Pay to play

in these last days i read a lot on facebook about this thing. vivo management seems to be selling out slots for total metal festival, the biggest heavy music fest in southern italy (here's the link to see the bill/cost). testament are headlining, but i don't know any other band in it. 

all right, i am not a walking metal-wikipedia but as far as testament are headlining i expect other popular bands to be in it. that's how festivals usually are. you bring a bunch of very popular bands and gather all their fans in the same place for one day or two. yep, it's that easy!

so why there are no other popular bands playing at total metal festival? probably because total metal festival doesn't really seem to be conceived as a proper festival, but more like a "pay to play with testament contest".

so, what is pay to play?

well, it's quite easy... you pay some money to play with your band in a specific gig, tour, show, etc. it's not something new, it's very common and most of the small bands you see touring out there with your favorite-super-mega-hit-band did pay some money to be on that stage. 

so un-drop your jaw, boys. pay to play is now, pay to play is real, pay to play is at your door!

what's wrong with it?

well, honestly nothing (ok, now drop your jaw). or at least it depends.

i don't think pay to play is such a big scandal by default - unless you pretend to make a festival to suck some minor bands dry - and i'm going to say why.

suppose that you love your band so much, music is your life (especially your music) and you want your dream to come true: you want to be a professional musician. 

well, we could say it's quite similar to running a restaurant. so you have your little restaurant outside your town, you serve superb food and you already spend some money on buying the gear that allow you to cook your dishes. you have been serving food for some time now and you have some "fan" that comes to your place, enjoy your food, headbang with you and vomit on your shoes. well, that's fucking great, what else should i ask for?

now a couple of years has passed. you keep serving your great food, headbang with your customer and clean their vomit off your shoes. well... that's a fucking nightmare! nothing has changed! you put so much passion, time and money (yes you did) in it and it's still the same fucking hole. 

you can't stand it anymore, you want something more, you want your restaurant not to be just a small town diner, but a proper world-famous "ristorante italiano"!

how to do it? well, first of all you have to invest some money. buy some books and learn more recipes, renew your gear so that you can actually do those recipes, do some advertising campaign and eventually move to a big fancy place in the center of the city. that's how new people will see your place, come to your place, become your customer, call their friends and come back to your great "ristorante italiano"!

now, let's go back to music life.

you have your band, you did a couple of good album (at least according to what magazines say), you have your own gear with your own sound, you have your fans. anyway this is not enough, you want more, you wanna go big, you wanna be a pro band. 

how do you think you do it? you must invest some money. you must take your music to a lot of people, you must promote your music both indirectly (advertising, reviews, interviews...) and directly (tour, tour, tour!), in other words you must move you restaurant to a big fancy place in the center of the town (and work for people to like your music... but that's another big theme we will discuss it in the future).

finally, is pay to play bad? there's no straight answer to that. 

if you're paying to take your small band in tour with the rolling stones for a couple of weeks, it's more than fair. you are no one and they are the biggest living band on earth. don't expect mick jagger to come begging to you for your band to support them. that's not gonna happen. ever.

instead, if you're paying to play a 20 minute show, in front of fifty people drinking beers waiting for the one and only popular band performing 5 hours later, well that sucks. a lot.

so the question is not "is pay to play bad", but "is pay to play worthy in this very specific occasion"?

consider the cost, consider your band, consider the chance you have: how many people will come to the show? is it a good crowd for your music? will they be interested in the genre you play? what can you get from this investment? what else can your band do with the same amount of money? so, is it worthy?

now choose and don't be ashamed of your choice, since you did with both your mind and heart.

a.

writing a new album?

yes, we are. i just posted the news on facebook and got some attention from our fans. much more than i expected.
so i wondered, maybe you thought we were dead or dying or not feeling that good.

well, as you probably have read before, we have been through some hard times, but this is not the end. at all.

wanna know what's going on right now?
two of us are dealing with some serious situation at their jobs, closing the past away and starting a hopefully brighter professional life (yes, music is not our job. don't even ask it, it's old-fashioned).
another big boy in the band is moving to a new house. unfortunately his old house hosted our rehearsal room too, so we are looking for a new one. and by the way it seems we just found one - i'll keep you posted on this.

