Rock acts today seem to find inspiration in Jonas Brothers, Hanson and Miley Cyrus rather than blues based rock bands ala Aerosmith, AC/DC, and Guns N’ Roses. To illustrate, check out Stereo Skyline who was recently a PureVolume featured artist and sees steady plays on their myspace. “I see alot of artists on myspace list modern acts from their own genre as influences. These are not people who have connected to music. If the artist has never connected to music, they won’t create music that connects with others,” says Angela Jenson at Altsounds. Most of these rock bands today simply cannot find an audience and disappear after a couple of performances on Warped Tour.

Nickelback is streaming a new song called ‘Something In Your Mouth‘. We at KOAR were betting that legendary rock producer, Mutt Lange (Def Leppard, AC/DC, Foreigner) would breath new life into Nickelback, but sadly to say, we are getting cold feet. Rock bands today just simply lost their edge except for the slim few like AC/DC and Metallica. Of course Avenged Sevenfold and Disturbed still perform and live like rock stars, but we still need a crop load of new ‘game changing’ bands if rock is looking for a resurgence.

Is it still possible to sell 3 million records and 2 million iTune singles? Absolutely, and is it still achievable for a new artist to be traveling with 3 tour buses and performing at New Jersey’s Meadowlands Arena with an audience so big that cars are causing traffic on the turn pike like a football game? Sure, that’s possible as well. Anything is possible!

Music history shows us that the greatest rock artists had the similar ingredients that caused music listeners to tremble. For instance, Def Leppard (Mutt Lange) who sold millions of records and packed arenas were certainly not original. They just plagiarized and ripped off AC/DC as can be seen in the video
Let It Go.

The moral of the story is stop trying to be original. We pity those acts that find inspiration in Miley Cyrus and Jonas Brothers. Artists that listen to disposable music will create disposable music and the cycle must come to an end. Start referencing legendary bands as your main source of inspiration. Steal from the greatest artists and copy the riffs and slightly re-arrange the choruses and the verses as every guitarist should be able to kick out classic AC/DC riffs.

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Lets welcome Matt York who hails from Ontario, Canada. For fans of John Mayer, James Taylor, and Dave Matthews. “I grew up listening to the Motown and gospel that my mom and dad would listen to around the house,” says Matt. “In high school, when all of my friends were listening to Nirvana, I was listening to Stevie and Rare Earth. In 2007, Matt was nominated for three TIMA (Toronto Independant Music Awards) including “Best Male Acoustic” and “Best Song” and his new album “Mine” has been picked up by US-based Indie label Rock Ridge Music and is slated for digital release November 4, 2008. Our favorite tracks are Let Me Go and Lucky Man.

AC/DCÂ ‘Black Ice’ – 784,269
Metallica ‘Death Magnetic’ – 52,169
Kid Rock ‘Rock N Roll Jesus’ – 40,069
Adele ’19’- 24,926
Katy Perry ‘One Of The Boys’ – 18,426
Kings of Leon ‘ Only By The Night’ – 16,032
Slipknot ‘All Hope is Gone’ – 14,546
Rise Against ‘Appeal To Reason’ – 12,927
Keane ‘Perfect Symmetry’ – 10,710
Saving Abel ‘Self Titled’ – 8,316
Journey ‘Revelation’ – 8,077
Buckcherry ‘Black Butterfly’ – 7,508
Hollywood Undead ‘Swan Songs’ – 7,221
3 Doors Down – Self Titled’ – 6,432
Secondhand Serenade ‘Twist In My Story’ – 4,776

Digital Albums (Total Sales)

Cold Play ‘Viva La Vida’ – 564,150
Metallica ‘Death Magnetic’ -132,109

It has been a tough year for the music business and all who are involved including artists, managers, lawyers and label execs and employees.

Matt McDonald, vice president of CMJ, said the attendance was high this year but the outlook for next year is less certain. Martin Mills, chairman of Beggars Group record company says, “We’re doing great this year, but it’s been an ongoing struggle for our industry. We’ve been hurting for awhile. Now the whole world is experiencing that”. The recent post How Quickly Is The Music Industry Shrinking? tells us that 2008 should be as bad as 2007.

