I realized recently that what with my recent forays into experimentation it’s been a little while since I uploaded a straight-ahead rock song. This one is loud and has a lot of guitars (as well as some salty language) so sensitive ears should beware.
Drums played by Ryan Tully-Doyle, bass played by Paul Szewczyk. Basic tracks recorded by Mark Haemmerle at Haemmerle Productions, mixing and additional recording by Aaron at Clairemont Mobile Garage.
I’ve mentioned before that the piece of writing I get the most email about is far and away “The Strange Case of Bobby Fuller”; that hasn’t changed. In recognition of the 45th anniversary of Bobby’s tragic death, some recent communiques:
Aaron:
Rod Crosby, writing you here from El Paso, Texas. I read your “Strange Case” article many years ago, and forgot how absolutely stunning and focused it is in its impact. I say that, because I just re-read it from top to bottom today, which marks the 45th. year since Bobby’s demise. Your article is better than a Reader’s Digest, or a Cliff’s Notes, as you touched on every major facet of the band’s story in the longest-short, shortest-long, all inclusive version I have ever read. Your article is timeless, and more, gets better with age, as does the Bobby Fuller, BF4 legacy, which continues to grow leaps and bounds due to so much interest from people all over the US, and now the world, thanks to the cumulative, talented efforts of people like yourself. Bobby died one month and 17 days after I got married in ’66, and on the 27th. of this month I turn 66. My band, Rod Crosby & The Intruders from the ‘ 60′s, is still playing, and the BF4 hit songs are at the core of the set lists. I’m still carrying on the legacy, and will continue to do as long as I can stand, on or off a stage, and hold a guitar. I was interviewed today by one of the local ABC affiliates, who is doing a segment on this evening’s news remembering the BF4 on this day. I was honored to say the least. They called Rick Stone first, but he was not feeling well, so Rick asked me to go in his stead. Got home, read your article, so it has been quite a day. Take care, and thanks for everything.
Warm Regards,
Rod Crosby El Paso, Texas
Thanks again for the kind words, Rod. The news segment is available online here — it turned out pretty good! They got a decent amount of the story in for such a short piece and it’s always nice when Bobby is remembered. (I believe Rick Stone took the haunting photo above.)
maura manning
hello- i would just like to say that it seems very clear that mr fuller was murdered ( i believe you are right on the melody angle) and then soaked in gas probably to set him on fire in the desert then dumped at his house. i think it is fucking disgusting and the guys that did it ought to be dead and i think they were on lapd to have any influence with the coroner. i would also like to say that he was a truly great musician and person as far as i could tell and it makes me upset to think about it. i have some ideas about whom they are if you were interested. thanks for writing something truthful about it, m. manning
Thanks Maura, it says a lot that Bobby’s loss was such that even today the details can be so upsetting. It’s truly tragic to lose someone with such potential.
brian s
Hi Aaron -
I enjoyed your article, on your web site, about Bobby Fuller.
I’m kind of curious as to how, and why, cases, get closed, and ‘sealed.’ I’ll ask my girlfriend about that. She’s a lawyer who commutes to Sacramento, so hopefully she’ll have some info on that.
Meanwhile, I used to do copywriting and proofreading-I’m just a guitar player now-and couldn’t help noticing that you used the phrase, “The Sunshine State”, when you mentioned about Bobby and the band heading off to see record labels while they were in California. California is known as ‘The Golden State’, Florida is the “Sunshine State.”
Not being critical, just showing how it’s not as easy to purge oneself of proofreading ‘issues’ as some might imagine.
Take care, Brian
P.S. Thanks again for the article; it’s a good one.
Haha, there you go–no matter how much a piece has been gone over — and that one was gone over at least three times before print publication and another time before posting online — there’s always something!
Eric Galati
Dear Mister Poehler,
Thank you very much for your excellent article on Mister Bobby Fuller and the Bobby Fuller Four,”The Strange Case Of Bobby Fuller”. There is so much I should comment upon but for now I shall ask one question and perhaps you will have an answer. You give excellent information on complete sets on compact disk of Mister Fuller and his group,Bobby Fuller Four,which one would never have been easily informed of. One of the unfortunate facts is that the Del Fi sets ,”Never To Be Forgotten” and “Shakedown! The Texas Tapes Revisted” unlike the three volumes of “El Paso Rock” are no longer available, except as used, and the label Del Fi closed after the death of producer and owner Mister Bob Keane. Are you aware of where they are available new at non-exploitative post-modern prices or if another label is planning to reissue them. It truly would be great if Mister Richard Weize’s Bear Family Records were to issue his recordings.