in the meanwhile, we are trying to write new stuff, looking for a new sound, studying different geometries and balances to build our new soundscape. this is gonna be different than anything we did in the past and i am so excited about it.

so, finally, stop your music player and put on some music you never heard before and wait for the spark..
ask your closest friend, read your favorite blog, pick it up randomly but try and try until you find that shiny sound that makes you stop doing anything and drag you into the musical flow.

i just found it and that's the shape of music to come.

a.

why are we doing this?

as you may know we've been in quite awkward situations through the last times.
i wrote about it, some of you write me back, i had been thinking about it for a while and since those days i saw many other bands in the very same condition.

finally we put our emotion aside and tried to focus on the rational part of the problem until we found the core of it. now it's time to medicate us and that's exactly what we are doing right now. we have new song, we have new strength.

this morning i found this video on the net and it seemed to me like a unavoidable part of the medication. that's why i'm adding this piece to the jigsaw. i hope this will complete the picture as it did to me.

a.

back on stage

damn... almost three months since the last post. i am really lazy.

anyway, we spent a nice summer under s serpent sun and we're back on writing the new album.
we're quite at the middle of it but we're still trying to get to new sounds and landscapes. the discovery is not finished yet and it's getting harder and harder, but that's what we love to do so good for us!

in the meanwhile we're trying to fill some days off in our next tour (dates below) and we're planning some shows in italy too.
on friday 14th october we're gonna play our first season show at a cool venue in our hometown... so if you're around don't miss it!

beside this, i'm moving so i guess i won't be posting anything for a while.
we'll get in touch right before or during our tour though.

that's all.
check our tourplan and get in touch if you can help.

a.





HERE ARE THE DATES OF OUR NEXT TOUR.. GET IN TOUCH IF YOU CAN HELP.

13.11.11 *Milano/Genova/Torino/Padova IT* BOOK US!!
14.11.11 *GER/AT* BOOK US!!
15.11.11 *GER/PL* BOOK US!!
15.11.11 *Nurnberg/Munich DE* BOOK US!!
16.11.11 *Wroclaw PL* BOOK US!!
17.11.11 *Brno CZ* BOOK US!!
18.11.11 SK Bratislava, Obluda
19.11.11 A Linz, Ann and Pat
20.11.11 *Zagreb HR* BOOK US!!
21.11.11 *Beograd SB* BOOK US!!
22.11.11 RO RO Cluj-Napoca TBC
23.11.11 RO Bucharest, Control Club
24.11.11 OFF
25.11.11 HR Rijeka, Palach TBC
26.11.11 *Trieste/Padova IT* BOOK US!!

summertime and the livin's easy

hi everybody.
six months since the last post. it's time to get back to you.

first of all, we'd been discussing if uploading here some excerpt from the new songs taking shape. half of us agreed on sharing them with you, the the other half didn't. the question is not really closed yet but we decided not to upload anything so far. unlucky you.

anyway the songs sound pretty cool, at least to our ears. as i said in a previous post, somehow our music changed, somehow it stayed the same. this reminds me of machine head's lyrics: "the more things change, the more they stay the same". well, it's true. our new songs both changed and stayed the same: the general mood didn't change that much, but everything seems more clean and focused. it's like we are finally writing "songs", if you know what i mean. whatever... you will listen to it.

just a few hours ago metal mayhem published an article about us, discussing also this blog. so go there and check it out, clicking here: http://www.metal-mayhem.co.uk/interviews/atthesoundawn.shtml.

moreover, it's summertime. tonight we have our last rehearse before vacation. we are going to stop for some time and we'll be back on september, writing more music and playing more shows.
yes, you got it right, we're going back on the road. and this time we're going to play also in our homeland italy. fuck yeah.

so spend a nice summertime.
see you soon.

a.

