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by W.S. McCallum © 2004
22 October 2004
Having spent most of the last four weeks in Slovenia, it was interesting to
compare the music scene there with New Zealand’s. The parallels were
particularly evident during a music show on TV one night which, on this
particular occasion, had four guests (two performers and two grizzled rock
journalists) nutting out the issues facing Slovenian popular music. They talked
largely uninterrupted for about an hour, something that would be difficult to
achieve in New Zealand, given Kiwi TV programmers’ demands for money-spinning
ratings and their mania for interrupting programmes with revenue-generating
advertising every few minutes.
So, what exactly does Slovenia have in common with New Zealand?
Firstly, they are both similar in that they have a small population base - New
Zealand with 3.8 million inhabitants, and Slovenia with 1.98 million. For
Slovenian musicians this means that, like their Kiwi counterparts, they have a
limited domestic market for their music, with it being unlikely that they will
be able to make a living from it due to the limited number of venues, the low
level of CD sales, and the smallness of their target audiences in their
respective musical genres.
The second factor both countries have in common is isolation. As we all know,
New Zealand is a long way away from anywhere except Australia, and even then it
takes two to three hours just to fly to the other side of the Tasman Sea. This
is probably the main reason why so few bands from here are successful overseas:
the sheer cost and logistical hurdles involved in touring for Kiwi bands are
something their North American and European counterparts can’t begin to
comprehend.
Slovenia’s isolation is different in nature. While any Slovenian group wanting
to tour abroad has an easy drive to practically any country in Continental
Europe, and a somewhat longer drive and a fairly cheap Channel ferry crossing
if they want to get to England, they have an almost insurmountable barrier once
they leave their homeland: their language. Very few foreigners speak Slovenian
and not many foreigners are prepared to buy or listen to music in a “minor”
language they can’t understand. We all know how condescending the Poms can be
to Kiwi musicians. Just imagine trying to crack the UK music scene if your
songs were in Slovenian, except for a couple you had painstakingly managed to
translate into broken English. It ain’t gonna work sunshine, is it?
If you’re from Africa or Cuba or some other exotic locale, you can play the
World Music card and get your foot in the door that way. Slovenes however don’t
have that luxury. They’re not seen as being particularly exotic and, coming
from Eastern Europe, the assumption is that their music must be naff.
Consequently, the Poms aren’t interested, and nor are many people closer to
home. Various Slovenian bands get to tour in neighbouring countries like
Croatia, and various of them even write songs in Serbo-Croatian in order to
boost their international appeal in the Balkans, but here too they encounter
the same sort of prejudice they get when they sing songs in English - the
accent isn’t quite right, the lyrics come out sounding clunky, and so on.
So, like their New Zealand counterparts, who know they are probably never going
to be rich and famous, for Slovenian musicians what counts is the music itself.
This is the third main point they have in common with Kiwi musicians. Sure, you
get the same manufactured Top 20 posers in Slovenia that you find in New
Zealand (I won’t bother mentioning names), but more often than not the
musicians just think “fuck that for a joke” and play what THEY want to play.
The unfortunate result is that there are a lot of really bad punk and heavy
metal bands in Slovenia, but there are some good ones too, along with various
acts that are true originals. Acts like Siddharta, Big Foot Mama, Orlek, and
Adi Smolar are easily as good as anything here or anywhere else in the world,
but you’ll probably never see their CDs as it’s hard to find their music
outside the countries that once formed Yugoslavia.
The only group from Slovenia anyone in the international (read “US/UK”) music
scene has heard of is Laibach, which is a bit sad as they were always a
bombastic group at best. Tellingly, what allowed them to break internationally
in the 1980s is that they recorded their music mainly in German and were
consequently able to ride on the coat-tails of Kraut rock. Still, how many New
Zealand groups adopt the same stratagem, concealing their national identity
behind a foreign image, trying to sound like rappers from L.A., or like
Metallica, Blink 182 and so on?
17 October 2004
Jean-Yves Legras
The scene is a Jewish restaurant in the 19th Arrondissement of Paris.
“Jewish” is possibly a misleading word, conjuring up images of a Middle Eastern
or Eastern European establishment serving bearded men in black wearing wide-brimmed
Homburgs. No - this is a place with a multi-national clientele, including
blacks and Arabs, and serves “cuisine raffinée” (as it declares on its business
card) of the sort you would find in any good French restaurant.