Awaiting your reply. Have A Blessed And Merry Christmas God Bless,
Eric Galati
Afraid I don’t have any information on Fuller releases other than what’s on Amazon, but I would hope the rights to Bobby’s music are in the hands of someone that’ll recognize the legacy of his work. A complete box set anthology of the type Bear Family is well-known for producing would of course be ideal, but I would settle for widely available mp3 albums as a lot more realistic in these times.
Gregg Byxbee
Dear Mr. Poehler: Maybe you can help me figure something out. I’ve searched the Internet for information on when Bobby would have attended Burges High in El Paso but can only find bits and pieces of information … nothing carved in stone. Anyway, I have a 1959 and 1960 Burges High yearbook both show a Bob Fuller but it doesn’t really look like him. Keeping in mind he was a Junior in my 1960 yearbook, so he was around 17 … people do change in 6 years I guess. The 1959 also has a Randell Fuller … could be his brother. Do you know if he would be in any of these yearbooks?
Thank you,
Gregg Byxbee Florida
Couldn’t tell you, sorry. Randy is his brother though.
Tom Connole
Thanks for the Bobby Fuller. I really enjoyed reading it. T
Much appreciated, Tom.
JAMES FREYLER
Hello Aaron -
I’ve read your superb article on Bobby Fuller on your website. You’ve done a great research job and I was wondering if you could shed any light on a little piece of BF4 trivia. I have a website Gazzarridancers.com that tells the story about the Gazzarri go-go dancers on the 1964-66 HOLLYWOOD A GO-GO TV show.
One of the dancers that I have recently been in contact with mentioned that she had a close working relationship with Bobby. She was a go-go dancer (possibly the only one) at “The Cave” , which was located in the Ambassador Hotel (LA area), and said that she always danced when Bobby played there. Her name back then was Shelley Bonis (she later went on to be one of Richard Pryor’s many wives). She also mentioned to me that BF4 appeared once on the Danny Kaye Show (1965?) and she also danced for the band for that gig. She remembers that they did one song, a cover of the Cannibal & the Headhunters hit, “Land of 1000 Dances”.
During your research on the Bobby story did her name ever come up? Any info on the Cave or Danny Kaye appearances? Hope that you find these little tidbits of info interesting and if you can likewise add anything to my story I would greatly appreciate it.
Thanks!
Jim Freyler
I don’t recall Shelley’s name coming up specifically or not during the research for the Fuller piece, though it has been a long time. I definitely do recall seeing her name before in conjunction with Pryor, so it’s hard to say at this point. (The page on Shelley Bonis at Jim’s site is really interesting, including the ultra-cool fact she went on to become a professional astronomer and astronomical historian!)
Kevin Patrick
Hi AF
I stumbled on your blog – while doing some research for a post about Bobby Fuller on mine. Although we disagree about our love for ‘Let Her Dance’, I found your piece and overall work fantastic. I’d like to link you on my blog link list if that’s ok. I took the liberty of directing folks to your article on Bobby. I’ve always been troubled by the circumstances around his death even though I never knew him or anyone involved with him in any way. When I hear his music, it has an eerie streak because of all that’s behind the story.
Anyways, great job.
Kevin Patrick New York, NY
Thanks Kevin. (One thing on “Let Her Dance” I’ve noticed: it sounds way better in mono.)
Mr Aaron Poehler,
I read with interest your article on the late Bobby Fuller musician. I noticed that findadeath.com and your article mentioned several locales but no actual addresses, such as where Bobby Fuller’s apartment was located in Hollywood and also the location of where his body was found. I am sure that you must know these details. Can you kindly share them with me ? It was only today when I was researching the recent death of Bob Keane the record studio owner that I came across the fact that Bobby Fuller was deceased. I have a watertight alibi. On the date of Mr. Fuller’s death I was living in England and had never been to the United States – just in case you were wondering about my curiosity.
Yours sincerely, Barry Jackson, Long Beach, CA
Um, good to know. But no, I don’t have the actual addresses on hand.
John K. Young
Mr. Poller…
I just read your article about the life and death of Bobby Fuller. I wanted to take a moment and let you know that I enjoyed it very much. It was very interesting and well done.
