Boomchild wrote:Baron Von Bielski wrote:I saw an interview with David Coverdale on TMS and was discussing the new album he and Whitesnake released or were releasing at the time of taping. He mentioned that he really had no intention of making a new album. He had so many other things going on that he would have been content to just tour for I guess the remainder of Whitesnake's tenure. The point is that music, especially hard rock music doesn't sell. Tickets maybe, but not albums. As much as I want a new Styx album of original material, I understand why they don't record one. It's a lot to put into something that won't make you money. They make money from touring, like most hard rock acts these days. It pains me to say this, but there is no demand for a new Styx album. I wish things were different...
One would think that they are producing these Regeneration projects in their own home studios. I would argue that it would cost them about the same money to produce an album of new material doing it the same way. I would also think that they would sell just about the same amount as these rerecords.
You are almost certainly right about that, but you're forgetting one important thing. Re-recording these old songs doesn't require much pre-production time because the songs are written and the arrangements are mostly following the old arrangements. A great deal of the budget for a new project is eaten up in pre-production - writing, woodshedding, arranging and so on. The band would either have to do that at rehearsal which is not always practical, or separately and piece it together via the Internet, which is how you wind up with crap records like the new Anderson/Wakeman snoozefest. This new thing is something where Todd will play the drums to a click and email the track to the next guy, who will dub his parts, and so on. Very little money spent, and someone gets a nice souvenir of a concert he saw. That's really all it is.
That said, I have to believe Styx could do a new record profitably. Marillion is recording new stuff all the time, and its fan base is WAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY smaller. Styx could pre-sell its albums and raise the $$, control the budget tightly, get in and blow through the ground tracks live in 1-2 days, and then the lead vox, solos and BGVs all dubbed at home studios on similar equipment, then bring it all together in a final mix and master session. As long as they had the elements recorded right to begin with, that would be feasible. The Stryper covers record was done that way, and it sounds great, and their budget was around $35,000.
If Styx put word out on its official web site that it was pre-selling a new album, and offered tiered purchasing - say $15 gets you the CD, $25 gets you the CD signed, and $50 gets you the CD, a poster and some exclusive webisodes about making the album or something - they could raise that much money in less than a week, probably by the end of today. So I don't accept that they CAN'T make a new album anymore. The ones in the decision-making positions don't seem to want to for whatever reason. I have to agree with everyone who has said that they don't understand the band's decision-making anymore. It seems especially comical to me that the band so adamantly refuses to play DDY ballads, but they are now recording and releasing that metal classic "High Enough. By the way, when that song was first released and Tommy was out saying how nice it was not to have to play crappy Styx ballads like "Babe" anymore, I remember an interview with JY in which he pointed out that Damn Yankees' current single sounded EXACTLY like a Styx radio ballad to him, LOL.
Bizarre. I still think this band is great live, and features talented players who are nice enough guys, but I am forced to agree with the prevailing wisdom that there doesn't seem to be a lot of forward thrust right now. I hope they will change that.
Sterling