Stupid musicians, stupid clients, general dumbasses and things people do that drive me nuts.
Got off the phone with a dude who is the “manager” of a death metal band here. Now, if you’re a death metal band in this town and you have a “manager” you’ve got to wonder…
Anyway, he was explaining to me on the phone today how he “knows about this business.”
And why is this guy such a vast wealth of knowledge about the music industry?
“His x-wife’s dad used to know Don Henley’s old neighbor.”
Man. Does this dude have connections or what?
Part of my business is in the duplication world. I do tons of CD/DVD work. The Christmas season is the busiest time of year for the duplication industry. I’m slammed right now. I’m going through tons of materials and need more.
There’s a company right down the street from me that manufactures an (unnamed) certain material that I use constantly. This material is made out of plastic.
This company is a little strange. They have a several hundred thousand square foot facility for manufacturing and warehousing their “product.” At any given time they can have millions and millions in the warehouse.
Given that this season is the busiest of the year, I placed an order with this company early in November. On my purchase order I specified when I’d be by to pick the order up. When I got there, the warehouse was empty. No product, no humans.
I wandered all through the warehouse and finally ended up talking to a lady I’ve dealt with before there. I asked where my buddy the warehouse manage was. Turns out, he doesn’t work there anymore. She wouldn’t tell me if he quit, or was fired.
I asked if my order was ready and she then informed me that they were out of stock. Now I’m not talking about a big order. I’m talking about 2000-3000 units, where they usually have millions in stock.
She informed me that they weren’t manufacturing the product for about two weeks. The reason? It costs them less NOT to operate than it does to produce their product. What??
I checked in again today (close to 3 weeks after my last discussion with them) and they’re still shut down. They’re not out of business. They’re just not manufacturing during the busiest time of year.
Business 101:
I do a little “consulting” now and then for people who can’t figure out why their recordings suck. This is one of those occasions:
This guy has a home studio and he’s got a TON of killer equipment. His gear is top of the line, worth thousands and thousands of bucks. But for the amount of gear he has, he can’t make a decent sounding recording. (Most crappy studio engineers think buying more gear is the answer, but it’s not)…
He has me listen to one of his recordings and sure enough, it sucks. It takes me about 7 or 8 seconds to figure out what his problem is. I reach down to his console and “do my magic.” BOOM! His mix opens up and all the sudden you can hear everything much more clearly!
He starts to freak out. “Wow! What did you do? That sounds so much better! You’re amazing!” I then inform him what a frigging PAN KNOB is. He had all of his channels panned dead center. $50,000 worth of gear and he doesn’t know what a pan knob is.
Someone shoot me now.
Hmm. Tough question. The one last time you have sex before you die. Who would you do for one last fling? Would it be Wilbur?
Much has unfolded over the last few days.
Mainly I had a knock down drag out email bashing contest between me and a client. This client has been one of my best for over 10 years. All the sudden he says I’m a price gouger and accuses me of jacking up my rates because “I saw his house.” I guess this guy is so into himself and how much dough he makes he’s flipped his lid. I’ve never seen his house and I’ve actually given discounts to him for all my services.
So the big album project that was slated for later this month has been shit canned. More details to come, but I’m too tired to write about it now…and I’m just finishing watching “The good, the bad and the ugly.”