The Scumfrog - Dance Department Podcast 102 - Aug 2007

Biography of The Scumfrog

TO START
Could it be that Kermit was wrong? No matter how heart-felt, disarming and historic his words may have been, and no matter how many kids - through this creature's infamous song - learned about morale, ethics, love, and all that good stuff, can it be that ultimately his tear jerking punch line 'It's not easy being green' is a lie? Is it really that hard being green?

The fact that this question enters my head in the midst of a busy and turbulent career, supports this slightly controversial point, if not proves it. Sure, my life consists of odd hours, little sleep and an ever decreasing hearing capacity, but it never seems to outweigh the fun. Because I have so much laptop-time on airplanes, I recapped the chain of events that led to my Remixer Of 2003 award—at the risk of having to check myself in at “Narcissists Anonymous”—just to explain why The Scumfrog story so far has been exciting and relatively smooth. It’s quite the read, and I’m sure it puts many to sleep, so consider this your Tylenol PM equivalent.

PRE-FROG
Before I was green, I was plain Jesse Houk, living in my native Amsterdam, the aspiring DJ at my high school soirees who couldn't leave the 45s alone after graduation. At 19, most of my fellow students at the Vossius Gymnasium went on to pursue serious academic studies around the world while I lacked any drive to extend my education beyond the point of bare necessity. Undecided whether I wanted to be a starving artist or a hustling music executive I started exploring the incestuous corners of the music industry. I stumbled from one job to another, shifting from A&R dude into radio personality and program director, all whilst staying true to my one passion, controlling a crowd with a stack of vinyl.

At 25 I decided to bite the bullet and focus all my attention on DJing, producing, songwriting, and other music related activities that notoriously lead to multiple roommates and disapproving parents. To make the leap from paycheck to unemployment even more radical I picked New York City as my new home. I had never been in New York City before, there was no job waiting for me there, I had not saved any money, but I was not alone. In Amsterdam, I had a summer-romance-turned-serious-affair with a New York belle. When she had to go back home at the end of her year in Europe, she invited me to come to New York to live on her turf for awhile. Her invitation and my dual citizenship were too tempting a combination to stay in Amsterdam. I quit whatever job I had, gave up my apartment, and left to start a new life on the other side of the Atlantic.

The moment I set foot on the mythical rock called Manhattan I was in its grip, and as the romance with my girlfriend blossomed, so intensified my affair with the Big Apple. Shortly before I left Holland I had started collaborating with Dutch producer/engineer Sjaak Sperwer which had resulted in an album deal with BMG. Our project was called Resonance, a slightly over-prestigious mix of Electronica, Pop, and Rock, and it required me to shuttle between my new and my old home to support its release with music videos and promotion. Since I had no contacts in New York's recording industry yet, I took my productions (made in the kitchen of our upper eastside apartment) to Holland whenever I went back, and sold them to labels over there. One of these productions was The Watersong.

In that period I had several aliases. Some were with Jake (Resonance, Barbarus, Jake and Jesse) and some were solo projects (DJ Jesse, Dapa Doosa) but for The Watersong—courtesy of contractual crap—I needed to adopt just one more. Don't forget that all these projects typically didn't sell more than 500 to 1000 copies, so it didn't really matter what they were called. This indifference caused me to submit the ridiculous name that would bless me with success, curse me with its longevity, and cover me in green...The Scumfrog.

LUCKY BREAK
Fast-forward two years; my beautiful girlfriend had become my lovely wife, Resonance was released but had bombed, and I had told the ever-so-local music business in Holland goodbye. The revenue from all previous projects was spent on Manhattan rent, a fantastic wedding, and a luxurious honeymoon, and I was scrambling for $100 DJ gigs in East Village lounges to get by. Out of the blue I received a congratulatory email on having two cuts on Danny Tenaglia's Global Underground (Athens) compilation, one of which was The Scumfrog's The Watersong. Go figure, two years after its insignificant release on a small Dutch label (600 of the 1000 first copies were still rotting away in an Amsterdam warehouse), this song, through the compilation, had become my first production with an actual public demand.

