"The Importance Of An Amazing Live Show" by DailyUnsigned.com

If you are like me…a true music fan who loves an amazing live show…this article is for you!
Before I begin writing this article, I am going to turn on some really cool background music to set the right mood for myself. My goal tonight is to get thru this writing experience without it turning into a long winded –soapbox preaching – pontificating diatribe filled with expletive peppered rants. This is one of those subject matters (next to songwriting) that I am very passionate about..because next to music sales..it is one of the only revenue streams left for Bands and Solo Artists to make a living from that they have 100% control of.
Ok…are you ready? Here we go!
I want you to close your eyes and imagine the first concert that you ever went to…you saved your money for weeks to buy a ticket and to have some extra money to get a concert shirt to commemorate the whole experience. Now without sounding like I am trying to hypnotize you…I want to you to remember how you felt during the performance…the goose bumps that you got….the “holy shit” I can’t believe I am watching them perform feeling…that feeling you got like they were performing and singing to just you. Feels good huh? I too have the same memories of my first concert..I truly felt like I was part of something much bigger than myself..wow such a great feeling!
Now….let’s fast forward thru your prepubescent days to today!
You are now on stage performing your carefully crafted songs to an audience that is just standing there watching you…they are emotionless and ready to fall over from boredom….some of these fine folks are texting their friends..or better yet…they are Twittering about how bad your performance is to anyone who will listen to them. You of course are telling yourself in your head that the crowd sucks tonight and how the previous band really screwed up the mood in the venue tonight. Sucks huh?
But wait there’s more!
The rest of the band isn’t helping you…the bass player has his head up in the air during the whole performance (I think he is daydreaming about what is on TV right now). Your lead guitarist has been looking at his shoes the whole time and hasn’t once looked up to see what’s going on. Your drummer is in his own world theorizing macro-economics and parallel universes.
What’s wrong with this picture?
Your performance sounds like a train wreck…but do not fret…it is all fixable!
Ok…quick flash back to your first concert experience…let’s analyze why it was such an amazing experience so we can push your live show over the top.
Do you remember when you felt like you were the only person that they were performing and singing to in the venue? There is a reason for that!
The key to communication on stage is eye contact and body language…in other words…it’s not what you say…but how you say it or in this case…. sing it/perform it.
The reason why you felt like they were singing and performing to you is because the band mastered these performance principals. The lead singer when they looked at you while singing…he/she was also looking at the people behind you and to those to the left and right of you….everyone in the crowd felt a part of the experience. The rest of the musicians in the band also did this and you didn’t even realize it. Always remember that when you are on stage performing, the second you break eye contact with the audience…the communication with them stops.
As for body language, the correct body movements, hand gestures (reaching out to the crowd), hand on heart..etc….needs to be practiced before using in front of an audience (don’t want to look like a tool on stage). Have your band mates watch you perform for them and have them let you know if you are any good at it….practice makes perfect.
I recommend that you Google “Eye Contact” and “Body Language” for further tips and explanations on these subject matters since I can spend hours telling what you need to know.
I am going to be blunt here….
If you are not spending a lot of time pushing your live show performances to the limit, you are ripping off your customers and you should be ashamed of yourself. Every show that you perform has to be better than your previous one….why you ask? Because if it isn’t your audience will get bored of you and will stop coming to see you perform. Don’t you get bored? I love meatloaf….but I will be damned if I have to eat the same meatloaf 7 days a week for the rest of my life for dinner. So why should your audience have to as well?
What you need to do is this…start video taping your live shows and analyze them like you are in a Pro Football Team…find out what worked and what didn’t work from the audience’s perspective. Did you look like a tool on stage? Was someone playing sloppy on stage? Did your songs connect with the audience?
To truly make it as a live performance artist, you need to step up your game and make it a memorable “holy shit” experience for everyone involved.
Well…that’s all I have for you…hope you got something out of this article!
Love,
Daily Unsigned

Lady Gaga "Judas" - Song Meaning?