Illegal downloading, hundreds of thousands of music releases, and market fragmentation (the loss of reaching a large, stable audience of potential customers through print, radio, and television ads) has still left the music industry along with other industries in utter chaos.

Now the world is faced with a global economic crisis. “You were paying $1.80 a gallon and suddenly it’s $3.80,” said Bhowmik. “The cover charges haven’t gone up. The concept that you’re going to be the next Nirvana is a nice idea, but most musicians almost just do it to have their art out there.” “You get offered a scoring job on television, but they want to pay very little or nothing because they think you should be grateful for the publicity,” said Shonali Bhowmik of New York-based Tigers and Monkeys.

More importantly, artists today are not as viable as artists of yesterday. Sure a couple of artists breakthrough here and there, but the magnitude of works available in the market place are over looked by the majority of consumers. Whether the music industry will return to its heyday is certainly unknown, but many people still hope so.

Neon Trees is possibly the best infectious, American indie rock band that NME, Pitchfork, and the rest of the internet’s blogs haven’t seemed to notice yet. Recently tapped by the Killers to open up a pair of shows, these California and Utah guys seem to be prime for label attention and alternative radio play. Check out their new tracks, “Girls and Boys in School” & “Drop Your Weapon”, mixed by Mark Needham (Bloc Party, The Killers, U2, My Chemical Romance).

‘Twilight‘, the soundtrack to this vampire love story should easily outsell the musical score from this past summer’s blockbuster, “The Dark Knight”. With Paramore on board with another hit in their track, “Decode” and a new cut from Mute Math, as well as hits from Linkin Park and Muse, this film will probably be lucky to make a quarter of what the latest Batman made, but could double or triple the sales total of that film’s soundtrack. View the track listing here.

Saosin will be heading into the studio with producer Butch Walker this January, according to a recent interview with Walker on alternativeaddiction.com. Walker is most well known for producing albums for the likes of Avril Lavigne, Bowling for Soup, and a few other radio friendly acts. He has recently produced tracks for artists like Pink and UK band The Automatic. Is this an odd pairing, or does Saosin need Walker to make that radio friendly album? For now, hear Saosin’s new song called “Love Maker”.

Live Cuts:
In the past week I caught a few shows from Weezer, Anberlin, Audrye Sessions, and Innerpartysystem.
Weezer is currently on tour with Angels & Airwaves and Tokyo Police Club in support of “The Red Album”. The band mixed it up with material that spanned their entire career, including their staple hits and more. They even brought out Angels & Airwaves singer Tom Delonge to sing on “Undone – The Sweater Song”, which made for an in teresting pairing. Due to work obligations, I unfortunately missed covers of Nirvana’s “Sliver” & Pink Floyd’s “Time”, but heard they went well. They also incorporated their hootenanny theme on the hits “Island in the Sun” & “Beverly Hills” where fans were brought up with whatever instrument they had to play along with the band. Weezer still knows how to have fun and satisfy their fans, a good formula for maintaining a successful career.

Anberlin played a solid set last week and are a better band to see headlining than on the Warped Tour or some opening gig.

Audrye Sessions are a recent signing to RCA subsidiary Black Seal and played their EP release show last week in San Francisco. With the aid of a violinist and some horns, they played a short set that sounded spot on. Be sure to catch them somewhere in the U.S. over the next few months.

Innerpartysystem is currently on tour with warped tour buzz band 3oh!3, and are direct support, but supply easily the best show of any of the 4 acts on the Myspace sponsored tour. Equipped with an eye-pleasing light show, and intense stage presence, IPS has had England talking for months and should have the same effect here in their own country. They put on a show fit for an opening slot on the next Nine Inch Nails tour, where they could play in large arenas, not skating rinks.

Quick Picks:

The Classic Crime – “Medisin”

Jimmy Needham – “A Breath or Two”

Soundcheck is written by Dallas Osborn who currently attends San Francisco State University and works on the Live 105 (KITS) Action Team.