My fear of having to pursue a day job was instantly crushed by a determination to milk the Global Underground momentum for all it was worth. The Miami winter music conference (WMC) 2000 was coming up and even though I probably couldn’t afford to go, I would make sure that I had a new Scumfrog single to give my DJ friends that did. The single was called Learning to Fly, and I had struck a one-time handshake deal with my favorite Manhattan record store (read: hangout), Beyond Bass Records, to pay for the manufacturing of 500 vinyls. I would get 100 to hand out and they would bet on profiting from potential sales of the other 400, without actually obtaining any rights to the song. Due to the good faith and total lack of legal knowledge between Beyond Bass and me, this deal was a big success and resulted in an early morning phone call from House Music's living legend, Roger Sanchez.

R-SENAL
The S-man—as Roger calls himself when he is in full gear—picked up the single for his label R-senal but also signed six other tracks that we planned to release as an album. To support the record and The Scumfrog as a DJ, he had me open for him on parts of his North American tour in early 2001. This was how I learned the ropes of life on the road and particularly exciting because it was my first introduction to the US beyond New York.

As I was finishing up the last tracks in the collection of beats and loops that were to become my album on R-senal, I napstered my way across the 60's Rolling Stones song We Love You. The song’s psychedelic chorus just begged to be remixed, so I downloaded it and cut it up to build a track around it. It instantly had the promise of a great big-room anthem, and although this sound was in stark contrast with the rest of the tracks I had made, I called Roger and played it over the phone. He insisted I not only include it on the album, but also make it the next single. Around the same time, he was working on his own sample-hit Another Chance and he pressed promos with his song on one side, and We Love You on the other side. What better way to be promoted than on the flip side of Another Chance?

We took the promos to Miami for WMC 2001. Another Chance ended up triumphant at number one in the UK pop chart, and We Love You (licensed to Groovalicious in the UK and promoted heavily by BBC Radio 1's Pete Tong), became my first number one in the summer club-charts there. Although the upsides of having a hit record may be obvious, the downside was that the other tracks on my album suddenly paled in comparison and would not match the expectation of a Scumfrog album. I threw away most tracks and started recording new material, which sounded better because I had access to a Protools studio, a considerable upgrade from my kitchen-PC setup that Learning To Fly and The Watersong were made on.

My life was changing, and my wife and I were going through personal changes too. Unfortunately, we both grew in different directions, and after a while it became clear that our marriage would not last the lifetime we had promised each other three years earlier. We separated a few months later and eventually divorced.

BOWIE
The commercial release of We Love You had been anticipated and hyped over the summer of 2001, a music video was in the making and everyone involved had high expectations. No one could predict that its release would coincide with the biggest terrorist attack of our generation, which understandably knocked 'going out to buy a Scumfrog single' from peoples to-do list that month. In the two weeks that Manhattan was a virtual war zone covered in tragedy, the music business was at a complete standstill. Not knowing what would happen with the world in the weeks to come, I put my album project aside and finally remixed one of my favorite songs of all time, David Bowie’s Loving The Alien. (The song from 1984 is about the taboo surrounding inter-faith relationships between Christians and Muslims, so what better time to start on this than the week after 9/11). When the smoke in downtown Manhattan had cleared and the music industry was resuming its pre-war decline, I sent a copy of the remix to Bowie’s people. Bowie himself liked the mix and its timing. He suggested making an animated video to my mix containing his images from the original video and that year he opened his tour with the song.

REMIXES
In Roger I had somebody to pass on my productions to all the top DJs in the world, and I wanted to use that affiliation well. Instead of waiting for a label to call with remix assignments, I started making unsolicited remixes, hoping that it would help promote my name. My mix of Sono’s Keep Control was created from samples off the original record, rather than parts that were sent to me. Nobody had asked me to do the mix, but when a lot of DJs started playing it, Sono’s label ended up paying me for it and releasing it. This mix, combined with the success of We Love You, led to new challenges.

The first major artist that approached me for a remix treatment was George Michael. Apparently Pete Tong—who tipped me as a hot new producer—had referred George’s management to me. This is a very memorable mix for me, as it was the first time that I had vocals on a tape (without any processing) sent to me by an artist that I had been listening to for two decades. The idea that someone with such superstar status delegates his work into my hands still makes me pause occasionally (usually right before I decide to throw half of their vocals away when they clash with my idea of a cool club track).

