Todd C. Roberts has written for Rolling Stone Magazine, and has been part of some of the more prolific and eclectic online resources for music information. One of which is The Daily Swarm, which he co-founded in 2007. With over 100 contributors per day, The Daily Swarm is a stunningly abundant source of information. Wired Magazine has called it “The Drudge Report for the music business.” All in all, whatever is happening on the music scene, The Daily Swarm is bound to have at least seven articles about it.

But Todd Roberts’ main focus isn’t The Daily Swarm. His true passion is his artist management, music consulting and media production company, Truant Media. Having worked for labels like Virgin and Astralwerks, Todd knows the business well. So back in the early 2000s Roberts saw potential in the digital paradigm shift. He would use it as a tool to help manage rising artists’ careers, and push them into the light.

“I chose management because I felt that most labels were a little bit further out from the process than they needed to be,” he says. “Not that I necessarily want to have a huge impact on the creative side. I think the A&R with the marketing and business side in mind is really where I see myself.” Todd helps artists with developing the content that will connect them with potential audiences. But the problem is that the audience he mostly focuses on is the youth.

Youth culture is a strange animal. Even though we see it all around us, there are countless breeds and creeds. And each one is seemingly self-generated, incompatible with other sub-cultures. When you try to bag one and resell it, it often goes rotten in the process, and fails miserably. You market to youth culture using youth media, and this is Todd Roberts’ specialty. Thought youth culture represents the largest market, the experts in this area are few and far between.

“There are less people than you might think conveying real information about what’s going on and making an impact on what kids have at their disposal,” says Roberts. “I went to a meeting for a big sportswear company. I sat in on a sales team meeting, and it was largely people in their sixties. And these are guys who are going to meet with other guys who are in their sixties on the retail side. I was the youngest person there, and I’m in my forties.”

Historically, companies had been run by a certain demographic. And that demographic generally made products they could sell to other similar demographics. But within the past few decades, the youth culture has become the biggest industry. That means a whole lot of men in their sixties trying to sell crap to kids with a lot of disposable income, who may or may not want to buy what they have to sell.

“Kids really want to try to be different from their older peers,” says Roberts. “So they’re always looking and striving for the thing that’s next. And they’re also gonna be a lot closer to the street, in terms of what is going to change and what trends are happening, even in business.” This translates into a volatile and risky market. Even if you strike it rich, you can’t settle down, because these wells are shallow. And every month of success is a month closer to your target audience growing up and out of the current trend.

“I think it’s a dynamic that changes,” says Roberts. “But it’s a dynamic that’s always been there.” It’s a struggle as old as the day is long. And if they had their way, the sixty-something businessmen would probably put a freeze on the youth culture. Making a profit off the youth would certainly be easier that way.” To mitigate this problem of change, Roberts informs us, “There are some huge consultants that just go out and take pictures of kids. They’re just saying to Kodak, to Polaroid, ‘This is what’s up.’”

But figuring out what kids will fork over their cash for, and nailing down to a formula is impossible, because even the biggest successes have happen entirely by mistake.

“[Big music companies] don’t understand why somebody like Justin Bieber blows up,” says Roberts. “It’s all youth. And it happened without me even paying attention. But guaranteed: from that person to that person, it was a very organic relationship. It just so happened he was doing it for a multi-national company who was listening and open to the opportunity.” In other words, despite what we all thought, there was no sinister mastermind behind Bieber who forced him into success. From the company’s viewpoint, he was a complete fluke.

Labels and companies invest in a variety of potential hits in the same way a studio will invest in a variety of films each year. They don’t know which ones will be blockbusters; they’re completely feeling around in the dark, hoping to strike a nerve with the people. For big labels, every once in a while the investment pays off, and you’ve got yourself the next King of Youtube on your hands. But even still, this is incredibly rare, and as Roberts indicated, the best the other companies can do is to attempt to tap into that Bieber Magic everyone apparently loves.

I predict a lot of androgynous boys romping on and off the American bandstand over the next year or two. We can only hope that the impending doom of these poor souls will happen as quickly and painlessly as possible. And after the other Biebers fall and dust settles, Todd Roberts and Truant Media will surely still be around.

Todd recently started working with a four-piece from Sacramento called Sister Crayon. “They’re just hungry,” Roberts says. “And I don’t say that dismissing their talent. But I think they get it. They get why they matter, and that’s exciting to me as much as their music. I think their music is good. A lot of other bands may be good, but I just don’t get that [these other bands] are ambitious enough for what they need to be doing—really understanding how difficult it is. Kids watch TV, and they see that this band blew up, and this guy is on American Idol, and they think, ‘Oh! I’m gonna sign up.’ Well… that was one out of how many people? So for me, I’m excited when I see a band who’s excited—who knows the reality, but is still excited.”

Trying to find the next Bieber may not necessarily be Todd Roberts’ goal, but who are we kidding? Anyone could certainly use that kind of money. But attempting to do so can be a demoralizing venture. It’s increasingly becoming a circus show out there, and most often it’s the biggest clowns who walk away with the gold. “It’s easy to be pessimistic,” says Roberts. “And that’s why I give those kids credit for sticking it out, because they know the odds aren’t great, but they’re gonna do it anyway. And that is to me why I chose the lane that I’m in.”

Depending on how you look at it, the 90s was Trey Many’s decade. It was a solid decade of drumming for projects like Pedro the Lion, Liquorice, and His Name is Alive. He even started one of his own projects, Velour 100. You might never have heard of any of these bands. If you have heard of the projects, you’re probably still listening to the albums. You might even be one of the faithful fans who still post comments on Velour 100’s Myspace, where few comments deviate from this general theme: Please! Make more music!

Ultimately, Trey’s involvement in these bands was transitory. “The bands I played in weren’t very big–respected maybe, but that doesn’t mean dollars. That’s the weird part about the music business . . . writing great songs and playing great shows doesn’t equal income necessarily. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn’t. I got to a point where I thought, well I love playing music but I’m not really making enough in any of the bands I’m in to support my family. And I wanted to have a family.”