I had a couple of questions… Even though it’s been almost 45 years since Bobby’s death, is there ANY possibility that the case might be re-opened? Since there have been “regime changes” at the L.A.P.D over the years and they’ve had to overcome more than a few investigational blunders in those years (O.J., Rodney King, etc), would anyone there be willing to take another look at this bizzare case?
Also…has anyone come forward since the writing of your article and shed any additional light on the subject? I completely agree that this case would be good fodder for a movie or as a Real Life “Cold Case” episode. I feel sorry for the remaining family members, not just because of their loss but also because they’ve never had justice or closure in the death of Bobby. That would have to be the hardest thing for ANYone in their place.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely, Johnny K. Young Phoenix, AZ
At this point I suppose anything is possible as far as new developments, but as it’s been 45 years since Bobby’s death the odds of justice being served are admittedly slim.
Hi Aaron,
My name is Rick Kern, a former drummer/vocalist with many local bands in El Paso back in the 60?s ? ?73 when we took to the road for our Fame and Fortune. We got the fame, but not much fortune. I just wanted to tell you that I have enjoyed the writings about BF4. I had a group that had Jim Reese in it for 5 years, after Bobby died. The group was formed in 1968 and went to 1972. We were called The Basic Sound. He was an amazing guitar player that could listen to a song and play it almost perfect the first time he attempted it. I was just talking with Dalton Powell a few minutes ago and he was saying that Jim could play Chuck Berry better than Chuck Berry. Most of the songs thatJim sang and played in our group were mostly Chuck Berry tunes.
I want to tell you about a site that I have put together. It came into existence as a result of being somewhat nostalgic and also because nobody has ever done this before. It’s called: www.musiciansofelpaso.com. It’s a work in progress but is coming along quite well. I would invite you to link it to your site if you would like since there is quite a bit of stuff about Bobby Fuller that I have put on.
I just wanted to take this time to share this information with you. Please feel free to share my musicians site with anyone you feel that might be interested.
Take care, Rick Kern
Thanks, Rick, I definitely agree on Jim Reese being an awesome guitarist. Rick’s site has actually come along quite well: check it out!
Will Bigham Hi, I saw your Bobby Fuller website, so I thought I’d write to get an expert’s advice. Here’s my problem: I bought the “Never To Be Forgotten” box set, but I HATE the stereo mixes of these songs. They are terrible … and I have another disc with the mono mixes. The mono stuff is much better, and I presume the music was mixed in mono when it was originally released and overseen by Bobby Fuller himself.
So, where can I get good MONO mixes of the Bobby Fuller material? Is there a mono version of the box set? Are there discs I should look for/stay away from? I appreciate any help you can give me, because I’m listening to these stereo mixes right now, and I’m sure Bobby Fuller is spinning in his grave knowing that this CRAP is what fills his supposedly comprehensive box set.
Thanks, Will
I thought the box included both the stereo and mono mixes in cases where stereo existed. I recall the first disc being mostly crappy stereo mixes, maybe judicious programming would allow you to skip them. Or these days, just delete them altogether from one’s ipod or whatever and create an all-mono playlist.
I do agree the stereo mixes pretty much all suck. (See above.)
Aaron,
I just finished reading your article pertaining to Bobby Fuller. Very interesting and such a shame that his death goes unvindicated. I do have a question about the suicide ruling. I don’t know how things worked with insurance companies in 1966 but suicide today means no payout. Was it different back then? If the mob was behind his death then seems to me that they would want it ruled as murder or of unknown cause. From your explanation of his death and the coroners report a monkey could see that it was murder. I’m in the health field and it doesn’t take a medical background to see this. I look forward to your answer and again, great write up.
Susan Ovadia
I’m far from an insurance expert — particularly on what the specifics of policies might have been at a time before I was born — but from what I understand, suicide doesn’t actually mean no payout in all cases today despite it often being portrayed that way in the media. It used to be a blanket provision in all life policies apparently though, and it seems likely that would have so in Bobby’s case, but I don’t know one way or the other for certain.