oh, one more thing. we're going to be on tour for a couple of weeks in november. if you wanna see us playing a show in your hometown send a couple of lines to this mail: info[at]manusbooking.com

here comes the sun

it has been a tough period for the band. many things concurred to make it one of the hardest time ever for ATS. i already wrote about this.
well, finally the black clouds are slowly spreading and the sun is approaching our portion of sky. however, it usually happens that crisis brings revolution with it and somehow that's what happened also this time.
you know being in a band is not simply a matter of writing music, planning tours, playing shows. at least it is not for ATS. the band and, generally speaking, music is the way we, as individuals, have been exploring, discovering, talking, living ourselves together. it's a journey we started many years ago. unfortunately there's no defined path, no routes to follow and it's easy to get lost. especially when you are the only one who can define the coordinates.
if "red square" was our awkwardly-drawn debut, "shifting" was exactly the way we wanted it to be. that's quite a result, in my opinion, but what to do now? it's like if wile e. coyote caught beep-beep... the great giant has been defeated, well what to do now, david?
in other words, with "shifting" we depicted our own idea of so-called post-core. no matter how bad, annoying, stupid could the album sound to you, we consider it a reached target. indeed it's not a matter of liking it, we're not on the "receiving side" of the musical flow. we're exactly at the opposite point, at the source of music, where we have to find inspiration, motivation, strength.
so, considering all these things, where to go now?

well, we have some ideas and they all implies some sort of (major) changing.
we have four new songs almost ready for a first demo recording, showing us the ways we wanna run this time. all i can say is that dynamics, singing and structures underwent some strong changings. that is songs are way shorter and, in our opinion, more focused.
are you ready for this? are we ready for this?

moreover, we're booking shows again. in 2011 we'll be playing accross italy and europe as wide as we can. if you wanna see us playing in your town, just drop us a line.

the new year is approaching, this is our last post for 2010.
spend these last days at their best.

The losing game.

It's been a week since we got home from our one concert trip to Berlin (Germany) and I've been thinking a lot about it.
The trip was great. It was quite a long time since last time we packed into a van and travel for like 6 or 7 hours to reach a God's forgotten land. This time it wasn't really forgotten, since our first stop was in München, the city of beer. And, as you can see for yourself, Jesus was on our side, leading our way from the top of a pencil.
Unfortunately (or maybe not?) there was no concert booked there, so we spent the night around the city, eating, drinking, smelling each other's gas and, obviously, puking. So yes, here's the incontrevertible evidence... we're back on the road!
Except this, the night was quite "standard" and even short, since at 1 am we were already sleeping.
The next morning we had a good breakfast, watching an incomprehensible German stand-up comedian on TV, we packed our bag and sit back in the van for another 6 hours run.
At mid afternoon we reached Potsdam, that happens to be a tiny wonderful town not far from Berlin, the town that hosted our concert as the final show of the Potsdamer Jazzfest.
The venue was called Waschhaus, that means laundry, and it was a pretty good venue, with a beautiful stage, great lightings and all the stuff that seems to be normal in Germany but looks quite special for anyone who has to deal with Italian venues: buffet with foods and drinks, dinner, towels, dressing-room, hostel accommodation and so on.
Right after the soundcheck, a quick shower and a quicker dinner, we step on the stage and start playing our show. The sound was terrific, the lights were awesome and we were totally enjoying it. Then everything seemed to turn into what I would call a beautiful failure: we took a look off the stage and there was no crowd. Like ten or fifteen people were relaxing on some couches at the very bottom of the room, comfortably enjoying our sound but commiting us the most difficult task a band can ever have to do: playing a great show for a few people.
I don't know if we made it great but I guess we did good since we also sold some merch to that few listeners, who said to have really enjoyed the show, despite the huge hollow off the stage.
On our end, we had quite a good time, even if the condition were almost tragic. So this is it, you would say. Unfortunately this is not. Here it's were the hard part began, at least for me.
Far before the show, the promoter agreed with us for quite a good fee that would have bear our costs, and at the end of the show my only thought was: "How the hell can we ask for that money?". And I mean not literally asking for the money, but how can we took that money knowing that the guy is probably losing half of it. Yes guys, despite our metalhead habits, we have a heart.
The equation was quite easy actually, we did our show, we did our job so we have to get paid. The promoter probably didn't consider all the risk of hiring a not-very-popular band from Italy and that's part of his business. Yes, that's true, but I felt quite bad anyway.
How did it end? We took our fee, the guy lost his leverage and we couldn't even cover our expenses. So, isn't underground music a losing game?