Fever FYI
Some interesting tibits…
Jim Holbrook, former bad ass bassist for Fever in the Funkhouse left an extremely honest and incisive comment on a post from July of ’06 – scroll to the bottom…
Why has he (Nick Briscoe) not been signed or picked up? Simple, when you are in a band that has one of the largest record deals in the 1990’s offered to you (an unprecedented 8 album deal!), yet you are tired of playing the music (like Nick was) and you want total control over all aspects of music, and you consequently turn down the deal of the century, the record industy tends to blackball you. Period.
Thanks for the honesty Jim!
Also – I finally got a copy of The Slack’s new cd at their show last Wednesday at Gezelig. The band really rocked out forall of the Dallas music superstars – They even played XTC’s ‘Generals & Majors’. You can tell they put a lot of time into the cd, entitled “Wishful Sinking”. Check it out here. Kudos to Chris, Eric and the rest of the boys!
Re: Fever, XTC and The Clash had similar mutli-album contracts but didn’t view them as “deals of the century”. Both bands eventually went on strike to get out of their exploitive contracts.
I can’t remember where I read this, but supposedly the best contracts are the one-to-two albums deals that provide as much artistic freedom as possible. Your band can create a fan base that appreciates original music and also entice other labels to offer you a more lucrative contract. And, if you don’t like your original label, you’re only an album away from leaving it.