Metal favourites Porcupine Tree are set to return to the UK in November
for two dates in Oxford and London. Further dates are also expected to follow
in December.
In a moment of musical history that will no doubt leave Sheffield’s finest The Arctic Monkeys cringing, Welsh crooner Tom Jones picked the Concert for Diana to unveil his version of I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor, the massive hit that cemented the Monkeys’ rise to fame.
American alt-legends Sonic Youth have stunned their fans by announcing the release of a new compilation album… through Starbucks. The album is due to feature at least one new Sonic Youth track and will be available for sale throughout the Starbucks chain.
Never mind the Concert For Diana or Live Earth – July 9th is the date when the new Wembley Stadium will really get put through its live music paces as Metallica thunder into town for the stadium’s first ever metal gig. The bill just got heavier as well, with Metallica’s Bay Area buddies Machine Head joining the party as the main support act.
Midlands guitar heroes Editors crashed back into the album charts on Sunday as their second album An End Has A Beginning debuted at number one. The four piece from Birmingham beat Kelly Clarkson to the top spot.
of all the adulation. Maybe it’s because he never
really expected it in the first place.
“I made the first record for myself and for my
friends to get a kick out of,” he muses, recalling
his earliest dealings with the recording industry. “I
wasn’t desperate. As a matter of fact I didn’t
even want a record deal. You know, the music was weird
and I thought no one is going to like this, it’s
really just for me.” That record was Flex-Able
– a milestone according to many. But Vai remembers
it as much for how it got released.
“It had a big machine behind it in the sense that
I was joining all these big rock bands and it was a
new kind of guitar hero record, you know?” he
begins. “But I’d made this record and I’d
started sending it around record companies and I was
unequivocally denied access to them. There was only
one label that offered me a deal.
“So I looked at this deal. I’m very attentive
to detail and I highly recommend any young musician
educating themselves about the music business that you
protect your intellectual property because if you don’t
then guess what – you don’t control it.
I looked at this deal and it dawned on me after hiring
a good attorney and having him explain it to me that
it was pathetic. They way that deals were set up in
the businesses was completely lopsided. And I wasn’t
desperate. It offered $10,000 for my record.
“I had done the whole thing myself so I thought
‘how do I continue to do the whole thing myself?’
I figured distribution was the next step after a label.
So I sent it to a lot of distribution companies and
the only one that responded was this guy Cliff Cultreri.
Important Records was the name of the distribution company.
He cut me this amazing deal, a distribution deal, where
I was getting $4 and ten cents per record. That was
unheard of when everyone was getting 25 cents. And he
took a thousand records. So that’s like, ‘Wooh,
$4000!’ Then he took another thousand, and another
thousand. Then CDs came out and I was getting $7 and
fifty cents a CD, and then it sold 400,000 units...”
It was the start of the Vai phenomenon that continues
to this day. Regardless of musical trends or fashions,
he has always stood on the principal of creating music
for its own sake. Not even the upheaval of grunge in
the early 1990s, seen by the media as a complete rejection
of the technical style of playing that Vai embodies,
was enough to deter him for making music on his own
terms.
“I didn’t have any intentions of doing anything
that I didn’t feel I was good at,” he insists.
“Grunge offered certain things that I liked...
