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|  The
Rosenbergs’ fame – or notoriety, if you will
– which arose from them rejecting a Farmclub.com TV
and recording contract has tended to overshadow the bands’
real mission – to become known for their music. And
the reality is that the band is, first and foremost, a hard-working
pop-rock band for whom music is everything.
Last
spring, The Rosenbergs – singer-guitarist David Fagin,
bassist Evan Silverman, drummer Joe Darone and guitarist
Joe Mahoney -- stopped by the StarPolish offices to talk
to editorial director James K. Willcox about the band, their
partnership with Napster, and the deal they signed with
Robert Fripp’s then-experimental label, Discipline
Global Mobile. Since that interview, of course, many things
have changed. For one, the once-ubiquitous Napster is no
longer extant. For another, Robert Fripp recently decided
to fold his DGM label, so The Rosenbergs are once again
unsigned. However, the interview offers interesting insights
into how the band viewed all these developments as they
were unfolding, and many of the issues they were dealing
with a year ago remain relevant today.
Currently,
The Rosenbergs are in the studio recording a new album with
songwriter/producer Eric Bazilian (Hooters, Joan Osborn,
Cyndi Lauper), who in addition to producing the album is
also adding his instrumental prowess to some of the tracks.
Once the album is completed, The Rosenbergs will begin shopping
the album -- heading off on yet another adventure that we
hope one day to chronicle.
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Owning
Your Masters
STARPOLISH: One of the important aspects of the deal
with DGM is ownership of your masters. I assume that was important
to you?
FAGIN:
For us it’s great because we wanted to have control of our
destiny and we just couldn’t imagine it going any other
way. We saw so many of our friends run through the mill with record
labels and stuff. And not that major labels are all bad and that’s
it and nobody should sign a record deal, but at the same point,
for us, it was the way to go. We did not want to let someone else
just funnel in endless, countless hundreds of thousands of dollars
that we would end up owing and have no say in, if it ever got
to that point. So many of our friends were just dropped after
their record came out or their record never comes out, and the
label keeps it as an asset for years and never releases it and
never gives it back. So ownership of your masters is very important.
What we did with Napster [was] release two CDs for the price
of one -- you go to your store and you can buy one of our records,
which is virtually like $8 a copy, and you get two. You’ll
never see that on Epic or Universal, because they’d never
allow it. And even the promotion with Napster that we did, we
have complete say over what we do and we can license it as many
times as we want overseas, and do whatever we want to do with
our music. And DGM is completely behind touring the record for
two years if we have to. So we know that if we’re selling
10,000 or if we’re selling 100,000, it doesn’t make
a difference. We’ll stay on the road and tour our butts
off. And that’s what it’s kind of about.
STARPOLISH: Has negotiating deals become very different?
FAGIN:
In this situation we’re lucky enough to have managers and
lawyers that are working with us that, when we do a co-publishing
deal, like we’re about to sign one, it’s finished
but it’s not signed yet, if it doesn’t fall through,
we’re doing something with KISS’ publishing people
in Japan. And instead of our manager going, “$50,000, $100,000,
upfront,” which we’ll owe, we’re taking a minimal,
very small advance, so that if anything does go wrong, we’ll
be free and clear right away. And the same thing with the record
--we’re getting Michael Jackson royalties on the CD and
we don’t have to sell three million copies to make the money
back. We sell 20,000 or 25,000 records and we break even. So for
us that really works out well, and DGM is totally into that, aside
from the fact that they don’t have $10 million to throw
at us. So everything’s being managed really carefully.
STARPOLISH: So DGM is not really acting like a traditional
label.
FAGIN:
Everything that we make money off of, they make money off of.
So, in a sense, they're not our record label, they're our manager.
And basically, major labels only function as sellers of plastic
discs -- that's the only thing they make money off of, so they
push the hell out of a CD or something. But basically DGM gets
a percentage of T-shirts and merchandise, sync rights and a small
amount of publishing as well. So it's in their best interest to
see that everything is moving on equal levels.
STARPOLISH: You also had an interesting deal in which
you packaged two CDs for the price of one, which seemed to fly
in the face of the major labels’ concerns about filing sharing
and the deleterious effect it has on musicians’ incomes.
FAGIN:
While we want to earn a living, at the same time we're about getting
our music out. We didn't come up with the idea -- our management
came up with the idea. And they said, "You know what, here's
something that a major record label would never ever do."
You'll never see this with a Mariah Carey CD; you'll never see
it with a Janet Jackson CD…
DARONE: The logic
there is that it will create a bigger audience, and in the future
we'll reap the benefits from playing to a bigger audience.
