Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Wouldn't it be fun to be an A&R man? I mean, don't get me wrong, I love my gig at Championship Vinyl, but wouldn't it be exciting to hear new acts, and bring them back to the label so that the whole world could have a chance to hear them? Somewhat in that spirit I played the long embargoed Fiona Apple album this evening, thinking to my self, "If I didn't know what this was, if it just came in over the transom, and I was the guy who had to decide if we should put the resources into promoting and distributing it, what would I do?"
Well, what I'd do is shift fantasies, I guess, and go back to the one about being a critic at the Village Voice. In the end temperament counts for a lot more than we think, and after three cuts of Fiona Apple I found that I was less interested in assessing the commercial prospects of the project (middling, I'd say-- no reason it couldn't sell 250,000 copies, but 75,000 seems just as likely), and more interested in why exactly it was not grabbing me. The version I heard doesn't sound quite finished, which is interesting-- the songs are written the way they are intended to be written, and there are strings and production effects in there, but it still has a work tape quality to it. The songs are okay-- an occasional turn of phrase turned my head, and there are even a few hooks-- but the whole thing has a forced quality to it.
Honest, I know less than nothing about Fiona Apple, because most of what I think I know is probably wrong, but if I were an A&R guy I would not be excited about promoting this artist. I can hear the potential, but I can't hear the buzz, you know what I mean?
Well, what I'd do is shift fantasies, I guess, and go back to the one about being a critic at the Village Voice. In the end temperament counts for a lot more than we think, and after three cuts of Fiona Apple I found that I was less interested in assessing the commercial prospects of the project (middling, I'd say-- no reason it couldn't sell 250,000 copies, but 75,000 seems just as likely), and more interested in why exactly it was not grabbing me. The version I heard doesn't sound quite finished, which is interesting-- the songs are written the way they are intended to be written, and there are strings and production effects in there, but it still has a work tape quality to it. The songs are okay-- an occasional turn of phrase turned my head, and there are even a few hooks-- but the whole thing has a forced quality to it.
Honest, I know less than nothing about Fiona Apple, because most of what I think I know is probably wrong, but if I were an A&R guy I would not be excited about promoting this artist. I can hear the potential, but I can't hear the buzz, you know what I mean?
// posted by Bill @ 9:12 PM 
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