Why Marketing Experts Are Useless

Henk Lubberding's latest folk-rock opus.

Behold the latest CD from Henk Lubberding. Henk’s soulful, environmentally-conscious music has touched thousands of people, and now his latest album is ready for your pine-floored livingroom. Henk covers everything from traditional bluegrass at a folksy tempo to melancholic guitar songs with a message. Lovers of Gordon Lightfoot or Tom Paxton will feel right at home as Henk invites y’all to a walk in the wilderness.

Ah, I’m just pullin’ yer leg.

Henk Lubberding doesn’t exist, and if he did exist his album would suck ass. This album cover is an exercise in random generation. Here’s what you do:

Get a band name by grabbing the subject title of a random link on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Don’t be shy! Your random link is PERFECT. You just don’t know it yet.

Then, get an album title by paraphrasing from this random quote webpage:
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
Now you need to do some thinking! Find a section, clause or entire quote that best fits the genre that’s forming in your head.

And now, art! Off to Flickr with you!
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days

There you go.  Ten minutes in Photoshop and you now have something that would have cost you $5,000 if you had signed with Sony.  There is nothing that some twenty-something graphic “artist” twat in a high-rise can do that you can’t do yourself. Furthermore, you can record and mix your own music as well.

What you DO need, however, is a talented person to master your tracks. Giving $500 to someone with a good ear and nice equipment is a smart investment. Dupe you mastered tracks onto CD’s. Then, fire up your MySpace, give away MP3’s for free, sell your CD at shows and perform perform PERFORM!

If you are any good, you will make a living making music. More importantly, you’ll be doing it on your own terms without some bean-counting suit telling you to tone down the cowbell. Fuck those guys. Fuck the labels.

The future is here, people. Dive in.

Don’t believe me? Then suck on THIS:

Ramelton's sophomore effort "Drama is Life".

The second album from Bay Area Dark-Metal quintet Ramelton is the newly-minted Drama is Life. Smashing their way through the rubble of contemporary culture, Ramelton have finally come of age. This album combines the furor of their maiden effort “Wait for Them to Self-Destruct” with a new sensibility that infuses analog synthesizer sounds with a trembling wall of heavy guitars. Vocalist Ray Olins rips open the assault with the opening track “Insania” and refuses to give way until the somber, bass-heavy track “Defensive”. This album is a must-buy for fans and should be on the list of anyone interested in modern, heavy music.

Arcadia's "The Chance of Living"

Fresh from a North American tour, Liverpool trip-hop duo Arcadia have released their latest EP, The Chance of Living. Mixing straight-up beats with a galaxy of carefully-tweaked aerial envelopes, Arcadia weaves their usual web of 60’s retro and Mersey electronic chill. Guesting on this 5-cut diamond are vocalists Kate McAllister and French siren Dominique Cotillard. The standout track is clearly Never Fail, with Cotillard’s angelic voice rising and falling on the gentle sea of Arcadia’s smooth, dreamy beats. That song alone is worth the price of admission.

Well, there you go. I just manufactured three worthy album names and cover art (with inside cover review) in about 30 minutes at a total cost of $0.00.

Obviously, there is more to it. But this exercise shows that you don’t need to entrust the look and feel of your band to some dork who spent 12 months studying graphic art in community college. Granted, you can’t just lift cover art from Flickr. It’s bad form. Instead, you can either snap your own photo, create your own scribblings or run off to sxc.hu and ask nicely to nick someone else’s hard work.

With that off your plate, you can concentrate on making great music. And that’s important, because your band really sucks.