A Quote by Michael Angelo Batio
I've had a very different career than a lot of other musicians. I went through the major labels. I was signed to two major labels and bands. I've toured with Aerosmith, and I've had records on the charts, songs in the movies. If you had checklist of things a person wants to accomplish in music...I've done a lot. And I don't mean that in an egotistical way; I never take it for granted. But you can't think outside the box unless you know what's in the box.
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All my records were dance-oriented, and all the hassle with major labels about changing my records, release dates, videos - everything was out of my hands. I always had to deal with somebody else, and I had a different perspective on a lot of things.
For new bands, I think a major label is the safest place to be. Independent labels are the ones getting away with murder. A lot of them are hobbyists who rip-off young bands, taking advantage of people who would never get signed to a major.
Signing to a major, there weren't many bands from our sphere that were doing it. I mean, obviously R.E.M. had done it, and Husker Du and the Replacements had done it, and maybe Soul Asylum, but that was probably about it. Those four bands were pretty much the only ones from that milieu that had signed to a major.
I've signed with major labels, and I haven't had any control over the money.
I went mainstream in a major way with the song "Let's Dance." And what I found I had done was put a box around myself. It was very hard for people to see me as anything other than the person in the suit who did "Let's Dance," and it was driving me mad - because it took all my passion for experimenting away.
In my career, I've never been a box office name. Granted, a couple of my movies have made a lot of money, but I'd do other movies which make very little money, or they're not seen that much.
Equal Vision seems to be doing really well. A lot of these major labels are just imploding and becoming indie labels, anyway.
It seemed record companies wanted bands to be creative because they didn't know how to manufacture underground music. We could do our own thing and go at our own pace. But that changed when major labels started wanting bands that would sell 7 million records.
I think the Cosmic Psychos were a band that was highly influential on the Seattle so called grunge scene. I know that Kurt and Nirvana were fans, they played shows with Pearl Jam. Even thou the Cosmic Psychos never had the commercial impact or success that those bands had, they were still a major influence on them, and I think a lot of it had to do with the spirit and the sound of their music.
I don't really see a difference in independent and major labels. To me, it's pretty much the same. There used to be a difference between indies and major labels, but I don't think there is anymore.
There was a lot of freedom, so bands in those days did not have to play for the public. They played for club owners that enjoyed music. You know, what happened - there was a lot of clubs that had bebop music or different forms of music. It was great for musicians.
I just got a chance to see strong tenacity and a desire to be on top from some young women who have never seen six, seven women signed at a time to major record labels. But they believe that they can put their footprint in hip hop in a major way.
I didn't expect major labels would embrace MySpace, and the original idea for music on the site was the unsigned bands, the independent bands.
I don't care about the critics. I took a lot of nonsense. I got stuck with silly labels like 'White Hope.' What about other guys like Tex Cobb - they never had those labels?
When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.
I think the Ambitious Lovers never got their due- we had terrible management and at that point, we were on major labels and we didn't have any music business savvy which we could have used. We made a series of hilarious mistakes not in terms of music but in terms of making it happen.
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