Staff Memos

Been great so far. The engineer is great and we’re getting some great sounds. It’ll be fun to top off the night with NXNE! continue

Well,
The Axl Rose solo band have finally decided to start paying some of their bills, rather than continuing to live with the distinction of most downloaded, and watched on YouTube, for free. As a fan from the days before Appetite for Destruction was a hit record, let me be straight. All those who have decided Chinese Democracy is not “Guns and Roses”, you are all continue

Any musician or band worth their salt these days needs to have a web presence and a good understanding of what brings people to their site and how people can find them on this ever growing world wide web.

A great resource on such topics and well as others in the Social Media Driven Marketing World is one of my favourite podcasts called “The Marketing Edge“

Today (well, at least thats when I listened to it) continue

…even if you’re not a drummer.

1. 9V batteries
2. a power cable and adapter
3. a drum key
4. pliers
5. a roll of toilet paper (don’t ask)
6. guitar strings of the proper gauge for every member of your band
7. drum sticks
8. duct tape
9. blank CDW’s (most sound boards can burn the stage sound straight to disk these days)
10. ….the current gig’s set list

One of the side interests I have when the Hookers aren’t kicking out the jams, as they say, is writing music for films and theatre.

This week, I’ll be providing music for another RJ Downes / K. Malek production Death to Dating appearing in Alumnae Theatre’s New Ideas Festival. continue

Podcasting has been good to us and we here at Parkdale Hookers International enjoy the many podcasts streaming into our iPods everyday. No sorry, that’s inaccurate we’re ADDICTED to podcasts.

And I thought books were bad…
I just checked my iTunes podcast count and I have about a day and a half of podcasts lined up for listening. Everything from The Advertising Show and the The Marketing Edge, to The Mac Observers Mac Geek Gab, to the incredible Insomnia Radio Podcast. It’s almost as bad as my book addiction — ‘cept they’re free and even easier to get a hold of. Good thing I have my iPod on most of the time!

Radio over the last few years has gotten pretty stale, whereas the quality of Podcasting just keeps on getting better. And not just the sound quality – the quality and choice in the music programming itself has surpassed anything I’ve heard on radio for a long time. Take a listen to Insomnia Radio some night and see what radio should be, and should start to pay attention to if it knows what’s good for it. continue

Canadian Heritage has just released their Report on the Canadian Music Industry and finds (surprise) that things are quite a bit different from the imminent collapse of civilization routinely predicted by the major label sock puppets at the Canadian Recording Industry Association.

It is nice to feel vindicated by this report. Although being a nobody in the music industry, I take a certain pride in having made certain calls about where things are going and being right about it.

A long time ago I said:
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While walking around town I usually have my ipodShuffle crammed into my ears. Either I’m working on some new TPH tunes (a great way to write lyrics – if you can’t remember them between walking trips, then they usually are worth forgetting) or listening to one of the many business, advertising, marketing or music related podcasts available for free.

On the Advertising Age podcast “why it matters” the host was mentioning that American Idol made 2.5 Billion (yep folks – that’s a billion with a “B” – I just checked the podcast again). continue