As I happened to be seated facing away from the table in question, I had to
have him pointed out to me: “Have a look at that guy over there - he’s the
spitting image of Serge Gainsbourg!”
Serge Gainsbourg: the author of an international hit in 1969 that was banned by
the BBC and the Vatican for its sexual references and erotic noises; the man
who released a reggae version of the French national anthem in 1979 (back when
most French people didn’t even know what reggae was); and, also, the man who
not only shagged Brigitte Bardot (she happened to be married at the time), but
also who didn’t hesitate to let Whitney Houston know on national TV that he
wanted to fuck her too.
And there he was, sitting at the head of a large table in this obscure
neighbourhood restaurant along with all his drinking buddies: Serge
Gainsbourg’s double. Just to emphasise the similarity, this guy had the same
haircut, wore the same sort of denim shirt, and was nonchalantly puffing
Gitanes as he held court with his band of followers.
To be strictly accurate, he wasn’t Gainsbourg’s exact double, given that
Gainsbourg has been dead for over ten years now; but he was an accurate
reproduction of what Gainsbourg looked like in his early 40s, after he had had
his first big international hit in 1969, some years before he lost his
celebrity wife (Jane Birkin) and headed down a path of debauchery that left him
looking totally wasted.
Whoever this guy in the restaurant was, people had probably started pointing
out his resemblance to Gainsbourg in his early adulthood. When you are
confronted with such a huge imposition on your own personal identity, you have
two basic options: you either radically change your appearance (by dying your
hair, growing a beard etc.); or you embrace it and adopt that person’s look.
Some people even make a career of it, appearing in adverts, dressed up as
Marilyn Monroe, Queen Elizabeth, or whoever. This guy was definitely in that
category. If he had appeared in a TV ad, French viewers all over the country
would have done a double take. Maybe that’s even how he makes a living.
Whatever he does for a crust, he must lead a strange life, this double of
Gainsbourg’s. Having effaced his own personality in favour of a dead man’s
public image doesn’t leave a lot of room for individuality. It’s a bit like all
those look-alike cover bands that go around pretending to be the Beatles, Pink
Floyd, Led Zeppelin etc. and who are judged solely on their ability to provide
a replica or a reasonable facsimile of long-dead groups or performers.
24 August 2004
Jim Marshall
Ahh, the Warehouse! Every trip is a new expedition into the unknown. Your
anticipation over the new bargains to be had rises as you approach that
familiar big red box. In you go, walking past the security guard who always
looks askance because you don’t dress/look/behave like the “normal” people who
usually shop at the Warehouse. Never mind, you continue onwards, past the
shoppers queued up at the checkouts, until you get to… the music section.
The music section’s precise location may vary from one outlet to the next. In
some outlets (Wanganui, for example), it is as far away from the entrance as
you can possibly get without putting it out the back among the forklifts and
the pallet trucks. In other locales (Upper Hutt), it is tucked away in a
corner, neither near nor far, whilst in yet other outlets, it is the first
thing you bump into once you have gotten past the friendly security guard. The
fair city of Palmerston North is one of those fortunate conurbations; being
blessed with a Warehouse that has a music department right inside the door.
Young musicians wanting a ground-level insight into the rise and fall of the
market value of contemporary recording artists should make a bee-line for the
Warehouse. And just to avoid getting distracted, make sure you don’t take any
money: just a pen and a piece of paper.
For here you get the opportunity to see just how much a name and a reputation
propelled by major label hype is really worth in dollars and cents terms, in
what is now New Zealand’s largest retailer of recorded music, with prices kept
rock-bottom both by savvy bulk-buying from all sorts of markets (Indonesian
cassettes anyone?), and a policy of aggressively slashing the price of stock
that does not sell after a given period.
Here’s one for the old fogies out there in music land - remember when Oasis
were the greatest thing since sliced bread? How much would you have paid for a
new Oasis CD back in the mid ‘90s? It’s safe to say you would be doing well if
you found one for under $25. These guys were GIANTS. They were QUALITY. And,
they were on a MAJOR LABEL. So all the Oasis fans shelled out full price,
because Oasis’s latest release was what you had to have to maintain your rep,
and stay cool with the other hip and happenin’ Britpop kids.
