Muse was incredible. It’s always great to see a band with such uniqueness and talent have such a draw. The sold out crowd at the Forum was very receptive to the 2 hour set and amazing light/video show the band put on. With the exception of the $40 t-shirts (boo), it was on of the most memorable concert events I’ve seen in a while. Stay tuned for more information on Matt Bellamy, as I’ve become fascinated with his guitar setup and his customized guitars. His rig is like nothing I’ve ever seen…

Your Band Name Is A Keyword

In preparing for this post, I took a second to look for a band that I could be completely unbiased against so as not to offend fans, but to solely use their band name as the focus of the article. In my defense, I’m an average fan of AFI and won’t discuss the music today. But after browsing the Guitar World website, AFI stood out as a great example for 2 good reasons: 1. AFI is a shortened version of the full band name “A Fire Inside”, and the acronym can stand for plenty of other things. 2. As a well established band, I’ve seen countless fan sites, links from record label sites and thousands of backlinks from the most reputable music portals out there. A good band name can really make or break your chances of making it as I mentioned earlier, but for internet marketing’s sake, it can easily bury you. But a deciding factor may be how easily you can rise in search engines under your band name. Try searching AFI in Google, and as of today you will see the following…

Since a newly formed band isn’t going to have a Google music link for quite a while, we’ll have to ignore this for now. But notice the first result in the organic listings. The American Film Institute. Some may argue the domain is an exact match to the search, but we’re dealing with two powerhouse internet entities here. Your still-playing-for-beer band can’t compete. If AFI can’t out rank everyone for their new name, you won’t either. Consider how commonly used the word or words making up your band name are. The more you know about your band name, the more the internet world probably has written about it. Unique combinations of words will help ensure you’re the only credible internet site for that result. For my examples sake, “A Fire Inside” may have been a better choice to promote themselves under, because the direct competition isn’t nearly as strong and has far fewer results. With all of this in mind, remember you are trying to make your music and material as publically accessible as you can. With band marketing today, you can’t afford to be buried in the search engine results when word-of-mouth can be your best ally. If you can’t secure the perfect domain that a screaming fan at a show will remember 100% of the time as mentioned in part one, you’ll need the power of search engines to get them to your site.

Being a part of both of these industries, it’s become very apparent that these two entities (music marketing and internet marketing) are fairly unaware of each other. But it’s very important that up and coming bands out there realize the power of internet marketing. And not the “we have more friends on Myspace than you” kind. Here’s my thoughts on the subject, and hopefully someone finds it useful :) When choosing a band name, consider the domain name. Choosing your band name is one of the most important decisions you and your bandmates will have to endure before hitting the path to stardom. When you’ve narrowed the list down, try a new method to help finalize. Are any of the names available as a .com, without dashes or a ___music or ___rocks at the end? If it is not, has another band or worse yet, a jumbo corporation taken it? Most domains are fine for standard SEO sake, but imagine the teenagers at your first show screaming in amazement before you have to blast over the PA “Check us out at official-megatron-rocks-your-pants8.biz. Whoa Yeah!”. Think anyone will remember that the next day? Or that night when they blog your awesome rock extravaganza? Up next in Pt. 2- Consider your online competition, your band name is a keyword.

Guitar World magazine has an awesome new feature where you can email a question directly to a rotating list of guitar heroes. This months “columnists” are George Lynch (Dokken, Lynch Mob, The Dojo) and the one and only Adam Jones of Tool.
If the questions are good enough, GW will post them in next month’s magazine, complete with answers.
Here’s an example question from their website:

“Tony, you have one of the most spectacular moustaches in rock history. What is your razor of choice?” or “Is it true you once lit Bill Ward’s beard on fire?”
Here’s the link

After visiting the NAMM 07 show in Anaheim, I was quite impressed with the array of new products coming out. Mainly the PRS, Schecter, ESP, and the Roland/Boss booths.
PRS is putting out a slew of new guitars, and they’re mostly artist models. One surprise that hit me was the new Chris Henderson model singlecut. Isn’t he the guitarist from Three Doors Down? Are they still making any impact on music today? It is a great looking guitar, but I’ve never really been a fan of the 3-pickup combo. The middle pup rarely gets used, and that area seems to be tone dead on most of the guitars I’ve played.

I was pretty impressed by the new PRS SE Semi-Hollowbody. It’s going to be a really affordable guitar, and it sounded great. The SE line may not seem worthy at first glance because they’re a Korean made version of the classic PRS line, but the new PRS SE Singlecuts will really give Epiphone a good amount of competition when it comes to price and quality. The younger generation these are aimed at would much rather own a more modern looking guitar than the usual Les Paul IMO.
Schecter is rolling out more guitars based on their usual line. I really like the quality and the general ideas Schecter is going for, but I can’t help but wonder when they will come out with a new line of body shapes. They seem to be set with the 8 or 9 standard guitar shapes, and just re-accessorizing them. A lot of the new guitars featured the usual Tempest or C-1 design with new features like EMG’s, fancy fretboard inlays, or just a new finish color/design. But Schecter really did have one of the most popular booths because of all the artists and guitars on display. I even ran into Synyster Gates of A7X in the bathroom on his break from signing autographs.
For the guitar amp companies, nothing much to report. Mesa Boogie had a smaller booth, and was really pushing the new Express Amps. They seem to be similar to the discontinued Nomad line, with the appearance of the F-line they still make. Not a bad sounding amp, but an uninspiring booth. But I still love em

Marshall had the new Kerry King model JCM800, and the new JVM series. Another high-gain Marshall amp, only this time it’s 4 independent channels, 100 watts, and MIDI programming for channel memories. Seems pretty impressive, but didn’t get to hear it.
As for my next likely guitar purchase, ESP is rolling out more guitars in the EC line. The new EC-500 lay off of some of the extra cosmetic features of the EC-1000’s, and still has everything that made them cool. Fast playing slim neck with extra jumbo frets, EMG’s and a sharp-as-hell look to them. (I still crave the Vintage Black version of the EC1000!)
The Boss booth wins hands-down for the best entrance, with their 25-foot DS-1 entryway! They only had a few new pedals for 2007, but they should be a big hit. The ‘59 Bassman and Fender Deluxe Reverb pedals are modeled after the classic Fender amps, and sound surprisingly similar. Boss also wins for worst product name, with the new Metal Core pedal. It sounded to me like a well-tweaked Metal Zone pedal, and I was a bit confused to why they were in this area of distortion again. The site says it’s aimed more for drop tunings and 7-strings, but that’s where they Metal Zone sounded best IMO.

Other honorable mention are the Orange Amps booth (biggest wall of orange cabinets I’ve ever seen) and the Dean guitar’s booth (check out this monster guitar!)

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