In 1998 he started his own agency, Aero Booking, where he worked his “fake job” as a booking agent for friends’ bands in the nursury of his apartment and taking care of his son, while his wife went out and worked “the real job.” Meanwhile, Many continued pursuing music on the side, and started a band called Half-life Souvenir. In 2004 Seattlepi.com included Half-life Souvenir as one of the bands they had their “eye on in 2005.” But this ultimately proved to be Many’s last endeavor–to date–as a musician. Despite the attention he gathered with Half-life Souvenir, the project ended without a bang.

His agency, on the other hand, eventually turned into a “real job.” He grew out of merely representing friends’ bands, and he eventually merged with The Billions Corporation, where he now represents bands like Death Cab for Cutie, Dntel, Fleet Foxes, and the Postal Service among others.

The Billions Corporation is a booking agency that works with artists, getting them shows in venues that are realistic to their audience size, and in ways that are profitable for everyone involved—from the venues to the artists. Billions places its manifesto like an honored plaque next to its list of agents and their respective clients. The company’s manifesto is an inspiring set of proclamations articulating the company’s philosophy of business, penned by the president and founder, David T. Viecelli. The manifesto is so clear-cut and candid, you might think it was first written in a Jerry Maguire-esque fit of idealism. If one were to sum up the philosophy in a few words, it would be this: honesty, transparency, and common sense.

For fledgling bands, the odds are stacked pretty high. It’s a wilderness out there, and without people like Trey Many, even the most talented artists are about as vulnerable as a middle-aged camper caught between a mother bear and her cub, if they don’t know what they’re doing. All too often these bands get mauled by an increasingly vicious market.

“The cost of touring continues to skyrocket,” says Trey. “So on one hand you’ve got U2 charging $250 for a ticket, and on the other hand you’ve got people playing the small clubs where fans are upset if they have to pay more than $10 to go see a band play. But ticket prices have been $8 or $10 for ten years, while the cost of gasoline has gone up, the cost of hotels, the cost of buying a car, and even the tax laws are different now, where more and more places around the US are withholding tax from out-of-state entertainers that come and play shows. It has become more complicated and more difficult to tour on a small level, because those ticket prices are not changing that much and it’s just difficult for bands to make ends meet on the road when they’re starting out.

“We work hard to strike fair deals for everybody that’s involved,” says Many. “Obviously we are going to put our clients above everybody else’s interests. But still, it’s about sustainability. We’re trying to help our artists succeed in the long term, and dishonest negotiating and dishonest practices are not good for the long term. If I try to artificially inflate the size of one of our artists to make the promoter think they will sell out their room, and we need X amount of dollars to play, and then they show up and there are twenty people there, that’s the last show they’re going to do for this band.”

It becomes clear after talking with Trey Many that his work requires a certain uncommon common sense, decisiveness, and a healthy dose of brutal honesty. Because when it really comes down to it, more is at stake than the artists’ careers. “I realize that just because a band is great doesn’t mean that they’re going to succeed. And as an agent, I can’t invest all my time in things that I love artistically, but have no promise of financial gain on some level. As agents we don’t invest capital, we invest time. So for an agent, I would say it’s a lot easier to spend 15 dollars on an album than 1500 hours on a band that doesn’t have the potential to succeed.

“When I say that a band has to have some promise of financial gain I mean, if I feel like this band could eventually sell out small clubs like Spaceland, or the Troubadour in LA, or the Crocodile Lounge in Seattle, that’s enough for me. I don’t look at a band and think if I don’t see this being an arena act in three years, then I’m not interested. There is success at different levels for me.”

“Success at different levels” doesn’t mean success at any level. Billions is extremely picky about which artists it deals with. But they’re upfront about that as well. Their expectations are high, but they’re not difficult to understand. “The number one thing is the music,” says Many. “I have to love the music that an artist is making to approach it. We’re not trying to dupe anybody or trick anybody into liking our bands. I’ll come across bands that I don’t like, but they will make millions of dollars for somebody—it’s just not me.”

In a day where finding “corporation” and “scandal” in the same headline has lost all its shock value, the cynic in me wants to think that the kind of honest and upfront business Trey Many talks about are just idealistic theories about how business should be. But what’s shocking is that Billions functions by this crazy theory of honesty—and it’s working. Take a look at the bands that Trey or any other agent working for Billions represents; you’re looking at some of the most galvanizing bands in the industry.

Although he’s no longer a part of the album-making process, for now Trey is a family man. He wouldn’t have it any other way. About his current position he says “I feel honored to work with some of the bands that I get to work with. Because I’m a fan first and then their agent.” But in the midst of writing this article Trey expressed a reluctance to say that he had given up creating music altogether. “[I] can’t promise that Half-life Souvenir will be my last musical endeavor,” he says. For those of us who remember the 90s as “Trey Many’s decade” we couldn’t be more excited to let the future unpack that cryptic statement.

(Photo Credit: Laura Totten)

Ashod Simonian is a musician who jams with members of Pavement, a visual artist who still works in Polaroid, and a co-founder of The Ship—a Los Angeles artist collective that just happens to include many of the scene’s heavy hitters. In short, he’s everything we look for in a Panelist.

“My primary instrument is guitar. But I’m not the kind of guy who could sit and listen to a CD and go play it with a bunch of people,” Simonian admits. When he got the call to join the post-pavement project Spiral Stairs, his first instinct wasn’t celebratory but rather diffident. “I think a lot of times, the fact that I’m not super well versed gives me an edge,” says Simonian of his skills as a musician. “That’s how I keep myself from not sounding corny is by not knowing. That’s where a lot of my sounds come from.” However, he’s quick to add, “People like to have me in the band, because I’m not gonna fight with anybody and I’m not gonna smell too much.”

