by Steve Albini

Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what’s printed on the contract. It’s too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody’s eyes water. The lackey shouts to everybody that the first one to swim the trench gets to sign the contract. Everybody dives in the trench and they struggle furiously to get to the other end. Two people arrive simultaneously and begin wrestling furiously, clawing each other and dunking each other under the shit. Eventually, one of them capitulates, and there’s only one contestant left. He reaches for the pen, but the Lackey says “Actually, I think you need a little more development. Swim again, please. Backstroke”.

And he does of course.

I. A&R Scouts

Every major label involved in the hunt for new bands now has on staff a high-profile point man, an “A & R” rep who can present a comfortable face to any prospective band. The initials stand for “Artist and Repertoire.” because historically, the A & R staff would select artists to record music that they had also selected, out of an available pool of each. This is still the case, though not openly. These guys are universally young [about the same age as the bands being wooed], and nowadays they always have some obvious underground rock credibility flag they can wave.

Lyle Preslar, former guitarist for Minor Threat, is one of them. Terry Tolkin, former NY independent booking agent and assistant manager at Touch and Go is one of them. Al Smith, former soundman at CBGB is one of them. Mike Gitter, former editor of XXX fanzine and contributor to Rip, Kerrang and other lowbrow rags is one of them. Many of the annoying turds who used to staff college radio stations are in their ranks as well. There are several reasons A & R scouts are always young. The explanation usually copped-to is that the scout will be “hip to the current musical “scene.” A more important reason is that the bands will intuitively trust someone they think is a peer, and who speaks fondly of the same formative rock and roll experiences. The A & R person is the first person to make contact with the band, and as such is the first person to promise them the moon. Who better to promise them the moon than an idealistic young turk who expects to be calling the shots in a few years, and who has had no previous experience with a big record company. Hell, he’s as naive as the band he’s duping. When he tells them no one will interfere in their creative process, he probably even believes it. When he sits down with the band for the first time, over a plate of angel hair pasta, he can tell them with all sincerity that when they sign with company X, they’re really signing with him and he’s on their side. Remember that great gig I saw you at in ’85? Didn’t we have a blast. By now all rock bands are wise enough to be suspicious of music industry scum. There is a pervasive caricature in popular culture of a portly, middle aged ex-hipster talking a mile-a-minute, using outdated jargon and calling everybody “baby.” After meeting “their” A & R guy, the band will say to themselves and everyone else, “He’s not like a record company guy at all! He’s like one of us.” And they will be right. That’s one of the reasons he was hired.

These A & R guys are not allowed to write contracts. What they do is present the band with a letter of intent, or “deal memo,” which loosely states some terms, and affirms that the band will sign with the label once a contract has been agreed on. The spookiest thing about this harmless sounding little memo, is that it is, for all legal purposes, a binding document. That is, once the band signs it, they are under obligation to conclude a deal with the label. If the label presents them with a contract that the band don’t want to sign, all the label has to do is wait. There are a hundred other bands willing to sign the exact same contract, so the label is in a position of strength. These letters never have any terms of expiration, so the band remain bound by the deal memo until a contract is signed, no matter how long that takes. The band cannot sign to another laborer or even put out its own material unless they are released from their agreement, which never happens. Make no mistake about it: once a band has signed a letter of intent, they will either eventually sign a contract that suits the label or they will be destroyed.

One of my favorite bands was held hostage for the better part of two years by a slick young “He’s not like a label guy at all,” A & R rep, on the basis of such a deal memo. He had failed to come through on any of his promises [something he did with similar effect to another well-known band], and so the band wanted out. Another label expressed interest, but when the A & R man was asked to release the band, he said he would need money or points, or possibly both, before he would consider it. The new label was afraid the price would be too dear, and they said no thanks. On the cusp of making their signature album, an excellent band, humiliated, broke up from the stress and the many months of inactivity.

II. There’s This Band…

There’s this band. They’re pretty ordinary, but they’re also pretty good, so they’ve attracted some attention. They’re signed to a moderate-sized “independent” label owned by a distribution company, and they have another two albums owed to the label. They’re a little ambitious. They’d like to get signed by a major label so they can have some security you know, get some good equipment, tour in a proper tour bus — nothing fancy, just a little reward for all the hard work. To that end, they got a manager. He knows some of the label guys, and he can shop their next project to all the right people. He takes his cut, sure, but it’s only 15%, and if he can get them signed then it’s money well spent. Anyways, it doesn’t cost them anything if it doesn’t work. 15% of nothing isn’t much! One day an A & R scout calls them, says he’s ‘been following them for a while now, and when their manager mentioned them to him, it just “clicked.” Would they like to meet with him about the possibility of working out a deal with his label? Wow. Big Break time. They meet the guy, and y’know what — he’s not what they expected from a label guy. He’s young and dresses pretty much like the band does. He knows all their favorite bands. He’s like one of them. He tells them he wants to go to bat for them, to try to get them everything they want. He says anything is possible with the right attitude.

