1) Sound checks
In our tech rider, there is a provision for a 30- to 45-minute sound check, as well as a 10-minute pre-performance line check. This helps us help you give everyone a good show by making us sound good, and by making sure that all of us can hear each other—again, helping us help you look and sound good. If we don’t get a sound check or line check, we’ll still try to sound good, but all the same; we’d still like a sound check. This is also one of the reasons we have a sound engineer named Teddy. Which brings us to my next point:

2) Sound engineer
If we tell you that we’re bringing our own sound engineer and you voice no objections, it is only fair for us to assume that said sound engineer will be doing sound. If we turn up and your equipment rental company says we can’t touch the sound board, it wastes both our time and Teddy’s, who is not the most free person in the world. Please notify us of these things beforehand.

3) Backline equipment
We have a tech rider that specifies a minimum requirement for equipment we are willing to perform with. There is also a clause in the rider stating that if the requirements are not met, we reserve the right to walk out on the show. We’re generally quite easygoing when it comes to these things, but if you give us underpowered solid-state guitar amps with one 10” cone and run our guitars direct to board without mic-ing them up, it sounds pretty shit. Ditto when you use the muddiest bass amp money can buy (Kelvin Siow, you were right; Line 6 is pretty shit). The only requirement on our backline rider that was met today was for the vocal microphones. Just saying. We’ve been around for four years, and not once have we blown an amp or front-of-house system.

4) Timing
If you are organising a corporate show and give us a call time of 8pm and a performance time of 8.30pm, we’ll turn up on time, and we expect to start on time. That’s how corporate shows are run. We do not, however, expect to wait for an hour and a half at Starbucks for our turn. Some of us have commitments to fulfill, and pushing everything back by over an hour inconveniences not only us, but our entire schedule after the show as well. I, for example, have an interview at Zirca with Boy George that I’m running late for at the moment.

5) Name
And finally, “Fire Fight” is not the same as “The Fire Fight”. If all else fails, and if all four points above are not met—if you book us for a show and serve as our only point of contact, you should at least get our name right. Please do not pass the buck to someone else.

That is all. Please note that I have no problem with the government body that engaged the events company responsible for today’s show—we’ve played for them before, and that show last year went very smoothly. This, however, is what can happen when the system requires you to go with the lowest bidder. To that end, we had a much better time two days ago playing at IJC on a stage smaller than my bedroom—you guys rock.

Yours truly,
Jbarks

Edit 2: This should be the final flyer. Yes, designerds, I believe that’s Archer.

You, my friends, are getting this news before the general public finds out through more traditional channels. This flyer hasn’t even been approved by *SCAPE’s marketing yet, so some info might be subject to change. Tickets aren’t out yet, either. But the gist of it remains; we’re moving on. Josh is going to Australia to study, and I’m applying to school elsewhere this year. Thank you all—it’s been a great ride.

Click through for a bigger image to view the details, or leave a message in the comments (or on our Facebook page) if you have any questions. Help us tell your friends about this show. ‘Like’ it on Facebook (there’s a button up there) or retweet this. Or write on your blog. Or something. Here’s the front and back of the flyer; do whatever you want with them. Just don’t forget to bring a camera.

Via Audio stand out from other Brooklyn-based bands in an interesting way: They don’t look like they just stepped off the Williamsburg Express. They eschew the full-on music video productions of bands like MGMT and Yeasayer, opting instead for delibrately campy, feel-good videos like Presents and Developing Active People that put a smile on your face (versus putting your hands in your pockets and nodding your head).

The first single of their latest album Animalore (Undertow, 2010), titled “Babies”, brings to mind Snoop Dogg’s Sensual Seduction—yes, my musical tastes are slightly eccentric—with lyrics that are unabashedly pop (Let me rock your world / Put your hands up / Ooh, I’ve got the place surrounded / I know the world is overcrowded / But I wanna make babies with you). “Digital” takes the piss out of the glut of autotuned albums on the market today. It’s one of the things I love about them; you don’t have to think too much about what you’re listening to. If R&B was pop, these guys would be it.

But that’s not what I’m on about with these guys; it’s how they go about recording an album that interests me. Something that struck me when I listened to their albums was that they would change tack halfway through. Dusted Magazine makes mention of this in their review of Animalore: “…the feel of an irreverent b-side more than a part of a whole.” That’s because it is a B-side. I emailed bassist David Lizmi about this and got an interesting reply:

We thought of the tracking of the record the way people listen to vinyl, [with a] Side A and Side B. So Lizard Song is the first song on Side B and so is Enunciation for “Say Something”.

There you have it. They also grab their buns in the studio so they can sing louder (I have no idea what goes on in producer Jim Eno’s studio), but that’s beside the point. Via Audio get a lot of flak for things they probably couldn’t care less about—Pitchfork panned their album in their review—or for things that are there for a reason, and that’s why I like them.

In retrospect, it shouldn’t have, because she’s right. We don’t care. I mean, it’d be great if you bought our album to show your support, but it doesn’t really matter to us in the bigger picture—what matters to us is that you love us and come for our shows. Buying an album is an added bonus that looks great on the books (you have no idea how good it feels to tell people we’ve moved a bunch of albums). I once talked to frontman Josh about it; he said he didn’t mind people downloading our stuff. Maybe it’ll change once we get big and go Platinum in the US, but until then I don’t think our position will change much.

“But Jbarks, what about the money you’ll be missing out on from album sales?”, I hear you ask. Well, we don’t earn enough from cuts to put food on the table.

Say, for example, HMV sells our album for the low, low price of $18.99. Retail channels typically market a CD at anywhere from two to three times the price they buy it from the label. Bands like us get anywhere from $0.50 to $1.50 for every unit moved. This is comparable to the US music industry, where bands get roughly US$0.30—US$1 out of the $9.99 you spend at a record store. The labels typically get two to five times of what we do, depending on the contract. Contrast this with the $12—$15 we’d get if we sold our album directly to you, our adoring fan. I’m not revealing anything new here; all this information is available online if you know where to look. Mashable just featured Information is Beautiful in a recent post which included an infographic on artist royalties online.

This is about as good as it gets; revenues from online channels go down from here. Last.fm pays artists just over half a red cent for every track streamed, Spotify, as fantastic a service as it is, has a US$0.00043 per-stream payout going to the people you’re listening to right now. So yes, digital content delivery is loads cheaper, but revenues are a lot lower as well. We’d need 800,000 people to stream our entire album once every month, or move 4,800 albums in the same time period through traditional retail channels for all four of us to earn minimum wage. English band Georgia Wonder commented that “we always giggle when we see our Spotify royalty statements.” Now you understand why merchandise is so expensive when international bands play concerts in Singapore.

I’m not bashing retail and streaming channels, online or otherwise. If anything, I think they’re a great way to gain exposure and for fans to have a little something of ours to keep. I’m just saying that it’s not possible for music artists to survive on album sales alone—definitely not in Singapore, anyway. Go for their shows. Buy a t-shirt or a button. And a CD as well, of course. We’d like you to be able to listen to us whenever you want.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to writing my admission essays. Jin Li is going to have my ass for slacking off and writing this instead.

P.S. Our debut album Henri is available at Get Up Merch for $19. Thank you, and we love you very much.