“Love the music, hate the business… I mean, where should I begin? The Snakes, the Wolves or the vultures…” – @RubenGomezKane @kingsharemband

December 3 – 2pm et:
Episode #279 : A.V.A Live Radio Behind The Music with Jacqueline Jax
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/avaliveradio/2015/12/03/episode-279-ava-live-radio-behind-the-music-with-jacqueline-jax

GETTING TO KNOW RUBEN GOMEZ KANE – KING HAREM
by Jacqueline Jax host of A.V.A Live Radio

Music business…
Love the music, hate the business… I mean, where should I begin? The Snakes, the Wolves or the vultures…
Musicians need a real union like Actors have Sag. Where live performers famous or not get paid well for their Live gigs, so all of these pay to play venues take advantage of bands, where contracts would have minimums in place for Recording Artists that would protect their interests. Making it impossible to sign a bad deal. You think an Actor has to fight to get his Residuals like Artists fight for Record sales? Tony Braxton knows all too well the Pitfalls of the Music Biz, signed to a Major Record label and had to sue the Company that made her famous just to get paid for record sales.

Pros and cons…
Never getting a Dime for record sales in Menudo, even though it was in the contract… Getting paid 9 months later for the Tour…

The pro’s would be the experience as an artist to mold your craft, how to engage the audience… Meeting unique butterflies and forging life long friendships. Bonds that are hard to break because people attracted to art seem to have a way of looking at life and living life… It has also made me a great judge of character…

Hurdles and pitfalls…
By staying positive, anyone who is in this business MUST understand that the Music Biz and even acting has its ups and downs , hills and valleys, so just enjoy the ride.

Social media…
The days of putting flyers out on car windshields are now on steroids. Social marketing combined with the analytics of understanding your consumer has changed the odds of the garage band making it in their favor. You still need a good product but at least you’ll get noticed. So we can be in touch with overseas markets as if it was around the corner. We can interact with our fans from a safe distance from home or on the go which they really appreciate. We love our facebook twitter fans. They are respectful and we enjoy having them play active roles in our success.

Our Merchandise store is opening soon so we can have a global store front with fulfillment without touching the product. It’s a beautiful thing.

The other thing is, the rise of internet radio embracing the new indie music culture. This is scaring the be Jesus out of the labels. Cause more and more listeners are tuning to the real new music on celestial radio through social media. The censored music who the labels let you hear over and over again is done! How many more times do we need to hear about a rapster shootin a cap off on a cop. It’s done! We can’t listen to it anymore. People want something different. …if we’ve learned anything from the grunge era. Music goes in cycles. It’s inevitable. So our message is, we’re coming, join us or get old!

Challenges to overcome…
Mainly physical challenges, suffering with a cyst in my neck while on Tour with Eros Rammazotti in Germany and still have to perform with the cyst still swollen. It was so painful, even swallowing or walking would cause me alot of pain. Imagine having to open a show like that.

Singles vs an album…
We actually prefer to release singles cause that’s the song your pushing. However the importance of the industry market place needs to know you have more cards up your sleeve to play in the arena of music. The industry is an album driven market for the cash cow. If your going to go out on a tour, the booking agent needs to know you can at least play a set of songs. The bands you open for or visa versa needs to know what you sound like. lol. Either way the fans are going to hear what we have once we play it so to have EP’s come out and a new song as a release for the tour and radio is cool. Like the old days when Elvis came out with a 45. Love it. Keep them wanting more!

The thing is the album’s and EP’s are a menu of items coming your way to digest. Your get to hear it all at once when you buy it and be the first in your school to circulate it. Now your cool cause you have something new that maybe only one song was heard of. Well its the business of that one song for you to buy the album. Now picking one song allows you to concentrate your money on the push of that one song rather than splitting up the volley between the others. So to be clear the product your selling is the album because that fuels the tour that sells more albums. The means to that goal is the single! One after another once the life the first single has done its job.
My father is the one reason why I am in the Music biz…
He was a radio DJ and would constantly listen to music at home. I remember hearing Elvis, Paul Anka, Neil Sedaka, The Beatles even before I could talk.