Well, if they had waited a few years (just a few, mind), those Britpop fans
might not have been quite so cool, but they would have saved themselves a lot
of money. These days, practically the whole Oasis catalogue can be had at the
Warehouse for $6.99 or $9.99. And no, we’re not just talking about the old
albums, but also the more recent ones that came out in the last two or three
years. Oh, how the mighty have fallen! And Oasis aren’t the only ones. To some
extent, most of the stars of the ‘90s have been devalued by the Warehouse:
Moby’s “Play”, that monster epic for SNAGs the world over, can now be had for
$19.99. Bits of Nirvana’s oeuvre can be had for $14.99, as can CDs by the likes
of Korn and Pearl Jam. Go even further back to the dinosaurs of the 1980s, and
the price reductions are even more marked. Phil Collins’ biggest-selling album
(I refuse to utter its name) can be found in the Warehouse’s racks for a paltry
$9.95.
It’s prices like these that are proving to be the wrack and ruin of
owner-operated record shops all over the country. After all, who wants to pay
$30-40 for a CD by a big name from your local retailer, or even pay $15-30 at a
chain-store music outlet, when you can get the same CD for even less from the
Warehouse?
Let’s look at a specific cross-section of music and the pricing applied to it.
Female artistes, for example. The following are a few randomly-selected
performers and some typical prices for their CDs at the Warehouse, in
descending order of monetary value:
PJ Harvey $28.99
Michelle Shocked $28.99/$19.99
Anastacia $24.99
Tina Turner $19.99
Avril Lavigne $19.99
Bic Runga $19.99/$14.99
Madonna $14.99
Kylie Minogue $14.99
Carly Simon $14.99
Aretha Franklin $9.99
Ella Fitzgerald $9.99
Carly Binding $9.99
Annie Lennox $6.99
Olivia Newton-John $6.99
Shona Laing $2.99
Tastes vary, but it’s safe to say that future generations will probably agree
that the likes of Aretha Franklin and Ella Fitzgerald, down in the lower price
brackets in the Warehouse’s scheme of things, made a greater contribution to
music on an artistic level than the likes of Avril Lavigne and Anastacia,
sitting at the upper end of the price scale. Unfortunately, Aretha Franklin and
Ella Fitzgerald did so forty-plus years ago, and consequently their market
value is not as high as these two latest flashes in the pan.
Having said that though, isn’t it interesting that performers from the 80s like
PJ Harvey ($28.99) and Michelle Shocked ($28.99/$19.99) are considered by the
Warehouse to be worth more than their contemporaries Madonna and Kylie Minogue
($14.99)? I don’t have the figures at hand, but it’s safe to bet that Madonna
and Kylie have shifted more units over the years than Polly and Michelle ever
will. Is it that fans of Polly and Michelle have higher disposable incomes and
can be counted on to pay more for recordings by these alternative music stars?
Food for thought.
Poor old Shona Laing though - $2.99! And that was for a 2CD “Best Of”! Is she
really worth so little? Didn’t she even have chart hits in the US in the 80s?
Or is it because of the lapse of time combined with the fact that, unlike
Madonna and Kylie, she doesn’t seem to be releasing material any more (or at
least any material being pushed by a major label). And Carly Binding doesn’t
seem to be doing too well either: her album was only released last year, with a
great deal of advertising and related hoop-la to go with it, and already it has
been marked down to $9.99. Still, Bic Runga seems to be holding her own in the
mid-range, but how long will it be before she too descends to the lower price
brackets?
Just to round things off, here are two closing questions to think about:
1) How long do you think your recorded music would stay in the upper price
brackets if it was in the racks at the Warehouse?
2) Once it begins its slide down into the lower price brackets, how do you
maintain your profit margin?
18 August 2004
Are you tired of those repetitive rock band interviews you see in the music
press all the time? The ones where the “journalist” (I use the word in the
loosest sense) asks the same old tired questions?
They tend to go something like this:
So when did you guys get together?
What are your musical influences?
When is your album coming out?
Any big plans for the future? Etc. etc.
Doubtless, there is probably a Web site out there somewhere with an idiot sheet
full of such questions for debutant music journalists to print off and carry
around with them, so they can pull it out and reel them off regardless of
whether they’re talking to an opera singer or a Norwegian death metal band.
