The second One Movement Showcase Music Festival announcement saw the addition of German funk rock band Sorgente, who caught American industry attention when they were invited to showcase at the Los Angeles Viper Room in June 2009 as part of the MUSEXPO event. Two months after that experience, Andrew McMillen spoke with Sorgente’s lead guitarist (and fellow journalist) Jakob Biazza to talk showcase sets and music conferences.

Andrew: Was the MUSEXPO set your first showcase event outside of Germany?

Jakob: It was our first showcase, so it was the first show we did in front of business people outside of Germany, but it’s wasn’t the first show outside of Germany. We’ve played most of Europe, in places like Austria, Switzerland, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, and we played the Montreux Jazz Festival in 2008. But it was the first showcase where we were playing in front of mostly business people. We made a lot of contacts in LA to non-business people, so we had about 50 or 60 fans in front of the stage as well.

What were your goals going into MUSEXPO?

We had several goals; one of course, was playing in front of the major business people you have at the MUSEXPO, so it was a pretty cool convention. The organization was great, and I think the whole event had a really good atmosphere. A lot of important people attend MUSEXPO, so it was one goal to be seen by those people.

The other goal was that it’s always an amazing chance to play outside of Europe, so it was amazing to play LA, which is still sort of the center of the whole rock ‘n roll circuit. The trip to LA itself was amazing; we took a cameraman from LA to film the whole trip. We’re about to edit a 90 minute about the whole trip. Travelling there was a goal in itself, as well.

I also read you were approached by some people who were interested in the band, after the show. What was the outcome there?

We will probably release our album ['Let Me In'] in the States. We made a lot of friends there, a lot of people who want to help us with shows in LA, Santa Monica, and the area around there. Then of course, we got invited to Australia, which is totally weird; from playing in LA and then getting an invitation to another continent. We’re pretty close to travelling around the world!

After we do the show in Perth, we will try to travel the other way and play some more shows in LA, maybe New York, and Montreal. If we’re lucky, we’re going to do a mini-world tour, at least, in October, which is something we would never have ever dreamed of. It’s totally weird to us right now.

Did you attend any of the discussion panels during MUSEXPO?

I saw some of the panels about band management, and that whole discussion about that boy band manager, Lou Pearlman [the former manager of Backstreet Boys and N*Sync, who was jailed for conspiracy and money laundering in 2008]. I saw a discussion about new forms of music distribution and about the whole mp3-versus-CD-versus-LP discussion, which was kind of weird because the distributor speaking, Gary Chen (Chairman/CEO, Top 100/Orca Digital, China), said he doesn’t use mp3s at all. He listens to CDs in his car and to LPs at home. He thinks that mp3s sound like shit, and that it wasn’t his job to distribute mp3s. That was kind of interesting and weird to me.

The panels didn’t mean too much to me, because it was like people complaining about how bad everything is and pretty much hyping themselves. There wasn’t a really good outcome for me, probably because I’m more of a musician than a business manager in the music business. I mean, the panels are more for the business side than for artists, at least the ones I saw. The people who attended the panels were huge; they really had the big guys in the industry, but maybe that’s why their point of view was sort of from outer space a little bit, or really close to their own subjects. The panel side of MUSEXPO wasn’t that good for me.

One Movement’s tagline is “Artist, Industry, Fan United.” What’s the one thing that you think needs to change in order to unite the music industry and its fans and artists?

That question is tough for me to answer because it would lead me to sort of a political discussion. I think the music industry is a perfect image of the Western capitalist economic system. I think that what I’d most like to change would be the whole system.

That kind of change would allow a really good chance to see music as a cultural piece again, like the importance of music in matters of culture, and what it is to people. I think there is not a culture known to man that doesn’t have music. It must be a really important cultural good that you have there, but in the way our economic system is surrounding the whole music thing, it’s nothing more than a product like eggs, or cars, or something like that. I think we need to have a really big change.

It would be harder, but we could also have a change in the way people interact with music. Right now, you can get your music for free everywhere but the industry still expects  want to pay for it, which is ridiculous. I think you won’t get a large amount of people to pay for something that you can get for free. I think everybody can understand that.

Watch the video to Sorgente’s track ‘Alive‘ below, and catch their One Movement Showcase Music Festival performance on October 18, 2009.