What is a concept album?

Let's kick off our discussion about the making of a concept album with a short discussion about what a concept album is.

Well, actually, it is not that difficult to figure out what it is from the name. It however get a bit confusing when you start to look at all the many options, so let's look at all those funny names given to these albums.

If you'd google any musical's name, with the word 'recording', you may find a wide variety of albums. Musicals tend to be recorded and re-recorded many times. It is not so simple as other musical works for which usually only one or two versions exist. Try it out. Go into your local shop and ask for the recording of Phantom of the opera. You are likely to just get a blank stare from your shop attendant, but let's assume for this argument that your shop attendant knows a lot about musicals and musical recordings. If she does, she might reply with "Right away sir. Which album would you like?".

Unless you know a little bit about recordings of musicals and specifically the musical you might be interested in, your shop attendant will at this point be met with a blank stare. Upon such situation, your shop attendant is most likely to hand you the latest available recording, which just might happen to be the 25 year anniversary concert album. Failing that, she would likely give you the original London cast recording.

For most musicals, the most popular and best known recording would be the original cast recording. That is usually either a Broadway or a London cast recording, but might be anywhere else in the worlds as well. This all depends on where the world primiere for your musical was held. The important word to look out for here is 'original'. The album is usually assgned the status of 'original cast recording' and a year, indicating that this is the recording of the cast of singers and actors who initially did the Broadway or London primiere show. Most often, this is the album that may contain the version of the recording of the songs that made it to the hit parade.

But not always.

Sometimes the song that you have heard on the radio comes from any of the other possible recordings. Sometimes you might be looking for the 'studio cast recording'. These are albums often recorded after the premiere is over and the composers never bothered with the original cast recording. Often the popularity of the show exceeded expectations and the composers decided that an album might be a good idea to make extra money, so they got a bunch of session musicians together to record the songs. But not always.

Often the studio cast recordings are done before the premiere and is done with the purpose of creating interest in the show. This is where the concept album often comes in. Jesus Christ Superstar is a great example of this. ALW recorded the songs from the musical with well known musicians to spread the word. The concept album would very often be followed by an original cast album, but not always. The songs on the concept album might often not be exactly the same as the songs in the cast albums. That is the whole idea of a concept album. It gives the composer the chance to check things out and change it to his liking.

Often you will get a demo album recording in the place of the concept album. Often the quality of a demo recording would not be as good as a concept album recording, but again, this is not always so. With recording technology more affordable and in the hands of the average man, quality of demo recordings are pretty good nowdays. The difference between demo albums and concept albums have become blurred and these names are now used interchangebly. Demo albums are usually not available commercially.

We've already talked about the original cast recordings, but there can be any number of cast recordings. If a musical is very popular, you may find that every producer anywhere in the world may want to make a recording of his cast. These albums would usually be indicated with some town and a year.

When a movie is made of the musical, you may find a soundtrack album. In many cases these albums would have the movie actors singing the songs, but not always. It use to be common practise to have session musicians sing the songs and the movie actors just lip sync in the movie.

Another popular option is the concert album recordings. These are when a number of great performing singers perform the songs in a live show. You would most often hear the crowd clapping in the background and between songs. Many Stephen Sondheim shows have very good concert albums available.

There are many other options as well. The songs from.. albums are very popular. These albums often mix a number of musicals from the same composer. You may even find a greatest hits album or often a popular singer sings albums. Barbara Steisand made a number of great recordings singing her favourite songs from her favourite musicals. Often these recordings make it to the hit parades and are more popular than the cast recordings.

Then there are many more variations for fun and commercial gain. There are dream cast recordings, symphonic recordings, highlights from albums, film score albums, karaoke albums, and the list goes on and on.

From this short discussion, you might get some idea of all the variations on the theme available. Have a look at some of the links provided above just to get a feelng. The thirty two pages with 373 recordings of Les Mis on Amazon would seem a bit extreme, but at least, I hope I helped a little bit to help you make some sense of it.

 

The concept album concept

Ken Davenport made a post on his blog about bringing back the concept of the concept album.

Thanks Ken. He gives Andrew Lloyd Webber as examples of using this concept. i am sure there must be many more. If you know of others, please mention it in the comments below.

I was not even aware that he concept of a concept album needed any bringing back! My ignorance aside, this is a brilliant idea and one of the most basic tools to the disposal of the writer / composer of musicals.

I have gone the concept album route for The exile. I have not done it with the hope of making lots of money from it, but rather as part of the development process. To add to Ken's post, let me list the reasons why you may want to do a concept album.