They conclude the evening by taking home a copy of a deal memo they wrote out and signed on the spot. The A & R guy was full of great ideas, even talked about using a name producer. Butch Vig is out of the question-he wants 100 g’s and three points, but they can get Don Fleming for $30,000 plus three points. Even that’s a little steep, so maybe they’ll go with that guy who used to be in David Letterman’s band. He only wants three points. Or they can have just anybody record it (like Warton Tiers, maybe– cost you 5 or 7 grand] and have Andy Wallace remix it for 4 grand a track plus 2 points. It was a lot to think about. Well, they like this guy and they trust him. Besides, they already signed the deal memo. He must have been serious about wanting them to sign. They break the news to their current label, and the label manager says he wants them to succeed, so they have his blessing. He will need to be compensated, of course, for the remaining albums left on their contract, but he’ll work it out with the label himself.

Sub Pop made millions from selling off Nirvana, and Twin Tone hasn’t done bad either: 50 grand for the Babes and 60 grand for the Poster Children– without having to sell a single additional record. It’ll be something modest. The new label doesn’t mind, so long as it’s recoupable out of royalties. Well, they get the final contract, and it’s not quite what they expected. They figure it’s better to be safe than sorry and they turn it over to a lawyer–one who says he’s experienced in entertainment law and he hammers out a few bugs. They’re still not sure about it, but the lawyer says he’s seen a lot of contracts, and theirs is pretty good. They’ll be great royalty: 13% [less a 1O% packaging deduction]. Wasn’t it Buffalo Tom that were only getting 12% less 10? Whatever. The old label only wants 50 grand, an no points. Hell, Sub Pop got 3 points when they let Nirvana go. They’re signed for four years, with options on each year, for a total of over a million dollars! That’s a lot of money in any man’s English. The first year’s advance alone is $250,000. Just think about it, a quarter million, just for being in a rock band! Their manager thinks it’s a great deal, especially the large advance. Besides, he knows a publishing company that will take the band on if they get signed, and even give them an advance of 20 grand, so they’ll be making that money too. The manager says publishing is pretty mysterious, and nobody really knows where all the money comes from, but the lawyer can look that contract over too. Hell, it’s free money. Their booking agent is excited about the band signing to a major. He says they can maybe average $1,000 or $2,000 a night from now on. That’s enough to justify a five week tour, and with tour support, they can use a proper crew, buy some good equipment and even get a tour bus! Buses are pretty expensive, but if you figure in the price of a hotel room for everybody In the band and crew, they’re actually about the same cost. Some bands like Therapy? and Sloan and Stereolab use buses on their tours even when they’re getting paid only a couple hundred bucks a night, and this tour should earn at least a grand or two every night. It’ll be worth it. The band will be more comfortable and will play better.

The agent says a band on a major label can get a merchandising company to pay them an advance on T-shirt sales! ridiculous! There’s a gold mine here! The lawyer Should look over the merchandising contract, just to be safe. They get drunk at the signing party. Polaroids are taken and everybody looks thrilled. The label picked them up in a limo. They decided to go with the producer who used to be in Letterman’s band. He had these technicians come in and tune the drums for them and tweak their amps and guitars. He had a guy bring in a slew of expensive old “vintage” microphones. Boy, were they “warm.” He even had a guy come in and check the phase of all the equipment in the control room! Boy, was he professional. He used a bunch of equipment on them and by the end of it, they all agreed that it sounded very “punchy,” yet “warm.” All that hard work paid off. With the help of a video, the album went like hotcakes! They sold a quarter million copies! Here is the math that will explain just how fucked they are: These figures are representative of amounts that appear in record contracts daily. There’s no need to skew the figures to make the scenario look bad, since real-life examples more than abound. income is bold and underlined, expenses are not.