It kind of says something about Lady Gaga when I write two blogs about her. She's cool and all, but after the last one I thought that would be the last you heard of Lady Gaga from me. Then, on April 15th, 2011, she released the song "Judas".
The single is off of her upcoming album Born This Way. If you haven't been keeping track of the pre-production, production, and promotion, here's all you need to know:
The first single released was the title track, "Born This Way"
The second single is this song, "Judas"
She has described it as, (parental advisory) "something so much deeper than a wig or lipstick or a fucking meat dress"

A little crucial background info on Lady Gaga: She is absolutely a performance artist, 110% of her body is composed of creativity, she is unafraid of criticism, she loves her fans, and even her most mainstream, pop-ish songs have an often startling underlying layer of raw realness. So raw and real in fact, that the Catholic church has condemned her.

Okay so here's the classic Sam DeCross, Mixed In The Music artist/music breakdown. Ready? Go.

Lady Gaga, after repeatedly causing controversy and shocking the press by her repeated wild costumes, rumors, truths, etc; announces an album called Born This Way.
Lady Gaga releases the single conveniently named "Born This Way." Here it is below.



Now, the thing about Lady Gaga's lyrical content and presentation through her music usually seems like she's throwing it in your face as if she's saying "THIS IS ME, DEAL WITH IT." I've always perceived it as if she was just in that awkward situation where someone puts you on the spot and you freeze, but as soon as you walk away your head starts whirling in that "I'll tell you what I think, I'm on top of the world and I'm not afraid to tell anyone what's what in my book" kind of thing. I think this is why her followers find something to relate to in the meat-dress wearing pop star. For the 3 minutes of a Lady Gaga song, you don't even have to vent. She'll do it for you. I think the song "Born This Way" was the peak of that mindset. Let out everything that you are too afraid to show publicly because of what others might think.
In a more literal sense as I interpreted from the lyrics, she's saying "There is nothing wrong with who I am. I am what I am, God made me this way. If God decided I was the kind of person he would allow on Earth then who are you to challenge that?"
This obviously hit a nerve with a lot of people. Once that happened, all it did was prove the point that just because you make a point doesn't mean that you are forgiven. Even after she pointed out that, "Hey, I was born this way" she was still attacked and criticized for the same old things and more.

Cue the song "Judas". Here it is below.



The first time I heard it, I was like "Wow." I immediately thought of the scenes in Get Him To The Greek where Jackie O is singing those raunchy songs full of sexual innuendos that were so offensive it came out comical. So, I listened again and payed closer attention to the lyrics. It was then that I realized, "Wait... I know who Judas is!" Obviously she can't LITERALLY be saying she's in love with the biblical figure Judas, the man who turned Jesus over to be crucified.
Her "Judas" ties right into "Born This Way." Now this isn't going to keep the Catholic church away, but if God created her the way she is, why is it the people that criticize her the most are those who claim to represent God? Her Judas is the very way that God made her. Her Judas is her passion, her free spirit, her open support for the LGBT community, her standing up for the outcasts, her open raw reality that she shares with whoever listens.







I wonder what the next chapter in the Lady Gaga Born This Way tell-all will be...


Special thanks to Melissa for suggesting this topic. Good call.

Pace and Constant - Conscious Rap At Its Finest

I'll kick this post off by stating that yeah, I know these kids. Not only that, I manage Pace. I just want to put that out there right now so I'll be the first to say I have a bias on this post. But dang, it's a blog not a Time Magazine article.

