Bogden Bogdon Box Bass Do it yourself kit Style

The Bogdon Box Bass is truely a remarkable instrument for the price. Who could imagine that a 93.80 bass could be so much fun and sound so good!A fellow named Chris Badynee aka Bogdon Vasquaf in the lower part of this fair state of Michigan has come up with a VERY nice sounding and playing two string bass made using a cardboard box for the body!

Bogden Bogdon Box Bass A String Style

This is a A String for use with the Bogdon Box Bass.

Bogden Bogdon Box Bass D String Style

This is a D String for use with the Bogdon Box Bass. Advanced bassists can tune the box bass to A and D which makes it easier for bass solo opportunities.

Bogden Bogdon Box Bass E String Style

E String for use with the Bogdon Box Bass.

Bogden Bogdon WashTub Bass Pickup Style

The Bogdon WashTub Bass Pickup is designed to amplify the warm natural sound exising within all washtub basses.

Bogden Bogdon Box Bass 3 Limited Edition String Upright Bass Kit Style

The Bogdon 3 Limited Edition 3-String Bass Kit is here and features original artwork on the front face created by Bogdon Vasquaf himself!

VIDEO: Pontiac movie studio raises profile, looks to lift economy

By DAMIAN KULASH JR.

Daryl Peveto/Luceo for The Wall Street Journal 

OK Go performs at the Nokia Theatre in Los Angeles, above. The band is known as much for its inventive music videos as it is for its music.

My rock band has leapt across treadmills, camouflaged ourselves in wallpaper, performed with the Notre Dame marching band, danced with a dozen trained dogs, made an animation with 2,300 pieces of toast, crammed a day-long continuous shot into 4½ minutes and built the first ever Rube Goldberg machine—at least that we know of—to operate in time to music. We are known for our music videos, which we make with the same passion and perseverance we do our songs. Our videos have combined views in excess of 120 million on YouTube alone, with countless millions more from television and repostings all over the Internet.

The band OK Go is no stranger to viral video success, with combined views in excess of 125 million on YouTube alone. Lead singer Damian Kulush explains how video works into the band's strategy.

For most people, the obvious question is: Has this helped sell records? The quick answer is yes. We've sold more than 600,000 records over the last decade. But the more relevant answer is that doesn't really matter. A half a million records is nothing to shake a stick at, but it's the online statistics that set the tone of our business and, ultimately, the size of our income.

We once relied on investment and support from a major label. Now we make a comparable living raising money directly from fans and through licensing and sponsorship. Our bank accounts don't rival Lady Gaga's, but we've got more creative freedom than we did as small fish in her pond.

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A scene from the music video 'This Too Shall Pass.'

For a decade, analysts have been hyperventilating about the demise of the music industry. But music isn't going away. We're just moving out of the brief period—a flash in history's pan—when an artist could expect to make a living selling records alone. Music is as old as humanity itself, and just as difficult to define. It's an ephemeral, temporal and subjective experience.

For several decades, though, from about World War II until sometime in the last 10 years, the recording industry managed to successfully and profitably pin it down to a stable, if circular, definition: Music was recordings of music. Records not only made it possible for musicians to connect with listeners anywhere, at any time, but offered a discrete package for commoditization. It was the perfect bottling of lightning: A powerful experience could be packaged in plastic and then bought and sold like any other commercial product.

Then came the Internet, and in less than a decade, that system fell. With uncontrollable and infinite duplication and distribution of recordings, selling records suddenly became a lot like selling apples to people who live in orchards. In 1999, global record sales totaled $26.9 billion; in 2009, that figure, including digital purchases, which now represent 25% of sales (nearly 50% in the U.S.), is down to $17 billion. For eight of the last 10 years, the decline in revenue from record sales has gotten steeper, which is to say the business is imploding with increasing vigor.

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'Last Leaf'

Music is getting harder to define again. It's becoming more of an experience and less of an object. Without records as clearly delineated receptacles of value, last century's rules—both industrial and creative—are out the window. For those who can find an audience or a paycheck outside the traditional system, this can mean blessed freedom from the music industry's gatekeepers.

Georgia singer/songwriter Corey Smith has never had a traditional record contract, but in 2008 he grossed about $4 million from touring, merchandise and other revenue, yielding roughly $2 million that was reinvested in the singer's business, according to his manager, Marty Winsch. Mr. Smith makes his recordings downloadable at no cost from his website, and Mr. Winsch emphasizes that they are promotion for his live shows, not the other way around. "We don't look at it as 'free,' " he says. "When people come to the website and download the music, they're giving us their time, their most valuable commodity." Recently, Mr. Smith entered a partnership with a small music company, but unlike a traditional label deal, the arrangement will give him 50% of any net revenue.

