-rock mode. You’ll hear a lot from this group in the near future! Be glad!

You can catch these last two bands during SXSW at these showcases:

The Answer plays at Latitude 30 this Friday, March 14 at 12:45am (well, technically it’s Saturday, but really it’s a Friday night gig…).

Foy Vance plays that same night at Buffalo Billiards at midnight.

Wow! Everything’s happening so fast I’m finding it awfully difficult to find time to write about it all! I’ll get caught up soon, I promise. Meanwhile, just a quick update on an amazing Monday night.

Bob and I were walking down 6th Street here in Austin on our way to a SXSW party, and as we walked past Nuno’s we heard some awesome blues guitar coming out the door, and decided we’d stop in after attending some sxsw “official” parties. Best idea we had ALL night, maybe all week! We stopped in a few hours later and the blues coming out the door were so incredibly soulful, rocking and pure we couldn’t believe it –then we recognized the pianist, whom we’d seen with Kenny Wayne Shepard last year - the legendary, grammy award winning Pinetop Perkins!

No wonder the blues were so deep and rich, because this man knows how to lay it down, and does it effortlessly. As he rolled through these amazing blues you don’t really realize the man is in his mid-nineties, because he’s as young and vibrant in his music as the young guys he’s playing with only with that incredibly old soul that only a true blues man can have.

According to local Austin songwriter, Lee Duffy, Pine Top was displaced during Katrina, and has settled down here in Austin where he’s been taken in as one of their own by the Austin music community. And I couldn’t resist getting my picture taken with the amazing Pinetop Perkins. He’s certainly still got his mojo workin’!

This weekend at SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, I caught a couple of cool panel discussions and presentations about how to grow on-line communities and how to leverage the strength and creativity of crowds. I wanted to share these learnings here on the Savvant Music blogs because it’s so important in what we’re trying to build here.

My vision is that Savvant Music will be influenced and really guided by the people who have always told their friends and neighbors about new cool, awesomely hip music. You know, the guy who always seems to have heard of the best groups or the chick who has tickets for the hottest concert because she knew they were great before anybody else did… A lot of these people are writing blogs now, and others are out there in chat rooms and fanzines still telling their buddies about great music via word of mouth. Some are disk jockeys playing late at night or early in the morning when the corporate monoliths aren’t mandating pop playlists from hell.

Well, these are the people we need to nurture and grow into a community which helps us find, support and promote great music of all kinds. And here’s what I learned at SXSW yesterday will help us to do just that.

The panel “Knowing the Audience: Improving Communication Between Artists and Fans” was made up of Steven Sesar, VP marketing and business development at WooMe, Ron Bloom of PodShow and WooMe, Slava Rubin, founder of Indiegogo, Raymond McGlamery, managing partner of Zen Mediagroup/Buddylube (trying really hard not to guess what that means), Vinvin, a french filmmaker and Steven Stokols, CEO and Co-Founder of WooMe.

During this session, McGlamery was waxing eloquently about the information overload coming from social networks and commented, “After awhile you get so much crap you just start deleting it all. You don’t even care if there’s a good band in it… Myspace is no longer a reliable source.” And I have to wonder… was MySpace ever a reliable source for good music? I don’t think so! Maybe at first you could at least get a feel for bands with a good “buzz”, but what does that tell you about whether the music is good? Not much, I’d say!

Ron Bloom commented that there are millions of internet-based programs including blogs, podcasts and internet radio, and there is a layer of people within those programs who are passionate about playing the music you love. Some may have 1000 listeners, may have a million. Once you get past 1000 listeners, you are talking about a show or program the size of an average radio station. Bloom recommends that we cross promote our music between these programs. Find the people who are promoting great music. There are some incredible broadcasts out there. Wow, Ron! That’s exactly what I’m thinking, and exactly why we started Savvant Music. Let me add that there are so many broadcasts, pod casts, video blogs, etc about music, that it becomes rather difficult to find the good amongst the ever increasing pile of, well, not-so-good. That’s where we at Savvant Music are looking for help from the savvy music community! What are the best programs out there? Who has the best ears, and who always recommends the best artists, no matter what the genre? If you are one, or if you know who they are, please share you knowledge here! Leave a comment! I’ll be on those sites tomorrow checking them out.

In fact, while I’ve diverged to this topic… If you know of any really incredible artists we should check out at SXSW 2008, please let us know asap!We check back on comments all day long and are dying for input on what artists to go see this week!

Back to the panel… Steven Sesar reminds artists to also remember to engage with your fan base. And Vinvin told us what we all should know — today, if you’re not on the internet, you’re dead. Vinvin recommends video blogging for artists. This enables fans to feel that they really get to know the artist — meet his cat, watch him play guitar. As an example, he mentioned Deepak Chopra - Chopra doesn’t need to talk to his fans, but he does, because it makes a difference to existing fans, and enables him to reach new people.