It was his natural talent (in part at least) that led him to “birth” The Ship recording studios. The Ship is a hybrid analog/digital recording studio in Eagle Rock, California, boasting all kinds of unique recording equipment “from ribbons, to tube, to what-the-hell-is-that?”  A creative collective has focused around The Ship recording studios. Simonian counts among his “people” such Los Angeles scene heavy hitters, as Earlimart, Silversun Pickups, Sea Wolf, and Great Northern.

Simonian’s obsession with Polaroid art sprung directly from his rock n’ roll lifestyle, accumulating in a recently released collection, Real Fun. “Rock photography is so often relegated to bands playing live, or bands posing for promo pictures. And as art, both of those leave me pretty empty,” he says. For Simonian, Polaroids gave him a way to counteract that. “Once I had an inkling I was on to something, I just made sure to carry my camera at all times and to have extra film in my bag. And I’m sure, to some extent, it pushed me into creating those moments where I was pushing a group of drunks out the door and into the streets and down to the river or what-have-you, because that’s where I knew the best memories were.”

It’s the emotional connection of memories that drive Simonian’s artistic choices. Conveniently, his first pick of the week, There the Open Spaces by Sleeping States, is saturated with memories. “[Leadman Markland Starkie’s] music reminded me of cobblestone streets and foreign market places, walks in the park and strange birds I’d never seen. He came to the states on vacation once and I took him to Fresno, my hometown, in the heat of summer and made him sell Panty Lions merch. It was miserable but it was the start of a great friendship. He continued to send me songs as he finished them, each outshining the prior, and I couldn’t believe I was one of the few who got to hear them,” Simonian explains. “Another vacation to the states began with the idea of me helping him get a few shows where I knew people, and it blossomed into a full-blown tour and record deal. Since he didn’t have too many American friends, I lucked into a position as guitar player. What an honor. The tour was cursed with one snafu after another (which is why you likely have never heard of nor seen Sleeping States) but remains one of my favorites ever, due to sheer ridiculousness. You couldn’t be stuck in a van with a more awesome dude than Markland, or stuck on a stage at a Wings joint in Lubbock, Texas with prettier sounds than those of Sleeping States.”

Photo Credit: Annie Beedy (www.mimandhoney.com)

by Adam Hildebrand

Take a right at the Mountain House just past Oakhurst, and it’s about four miles to Bass Lake. Roll down the window and the smell of pine tar and dust float in through the warm air. Thick flora fences in the sleepy lake. All at once, it seems, the deep blue water emerges between the trees. People speed through the water on Sea-Doos, while shabby boats drag people in inner tubes. On the shore pasty white bodies reflect the bright summer sun. It’s late June, and the crowds are trickling into town, onto the beaches and into the water.

Bass Lake doesn’t appear to have grown since the 60s. The town looks like it has been designed to keep casual passers-by from mingling with the natives and with those who are paying to visit. The beaches most easily accessed by visitors stand opposite the town. If you loop around the lake, wind through some back roads, and keep up with the poorly marked 222, you’ll reach the tiny town. Thick trees obscure the homes that dot the hills. From the other side of the lake, these homes are invisible.
July 4th weekend, 1965, this quiet village rattled with fear for an entire weekend. At the height of their infamy, the Hell’s Angels were expected to make one of their massive runs to the lake for the holiday weekend. They were a rough and ragged crowd. The Angels numbered in the hundreds, and their collective criminal record ranged from minor traffic infractions to murder. A few of their men faced the possibility of jail time for the much-publicized alleged rape of two teenage girls. While the bikers claimed the girls had asked for it, the rest of the country wasn’t convinced.

Meanwhile, the local studs geared up for the fight of their lives. They expected a weekend full of keeping an overwhelming force of drugged-up, raging and aroused maniacs from raping and pillaging the entire establishment. But that wasn’t the Angels’ idea of fun that weekend. Instead, they wanted to enjoy the weekend in peace—like anyone else would. Not chancing anything, the local cops quarantined the gang far from the regular tourists, and the Angels enjoyed their time alone.

The most heated moment came when the Angels ran out of beer. A few of them rode into town to grab a few cases. The sight of the motorcycles practically sent the tense locals into a frenzy. But the situation was quickly dismantled, and the Angels loped back to the hills with their booze without as much as a punch thrown.

As we drive through town, looking for a place to park and explore the lake, I can’t help but search for signs of the gang’s historic visit. The town has its fair share of retired hippies and motorcyclists—a crowd that might not have been welcome 45 years ago—but they’re the one’s running the show here. The mood is peaceful; everyone is here to have a good time.

With pine trees shooting up from the shore, and calm waters, Bass Lake has the potential to be quite beautiful, but not every spot is exactly a work of art. Green sludge crusts the shore where we stop. And with a good gust of wind, the scent of duck droppings, dead fish, and pond scum wafts through the air.
Tiny pockets of people—mostly teens—speckle the shallow shores. As new groups arrive, the thinner girls eagerly strip off their jeans and tank tops, and, bikini-clad, run splashing into the water. Meanwhile, the heavier girls cautiously wade into the shallow water wearing large navy blue T-shirts and swishing their hands over the surface. The boys toss their shirts onto the sand. Pimples speckle their pale shoulders. They immediately go to splashing water at the girls and picking up dead fish from the shoreline.

A radio blasts classic rock, but the sound is spread too thin over the expanse of the lake. Wispy guitar riffs and drum solos echo through the air and mingle with the relaxed splash of waves and the general smattering of voices. After only being here a day, this is the first sign of music. With five days left to go, no cell reception or internet, and two days from my brother’s-in-law wedding, I wonder what Bass Lake has to offer musically. Just then, a maroon helicopter roars over the lake and circles for no apparent reason. People cheer as it flies overhead, and the chopping blades drown out the splashing, the voices, and the radio.