Thankfully, there is a new generation of young journalistic talent out there,
daring to ask the questions none of the tired old twentysomething hacks will
ask. Don’t believe it? Well then, check out:
http://smashintransistors.homestead.com/MonkeyJimmysFriend.html
in which Lucas, a 5 year-old, gives us an incisive perspective on Jack White’s
world, asking the White Stripes’ guitarist all those telling, perceptive
questions you just have to get the answers to:
Has the Monkey stopped jumping out of bed?
What colour is the school bus in “Sister Do You Know My Name”?
Do you like bowling?
Did you have to wear good clothes at Easter?
Do you have a favourite song by the Coasters?
What's your favourite building (besides your house) in Detroit? Etc. etc.
The best rock interview I’ve read in years, and it was done by a five year-old!
Which speaks volumes about the level of journalism in rags like the NME.
The piece ends with the words “Lucas said he may interview someone else soon if
he isn’t too busy”.
A kid with attitude! And proof that the old guard had better watch their backs…
12 August 2004
Photos Fournier
Some noteworthy musical news came out of France earlier this month. Although
it was widely reported by the French media, it will probably go largely
unnoticed in the English-speaking music press, if only because the main
protagonist involved, Johnny Hallyday, tends to be a bit of a standing joke
outside his homeland. Hallyday is the closest thing the French have to Elvis,
and has proved far more resilient. Yet in light of a musical career that
started in the early 1960s, and repeated chart hits limited to his home country
ever since, his show business profile is more comparable to Cliff Richard’s.
On 3rd August, Johnny (as his French fans prefer to call him) won a landmark
court case against one of the giants of the global music industry: Universal
Music. In response to his accusations of unfair treatment from the company, a
Paris tribunal ruled that its subsidiary, Universal Music France, has to hand
over all the masters of the recordings Hallyday has made, right back to his
first studio sessions in 1961. The catalogue involved is considerable: over a
thousand songs, including a good many million sellers, and over forty studio
and live albums recorded over the last 43 years.
The tribunal’s ruling also stated that Hallyday’s current contract would be
terminated as of 31 December 2005, and that he would only be required to record
one more album for Universal before its end, instead of the six he had been
required to record.
The ruling is the outcome of discontent from Hallyday that has festered over
many years. Like most of Hallyday’s contemporaries who were signed by major
labels in the 1960s, his contractual terms were not as advantageous as might be
imagined, and even a million-seller like him came to notice certain inequities
over the years. Hallyday is relatively lucky compared to most of the people who
hit the musical scene in France and elsewhere in the 1960s though. They
experienced such fleeting success and such short musical careers that they did
not have the chance to amass the fortune required to take on a company the size
of Universal.
On top of which, the ruling should not be overestimated. According to the Paris
newspaper Le Monde (3 August 2004), Hallyday will probably have to come to some
arrangement with Universal over future releases of his back catalogue given
that the production rights over the recordings are still owned by the record
company. Also, a good many of “his” songs were actually written by other
songwriters and lyricists, so he does not control the publishing rights to
them.
Nor is the court case necessarily closed - should Universal decide to take the
case to a higher court, the tribunal’s ruling may be thrown out on appeal.
This is a cautionary tale for budding young performers eager for a deal with a
major label: signing a contract with a recording company and managing to become
incredibly famous and successful (and Hallyday is as big as they come in his
own particular market), is not necessarily the road to nirvana. If you decide,
however many years down the track, that your corporate overseers are nothing
but a bunch of exploitative so-and-so’s, you may find you have very limited
options indeed if the production rights and copyright for your recordings, and
even the songs themselves, are owned by the company or one of its publishing or
production subsidiaries.
A further illustration of this came from France recently: on 21 June, MC Solaar
won a major court case, also against Universal Music. Concluding legal
proceedings instigated by the rapper in 1997, the French Supreme Court of
Appeal ruled that Universal had failed to fulfil its contractual commitments
and had set unreasonable timeframes for recording and working with the company
to release his music. The court ruled that the French rapper was entitled to
have his contract cancelled, and have all his original recordings and
performer’s rights returned to him.
Here too though, there is a tangled web involved. Just to give one example, MC
Solaar’s biggest hit, “Nouveau Western”, includes a sample from Serge
Gainsbourg’s 1968 hit “Bonnie and Clyde”. The rights to that particular
recording are held by a company called Mercury France, which is a subsidiary
of… Universal Music.
