Post by vermin707I've heard alot of people talking trash these days about Martin Atkins
screwing people over on contracts, but I know no specifics. Anyone
out there know of, or have any personal horror stories about dealing
w/Martin/Invisible(Jason of SMP, perhaps)?
Well I'm not trashing Martin as a person, becuase I
really don't know him, and I've only talked to him on a few
occassions. but I know that Meg Lee Chin was completly done with
Martin and Invisible and I've heard it for a LOOOONG time from various
people that signing with Martin is a dead end deal. I can't speak for
Jason't experience but I know that SMP has been pretty self sufficient
for a long time now and then Jason prbably thought that signing with
Invisible would help boost SMP and get some good tour dates etc which
I don't think is what happened...
From my experience I'm not blaming Invisble or Martin for
anything, personally but I will say that I left my former band AFTER
we signed to Invisible, which alot of it was ego, and just a lack of
friendship, anyway from my experience here's what I've had:
-Notes From Thee Real Underground, sounds like a cool Idea, BUT since
the first one ,this has become a "Pay for Play" CD of unknown bands. I
remember talking to Martin after the Preaching to the Perverted
concert and from his mouth came the words "Pay for Play is Bullshit"
and I think it was when Notes III came out that was a $100.00 fee to
be on the CD?(and that's just a submission that doesn't even garuntee
that you are on it) So in the end it just became a play for play in
hopes that you "might" get a deal with Invisible
-Getting Signed to Invisible, okay when this happen the only person
who's name was on the contract was our singer's. Now I'm not saying
that was Martin's idea BUT he certainly seemed interested in just her.
So we get signedand Martin is gonna produce our album Yay!!!!. All of
a sudden we have to pay this Engineering Fee?!?!?!! We had to pay
somthing like $1,500.00 to get the album Engineered? What really
turned sour is my Current Band mate Ben and I put more money into the
Engineering fee than anyone else in the band. So we had to Actually
PAY to have Martin Produce, and release the album. Needless to say the
two guys that put the most money into this have both sense left the
band.
-Invisible was REALLY only interested in our singer, so I don't blame
Martin or anyone for that, but the singer pretty much became a
Invisible Nazi, which means she was selling out her own bandmates over
people from Invisible and then the whole "we're a band" attitude sort
of went out the door, when it was pretty much like Invisible would say
jump, and she would say How high? and then any concerns within the
band feel upon deaf ears.
-Remix album, So then Invisible wanted to put out a "remix" album,
which SOUNDS like a great Idea, It was my job to send in a list of
remixers that i'd like to see remixes by, so I had people like Android
Lust, Gridlock, Susan Wallace, etc... And of course none of the artist
on my list were asked, instead it was the same 10 artist that are on
the roster for Invisible right now. Which to me is kinda not very
interesting, I mean okay for Every release that comes out you have the
same ten bands remix on everyone's remix album?. In all honesty there
was only like three remixes that we even liked, so we didn't want to
have this remix album come out, Then of course Martin is saying we
HAVE TO pay the remixers? So WE HAVE TO PAY for a remix album that we
didn't even care about???
-Touring: I put my entire life on hold and thank god my girl and job
are cool, because when we did the U.S. Tour is was basically 6 weeks
of not getting paid. I'm an adult and I have a house payment, bills,
etc. I'm not 18 waiting to be a rock star. Soooo the band had to buy
their own fucking Bus. So the singer and guitarist buy this bus, we go
on tour, I fucking LOVE Buzz McKoy and Ruth McArdle, because if it
wasn't for them I wouldn't have made jack shit on that tour, So my
label doesn't pay us, and then I get paid by the other artist to be a
DJ for someone else's band. WTF? So in the end the only money I ever
got paid while doing all this was from Mars and Ruthie.
-Name dropping, I honestly despise how labels use the "name dropping"
instead of the actual talent. Of course Martin does the Pigface thing,
but I don't think that means on every single release they need to say
"this guy from this band, and featuring this cat from that band,
etc"..
- Waving the Carrot in front of the Rabbit. I REALLY think that
explains the experience with Invisible, it was like all these false
promises that will pay off(after you pay more money), well I never saw
any payload of any kind, what I ended up seeing was bandmates
constantly bitching at each other, dumping your every dime into
promotion etc, I could own a fucking full Studio with all the money I
dropped on that deal and band.
In the end I had no interest to make music with those people
anymore, and I had to get away from them so I could still respect
them, But if you call spending everyday of your life riding around in
a bus playing shows for little to no money, or being a socialite with
some guy who use to be in some band that was good ten years ago, then
more power to ya, I however LOVE making electronic music, I like my
job, I like my life, and I guess I'm not punk rock enough to want to
spend my life chasing some distant dream.
Anyway in the end I'm happy I'm working on new music with
Ben, I'm working on remixes for people, I'm getting ready to work with
some amazing vocalist, so I don't blame Martin or Invisible for
anything, but I do think they were apart of the situation, and all of
this isn't anything new, I mean I've heard things from just about
everybody from Ogre, to Meg, to Lee Fraiser..
I will say though As a Music FAN, and outside of the
business side of things, I have very much enjoyed some of the releases
the Invisible has put out like LoLo, Defragmentation. Dead Voices On
Air, Meg Lee Chin, and a few others, so if anything I think they've
got a pretty decent ear for some cool stuff.
Just my Experience,
David
NP: C17H19NO3 "Terra Null"
syncromesh.net