by Henry Owings
519 If you’re in one of those bands with a message, odds are nobody came to see you or to hear your pampered ass talk about the world’s injustices. Please do everyone a favor and buy an LED sign and scroll your message at the bottom, like the nightly news.
520 If you’re under the drinking age and a club employee asks for your ID, the proper response is not “I’m playing tonight.” The law is “You Must Be 21,” not “21 or in a Band.”
521 Never pass up a free meal.
522 In an effort to psych everybody in the band, tape this sign somewhere on an amp or a drum head: “PMA (greater than or equal to) AKG (Another Killer Gig).”
523 If you’re making any decent money on the road, routinely send it home in the form of money orders. God knows what your bone-headed tour manager will do. Actually, God does know what he’ll do; he’ll either lose it or blow it on nose candy.
524 Always remember: Duct tape is a touring musician’s best friend.
525 If your band gets an offer to play on a cruise ship or an extended stay in a hotel in Asia, things are winding down.
526 Be aware that it is not the job of paying customers to “get the message of the song.”
527 Touring the Midwest during the winter is always a horrible idea.
528 The man with the black Sharpie is always king.
529 It’s never wise to have a four-band bill on a weekday.
530 If you’re playing LA, have insulting business cards made to hand to the legion of industry scum who introduce themselves with theirs first as they ask for free merchandise.
531 There is no better way to be an ugly American than to be impressed by fast-food restaurants overseas.
532 Everybody at every show is either in another band or dating someone in another band. That means nobody’s there to see your band. They’re there to be seen, to look like they’re giving you support, and to promote themselves.
533 Never trust anyone wearing two different bands’ merchandise at the same time.
534 Any record that runs over the 45-minute mark is considered a double album and must be judged by double-album criteria. You’re making a statement by doing this. Does your record slip neatly between classic double albums? No? Then edit it.
535 Any band that feels the need to indulge itself with a concept album should consider that no one wants to hear an album’s worth of tracks referring to mythical warriors, mutant dragons, or a great journey across the cosmos.
536 Composing “rock symphonies” is a contradiction in terms.
537 Releasing your demos later only acknowledges that you had it right the first time.
538 For a band that has been around fewer than five years or a band that has fewer than three albums, it is impossible to have a masterpiece.
539 There are few albums that will ever be considered masterpieces. Don’t be even remotely shocked that yours isn’t one of them.
540 No self-titled albums unless it is your first record. Don’t be an ass. You blew your chance.
541 Album titles should never contain the words “movement,” “suite,” “opus,” “concept,” “part,” or any roman numerals.
542 It is never appropriate to title your album with a bunch of words that have no association to one another and do not make a complete phrase or sentence.
543 Never thank Jesus in the credits.
544 Reconsider thanking every band that you’ve ever performed with. This is especially the case with the two or three “big bands” you’ve shared a stage with because, more than likely, they didn’t have a choice in having you open, couldn’t care less how many people you draw in your own hometown, and probably didn’t even see you play.
545 Inside jokes in the thank-you list are strictly forbidden.
546 Album titles with conflicting terms such as Nobody Knows This Is Everywhere, Building Something Out of Nothing, Ancient Melodies of the Future, etc., are not intriguing, beguiling, or amusing. They are dumb.
547 No symbols. It’s a title, not graffiti.
548 If your album title is a sentence or longer, expect everyone to shorten it in the most unflattering way possible.
549 If you decide to issue your LP in a gatefold sleeve, make sure you make good use of the space. A gatefold sleeve is no place for minimalism.
550 Never give each band member his own thank-you section in the liner notes. All the people you thank will hate you in two years.
551 For record covers or promotional merchandise, hire a professional to design it. If you can’t afford it, leave it blank.
552 References to robots, cover art with robots, and robotic themes are all tired and prove that you are completely lacking in good aesthetic judgment.
553 Reconsider doing a 10-inch record. They look like toy records and they don’t file correctly.
554 Never put a sticker on the front of your album stating “featuring the hit singles … ” The album just came out and couldn’t possibly have spawned a hit single yet.
555 With rare exception, album covers with animals have never been cool.
556 Popular bands have B-sides. Unpopular bands just have “other songs.”
557 A CD burned on your mom’s computer is not a “release.”
558 A CD that your parents paid for is not a “release.”
559 You are not a “musician,” you are “in a band.”
560 Rare records rarely, if ever, equate to “good” records.
561 If a song falls below 78 beats per minute, it’s considered a dirge. If it falls below 78 beats per minute and has a steel guitar or Dobro, it’s considered country.
562 Musicians that describe themselves as singer/songwriters are never equally competent at both.
563 If you’re going to poison the world with yet another horrible album and send it out for review, at least make it obvious which is your band’s name and which is the name of the album.