STEVEN BERRY Hello Aaron. My name is Steve Berry and I wanted to compliment you on the great article you penned about one of my kid idols, Bobby Fuller.I have been talking with another few BBFF fans nad it remarkable how much misinformation and flat out lies about a mystery that is still not reesolved. I would like to see a full book written on this event…I am utterly amazed that there wasn’t one fan back in the days when this story was being mis reported and facts awere and are as scarce as a virgin at the Chicken Ranch..I was in Vietnam doing my first of two tours with the Marines when i heard about his murder…it blew me away man. Now you are probably thinking that being a Marine and in the business of killing I should have been able to let it go but I am telling you for some reason that moment has beenj in my heart since the day of bad news.I would like to see the case reopened and thoroughly srutinized by people that you can trust and are honest. I think there is a Movie here as well regardless of when it happened ..it a story that needs to be told and if there was foul play as I beleive then maybe we can smoke the bastards out and give rest to Bobby anf his family. Do you know anyhting more than whaat I have read here? Is Randy Fuller still living?Do you think there can be enough interst raised to maybe reopen the case..How does that happen by the way? I wrote a blog about this incident and what effect it had on me being an 18 yr. old kid and having just arrived in a strange and evil place called Nam.Bobby Fuller had a major impact in my life to say the least.,
Steve Berry
As of last year there was a press release regarding a full-length Bobby Fuller bio being written by Miriam Linna in collaboration with Randell Fuller but it’s been awhile with no news. This kind of project can take awhile though, so hopefully it’s still on the way — I know I’ve been looking forward to reading it for a long time and from the looks of it, there are at least a few people out there who agree.
This boils down once again to the music/music industry dichotomy. A musician has to know that these are two very distinct things. I can be a musician right now, sitting here in this little room. All I have to do is pick up a guitar and sing. But the equation totally changes when one expects to pay bills from this ability. In most cases, it puts tremendous, distorting forces on the music you’re creating, and eventually deforms it or destroys it.
Early on, I knew that the normal music business equation was not going to work out for me. I could tell by the conversations I had with music business people. They were always telling me how I had to change. They were always telling me to use a better mic, or go into a real recording studio with a real producer, or to write happier songs with faster tempos, or a hundred other things. The normal music business equation only works out if you really want it badly, and are willing to jump through hoop after hoop, when you’re told to.
We hear a lot today about the changing state of music, and it’s very easy (especially for those not inclined to overthinking such things, or those occupied more important issues) to confuse this: it’s the music industry that’s in trouble now, not music. Music is doing great, arguably better than ever before. Anyone can release an album that anyone else can buy, anywhere. People can do whatever they want to creatively. Whatever your musical tastes, someone is doing something somewhere that you will find interesting. You may have to look for it, but when you find it it’s all the sweeter for the search.
The music industry? Yeah, that’s fucked. But they had it coming — and if you doubt it, read Fredric Dannen’s Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business, or Stiffed: A True Story of the MCA, the Music Business and the Mafia by William Knoedelseder, or hey, how about any book ever written about the music industry. It used to be axiomatic that the artist got screwed, and that was just the way it was: the people who distributed the music lived better and longer and derived significantly more financial reward from the music than the people who created it.
It was a shitty system, and it deserves what’s happening to it now. But don’t worry about music in all this, music’s fine. In most cases all those people did was get in the way, in the ways Cornog describes above and dozens if not hundreds of others. Don’t weep for them.
Instead, look forward to what’s possible now that they don’t matter. No, many people may not be able to make a living off of their music. But why should they expect to? Hell, why would they want to other than to feed their egos and soak up attention? Even when music does pay, it does not pay well except in exceedingly rare fluke cases that are getting rarer all the time. If attention and ego-stroking is what you’re really after, well I’m sorry to tell you music is really not the way to go. In most cases, there’s a lot more rejection than acceptance, and while what one sees in the media is 99.9% cheering, rabid crowds of fans, real life is 99.9% not that way at all.
The good news is there are way easier ways of getting cheap attention these days than music, so just make youtube videos or go on an internet reality show or something and leave music alone as a means of garnering attention. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine without you, and you’ll feel happier without that burden of constant attention-seeking, and frankly your facebook friends will be relieved (if they haven’t hidden your posts already). And if you really have something to say musically, that’s when you’ll know, because it’ll be something that you make to please yourself and no one else.
The funny thing is, something that you make to please yourself is often the most interesting thing to other people — but you can’t count on that. The important thing is that if you’re happy with what you do then no matter what happens, you win.
So yeah, I worked during the day so I missed the lunchtime “Beer & Pizza Staind Listening Party” which was a shame, I always love standing around awkwardly eating free pizza and drinking on someone else’s dime while listening to something no one in the room will ever buy. Truthfully, Friday’s scheduled panel discussions sounded a lot more interesting than Saturday’s based on the descriptions, but oh well, I wasn’t going to use my PTO hours on this thing so that’s that. In any case I was able to make it well in time to see all of the Friday mainstage acts, which included GIVERS, Ali Handal, Dead Sara, Drive A, and Kopek, none of which I’d ever heard of before to my knowledge. But hey, that’s why one comes to something like this: to hear stuff you might not have ever heard otherwise, or at least before you would otherwise have found out about it. And when you do find that one act you love, it’s completely worth it…but it can be a bit of slog getting there.