Steven Stokols pointed out that it’s the internet users who really want to engage with the artists. For example using Meebo where the artist is actually talking to you. And of course, he then plugged his company WooMe as being even better. I’ll have to look at WooMe more closely. The only thing it really asked me when I signed up was if I was interested in Girls or Boys or both. Does this mean it’s a dating site? I told it girls and boys, because I’m looking for people who care about music and I don’t care what gender they are!

McGlamery pointed out that in the mainstream music industry today, the record labels often force bands to do fan interaction work and that makes artists unhappy and resentful, especially when they don’t really see the value. Artists need to be sure the labels are using your site in a way that the you and your fans real benefit and appreciate. He claims that most artists really don’t search out and understand the fan interaction technologies, especially the bigger they get!

Ron Bloom pointed out that in the old days music was packaged in albums, and the album told a story from the music, to the artwork on the cover, to the liner notes on the inside. Now the technology online enables us to deliver these stories in a different way to our fans, if we but chose to do so! You can provide fans with a short, unplugged version of a song you’re working on - let your fans see what you’re working on; let them contribute to the second verse!

With today’s tools, independent artists have a real advantage — Blooms says “If you want to make a living as an artists, there’s no better time in history to do it.” Bet we could have some interesting discussions around that comment! But, in general, I think Bloom is right on!

McGlamery wrapped up by reminding artists not to underestimate your power to participate in that dialog between you and your fans.

Well, there was also a really cool panel called The Weird Turn Pro: Crowdsourcing For Creatives from Derek Powazek, CEO of Pixish and Fray, but I’m already late for today’s sessions so I have to run! I’ll be back with more soon!

Cheers! from Anny

Wow, I was really excited about the opportunity to hear Mark Zuckerberg, 23-year old billionare CEO and founder of Facebook tell us how it was done, and share his vision of the future today at SXSW Interactive in Austin, Texas. Unfortunately, I, along with a few thousand others, was disappointed due in large part to the incredibly poor interview skills of the interviewer, Sarah Lacy of Business Week.

Now, there must be about 400 blogs out there tonight (I don’t know, I didn’t count them) blasting Ms. Lacy’s performance, and if you’re interested in the gory details, see any of the links below. Several of the bloggers seemed to feel that the problem was that Lacy is female and was being discriminated against as such, or that she isn’t a geek, so didn’t know how to ask geek-relevant questions.

Lacy’s problem with the crowd at SXSW was not that she’s not a geek, nor that she’s female (although the hair twirling was a bit weird…). The problem was that she is a poor interviewer. I started really searching for one truely open quesion about 15 minutes into the interview, and did not hear a single question from that point on which left Zuckerberg anything to say but “Yes, Sarah, I do agree with your presumption of what I’m thinking” or “No, Sarah, I am not aligned with the words you just tried to put into my mouth”. I thought Zuckerberg did an admirable job of trying to actually provide his own answers to some Lacy’s closed questions, but she responded by interrupting him and didn’t really appear to be listening to what he actually said.

I also think Zuckerberg did a fine job of politely suggesting (subtly at first, then more directly later) that she ask him a question, but she never took the hint. The audience, however, did take the hint and was very pissed off by the time took a more direct approach. At his suggestion that she actually ask him a question if she wanted him to answer, the crowd erupted in applause (some standing) because most of us were terribly frustrated and had been for the duration of the “interview.”

Another big problem was that Lacy seemed to want to tell us her opinion of what was going on at Facebook, about what happened when she talked to Zuckerberg (and how bad an interviewee he was despite her valiant efforts ) and about her book about Zuckerberg (which I’m not going to link to, because it pisses me off that incompetence might breed links to Amazon in this case). Frankly, I wanted to hear Zuckerberg tell us about Facebook. Instead, we heard Lacy telling Zuckerberg what she thought he should say.

What may have most contributed to the crowd turning so ugly, however, was that most of the people there have a lot of respect for Mark Zuckerberg, and Lacy’s behavior during the interview was really quite disrespectful, condescending and inattentive to this brilliant young man that so many here at SXSW admire. She interrupted him constantly, she criticized his short answers to her closed (or sometimes pre-answered by Lacy) questions, she told a story about him being so nervous that he sweated profusely, and she referred to an executive he’s hired as the “token grown up” at Facebook. I thought that was a pretty in your face insult to Zuckerberg, but maybe I’m just sensitive. But so was the crowd. So there you go.

Enough about the Sarah Lacy train wreck.