Mr. Smith's touring success, unfortunately, isn't indicative of industry trends. Live performance, once seen as the last great hope of the music industry, now looks like anything but. Live Nation, the largest concert promoter in the U.S., recently reported that concert revenue is down 14.5% since last year. A report by Edison Research found that in 2010, 12-to-24-year-olds went to fewer than half as many concerts as they did in 2000; nearly two-thirds went to none at all.

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A scene from the music video for 'Here It Goes Again'

So if vanishing record revenue isn't being replaced by touring income, how are musicians feeding themselves? For moderately well established artists, the answer is increasingly corporate sponsorship and licensing—a return, in a sense, to the centuries-old logic of patronage. In 1995, it was rare for musicians to partner with corporations; in most corners of the music industry, it was seen as the ultimate sell-out. But with investments from labels harder to come by, attitudes towards outside corporate deals have changed.

These days, money coming from a record label often comes with more embedded creative restrictions than the marketing dollars of other industries. A record label typically measures success in number of records sold. Outside sponsors, by contrast, tend to take a broader view of success. The measuring stick could be mentions in the press, traffic to a website, email addresses collected or views of online videos. Artists have meaningful, direct, and emotional access to our fans, and at a time when capturing the public's attention is increasingly difficult for the army of competing marketers, that access is a big asset.

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A scene from the 'White Knuckles' music video.

My band parted ways with the record label EMI a little less than a year ago. While we were profitable for them, our margins were smaller than those of more traditionally successful bands, because our YouTube views don't directly generate as much revenue as record sales. Our idea of what constitutes success and how to wring income out of it eventually wound up too far apart from EMI's.

Now when we need funding for a large project, we look for a sponsor. A couple weeks ago, my band held an eight-mile musical street parade through Los Angeles, courtesy of Range Rover. They brought no cars, signage or branding; they just asked that we credit them in the documentation of it. A few weeks earlier, we released a music video made in partnership with Samsung, and in February, one was underwritten by State Farm.

We had complete creative control in the productions. At the end of each clip we thanked the company involved, and genuinely, because we truly are thankful. We got the money we needed to make what we want, our fans enjoyed our videos for free, and our corporate Medicis got what their marketing departments were after: millions of eyes and goodwill from our fans. While most bands struggle to wrestle modest video budgets from labels that see videos as loss leaders, ours wind up making us a profit.

We're not the only ones working with brands. Corporate sponsorship of music and musical events in North America will exceed $1 billion in 2010, up from $575 million in 2003, according to William Chipps, author of the IEG Sponsorship Report, a Chicago-based newsletter that tracks and analyzes corporate sponsorship. By comparison, the U.K. music licensing organization PPL reports that record companies' global annual investment in developing and marketing artists stands at $5 billion. The numbers measure slightly different parts of the industry, but from an artist's standpoint, one thing is clear: Outside corporate investment in music is rapidly climbing into the range of the traditional labels'.

Still, this model isn't much use to unknown bands, since companies tend to bet their marketing money on the already established. This brings us to one part of the old record industry that no one seems to know how to replace: the bank. Even in the halcyon days, profitable labels were only successful with about 5% of their artists. Contracts were heavily tilted in favor of labels, so that the huge profits on the few successes paid for the legions of failures. Labels aggregated the music industry's high risks. Even if there are newer, more efficient models for distribution and promotion in the digital era, there aren't many new models for startup investment.

"That's the billion-dollar question," says Ed Donnelly of Aderra Inc., a company that helps touring bands record their live shows and, right there at the venue, sell the recordings to show-goers on custom-decorated USB flash drives (OK Go is a client). "Sure, I work with a lot of young and unheard-of bands," Mr. Donnelly says, "but I'm not a venture capitalist, and I have no interest in trying to totally replace the infrastructure that labels used to provide. I'm trying to give tools to young bands who are doing things their own way. What labels sold were recordings, what we sell is an experience and an emotional connection with the band."

Though his system can't provide the six-figure advances that young bands landed in the 1990s, it can be one crucial puzzle piece in a band's revenue. The unsigned and unmanaged Los Angeles band Killola toured last summer and offered deluxe USB packages that included full albums, live recordings and access to two future private online concerts for $40 per piece. Killola grossed $18,000 and wound up in the black for their tour. Mr. Donnelly says, "I can't imagine they'll be ordering their yacht anytime soon, but traditionally bands at that point in their careers aren't even breaking even on tour."