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When we talked with Josh Kouzomis it was one of those too-bright days in the Valley, the kind where sunglasses don’t help. The sun blasts off every surface in white-hot dry cakes of light. You feel as though the light were pressing your back, and you feel the dust between your teeth, and can’t wait to get indoors. We met at his home/studio in L.A.: an unassuming Southern California stuccoed place, with rugged irregular wood paneling at the front, painted a deep grey green. A beautifully restored black sedan sat in the driveway—a friend’s car, Josh explained later. As you approach the cement steps leading to his front door, you realize what a puzzle Josh Kouzomis really is. It’s difficult to anticipate spending a little one-on-one time with a guy like Josh Kouzomis. Aliases abound in the hip-hop world, and Josh’s alias, Troublemaker, is enough to give a man pause. He earned the name in a sort of infamous way that makes you glad you weren’t present for the inauguration.

Raymond Roker of Urb Magazine gave Josh the name a few years back at Miami’s Winter Music Conference. Raymond, Josh and a few others huddled behind the stage relaxing. The sweet and sour rot smell of marijuana wafted from backstage and into the nostrils of a bouncer—the wrong bouncer. He marched to the back and accosted the group. “I want everyone out of here who’s smoking marijuana!” he said. Josh replied, “Hey man, we’re all artists here—we’re all backstage, see.” The veins in the bouncer’s neck bulged with irritation, and he said, “I’ll take you around back and beat the hell outta you. Now get out!” Josh leapt onto the bouncer in a flash and throttled him by the neck. A mob of six or so bouncers crashed onto the scene and attempted to subdue the young Kouzomis. “He’s high on something, gents!” “I think it’s a controlled substance of some kind! It might be PCP! Watch out!” Things eventually settled down, and Roker, cool the entire time and watching, said, “You’re such a troublemaker, man.” Troublemaker… DJ Troublemaker. It sounded good, it fit, and it stuck. Although he had been around for a while and had become a recognizable DJ, that moment was when the Troublemaker persona officially took root. “That,” said Josh, “was the defining moment.”

“I was really young at the time,” he said, explaining why he leapt onto the bouncer’s throat. The day we talked with him, we found an older, perhaps wiser Troublemaker. And he made for good conversation, too.

Josh has amassed an extensive body of work. He has had ample opportunity to make a few enemies along the way with his work. Creating remixes of other’s music is precarious work. “I try to be very respectful of what they’ve done,” he said. “I know, as someone who makes music, that when you give your music over to somebody, you don’t know what is going to happen.” Josh’s remixes are definitely uniquely his. “But,” he said, “I try to respect what the artist did, and then come at it from my own angle.”

The work of a DJ is half homage, half creation, tweaking and rearranging and adding to what exists. But you don’t choose a particular track to remix if you didn’t already respect it to some degree. “Sometimes it’s part of the vocal hook,” he said. “Or even something they sing in their verse, and that triggers an idea. Or it’s the melody of the track, and I know I can build around that. But most of the time it involves me stripping a lot away and finding the couple of good things that really interest me. More than likely it’s one of the sounds that make the melody—like a guitar riff, or some synth line, or a nice little vocal piece that I can make into a hook.”

After he’s got his hook, he applies the Troublemaker motif. “I’ve gotten to a place where I definitely feel like I have a sound,” he said. “But I’m sill diverse, and can do a lot of different types of music. And in all those types of music there are always a couple common threads.” A common thread, he said, “has to do with the drum programming choice: what type of drums to use and their programming, as well as the bass.” The bass, he said, was something he especially loves to figure out. “I like bass. I started out as a hip-hop kid in drum and bass music.” As he’s progressed and changed, the styles that have attracted him have found their way into his work. “I like punk rock music, and it’s all agro and harder driving. And even now that I’m into more pop stuff, I like to add those elements into it, too.”

Over the years, Josh’s work has varied both in style and nerve. Josh has taken on many artists, some probably less known, but others who would be considered untouchable: Johnny Cash to name one. “Sometimes when the true core fans of a band hear your remix, they hate you,” Josh said. “I went off the deep end with the Johnny Cash remix, so it sounds way wacko. But people really liked it. So you never know.” As a remix artist, Josh is sort of an invader in occupied territory. He takes what he likes (and presumably what other people like), he tweaks it, and he makes it his own.

“I know that my stuff will probably be more driving and beat oriented,” he said. “That’s why I try to take something from the artist’s melody, or vocal, or something that they will warm up to and that’s what also warms me up as well.” At the end of each project his next harrowing task is presenting his work to the original authors: Here’s your work, rearranged and different. Whadya think? “You know you’ve nailed it when the artists agree with you: there aren’t any comments. When people tell you that they actually like the remix better, that’s very humbling.”

But not all his feedback is exactly glorious. “I did a Mastadon remix, and nettle rock people don’t understand electronic music, and they hate me. At the same time,” he continued, “Allison Stewart—a journalist who used to be at MTV—she reviewed that remix in the Washington Post. So obviously some people get it and like it, and some people don’t—and that’s cool too.”

Positive feedback or not, when it really comes down to it, Josh Kouzomis is an artist who loves to work with fellow artists. One of the biggest personal moments of his career was sharing a project with De La Soul. “I did a remix last year for the song ‘Daylight.’ And De La Soul rapped on it. And that was a huge moment in my life. Having grown up as a hip-hop kid and being a fan of De La Soul, to be able to say that you did something with De La Soul is a pretty big deal.”

Perhaps face-to-face, Josh has mellowed out over the years—no longer strangling bouncers. But still, ego is inherent in his line of work. You have to be confident enough in your abilities to make a living taking original existing tracks and pulling off something marvelous and different, that the original artist couldn’t have imagined. Despite Josh’s obvious respect for the artists with whom he chooses to collaborate, the spark of the Troublemaker is always with him. And it really manifests itself where it always has, in his work, at the turntables, or in the studio, where his talent is unleashed. And in the moments of creativity, that spark bursts into a rowdy blaze.

If there is anything consistent about the music industry, it’s that it is completely unpredictable. Not only do the tides of trends and genres ebb and flow, but also laws, practices, resources, business, and even the entire industry itself. With the recent fall of lala.com, we have been forced to consider life without the beloved resource. However, in the middle of this unstable current, Todd Clifford navigates these uncharted waters with ease, seeing each new change in wind as an opportunity rather than a loss.

