This Fuckin' Kid

[Nitro Express]

Hagar had a slightly naturally higher vocal key he sang in than Dave did. They were both basically tenors. Hagar's voice was maybe a half-step higher than Dave's was.

I never quite understood how that meant Hagar's voice was therefore better.

Sammy’s voice sounded like he was taking something super big up his ass with no lube.

[Nitro Express]

Hagar was a certain flavor of gay. He was not the wear leather and pierced nipples gay. We was more of the flowered shirt and yellow pants gay. He really seemed like he would be more at home reaming butts at a hippie commune that grew fruit than a rock and roll stage.

[silverfish]

Many of my favorite singers did NOT have great technical skill as a vocalist (it's the attitude in their sound):
. Iggy Pop
. Marc Bolan
. Jim Morrison
. Ronnie Van Zant
. Paul Rodgers (ok, actually, he really is a very talented singer)

Maybe my favorite vocalist of all-time is Chris Cornell...but NOT because he had such vocal range...but because of the character in his voice.

You're spot on with the distinctive sound.

I don't care who "Skynyrd" gets to sing, even if they are related to Ronnie. No one has the "feel"
that Ronnie had. He was a perfect fit for that band at that time and his attitude carried that shit.
If there is a "Bands at their peak I wish I saw" thread, Skynyrd would be at the top of my list.
I watch live clips on YT and those cats were smokin'.

[Rikk]

You're spot on with the distinctive sound.

I don't care who "Skynyrd" gets to sing, even if they are related to Ronnie. No one has the "feel"
that Ronnie had. He was a perfect fit for that band at that time and his attitude carried that shit.
If there is a "Bands at their peak I wish I saw" thread, Skynyrd would be at the top of my list.
I watch live clips on YT and those cats were smokin'.

Oh, absolutely, my friend.

Ronnie Van Zant does not have as "smooth" a voice as his younger brother's. But it makes NO difference. He had an attitude in his voice. When he sang those lyrics, you just know he meant it.

When Johnny sings them, he sounds like he's punching a clock...singing for money. No danger, no swagger.

I'd give ANYTHING to go back in time and see them. Pretty much any Skynyrd show (as long as it's a full set, headlining) from 1973-1977 would be perfect. (They were so rehearsed, so consistent live.)

There are Skynyrd "sheep" who literally freak out on me because I have ZERO feeling that the current band is in ANY WAY Lynyrd Skynyrd. They don't have a single original member. A decade ago, they had ONE original member. It's a complete joke.

Lynyrd Skynyrd were one of the 5 or 10 best bands in music history. Truly. The original Lynyrd Skynyrd were at a level of greatness that can be considered in the same zone as Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, etc. BUT...that band died with the plane crash in 1977. Going to see them in the 1990s, when I was a very young lad...it was fun. But it was not remotely Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I wish they never had reformed. They would have had a much greater air of mystery about them...an air of legend.

They still have that to some degree (the original band)...but the shitty tribute band that's been touring for almost 40 years has definitely diluted that.

[ZahZoo]

I agree with the sentiment that many of the former great bands... Skynyrd, Molly Hatchet, ZZ Top, AC/DC, etc. have morphed into "tribute" bands with replacements filling the slots of dead greatness... I won't waste my time or money going to see any of them. Just damn thankful I saw em all a bunch when they were the original ass-kickin legendary rockers in their prime! Fuck sloppy seconds, thirds and posers...

Oh and on subject... Wolfgang has a long way to go to achieve any sort of legendary status beyond celebrity spawn for morning talk and cooking shows...

[Never was]

I just wonder how Wolf reacts when his 3rd record fails to have a hit.

Also, as he loses control of the VH narrative and stuff he doesn't want to happen begins to happen anyway. I can not imagine his entitled ass taking that well. How will tubby implode

[VHscraps]

What even is the definition of a hit today? You have an album that hits #25 or #32 or whatever on the chart in its first week out, then likely falls down the chart.

how many people? How many people hear it or choose to listen to it on streaming?

I am saying this as someone who has never - NEVER - even heard the supposed biggest act on the planet, Taylor Swift, and I am sure like many people over a certain age, don't have a damn clue what kind of music she plays. I remember working on a factory production line in the 80s, and the radio played all day every day. You heard all the hits over and over a thousand times. Multiply that across every factory and workplace, et etc, and it absolutely kills the so-called 'listening' that is attributed to streaming numbers. On youtube, you hover over a video now and it counts as a play. 15 seconds on Tik Tok, one play. The engagement with the music is nowhere near what it was before the era of streaming.

Rick Beato recently had a few videos where he discussed these things with some other former music business guy in A&R and production with Geffen and he called Taylor Swift the biggest cult act in the world, of all time, and that is because she may sell a bazillion concert tickets (although her accumulated record sales including the streaming equivalents is still less than an act like Van Halen, who are not even in the Top 50 of all time, if I recall - Sesh posted some graphic with sales figures recently), but the vast majority of the population do not know or have not heard her music. I know what she looks like.

