I can never remember if it’s supposed to be the difficult second album or the difficult third?
At the moment it seems that bands are being pushed much too hard into releasing that second album way before it’s ready.
We all know the score. You spend 5 years honing an absolute cracker, release an album, go on tour and then somebody says you’ve got three weeks to release album two. Because you’re half ways decent there’s one or two crackers that you’ve been working on. The only problem is that everything else sounds about as rapidly put together as Keith Richard’s wardrobe.
I thought the whole point of an A&R man was to look after the artists and guide them through these things without overexposing them or ruining their reputation. If the labels aren’t even doing that anymore their point is rapidly disappearing.
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At the risk of sounding like a terrible hypocrite, is this not down to t'internet a bit?
You don't get as long to polish your follow-up releases as it doesn't take as long to distribute/promote the first one?
And maybe bands are getting picked up quicker as they have an online presence but that also means they don't have the catalogue of practised material you mnight get from gigging?
And the blogs will pick up on any leaked material out of the studio (deliberately planted by the label or not) so you have less impact when you do release?
And there is so much other music jostling for position, both signed and not, Myspace, etc. that the label will panic that you'll be forgotten if you delay?
The traditional ponytailed PVC-jacketed A&R man is surely a dinosaur; is his replacement not the iTunes Chart Optimisation Guru?
(Sorry, just some incoherent thrown-together thoughts but as the sun has come out I'm off to the park with Freyja!)
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