Martin Atkins Offers Some Advice

A 25-year music industry veteran, Warped Tour keynote speaker Martin Atkins knows all too well the hurdles indie labels and musicians face in today’s landscape. In addition to making history with Public Image Ltd. (featuring post-Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten AKA John Lydon), Atkins has toured relentlessly, recorded, engineered, and mixed countless bands including Pigface, Killing Joke, Ministry and Murder Inc. He writes and records his own music, runs a successful recording studio and owns and operates his own indie label, Invisible Records.

Additionally, the industry guru also runs Underground Inc., a collective of independent labels under an umbrella that gives each shelter from the storms that await the “little guy” in the industry. He’s worked with a staggering number of high profile musicians, and is now sharing his insight by traveling the country and imparting wisdom on up and coming bands on the verge of getting chewed up by an unforgiving industry.

Atkins’ 2008 book/DVD Tour: Smart, which has been met with critical acclaim, compiled his experiences to create a valuable resource for any aspiring touring musician or band. Armed with the base knowledge his book has to offer, we tracked Martin down for a few updates on his philosophy, as well as to get a gauge on the shifting climate of the record industry in today’s world.

How would you describe “selfish philanthropy” to a musician?

It would be GREAT if everyone UNDERSTOOD that the best way to get anything done, anyone motivated is to act and speak in an Unselfish way… What is important to THEM, what do THEY care about, what do THEY want. If you are conscious of these factors (instead of worrying about what YOU want), you’ll actually end up getting what you want. The Selfish Philanthropy idea is just a way of describing this concept to an artist that might be having difficulty with the open-ness of the idea – perhaps not because they are raging selfish assholes – but, in tough times in tough businesses (and in the music business now its both) sometimes it’s difficult for frightened stressed people to be as nice as they might hope to be.

There’s a GREAT example in Tour:Smart where I advise a tour manager – or a band to divide up their rider (this was for a 4 or 5 band package tour so it was quite complicated) into a separate shopping list for the person that would be going to the store. On the surface this seems like an amazingly nice thing to do for the club / the runner BUT really, by YOU taking one hour to do this, nicely and clearly you are saving all 50 clubs that hour but also allowing for the fact that only 20% of the venues might have time to do this. So, in terms of man-hours – you just saved the planet 49 hours of shit, but you also made better sure that the stuff you need will be where you need it, when you need it – and that the person who COULD be helping you work through that days crisis (broken something – instrument, body part or heart) isn’t still at the store circling back around to the fresh produce section for the fourth time because of your horribly constructed, thoughtless list.

You’ve cited Butthole Surfers as a band that had autonomy until they went to a major label, where they failed in a fog of compromise. The fact that bands with talent still feel the need for validation by signing to a label is terribly sad, given all the options out there. What’s a band to do once they’ve bitten the apple, so to speak, and signed a contract with the majors, only to realize things aren’t what they thought they’d be?

I don’t advise bands to NOT look for a deal anymore (I mean that’s the advice but they just don’t listen!) Instead I advise them to start running their own businesses as the ONLY real way to get the audience, the following to attract the attention of even a small independent label – hopefully along the way they will accumulate the skills they need and most importantly the realization that 100 CDs sold themselves is the $ equivalent of 1,000 sold through a label. The introduction of additional filters of a label isn’t always a good thing.

The list of bands who have come unglued by the very different world of majors goes on and on… Butthole Surfers (although they got a ‘hit’ out of it), Jesus Lizard, Cop Shoot Cop (name change insisted upon by the major!) goes on and on.

How do you feel about bands giving their music away as a means of exposure?

Free Is The New Black… we are all drug dealers – and the first hit has to be free, right! I started riffing on this a long time ago – most recently advising people to ‘think like a bakery’  meaning, if you have a new customer – are you going to give them a free sample of the amazing and expensive smoked salmon thingy you just created, or are you going to give them a free sample of last week’s not very popular stale bagels?? Weirdly, Panera Bread is now trying out this formula – pay what you can, pay what you feel…

What’s the best thing a label can do for a band?

At its best the thing that invisible did was USE its total leverage to help a new band get further, quicker… Not by any leapfrogging / missing of important steps but by creating more value and inserting other reasons to be interested in every project. Early on, Meg Lee Chin came out with Pigface when NO ONE knew who she was, I made sure I stood on my drum seat and introduced her every night – knowing that I was sowing seeds – I spent WAY too much time working on her debut album – spending 16 full (12hr+) days working on a song called Heavy Scene alone.

Later, with a band called VooDou, I asked Michelle from the band to sing backups on Chris Connelly’s solo album that we were recording at the time and it naturally occurred that he sang backups on her album. THEN they all decided to tour together, THEN we asked Voodou to open for Pigface and I helped them get the opening slot with My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult… We utilized loads of things that didn’t specifically cost any money, but had taken years and loads of money to accumulate (street team, studio, leverage, etc. etc. etc.) NOW we also make shirts for bands too – trying to help wherever we can.

I have to end this little part though by saying that any band can start their own label – they WON’T have any leverage and will encounter all kinds of difficulties as they start to try and help their ‘friends’ but there is NOTHING stopping anyone from DOING IT THEMSELVES!

I think the ONLY reason for a band to sign to a label is to be able to take advantage of leverage – if the label has a studio – get it in the agreement that you can spend _______ hours there, if you want to tour with one of their bands – get it in writing that you CAN!!

We get 150 emails a day from publicists pimping new acts, but after years of this I can’t recall more than three bands I’ve ever truly been turned on to by any of them. Our readers, on the other hand, have recommended incredible sounds like Janelle Monae, The Ringers, Nico Vega, Gutter Twins, etc. That relationship is far more important than people seem to realize at the moment. Our readers have just as much of an impact on what we cover as any record label, and we’re succeeding. What does that say about the industry?

I think its great – the promise of the punk rock revolution is finally being fulfilled!

The weird thing is that when a band is over-hyped – they might achieve meteoric fame – but it’s only for a heart beat and can be just as easily taken away or overtaken by someone else’s 15 minutes. When you build it brick by brick yourself, it’s much more solid, much more real, much harder for other forces to tear it down!

This used to be a land of ubiquity, where there were only a select few sources from which to find good music. Now that it’s everywhere – but mixed in with the white noise of the mediocrity avalanche – people seem to be in need of new tastemakers, new places they can feel a sense of trust that they’ll be pointed in some good directions. They’re skeptical, and the last thing they want is another MTV. At Antiquiet, we tackle that role with heart-attack seriousness. What advice can you offer us, whether to not be led astray or get too far up our own asses?

As I said above, just keep doing what you do that works – and less of the stuff that doesn’t and, brick by brick, build the Great Fucking Wall of China.

You are absolutely correct that the very thing that is missing these days is a trusted voice – a filter – there’s room for many of them so as long as you have a consistent voice / opinion / viewpoint or delivery that people like – they’ll come to you. I mean, there’s no shortage of information out there – but people want help to sort through all of it.