So a few months back I'm putting on a Hip-Hop show in Phoenix, AZ. On the bill are local artists like New Breedz, 4XL Ent, Stunna Mike, good ol' bumpin Hip-Hop. As I'm posting on Facebook at LEAST once a day about the show, this kid Constant says "Hey man, you got any open slots on that show?"
Since I've heard his music (also amazing artist btw) I say "Sure, come on down."
Sure enough that night he's there, and he brings a buddy along, Pace. The night is absolutely horrible, there's maybe 15 people in the "crowd", the sound was absolutely bad, and the schedule was being thrown off every five minutes. Every single artist there was just throwing it down and taking advantage of an open stage and a microphone. From a promoter's standpoint the night was a wreck; from an artists standpoint, why not have fun. As each rapper performs the girls are dancing and the guys are giving that repetitive nod like, "Yeah, you're good."
Everyone has done their set, and it's time for Constant and Pace to go on. As soon as they get on stage, they don't look like they belong. One's a white kid you would expect to see shopping for 2XL Hollister tees, the other a slim asian-ish kid that always looks like his brain is going a million miles an hour; definitely stops to smell the roses. Obviously the room is kind of quiet, just wondering what is going to happen. Constant starts. His song "Night" begins, the instrumental playing while he holds the mic in both hands in front of him, his eyes down as if in prayer. As a recorded narrator reads a small excerpt from Elie Wiesel's book Night, written about the Holocaust. He looks up slowly... with the mic snatched up to his lips and a hand thrown out toward the 15 person crowd, he slams into the song.

Here's the song:

Night by Constant by sdec

Here's a video of Constant performing the song Night at his High School talent show.


Wow. The crowd didn't dance. They didn't nod their heads. They just stood completely still. Some stared at him, some stared at the ground. Maybe a wall. Who knows what they were looking at. It's funny to say, but for the first time that night at a concert, people were actually listening.

Next up is Pace. He does his song Forrest, a play off of the movie Forrest Gump.
I'm not going to say much about Pace. I want you to find out yourself. If you live in Phoenix, he has a show May 13, 2011 at Club Red. You can hear his music below, or at www.reverbnation.com/paceaz
Also check out his Facebook at www.facebook.com/paceofficial





If I could manage both artists I would. Constant lives in Flagstaff, AZ right now, attending NAU. He is releasing an album soon, and as soon as I have details on it you will too. The last thing I'm linking into here is one of my favorite songs that was done as a group called 3PM, which consisted of Constant, Vice Versa, and Pace. The song is called "Top Of The World".

Top of the World by 3PM by sdec

Lil' Wayne Shot Himself In The Chest

Today I’m going to make a few points that go along with the story. First, the story.

Yes, it is a fact. Lil’ Wayne, a.k.a. Dwayne Carter Jr., acidentaly shot himself in the chest when he was 12 years old. It was an ordinary day in the Hollygrove neighborhood of New Orleans. 12 year old Dwayne had gotten out of school early (report card day; students everywhere know that day) and stopped by Burger King on his way home. He took his meal to go and made himself comfy on the bed in the master bedroomto eat his burger. That is, until he noticed the blue steel Taurus 9 mm handgun. A family friend has left it at the house after a football game. What would you do if you were a 12 year old aspiring rapper who just found a loaded 9 mm while you were home alone? You would do exactly what Dwayne did; blast the music, stand in front of a mirror, and get’cho gangsta on. The only problem with that game is that he wasn’t playing with a toy. Pretty soon the gun went off sending a bullet straight through his chest and out the bedroom window. Lil’ Wayne was down. Somehow the bullet missed every vital organ, but 12 year old Dwayne Carter was bleeding out quickly. He managed to dial 911. Here’s the Lil’ Wayne attitude from an early age; when the operator pressed for details on the injury, Dwayne responded, “You’ll find out when you get here.”

When the 911 call went out, an off-duty New Orleans P.D. Officer named Robert Hoobler happened to be in the neighborhood. He went to Dwayne’s apartment, 3409 Monroe St. Apartment D. Hoobler pulled up to the complex at the same time as Officer Arthur Thompson. They went up to the apartment, knocked on the door, and heard no answer. They tried again to no answer. When they asked a neighbor what she knew about the family in Apartment D, she said they had jsut moved in and she didn’t know them at all. As Thompson went to find the maintenance man to unlock the door, Hoobler knocked once more. This time, he heard a faint response, “Help me, I’ve been shot!”