Main Stage Shows:
GIVERS
I’m not as big a fan of the “college kids play junior ethnomusicologists” genre as a lot of people, but someone bought those Vampire Weekend records and I bet a lot of those same people would like this band, as well as oldsters harboring fond memories of Paul Simon’s Graceland. Ably straddling the jam band/indie-rock line (so yeah, I’m sure they’ll be at Bonnaroo soon), GIVERS deliver a pleasingly upbeat high-energy show brimming with charisma featuring a fairly eclectic (outstandingly so in this landscape) Afrobeat-derived sound, all wrapped up in the exuberance and optimism of youth. Everything the aging industry vet looking to prop up his or her ever-more-tenuous association with youth culture needs in one convenient package! They also seem to have the advantage of an obvious heavy investment of support from their label (they were the only act to be introduced by the president of their record company, a gesture that goes a long way with this type of crowd). I’d like to hear something a little more substantial on the lyrical end (and no, titling a song “Ceiling of Plankton” doesn’t count), but that can come along as they develop, hopefully — for a band just now hitting their debut they’re very fully-conceived . SPIN will love them, NPR will love them, KCRW will love them. Better still, later on we happened to wander bathroom-ways during one of the less-entertaining sets described below and passed by the makeshift 91X broadcast room just in time to catch a stripped-down GIVERS radio performance which was a real treat, especially since there were only about fifteen people in the room at the time including the band members. I would be very surprised if I didn’t see multiple GIVERS appearances in “new and upcoming bands to watch” articles over the next year; I just hope they gradually drop the “all-caps bandname thing because it’s stupid and I hate it.
Ali Handal
Generic chick-rock, like a slightly harder-rocking Melissa Etheridge. Her voice is OK and her band is tight in that professional, “could be a Spin Doctors cover band” way but the songs and everything else fails to distinguish. Pretty boring, I felt like I was watching the third opener at a small state fair. And really, you’re going to play a “My Sharona” cover? Seriously? Just don’t. Also, quit begging people to listen to your CD in their goodie bags, that just doesn’t work and wastes valuable time. No one likes to be nagged.
Dead Sara
This band hit the ground running — if nothing else they got across that they came to play. Somewhat like a more obviously mainstream rock-oriented Veruca Salt; a few of the quieter moments remind me a lot of Lone Justice, not that that reference helps anyone. Strong on the performance front, but the band’s songwriting could stand to be a few more notches more individual, especially the painfully earnest junior-high poetry lyrics. Unfortunately the lead singer hit the Janis Joplin-worship/Zeppelin-style oversinging way too hard in the first ten minutes, blowing her wad early and noticeably diminishing her range and tonal quality in the latter part of the set. (Remember kids, oversinging doesn’t make your songs better, especially if you can’t sing the melodies properly.) She tried to compensate by pulling a lot of cliched “rock” moves, but this band really doesn’t rock hard enough for anyone to be climbing on amplifiers (the Stooges, Dead Sara ain’t) and this industry crowd has seen it all far too many times for the standard rock playbook to work here the same way it does on kids too young to drink legally. After awhile of this the singer seemed to get frustrated that the audience wasn’t getting into her rockstar act and the band ended up leaving the stage on something of a down note at the end of the set without thanking the audience or saying goodbye, which struck me as bad form. It left me wondering if the band even understood why they were there, frankly.
Drive A
Kinda generic high energy punk rock. Zero originality but some catchy tunes. Just think of a punk rock band of four dudes in their early 20s that writes the kind of songs you might hear on the radio and you basically have it — you know, the kind of punk rock band that would have a nondescript name like “Drive A”. Not bad at all but difficult to get excited about. Also, these guys (or their management/label) sponsored the goodie bags, which probably wasn’t cheap. Lesson of the evening via these guys and the previous act: don’t bother exhorting industry types to “come up front.” You are misreading the crowd, badly.
