CTV News' Robert Collins caught up with ROB ZOMBIE in anticipation of tonight's Vancouver date with SLAYER. An excerpt follows:

It seems unlikely that Rob Zombie will be going into the advertising business on a permanent basis. He's still fully committed to making music, even though he's acutely aware that the industry around it has changed beyond recognition since his original band, WHITE ZOMBIE, broke onto the global stage in the early 1990s. Now in his mid-40s, for a man that has based his career as a musician and filmmaker on the darker side of surrealism, there's something refreshingly pragmatic about his understanding of where the music business is going.

"A lot's changed in the last five years," he sighs. "Back then we were thinking, I wonder where all the record stores are going to be? Then we realised, nowhere. People were still buying CDs then. They're not doing that any more.

"Young bands come up to me all the time and ask me for advice. I don't even know how they're going to do it. So many of the tools that were so prominent, like MTV, aren't there any more. At the same time, when we were breaking there was no Internet. There was no Facebook. You were at the mercy of your record company to give a sh*t. Now, if you're industrious, you can be in charge of your own career. I don't know if they'll be selling out arenas, but they can keep themselves from going bankrupt. My goal was to be able to survive off making music. Anything after that was gravy."

The flipside to the recording industry's woes is the booming concert business. The Rob Zombie live experience is as spectacular as one would expect from an artist with such a unique visual signature. As for the music, he'll be performing a mix of old favourites and a selection from the 2010 release, Hellbilly Deluxe 2.

"I'm perfectly happy to play songs that people want to hear," he continues. "But you don't want your set to consist of the same ten songs for the next 40 years. A lot of bands do that."

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