Stéphane Sednaoui
3 August 2004
There was some noteworthy information to be gleaned from the June/July 2004
issue of NZ Musician in Richard Hobbs’ article entitled “Music Video PDs
[that’s “Programme Directors” for those of us who still use English] - Be Nice
To These Guys”.
Mr Hobbs’ message is that we have to be very very nice to the Programme
Directors of both Juice TV and C4 (that’s Daniel Wrightson and Andrew
Szusterman respectively) because not only do they decide whether your music
videos get airplay, they also “help decide” who gets music video funding from
NZ On Air.
Am I alone in wondering about the ethical grounds for allowing the
representatives of two commercial TV channels input into deciding who gets
funding to provide the aforementioned channels with free product?
Not that I, as a musician, would ever dare to criticise. As Richard Hobbs
points out, we should instead be aware that these two guys are “two people you
really need to get on side with if you want to go through the ranks. So if you
ever see either of them in a bar, make sure you shout ‘em a drink”.
Very rock’n’roll. Just remember fellow musos - it ain’t the quality of your
music or your clip, but how well you suck up to the gatekeepers.
27 July 2004
W.S. McCallum
One of the great paradoxes of rap is the sight of rebellious youth strutting
its stuff up on stage, arms flailing, faces grimaced, railing against racism
and other injustices, looking very politically correct… and then you stop and
have a closer look at what they’re wearing: Nikes, Adidas and other brand
clothing, the product of merciless multinationals that use slave labour in
Third-World sweat shops.
On a less benighted but just as paradoxical level is the sight of po-faced indy
rockers or death metallers jumping around singing about life in the gutter or
on the edge. All fine and well until you stop and look at the very expensive
gear they’re playing. The drummer will be pounding away on several thousand
dollars worth of kit, the guitar players will be brandishing their equally
expensive Fenders or Gibsons, standing in front of their Marshall stacks, etc.
etc.
It’s the gap between posing and credibility - a mere stage act and something
that is actually sincere. Unfortunately sincerity is all too rare in the music
business.
One of the more tedious aspects of musicians, like rappers (the two are often,
but not always, mutually exclusive categories), is their mental slavery to
brand names. You can’t go on stage unless you’ve got the designer clothes. You
can’t crank up an amp unless it’s a Marshall. If it’s not a Fender it’s not
worth playing. Then there are the drummers who only swear by brand X drums. Its
all about as radical as housewives and their fixation with certain brands of
home consumer items.
But most nauseating of all are those free puff-piece magazines you see in music
shops, issued by certain manufacturers of drum kits, guitars, electronic gizmos
or whatever, all of which feature name musicians (and quite often people you’ve
never even heard of, but who must be famous to someone out there, or they
wouldn’t be in the mag), preaching the virtues of a given brand. You know damn
well it’s because said brand gave them thousands of dollars worth of gear or
some sponsorship deal in exchange for them whoring their names around. Pretty
radical eh?
Love ‘em or hate ‘em, one of the more admirable aspects of the White Stripes is
Jack White’s use of an el cheapo Japanese guitar that only with time and
changing fashion whims is now a bit of a collector’s item. Going further back,
there are blues people like Hound Dog Taylor, who championed the use of junk
shop Japanese guitars, or old country blues players who played on battered
no-name guitars they mail-ordered from a catalogue. Even some of the big names,
like Pete Townshend, prefer to assemble their own electric guitars from various
manufacturers’ components rather than relying on a certain brand.
Because when it comes right down to it, it’s not the brand that makes the
musician, it’s whether you know how to play the instrument. And you don’t need
a $3,000 guitar to produce good results. So next time you are buying equipment,
why not save yourself some money and stop promoting the monopolies that certain
brands have in certain sectors of the music industry by trying instruments or
equipment made by a name you’ve never heard of? You may just be surprised at
how good the gear sounds.