Shake It Up!…
is about the crowds that come to see us play. It’s about ‘shaking up the party, bringing it up a notch for the evenings event. ‘life’s entertainment, to have a good time’.

Well the shows we play are usually packed to the stage. People pressing against the stage like sardines. When your that close you feel the energy of the crowd. …and we give it right back. We’re a live band, born on stage, so we recorded our songs with the same intensity as a live performance minus the screaming audience. If the vibe is happening on a take, we’ll even leave a mistake it if it sounded cool. Same thing live… its the raw excitement that drives the band.

“Shake It Up!”, was a song we used to open the show with. It wasn’t till we got into the studio and really heard the potential of the song that it could become a hit. The funny thing is, it’s not our strongest song. We have more songs to release in time, so in essence, it’s still our opener. HaHa!

“All Access Pass” is…
Life on the Stage and off. We are really happy with how the tracks turned out. Our music’s life comes alive from the bands players. It like a frankenstein, when you put the unique abilities of each player together, a certain sound comes out that’s ours and no one else’s. You may hear hints of iconic idles in our music but we really don’t sound like anyone specific and that’s key to not getting lost in the menagerie of bands competing for airplay.

When you hear one of our songs for the first time on the radio, the usual reaction is who’s that? That’s different. Yet we are the product of the bands we grew up with. It comes out in our music a little at a time. Each song is a little different yet unified with tone, rhymes, rhythmic structures and hooky guitar riffs. …with the topping of vocals. Just a like a nice a pizza pie! lol

The releasing of our EP…
will just take the party to the next level. We’ll repeat the same formula that has worked for us. ‘Give’m a show they won’t forget. By have a product to sell we can support the tour to get ball rolling. We actually have a full album already recorded but we are choosing to announce KINGS HAREM in a tease. lol That’s us alright.

Marketing the album…
Grassroots first. Being Ruben came from Menudo, he already has Fan Clubs through out the world. They have actively been joining in since this February when we started up with the promo’s. Within 90 days of that, Kings Harem Fan Clubs started to emerge. Our first radio interview drew 200k arbitron listeners just by posting on Twitter and Facebook. Funny thing is we don’t even have those numbers on our sites so we were all surprised. Our fan clubs head quarters is in Sacramento, CA. Makes sense since 37% of the population is hispanic and our hard edge sound is California meets Jersey. We now have two clubs in Mexico, two in the USA, one in Venezuela that’s official. So grass roots is very important for a bands survival. Our job now is to lay the foundation for that and have everything ready for when we break out on the main stage of airplay. We’ve been mostly on the celestial stations making our way to up to the broadcast markets. Climbing with requests and new stations adding us on everyday. We joined a charting service to watch spins in case something jumps. Eventually, to really get the single out to the clear channel market, we plan to hire one of the industry standard firms who already have working relationships with a 1000 or so stations.

I live NYC…
we have every kind of sound under the sun. I actually love to see ANY form of live performances. I feel you can learn from all kinds of styles… Even bands you might not like may have a song or 2 that catch your attention… Also love to see how different bands grab the attention of the people…
Arline’s Grocery is a fav of mine…

I like to go to at least one live performances everywhere I travel to… Preferably a local dive bar…One memorable live show was when i went to an underground Rock Bar in East Berlin…

I would love to have 5 minutes alone with…
Marilyn Monroe, I feel that her bright light and gentle soul was taken from all of us way too soon…

Do you find that there is to much emphasis on being current and trendy…
I don’t ever really think of being trendy or current, I feel true art has no specific moment in time that it belongs to… I like to record music that has an unforgettable melody…

I am most afraid of…
World War 3

My personal definition of success is..
I have performed in many 3rd world countries… To give people a moment of fun and entertainment, a break from their hard lives… That is Success to me… I feel that is what music does for all of us in our lives… A mental journey , a special place you can’t see or touch but is just as real … A true gift from God…

My over all goal for my life & career is…
My goal in life is to be able to entertain and bring smiles and found memories to people’s lives. To use my art to help different organizations and foundations that help people in need.

3 Ways that I challenge myself…
1) Mind – The quest of learning never ends

2) Body – Eat right, exercise & play with moderation

3) Soul – Thank God your alive and do something nice for someone else.