564 If an album is described as having “layers of emotion,” that simply means it contains some mediocre rockers but is mostly just an apologetic excuse for having a couple of sappy, sad-sack ballads.
565 If an album is described as having an “unswerving sense of purpose,” it means that it is a self-important, holier-than-thou piece of tired, regurgitated cud that has only one song played in ten barely noticeably different ways.
566 If your band has been credited for “saving rock and roll,” then save every last dime you make on your one successful tour. You’ll need the money later.
567 Online reviews of your record do not count.
568 Under no circumstances should you ever play your band’s CD or demo for someone unless they specifically ask to hear it. Don’t ask or tell them to listen to it. Putting them on the spot to provide feedback is rude.
569 To describe your album with hyperbole and then follow it with the “fact” that said hyperbole is an understatement (example: “To say this record was a monumental effort would be an understatement.”) is the weakest of one-sheet bio writing, and the author’s fingers should quickly be run through a paper shredder.
570 Always refer to your band’s upcoming album as “the best work we’ve ever done,” no matter how awful it really is.
571 No matter how low you try to set the price, your record will still be overpriced.
572 Overpriced CDs should come with fancy packaging and a special bonus disc to justify the extra cost.
573 Having a limited pressing of a release ensures that everybody will buy the record not for the music but for the investment potential.
574 Use extreme caution putting “Rock & Roll” in the title of a song. It had better really rock, which means you can’t use the phrase for a ballad.
575 Unless you’re a hardcore punk or ska band, you can never have a song named after the band itself.
576 Never write a song that complains about how your previous record didn’t sell nearly as well as you hoped.
577 Any mention of wizards, unicorns, or spacecraft in a song automatically puts you
in the prog genre, which, in turn, means that you owe somebody your lunch money.
578 If you can’t hum the melody to a song you wrote, it has too many notes.
579 If you write a song about having sex with a family member, it must be set up north, as setting it in Alabama or, God forbid, Mississippi, is just too easy.
580 All great rock songs are about women, beer, or the lack of either. If you write a song about anything else, at least find a way to make it funny.
581 Any kind of songwriting about the record industry, nuclear war, or pedophilia should only be described as “black comedy.”
582 Using the word “buggery” is always funny, but there are extra points if it can rhyme.
583 If the drummer writes the majority of the songs, it means your band is filled with mediocre songwriters.
584 Acid casualties always write their best songs while on acid.
585 If you can steal a great band’s riffs and get away with it, you can stop writing your own.
586 Great songs are never born out of “jamming.”
587 Never let a drummer write a song or do anything other than drum. Ever.
588 If you did not help write the songs, do not expect an equal cut of the royalties.
For it came to pass, in a house of pre-collegiate learning, there strode a girl. And the girl possessed the beauty of a birch tree’s wind-loosed blossoms, falling to earth in autumn twilight—but still not in a way that one would deem her beyond reach, and so she had many suitors.
But none of them tarried long, for she housed a minor devil. The devil did not make her bark in the moonlight, or spew grub-worms from her mouth, or cause her monthly cursedness to issue forth as crows.
No, for this eldritch soul-pirate caused in her a burning love of popular music, a love that fogged, flickered, and flummoxed the steady flame of logic, so that in her excitement she’d sing along with whatever tune flitted about in the immediate air.
And what she’d sing would not be the song as the artist intended. It was whatever her first impression was of that song’s lyrics. Thus, a lover who was, say, trapped in a car on a lengthy journey would have to hear, “Mices wear faces, you’re addicted to love,” or “Hey, Mr. Tangerine Man” and “Joy to the bitches in the cheap blue jeans.”
And soon they would depart.
I mean, “Mices wear faces”? Come on.
589 Never write a song that talks about the Internet.
590 Writing a great song is one hundred times harder than soloing all over the place or writing “complex” compositions—and one hundred times more pleasurable to listen to.
591 Every time you write a song about Jesus, another natural disaster happens somewhere in the world.
592 All of the tunings, noise, and riffs that you believe to be original are not. There’s absolutely nothing new you can do with a guitar at this stage in rock’s evolution.
593 If you can’t hum the melody to a song you wrote, it has too many notes.
594 No song can be markedly improved with the use of rhythmic hand claps or finger snaps.
595 Never have fake sex sounds, like heavy breathing, in a song. It sounds like you just ate a huge party sub and were forced to run around your house twice.
596 Unless the song has multiple references to a mystic sword or dragons, keep it under five minutes.
597 Nobody with a shred of taste has ever bought an album because a certain someone produced it. Don’t brag about your producer.
598 If you are one of the few decent, mindful, and cool musicians on the planet, don’t waste your time trying to small talk with the engineer or producer. They’re almost always certifiably insane.