Todd Clifford’s journey into the world of music started where it did for a lot of us before the digital revolution: Columbia House. (You remember the club where you paid a penny and got 15 cassettes… and inextricably placed yourself on their mailing list for good or ill. The point is, it was a good way to find new music.) It was through Columbia House that Todd had his first exposure to music.

Todd recounts his album picks from elementary school and junior high, “I was really big into oldies like Bill Haley. And then I randomly got into hip-hop. In junior high there was no one else I knew who liked hip-hop. I looked back on it years later and realized that I was listening to some really good hip-hop. And I have no idea how, because I don’t know where I got it. I had Eric B. & Rakim and all the first Public Enemy tapes.”

Clifford continued collecting music all through college. Toward the end of college, he became the Music Director for UNLV’s radio station. “That really turned the corner for me,” Todd says. “It opened me up to all sorts of other music that I wasn’t aware of. I started with 40 CDs and ended the semester with 300 CDs. Cut to a couple years later, and I had 8,000 CDs.  Every band I heard would lead me to some other band, and it went ugly from there. Then I started collecting vinyl, and it got really out of hand.”

After a job with Reprise Records and a record promotions company, Todd opened his own store, Sea Level Records. This was back in 2001, just a few days after the grand opening of Amoeba records. “We actually tried to open the same day [as Amoeba], but we were missing a permit.” They had to delay their official grand opening. But they held a party anyway on the same day Amoeba opened. “There was a newspaper article that had a picture of Amoeba opening with the line around the block, and then it had a picture of me and my business partner, in the store sitting in front of empty record racks.” But having a behemoth rival in Amoeba ultimately didn’t have much of an effect on the underdog. After officially opening, Todd’s Sea Level had so much press that the L.A. Times unofficially put a hold on any mention of the store and Todd.

Since the rise of the digital download, many questions have arisen about the future of the physical album. Is the end of the physical record in sight? ”I don’t think so,” Todd said. He then gave us an example of why he was so confident. “I had to pick up some headphones the other day at Best Buy. When I was there, the new LCD Sound System and the new Black Keys albums were both on sale for $8 bucks. I picked them up.” You can see his point. When you browse through websites for music—or any other item for that matter—you’re really only seeing a very small portion of the store. It’s like walking through a pitch-black store, with a spotlight on only select items. “I am a record collecting nerd. I have thousands of vinyl and CDs, but I like that physical part of it. I know that a passive music fan is not going to do that; you can’t argue with wanting to listen to something and then two clicks later you’re listening to it.” We may not be as intense as Todd, but when it comes down to it, the convenience of the one-click album doesn’t always win.

Despite the overall decline of the record industry, Sea Level maintained a healthy increase in record sales every year since it opened in 2001. It was both the increased interest in vinyl as well as the store’s notoriety that really defied the ubiquitous decline elsewhere.

Regardless of the store’s strong sales, Todd closed Sea Level’s doors on May 30th, 2007. It was the call of the open road and the freedom from the confines of the store that did it: He had taken a vacation, accompanying Silversun Pickups on a short tour on the east coast, and when he returned to the store, Todd realized that it was time for a change. You might say he was tired of being stuck on the beaches of the industry, selling records. He needed to be out on the ocean, sailing the seas with a living crew. Only a short while after putting word out that he was looking for a tour management position, Todd landed a job managing Herman Dune, with whom he still manages.

Working six or seven days a week for five and a half years in one place certainly affected Todd’s love for owning a business, but it didn’t deter his love for the music. Out on the road, with his crew, Todd’s appetite for music is as voracious as ever. “I’m still buying records; I just bought three records this week,” he says. “When I’m on a tour and we get to stop at a record store, I still get all excited to go buy records. That would have been awful if, after I had given up the store, I didn’t like music anymore.”

Music and food go hand in hand—like pesto and pasta, like coffee and cigarettes, like bars and barflies. We roll through life like old Chevy flatbeds on an empty highway. Memories jog and jostle and threaten to spill off the back of the bed without these two ties. Music and a good meal have the power to seal a memory in our brains for good. Don’t ask me what it is, but you’ve experienced it: You take a bite, smile at your date, and listen to what’s playing—now you’re back at grandma’s. You’re four again; she’s humming at the sink as she scrubs a pan. Grandpa’s mouth hangs open wide; when he sleeps on the recliner his neck bends in such a way that, when he breathes, he sucks in air with loud sputtering hisses. You stare at the TV remote hanging from his limp hand, and wait for it to drop. You can almost hear the crickets outside, and the knee you skinned—the one with the scar on it even all these years later—it almost stings again. “You better eat your soup before it gets cold—”… was that grandma who said that, or your date?—Anyway, back to the present… back to this article…

If you eat at Alex Eusebio’s restaurant, Sweetsalt, in Toluca Lake, you’ll have all the right elements for memories: good music and great food. The thing is, though, you won’t be recalling any old memories about grandma—that’s for sure. Alex Eusebio is in the business of making new memories. As a maestro of the gourmet sandwich, every day he cooks up flavors you’ve never tasted before in your life.

Eusebio’s heart is in Sweetsalt, and it ripples through the entire place. From the gourmet menu to the music wafting through the room, when you’re at Sweetsalt, you’re in Alex’s world. Every part of this place reveals Alex’s qualities and moods. “One thing I realized early on,” he says, “especially when you change the menu everyday like I do, is that the food you make is a reflection of your mood.” This doesn’t mean that he’s going to serve you spicy food on a bad day, even though you ordered a seasonal vegetable salad. Alex is the auteur of this fine dining establishment, and his knowledge of possible menu items is as extensive and varied as are human emotions and temperaments. “If I’m in a pissy mood, you’re going to get a very dark dish. If I’m in a good mood, you’re going to get a really bright vibrant dish. On a light day, it would be something like a snapper—the skin reflects a lot of color, it’s crunchy and vibrant—and then maybe I’d pair some fruits with that.”

