Listen to the Live Interview Episode #452 Behind The Music with Jacqueline Jax : http://tobtr.com/9925051
GETTING TO KNOW MIKE COLIN
by Jacqueline Jax host of A.V.A Live Radio
I get lost in my own little world. I’m a bit of a hermit staying in the studio working on songs but it helps me to stay in my own lane and making music is what I love to do. I don’t pay attention to trends, sticking mainly with my own sound. This year I’ll be recording a new album with my son. Looking forward to it.
Music Business..
I have really only ever had experience in the D.I.Y./Hardcore indie music business and that experience has been and is always mixed. Sometimes the idea of being “underground” is appealing to people, and at other times the idea of being “mainstream” is more appealing to people. When people see the mainstream as more sizzle than steak then the underground does better and vice versa. We have been in an extended mainstream era, which never actually truly ends, only lulls, and I look forward to when the underground gets a chance to rear it’s head and scream for a while before being put away again for a few years.
I had three chances to join the “mainstream” biz but I deferred on all three, no regrets whatsoever. The first chance was when I was 21 and EMI wanted to sign the band Phantasmorgasm, the second chance was being offered a management contract by Will Alvarez and strike three was when I quit working for the Virgin Record label after a year when I could have stayed and potentially moved up.
I would love to have 5 minutes alone with the music business…
to persuade it that the reason it’s not bigger than movies, video games and porn, when it should be, is the undervaluing of artists and performers who are not “sexy” and “glamorous.” The old music biz, which was bigger and better, was full of colorful celebrities more for who they were on the inside than on the outside…Jerry Garcia, Roy Orbison, Steve Miller, to name a couple, and even the ones who were popular for traditional superficial reasons were unbelievably talented like Paul McCartney and Prince. I cant believe people actually say The Beatles and Backstreet Boys in the same sentence as if there is any comparison in the actual talent level of these two “boy bands”…I can’t believe someone like Britney Spears gets to be called the same thing as someone like Prince : a music artist. I understand the superficial nature of entertainment and I’m not saying that it needs to go away, but when the main focus is what you hear I don’t understand the adherence to superficiality as it exists in the music business since Madonna.
I know I am not a “sexy, glamorous” person. I’m not trying to be a model or an actor. I’m a music artist. I make records. People listen to records, they don’t watch them.
Stop Trying To Tell Us What To Do…
I wrote this little ditty in a random association environment. The music has a Ramones meets Prince and Folk Implosion vibe, which are all artists whose music I love, and the lyrics came about after the new Attorney General made veiled threats against Colorado and it’s voter mandated legalization of Marijuana. I was especially upset at the idea that state’s rights were being applied to allow discrimination, as in the trans-gender issues in Carolina, and then “Federal” rights were to be applied to deny Colorado it’s state’s rights regarding the legalization of Marijuana. Also I believe that the current administration wants to get us into a new war, any war, and I threw in the old 60’s chant because it is definitely time for us all to give peace a chance, man. Obviously we must defend ourselves, but going on the offensive creates more problems than it solves, in my opinion. Recording wise this song started with the beat, then I added guitar/keyboards/bass and then wrote the lyric and recorded the vocal.
The music…
The basic idea of any of my music is just the “in the moment” idea. I guess you could call Music Dada-ism, which is where the artist creates whatever they want and the imbibers of the art decide what it is. And that’s all I’ve ever done or do. I get inspired and I write tunes. In lyrics there is a freedom to say and think whatever you want because t’s music, not politics. I am never trying to tell someone else “how to think,” I am expressing what I think. Agree or don’t agree, the choice is yours. Art is where we can live and breathe and think our lightest and darkest thoughts without consequence. There’s no such thing as altruism, especially in art. And no matter how much fun some people make of the idea, it will always be true that music is art.
https://soundcloud.com/user-110361330-166215127/stop-trying-to-tell-us-what-to-do
Denver Colorado…
My whole entire life, outside of touring, vacationing and traveling, has been spent in Denver. I was born downtown and grew up downtown, now I live near the mountains. My biggest local music influence was Augy Rocks, aka Augy Zhivago and his groups The Lipstick Gunfighters and Pil Bug. There are so many talented music people in Denver and Colorado, just like anywhere there are humans. My personal history in the Denver Music Scene started out with the funk-punk band Phantasmorgasm as vocalist/bassist in 1989. Other bands I was a part during the 1990’s and 2000’s were acoustic punk group The Acoustifuxx (Vocals/Guitar), the hip hop collective Ratiocination (Bass), and the rock group the Eclectix (Drums) which also included my daughter Hana and son-in-law Josh Tucci, who are currently working a new music project in California. I also have been part of my son Jovian’s band Millennial Axiom which started in 2010 and continues…Also I was the last recording engineer at the infamous but sadly defunct Time Capsule Studio.
LINK TO SONG PURCHASE: https://www.cdbaby.com/cd/mikecolin8 (NOT for sale UNTIL 3.31) OFFICIAL SITE: http://www.mikecolin.net
SOCIAL MEDIA
http://www.jango.com/music/Mike+Colin
https://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/MikeColin
https://www.twitter.com/mikecolin5280
https://www.facebook.com/milehighmikecolin
http://www.reverbnation.com/mikecolin
https://soundcloud.com/user-110361330-166215127