Page 16 - ION Indie Magazine MayJune 2018 Issue

Photo credit: Marty Haviik

GA: Record industry? The fact that you call it the "record industry" shows that we're in a whole different time.
We're in a download industry now, we're no longer in a record industry. Although, when I release a new product
I say, "I'm recording a new album." We're probably going to date ourselves, but I remember one of the music
companies way back when would say, “You can get 12 albums for free or for 99 cents and you only got to buy 3
more throughout the next year.” And I still remember like it was yesterday. I remember getting my stack of
albums. Some of the ones in my stack were Foreigner, Nazareth, Scorpion's “Black Out” album, Iron Maiden
“Number of the Beast,” AC/DC “Back in Black.” Who else? Some great ones. I also had Heart. I loved Heart. But
the first album that was on top of the stack…Ozzy Osbourne. I remember looking at Ozzy -- the album blew my
mind -- and thinking, "Man, this is amazing!" I opened it up. Pulled the sleeve out of the album. Remember that?
Then you had these things called liner notes, right? Where it was recorded, who recorded it, who's the engineer,
who played on it, who wrote the song. And I would just sit there as the album was playing and look at the album.
And then you would pass it around. Some of the albums on the inside had the lyrics, and everyone would be
singing along while reading the lyrics.

I miss that. I miss people caring about the liner notes. They don't give a damn anymore. There was a story in
each album, back in the day. Like Queensryche’s “Operation Mindcrime.” It was a whole story. And yet
nowadays people go to iTunes, Spotify, Soundcloud, and whoever knows what other news things are out there.
Now they just say, "Cool. Gabe's got a new CD. Uh, I'll download track #3.” What about my story man? Do you
know why I put it in this order? And now, it doesn't matter. Music is so compressed that you can't even hear
little nuances anyway. We go into that mix and master for hours, only for it to be compressed as small as possible.
It's like, going to have dinner and you order a steak and lobster, the sides and everything. And you say, "I'm just
going to have one bite now and be done.” Why? It's all there, but you choose to get it in this mp3 format instead
of an AIFF file where you get them to taste everything. So, so disappointing. That's the generation I came from.