It’s not just the food, but the entire restaurant is an organic extension of who Alex is. The smell of cooking soups, and fresh bread waft through the air and mingle with his daily music mix. “In the morning, it’s a little slow,” says Alex. “You put on some slow music, and as the day goes on, you speed it up.” Eusebio starts the day right; he says, “I love Beastie Boys; their instrumental stuff gets you in the right mood, and it gets you going. But then if you really want to crank it up, you’d listen to ‘Sabotage.’ ” Just picture “Sabotage” blaring as your Dominican chef throws alfalfa sprouts into a sandwich, or chops fresh onions and tomatoes for a salad. “Every day around 3pm, there will always be Reggae playing. Around that time, everyone’s mellowed out. The rush is over, and ‘everything’s gonna be alright’—it’s pretty fun.”

“I cannot cook without music,” Alex says. Come in to Sweetsalt and what you hear is Eusebio letting you know how he’s feeling, and how things are going in the back kitchen. “There are times when I know we’re gonna get our asses kicked, and I’ll play some really hard stuff.” Alex breaks into a guitar riff; he’s getting pumped just thinking about the fast drive of an evening rush. “I know it’s like, come on, focus. It’s go, go, go—let’s get the salad. You can’t be cooking—getting 100 tickets out—and playing Sinatra. That ain’t happening!” When Alex talks about his job you can hear the passion in his voice. He loves what he does. And to Alex, every day is a concert; the kitchen is his stage, and everyone is invited to the performance.

Since the attacks on September 11^th, Alex moved from New York and shot from one side of the nation to the other. He had a brief stay or two in Denver; he opened up a restaurant in Valencia (a suburbia with a capital S just north of the San Fernando Valley). But Alex’s creativity and the Home-Owners-Society-Lovin’ Valencia clashed; it was a doomed venture before it even began, and he quickly moved on to bigger and better things. You may have seen him on Top Chef where he garnered national attention for his culinary talents. Ultimately, it seems Fate has decided Alex should settle in LA.

Alex is developing a life for himself, where he can finally be the artist he was meant to be. “Once you’ve written your own song—you’ve produced it and it’s your own song—you are less inclined to do other people’s songs,” Alex says about his future plans. With Alex, the fewer the restrictions the better; he looks forward to the day when he can cook food like the improvisational culinary Jazz artist he is. “Having my own restaurant would be my end goal… then I’d be truly happy.”

As a chef in multiple states throughout multiple stages of his life, Alex has created memories for thousands of people. The combination of food and music, it seems, is always the through line.

“The best moments of my life, I can tell you what I was listening to; I could tell you what was on the radio in the restaurant on certain nights.” Hundreds of days cooking; thousands of dishes. The smells, the tastes, the galvanizing sound of the hungry crowd competing with the music, the feel of a firm tomato in one hand and a heavy steel knife in the other, the release of relaxing with fellow employees after a good day’s work: for Alex, his happiest memories have happened in his restaurant. “I was listening to Pornos for Pyros one day when we were cleaning up,” he says. “I remember how fun it was. We had a couple beers—my sous chef and I—we were mopping the floors and cleaning up at 2 am. We were listening to Pornos for Pyros, and I remember how cool that moment was… And to this day, I can connect that music to that moment.”

Sweetsalt is located at:
10218 Riverside Drive
Toluca Lake, CA 91602

First up was John Kuntz, owner of Waterloo Records in Austin, Texas. He educated us about record stores, Frank Zappa and music piracy. He also introduced us to two Austin favorites, Carrie Rodriguez and Bob Schneider.

Mark Landsman, director of the most talked about movie at SXSW, Thundersoul, invited us into his world of filmmaking, jazz-funk music, and the art of uniting music and film. Mark’s album picks featured Kashmere Stage Band’s Texas Thundersoul, as well as Stones Throw’s funk compilation The Funky 16 Corners.

The latest addition to our Hall of Justice is Ben Patterson, founder of DashGo (formerly Audio Bee), and all around advocate for the up and comers. DashGo is an online resource that assists musicians in the area of publicity and promotion. Ben graced us with the sounds of Coconut Records and Still Lost Bird Music.

As we do every month here at Panel, we have once again hijacked the site in order to feed you two albums of our own choosing. This month we’re eager to share two self-titled releases: Fang Island and Surfer Blood.  Both bands have a lot in common: they are new, they hail from the east coast, and you must know about them both. We hope you enjoy them as much as we do.

The staff here at Panel wants to keep you informed as best as we can—it’s basically the reason we exist. So to serve you best, and for the sake of brevity, we’re bringing the rest of this month’s news to you rapid fire.

In the News:

The legendary jazz singer/actress, Lena Horne has died at age 92. She was the first black singer to be hired by a major white band, and she was the first to play at the Copacabana nightclub.

T.V.

Tuesday night (5.11) late night television offered us some fantastic acts:

Jonsi performed on the Late Late Show

MGMT played on Letterman

And the National performed on Later

Film

What the movie Singles was to the 90s grunge era, Wah Do Dem should be to the Hipster-Indie scene of today. The film, shot guerrilla style in Jamaica and New York, is set to release “soon.” Yeasayer’s Ira Wolf Tuton, singer-songwriter Sean Bones, Nora Jones, and MGMT all star in the film, and it looks like it’s gonna be good. Check out the trailer:
www.wahdodem.com
Tours and Works In Progress

Titus Andronicus’s fans have worked together to release an unofficial collection of demos, B-sides, live tracks and covers. The album is entitled Feats of Strength.

Bloc Party front man Kele Okereke has announced a solo album and tour. The album will be entitled The Boxer. It will be released June 22nd. The 11-date tour will begin in Chicago on July 23rd.

