ALCATRAZZ - The "Real" Band Is Writin'! Page 3
by Martin Popoff

Referring to Alcatrazz and the demise of the original band in the mid-'80s, Jimmy chuckles that, "I go down with the ship. I keep going down with the ship, and there I was again, and that was it for me. After Alcatrazz I said, OK, no more ships with holes in them for me. So I changed my whole attitude, and that's why this time, with the current lineup of Alcatrazz, we put this thing together, and it's nothing against Graham personally. I don't blame everything on Graham. But I know now, we all need to be on the same page, and have the same thing in mind. And for me, the Alcatrazz thing, honestly, we're just going to do what's good musically, we're not trying to rehash the past - we just do what we do."

"You know, all the Alcatrazz stuff is up on iTunes," adds Waldo, in closing. "I have a label with my partner, called Stoneworks, so we put the stuff out, all the live stuff and studio stuff - it's all up there. And New England is as well. The New England stuff, ironically, doesn't do as well as the Alcatrazz stuff. For whatever reason, it's not doing that well."

So do you get a nice cut from these things when people do the download?

"It's okay. A download is about 99 cents, and the band, our little organization, ends up with about 60 cents. It's way better than a record deal, put it that way. Because the truth is, with a record contract, you're getting 10%. But yeah, if you just go to iTunes, and just type in Alcatrazz, the name of the band, two z's. There is another Alcatraz, but it's not a rock band; it's a dance label from Washington, and they had that name, and they were using it for a while with dance remixes, but it's one z. But yeah, go there and it will take you there, and it's cool. More than the money, it keeps people aware of the name and stuff, which helps when we get the record out."

Again, the web presence for the band is www.myspace.com/therealalcatrazz.