On to what Zuckerberg actually did say in the few opportunities afforded him…

Zuckerberg reiterated his theme of Facebook is about communication, not valuation and buyout opportunities. He emphasized his mission to build a platform uponwhich world problems can be solved. It’s a big bold statement, but I admire the man for thinking big. It might be rare for many of us to actually have a significant impact on world problems or social issues, but if no one thinks about tackling big issues then no big issues will be conquered ever…

In support of this mission, Facebook has started to launch the platform in differnt languages with a Spanish language version recently launched and a French language version to be launched within a week.

Zuckerberg also very candidly discussed privacy issues that are percistent and challenging for Facebook. Zuckerberg feel that Facebook must give people full and very granular control over what information they share and with whom they share it, and that most of the issues to date have been a result of insufficient user control in these areas. Zuckerman suggests that trust is a key element of Facebook’s design, and that features will support and enable users who have demonstrated trustworthiness to communicate faster and with more people. So, for example, while a user may be limited in the number of invitations they can issue, the more people who accept your invites in Facebook, then the more invites you offer. This being based on the assumption that you are a responsible inviter. (Is that a word? I didn’t think so.)

Of special interest to me was the question regarding rumors of negociations by Facebook for music play and sales integration. Zuckerberg claimed not to know (right…) and said they were “talking with people” about alot of things, but that “he has nothing to talk about.” Hmmm… sounds like something could be going on, but he was pretty evasive.

At one point Zuckerberg was asked about whether Facebook drove a very high valuation as a possible barrier to an undesired buy out, Zuckerber said it’s not that Facebook is trying so hard not to be bought, “it’s just that we’re not focused on that. We’re focused on building an application.” And he reiterated that the vision of communication and connection is what is really important to him. This made me really like the guy. Because I feel very much that way about my company. It’s not about becoming a billionaire (although that wouldn’t suck). It’s about making a difference in the world.

I think it’s a shame that Zuckerbergs message may have been clouded under the smoke from Ms. Lacy’s poor interviewing skills. I hope we can walk away remembering the important stuff, but I’m guessing the train wreck will be much more remembered than the comments. Oh well.

Here are some links if you want to know more about the SXSW Interactive Interview-Slayer Revolt — you won’t find much about Zuckerberg’s message there, I’m afraid, and I disagree with some of their conclusions about exactly what went wrong, but here they are…

The Underwire by Lewis Wallace

Master of 500 Hats - Dave McClure

YouTube video of the clueless Ms. Lacy demonstrating a distinct lack of poise and empathy in a post-train-wreck interview.

The Buzz Machine - Jeff Jarvis-this one at least gives some insight into the message Zuckerberg was trying to communicate.

Wow! Time for SXSW already! Every March we go down to Austin eagerly hoping to find that fresh, exciting group that everyone else has overlooked,

The problem is, they’re hard to find! At SXSW even industry “outsiders” such as we are likely to get “tips” on artists to see — after all, most of the attendees are there to promote themselves or someone, but the tips we get tend to fall into one of two categories: “buzz” bands that everyone “hip” has heard about, or “pet”: bands being promoted by themselves, their management, their friends or their label. The problem with the latter is that it’s so hit and miss, mostly miss. And “buzz” bands are the industry darlings — not what we are looking for here at Savvant Music.

Another option is to listen to hours and hours of online samples provided by the good folks at SXSW and hope you find something interesting, preferably fascinating. Then, if you do, hope (often in vain) that they’re decent live!

This might make you wonder why we bother, but the truth i that this is the problem no matter where you look for music. The reason we go to SXSW is that there are so many bands there (around 1700 showcases) that the filtering and discovery process is marvelously compressed (and often exhausting).

And this is why we are here ad what you need us for — to help filter through all this music and to find those special artists, overlooked by the mainstream industry — artists you’ll be really revved to hear, that blow your mind.

Meanwhile, if you know some really amazing artists we should be sure to look at this coming week at SXSW, please let us know! You can comment here on our blogs, or you can send me email at: anny (at) savvantmusic.com!

See ya in Texas, y’all!

Anny

Welcome to Savvant Music – finding the best music never heard, our blog giving you my take on the world of music in a variety of arenas.  We’ll keep you updated on our progress as Savvant Music works to drive change in this challenging business and creative environment of today’s music industry. You can follow our search for incredible, barrier breaking artists here as well, reading about the triumphs, the artists we will watch and nurture, and (if you really want to know) about those in our “why bother?” category.

If you’re wondering, “Who are you guys?” then follow the link or click on my photo to travel to the Savvant Music “About Us” page where you can find out more about us and what we’re all about!

Just a heads up that this blog is still under construction.  Check back Monday, March 10th and it should be way more presentable!  Thanks! ♥ Anny