Kaiser Chiefs singer Ricky Wilson performs in 2005. – Photo: Andrew Kendall.

“If you haven’t got a scene you’ve gotta’ set your own scene” said Kaiser Chiefs singer Ricky Wilson at 31:40 and “keep your ears peeled” for song ideas said drummer Nick Hodgson at 51:00 during their interview below with Steve Lamacq on BBC Music:

This also confirms my theory that anything can be made into a punk rock song. It would also be good behind a diesel beat! Before the 2010 heat map, my most popular post was 10 Engineering Rules. Each line of the song makes reference to one of the top posts on the blog, with reference to one or two extra to fill in the back-story. Linkable lyrics are below. Tabbed lyrics are right here.

GigsWiz allows promoters to submit gig details, which, working through APIs, get syndicated to event search sites like Songkick and Eventful. GigsWiz also lets promoters automatically post information about the gig to the Facebook/Twitter streams of the bands on the bill. But the promoters aren’t able to flood the stream—it posts once when the even is first listed and again eight days before it. Event organizers can also keep track of sales as they come in.

Bands have two incentives to join. First is that the service helps promote their shows. Second is that they get a kickback when they promote their shows. GigsWiz has set their ticket fees at a flat 15 percent. A $20 ticket costs $23 and no more. From that 15 percent, 10 percent goes to GigsWiz, and the other 5 percent is potential revenue for the bands. It’s like they’re getting paid to help themselves. For comparison, Ticketmaster has been known to charge upwards of 30 percent.

GigsWiz is based in Finland. They launched in the UK on January 25. Joonas told me that they see the the U.S. and the UK as their biggest potential markets—so that’s where they wanted to start. Right now GigsWiz is best geared for the big music middle class—for venues that have decent-sized shows and the bands that play them. They are also incredibly fit for promoting festivals. Promoters are able to broadcast to the fans of every band on the bill.

The GigsWiz team includes the three co-founders Joonas Pekkanen, Juuso Vermasheinä, and Kai Lemmetty. Joonas said they had previously worked on another tech startup and that his background was more of a techie than a music junkie. Also on board is David Hazan—based in New York—and a handful of programmers in Helsinki. Lemmetty and Hazan are both at NMS in Los Angeles today.

Joonas gave me a quick tour of the interface on our video chat. It seems really easy to use. Screenshots are viewable here.

UK startup BandApp is hell-bent on becoming the indie mobile replacement for MySpace and record labels. Similar in concept to Sound Around (now part of ReverbNation) or MobBase, BandApp’s monthly service gives musicians a platform to create and manage their own iPhone apps. But BandApp is taking a different approach in that they’re sidelining the paralyzing iTunes App Store approval process and delivering their apps via the web, and in 2011 will launch their own retail outlet, a digital storefront, called the BandApp Store.

Perhaps the most intriguing thing about BandApp is who’s behind it. Have you ever heard “The Ballad of Chasey Lain” or freak danced to “The Bad Touch?” [iTunes link] Don’t lie.

Actually BandApp founder Adam Perry (a.k.a. The Yin) was a drummer for the band ‘A’ until circa 2005 when he joined The Bloodhound Gang, who released those two particular sonic treats in 1999.

Pricing: Bands: £20 startup fee plus £7/month with 1-yr contract or £75/year. Fans: Free.

I gave a quick test run on my iPhone of one app, and it worked pretty well, nice features, especially the fan wall, but an issue with going horizontal (no landscape mode yet maybe). The fan wall gives a direct connection between the band and the fans, and has nice Twitter and Facebook shareability.

To try out the apps point your iPhone’s Safari browser to one of these: bandapp.com/theblackout – bandapp.com/zebrahead – bandapp.com/wearetheocean – bandapp.com/a. Once there, just use your menu to “add to home screen” and you have instant pain-free mobility. Can you pocket it?