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Daryl Peveto/Luceo for The Wall Street Journal

OK Go members Dan Kanopka, Tim Nordwind, Damian Kulash and Andy Ross, photographed before a concert in Los Angeles.

What Killola is learning is that making a living in music isn't just about selling studio recordings anymore. It's about selling the whole package: themselves. And there are plenty of pioneers leading the way. Top-shelf studio drummer Josh Freese sold his album online with a suite of add-ons. For $250, fans could have lunch with him at P.F. Chang's; he says the 25 slots he offered sold out in a day. One fan sprung for the $20,000 option, which included a miniature golf outing with Mr. Freese and his friends.

Singer Amanda Palmer made over $6,000 in three hours—without leaving her apartment—by personally auctioning off souvenirs from tours and video shoots. The New Orleans trombone rock band Bonerama advertises online that they'll play a show in your home for $10,000.

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The band in the 'A Million Ways' video.

Not every musician takes the project of selling themselves literally, but the personality and personal lives of musicians are being more openly recognized as valuable assets. The Twitter account of rapper 50 Cent arguably has wider reach than his last album did, and Kanye West has made an art form out of existing in the public eye, holding spontaneous online press conferences and posting rambling blog entries.

This isn't so revolutionary an idea. Pop music has always been a bigger canvas than beats, chords and lyrics alone. In his early days, Elvis's hips were as famous as his voice, and Jimi Hendrix's lighter fluid is as memorable as any of his riffs, but back then the only yardstick to quantify success was the Billboard charts. Now we are untethered from the studio recording as our singular medium, and we measure in Facebook fans, website hits, and—lucky for me—YouTube views.

Apple

Some bands are finding alternate routes to success by tapping into the app market or reinventing the music video.

Apps could be the new albums.

Many bands, from Phish to rapper T-Pain, have developed their own apps, which fans download to their smartphones, typically for less than a dollar. With features such as remixing tools and games, apps can offer bands a deeper connection to their fans. Developer RjDj makes apps that pick up noises through a phone's microphone and weaves them into the music, promising a new version on each listen. The company has created apps for the U.K. rock group Clinic and the film "Inception" and its Hans Zimmer score.

Fans don't just buy records, they make donations.

Via a crop of sites such as PledgeMusic and ArtistShare, acts are soliciting donations directly from fans for tours and recording projects, offering donors access and clever swag. Recently on Kickstarter.com, a Las Vegas "lounge legend" named Richard Cheese raised more than $21,000 to make an album called "Let It Brie." He promised to thank donors of $250 by name on the record.

Keep reinventing the music video

A clever music-video concept can be a band's best marketing tool, and savvy acts apply their creativity to their videos as well as their albums. For its song "We Used to Wait," the indie-rock band Arcade Fire collaborated with Google Web developers to create an online video that incorporated customized maps of the viewer's hometown into a dreamscape that spilled across multiple browser windows.

Rework the classics

Pomplamoose, a San Francisco guy-girl duo, has a repertoire of its own endearingly warm pop songs and videos, but it was their homespun versions of hits by Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Michael Jackson that raked in millions of views on YouTube. Then the group broke into the mainstream with another set of covers: performing holiday tunes such as "Deck the Halls" in TV ads for Hyundai.

Alice Cooper, the Valley singer who pioneered the use of theatrics in rock, has confirmed that he will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with his band March 14.

Cooper, 62, said Tuesday that he was notified a week ago by the Cleveland-based organization that he and his group will be part of its 26th class.

 Alice Cooper's greatest hits |  Cooper through the years

"Getting in the Hall of Fame is about the ultimate thing you can do when you're a garage band from Cortez High in Phoenix," Cooper said. "It's the most humbling thing in the world when you realize who else is in there. You look out at the audience, and every guy who influenced you is sitting there, and they are the people who voted on you." 

The eyeliner-wearing Cooper and his original band - guitarist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway, drummer Neal Smith and late guitarist Glen Buxton - will join such rock and pop luminaries as the Beatles, Bob Dylan, U2, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, James Brown and Buddy Holly in the hall, which was established in 1986.

Cooper joins two other hall members with Arizona ties - guitarist Duane Eddy and singer Stevie Nicks, inducted as part of Fleetwood Mac. 

Cooper, born in Detroit as Vincent Furnier, and his group had been snubbed by the hall since becoming eligible in 1994 - the 25th anniversary of their first release - but they weren't alone. Such acts as Black Sabbath, Velvet Underground and the Stooges also had to wait years for induction. 

"Every single year, somebody has called up and said, 'Well, you didn't get nominated again,' " Cooper said. "It's not a popularity contest. It takes a while to get through everybody. We got nominated one time and got in on the first vote, so that was really nice." 