Kopek
Dude rock from Dublin Ireland, but frankly could be from anywhere Midwestern — like Canada. (They could really stand to listen to more Therapy? and Thin Lizzy.) Tiny (like Prince-range height, really) singer/guitarist is clearly the band’s driving force (the second guitarist’s presence is so totally unnecessary that I started idly wondering whose brother he was) but his voice’s unfortunate Nickelback tone started to give me a headache after three or four songs so we left their set early and started wandering over to the Late Night Lounge area. The rest of the weekend whenever the subject of Kopek came up I referred to them as “Irish Nickelback” and that pretty much sums it up.
Late Night Lounge set:
Larisa Stow and Shakti Tribe
Listening to this band was like being trapped in a bad conversation at a party with someone who thinks crystals have healing powers and water molecules have memory. Dire, intolerable L.A. hippie bullshit, way way too much tuneless wailing and noodly playing, not enough cohesion or songcraft or anything of substance, really. People stopped forming fake hippie bands like this decades ago for a reason — imagine combining all the most florid, musical theater aspects of the Doors’ music with Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians’ lightweight grooves and you’re most of the way there. I’m also not sure how “spiritual” you can pretend to be when you ask your followers to donate substantial amounts of money so you can go put your ego on display for a small group of affluent music industry insiders instead of, you know, feeding starving children. Being a hippie ain’t what it used to be, apparently! As it turned out, Shakti Tribe was just awful enough to drive us to leave earlier than planned, so I didn’t see any of the other Late Night Lounge acts this night. Sorry, I’d planned to wait it out but after it was clear the singer was going to wail like that on literally every song my patience and delicate constitution wore out. There’s still plenty on the schedule for tomorrow though, so come back for part three!
I’m happy to present my new album, titled THIS IS MY REVENGE. It’s been long in the making (years!) and I really hope you enjoy it. If not, well, I’ve got another one in the works for later this year so maybe you’ll like that one better!
THIS IS MY REVENGEby AARON POEHLER is available now via Bandcamp, iTunes, Amazon mp3, eMusic, Shockhound, Napster, Spotify, Nokia Music Store, and other purveyors of fine downloadable audio content. You can listen to the entire thing on the album’s Bandcamp page, and the press release is reproduced below.
Thanks for listening,
A
For Immediate Release – April 5, 2011
AARON POEHLER RELEASES THIS IS MY REVENGE
DIETRICH Projects San Diego and Family Scam Productions proudly present THIS IS MY REVENGE, the debut full-length studio album by critically acclaimed singer-songwriter-guitarist Aaron Poehler (ex-DAISY GLAZE)
April 5, 2011 (San Diego, CA)– As frontman and leader of 1990s-era Bloomington, Indiana alt-rock band DAISY GLAZE, AARON POEHLER helped craft the band’s landmark independent CD ONE WAY OUT. Featured in Option, High Times, MaximumRockNRoll, Fizz, Popwatch, Cake, Sound Affects, EYE, BAM!, Different Beat and other publications, ONE WAY OUT was described by John Barge (The Panics) in BC Magazine as “ambitious, soulful, paranoid, and analytical…fascinating…a compelling piece of work”; Jack Rabid at The Big Takeover wrote that ONE WAY OUT boasted “wired playing, hooks, and above-average lyrics…not bad at all”; Magnet‘s Bill Meyer simply stated, “the band’s exceptional”; while Flipside raved “One listen to this disc and I was sold…this disc sounds great…more than I could ask for!”
Now relocated to San Diego, former DAISY GLAZE singer/songwriter/guitarist/producer AARON POEHLER now returns with THIS IS MY REVENGE, his first new release in over a decade.Available right now, THIS IS MY REVENGE continues solidly in the template established by ONE WAY OUT, featuring pop music structures slathered with steaming layers of distorted guitar, combining everything from postpunk keyboard drone and seventies wah leads to folk strumming and metallic crunch into an aesthetic that successfully meshes slacker bedroom-pop delicacy with full-on, old school glam-rock power.
Regarding the effusive praise garnered by his former band’s breakout disc, Aaron commented: “Well, it’s nice when people say nice things about you or your work, but I don’t know how much that relates to this record. I didn’t really think about it while recording—I actually think REVENGE is a lot better record myself but you know, everyone says that. I’d think people who liked ONE WAY OUT will like this record, but The Big Takeover and High Times aside almost all of the magazines that covered Daisy Glaze are now as dead and buried as the band. I know some people are going to jump to conclusions about the album title,” Aaron notes, “But people are going to take it however they decide to. And really, the music as well. That’s sort of the point of it all, no?”
