He was calling regarding our upcoming show with LMFAO on Saturday the 18th of July, but we ended up talking a little longer regarding our album release (August 18th 2008) and some other topics.
What inspired me to sit down and write this, taking a break form the 8 million things on the Silver Medallion to do list was what he said regarding he heard over the grapevine that we disliked the New Times Article on Sonny Long, which is hilarious, because I don’t know what grape vine we were in to get that heard but that’s pretty ludicrous that people are saying stuff about us and that its that. I wrote some comments on arizonabeats.com, but they have little reflection on my opinion as portrayed the intense discussion of this article that we went through with dozens of people in the music scene in Arizona in the weeks following.
I was in a state of shock after reading the article “A Star in His Own Mind” not because I disliked it, but because that this was the state of the Arizona music scene: the press decided to write a story about someone whose only story was they we’re no one at all, with nothing cracking.
This means that there are no Arizona artists doing something interesting who could be written about on hand, instead they had to find a liar and make fun of him/expose him. I couldn’t agree more with the concept behind this because man am I tired of people acting like they’re getting it crackin and in reality having nothing while bands like us keep our mouths tight about what we’re doing because we don’t want to act big headed and have shit talked about us (even though everyone apparently thinks we’re assholes anyway). But it’s a sad fact that our scene is so terrible (and I’m gonna stop being nice, and say it really really is this bad) that this was the best thing they could put a cover together about. This isn’t on the New Times, this is on Arizona music, which I’m beginning to start to want to lose my discretion in talking about on a daily basis.
My favorite music New Times stories are, in order: Hollywood Heartthrob, Sonny Long, and the Willy Northpole Groove Candy story.
My favorite part of this is the fact that the only thing worth writing about out of all of these is Groove Candy, because Groove candy is a. the shit and b. a cultural pillar in Arizona for music and urban life. Willy Northpole hasn’t done squat for Arizona more than any other rapper but diss people and break up the Roundtable, I damn near rather read about Trap (on the flip side, I would love to read a story on Willy’s manager, Tiffany J. whose a beast of fairly epic proportions). Hollywood Heartthrob is only relevant because Teddy won the Health and Wealth Raffle (as their eventual album release review said, they might be relevant now that they're on tour), and I didn’t even know Sonny Long still was alive/making music until that story came out. That’s not what made these stories dope to me, the subjects might have kinda sucked, but they went IN on everyone involved here. They talked shit, they exposed the fact these people are fakers and/or liars and/or real human beings. Both Hollywood Heartthrob and Sonny Long we're shown to be "fake" stars and thats a mighty powerful trend to be proliferating through the press.
If someone does our story I’d want it to be the same way though, because we’re humans, and we’re seriously flawed, and that’s why I think our music is so good. And all these other stories are so convoluted, because these peoples lives are wack! Wheres the sex? The fights? The lies? The shady industry people? Back of the club promoter beatdowns? Sex and music and drugs and violence and lies and money! Are the rest of these bands not in the midst of this? They can’t even pull off a weeklong bender so the press thinks they are? This is the MUSIC INDUSTRY. Get it crackin!
At the end of the day I’m comfortable with any press story from any avenue, even if it’s biased negatively, because you can talk all to hell about Carnegie and I as human beings and what we’ve done to get here (sell outs, assholes, posers, gimmicks, gay, cocky, stuck up, pretentious, strung out, talentless, whatever) but at the end of the day our music is GREAT and we’re POPULAR and we’ve done 85 shows in the last year and our national buzz is bigger than signed acts and that makes us, in my opinion, the most relevant musical act in Arizona (gasp).
In the past three weeks, people have told us a lot about what the grapevine has said, and I quote.
“Silver Medallion didn’t like the Sonny Long piece”
“they’re saying you guys sold out”
“I heard people say you guys aren’t together enough to ever drop a project”
LOL. My album is barcoded and shrinkwrapped and in my hands, our release is at the goddamn W, I read that Sonny Long piece four or five times, loved it, agreed with it, an pushed it on other people to read it, and if we sold out where’s the damn money?
What a life, I've been trying to so hard to just keep on the low until we we're ready for the blitzkrieg offense we we're planning, but its always the little things that get under my skin and ruin my Hawaii vacation.
I keep saying I’m going to write some kind of blog on our experiences in the industry and I super half ass it and never really write anything interesting cause my fam reads everything I write, and we have a lot of other things to get done, and I’ve been afraid of people learning too much about us, we keep mysterious and I like that.
But at the end of the day, if people knew what was really good with us, I feel we wouldn’t have a lot of these problems with people talking so much.
In the last month we:
1. Found out the record label we we’re dealing with was full of it and never going to cut the check.
2. Secured an album release at the most prestigious event location we could find in the valley
3. Flew to Hawaii and djed
4. Got sponsored by Nooka watches
5. Got with a new booking agent who immediately flew to Miami to work us there
6. Began developing a weekly Las Vegas event with one of the oldest, most respected deejays we know
7. Launched or djing with a neo-soul and old school weekly event we deejay at a club in the Biltmore
8. Released and promoted a DJ CD “Electro is the Loneliest Number”
9. Opened for Wale and 2 Live Crew, and did four other shows
10. Got booked for NYC
11. Launched our street promotions with a new sticker line
12. Collaborated with two of the best local street wear names on clothing line shirts for fall release
13. Worked on two mixtapes with J. Paul and Fresh 85
14. Began a project with a producer in Canada
15. Wrote new records and placement tracks with the writer of Madonna’s “Open Your Heart”
16. Developed an intensive local radio promotions plan with the help of some of our favorite radio peeps (Ramses and Chilly shout outs)
17. Launched a project with one of our favorite local deejays to mash up our tracks with Scottsdale classics
That’s last month. This music industry involves real work, and no one I read these damn articles about does it. Yes my gas gauge is empty and I live in an apartment with not one piece of furniture, but my bands popping. So you know what fuck it, I’m writing about and promoting everything we do and taggin all sorts of people in it, and maybe our New Times feature if it comes to fruition will be about a band that’s trying to run its state and create a national buzz with nothing but their own grit, and not about a liar an poser who makes our entire state music scene look like a bunch of featherweights.
If any has any questions about whether I like something they can read it right at GetYourSwagUp.
