Unfashionable Music Alert

Sometimes, especially when you are stuck in traffic in Glasgow, as I was the other day, something noisy and upbeat is the only thing that will do.

AOR, Melodic Rock, whatever you want to call it has never been fashionable, but scratch the surface and you will find a lot of people admitting to listening as a "guilty pleasure". Why feel guilty about it? There is as much dross as any other genre but there are some great records both old and new waiting for you to sing along.

When The X Factor had a moment with Don't Stop Believing a few years ago (why it wasn't the winners single that year I don't know),  the Journey original shot up the charts. While Journey are far from my favourite band the song has most streamed/downloaded song status on many portals and in lots of countries.

Who should you be listening to and where do you find out about it?

Work Of Art. Four albums into their career, they have yet to produce anything below an 8 out of 10 record. Play this loud

 

Radioactive. I did a whole post on Tommy Denander a while ago. His name is a mark of quality and you should buy anything he is on. The Radioactive albums are his best though.

A recent album from a new band The Defiants, 'Zokusho' has been hailed as album of the year for 2019 in many quarters.

Terry Brock has appeared on some great albums, solo, with Strangeways and as a guest artist. This is one of his best songs.

Hopefully that has whetted your appetite so where can you learn more? Best magazine by far is Fireworks. There is usually a free digital copy to be had of a back issue here, so give it a try.

Rob Evan's AOR Underground appears in Powerplay magazine, which is a bit more heavy metal focused than Fireworks but still worth a read. He is also on Facebook here.

Melodic Rock, run from Australia by Andrew McNeice is the best online portal, lots of reviews and news.

And that is AOR/Melodic Rock. Way more to it than Journey, Toto, or Giant. If you like a good tune then this is the genre for you, and one that gets a lot of play on the iPod, especially in the car.

A bit of interaction goes a long way

This started life as an appreciation of a musician I like and follow, but turned into a business blog, so while it is posted here, it's true home is my Linkedin platform.

Back in 2001 I read and occasionally contributed to an email newsletter called The Armada, basically about the band Asia but drifting into other related artists. I commented on a then new album called Ceremony of Innocence by Radioactive. A few days later I got an email from the album's creator Tommy Denander thanking me for my comments and after a brief exchange of emails that was it. Or so I thought...

Having seen his name appear on albums regularly I did make an effort to look out for him, as he seemed to be a stamp of quality on a rock album. The recently re-released Rainmaker album is a good place to start. In a slightly surreal moment he also popped up on an album by Big Time Rush, a TV show boy band loved by my then 12 year old daughter and her friends.

Tommy is typical of the way the music industry works in the 21st Century. His Wikipedia entry, which I assume to be largely accurate, gives hundreds of albums he has played on, written, or produced. It's an impressive list, and crosses all sorts of genres, which is what you need to do to make a living in music these days. However it's clear his heart is in rock, projects with his own name on them, Radioactive and as an integral part of work by House Of Lords, Robin Beck, Houston and many others in the Hard Rock/AOR world. These names may not mean much to you but in the rest of Europe, particularly Scandanavia, this genre is huge, and Tommy is one of the leading lights.

The interesting part of looking at Tommy's website and social media are the parallels between the way he manages his business, and it is a business with all the requirements to feed and house his family that the rest of us have, and the way pretty much any other business owner will operate. OK so we aren't working with Deep Purple and Alice Cooper, but the networking required to secure that work, presumably through producer Bob Ezrin is the same process that I go through at an FSB or 4Networking meeting. Interestingly we are second connections on Linkedin as well, (happy to help you make a bit more of your Linkedin Tommy!). The basic rules of networking work in pretty much any arena, and as I am looking at new avenues for my own efforts it is a timely lesson. We all get a bit jaded by the formulaic approach of many business networks, but it works, at least it does for me and Tommy. So, get out there and talk to people, on Linkedin, in the queue at the bank, any venue that business people gather, you never know where the next opportunity is going to come from.

Recently he started a new line called Platinum Demo's Worldwide, offering professional quality demo's for €250. As, from reading his social media, he has a young daughter he clearly wants to work from home more, this is a cracking way of doing that, with potential to root out new talent that can be presented to his contacts in the biz, as well as making money on the actual demos themselves. Oddly as my venture in Marketing 4 Music gathers pace I could see myself using his service, in fact I have a client just now...

To learn more about Tommy Denander's music start here

Radioactive - Ceremony Of Innocence and F4UR
Sayit - Again
Alice Cooper - Paranormal
Deep Purple - Infinite
Frederiksen/Denander - Baptism By Fire