Adoring fans, exotic travels, posh hotel rooms and hotties galore – these images come to mind when daydreaming of being in a successful band. But what about the stuff that goes on behind the scenes – in a boardroom with record company executives who can make or break an artist? Although having several record labels knocking on your door may sound like a dream come true, many bands will tell you that it can also be tremendously stressful, because choosing the right label is one of the biggest decisions a musician can make.

So what’s it like to be involved in this process? Three of us from Under the Radar went on a mission to find out when we shadowed up-and-coming New York City band stellastarr* during their four-day trip to Los Angeles. In between gigs and record label meetings, we hung out with the band and their manager, and had a chance to chat about matters ranging from the ridiculous to the sublime. Here’s a smattering of both:
Main players:
Shawn Christensen – lead singer
Amanda Tannen – Bass, vocals
Michael Jurin – guitar, vocals
Arthur Kremer – drums
Jonathan Kaplan – manager
Christian-Philippe Quilici – Dowager label owner

Labels
What exactly goes on in these three-hour meetings, and who do you meet with?

Shawn: [At the label meetings] we meet with higher-ups, the heads of A&R, and we walk around the label, look at the departments and talk to people. At one of the meetings, we played the rest of the album for the head of A&R to give them a taste of what they’d be releasing if they went with us. My God, it was so weird! We just watched him bob his head to it. You know he’s liking it, but you just kind of crack a smile. Then we talked about how we would build it up and get it to radio, how to pace it so it’s not just shoved down people’s throats, and so on. It eats up time because we’re meeting some of these people for the first time and they’ve got to warm up to us, we’ve got to warm up to them. We’ve had good meetings all weekend, so it’s gonna be a very tough decision.

Michael: We have a certain criteria that we want the labels to meet. That doesn’t mean a big advance or anything like that, but a certain kind of deal. We want people who are going to want to stick with us through multiple records, and say, “Hey if you think this record is good now, wait until you see their third record.” We want people who are going to support us through tours. But we don’t want to be thrown onto the radio right away. First we want to build an audience.

Amanda: It’s a lot better when you discover or find a band rather than having a band shoved in your face. It gives both the band and the consumer a certain amount of pride. If it’s through radio or MTV or something, there’s just no work there. We’re trying to do it a whole new way and the major labels seem very receptive to it. So we’re wondering why they’re being so receptive to it… Michael: And if it’s really true. So we’d like to keep expanding our fan base and keep touring. Touring makes you good, basically. It makes you tighter, it makes you play off each other better. So we’ll be better next time we go into the studio. I think it’s just a better way of doing it. The main complaint I’ve heard from bands is: ‘You’re nothing if you don’t get publicized.’ I’m not talking about magazines and radio and all that shit. I’m talking about touring money. Basically, that’s what most bands want. It’s like, ‘Give us money to tour and we’ll show you returns.’

Michael: Basically for every pay advance that’s the amount of money you owe them. What we want is a smaller pay advance with the money going to better places. After all the fees it’s amazing how fast that money goes because you have to live off it for at least a year probably. You think a number like $300,000 sounds big but when you do the math that’s like $32,000 dollars a year per person after all the costs. It’s like, ‘Don’t go buying anything because we have to live off of that. That’s our income for the year.’

Amanda: Yeah, don’t go buying your sports car or anything. Michael: Yeah, I’ve got $32,000 I’m going to go buy a sweet car. In two months you’re going to be pretty hungry. So we’d hopefully have a touring budget when we sign and we’d basically go on tour right away. And our bonus would go right into the bank. Then from there I guess we’d ideally hit college radio, which is always viable. There’s a good little market there. College kids are a great audience. I bought a lot records in college. So you just see how it goes from there. We want to build it. Jammin’ Amanda: When we jam together we feed off of each other really well. I think that our music kind of shows that we all came from completely different places, but somehow it all comes together. Michael: It really starts with someone coming in with something. For instance, Shawn may have a melody that he’ll come in and sing and maybe not even have chords to or something. It’s usually when we are all screwing around and someone will put something out there and one of us will go, “I like that. Keep doing that.” Amanda: Then we’ll just jam around that.

Michael: Yeah. Then I’ll come with something else on the guitar and Mandy will say, “Keep doing that too.”

Amanda: Then I’ll say, “Why don’t we try this next?” Then the next person will say, “But let’s change this chord here.”

Michael: We’ll sometimes argue against each other. We’ll completely go at it.

Amanda: Sometimes it gets a little annoying. But in the end everyone has ownership of the song. It’s not like, “O.K. I’m just going to play this song.” Everyone owns it and puts in their own piece.