OR Vimeo—as opposed to streaming from your own host in a custom player

• 1. No bandwidth strain or maintenance issues.
• 2. Visitors get player controls that they’re already used to.
• 3. Shareability.
• 4. It works. Everywhere. Always. (plays on iPhone etc.)
• 5. Easy as f*** to implement (copy and paste). No webmaster needed.
• 6. Traffic source—put link to your site in YouTube video descriptions.
• 7. Google indexes YouTube videos.
• 8. The network effect compounds these advantages.

YouTube blows away the rest as far as eyeballs. I really like YouTube’s new iframe embed code (it’s what we’re using here now). Vimeo is the second biggest and IMO has really nice features. The best part is that you don’t really have to pick—upload to both of them! Psst.: Tube Mogul may help for going beyond that—I’ve never used it but it apparently can syndicate uploads to multiple video sites. Also I know the YouTube API available for developers. Anyone use it?

“I play it like I stole it and the guy I stole it from is about to break down the door and take the guitar from me.” –Chris Dinardo, SLeuX guitarist.

The building used to be a bank. But in December, 2004, when I first met Chris Dinardo, the sign on its door read “SMR Studios.” Chris, and two of his hard-rock bandmates, from DownNeck had opened the rehearsal/recording space there in Garfield, NJ and were running their own record label, Saturday Morning Records. I discovered the newly-opened studio via Craigslist—when nobody here knew about Craigslist—and I knew Chris could be trusted when he told me he knew who Matt Skiba was. Inside SMR, walls were decorated with brilliant paintings by Paul Jach, who rented space upstairs. Their engineer Jamie ate voltage and loved Primus almost as much as Chris loves KISS. Let me tell you, there’s nothing like recording vocals in a vault.

But years passed, and it was a strain for the rest of the original DownNeck to keep focus on the SMR venture when they, unlike Chris, had proverbial day jobs. (One we suspect was CIA, although he won’t admit it, and the other may have built your house.) The studio closed and DownNeck split. Chris, who had studied TV/film production and broadcasting, needed a better way to fuse creativity, music, and video production, so he decided to start his own company, NeverImage Entertainment. His latest music project SLeuX came about last year, which Chris started with James Donovan, DownNeck’s singer in their later years. Chris is no stranger to the NYC/NJ underground scene or to indie music business, and he had a lot of great stuff to tell us, so let’s cut right to it.

Tell me more about your vision for NeverImage. I mean, when you were starting it a few years back you saw it as an entertainment company rather than a traditional record label. Are you taking on other artists with NeverImage?

CD: I think with the way things are today you can’t be a traditional label and survive. With NeverImage we’re doing albums but we’re also able to get into other areas like film, video, DVD’s, webvids, and whatever else we feel like doing. The key is to have an artist own what they do content-wise and have the vision to present it. NeverImage started as a home for me and my friends to have place to put out their stuff, my crazy projects, and stuff I produced with other artists. Now with the release of SLeuX it’s a nice way to start off what we’re going to do in the future. We’re not taking on artists, but with that said, I’ll never say no to a good idea.

You mentioned producing a video for every track on the new SLeuX album. Awesome. Is that still the plan? What’s your approach on that?

CD: Well we got two so far…10 to go…(laughs). It’s a task, that’s for sure. I know five songs on the album have video treatments. The approach is as footage is collected and ideas get filmed, we’ll put the videos together. There’s no time frame, but we’d like to have all of them done before the next album comes out…(laughs)…in 2023.

Old school vs. new school—who wins?

CD: Old school recording, performing, and music wins for me. The new school way of the music business wins over the old school model.

Dinardo lies amidst his influences, who include KISS, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Quicksand, Rush, Dinosaur Jr., and The Misfits: “If you don’t own at least 5 things in this pic ya’ need to reconsider your taste music n’ DVD’s.”

Tell me about the lead up to SLeuX and the production of the debut album.