There are structural reasons for all that, the music business and the media communications industries have been changed so much that the idea of a mass audience - in the true meaning of mass - no longer pertains. There is too much media fragmentation for even someone like Taylor Swift to cut through to the population in general, so where does that leave a Wolfgang, whose records probably sell in the low thousands?

[Seshmeister]

A quick look on Spotify shows his new album has about 11 million listens the first one maybe a bit more than 3 times that.

Earnings from streaming on Spotify would be something like $200k. Spotify aren't the only game in town and once he adds Amazon, YouTube Apple and the rest that should reach about $500k.

[VHscraps]

So, if the formula is 1500 streaming plays is equivalen to 1 album sale, those 11 million listens equal less that Eight thousand equivalent sales?

Or do I have it all wrong?

Whatever, as I was saying, back in the 80s, a song like Jump would have been heard gazillions of times, not just by those choosing to listen to it, but as it was pumping out of radios non-stop for months at the time it was a hit.

[Seshmeister]

You get about $5k for 1 million streams. A ten song album played equally would be $500 for the album being played all the way through 100 000 times.

Say in the olden times each person who bought your album listened to it 20 times. That would mean 100 000 streams = 5 000 album sales which would have been 5000 x $10 but you only made 10% as the artist so also $5000?

Have I made a mistake on the math there?

I guess it misses that $10 an album was a long time ago now so ignores inflation, no earning from singles and did we really listen to albums we bought 20 times each on average? Also the $5k per million is the total earnings so from that WVH still has to pay record company, manager and so on.

[VHscraps]

In some ways it is a bizarre situation. In addition to maybe listening to old albums over and over, a person usually also laid down actual cash for the album. So, before they even listened to it, they had - by modern methods of calculating - already done the equivalent of 1500 streams of the songs on the album ...

But it is difficult to compare - did we listen to the albums we bought 20 times each on average? ... I don't know. Yeah, plenty of albums I bought might not even have got played all the way through once. But I do know that the albums I really liked I have sometimes listened to thousands of times.

Until I recently got shot of my old car that had a CD player, I would typically have a CD in the player and it would play on repeat - sometimes multiple times during a single trip, most days of the week - until I decided to change it. Some albums stayed in there for a year or more, never changed, and on repeated play during trips. Some of those would have been played thousands of times.

So, you've got what counts as a sale based on contemporary metrics on the one hand, and on the other all those old ways of listening after purchase that were never tracked or counted and so on - plus the passive listening that was not counted.

It's like before the introduction of the platinum album in the mid-70s, and then multi-platinum awards, no one before that ever achieved more than a gold record, but may have sold many, many millions that were never truly accounted for.

[Seshmeister]

In some ways it is a bizarre situation. In addition to maybe listening to old albums over and over, a person usually also laid down actual cash for the album. So, before they even listened to it, they had - by modern methods of calculating - already done the equivalent of 1500 streams of the songs on the album ...

But it is difficult to compare - did we listen to the albums we bought 20 times each on average? ... I don't know. Yeah, plenty of albums I bought might not even have got played all the way through once. But I do know that the albums I really liked I have sometimes listened to thousands of times.

Until I recently got shot of my old car that had a CD player, I would typically have a CD in the player and it would play on repeat - sometimes multiple times during a single trip, most days of the week - until I decided to change it. Some albums stayed in there for a year or more, never changed, and on repeated play during trips. Some of those would have been played thousands of times.

So, you've got what counts as a sale based on contemporary metrics on the one hand, and on the other all those old ways of listening after purchase that were never tracked or counted and so on - plus the passive listening that was not counted.

It's like before the introduction of the platinum album in the mid-70s, and then multi-platinum awards, no one before that ever achieved more than a gold record, but may have sold many, many millions that were never truly accounted for.

I don't think it can be underestimated how lucky Van Halen were with their timing though. There were a lot of complaints which are completely correct about the shitty horrible record deal they signed but I've never heard them say anything about how they must have massively benefited from the introduction of CDs at the almost perfect time for them. How many people bought their albums twice once on vinyl and then again on CD? Particularly the 2 biggies VH1 and 1984.

Van Halen 1 sold around a million early on but it took to 1996 before it reached 10 million Diamond status. I think a significant amount of that was people buying it twice. It certainly wasn't anything to do with the 10 years of them not playing it live with Hagar.

[Seshmeister]

Also I should repeat why are we citing sales as anything to do with quality - I blame Hagar completely for this. Usually rock fans would never get drawn into this his insecure lies have pulled us down to his level.

Celine Dion has sold 5 times as many albums as Van Halen.

[Nitro Express]

Saw all those bands and the southern fried bands always had the stars and bars on stage. Nobody gave a damn in the 70’s and 80’s but today the Karen’s would have a shit fit.

[Nitro Express]

Fair warning was a weak selling album and it’s one of my favorites. Big pop divas were always a record sales powerhouse. Why do you think Sammy was trying so hard to be one. He was way ahead of this transgender thing.