Over this last weekend, through personal experience, conversations out in L.A. at the Remix Hotel and at Swingers restaurant with my friend Ken Lopez, and input from some of my students regarding the Taylor Swift marketing campaign, I realized there's a whole new area opening up. After spending years trying to perfect songwriting, studio and production techniques to plant hooks (it is a seven hour lesson in itself) in people's brain to get 'em to buy music, I've found a whole new way of doing it. With Rock Band or Guitar Hero a song becomes deeply embedded as gamers play along because the brain is open and fully engaged in the ego driven task of beating the computer. The hooks in the music seem to bury themselves twice as deep, twice as effectively, and, after a few sessions on an Xbox, it is now twice as impossible for me to stop singing "Hungry like the Wolf." (Is that possible?)

The financial impact of a song succeeding on Guitar Hero for instance, is already well documented. A band in the UK jumped from 55,000 to over 624,000 units (I was reading about them in The Economist). However, the long-term impact of deeply embedded hooks is yet to be felt.

In the future, perhaps the bands that do the most business live won't be those you heard on the radio during your first illicit backseat kiss. Nor will they be playing the songs selected by you and your friends after a discerning, broad, sometimes heated discussion of the their merits, techniques, and studio production of one artist over another. Perhaps our arenas and stadiums with be filled by an assemblage of the bands who perform the songs that the largest percentage of people found challenging on their Xbox (but not so difficult as to seem impossible — at least during the first half).

And will the feelings you get as these bands come out on stage be true joy, or just an echo, a memory marker from the day you beat the song — the day it became a meaningless, discarded talisman of something you used to find fascinating and frustrating. Will the chords and riffs they play evoke real life memories or a distant goal achieved &mdash something whose completion would mark accomplishment? Ultimately, will our once favored Guitar Hero and Rock Band songs simply be placed on a memory shelf in an "ego bin," like a notch on the butt of Wii rifle or the yellow belt from karate hanging in the closet?

Are we set for new genres and divisions, the ultra elite, maybe more dexterous in hand and quick with a non-color blind eye who will naturally gravitate to see the bands perform, to continue to out-wit them in some kind of bizarre Dungeons and Dragons mutated arm wrestling contest? Do we want to laugh and discard a Tool song triumphantly as we rise up the skill levels on to King Crimson and perhaps Zappa?

Where is this all going? And, more importantly where artists' bank accounts are concerned, what are these bands going to sell at their merch booth in the future? Books containing technique tips and game cheats? DVD lessons? HeadOn for joint pain to soothe arthritic fingers? And never mind an autograph or a meet and greet with the band, I want Yngwie Malmsteen's guitar tech for the afternoon. The only constant thing, it seems, is change.



What else is going on in my world? Well, the newest Pigface album is going to be available on 8 track cartridge soon. I'm mixing amazing music from China and finishing up the sequel to my Tour:Smart book. You can help with my "market research" by filling out a survey HERE. I want to know: What is the ONE THING you wish you could tell a band, a singer, a radio station, etc.? We'll pick some of our favorite responses to include in Band:Smart and we'll send you a free Tour:Smart e-Book if your survey is chosen.

Peace, love and happy holidays to all

Martin Atkins
Chicago Illannoys



Martin Atkins has drummed with PiL, Killing Joke, Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Pigface, and The Damage Manual, among others. As owner of the now 20-year old Invisible Records, he has worked with artists such as Thrill Kill Kult, Einsturzende Neubauten, Chemlab, Chris Connelly, Sheep On Drugs, Murder Inc, and Psychic TV. Martin teaches a course on Business of Touring at Columbia College in Chicago, IL, and has written a survival guide for touring bands, Tour Smart: And Break The Band, which features contributions from Henry Rollins, Cynthia Plastercaster, The Enigma, the Suicide Girls, Zim Zum (formerly of Marilyn Manson), Kevin Lyman, and various other managers, journalists, venues, agents, sponsors, radio personalities and the like.