Aaron continues: “I don’t really know what people will think of [THIS IS MY REVENGE]—so much music today has been tweaked to within an inch of its life long before it ever reaches the listeners’ ears that you don’t even really know what the artist actually sounds like. This is definitely not that kind of thing–for better and for worse [laughs]. That said, I did go out of my way to include a fairly wide variety of music on REVENGE—rockabilly, hard psych, instrumental rock, improvisation, acoustic, etc.—and to make it a varied listening experience. I’m deploying every weapon in my arsenal! In the end, it is what it is, and if people like it, cool. If not, well, there’s plenty of other stuff out there.”
Better yet, there’s more to come: “Actually since getting back to making music regularly I’ve been having a blast; I’m already about a third to halfway through recording another album and I’m hoping to have this next one out within 2011 as well. THIS IS MY REVENGE is only the beginning. I’ll be posting new tracks to http://aaronpoehler.com as I go, so keep an eye tuned there for new developments…I’ve definitely got some surprises in the pipeline!”
THIS IS MY REVENGEby AARON POEHLER is available now via Bandcamp, iTunes, Amazon mp3, eMusic, Shockhound, Napster, Spotify, Nokia Music Store, and other purveyors of fine downloadable audio content.
Recorded Clairemont Mobile Garage, San Diego California except “Not So Naive (Here We Go Again)” recorded The Aerie, University City and “Metallic Eyes” recorded DG Dungeon, Bloomington Indiana
Mastered by Tardon Feathered at Mr. Toad’s, San Francisco California
Album cover design and photograph “Seine Wall” by Aaron Poehler
I’m pleased to announce the title and release date of my new album: THIS IS MY REVENGE, April 5, 2011. (Yes, that’s next Tuesday.) It’s a twelve-track, fifty-minute, full-length album, to be available via iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, emusic, Napster, and many other fine outlets. I also expect there will a full album stream somewhere online. The cover image is depicted above.
Hi Aaron. I came across your blog while trying to do a bit of research on band/musician PR. I’m wondering if you can answer a question for me.
I work for a niche digital music store that focuses on aggressive electronic genres. In addition to a variety of labels, we have a rather large roster of independent musicians who sell their music through our store. Several of them have begun asking me to write album descriptions, bios, and other press for them, based on some that I’ve done for friends in the store.
My question is: what do I charge? I have no idea what the “going rate” is for an album one sheet or anything similar. Do you have any insight, or any resources I can peruse?
Brenton R. Nichol
FiXT Store Distribution Manager
For any freelance writer, the only meaningful answer to “what do I charge” is a question: “What can you get?”
The trick is finding where that level is, and keeping track of it as you career progresses. A skilled writer who’s been working in a certain field for years obviously charges more than a neophyte, but the product of his/her efforts will most likely (not always) be superior. On the flip side, dozens of freelance sites offer cheap outsourced labor providing copy of any sort imaginable, but the quality produced is frankly hardly even worth the pennies on the dollar they charge for such substandard work. Most people reading this fall somewhere in between, I’d imagine.
So in your case, it depends on many factors I have no way of knowing: how good are you? How experienced are you? How much do you value your free time? How badly do you need money? Do you need to build up your writing samples? Do you really just want to help these people out, or do you really just want a way to make them stop asking you for free/cheap work? (I find simply sending a quote to be a great way to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak.)
The most important thing to remember when setting your freelance fees is to charge what you think is a fair price for your labor, not what other people think, or what some website claims is a typical price (they’re pulling those numbers out of their rear ends 99% of the time) and never less. (The exception here is to do some pro bono work or a freebie for a friend now and again, but only once to a customer.) If you go below your bottom line, you’re going to be angry at yourself and annoyed with the client, and most likely produce substandard work in response. This doesn’t help anyone.
I would caution against setting your fees outrageously high out of unreasonable appraisal of your own abilities (“I’m just as good as the top copywriters in the business! I should get what they get!”) but in my experience only real no-hope amateurs and wannabes tend to make this mistake and stick to it against the evidence of reality — in fact, I find most writers tend to undervalue their own work and time, setting their fees too low either out of lack of confidence, or empathy with a client, or endlessly repeated headlines about the state of the economy.
Finally, in your specific case, I’d go out of my way to make sure there are no conflicts of interest with your current employer. It doesn’t sound like you’re interested in jumping into fulltime copywriting anytime soon, so before you go crazy with this thing take a few minutes to ensure you won’t be jeopardizing your regular gig chasing after a few extra bucks.