To make a long story short, Hoobler kicked the door down to find Dwayne laying in a pool of blood. He searched the apartment for a gunman, but only found a pistol at the foot of the bed, a shell casing next to the half-eaten burger, and a stereo blasting gangsta rap. No ambulance was available to come to the scene, so Hoobler took Dwayne to the nearest hospital in the back of his squad car. He got there just in time for doctors to rush Dwayne into surgery and save his life.

The first point I want to make is this: Idiots should not leave their pistols around town after football games! When police questioned him about the unregistered gun, Dwayne said it was his stepfather’s. It wasn’t, but his stepfather, Reginald “Rabbit” Carter, ended up doing six months in jail as a result of the incident. This is a prime example of why extra care should be taken to protect children from guns within the home.

The second point is tricky for me. In the debate on media influence on children, I’m independant. In my own opinion, I think there should be a level of censorship and restriction on media up to certain age levels. On the other hand, a 12 year old kid has a reasonable grasp on right and wrong. Obviously Dwayne Carter had been exposed to some less-than-clean gangsta rap music; as a child he would rap at parties and he never was into the bubblegum rap that most teen artists are. At 12 years old when Lil’ Wayne first signed with Brian “Baby” Williams and Ronald “Slim” Williams he was already known for being a gangsta rapper with dedication. The main reason the Williams brothers signed Lil’ Wayne to Cash Money Records was because they were getting freestyles left on their answering machine every day. The only thing I can say in Lil’ Wayne’s defense was that he actually did have a level head as a kid. He wasn’t a gangbanger, he was a businessman even at that age. He was out to make a name for himself as an artist, not as a thug. His mother even pulled him from Cash Money for a while because Dwayne started wearing gangsta style cothing. As soon as he convinced her that he had nothing to do with any gang, he was back in the studio. Yet the question still remains: If the music didn’t turn him gangster, and he wasn’t a gangster with a record deal, then why did he feel the need to play with a loaded 9mm in the mirror? Kids will be kids. Kids with guns will be dead kids.

The third point is the most interesting to me, and requires more story.

For years after the incident Officer Hoobler would hear about this “Lil’ Wayne” all over town. People were talking about him, there were posters all over the city, radio shows had interviews and advertisements. One day as Officer Hoobler is sitting at a restaurant eating his lunch, a man walks up to him. The man says, “Lil’ Wayne wants to talk to you.” Hoobler follows over to a table packed with people crowded over a man with long dreads, goldchains, and a silver grill. Lil’ Wayne says, “Everyone, this is Officer Hoobler. This man saved my life. I almost died and this man saved my life. I’ll never forget him.” Hoobler reache over and bumped Lil’ Wayne’s fist. They had a small chit chat before they each returned to their meals. When Officer Hoobler went to pay his bill, the waitress said, “Don’t worry about it. Lil’ Wayne covered your bill.”

I find this nearly mind-blowing. Honestly. Have you heard gangsta rap? Have you ever heard a GOOD thing about cops? Have you ever heard a song by Lil’ Wayne that said something GOOD about cops? I’ve heard tons of stories about a gangsta getting shot and then fighting to get away from the cops that are there for their safety. I’ve heard songs and stories about rappers that say they’ll never forget the face of the cop he killed or the cop that shot at him. I have never heard of a rapper who never forgot the face of the cop that saved his life. I have never heard a story of a rapper who bought the cop that saved his life lunch. I have never heard a rapper tell a cop “Thank you for saving my life and being out there to save everyone else.”

Hoobler lost his home and was seperated from his wife for 5 days when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Lil’ Wayne was there helping as soon as he could.

Lil’ Wayne, notorious for his tattoo’s, has a large tattoo on his chest that says “Bang Bang” to commemorate the shooting, and has a tattoo that says “Rabbit” on his arm in memory of his stepfather Reginald “Rabit” Carter who was kidnapped and murdered shortly after he was released from the jail where he served time for being responsible for the unregistered gun Dwayne shot himself with that wasn’t really his.