20 July 2004
The March 2004 issue of APRAP (the APRA newsletter) offers some interesting
things to think about. Lindy Morrison, in an article entitled “When Music Hits Hard
Times” points out the flip side of the fleeting fame and fortune the music
industry offers to a lucky few. Specifically, she refers to someone few Kiwis
will probably ever have heard of - an Aussie glam rocker called John Cave
(presumably not a relation of Nick’s). He had a number one hit in Australia in
the 70s that was in the charts for about 20 weeks, had guys like Vanda &
Young (from the Easybeats) writing songs for him and, in terms of his sudden
rise to fame, appears reminiscent of Scribe. Unfortunately, by the late 1970s,
faced with the down slope of fame, John Cave freaked out and ended up having
mental health problems, from which he apparently still hasn’t fully recovered.
Lindy Morrison points out:
“In recent years, it’s become clear that there are many performers in the
popular music industry who are struggling in their middle age with sickness and
ill health and have no resources to see them through their sickness or the rest
of their lives.”
Actually, it’s not really a new realisation - when they reached the USA in the
1960s, people like the Rolling Stones and Eric Clapton discovered just how
shoddily the US music industry (and American society in general) treated the
ageing black men who were their blues heroes. But nonetheless she has got a
point. The music industry, in New Zealand as elsewhere, has a habit of hoisting
a select few up high, giving them their proverbial 15 minutes of fame, and then
unceremoniously ditching them once they are no longer flavour of the month.
Lindy Morrison’s article discusses Support Act Limited, a benevolent society
set up by APRA (among others) to assist impoverished musicians with health and
other problems.
It makes me wonder - does Scribe have medical coverage? Or will he be left
waiting in Christchurch Hospital’s A&E along with all the other
unfortunates who have to rely on the failing public health system? Do the
Datsuns have health insurance? What happens if one of them cracks under the
pressure of touring, or if there’s an accident out on the road in some social
welfare-deficient spot like the USA? These are top billing Kiwi acts - they may
just have some sort of coverage, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t.
And what about superannuation plans, or income insurance? What guarantees, if
any, do the record companies offer acts signing to them, other than the whiff
of a promise of a percentage of royalties and the signing over of the copyright
on the songs they wrote? Something to think about for young bands being asked
to sign on the dotted line.
And should you be thinking that such mundane considerations are not very “rock
‘n’ roll”, then ask yourself this: if the suits running the record companies
enjoy benefits like retirement plans and medical cover, why don’t the musicians
who create the music?
Wellington, Friday 9 July 2004
After arriving, having to wait in the booze barn foyer until well after 9pm,
getting fed up because they advertised an 8pm start time (yes, we all know they
do it to raise the bar take), and going away, I came back to find that Rhombus
had nearly finished their loose set. An odd choice for a support band for
Gomez, but there you go… There was an additional wait as all the Gomez roadies
came on and made a great show of fiddling around, testing mikes and waiting
from the flashlight OKs flashed by the ageing hippie behind the control desk
(which, with its surfeit of knobs and faders, was so impressive you probably
could fly a space ship with it, but so large you would never get it onto the
space shuttle’s flight deck).
I waited in bated breath as Gomez finally strode out onto the stage and then
stood there thoroughly underwhelmed at what I was hearing. Don’t get me wrong,
I love Gomez - great blokes, and doubtless they played a great set, but with
the quality of the mix that night, how was anyone in the audience to know?
How do I put it? Imagine a not very large rectangular concrete box, with
reinforced concrete girder pillars and beams - basically your multi-floor
carpark sort of architecture. Not the best environment acoustically speaking,
but hey, it is what it is. Now fill it up with people, place a band and speaker
stacks in it, crank ‘em up, and press play. What do you get? A great sludgy noise,
with an excess dollop of blurghy bass noise completely enveloping it.
Was it the fact that the ageing hippie at the controls had been to too many
concerts and was too deaf to know any better? Or that Gomez’s crew were used to
playing stadium-sized venues rather than a more compact concrete box like the
Starlight? Undoubtedly it had something to do with the room’s acoustics.
Whatever the explanation, it was a disappointment - a band you go to see to
enjoy the vocalist’s singing, which turns out to be inaudible through the
shonky sound. You want to hear the great lyrics, which are indistinguishable
through the sludgy sound, and miss the subtle guitar playing you hear on the
albums, which is lost in the din of bass frequencies.
It’s ironic Gomez have based their latest album on the Who, also renowned for
their loud concerts back in the 1970s. In their dotage will the lads end up
like Pete Townshend - staging endless tedious comeback concerts on acoustic
guitars played on tiny little amps to avoid destroying what’s left of their
shattered hearing? We shall see…
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