The Paradise Valley resident and his band have solid credentials: They created such enduring rock anthems as "School's Out," "I'm Eighteen" and "No More Mr. Nice Guy," released six albums that went platinum and were one of the biggest arena acts in the world in the mid-'70s.

Marilyn Manson, who followed in Cooper's footsteps with the use of makeup and scary imagery onstage, said in 2007 that being introduced to his idol felt like "meeting Santa Claus when you're 5 years old."

Rob Zombie, another theatrical rocker who uses makeup and costumes, said last week, "There are very few artists who are that influential: Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones, Alice Cooper, Led Zeppelin. It comes down to a pretty small group of people that did something and then the entire way that music is perceived changed." 

Cooper drew upon American pop culture and even vaudeville for such stage gimmicks as using a guillotine and live snakes, pretending to hang himself, putting himself in a straitjacket and beating up Santa Claus. Such antics may seem tame in 2010, but they were groundbreaking four decades ago. 

A voracious consumer of television and movies, he became friends with Groucho Marx and horror-film icon Vincent Price. He appeared on "Hollywood Squares" and "The Muppet Show" and co-starred with Price in a 1975 TV special called "The Nightmare." Cooper also became a close friend of surrealist painter Salvador Dali. 

A major sports fan, Cooper opened his Cooper'stown restaurant and sports bar in downtown Phoenix in 1998. Cooper has been a fixture on Valley golf courses, playing every day, and helps fund Arizona teen programs through his Solid Rock Foundation.

"Alice is one of the best ambassadors that rock and roll has ever had," said Danny Zelisko, a longtime friend and Arizona concert promoter since 1974. "He has lived it, breathed it, and along the way helped the world to understand it. His induction is long overdue." 

Cooper and his wife, Sheryl, whom he married in 1976 after she was hired to dance in his stage show, have lived in the Valley since 1984. They have three children, Calico, 29; Dash, 24; and Sonora, 18. 

Cooper credits his wife with freeing him from a decadelong alcohol problem in 1980 and says he has been sober ever since.

"Once I got past that, everything got a lot easier," Cooper said. 

Although he was born in suburban Detroit, the minister's son who would be Alice Cooper formed his first garage-rock band, the Earwigs, in northwest Phoenix while attending Cortez High School with two future members of the Alice Cooper band, Buxton and Dunaway. 

Changing their name to the Spiders and adding Bruce ("The Spiders were the top dogs in town," Bruce recalls) they enjoyed their first taste of success with the regional radio hit "Don't Blow Your Mind," in 1966, before changing their name to the Nazz and making frequent treks to Los Angeles before settling there in 1967. With Camelback High's Smith brought in on drums, the classic lineup was complete. 

"We knew we had something different. We were not peace and love and 'Isn't everything groovy?' " Cooper said. "You had all these rock heroes, and if nobody wants to be Captain Hook, I'll be Captain Hook." 

After a final name change to Alice Cooper (the singer said he asked the band, "What if we came up with a name that sounds like somebody's grandmother, like Alice Cooper?") the increasingly theatrical, androgynous young rockers came to the attention of Frank Zappa, who signed them to his label, Straight Records, releasing 1969's "Pretties for You" and 1970's "Easy Action."

"We were just trying to be a little more outrageous, to get everyone's attention," Smith recalls. "We had outrageous egos but this (induction) has to humble you."

Dunaway adds, "The Alice Cooper group seemed to be underdogs in everything we did, so this (induction) is a validation"

After relocating to Detroit, the group hit the mainstream, with producer Bob Ezrin refining its sound on an album called "Love It to Death" and its breakthrough single, the teen anthem "I'm Eighteen." More hits followed, including the song that kicked off summer break for years to follow: "School's Out" topped the U.K. charts and peaked at No. 7 in the U.S., later joining "Eighteeen" on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The original lineup's biggest album, "Billion Dollar Babies," topped the charts in 1973 and had three Top 40 singles. 

Cooper went solo in '75 with "Welcome to My Nightmare," a Top 5 concept album that spawned another major hit in "Only Women Bleed," whose more reflective tone was mirrored in a string of ballads that kept him on the charts for the next three years. The New Wave-flavored "Clones (We're All)" arrived in 1980, marking Cooper's last Top 40 single until the more metallic comeback, "Poison," went Top 10 in 1989. 

Cooper still releases albums and tours as a solo act with a new band, and he is reuniting his original band for the 10th edition of his Christmas Pudding charity concert Saturday, Dec. 18, in Phoenix.

Cooper says his band, their management and families will have a celebration of the induction Friday, Dec. 17, at Cooper'stown.