When Hoobler, a rock-music enthusiast who has never heard a Lil’ Wayne album, heard that Lil’ Wayne was releasing the album Rebirth, a rock album, he said, “Now there’s something I might listen to.”

Not-So-Fun-Fact: When Jay-Z was 12 years old, he shot his brother in the shoulder for stealing his jewelry.

"Daughter" by Pearl Jam

This is definately one of the best songs ever created in my book. The song “Daughter” by Pearl Jam tells an amazing story, but the lyrics are… extraordinary. Their simplicity tells the whole story itself. First of all, here’s what Eddie Vedder has said about “Daughter.” (Warning: Language)

“The child in that song obviously has a learning difficulty. And it’s only in the last few years that they’ve actually been able to diagnose these learning disabilities that before were looked at as misbehavior, as just outright rebelliousness. But no one knew what it was. And these kids, because they seemed unable or reluctant to learn, they’d end up getting the shit beaten outta them. The song ends, you know, with this idea of the shades going down—so that the neighbors can’t see what happens next. What hurts about shit like that is that it ends up defining peoples’ lives. They have to live with that abuse for the rest of their lives. Good, creative people are just fucking destroyed.”

With that being said, I have heard a couple rumors about this song. The first is that the song was actually Eddie Vedder’s own childhood. It’s possible that he changed some things, like the main character being a female and such. But according to the rumor, the song is about Eddie Vedder’s struggle as a child with undiagnosed Dyslexia, and his stepfathers frustration with Vedder’s inability to do well in school. The part about being called Daughter basically highlights the pain of his stepfathers abuse, and Vedder’s feeling of being less than a son.

The second rumor is that the song is actually about a real girl who was killed by the abuse she recieved as a result of her learning disabilities.

The song itself is, like I said before, amazing. The lyrics tell the perfect story; from the emotional guilt, depression, and frustration felt by the child, to the abuse that the child recieves, to the ending where the blinds are shut so the outside world wont see what happens. Vedder’s vocals express the emotion behind the words superbly. The drums, bass, and guitar are strong enough to bring out the emotion but also simple enough to double that effect by imitating the simplicity of innocence and childhood.

If you don’t know what song I’m talking about, please look up “Daughter” by Pearl Jam.

Stay gold Ponyboy.

So, What’s Up With Lady Gaga?

Well, does anyone really know? Lady Gaga (a.k.a. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) was almost a normal kid. She was bullied a lot and hated high school. That’s really not uncommon amongst artists, right? She loved music, especially Queen. There may not be a bigger fan of Freddy Mercury than Stefani Germanotta. Her college days were spent doing shows in Manhattan. So common for artists it’s almost cliche’, right? She was signed to Def Jam after L.A. Reid heard her singing down the hallway from his office. That’s a pretty lucky break, yeah? She was soon dropped from the label, but continued to work with producers. In fact, her stage name Lady Gaga came from a weird glitch from a producer, Rob Fusari. Since Stefani was such a Queen fan, her “entrance song” at the studio was “Radio Gaga.” Fusari tells the story, “Every day, when Stef came to the studio, instead of saying hello, I would start singing ‘Radio Ga Ga.’ That was her entrance song. [Lady Gaga] was actually a glitch; I typed ‘Radio Ga Ga’ in a text and it did an autocorrect so somehow ‘Radio’ got changed to ‘Lady’. She texted me back, “That’s it.” After that day, she was Lady Gaga. She’s like, “Don’t ever call me Stefani again.”

Her mom even calls her Gaga.

So what about her crazy outfits? Well… Who knows? It’s just Gaga. It’s crazy, it’s flashy, it’s in-your-face, it’s exotic, erotic, and neurotic. It’s her thing. There’s really no big explanation. It’s her tribute to the wild 70′s scene. Glam rock, pop, disco. She bottles it all up, shakes it like a polaroid picture, pops the cork and pours it in a tall glass of modern edge and creativity.

Lady Gaga: The definition of Performance Artists.

Oh, and no; she’s not a hermaphrodite.