Mandi Perkins is far from being an unknown independent musician, I’ll grant you, but she is an awesome one. She’s already been featured in more music publications than most musicians ever muster with numerous quality ratings. In particular, the song “Why” has been voted for by visitors to numerous websites as being the best just about everything including lyrics, drums, and rock song. Broken Window Pane isn’t without its fans either having been voted as best song in Songwriter Universe Magazine.
Are the accolades justified? You better believe it. She may look young and sweet but her appearance belies her voice. Often dark and regularly alluring, she manages to breeze from slow melodic tracks to seriously rocking tunes without missing a beat and with definite ease. It’s almost impossible to compare her voice to any one single artist because of this staggering range. Everyone from Tori Amos to Evanescence seems to feature in one track or another.
Eclectic her voice may be, but it doesn’t suffer for it, as is sometimes the case. Hailing from Toronto, Canada, Mandi Perkins is guaranteed to gain even more of a global following very soon.
July 23rd through July 30th is going to see one of the greatest and most influential of rock concerts in South Africa for some time. The Party in the Car Park is being held at the Fourways Mall and looks set to showcase some of the finest talent in the area. Niemand, The Finkelstiens, The Parlotones, Wickhead, and Cutting Jade are among some of the bands that will be appearing. The Parlotones were given the prestigious Best Rock Album award earlier this year at the South African music awards. They have gained huge following in the past twelve months and join a long line-up of massively popular rock and punk indie bands at the Car Park. Wickhead are another band of note having gained recognition as being one of the best live bands that South Africa has to offer. Having been playing and touring since 2000, they’ve honed their performances even further to bring fans a true musical extravaganza. The good news for anyone reading this in South Africa is that entry is free to everyone, and the bands are generally more than happy to meet their fans before and after they’re on stage. Band merchandise is also available from numerous stalls set up around the venue.
There are an alarming number of ways that record labels manage to bleed extra money from their clients. In a lot of cases these are charges that you and I would generally believe to be acceptable costs that the label themselves should pay. A prime example is "secretly" paying independent promoters to promote the single or album. They usually do this by paying radio stations to play the music. Record labels claim to do this in order that the radio stations don’t know they’re being paid by the label. You might believe this would fall under the remit of the label, as being part of the marketing costs. However, in many contracts, deep down in the incredibly small print, you will usually find that the label would rather the band paid for it. Once the contract is signed, of course, there is nothing that can be done. The most difficult part of this for musicians to bear is that the independent promoter is not as affordable as his name would suggest. The cost of this little transaction can easily be in the range of $500,000 or possibly even more. There is no guarantee that the independent promoter has a positive effect or that it is even they who get the record played on the radio. The band also has no say in whether it goes ahead or not. The ist on signing a contract with a large label then do read every last letter of the fine print. If possible get a solicitor to look it over to be sure that you aren’t signing away your unborn children.
