The 80’s were about learning the top-40/rock bar band trade in SC. My brother, my band and myself spent time learning several hundred cover songs and moving up the income ladder in local bars. After getting some local radio airplay with some of our original songs we sort of became big fish in a little pond - (at least in our minds). The conventional wisdom from all our drunken musician buddies was: “Nobody ever gets a record deal in SC… if you want to perpetuate your musical career you’ve got to move to a major city like Atlanta, L.A., or N.Y.” So, we loaded up the truck and we moved to Bev-er-ly. This was approximately 3 years before Hootie and the Blowfish got their record deal… in SC - HA! Life lesson: never trust the “conventional wisdom” of the yahoos that you hang with.
In the early 90’s my brother and I moved to L.A. There we soon learned that the music industry was focused on Seattle and grunge was the fad. But, we soldiered on. We honed our craft by writing pop, rock, hard rock, reggae, and punk tunes. We tried to be open to every possible musical influence in the hopes of creating a unique sound. We tested them on the local LA market via bars, coffee shops, etc., and recording when we could. Over about 4 ½ years we had written a large number of songs and recorded 15 or 20. So, we decided to put together our 1st full length CD.
Around that same time our band sort of fell apart, so we had to recruit new members. In the interim, we learned that we could get national radio airplay through college stations. We began mailing out full length CD’s to college stations around the country. Using calling cards we’d call them during our work breaks and lunches to check chart progress. (Later we learned that sending full CD’s was a big NO-NO because stations only want singles. They barely have time to sift through the large stacks of CD singles that they receive). But, about a 1/3 of the 200 college stations were sympathetic to our “grand ignorance” and began playing different cuts from our CD. We ended up charting in the top 30 on 13 stations play lists in the College Music Journal - (college music’s equivalent to the Billboard charts). About ½ of the other 70ish stations gave us medium to heavy rotation and in some cases we were the only unsigned band on their chart. Not bad for a couple of guys making radio promo calls on their lunch hour. An idea was born. Maybe we can do this independently. Without a record deal!!!
Well said.
Wenda
October 28th, 2008