From: messiah
Message:
well i'm on vacation finally, yee haw! which means i have a moment to
catch up with ukd after months of working 13 days out of every 14.
despite the hard work it's been a pretty cool 4-5 months, i've been
super busy doing nothing but music, with good results to show for it.
my band soulflip has been resident band at this trendy italian
restaraunt in the heart of kuta, bali's tourist center, for ages now.
we get a great response, and lately have been selling loads of cd's
every time we play as well. not that the cd's quite finished, but we
had so much demand i've just been running off batches of 50 cheap copies
of whatever's finished to sell at the restaurant up till now - we've
made more in the last 6 weeks from selling just at the restaraunt
(http://www.maccaroniclub.com) then i got in a year of royaties from bmg singapore...
anyway i finished mixing the last song a couple of nights ago but will
have to sort out the cover and distribution when i get back next month.
we've gotten some offers from jakarta labels but as we've heard almost
nothing but horror stories from our friends on big labels, and there's a
quite decent indie distribution network, and we've saved up some cash to
get the cds and cassettes pressed up, it seems silly to sign away our
rights to some dodgy indonesian music mogul. especially when they are
known for taking more than half of the money you get from your live
shows as well as ripping you off of your royalties. all for the
privlidge of distribution your album nationally, which the cd pirates
will do for free, and getting you on mtv, which surprisingly is
supposedly very easy to do as an indie - if you've got a decent vid you
dont even have to bribe them! (according to my friends)
anyway besides the new cd, we've scored a posh job playing at a very
very nice 5-star hotel (the conrad in nusa dua) for loads of money -
even after the musicians get paid (and they all get a big raise) i'll
still be pulling in about $25-30k a year (well it's a 3 month contract
but they wanted 6 and we may extend it past that if more lucrative or
interesting possibilities dont come up) the job starts as soon as i get
back from vacation. and as they saw the firedance video we'll be doing
a fire act as well. which i'm pretty hyped about cause we havent really
been able to do much with that since we've been playing mostly indoors
for the last year, and i recon a really tight fire show would really
blow away the local audiences if we can get an indonesian tour together...
also i'm producing these 2 rappers, they're really up-and-coming, very
talented (everyone really likes their lyrics and style and they play
around bali constantly) i rekon rap is set to really blow up in
indonesia any moment now, and i hate to say it but with an american dj
producing their album and appearing in their videos (very rare in
indonesia, i'm pretty sure i'm the only one at the moment and it's
unquestionably a big pull) i figure they've got a serious chance at
superstardom in indonesia. maybe a better chance than my band, although
the last song soulflip did on this album is a very poppy tune that i
think will give the rappers (yudhi and iwan) a run for their money on
the pop stardom front.
on top of all that i've been djing (scratching and playing the
occasional loop) with this local bali band called xxx. i dont get paid
much but it's in front of huge-ish audiences (2000+ at least 4-5 times
now) which is fun (first time i've had girls actually screaming and
throwing themselves at me as i'm walking off the stage, which i think i
could get used to) it's gotten to the point where people are recognizing
me on the street from gigs and tv coverage now which is kind of a trip.
btw thanks to tom for his suggestion of the pioneer cdj-800/1000 as a
practical solution for on-stage scratching. i got the 1000 and it's
wicked, almost completely unskippable on dodgy bouncy stages and what
with all the blinking lights and stuff it looks at least as cool as
technics on video. plus being able to use custom sounds for scratching
really opens up loads of interesting new possibilities.
anyway that's what i've been up to lately!
-messiah