Album Releases:

May 11

* Sea of Cowards by The Dead Weather

* On Approach by Everest

* Night Train by Keane

* Grey Oceans by Coco Rosie

May 18

* Brothers by The Black Keys

* Infinite Arms by Band of Horses

* Can’t Feel Born by High Places

* This Is Happening by LCD Soundsystem

May 25

* At Night We Live by Far

* Saint Bartlett by Damien Jurado

June 1

* Totaled by Indian Jewelry

Charts

CMJ Radio 200

1.     Gorillaz: Plastic Beach

2.     Broken Bells: Broken Bells

3.     Joanna Newsom: Have One On Me

4.     Hot Chip: One Life Stand

5.     Local Natives: Gorilla Manor

6.     Yeasayer: Odd Blood

7.     Liars: Sisterworld

8.     Ted Leo and the Pharmacists: The Brutalist Bricks

9.     Beach House: Teen Dream

10.  Spoon: Transference

Insound Top Sellers
Last updated: May 3, 2010

1.     Broken Social Scene: Forgiveness Rock Record

2.     The National: High Violet

3.     Justin Currie: The Great War

4.     The Pains of Being Pure At Heart: Say No to Love

5.     R.E.M.: Chronic Town

6.     Sonic Youth: Hits Are for Squares

7.     Cap’n Jazz: Analphabetapolothology

8.     The Black Keys: Brothers

9.     Queens of the Stone Age: Feel Good Hit of the Summer

10.  Woods: At Echo Lake

Attempting a career in music can feel like a Sisyphean task—relentlessly futile effort without any reward. Just when you think the consistent gigs are a sign of impending success, everything flat-lines—no gigs, nothing. The tedium sets in as you push that boulder uphill all over again.

The way we generally phrase the scheme is that you have such-and-such a chance in hell to make it as a rock star. But that’s misleading. It gives the impression that attempting a career is like blindfolded archery. Pull back, let go, and let physics do the rest. If you hit the target, you’re golden. If not: Oh well; guess you weren’t meant for fame. Too often good artists don’t have a clue about marketing themselves. They’ll record one demo, and when the labels don’t come pounding on their doors, they get discouraged and give up. But getting a few songs recorded is only the first step in a long journey.

Overnight successes are few and far between. We spend too much time dreaming about those people who got the quick ride. We forget that 99% of those who had any kind of success weren’t born with a contract in their hands; they worked at it for years before there were any glimmers of hope.

The lure of the quick and easy ride has always existed, and it’s just as powerful as ever. Schwab’s Pharmacy was to Lana Turner what Youtube was to Justin Bieber. The reality, though, is that you’ll most likely be wasting your time hoping to be picked up by a major label via Youtube. Youtube numbers don’t necessarily impress executives. The Star Wars Kid is currently over 16.5 millions views, and as far as I can tell, he still hasn’t signed any movie contracts. Large quantities of Youtube views don’t amount to any species of clout within the industry.

If your goal is to have a fantastic Youtube channel, go knock yourself out. But if the point is to “make it,” don’t give up before you’ve really tried. It’s a lot of work, but it’s not impossible. And that’s where Ben Patterson, this week’s Panelist, comes in.

Ben Patterson is the founder of DashGo (formerly Audio Bee), a brawny “intermediary” resource that helps artists get their work out to the public, using just about every kind of revenue generating avenue possible. In the words of the DashGo website: “DashGo allows artists, labels, and content owners to distribute, promote, and market content across digital stores, social sites, and tastemaker blogs and track the results.” In a few words: “Distribution. Promotion. Monetization. Syndication.”

DashGo is part of a new market that has blossomed since the boom of the digital age. As old markets die, new markets naturally take their place. DashGo is one of several intermediaries serving the flourishing subculture of homespun artistry, who have gone too long without representation.

These artists not only lack representation; most of them lack a fan base. To many of these artists, completing a song or an album, and expecting success is sort of like trying to let your pet dove free to fly in a closet. C’mon, Ivory, flap your wings! Flap!

Ben Patterson tears down the closet, and helps you expose your music to a wide field of potential fans. Ben described the service as, “A robust online distribution engine with worldwide reach, transparent sales and social networking data and media management.” But rather than a one-size-fits-all, impersonal service, DashGo takes a more hands on approach with its clients. Patterson said, “I want to make sure that we support our clients by customizing that product to fit their needs, not asking them to modify their needs to fit our product. To that end, we provide digital retail sales support, online marketing, social strategy and more. This ranges from promoting new releases to retailers, to developing custom iPhone applications for [our] clients, like we have for Delicious Vinyl.”

Sadly, too many artists have given up the ghost because the constant struggle felt like screaming into a void. It’s a big world full of a lot of people, and it feels like no one is listening. The opposition can appear insurmountable, and as artists it’s easy to feel intimidated and scrawny. But Patterson steps in, like a bigger tougher older brother, with his Dashgo baseball bat and knocks some heads. DashGo takes care of some of the bigger obstacles—some of the aspects of the Business, which might otherwise be overwhelming for artists to handle alone.

The business side of life and the artistic side of life live in opposite hemispheres of our brains, and it’s a rare person who has mastery over both. So if you’re finding yourself thriving artistically, but totally bombing as a businessperson, don’t despair. You’re not alone.

“Creating a platform for a band without an existing audience is very hard,” said Patterson. “So many media outlets ask for proof of audience before they cover something, since their own success is driven by page views. And since that overnight success randomly and rarely happens, bands and marketing companies are often spinning and hyping and inflating their streams, video plays, friends and other online statistics, which only makes it harder to crack through to a real audience. What makes a slow-growth campaign hard is wearing down the potential fans and gatekeepers to prove you are still out there, that you care and that you’re focused on the project.”

But this is what DashGo is designed for, and they’re on their client’s side, ready for the long haul. “It’s like besieging a castle in the Middle Ages. Prepare to dig in for months or years and hope they run out of food and water—or in this case music—before you do.”

As music consumers, we can often be the weight in the Sisyphean boulder that crushes struggling artists. It’s a strange symbiosis: we want to see new artists, we want to see something different and creative, but it can be difficult to be willing to give unknown artists a chance—especially if they have absolutely no fan base. But they’re never going to get a fan base, if no one gives them a chance. I don’t know if we’re just naturally skittish, but we seem to need the verification from others that says everything is “A-OK.”

