Jason Bieler, SAIGON KICK guitarist and label boss of Bieler Bros. Records, has posted a new blog taking on the music business. An excerpt is available below:

"The lunatics are not running the asylum; how is that working out for you?

Are we better off? Is the industry thriving? Are we discovering more trail blazing industry altering career artists? I don’t want this to turn into an essay on why the music biz sucks, nothing would make me happier than to see it all turn around, move forward and enter a new glory period. This business has provided me with unimaginable opportunities and allowed me to live a really extraordinary life. Unlike the majority of pundits I have lived and breathed in this industry since I was a whelp. I’ve had the opportunity to work under the old guard as well as the dopey, accidental, overconfident clothes-less emperors at the helm of the good ship song-tanic currently.

Unlike most traditional businesses the music business is a guessing game based on unmeasurable emotional attachments to random notes strewn together, most of the time by cultural outliers. You can assemble all the accountants and techno dorks in the world and they can provide you with thousands of power point presentations and charts but the reality is….they have no idea what they are talking about and the more emphatic they are about how their method of calculating obese housewives phone responses versus teen mobile streaming patterns the more dangerous they become and the more they destroy what was once a beautiful albeit unstable and magical business.

Let’s look at what happened to terrestrial radio with the arrival of the almighty research folks. Armed with their brainwave readers and mood rings….they knew just how to fix everything and turn this into a real business, something Dad would be proud of. No more hookers and blow, it was all PPM and diaries now.

They simply ignored that radio WAS Rock & Roll and at its greatest was just as subversive and dangerous as any of the artists and in some cases more so. Radio used to be run by lunatics, now it is run by corporations, consultants and scared little men. They keep releasing studies to show how relevant and important they are and they ignore the fundamental reality…kids are not really listening, don’t care and aren’t coming back. Sure this is a general statement and there are a few exceptions but that is like me pointing to Adele as proof that the music business is thriving again…she is the exception…not the rule."

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Bieler recently launched a new project dubbed OWL STRETCHING, which he told BW&BK; first-hand is "a constantly morphing project with different guests that I use as a vehicle to release new music." He has posted rough demos for two new songs 'Fall To Pieces' and 'All Great Stories End' online. Check them out below:

During an exclusive interview with BW&BK; discussing the initial rumours of a Saigon Kick reunion Bieler shed some light on Owl Stretching:

“Owl Stretching is me working with different musicians, some of them older and more experienced, some new guys, and constantly messing with it and evolving with it. Because I own a label and a studio, I don’t really have to do anything. It’s been the most fun, and the most dangerous in a sense, because I really don’t care. I can do what I want with whoever I want and how I want along with the people working with me, with no real justification for it. I’m not concerned about whether radio will like it or being able to tour with it. We’re just making music that we think is cool for that moment. We’ve only done a few things so far, but the diversity of Owl Stretching makes Saigon Kick look like a death metal band (laughs).”

Bieler has put Owl Stretching's debut digital EP up for sale via his label, Bieler Bros. Check out the complete tracklist with samples below. Go to this location to order.