It’s the singer but he needs a great song

Most musicians don’t have songwriting skills but insist on inflicting their weak material on audiences

By Stephen Pate- If you want to be successful either as a local bar band, touring act or recording artist – or all of the above – you must have great songs. People buy songs not musicians or your cool stage act.

The lead paragraph in the Lefsetz Letter quoted in the article A new way to promote Music PEI News Dec 12, 2008 says it quickly,

I have to disagree with you on at least one count about the dearth of singer/songwriters out there. In general, it’s a genre that lends itself to b-minus/c-plus material. The world is populated with talented guitarists who have gorgeous voices….but it isn’t as amply staffed with songwriters……

If you want to be a success get some good songs and forget about trying to write them all yourself. Only the chosen few can do that.

Get yourself a songwriter or several and let them crank out the tunes while you make the money performing and selling iTunes songs.

There are too many un-memorable songs being sung and recorded. I didn’t say bad songs. They’re just not great, not memorable. If we go to a bar and hear a new band or the same band, do we remember one song? Usually not because bands play un-memorable songs hence songs destined never to be hits or make money.

Everyone thinks they have to sing original material. What if it sucks? If it’s not memorable, meaning people whistle it on their lips leaving the bar, your act is going nowhere.

There are bands that have that can produce memorable songs. Mars Hill is a good example of a local band with good original material. They also covered Leonard Cohen with equally great results. They were a cult on PEI with lots of devoted fans.

Thank You for the Music, ABBA

The Beatles could write great songs and perform – what are your skills

When I told Music PEI’s famous career expert Rob Oakie I was pursuing a career as a song-writer he said “No one will ever record your songs around here. You won’t be a success.”

Again, hats off to Mr. Optimism and Encouragement who only knows enough to play mandolin, sing tediously and get a job working as a sycophant for the government.

What I tried to tell him was I knew that. I didn’t expect to sell songs on PEI.

First it’s bad for my bank account. Songwriters get paid a royalty on sales. If your band sells 1,000 copies of my song I just lost an opportunity to pitch it to a singer who’s next CD might sell 100,000 copies. It’s all in the numbers baby. I love ya but what are you gonna do for me?

Most artists want first release rights so giving it to someone else first can stop further song licensing, but not always. It’s tricky.

Second, I understand the independence of musicians. For awhile I tried an experiment. Listen carefully to the style of an up-and-coming band. Up-and-coming means they are getting gigs in local bars but still have day-jobs. Then I’d make my next two songs fit their style – reggae, pop-rock, hip-hop, indie. I liked doing it, kinda fun. I tried the songs out at Hunter’s and Baba’s. The good ones I kept and offered to the intended bands.

In each case they didn’t even care to listen. I won’t name the bands but none of them are going anywhere or have already disbanded. They simply ran out of steam before they caught on. One of the reasons they didn’t catch on because their songs all sounded the same. Why not, they wrote all of them.

Performing and songwriting are different crafts. Full time touring musicians usually get off the road to write their next album. The more successful bands will match up with a great producer who helps them craft their material into something memorable and marketable.

I got Bob Dylan’s outtakes from Time out Of Mind. Tell Tale Signs: the Bootleg Series Vol. 8

Boy was that stuff boring until Daniel Lanois and Bob worked on it.

It’s a weird phenomena. Why bands do it? Bob Dylan and Mozart. Both of them were virtuoso composers and performers.

Well if you could see Mozart play his own music, who cared about Antonio Salieri? After that the real hot pianists had to be composers too.

Unfortunately there weren’t that many composers who could play entertainingly in public so virtuosity became the craze. That’s when playing without music became hot.

So you had to play some else’s music and you had all the passion of Rachmaninoff but to play for 90 minutes from memory. Women fainted in their seats just like they do today at great rock concerts.

Bob Dylan ruined it for us today. Here’s this guy who writes all his own material and can sing and perform. Well everyone must write all their own songs and perform them as well.

So we have tons of ho-hum material being performed by decent singers/bands and great material being performed authentically by pretty dismal performers.

Pop quiz: Who was the top male opera singer? Pop ballad singer? King of rock and roll?

Pavarotti, Sinatra and Elvis. The common thread is none of them wrote songs to any great extent. All of their big hits were written by other song writers and they took those songs to the top.

Yes the Beatles yeah yeah yeah. Well if your band has material, talent and George Martin as a producer go right to the top of the charts.

So that’s it – get a songwriter and move to the next level.

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