Corporate Rock Music is Terribly Boring - Fuji Rock is For Old People - Had Kenny Rogers Been Born 20 Years Later, He'd Be a Rock Musician and Probably Appearing at Fuji Rock

Rock music, for the most part, is totally and completely boring. No wonder many young people under 35 don't listen to it. Today's corporate Rock music is for old people.

Average Fuji Rock fan

I just saw the news release for this year's artist line up at Japan's famous summer festival, Fuji Rock. May I say, "Boring!" No. Make that BORING! B-O-R-I-N-G! There's not one new and exciting artist on the top lineup at all... Here's the announced line up for Fuji Rock 2012 so far:


Beady Eye (Oasis retreads - Oasis were OK 20 years ago)
Elvis Costello and the Attractions (Loved Elvis... in 1979!)
Stone Roses (Loved them in the 80s & early 90s - but that's more than 20 years ago)
Radiohead (Ditto to above)
Jack White (White Stripes, Dead Weather, ho hum... At least Dead Weather has been in the last decade)
The Specials (Loved them - When I was a university student)
Buddy Guy (Buddy Guy? Wait! What?) 


I said there were no cool new artists on the bill, but I take that back. Galactic is playing. Galactic is cool. Galactic is relatively new and doing something fresh with music.

Galactic - Heart of Steel

But that's about it; Galactic. 


Look, I like(d?) rock music as much as the next guy but this playing old artists all the time is just killing rock music (it's already dead?) I certainly loved Elvis Costello and the Attractions. I went to see them in 79 (or was it 80?) in Santa Barbara. The Specials, Stone Roses? Sure. A long time ago. I even saw Buddy Guy play at a 300 person venue in Shibuya called Club Quattro in the late 80s...


I know that Fuji needs to draw an audience and I know that older people are the ones that have the most money, but Jeez Louise, how about at least trying to propagate new artists and new music for the future? There's tons of good new artists... How about playing one or two of them? 


I liked these other artists that Fuji has lined up. I've played them all on the radio - a lot. Still do sometimes. But there's no way I am going to pay $1000 USD to spend a weekend with my girlfriend at Fuji Rock watching artists that should be playing in cozy 500 seater venues in downtown Tokyo. Especially since the sound at outdoor festivals is terrible and seeing any band at Fuji Rock is about as fun as lining up at Disneyland for an hour and a half just to ride Dumbo for two minutes. 


No thanks.


With a boring line up of old artists that they have set up for this year's Fuji Rock, I'm surprised The Who aren't playing. At least with the Who, you know you'll be getting a tired band on stage that hasn't written any new songs in 35 years. No surprises there...

♫ People try to put us down... 

Talking about our ge...ge...geriatrics ♫

I'll make a prediction here: 


No more Fuji Rock in 15 years. They can't survive. At this rate their average audience will be on Social Security by then.


With this type of line up, the Fuji Rock fan appeal is, let me put this nicely (or as Spinal Tap's Ian Faith would say) "the band's appeal is not waining... it's becoming 'more selective.'" 


Yeah, more selective to people over 45-years-old... Or is that exaggerating? OK. More selective for people over 55!


I'm not a particularly big fan of Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson or Adele (actually Adele is okay) but at least these artists appeal to people under 30. The Fuji Rock lineup? What? Is this designed for the geriatric crowd? 


Maybe this year's Fuji Rock can get sponsorships from companies that make and sell products that do things like lower cholesterol levels or other companies that sell adult diapers or medicine for constipation.


Oh, did I mention that Fuji Rock's lineup this year is boring?


I also have Kenny Rogers's name in the title of this article. Most people know who Kenny Rogers is. Kenny Rogers is a very famous country music artist in the USA. He might even be the most famous country music artist in history. He has had more than 120 hit singles in his career. What Michael Jackson was to Pop Music, Kenny Rogers was to country music.


But one thing many people don't know was that, at the start of his career, Kenny Rogers was the lead vocalist for a late sixties psychedelic rock band named the First Edition. In fact, the First Edition was a famous group that had several smash hits - on the pop/rock and country music charts in the sixties psychedelic era! 

Kenny Rogers' band, the First Edition was formed in 1967 and broke up in 1976. It was then that Kenny Rogers made an important career decision: He dropped pop and rock music for a career in country music because of his age. He thought that rock music was music for young people (it was) and at his age, if he was going to continue in music, he'd have to go the route of country music that found it acceptable to have older artists. Rock was a young person's arena. Country and Western had many popular artists who were in their late sixties, like Ernest Tubb, and some, like Earl Scruggs, who is in his eighties and still performing country music today!  


Too bad for Japan's rock music fans that Kenny Rogers quit pop and rock music for a career in country. Now, at his ripe old age of 74 years old, Kenny would fit quite well on the main stage of Fuji Rock....


In fact, Kenny wouldn't even be the oldest one to perform on stage if he were invited to Fuji Rock this year. That would be reserved for Buddy Guy, who is two years older than Kenny Rogers.


Fuji Rock? My what a cool and cutting edge lineup up... If you were born in the 1950s. Pretty soon they'll be having to give senior citizen's discounts for Fuji Rock.


Don't forget to get in line for that... Oh and don't forget, senior citizens get a 20% discount.

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Why Good UK and USA (Western) Independent and Alternative Artists Cannot Get Record or Publishing Deals in Japan

In the last month, I've had three different artists' managers and agents from the USA, Ireland and Britain ask me for help in getting them a release deal or a music publishing deal in Japan. These people ask me because I play a lot of new and independent music on the FM radio. Perhaps they also know I used to run one of Japan's most successful Indies labels (in the late 80s & early 90s) and I have been involved with alternative music and the promotion of that kind of music since the late 70s.