I thanked Tong for the referral by remixing Roger Goode for his label FFRR. This sudden array of Scumfrog remixes (and a little help from Sanchez’ former manager Hywell) caused the call from EMI to remix Kylie. This was the big one: not only a big artist and a big record label, but also my first big paycheck! Traditionally, record companies start commissioning remixers the day they need the mix, but EMI was smarter than that and gave me plenty of time to come up with something, which turned out to be the addition of my own vocals. I got away with this because the order came from the UK, where companies usually give remixers carte blanche to produce their own vision. With US companies, you often find yourself on the phone with neurotic and undecided A&R executives discussing their views, using words like “key” when they mean “range”, “speed” when they mean “energy”, and “beat” when they simply mean “kick drum”. If there were a course that teaches how to make a remix, it should also have a class in understanding A&R lingo.

MANAGEMENT AND BOOKING AGENTS
All the success with my studio productions caused a renewed—this time international—demand for The Scumfrog as a DJ, and I had to decide how I was going to go about selecting a team to represent me. A booking agent was a bare necessity, but eventually I would also need a manager.

When it comes to DJ bookings, I am very picky. I want to know what a venue is like and how a party is promoted before I even care about money. I like to stay independent and play at multiple venues in a market as long as it is reasonable, and I like to turn down offers if I don’t feel like playing them, even if they pay decent money. These demands don’t make me a very popular candidate for big booking agencies who prefer to book a DJ whether the venue is cool or not. Coolness aside, these agencies tend to book with promoters and venues that they have an exclusive contract with, rather than dealing with the promoter that caters most to the DJs personal needs and image.

My first bookings after Roger’s tour were handled by his personal agent Kama. She did this more or less as a favor because I wasn’t exactly a headlining goldmine. After a while she got too busy with Roger, and sent me off to find someone else. Even though she had never been my personal agent, I had experienced, through her, the benefits of a personal booking agent as opposed to a big agency, and I was sold on them. While in Amsterdam on my first gig abroad since 9/11 I got a call from my friend Angelic Tassos, who told me she wanted to pick up my bookings where Kama had left off. Angelic was very motivated, fashioned a great press kit, and accompanied me to Miami for WMC 2002, where she made contact with big event promoters like Spundae and Dance Valley. Although bookings were not exactly flying in immediately, I was happy with her representation because it showed promoters that I was not in a hurry to kiss up to big agencies for the sake of gigs. If they wanted to book The Scumfrog, they could, but I wasn’t going to be a bargain or an opener. This attitude made my climb into the international headlining regions considerably longer, but looking back I feel I made the right choice.

Once Angelic was on board, I needed a manager. In the world of platinum selling rock bands and carefully exploited teen idols, the manager is usually an experienced (sometimes even educated) individual who carefully plots ahead and steers clear of other opportunists. Most underground dance artists and DJs are not dealt with such luxury management, but fortunately we can tap from another source of pure brainpower to aid us with the business side of things: the ex-club-kid. Just like in the golden age of rock ‘n roll where groupies and entourage suddenly proclaimed themselves managers to their freshly squeezed stage punk, the club kid of today is ready to take care of our business. Fresh out of Dancefloor University, they apply their global knowledge of DJs and glowsticks to aid their aspiring artist with everything from bookings to recording contracts. Unlike in the Rock ‘n Roll heyday, most of them get away with it, not because this time around they are smarter, but because whoever is on the receiving end of those bookings and contracts today, sadly, came from the same University.

Most Dance Music booking and management agencies today, even the big ones, operate on street knowledge and personal contacts alone without any conventional insight in business or entertainment law. Although this can provide a local boost for a completely unknown artist or DJ, the agencies are unlikely to establish a brand or strategy that secures longevity and possibly crossover success. So what is an underground artist to do amidst this anarchy? Just when I started to get frustrated with all the bullshit and ignorance displayed by the agencies and individuals I dealt with, Steve Rosen came to my rescue.

I had known Steve for over a year in the role of label manager for R-Senal. Steve and I always got along great and I knew he had managed some of the big names in the golden age of New York Dance music, such as C&C Music Factory and Masters At Work. He didn’t manage artists anymore (and who can blame him) ever since he started his distribution company US Music, from where he operated R-Senal. After the success of We Love You, Steve had referred me to some UK agents, both for DJ bookings and Management, and witnessed how absurdly incapable all of them were. I guess he felt bad for me because he offered to come out of artist-management retirement to manage me the right way. It was a deal that made sense, we already knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and his expertise was exactly in the departments where I needed assistance. Steve initially started to manage only my production and remix schedule, but our partnership expanded through the years.