CD: Well we went in wanting to give the music justice. We wanted to record old-school style on 2-inch analog tape. We had 22 songs. We wanted that down to 12. For the production I wanted a sound like Rock and Roll Over by KISS. I realized pretty quick that I wasn’t Eddie Kramer either…(laughs)…I wanted the musicianship to jump out…I wanted guitars up. I wanted to play the fuck out of the guitar on this record. So many new guitarists play two strings and don’t know what the hell they are doing. I play it like I stole it and the guy I stole it from is about to break down the door and take the guitar from me. I wanted harmonies. Character-driven lyrics. We definitely achieved what we set out to do. People are gonna dig it.

You imposed at least one rule on SLeuX so far: don’t make the same song twice. Are there any more…or is that the only one you need?

CD: Yeah, never say no to a musical idea without trying it or feeling it out. It’s no fun making the same song over and over,or getting held down in one sound. It’s exciting because when someone brings a song in it could be anything in any style. It may never even have a style. You have to take the song where it should go and that could be anywhere. To me that’s where the fun is—creation.

Dinardo, on surviving the industry: “It’s like you’re playing a football game and the rules keep changing every minute. It’s impossible to navigate. But if you make your own playbook and play by your own rules it makes things easier.”

With the industry in hyper flux, how are you adapting on the business side? What are you doing the same/differently now with SLeuX and NeverImage?

CD: It’s insane. The way the music business is now, it’s like you’re playing a football game and the rules keep changing every minute. It’s impossible to navigate. But if you make your own playbook and play by your own rules it makes things easier. I love the way the music business is. I think if you are an artist who can create good songs, have a decent idea of promotion and kick ass live, you will be fine. Business-wise we have ideas on this release. We haven’t decided the exact route yet. We know it will be on iTunes first before it’s anywhere else. Then we’re gonna get crafty with the actual CD. Not too many people buy CD’s but we want to make it special for the ones who still do. I’m hoping to have it released as a CD/DVD and keep it at a low price. We do all the DVD production in house so it lets us keep our stuff low in price. We’re not into over pricing anything we do.

What’s your take on free media, P2P, and alternative pricing like pay-what-you-want?

CD: I don’t have a take. Everyone can decide how they want to present their music. An idea might be perfect for one artist and a disaster for another.

What’s one thing that’s wrong with the music industry, and one thing that’s right?

CD: What’s wrong is artists looking at getting signed as the be all end all. It’s not. Every deal is different for every artist. You have to make it on your own before anyone invests in you. Hard work pays off. The thing that’s right is artists can have total control. As long as you have tunes that people love you’ll be okay. Trust your vision.

What’s the SLeuX album called?

CD: It’s gonna be self-titled. But like everything with SLeuX, it’s subject to change. The thing that won’t change is NeverImage. I will be involved in several projects in the future and NeverImage will be the home base for everything. I can’t stop making music and I see myself being in several different projects. I love what I do. Music is my passion. Plenty of good shit is coming from the NeverImage camp—stay tuned.

Dinardo has a mysterious affinity for anything silver. I recommend you ask him about it via Twitter @DiNardoSleux or, even better, in person on Saturday, November 27 at Dingbatz in Clifton, NJ, where SLeuX will be performing their entire debut album live for the first time. Also performing will be The 33rd Revolution, Lowdown, and Object 7. I’ll be there too, because, “It’s going to be one hell of a party, and you don’t wanna miss it!”

In a VideoSong

1. What you see is what you hear (no lip-syncing for instruments or voice).

2. If you hear it, at some point you see it (no hidden sounds).

VideoSong is medium defined by Jack Conte with those two rules. In addition to his solo production, Jack is the orchestration half of the indie music duo Pomplamoose, who chose video as their social medium of choice largely due to the magnetic attraction emitted by YouTube. They popularized their music on YouTube with videosong—a format that seemed functional and easy—and inspired viewers.

Last Friday, Kevin Breuner at CD Baby interviewed Jack Conte in DIY Musician Podcast #096. I recommend giving the full podcast a listen. Jack explained why he and Nataly chose to cover the songs that they did, and how it helped them become sustainable on mp3 downloads alone—covers and originals. Here are two excerpts from the podcast—the first is about the attraction to videosongs, and the second is about why Pomplamoose resisted record deals from all four major labels.