FAGIN:
Right. Twenty thousand records sold means 40,000 potential people
at the show.
DARONE: Just gotta
build a fan base.
SILVERMAN: It's
really interesting because I think I get most of the band-related
email, and people are always emailing me and telling me, "Yeah,
I gave the CD to my friend," or, "I gave the CD to my
sister," or something. It's just really interesting how everyone
always tells me who they gave the CD to.
FAGIN:
Yeah, when you're listening to music, how many times have you
popped in a CD of a band that you've discovered, as opposed to
something that you already know and everyone else is aware of.
Because I know that when I hear something and then it all of a
sudden it just breaks loose, I'm just like, "Oh, there's
something else that's just taken off without me..." And I
like to find new bands and discover new music and stuff, and so
in this situation you don't have to burn a CD or put a cassette
in or anything like that -- you can just basically throw 'em a
copy. And Napster was really cool about that, because they paid
for the whole thing.
MAHONEY: It was great for them because
instead of file sharing, you've got an actually physical CD with
the Napster logo on it, and you can give it to you friend. So
it was great for them, too. I guess that's kind of how things
go.
STARPOLISH: You guys sort of became the poster boys
for the DIY route using the Internet as a primary marketing vehicle.
Has the impact of the Internet been that big?
FAGIN:
For bands that don't have the support of a big label behind them,
it's just priceless. Where else can you find out about a band
in Seattle or in the Canary Islands? It's just... you're in your
bedroom and you're connected to every single other person on the
planet.
SILVERMAN: I sent
out an email yesterday, kind of telling people about my idea for
a little bit of a fan club that we're putting together -- it's
kind of an interactive fan club where we send them CDs and they
help to sell them like street teams. And it's amazing, the response
I got. I got over 50 responses in less than 24 hours. People from
Scotland, two people from Germany...
FAGIN:
(off camera) The people from Scotland want to promote our New
York show...(laughs)
SILVERMAN: And
it's amazing, because of the Internet, just type some words and
click, and anything can happen.
SOMEONE OFF CAMERA: The Bangers and Mash
tour. (laughter)
FAGIN:
Plus it's a great way to allow and obviously let other bands and
musicians know what's going on or what's happening and being done
to your band. Because a long time ago -- less than six years ago,
before the ‘net came around -- labels were doing all these
awful things to bands, and lots of bands had all these stories
but you couldn't tell anybody else about them except the people
in your town. Or when you toured, you’d just have a microphone.
With us, that's when we found out about [the Farm Club deal],
when we pushed "send" on our little Farm Club -mail.
Next thing you know, everyone in the country knew about what was
going on and what Farm Club was doing. And so hopefully it made
a lot of other artists aware. And that's a big part of it...
What we're trying to do now is we're trying to figure out some
way to make the playing field a little more level, because in
general most higher-profile artists -- and most artists in general
-- are, at their core, selfish, and they don't have time or they
don't care about the up-and-coming band or guy that's just about
to sign the deal. A time when a band needs the most leverage is
when they have the least. Once you're Bob Dylan, you're not going
to really have a problem with your next record deal. So, what
we're trying to do is -- we can't stop the guy from signing the
record deal, we cannot stop the one person from signing that deal,
because everyone's going to think that they're the ones that are
going to get the promotion, they'll be the exception to the rule
– but what we're trying to do is make it a little more balanced
by changing the contract clause a little bit. And the way you
do that is you have some kind of a lobbying organization on Capitol
Hill to fight Hilary Rosen and to fight the Recording Industry
Association of America -- right now, they are the only ones, unopposed,
lobbying for record labels and lobbying for the laws. So, if we
can come up with some sort of a way to start a non-profit organization,
not run by artists, but run by people like of the Future of Music
Coalition or some sort of governing body that represents artists,
they can say, "Wait a minute, this is bullshit," and
the Works-For-Hire law would have never been passed. And if we
can get some kind of a contractual clause where a band can get
their masters back after they get dropped for a small licensing
fee or something, that would automatically level the playing field
because it wouldn't make the major labels as scary to be involved
with, either.
STARPOLISH: Let’s talk about your album, Mission:
You, which you recorded for DGM. Was that a high-risk proposal
for you?
FAGIN:
We had no fans on our first record so there was no danger. We’re
like, “We have nothing to lose, let’s just release
a cheese-ball record.”
SILVERMAN: We went
into this record knowing that we had this really great opportunity
to record at a wonderful studio, Big Blue Meenie…
FAGIN:
In Jersey City.
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