Today, I'd like to write a short post about why it is next to impossible for an unsigned independent artist in the west to get a record or publishing deal in Japan in the year 2012. I do this to help people and I do this to help myself because I've written this explanation more times than I care to and don't want to do it anymore. 


This example though, I'm sure, is not just limited to the music industry. I think this example is a microcosm for all industries across the board in Japan when it comes to subsidiaries and licencing product across international boundaries.


Let me give you specifics.


I can think of three artists that I really like and have been playing on our nightly FM radio show. These artists have also hit the Top 5 Japan countdown hosted by George Williams. You can see that chart here.
Because of this support and these efforts to bring new music to Japan, I have earned the reputation for being the guy who finds these new artists and plays them years before they break even in the west. May I pat myself on the back? Recent examples were Amy Winehouse who we began playing heavily in 2006, a full two years before she she broke big and, more recently, Adele who was introduced to me by Rodney Bingenheimer. I was the first one to play these artists in Japan years before they got popular even in the west. Over the years there were hundreds. Guns and Roses was another notable one way back when. 


Like I said, this is an example, a microcosm, of how other businesses in Japan work also. If there is a parent company and a subsidiary involved you can be sure that politics play a big part in all decisions that are made... This point is obvious but many artists fail to grasp this.


In the past, I have also introduced independent artists to Japanese record labels and music publishers and have gotten them contracts. But that was well before the year 2000. Japanese labels and music publishers today are not interested in signing new western acts for the Japanese market and here's why...


Let's take the example of a world-wide label like Warner music. Warner in the USA releases hundreds of albums annually. Of those hundreds of albums, only a handful get released in Japan. It is unclear how the process for deciding which artists' albums get released in Japan is made. Ostensibly, it would be a decision founded on which artists' album the local label people believe would be most popular and sell the best, but I would be a fool to tell you that is exactly how it is done. I have been in Japan long enough to know that politics and favors are quite important in the decision room. I know that sometimes the good of the company is sacrificed in order to placate some employees' desires and wishes. 


I have witnessed, more than five times in my life, adult Japanese men over 40-years-old of age, actually crying or pouting like little children at business meetings because they didn't get their way. I've seen this in the last month, actually! Grown men crying like children! It was astounding. 


So remember that, perhaps, sometimes an album is released just because Mr. Tanaka is a fan of that artist even though the rest of the staff don't feel that it will sell well... And when it doesn't sell well? Does Mr. Tanaka suffer any penalty? Not immediately and perhaps never. In a few years he might be transferred to another section.


Ever heard of the Peter Principle? If you haven't you should. The Peter Principle says that, "In a hierarchy, every employee will rise to their highest level of incompetence." That, in a nutshell is one of the biggest reasons I can see why business is bad in today's Japan.


But I digress.


The western arm of the label releases hundreds of artists a year. In Japan, only a few of those are released. Politics play a big part. Now, when hundreds are not released, what would happen if the Japanese side arbitrarily picked up an artist from, say, London who wasn't signed to the sister or parent label and released that artist in Japan? Well, you can bet that the sister or parent company would soon find out about it and they would be very pissed off. It would become a major political problem for the western label (destroy their credibility in the local market) and it would then become a major political problem for the Japanese side too.


The western arm of the label would say (of course), "Hey! We have all these other artists that we released. Why don't you release one of those? Why don't you help us promote our artists?" A big row would ensue. And people would be angry and relationships frayed or destroyed.


The Japanese, not being ones to want to make trouble, would rather decline unilaterally signing an artist from the west - one that, by the way, doesn't even have management that the Japanese side has a relation with - so if there is trouble, they have no one to blame. 


The Japanese just won't do it.

Suddyn, one of the best bands in the world today? Not signed in Japan.

There is one more problem. In spite of what you've heard, western artist CDs and album sales have dropped off a cliff in this country. Even Lady Gaga and Coldplay are second rate in this country compared to Japanese artists. 


In the west, you have the Billboard charts. In Japan, we have the Oricon charts. They are both corrupted by payola but they are what we use. To see the most recent Oricon charts, we have to subscribe and pay money. There's no way I'm going to pay money for that so here's the most recent Oricon Chart Top 30 chart that we can see for free. It's from Nov. 11, 2011. See if you recognize any names on the Top 30:

See any Adele? Lady Gaga? Katy Perry or Flo Rida? No? Neither do I and you will rarely, if ever, see them on any Japanese charts. Like I said, sales of western artists have dropped off a cliff in Japan. 


There won't be any recovery of those sales anytime soon, either.


Understanding these things, then you can see why your band, unsigned in the west, has a basically zero chance of getting signed here in Japan. I hate to break this news to you good folks and great musicians but it is what it is. Don't take it personally at all if a Japanese label or publisher doesn't answer your inquiries about your music. It's not about the music anymore.


Imagine if there were a time slip and your band were the Beatles, as yet undiscovered in 2012 and unsigned to a label in the west, there's no way a Japanese label will sign you for release in Japan. It has nothing to do with your music and your talent and gift; it has everything to do with intra-company politics.


John Lennon and Paul McCartney, if they were 18 years old today, would have a major problem. And that's why the major music industry is dying.


Good riddance?




For Linda, Margaret, Jp and Allison

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