DUFF MCKAGAN (VELVET REVOLVER, LOADED, ex-GUNS N' ROSES) has issued his latest blog for Seattle Weekly, an excerpt follows:

"As I write this, I'm sitting in the exit-row seat of a Southwest Airlines flight from Los Angeles to Austin, Texas. Thursday afternoon I will be speaking about the business of music to musicians and perhaps some industry types who are maybe interested in what I have to say, and the angle in which I shall try to deliver it all. But the real reason for my trip is that I will be playing my first public gig with my band Loaded since December 19, 2009.

The South-by-Southwest Music Festival (SXSW) started in 1987, and used to be primarily ALL about unsigned bands making their way to Austin in hopes of securing a record deal with the many labels who would also flock to that city hoping to catch a rising star. That made a bunch of sense for the music-business model that was in place at the time.

These days, the whole scope and breadth of the commercial side of music has observed a radical sea change. SXSW has changed along with it, and now the focus down there seems to be on news frontiers in digital music, film, and all things Information Age. The subject that I will be speaking on is the ever-changing field which a touring and recording band must adapt to. Most of the younger bands I know about have become mini-geniuses at things like inventory control, Tune-Core, and the price of gasoline in different regions of the country. You have to be smart and have the ability to adapt quickly these days, as WELL as write a great song.

Back in the 1980s, when I got my first major-label deal, I simply couldn't have cared less about how everything worked in a business sense. It all seemed so massive and beyond my scope of knowledge that I just sort of shut down intellectually and turned a blind eye to some really important things. I didn't realize that, as a principal business owner in GNR Inc., I was paying everyone who worked for us, and that they should have provided me with sober and clear-cut reportage of our growing empire. Luckily--and it was only by the fact that we sort of ruled by fear--no one really ripped us off. Sure, we overspent and were not that smart about our personal dough--but in the end, no one who worked for us blatantly stole. They could have."

To read the rest of Duff's blog, click here.

Eagle Rock Entertainment will release The Taking, a brand new studio album from Duff McKagan’s Loaded, on vinyl on April 12th - one week before the release of the regular CD on April 19th.