Music Industry

After a tumultuous 2011 in which they opened a new Center City coffee-and-music venue amid a nasty labor dispute, no one would have faulted rising entertainment entrepreneurs Jamie Lokoff and Tommy Joyner for taking it easy in the new year. But that's not how they roll at MilkBoy, a blend of java- and music-brewed business ventures that seeks to reinvent itself in 2012. Joyner and Lokoff are focusing on Center City after a decade running a recording studio and their now well-known coffee house in Ardmore (and a smaller one in Bryn Mawr)

Back in 1994, Bill Mallonee and his Athens, Ga., band, Vigilantes of Love, attempted to introduce themselves to a national audience with their fourth album, and their first with major-label distribution. Its title, Welcome to Struggleville , was apt, even prophetic. For Mallonee is a cult artist who's never found a wide audience despite consistent critical acclaim. In 2006, he was ranked the world's 65th best living songwriter by Paste magazine - ahead of Michael Jackson, Merle Haggard, and Allen Toussaint, among others.

When it works well, the music business can be Darwinian: The best music will find its audience, somehow. Parquet Courts' Light Up Gold is a case in point. Released last summer on the band's own label, the album followed the Brooklyn band's noisy, lo-fi debut, which was first released only on cassette and generated little notice. But Light Up Gold , recorded in three days in the band's rehearsal space, is a bold, bracing blast of punk rock, full of sharp, rousing riffs behind wordy, witty rants, and it found enough acclaim for a larger indie label, What's My Rupture?

Their work spans the spectrum of musical achievement: opera singer Marian Anderson; tenor Mario Lanza; jazz musicians John Coltrane and Dizzy Gillespie; blues singer Bessie Smith; entertainer Pearl Bailey; rock-and-rollers Chubby Checker, Bill Haley and Bobby Rydell; Philadelphia Orchestra conductor Leopold Stokowski. Yesterday, these 10 artists were named as the first inductees into Philadelphia's Walk of Fame, dedicated in December to honor outstanding contributors to the local music and arts community.

Friendly and outgoing, Harmonie delights in laughing at a good joke. What the 9-year-old likes most about herself are her dimples, her height (she's tall), and that she knows how to dance. Harmonie is also good at singing and has not ruled out a career in the music industry. Her favorite subjects in school are computer technology and music. She does well academically and has many friends in school and in her neighborhood. Harmonie dreams of being a billionaire some day. On the way to that goal, however, she plans to finish high school, attend college, and then become a teacher.

When Second Generation played the RUBA club in Philadelphia last month, the capacity crowd of 150 caught the musicians off guard. "I was totally shocked by the turnout," vocalist John Hopkins said. The four-piece rock band out of Upper Darby hopes to make it big in the unpredictable recording business. Music industry experts caution that there is no easy path to success. Cyndy Drue, a 15-year music industry veteran and disc jockey at WMMR-FM (93.3), says the recording industry is so unpredictable no band could be considered a "guaranteed success.

Lee Guber, who began his show business career running the old Rendezvous, a jazz club in Center City, and helped found an entertainment empire including the Valley Forge Music Fair, died yesterday at his home in New York City. He was 67. A native Philadelphian, Guber also produced plays and musicals on Broadway and became involved early in staging roadshow productions. He was chairman of Music Fair Enterprises Inc., the company that owns and operates the Valley Forge Music Fair, in Devon, and the Westbury Music Fair in Westbury, Long Island.

When Jim James comes to town, it's usually as the front man for My Morning Jacket, the adventurous jam band that has made a habit over the last few years of entertaining 7,000 or so souls at the Mann Center in Fairmount Park on steamy summer nights. It was a little different Monday night at Johnny Brenda's, the cozy Fishtown club. The singer with the haunting, luminous voice launched a tour for his debut solo album, Regions of Light and Sound of God , in front of a packed house of about 200, who snapped up tickets in a matter of seconds when they went on sale last month.

TAKING A PAGE out of the Jesse Jackson extortion playbook, City Councilman Wilson Goode Jr. suggests dropping banks from participation in the city's corrupt business practices for not doing the right thing in regard to loans. But here's a few suggestions to low-income people before they apply for a loan: Get a job, then form a partnership (get married), pay your rent and utility bills on time. Open a bank account. Establish permanent residence (more than six weeks). Save and stay out of trouble for a couple of years, and then you're sure to find a bank that will lend you money and gladly make money on your interest payments.

June - it's not just for weddings. It's also Black Music Month, which makes it the most important month of the year for the Philadelphia-based International Association of African-American Music. After a stint in Washington, IAAAM co-founders Dyana Williams and Sheila Eldridge have brought their business home: The eighth annual IAAAM conference settles in at the Pennsylvania Convention Center today and runs through Sunday. The event brings together executives, aspiring artists, songwriters, producers and others interested in breaking into the music business.