For over a year Angelic did my bookings in the boutique style that I had become so prone to. Then we parted ways; she started her company Diabolique Entertainment to focus on a broader roster of artists, while Steve started handling my bookings aided by the scheduling skills of Brian McDermott.

JEANS ANDT-SHIRT SYNDROME
Either Angelic or I had apparently made a good impression on the Dance Valley bookers in Amsterdam, because they flew us in to play their House-tent during the 2002 edition of the annual festival. This was not only my first festival as a headliner; it was also my first appearance in my old hometown as a New York DJ. Because I adopted the name Scumfrog after I moved to New York, virtually no one in Amsterdam knew that this was the Dutch dude they could have known as DJ Jesse. On the morning of the festival, I suddenly wanted to make sure there was as little of a resemblance with that DJ Jesse as possible. I wanted to use the opportunity of the Dance Valley gig and its massive, faceless audience to break through my DJ stage-freight that I call “Jeans and T-shirt syndrome”.

An important historic difference between a performer and a club DJ used to lie in their presence. A performer draws a crowd, stands on stage, a spotlight on him, demanding all attention from the audience through his moves, costumes, musical abilities and various tricks his narcissism taught him. A DJ on the other hand used to be a shy, shabby dude tucked away in a booth where no one could see him, remaining anonymous while playing his tunes. The superstar DJ phenomenon has created a hybrid between those two caricatures: a shabby looking introvert on a huge stage, trying to keep out of the spotlight, not asking for attention but getting it nevertheless. He downplays his superstar status out of insecurity or because he finds it cool (first rule of underground club: everything famous is a sell-out and therefore uncool) and therefore always wears plain jeans and T-shirts at even the most stylish gigs. Granted there are plenty of rock stars with the same syndrome, but let’s not forget that they usually have entertaining qualities that DJs don’t (such as singing or playing an instrument) to justify an audience’s undivided attention. It is a completely new phenomenon to have 10.000 people in awe over someone, who—for hours on end—barely moves, never looks up, and puts on other people’s records.

Through my early careers both as a stage performer and as an anonymous DJ, I have become comfortable with both job descriptions. However, on the morning of Dance Valley I could simply not get on stage in Jeans and T-shirt in front of 10.000 people. Partially because it would feel like I was ripping them off, and partially because it would be a wasted opportunity. At the last minute I realized that if I would bring something over the top and spectacular to the event, I might just make a lasting impression, for better or worse. The only problem was that my carry-on suitcase had only apparel fitting a Jeans-and-T-shirt DJ. I walked out of the shower wearing the hotel bathrobe when it hit me. I could wear this! The stage would be far from the audience, so all I needed was an accessory to slightly disguise the characteristics of the bathrobe. I ran out to the nearest party store and bought a huge white feather boa and extravagant sunglasses to match what I had found in my hotel bathroom. Then I reached deep into my pockets and bought a wireless headset microphone in the local music store. Now the robed Frog would be able to speak/mumble/sing over his records and by doing so, become the performer that justified the outfit. The stunt was a huge success. All the press that was roaming the festival gathered backstage during my set and afterwards I must have gotten more exposure than other DJ that day. I had proven to myself, that sometimes it’s not un-cool to look ridiculous on stage or to add live vocals. These added elements can help to make an average DJ set into a performance that is more memorable, and most importantly, more fun to do.

IN FULL GEAR
It had taken me five years to set up Scum-shop and to appear on the radar of the global dance music scene and things were going great. One remix request after another came in, commissioned by record companies on both sides of the Atlantic. I tried to maintain a balance between remixing underground tracks for labels like Bedrock and Defected, and doing jobs for mainstream pop artists like Monica and Enrique Iglesias. The DJ gigs were coming in too. In 2003, I toured Asia and set foot in South America for the first time. Regular gigs in the US and UK sparked a loyal fan base and as soon as I mastered the art of Djing whilst using my headset microphone, I brought along an electronic percussion set for even more live action in the booth. I developed a comfortable work ethic of studio sessions during weekdays and travels during the weekends. 2003 saw so many remix offers coming my way that I ended up doing too many, even though I declined many. The risk of remixing too many records is that they all start sounding the same and that some remixes get clouded by others and go by unnoticed. In May of 2003 I released “Extended Engagement”, a double CD that featured twenty of my remixes and originals to date, mixed together like a DJ set. It was my first full length Scumfrog album and the perfect way to prepare the dance music audience for the next Scumfrog album with all original material, scheduled for release in 2004. Even though there were some juicy checks attached to some of the remixes, it didn’t compare to the rates I would have been able to charge had I been doing this ten years earlier. Due to the drastic decline in music sales, record companies dropped their pay to remixers severely over the past two years. My name had become established, I had won the “remixer of the year” award at the WMC 2004, but it was hard to capitalize on this reputation the way someone with a comparable resume would have done a decade ago. Even though many remix giants of eras past complain about lower fees, I am quite OK with it, partially because I had never experienced the riches of a nineties superstar remixer, but mainly because there is still a decent living to be made from the DJ gigs. There even was an upside to the trouble in remix paradise; without the constant distraction of remix possibilities, I became more motivated to focus on my own music and to finally finish The Scumfrog album.