DashGo isn’t a free ride for any and every artist who knocks on their door, though. They’re looking for artists who are willing to work. DashGo ameliorates a lot of the pain and hassle of getting your work widely available, but an artist can’t just send Ben an e-mail, saying, “Take it away, Maestro,” and expect to sit back and rake in the dough. Even after teaming up with Dashgo, that Sisyphean boulder is still there. But now you’ve got an advocate. You’ve got a beefy supernatural team on your side that just might be able to break the curse, and roll the boulder over the hill.

But then again, how far you want to go is all up to you. Patterson puts it best, like this: “If you’re just trying to move your song across town, the lowest price Do It Yourself option may be best. If you’re looking to go across the country, it probably makes sense to invest in some movers.”

Shortly after graduating, Landsman heard a story on NPR that caught his attention. He heard what he calls a “wall of funk sound” coming through the stereo—a kind of big-band-jazz-meets-funk. He was blown away to find out that the fierce genius combo was an early 70s recording of the Kashmere Stage Band: a band of high schoolers—16 and 17 year old boys—from Houston, Texas. They were the product of Conrad O. Johnson, an African American school band director, who wasn’t afraid to challenge the reigning cultural norms of his day. He inspired this group of high schoolers to form the Kashmere Stage Band, and they proceeded to stomp the competition in a predominately white festival circuit.

“The sound is just bold,” Landsman says. “Their arrangements are as good as or better than any funk album of the day. You could hold it up to anything and it would stand up, and there’s a reason why DJs now, 35-40 years later, are still pulling it. It’s still in the arsenal of all these people who know a lot about music. It’s because that stuff is timeless, but it’s also because it stands up. It holds its own.”

What made the Kashmere Stage Band so unique was not only the members’ ages but also the odds stacked against them. As an all-black band, they not only participated in music events dominated by white students, but they also played a completely different sound from the others: big band era jazz. They overcame the odds of the prejudice around them, and they also inspired many of their peers and the community around them. The academics of their school turned around completely. The grade point average of the rest of the student body gradually rose. Kashmere inspired the students in an atmosphere where methodology was failing, funding was low, and the arts were the lowest priority.

Inspired by their story, Landsman’s initial desire was to make a scripted film based on the band. However, upon discovering that the band was planning on reuniting after almost 40 years, he adjusted his project to be a documentary. The product was Thunder Soul, named after a two-disc album that the Kashmere Stage Band released.

Upon completion of the film, Landsman and the original members of the band gathered at SXSW to premier Thunder Soul. The film resonated with the audience, earning an Audience Award.

Despite its unanimous success at SXSW, the film has its critics, but Landsman doesn’t let any of that bother him. He says, “You don’t make films for critics. I think with this film we’ve been really lucky, because it’s a universal story. People love it. It speaks to universal themes, and it really doesn’t matter what you do, where you come from or what you’re into: People are responding to it very positively. If somebody doesn’t like something, I don’t take it personally. It’s the same thing with music. If you feel good about it, you love it, and you have integrity in what you do: So I don’t really pay attention to negative reviews. I put my heart and soul into the movie.

“For me, I’m always looking for true stories that resonate; there’s so much profundity and beauty in true stories. Those are the films that I tend to gravitate towards: stories that touch on a larger social relevance, something that has a broader context than just the story itself.”

The big themes in Thunder Soul weren’t the only thing that drove Landsman to the project. Landsman has a deep affection for the style of music Kashmere was laying down. “I love big horn-driven stuff. I love large ensemble music. I love big band jazz. I love afro-pop. I love the big Brazilian stuff. I love the big New Orleans style Neville Brothers sounds where you’ve got 20 musicians on stage and all kinds of instrumentation. That’s really exciting, and in this era of electronic music you don’t hear that; you don’t hear that kind of symphonic sound.”

Landsman’s appreciation for music stretches beyond huge instrumentation; he also loves music with a raw and authentic sound. Landsman explains, “It’s on a smaller level why I like the White Stripes so much, because you hear every creak, every cranny, every nook, every intentionally missed note. It’s very raw. It’s nice to hear something that’s not so shiny.” It’s this same reason that he recommended Hanni el Khatib to Panel. “This guy wasn’t even a professional musician by trade. I think he’s a designer or something like that. He started recording this sort of ‘garagey’ music along the lines of the Hives and the White Stripes. His voice is like an emotional Jack White—really powerful, screaming but incredibly resonant, very musical, and driving. I’d say it’s like a cross between the White Stripes, the Hives and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club. Just driving and jamming great, great percussion… The songs are beautiful, and it’s just got a great grind to it.”

When it comes to music meeting film, Landsman is not without passion, either. He believes in the integrity of the music and would never consider compromising one in favor of the other. “It really bums me out when musicians sell themselves to the highest bidder,” he says. “I feel like certain bands are iconic—like Dylan and Zeppelin and, to some extent, the Stones—with the exception of the way that Scorsese uses them. I feel like those songs are sacred and they should be left alone. I can’t stand when mediocre filmmakers take epic songs; to me that should be illegal.”

Landsman’s film and his love for funk are what influenced his album recommendations: The Kashmere Stage Band’s Texas Thunder Soul, and the funk compilation Funky 16 Corners.  His love for these albums drives his desire to learn about the people who made them. When describing Funky 16 Corners he couldn’t help but spin off into the stories behind the creation of the album, “an amazing record that has Spider Harrison and all these obscure funk artists that Egon, the record label owner, found in this across-the-country hunt for undiscovered funk classics. I often refer to him as the Alan Lomax of funk. He’s really a preservationist, and he’s uncovered this stuff, and now he’s put it on these different albums. While we were making the movie, I listened to this compilation nonstop.”

Landsman is a natural storyteller who can’t help but talk about the things he loves most. Thunder Soul is an extension of that, and to watch the film is to experience Landsman’s passions colliding in an exhilarating true story.