Advance:	$ 250,000
Legal fees:	$ 10,000
Producer’s advance:	$ 50,000
Drum Amp, Mic and Phase “Doctors”:	$ 3,000
Equipment rental:	$ 5,000
Lodgings while in studio:	$ 10,000
Mastering:	$ 10,000
Video budget:	$ 30,000
Crew:	$ 5,000
Off-line:	$ 2,000
Catering:	$ 1,000
Copies, couriers, transportation:	$ 2,000
Album Artwork:	$ 5,000
Band fund:	$ 15,000
New fancy professional guitars [2]:	$ 3,000
New fancy potato-shaped bass guitar:	$ 1,000
Rehearsal space rental:	$ 500
Tour expense [5 weeks]:	$ 50,875
Crew [3]:	$ 7,500
Fuel:	$ 3,000
Wardrobe:	$ 1,000
Tour gross income:	$ 50,000
Manager’s cut:	$ 7,500
Manager’s cut:	$ 3,000
Publishing advance:	$ 20,000
Lawyer’s fee:	$ 1,000
Gross retail revenue Royalty:	[13% of 90% of retail]: $ 351,000
Producer’s points:	[3% less $50,000 advance]: $ 40,000
Recoupable buyout from previous label:	$ 50,000
Record company income:
Artist Royalties:	$ 351,000
Manufacturing, packaging and distribution:	@ $2.20 per record: $ 550,000
The Balance Sheet: This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game.
Producer:	$ 90,000
Studio:	$ 52,500
Agent:	$ 7,500
Band member net income each:	$ 4,031.25

The band is now 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month. The next album will be about the same, except that the record company will insist they spend more time and money on it. Since the previous one never “recouped,” the band will have no leverage, and will oblige. The next tour will be about the same, except the merchandising advance will have already been paid, and the band, strangely enough, won’t have earned any royalties from their T-shirts yet. Maybe the T-shirt guys have figured out how to count money like record company guys.

Some of your friends are probably already this fucked.

Originally printed in Baffler No.5 and/or MaximumRocknRoll No.133

Steve Albini is a well-known engineer as well as an equally well-known critic of major labels and the “music industry”. Steve has worked with artists ranging from the smallest garage band to the Pixies, Page/Plant, and Nirvana. In addition to his recording work, Steve was also the founder of the seminal ’80s noise-rock band Big Black, and now plays guitar in the underground rock band Shellac.

 

“Sammy Jankis wrote himself endless notes. But he’d get mixed up. I’ve got a more graceful solution to the memory problem. I’m disciplined and organized. I use habit and routine to make my life possible. Sammy had no drive. No reason to make it work” – Leonard Shelby

Remember Sammy Jenkis -

Sammy Jankis had the same problem. He tried writing himself notes. Lots of notes. But he’d get confused.

Sammy Jankis. Yeah, I guess I tell people about Sammy to help them understand. Sammy’s story helps me understand my own situation

Sammy Jankis wrote himself endless notes. But he’d get mixed up. I’ve got a more graceful solution to the memory problem. I’m disciplined and organized. I use habit and routine to make my life possible. Sammy had no drive. No reason to make it work.

I met Sammy through work.

Insurance. I was an investigator. I’d investigate claims to see which ones were phony.

I had to see through people’s bullshit. It was useful experience, because now it’s my life. When I meet someone, I don’t even know if I’ve met them before. I have to look in their eyes and just figure them out. My job taught me that the best way to find out what someone knew was to let them talk. Throw in the occasional “why?” but just listen. And watch the eyes, the body language. It’s complicated. You might catch a sign but attach the wrong meaning to it. If someone touches their nose while they’re talking, experts will tell you it means they’re lying. It really means they’re nervous, and people get nervous for all sorts of reasons. It’s all about context.

I was good. Sammy was my first real challenge
I’d just become an investigator when I came across Sammy. Mr Samuel R. Jankis – strangest case ever. Guy’s 58, semi-retired accountant. He and his wife had been in this car accident… nothing too serious, but he’s acting funny — he can’t get a handle on what’s going on. The doctors find some possible damaqe to the hippocampus, nothing conclusive. But Sammy can‘t remember anything for more than a couple minutes. He can’t work, can’t do shit, medical bills pile up, his wife calls the insurance company and I get sent in. My first big claims investigation – I really check into it. Sammy can think just fine, but he can’t make any new memories, he can only remember things for a few minutes. He’d watch T.V., but anything longer than
a couple of minutes was too confusing, he couldn’t remember how it began. He liked commercials. They were short. The crazy part was that this guy who couldn’t follow the plot of “Green Acres” could do the most complicated things as long as he had learned them before the accident ….. and as long as he kept his mind on what he was doing.

The doctors assure me that there’s a real condition called Korsokoff’s syndrome; short-term memory loss, rare but legit. But every time I see him I catch a look of recognition. Just a slight look, but he says he can’t remember me at all. I can read people and I‘m thinking bad actor. Now I’m suspicious and I order more tests. His wife has to do everything. Sammy can only do simple stuff. He couldn’t pick up any new skills at all, and that’s how I got him.

