Robert Baird

Welcome Back My Friends
Robert Baird
Robert Baird  |  Sep 13, 2007  |  4 comments
ELP As Christmas approaches, the reissues have begun to trickle in. Today's bounty was Emerson, Lake and Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery or what the notes call "Prog Rock's masterpiece."
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Do Re Me
Robert Baird
Robert Baird  |  Aug 28, 2007  |  0 comments
The amount of flux in the world of music and the businesses of marketing and selling creativity continues to be absolutely amazing. In nearly 25 years of writing about music I’m seeing things I almost don't believe.
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Bend Over
Robert Baird
Robert Baird  |  Aug 13, 2007  |  2 comments
For good measure alone, Critics, particularly the cranky ones like I've recently become, all deserve a well–placed boot up the arse once in awhile and so, much to my delight I too loved much of The Simpsons movie I prematurely sniffed at last week on this forum. I even get to add this delicious addendum: The critics are wrong! It's pretty wonderful. Many great bits. Much self-deprecation. Maggie emerging as a full–blown character. Okay, okay: I was wrong.
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Lo Res Labels
Robert Baird
Robert Baird  |  Aug 10, 2007  |  1 comments
Insider music biz stuff should in most cases stay that way because normal folk, what I like to call "civilians," don't care about who said what to whom in the bowels of some label HQ in Burbank or Manhattan. There's also something pitifully self-indulgent and exclusionary and ultimately pathetic about people who are in the know about the music biz and live to tell you about it.
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Steamin' in the Rain
Robert Baird
Robert Baird  |  Jul 23, 2007  |  1 comments
It's Monday. It's raining. And people, tourists in particular, (excuse me, why don’t you just poke out the other eye while you're at it!) cannot walk with umbrellas, so let’s talk Ticketmaster.
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Pageant of the Transmundane
Robert Baird
Robert Baird  |  Jul 20, 2007  |  0 comments
Now that we're perched upon the precipice of the Simpson Movie opening—at least a decade too late—I, by chance, I caught the Hullabalooza episode with the Smashing Pumpkins this week, the one where Homer becomes part of the "pageant of the transmundane," by being shot in the stomach with a cannonball.
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New Math
Robert Baird
Robert Baird  |  Jul 13, 2007  |  2 comments
Here's a number to contemplate: 52% of recorded music sales at Sony/BMG are now via downloads.
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Jammin' Till The Jam Is Through
Robert Baird
Robert Baird  |  Jul 12, 2007  |  0 comments
It's too bad the word "jam" was ever invented, much less the concept it implies being attached to music.
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Craig Kallman of Atlantic Records: Listen Closely
Interviews
Robert Baird  |  Jul 08, 2007  |  First Published: Jun 08, 2007  |  0 comments
Label heads—those at the very highest positions of power at music companies. To anyone who's spent time near the record business, they're a mythical breed. Like gnomes. Or dragons. Often, it's their vision that spells success or failure for the label they run. And what they say goes. Over the years, many a legendary creature has assumed the title: Goddard Lieberson, Clive Davis, Mo Ostin, to name just a few of those who have survived and prospered. The list of those who did not is at least twice as long.
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Kim Richey
Robert Baird
Robert Baird  |  Jun 22, 2007  |  1 comments
The old saw about "the first album was their best" is often true, truer than most artists want to admit. And no where in music is that state more widespread than with singer/songwriters who only have a guitar, their voice and their material and no band to hide behind. Trying to hack out a career as a solo act is a bitch. Takes guts or overweening ego to get through it. Most soloists fall prey to the natural reaction which is to pour all their best ideas into the first project. That's cool until you're faced with coming up with a second and perhaps a third record. Yet sometimes the process can reverse itself, and after a fallow period a songwriter can recharge, again have something to say, and they come through with a late season masterpiece.
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