GDA -
Even if Chris doesn't know who Mark Volman is as far as his music is concerned, it doesn't mean that his 40 years of experience in the music business couldn't be helpful to him. Mark has had a lot of "adverse" experiences in the music business and has learned from them. His "Ask Professor Flo" site has a lot of information on the resources pages alone:
http://www.professorflo.com/_link_s/index.html Not that Chris doesn't have advisors or doesn't know about a lot of the business, but it couldn't hurt to hear this guy's opinions. And he expresses himself a lot of the time with humor. Chris should appreciate that. Here's a short video from the site:
http://www.tennessean.com/audio/2007/0223markvolman/Here's a quote from his site:
IB: What’s the aim of Ask Professor Flo?
MV: After teaching at universities for 10 years I thought about a way that I could continue to work with the thousands of students I had and how I could pass on information to others who might need help. The Turtles was a sad story not unlike many artists from our era that sent us spinning out of control in a flurry of bad business choices. I had no mentors, no consultants and certainly no books to offer me insights into the spiral onto which I had just embarked…a spiral through seven managers in the first five years and worse yet, I had signed 100% of my song-writing publishing away before I had even written my first song. The music business has changed dramatically since that first contract was signed in 1965 as a member of The Turtles, but many things still remain the same. The incredible amount of stories I have personally heard, telling of lost careers and lost human beings, could fill a very large book. For every successful story, there are many more reflecting the outcomes of battered lives left to fade away in the wake of misguided musical choices and decisions. Today, musicians, artists and songwriters still sign agreements they do not completely understand and the results of that turn their dream of success into a battle of survival, not just as a musician, but as a battle for life. Record companies, for the most part, still function as a small cog in the much larger wheel of the corporate structure and the musicians, artists and songwriters are the oil that greases the cog in the wheel. Many, I should say most artists, have no idea of a long-range plan for survival, and the idea of having a plan for a career is so far away from their reality that most will find themselves signing one bad deal after another…over and over again. The promise for success lays a foundation for those bad choices and bad decisions just as it did for me over 40 years ago, and continues for others today. I hope that professor Flo can help those who might have the dream but not the knowledge.
I also think that it would just be a fun thing if they met.
Anyway, that's my take on Chris and Mark Volman.