599 Studio engineers have bad taste. In everything.
600 Don’t let the recording engineer talk you into using one of the amps in the studio that he is accustomed to recording. It makes things easier for him, but your studio time isn’t about him. It’s about your “art.”
601 Never record at a studio where the main engineer wears flip-flops with dark socks.
602 Never record at a studio where the engineer has his children or cats running around the control room. You’re recording your album, not running a day-care facility.
603 To keep an engineer happy, you must make sure you feed him.
604 If you don’t laugh at the studio engineer’s “jokes,” he will ruin your album.
605 Don’t let a drug addict be the recording engineer because he or she may discover much later that the mic fell out of the kick drum.
606 Don’t overdub your solos with sweet little riffs. The engineer and your band are sitting in the playback room laughing at you.
607 Don’t tell people that your album was recorded by a hot engineer if you’re lame enough to think that it’s going to afford you any credibility.
608 If you extol the virtues of recording exclusively to tape, you better know what the hell you are talking about.
609 There is such thing as a guitar tone having too much distortion in the studio.
610 Describing vocal harmonies as being “sun drenched” just means a band stacked multiple layers of vocals together in a studio that they could never pull off live. It also means, at this late stage of the game, that you still find merit in ripping off the Beach Boys.
611 If you want your music to sound sourly out of tune and completely dated, use a Mellotron.
612 “Lo-fi” really means you “couldn’t afford to record in a real studio.”
613 If you are going to have backward masking in your recording, it absolutely must be because your band is satanic.
614 Remember, everyone is looking at you. Don’t screw up, because if you do, you’re costing the band a lot of money.
615 There is no such thing as a “one-take wonder.”
616 Play every song like you invented it.
617 Never mix a song to sound great for television. Your video, at best, will be downloaded as a substandard file on the Internet.
618 Don’t complain to the engineer that the guitar isn’t loud enough when he is tracking vocals and you’re not the vocalist.
619 No overdubbing two drum sets or drum takes by a single drummer. It always sounds like a bag of puppies being thrown down the stairs.
620 If you’ve just mastered how to play a barre chord, some may wonder how you got an entire orchestra to play on your hit single.
621 Recording with an uncommon instrument is never uncommon.
622 Using a xylophone during quiet passages to “add accents” will only make you look like you have a passing interest in jazz.
623 Don’t let your hired horn players polish off the liquor and drugs until after they’ve laid down all their tracks.
624 Your dog does not belong at the studio. Nor do your friends.
625 Never bring a “posse” into the studio. Only the band, engineers, and one non–band member are allowed. Having a crowd in the studio only ensures that you’ll try to figure out how to work them all in, thus creating really bad hand claps or shout-outs during any given song.
626 Don’t touch the console unless you’re the engineer, mixer, or producer.
627 Taking interesting notes and pictures only shows you care more about yourself than actually making a good record. If you feel it is necessary to have pictures of the band while in the studio, hire a professional.
628 If anyone passes out in the studio control room, it’s open season for teabagging.
629 Don’t smoke in the studio. Instead, vaporize.
630 If you bring snacks to the studio, bring enough to share.
631 If your guitar isn’t set up, it has no business being recorded.
632 If you break wind in an isolation booth, give a courtesy shout and tell someone before they open the door. There is nowhere for that foul air to go except out the door once it’s opened.
633 Never let your bandmates have a farting contest on the control room couch that one of you will be spending the night on.
634 Ne
ver personally master your own recordings unless you really don’t want anyone to listen to them.
635 When you get a copy of your recording from the studio and it sounds horrible, before you blame the engineer, you should first ponder whether your music is horrible.
636 If you hire a famous hip-hop artist to come in and drop beats and remix a song, chances are it’s not going to save your already mediocre release.
637 Never smoke before you do your vocals unless you intentionally want it to sound terrible.
638 The integrity of your recording may ultimately suffer if your heroin-to-blood ratio exceeds your signal-to-noise ratio.
639 Don’t sleep with the studio interns who get your food for you.
N the sixth day, God said, “Let there be lesser creatures who they themselves want to be musicians.” God made these creatures according to their utility: guitar, drum, and bass techs; house engineer; monitor engineer; light guy; and tour manager. God made these primarily, according to their kind, to score drugs for the band. And there was a mag light and there was a Leatherman, then there was a smell, and then there was a laminate, and then there was a lousy, falsely authoritative attitude about who was allowed on the bus and other such things, and then there were old crew people who regaled (bored) younger people with tales of how they roadie’d a Starz/Blue Oyster Cult tour in 1980 and witnessed a food fight at a hotel pool, and so on, and so on.
1 If it’s green, smoke it. If it moves, fuck it. If it doesn’t move, put it in the van.
2 Even if he can’t play his way out of a paper bag, always have one guy on tour who can successfully back up the trailer.