So Sammy can’t learn any new skills. But I find something in my research:Conditioning. Sammy should still be able to learn through repetition. It’s how you learn stuff like riding a bike, things you don’t think about, you just get better through practice. Call it muscle memory, whatever, but it’s a completely different part of the brain from the short-term memory. So I have the doctors test Sammy’s response to conditioning… They kept repeating the test, always with the same objects electrified. The point was to see if he could learn to avoid the electrified objects. Not by memory, but by instinct. They kept testing Sammy for months, always with the same objects carrying the electrical charge…

Even with total short-term memory loss,Sammy should’ve learned to instinctively stop picking up the wrong objects. All previous cases of short-term memory loss had responded to conditioning in some way. Sammy didn’t respond at al.l It was enough to suggest his condition was psychological not physical. We turned down his claim on the grounds that he wasn’t covered for mental illness. Sammy’s wife got stuck with the bills and I got a promotion for rejecting a big claim. Conditioning didn’t work for Sammy, so he became helpless. But it works for me. I live the way Sammy couldn’t. Habit and Conditioning. Acting on instinct.

Sammy’s wife was crippled by the cost of supporting him and fighting the company’s decision – but it wasn’t the money that got to her, I never said that Sammy was faking. Just that his problem was mental, not physical. But she… she couldn’t understand. She looks into his eyes and sees the same person. And if it’s not a physical problem…… he should just… snap out of it. So good old Leonard Shelby from the insurance company gives her the seed of doubt, just like he gave it to the doctors. But I never said that Sammy was faking. I never said that.

I told you about how she tried to get him to snap out of it? It got much worse than that. Eventually Sammy’s wife came to see me at the office, and I found out all kinds of shit. She knew that I was the one who had built he case for Sammy faking it. She told me about life with Sammy, how she’d treated him. It had got to the point where she’d get Sammy to hide food all around the house, then stop feeding him to see if his hunger would make him remember where he’d hidden the stuff. She wasn’t a cruel person, she just wanted her old Sammy back. I told her I believe that Sammy should be physically capable of making new memories. She seemed to leave happy. I thought I’d helped her. I thought she just needed some kind of answer. I didn’t think it was important to her what the answer was, just that she had one to believe.

I never said he was faking. Just that his condition was mental, not physical. She seemed satisfied, she just said “thanks” and got up to leave. I found out later that she went home and gave Sammy his final exam. She knew beyond doubt that he loved her, so she found a way to test him. She really thought she would call his bluff…or didn’t want to live with the things she’d put him through. Sammy, it’s time for my shot, she says. Changes the time on her watch and again Sammy, it’s time for my shot. She went into a coma and never recovered. Sammy couldn’t understand or explain what had happened. He’s been in a home ever since. He doesn’t even know his wife is dead.

Sammy’s brain didn’t respond to conditioning, but he was no con man. When his wife looked into his eyes she thought he could be the same as he ever was. When I looked into Sammy’s eyes, I thought I saw recognition. We were both wrong. Now I know. You take it. If you think you’re supposed to recognize someone, you pretend to. You bluff it to get a pat on the head from the doctors. You bluff it to seem less of a freak.

Once upon there was a king who ruled over a vast kingdom. This king happened to be very interested in art and had an artist who every week would paint him a grand painting for his large collection.

One day, a stranger from another country, a small island in fact, came claiming he was a better artist than the famous painter who worked for the king.

The king was shocked by this so instantly decided to hold a painting competition.

So for weeks on end they both slaved away, nobody knowing what would happen.

The final day came and they both put their paintings under a large white sheet in front of the king and all his citizens.

The king’s artists pulled off his sheet and revealed a large painting of a basket of fruit. So good in fact that the birds flew in through the windows of the palace and attempted to eat the fruit.

The king looked at the stranger and said ‘Ha! My artist has fooled Nature herself, surely you cannot beat it. Now reveal your painting!’

The stranger stood there, motionless, and did nothing.

‘I command you to remove your sheet, stranger!’ shouted the King, yet still he did nothing.

The king then went mad, strode down from his throne, put his hand on the sheet and attempted to pull it off.

But there was no sheet, only canvass, a rough outline of a cloth drawn on in a black pencil.

He had been fooled.

The artist looked up and smiled, and spoke quietly to the king,

‘Your artist may have fooled Nature, but I have made the king of this great land look like a bit of a twat.’