I love the power that viral marketing has these days. I didn’t know about it, but I had the chance to find about it today, so I thought to share it with you here.

The story goes like this: Dave Caroll and his band travel by airplane, his Taylor guitar gets broken, he doesn’t succeed in getting a positive answer from United Airlines so he and his band put up this video about the whole story.

Long story short, in 4 days he had over a million views on YouTube, had the video featured on CNN, and had over 19,000 blog mentions as VerticalMeasures.com mentions it! Damn! United contacted him the next day but seems that it was one day too late, the video was out and seems to be a hit!

Anyway, seems that the publicity that the video generated turned out to be a great thing for the band after all.

So here it is, United Breaks Guitars!

Taylor guitars provided also a video response and shared some great information about the fact that you could take your guitar with you on the plane, just print out the info and show the paper to the airport employee that won’t let you take it!

Here’s the video response of Taylor guitars.

Enjoy and Stumble that!

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For me releasing an album was always a full service story: record demo, get the contract with a company, record album, distribute it using “regular channels”, pretty complicated, I might say, reasons for which not many do it. Including us, me and my band, that is. We recorded like 7-8 songs, never released them, even if we discussed about it a lot of times.

But the fact is that in today’s world, things can work using other ways of promoting yourself, the internet is such a huge channel for communicating your music, so many bands get out there using the internet that “the regular” way of doing things may die soon…Or already did?

This post came to me after listening this song on YouTube, I didn’t know the band, Company Of Thieves, the song is Even In The Dark. I liked it, but most of all I was intrigued by the way they did this, the recorded it on a mountain, not even in a room.

What can I say? I like it, and it didn’t work so bad, they have like 15k views, for one single song recorded on a mountain, it’s equivalent to a good show in front of 15k people. How many of us can say they can skip the occasion of playing in front of 15k people?

Well? What do you say about it?

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I wanted to say a few things here but I just don’t know what to say. I’m speechless!

Really, enjoy and comment!

Later edit:

After posting this, I have been pointed by my internet buddy Pzychotropic (Mac) to this impersonation of Jimi Hendrix. If you don’t get it from the first moment, that’s the guy from Police Academy!

I ask myself, can these guys actually sing, if they are able to use their voices this way?

And now stumble that, or even blog about it  !

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What is the source of the creativity for all the artists around? What makes them come up with all those beautiful songs and lyrics?

From where I’m standing, the source of creativity is pain or at least the lack of inner peace…

I mean, do you see a great composer happy with himself, not having any dare in his life, working from 9 to 5 on his piano? We see all day long great artists doing foolish things, we sometimes laugh, we sometimes blame them, hey, look at this stupid guuy, he has all he wants and still does this crap…

Did you ever think that he may need that crap to stay alive from a creative point of view?

I mean we all love and hopefully we look for and find inner peace. Probably great composers too, but do you really think that all those love songs that we love would have been created if the composer was happy and happy with his life?

For me, Bon Jovi’s “In these arms” describes it best:

I would do anything Id beg, Id steal, Id die
To have you in these arms tonight
Baby I want you like the roses want the rain
You know I need you like a poet needs the pain
I would give anything my blood my love my life
To have you in these arms tonight

Considering the last period, with Michael Jackson being dead and all the buzz around his life, do you think his creativity would have been the same if his life would have taken a different path 40 years ago?

What do you think?

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Today I have read the funniest conversation ever about Manowar (again Manowar).

It is between a dad and his 6 years old daughter, about rock and pop music.

I love Manowar but I do have the power to make fun of such stories.
If you have a bit of sense of humor, you should really read it here. The story is called Death match: Manowar vs Jonas Brothers.

By the way, I don’t know who Jonas Brothers are. Do you?

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I was reading an interview with Eric Adams from Manowar this morning and I found it very interesting to see how they compose a song. Quite very interesting, I’d say…

So I will just reproduce here that part from the interview of Eric Adams on Metal-Rules.com, I hope I won’t get complains for copying it. So here it is:

How do you guys get to where you have the songs selected? I mean, is it just…

EA: Usually it’s if, I mean, if Joey writes the song, if he comes up with the idea, he generally comes up with the idea and–I don’t know why but it is usually two or three o’clock in the morning, because I get the phone call about that time-and he’ll always say, “I can’t continue on this song until I hear if it’s in your key, if it’s good for you.”

So I come over to his house, right away, while he’s hot and we work on it together. Once we come up with a melody together, we kind of piece the song together, and then everyone gets over to his place (we have our own studio over at his place) and we work on it as a band. Then it’s a song.

Then we move on to the next one. And that’s how it is. Then, we generally go back to it after awhile, with fresh ears, and we listen to it with new ideas.

Then we add the new ideas in. Then we leave it alone for a while. Then we move on to the next song. Then we come back to that one with fresh ears again, until we come back to that song and we say, “OK, does anyone got any more ideas?” And then when everyone has said, “Nah, I can’t think of any, I think that’s it,” then that’s it-the song gets put to bed and we move on. Because you can overproduce a song as well, if you keep on it.

