Articles & Advice
There's a widespread misconception around the record biz that A&R people merely sign acts, pester department heads about those same acts and generally support the popular definition of A&R as "Airplanes & Restaurants." But there's much more to the A&R process than wining, dining, signing and whining. In order to clear up the misconceptions and provide an in-depth look at what these people actually do, we called on four of the best and brightest young weas- ... um, A&R execs, gathering them together in the conference room of the Work Group in Sony's Santa Monica complex for what proved to be an extensive and pithy roundtable discussion. |
The participants 
Capitol's Matt Aberle, who's responsible for the Smoking Popes, formerly worked at Restless and a pair of now-defunct startup labels, Morgan Creek and Imago (where his proudest moment came when he managed to remove predecessor Hugo Burnham's speed-dial to his mum in the U.K.).
 Jim Barber, who works for Geffen/DGC out of Atlanta, signed Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories, Girls Against Boys, Young American Primitive and froSTed. He previously managed drivin'n'cryin and Adam Schmitt, while at the same time acting as an A&R consultant for Zoo Entertainment.
 Liz Brooks switched coasts as well as labels last year, coming to the Work Group from Virgin's Vernon Yard Recordings in New York. Prior to that she was a director of marketing for Polygram London and headed promotion at Relativity. Recently, she's been A&R ing album projects by her bands Pond and Protein. She's looking forward to A&Ring the next album by Work's newest acquisition, Midnight Oil.
Our token VP, Warner Bros.' Geoffrey Weiss (Cool for August, You Am I, Mark Eitzel), moved into A&R from product management at the Bunny after performing a similar function at A&M. Weiss and Barber both worked at Big Time way back in the '80s.
 Moderating the discussion was veteran music journalist and current ASCAPper Bud Scoppa, who successfully impersonated an A&R VP at Zoo (Matthew Sweet, the Odds, Neal Casal) and Arista, after doing stints as an A&M product manager and a Mercury publicity guy.
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