DOT COM A MUSIC REVOLUTION
Ever since Shawn Fanning developed peer-to-peer file sharing and heroically decided to set it free under the name Napster, I have been an avid supporter of online music swapping. Many people have asked me why I would support a technology that threatens my revenue stream from recorded music and the industry that provides it. My answer is that, granted, I would have made more money had I been producing records twenty years ago, I prefer to look to the future and tap into its possibilities rather than to ignore technological change and whine about the glorious past. And glorious it was! For close to a hundred years we had it good, almost too good. First we discovered how to record music and we developed a system in which record bosses and rock stars competed for million dollar paychecks. So far so good. Then, in the eighties, we came across digital music technology, transferred all our precious songs into ones and zeros, and bullied innocent consumers into buying their entire collection all over again under the premise that CDs sounded better. In our lust for higher profits we ironically disregarded the fact that ones and zeros could be transferred through phone lines, and even though this may not have been a threat back in 1981 (back then it would have taken weeks for a single song to transfer), modem speeds would eventually mark the bottom of the glory-days well. I could easily make a side step here and suggest that this ignorant and short-term-profit way of thinking affects other areas such as our environment, but since I’m not Moby just yet, I will refrain from that for now.

In short, we milked the recording business for all it was worth and much more, and now the ride is coming to a stop. Accepting this is the first and necessary step to move on in this industry. Not to say that there won’t be any more money to be made from music, on the contrary, live performances will remain a decent way for an artist to make a living. So while I’m designing my stage show and polishing my guitar licks, I no longer worry about dwindling record companies, but rather start exploring alternative ways to get my music out there. The online Dance Music community is a great candidate. Its demographic is more Internet savvy and Limewire-addicted than any other fan base out there, which ought to be utilized and exploited, rather than threatened with unsubstantiated lawsuits.

For my first experiment, I offered my new song Music Revolution as a free download on my website. It was a big success in the sense that it generated a lot of hype, and DJs far beyond the reach of any label’s mailing list were supporting it. UK label and EMI affiliate Positiva had released my Loving The Alien in 2002 and were now interested in putting out Music Revolution commercially. Understandably, they were weary of trying to sell a piece of shareware, so to close the deal, I offered to deliver them remixes of the song by renowned producers. Since I didn’t have the money to pay for big remixes, I looked for producers I could trade remixes with. Fortunately the S-man was game, as were my favorite producers of the moment, Italy’s Planet Funk. With the new remixes, Music Revolution became a smash, as did the free remixes that I did in return for Roger and Planet Funk (Pure Orange’s Feel Alive and Planet Funk’s The Switch). All these new successful ways to market records spawned more remix trades and free downloads.

I believe that while record companies are still standing, the most effective way an artist can utilize them is through the marketing and promotion of the artist’s website. This way, consumers and fans will know where to find the artists and their music when the record companies disappear. Until that day, I will provide my own site with free downloads, guestlist giveaways, and other fun stuff. Eventually, I may divide my site into a free section and a member section with weekly downloads.

At the end of 2003, Elektra records agreed to have me remix Missy Elliott’s Pass That Dutch and present it as a free download exclusively on TheScumfrog.com. Even though this generated no money for anyone, the remix counted over 25.000 (!) downloads from all over the world. This may only be a slight increase in visibility for Ms Elliott, but it was a huge boost for an underground frog like me. The global reach of these free downloads and the speed with which they were discovered, shared and discussed resulted in more major labels suddenly showing their interest in having their artists on my website. I guess you haven’t heard the last about this.

TO BE CONTINUED

http://www.myspace.com/thescumfrog