• Firstly and most importantly, it serves as a basic tool to help you sell your musical to an interested producer. Without the concept album recording, the best you can do to sell your musical is to lie, beg or plea to producers to believe in a script, with empty promises that the music will be brilliant. Maybe you can bring your own piano and sing some of the songs. Unless you are Bon Jovi, you are more likely to bore or scare the producer. People are much more likely to take you serious if you have a professionally recorded CD. You may even leave a CD with interested people, and yes, it will give your ego a huge boost if somebody phone or contact you afterwards to tell you which song is his or her favourite! Which brings us to the next point.
• It gives you a chance to get feedback from people. Very valuable feedback. This is free feedback you can use to invest back into your show. I have received lots of feedback from people on my concept album. Most people told they just loved "that blues song". I had some requests from people interested in licencing and recording "that love song". Others told me how that song about democracy had them in stitches. Knowing what the crowd favourite is, gives you a heads up on what you can use to sell your show to the next producer you talk to.
• The concept album is just that, i.e. a concept album. It is a development tool. It gives you a chance to try things out and change these things. I had some people making suggestions on how to improve the show. The most common idea is to add another big company sing-a-long somewhere in the middle. My show opens with a company number and close with a reprise of something on the same theme. People would love to have a break in the story somewhere in the middle as well, similar to Les Mis did with Master of the house. During the recording process I could pick up when a song just does not work. This gives me the chance to re-write that song.
• It serves as a milestone. It gives you something to hold and treasure. It gives the feeling that you have achieved something major. Your show have moved on from just paper to something concrete.

Recording a concept album is not cheap. It is much cheaper than in the 70's when ALW did Superstar, but it still requires some investment. In the next few months I will touch on the behind-the-scene process of producing a concept album. So, untill then. Leave some comments below about what you want me to talk about, and tell me which song did you enjoy the most from my concept album recording. You just might be able to say some day that you gave some significant input into the next hit on Broadway;)

 

News from Broadway - Evita fails to show a profit

The Lost Angeles Times ran a story this week about Andrew Lloyd-Webber's hit show, Evita, closing its doors. This is interesting news for all of us and there are much we can learn from it, even if we are not playing in the same league. This revival of Evita has it all. Ricky Martin and Elena Roger as the stars, Lloyd-Webber's music, a movie to remember, and an advertising budget like never before. Yes, if any show had potential, that must be it.

In contrast, Lloyd-Webber's Phantom of the opera celebrated its 25th year in London last year and this same week, the 25th year on Broadway. Hope you have seen the show when it came to a theater near you. I was in second heaven when I saw it at the Teatro last year. If you do not have the celebration concert DVD, shame on you - you must get it.

What we can take out from this is important. Big budgets does not make a success - at least not always. The $11 million made sure that the show would be of greatest quality. Just remember, if you want to spend big budgets, you have to earn even more to pay it back.

Big names does not always make for big profits. The times reports in the story quoted above that shows staring Ricky Martin showed better ticket sales. What it does not say, but can be assumed, is that the bigger names also insist on bigger salaries. If you want to splash out on big stars, you will have to make sure that they can bring in more than what you spend on them. That is a most basic budget principle.

The story above also reports that the show ran for 46 weeks on Broadway, but it needed 63 weeks to recoup the costs. We can safely assume that the budgeting team did not make such simple mistake. What most likely went wrong is that the attendance was lower than expected. Mmmm. Looking at the gross figures as reported on The Broadway League for the previous week, this show ran to a crowd of close to 80% capacity. Mmmmm. Make me wonder. If the budget team made the assumption that they needed to contract their stars for 46 weeks only, and 80% attendance was not enough to make it, then what on earth did the budget team assume for attendance? A lesson to be learned, which I have learned in grade one of finance 101, is that you never budget  to sell at 100% capacity. Always make sure that you have some margin. I read on the internet and in learned books that a 60% attendance on Broadway is about average. In budgeting basics you learn that, when you draw up your budget, starts with a likely scenario (say 60%), contract your expenses to make sure you break even at a pessimistic scenario (say 50%), and then make sure your product quality and appeal aims for an optimistic scenario (say 80%). With this simple budgeting model you make sure that you will make big profits when your show hits it big. Yeah I know I am selling cars by daylight and musical theater on Broadway is something very different, but we are talking basic business principles here.

So much for complicated budgeting stuff for now. Until next time, and oh yes, I wish Ken Davenport all the best with his production of Macbeth on Broadway. There is one producer who will not make any such mistakes when drawing up a budget.