The
Musician's Handbook: Reviews
Musician's
Cyber Cooler
http://www.jammindave.com
By: David Jackson
If I wanted
to read a book about war, I don't want the author to be a news anchor,
politician, or general. I want the book to be written by a soldier in
the field who can tell me the good, the bad, and the ugly about war (so
I can avoid being killed). Bobby Borg is a strong soldier with plenty
of knowledge about the war that is the music business.
>As I started
to read the book my first impression was "This is the drummer from
Warrant?" Bobby Borg is not your typical musician. He rattles off
quotes from dozens of books (so he is well read). He graduated Berklee
with a BA in Professional Music (received the (Outstanding achievement
in the Berklee College series) as well as UCLA (with a certificate in
music business). He has been recording on major labels for 12 years. In
addition to recording two albums with Warrant he has also recorded with
Left for Dead, and Beggars & Thieves. Yes, our Soldier is WELL decorated.
OK, so Bobby can play the drums and he's smart. But can he write?
If I lead
a class on being in a band The Musician's Handbook would be required reading.
We have been talking in the last few issues about Planning your band.
Bobby outlines this whole process THOROUGHLY. The whole book is THOROUGH.
Now there are times when you could get fact overload with books like this,
but Bobby has done a nice job of adding entertaining sidebars to keep
you interested. At the point my eyes were going to roll back in my head
during the discussion of taxes, Bobby throws in an interview with freelance
drummer Kenwood Dennard who gives you real life knowledge, and brings
it on home.
This style
of commentary, sidebar, and interview is used throughout the book. About
half the way through the book, I noticed that not only does Bobby do a
good job of making things easy to understand, but he is a really good
interviewer. When he interviewed Fred Croshal (the head of Maverick Records),
he was not afraid to ask the tough questions that might show a record
label in a bad light (the type of questions that you would ask if you
had the chance). His chat with Chris Arnstein (who has worked for um,
EVERYBODY) about touring is CLASSIC.
The book
covers about every aspect of the business from starting the band, choosing
your management team, recording, publishing, and a whole lot more. He
shows the reality of the BUSINESS. For example, how you can obtain gold
record status and still owe the record company money. If you're thinking,
"Well I'm just in a cover band" this book is still for you.
I can see having this in my library as a reference book (I've added it
to the Success Library on our site). It really does a nice job of covering
a large amount of topics. When I turned over the back cover to see how
much this book was, I expected to see a price of at least 35 bucks (the
book is 288 pages and could inflict some bodily harm with some velocity
put behind it). The fact that this book is 20 bucks is amazing. Throw
in the fact that as of 7/25 this book was 30% off ($13.97) at amazon.com
and you should now have a three word plan: BUY THIS BOOK.
Bobby says
that he wrote this book because so many awesome musicians polish their
art, only to learn about the business end one mistake at a time. He wanted
to create an easily understood book that musicians could use to better
understand the music business and he did a fine job. Here at the Musician's
Cyber Cooler we are all about mentoring, and if we gave out medals, this
solder would get pinned for a job well done.
The Musician's Handbook.
Published by Billboard Books, an imprint of Watson-Guptill Publications.
Find out more at http://www.watsonguptill.com
or order
it here right now through Amazon.com
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