TAKING WHAT COMES
Interview with TSUNAMI BOMB'S AGENT M
by Don Sill
"I have two big pet-peeves with the music industry and their both tied," says Agent M, the sultry lead singer of the explosive punk rock outfit appropriately named Tsunami Bomb. "The first is that clubs takes a percentage of all the merch that we sell…They have absolutely nothing to do with our merch. Sometimes they don't even give us a table; they just give us a corner and then charge us 20 percent of our sales. It's just really wrong.
"The second thing is those Ticket Master fees…I mean we could have our ticket fee at $12.00 and then for a person to buy it through Ticket Master is ends up being like $30.00 which is just wrong. Especially since our market is teenaged kids. They shouldn't have to pay $30.00 to go to our show."
With Ticket Master living up to it's name and rock clubs banking in on band merchandise it is no wonder that more and more independent bands are struggling to stay alive.
"It's frustrating," Agent M continued, "I hope it changes somehow."
While the music industry isn't about to change it's greedy ways anytime soon Agent M and Tsunami Bomb will grin and bear it once again all in the good name of rock n' roll. With a new album, The Definitive Act and new tour with Motion City Soundtrack they have no choice but to endure the wrongs of the industry and look at the plus side of things such as landing their first-ever debut on the Billboard Heatseekers chart (#44) with the darkly emotive single, 'Dawn On A Funeral Day.'
"The Definitive Act is a better representation of what we really sound like live," proudly said Agent M, "even though we did add some layers with guitars. We kept the tones and sound pretty raw."
Raw indeed, 'Dawn on a Funeral Day,' for example, is a metaphor for being buried alive emotionally and physically. "I think it's easier to write angrier songs," admits the front woman, "I think those come out better. But I'd like to be able to write happy one well. I don't think there's anything better then a song that makes you feel really great about life."
Although not always happy, Agent M is does tap into her emotions with a straight-forward appeal and writes from her heart for better or worse. "Any time I feel really happy or really sad or angry about things I try and write it down and make a song out of it later…My producer was talking to me about my lyrics and he said that I needed 'some more poetic parts in there, it's too straight-forward,' but that's just how I like it. I want people who are listening to know what I'm saying."
People know exactly what Agent M is saying and despite a few music business pet-peeves the singer/songwriter/front woman has led her band towards success. "We've pretty much done everything that we wanted to," she said, "We don't really have any goals of MTV and media stuff like that, we just take what comes to us."
