I’ve never seen this band, but I have enjoyed being on their mailing list. Their final show is allegedly this Friday:
We would just hate to see you, the fans of us, Tragedy, the # 1 Heavy Metal Tribute to the Bee Gees in the Tri-State Area, eastern Pennsylvania, New England (excluding Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire), Los Angeles, Anaheim, Tampa, Texas (excluding Ft. Worth and Corpus Christie) and the United Kingdom (excluding Northern Ireland and Leeds and its surrounding areas), not be able to get into Bowery Ballroom on March 12th to celebrate our incredible legacy.
Phish made $10 million in 2009, according to Billboard’s recent “Money Makers” list. On the ranking, which Billboard says is “is based on the artist’s share of revenue as opposed to total dollars generated,” Phish placed 37th, ahead of Bob Dylan and behind Andrea Bocelli.
The methodology looks decent to me. They tally up revenue from tour, record sales, streaming, royalties, and so on. Then they estimate the artist’s cut. No estimates on merchandise, which is sort of weird.
For live shows, they assume artists will net 34 percent of total box office. Sounds fair enough, maybe even conservative, although what the heck do I know. Google’s net profits over the past 12 months, come to 27 percent of revenue.
How does Billboard’s number line up with other estimates of Phish financials? Pollstar recently gave the band a $37 million tour gross. Under Billboard’s formula, that looks high. If you assume that every penny of Billboard’s revenue number for Phish came from touring, that would imply a $29 million gross.
Bottom line, assuming Billboard is close to reality, the guys had a pretty good 2009. And that’s not counting t-shirts. I bought three at the December 5 gig in Charlottesville.
I wonder what’s up with this:
Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio is inducting rock group Genesis into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame next month.
Is Trey a Genesis fan? I guess we’ll find out. Maybe he was the one who put the “Lamb” on the Festival 8 countdown list.
Last night, I downloaded ‘Love,’ the new one from Angels and Airwaves. The band is offering the record for free, with the option to contribute what you wish. I chucked in $10. I figured that’s what the price would be on iTunes, and I definitely would have paid for the record on iTunes, had it been available. It was worth the contribution, for sure.
‘Love’ was called ‘prog’ by Rolling Stone Billboard, but I wouldn’t use that term for these guys. All their songs sort of sound the same to me. The use of synth, the vocal phrasing, the chord changes: musically, it sounds to me not far off from their first and second records. Here are my thoughts on that.
1) So what.
2) Maybe it’s deliberate? It’s not that they don’t have depth; they’re just aiming for a consistent sound. Like AC/DC – do one thing, do it well.
Another thing: something intrigues me about this band. What is it? I’m a sucker for pop music? I’m a sucker for uplifting material? AvA has an original approach? Tom DeLonge is cool? Probably all of the above. They’re playing at the 930 Club in May. I think I’ll go for tickets.
Recently, I’ve come across two remarkable magazine stories that share three themes: Illinois, movies, and music.
The first one is a Esquire item on Roger Ebert.
Ebert always had music playing in his hospital room, an esoteric digital collection that drew doctors and nurses to his bedside more than they might have been otherwise inclined to visit. There was one song in particular he played over and over: “I’m Your Man,” by Leonard Cohen. That song saved his life.
Next, a Vanity Fair story (flagged by Peter Lattman) on John Hughes.
Indeed, apart from farming, music was Hughes’s most consuming passion. It pained him that he was so identified with the 80s alterna-pop of his teen films, since that music represented but a thimbleful of the many genres and idioms he enjoyed. His iTunes library filled several hard drives, and he planned the playlists for his sons’ weddings as carefully as he had the soundtracks for his movies. In recent years, he took to dispensing pre-loaded iPods to people he liked, much as he’d assiduously compiled mix tapes for Ringwald and Broderick in the old days. The last time he ever saw Hughes, in November 2008, Chris Candy, John Candy’s 25-year-old son, was the recipient of such an iPod, “an incredibly eclectic four-gig, thousand-song mix tape, basically,” Candy says.
Filed under: Artists, Listening | Tags: Frank Zappa, Guitars, Page McConnell
- Digging out my back yard today, I shoveled a bit of yellow snow (where the greyhounds go). I found myself humming, “Dreamed I was an Eskimo…”
- The Phish.net blog has a good video up of Page McConnell walking an interviewer through his rig. I’d embed the video here, but WordPress.com doesn’t support the player (Brightcove) yet.
- One of the tuning pegs on my old Yamaha acoustic is shot, and it slips when I tune it above a certain pitch. So I’ve tuned the guitar way down, which has lowered the action quite a bit. It’s a lot more fun to play now.
Not much in the hopper this evening, except something I meant to link to a few days ago. The Dog Gone Blog has a nice post up on Trey’s use of open tuning:
“Time Turns Elastic” is the next step in this compositional technique. Pushing forward in new directions, Trey landed on a very obscure tuning in which to compose his newest masterpiece. “TTE” is written in ‘open C6′ tuning (C-G-C-E-A-C), which sounds exactly as complex as it is. Without going into the specifics, this tuning allows for a wide variety of chord arrangements, using open strings. These interesting chord voicings can be heard all throughout the song, especially in the solo acoustic version (click here to watch the video). But, few realize how challenging, and how forward-thinking this new composition is, and have dismissed it for whatever reason.
I’d certainly like to see Trey run through TTE on Tuesday, although I think it’s unlikely to happen.
By Pollstar’s tally, Phish ranked 21st on the top 50 North American tours of 2009. The band’s tour gross last year was $37.2 million.
By my tally, Phish played 50 shows in 2009, suggesting revenue per show of $744,000. That’s right in line with an earlier estimate made on this blog, inspired by Def Leppard’s reported per show haul of $700,000.
I may have to break all this down a bit more. For now, I think the takeaway is that it’s good to be a top-tier jam band.
Filed under: Artists, Listening | Tags: Bob Cesca, phish, Sound Tribe Sector Nine
Bits and pieces this evening.
- Phish $0.02. I kept tabs on the Phish shows down in Miami via Twitter. One tweet said something to the effect of “Thanks for a great ‘09 guys! Can’t wait to do it again next year.” My reaction is different. I think the boys maybe now ought to take some quality time off: regroup, write some new material, tend to their personal lives, work on solo projects, etc. Take a year off – or two! I’d prefer it if Phish didn’t flame out again.
- Cesca. Bob Cesca lists, with audio files, his favorite songs of 2000-2009.
- Sound Tribe Sector Nine. I saw that this band is playing a few dates at 930 this spring. I also noticed, whilst browsing the App Store in a moment of boredom, that they’ve got an iPhone app (as do Dave Matthews and Wilco). So I got curious and checked them out on MySpace. Material didn’t grab me. Oh well.