This About.com piece contains some extremely basic, solid ground rules for musicians attempting to handle their own music press PR — occasionally to the degree that certain points might seem blatantly obvious (“Don’t be annoying”), but the common fatal flaw of the self-promoter is a complete lack of perspective. There are a couple of real groaner sentences in the piece that indicate the writer knows all too well the type of person most in need of her advice, particularly: “Stay professional in all emails and phone calls with the press, even if you don’t like what you’re hearing. You’ll get your revenge when you’re big and famous and they’re scrambling to get on the guest list for your show!” Anyone with half a lick of sense can see how ludicrous that second sentence is, but there are many, many musicians who are utterly convinced of that reality. All would do well to disabuse themselves of that notion (and all similarly delusional ideas) immediately.
For this reason, I’d generally advise skilled musicians who are inexperienced writers against attempting their own music copywriting, although the piece does contain links to some basic press release and bio templates for those who either want to give it shot or simply lack the resources to hire a proper music copywriter. In either case, having a professional music copywriter edit the work before release would be highly recommended (if not absolutely paramount) as well as significantly cheaper than hiring a copywriter to draft professional press release copy from scratch — probably less than half the cost.
This is an excellent article lamenting an unfortunately all-too-common problem: terrible business writing. Sure, I’m a writer, I’m keyed in to notice this stuff — but you are too, and so is every single reader/consumer/customer out there: when you encounter it, you get bored and stop reading. That’s it. And when that happens, business writing has failed.
Author Jason Fried correctly identifies a few of the common hallmarks of awful copywriting, nailing “buzzwords, jargon, and vapid expressions” as pervasive copy problems — managerial types, take note: the rest of the world is not as impressed with Lean Six Sigma catchphrases and alphabet soup acronyms as you are. While Fried seems slightly overenamored with the “quirky and personal”approach — which works well for some businesses but applied indiscriminately can be disastrous — in general his article makes an excellent case for the value good professional copywriting can provide. In fact, after reading and digesting Fried’s points, I’d suggest taking a look at your own business or organization’s promotional materials and considering these three questions: If I knew absolutely nothing about this and was encountering it for the first time, what would I think?Would I keep reading, or would I zone out? And finally, and most importantly, is this conveying the message I need it to convey? If the answer to that last question is no, well…that’s a problem.
I recorded and produced this track at the Indiana University Musical Arts Center studio in the mid-90s as part of my audio engineering studies. If I remember correctly, local bands wanting to be recorded put signup forms in an envelope outside the studio door, and I recall having a boombox demo tape they’d recorded beforehand — maybe that was submitted along with the initial form? Dunno. In any case, I was surprised at the number of solid tunes Yarnmarvins brought to the table and thought they were an really good band, even if they wore their R.E.M. influences a bit on their sleeves at times. I do recall pretty much every other band that submitted was utterly dire so it didn’t take me long to decide which band I wanted to record.
The session was recorded to 16-track 2-inch analog tape with the band all playing live together in the same room; that’s my voice at the beginning announcing the take. This was actually the rough mix I did right after the tracking session; I did a remix later that pushed the vocals further forward and removed most of the hiss evident in the recording (that’s the one I submitted for grading), but they preferred this mix. Listening to both later on, I had to agree with their decision.
I also the recall the upperclassman assigned to “assist” us in the session pushing the band to track separately, overdub the vocals, etc. and lead singer Darin Glenn looking extremely uncomfortable with his suggestions. I went over and asked him what he wanted to do — which was track everything live — and that’s what we did, above the sneering of the Queensryche-loving assistant engineer, who couldn’t resist throwing in “Going for that boombox sound, eh?” Whatever, dude — just plug in the cables like I asked.
Credits for Yarnmarvins – “Unturned”: Tom Hoff – bass, Josh Parks – drums, Eli McCormick – guitar, Darin Glenn – vocals.
I always regretted that I never got the chance to see them live, but the members of Yarnmarvins went on to about a dozen different Bloomington bands. You can learn more about that at their Musicalfamilytree page, as well as hear a bunch of other Yarnmarvins tunes.
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From the ol’ inbox:
I recorded and produced this track at the Indiana University Musical Arts Center studio in the mid-90s as part of my audio engineering studies. If I remember correctly, local bands wanting to be recorded put signup forms in an envelope outside the studio door, and I recall having a boombox demo tape they’d recorded beforehand — maybe that was submitted along with the initial form? Dunno. In any case, I was surprised at the number of solid tunes 