Personally I found it very interesting to work like this. However, they are a professional band, it would be a bit difficult to call my buddy and lead singer in the middle of the night, hey, man, come over to test a song to see if it fits your key…I imagine his joy and willingness to come over…

What do you say about it? Do you call your lead singer in the middle of the night to see how a song would sound?

Later edit: it just hit me, how could a song not be in this guy’s key? It’s said he covers 5.5 octaves! I won’t bet my life but you should listen this:

Well?!

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These days, following the concert I’ve been to, I was thinking what’s actually better, to keep your musical direction over the years or to change it as the wind blows, to keep sales up?

I mean I was thinking about the way people accuse Manowar (is this a subject that keeps on returning to me?!!) of not changing their music too much over time. But isn’t that a good thing? I mean, as we have a saying here in Romania, some may be still searching, they’ve found it!!

Maybe this is what being vertical in music means, to keep your way of doing things(music) no matter how wind blows, how musical genders come and go.

I was thinking about Metallica and how people accused them of selling themselves by making a music that is “connected to our times”. Or Bon Jovi, as a matter of fact. If you put songs like Living on a prayer next to the acoustic ballads they make these days, it won’t sound too much alike, maybe only the voice is the same (and I would also have something to say about it…)

Changing your music over time means adapting, means exploring new grounds, means reaching new fans (how about losing old fans that followed you over the years and can’t find themselves in the music you are making now?).

Keeping your musical direction means adding new fans to old ones, without losing the fans that followed you over time. Maybe it won’t help you too much in exploring new grounds, but it means you have a vertical way of doing things.

Now, this is an older dilema of mine: what should you be: the captain leading the ship until the last moment, dying,  or the rat running away when the ship’s sinking, staying alive?

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This blog is about guitars, rock music, blues music, this kind of music, not pop or dance or whatever.

But I do remember the period when everybody in the neigborhood was listening Michael Jackson’s music, was speaking about Michael Jackson and was waiting for him to come to Romania. And he did come and it was madness. All those girls screaming like crazy the famous “I love you, Michael!!!”, fainting on his concert, crying and acting crazy, all those things my mother couldn’t understand and honestly, me neither…

But I had a copy of Thriller and I did listen to it a lot back then, I used to like it, it was new, it was crazy…

It was, for Romania here, a change, from the communist political regime  to “liberty” how everybody called it. Michael was the first big name that came to Romania, if I well remember, it was a symbol at that moment, it was the sign we are heading to something new and that the world is open to anything.

Then it appeared more and more obvious that he had issues, news came from all over about his problems with money, children, health etc. I always wondered (and probably you too) why he tried so much to change his appearence…

Anyway, we should not care about this at this moment, we should care about the fact that he meant a great deal for the music worldwide. How many could brag for getting the name “king of ” some musical style? He was named king of pop and nobody could take that from him and probably nobody will for the next period of time.

But now Michael Jackson is dead.

I found about it this morning reading a e-newspaper. Strange, considering I understand it’s all over the TV and radio news, I didn’t have time to get them. I was wondering this morning in my car(listening a radio station) what’s that buzz with Michael Jackson, I presumed he released an album or something.

But not. He is dead. King of pop is dead.

So, it made me think and write this article.

Rest in peace, Michael, your problems are over now…

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I guess we all know the song Stand by me, right?

You can’t say no, really, this movie here proves it without doubt.

Take a look here, enjoy and comment!

Well?

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I’m not a big fan of Accept. I do like their music, but it’s a long way to go to the fan status . However, Amamos la vida is one of the songs that I will always keep burried somewhere deep into my heart. It’s because of the memories it brings back to me…

I remember listening this song while climbing a peak with my friends, on heavy rain, with a large backpack on my back and with an improvised  rain coat covering me and the backpack. Under all this I had a walkman playing rock music and from all the songs that I listened at that moment, Amamos la vida remained strongly marked in my head; for me Amamos la vida will always mean heavy rain in the mountains when there’s nothing dry on you,  cold, best friends and then a hot cup of tea at the chalet…

That’s Amamos la vida for me…

However, a few days ago I gave a Hammerfall CD to my buddy drummer and got an Accept CD to listen in my car. I must admit I didn’t know a few of the songs there, like for example Mistreated, which is a lovely ballad, not quite Accept, but OK, a rock ballad typical for those times.

But my ear told me something’s fishy there, that’s not Udo, man, who’s the guy singing this?!

Again, I am not a fan of Accept, I didn’t know about the fact that Udo and Accept split at one moment because the band wanted to pursue a more “commercial” path. Well, seems that David Reece replaced him for only 1 album, sounds to me an interesting replacement, however, again, turning the band into something else.

You know, it made me think to Iron Maiden and Blaze Baley, but David Reece is better here, probably because he was allowed to sing like himself. Hmm, I’m mean…

So, to conclude, here’s Accept with David Reece and Mistreated

and Amamos la vida.

By the way, what’s that thing with Mistreated? Everybody felt the need to make a song named Mistreated or I’ve been mistreated or similar?! I think I know at least 3 already…

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