Worst venue ever Michael: We were booked to play someplace in Philly. I don’t remember what it was called… Funland? Funtime? It was advertised in the paper, and when we got there, it was a basement. Basically it was a house filled with eight or nine unwashed kids who paid the rent by having bands play there. So we literally walk downstairs and I’m thinking, ‘O.K. this is a house. Wait, this is a basement. I literally had my bags and equipment sitting on top of a washing machine. I should have brought my laundry!’ And somebody in the band before us had terrible B.O. So it stunk of mold and B.O. There were only like 15 or 20 people down there. But in the end, when we were driving home, we were like, ‘Hey that turned out to be kind of fun.’

Fans armed with birthday cakes
Amanda: We’ve been really lucky because we’ve always had a good fan base in New York. We have really loyal fans.

Michael: Yeah, a lot of our fans show up and show up and show up. It’s amazing. We talk to them all the time. You know, after the show we’ll hang out. I think that helps a lot because they see what you do on stage, they hear the music, and they like the songs. But sitting down and having a drink with somebody you get to know them personally. They know our names.

Amanda: Yeah, and they know all the names of the songs, and all the lyrics.

Michael: It’s weird. The first time I saw people mouthing the words I just stood there and thought, ‘How do they know the words to the songs?’

Amanda: They even brought Michael a birthday cake. Michael: Yeah, towards the end of the set they just walked out with a cake with candles on it. I was in the middle of playing a song and I must have completely screwed up because I was just like, “They came out with a cake!” It’s crazy. Our fans are great. There’s a group of them who are very much like friends. The NY music scene Saturday night danceparty Amanda: The music scene in New York a couple of years ago was horrible.

Michael: When I moved to New York I remember thinking, ‘Finally I’m moving to New York. Things are going to great!’ And basically my first year there sucked. Not a single local band was getting signed.

Amanda: But now...there’s more of a scene. But we definitely don’t all live in a house together – we just work with each other. We’re good friends with other bands so we’ll be at each other’s shows. There are TisWas Saturday night dance parties, which is the label we’re on. All of these bands that have broken from New York have played those TisWas nights. That’s how we all know each other.

Michael: Yeah. You watch two bands and then you dance until 4:30 in the morning to great music. You definitely can’t complain. Amanda: So it’s not that we all live at the same house, but we all do have this same place. There are so many types of people who live in New York and they all have different tastes. And everyone is just playing what they like. It’s not like musical movement – it’s more like a geographical movement. Michael: We would probably be really bored if there were a bunch of bands making and pushing our genre of music. Amanda: Yeah, we don’t want that.

Michael: It would be like, ‘Hey! Get out of our backyard!’ Amanda: So if there really is a New York scene, then if feels really weird to be clumped into it. On the war with Iraq Shawn: I’m against it the war. This is the first time in American history that I feel like America has picked a fight with someone. We’re throwing our reputation down the toilet. Saddam is crazy and all that, but we’re supposed to practice innocent until proven guilty in our country. But that’s not what we’re doing with Saddam. Big in the U.K. Jonathan (band manager): We’re working on a licensing deal for the U.K. Shawn: It should go through because they really love us over there. And the truth is a lot of the bands we listen to are from the U.K. If you can get an entire country backing you, then you’ve really got something in your corner. It’s also nice to have a different label looking after you in a different country. If you go worldwide with one label then that label has their hands in everything and you have to deal with their distribution. But it’s good to have someone in the U.K. going, ‘No, we love this.’ We wouldn’t have to worry about whether a stateside label has a U.K. team that has to fall in love with us because we’d already have that taken care of.

The quiet revolution Jonathan (band manager): [Christian’s] livin’ on a dream of just doing it for music’s sake. And that’s why I’m in this too. I’m not in this for money, I’m not in this because of my experience – I don’t have any. I’m in this because I saw a band in Brooklyn that I thought was really cool and I was like, ‘Why haven’t I heard of them before?’ And that’s what it’s all about. This industry’s changing so quickly. And it’s not like I’m such an indie kid or anything. I like good music, I like good magazines. And there’s a quiet kind of revolution going on. No one really knows what’s gonna happen, but a lot of the people who are in power are scared. A lot of people who have no power, like me, have opportunity. And like these guys – right now there’s nothing, but there can be. That’s a beautiful thing. That’s how the ‘60s happened and that’s how these great movements in music happen – when things kind of get flipped upside down.

Coming soon: an MP3 of stellastarr*’s “Somewhere Across Forever.” www.stellastarr.com News Flash! stellastarr* signs to RCA and frontman Shawn Christensen tells us why here.