Poor Bradley Carter of Pistol Youth and Steriogram. We dared him to play in the street and he wasn't one to back down. Instead, he played chicken with a hushhush ATTACK! bus and lost.

Dean Raissen

Dean Raissen, President/Raise Up Music

How did you create Raise Up Music?

A couple of years ago I moved to Los Angeles to attend the Music Business Program at Musicians Institute and was educated about all areas of the music industry. While learning about how messed up the it was and how all these artists are getting bent over and taken advantage of, I wanted to start a company that could do many things for its clients and let them make their original music....without any need for lubricant.

Tell us what Raise Up Music consists of.

We create new divisions all the time. The day I got hired to book a tour for a band we had a Tour Booking Department, the same with music supervision and so forth. I recently got some great help...and now run Raise Up Music out of my other office at Silverback Music (Sublime, Slightly Stoopid, Fishbone, The Expendables, Pepper and The Beautiful Girls). If you enjoy the music you choose to work, I feel the fans will do a great job in spreading it themselves, in due time and with the right people behind it, will grow faster but still organically. Unfortunately sooner or later you get the kibosh if you keep submitting shitty unoriginal music; also it's hypocritical to recommend music that you don't like yourself. Then again everyone likes different types and sometimes you're the one with the shitty music haha. This is a fairly new "360 Indie" style and I am running with it.

Being the one-stop shop for music business, what are some of the projects that you have worked on?

One stop shop wouldn't really be the explanation for it, but booking tours, marketing and press campaigns for a few US Tours as well as managing bands, music supervision, music events promotion (MUSEXPO), setting up and running online and physical street teams, really trying to have grassroots and popular followings respectfully. Booking at The Viper Room for 2 years really taught me a lot. Hopefully soon we will be releasing albums from mine and other artists nationwide and looking at licensing music from other countries. Anything we can do to put good music out in any way from releasing the bands album, making them a widget for their Facebook page, running their street team and booking them a tour.

I recently signed a Reggae band called Rebelution consisting of 4 guys from Santa Barbara, CA playing great Reggae/Rock/Dub. Their debut album received the iTunes Editors Choice for the Best Reggae Album of 2007 and they are charted in the top 10 iTunes and Billboard Reggae charts and are now selling out thousand cap venues, all while never having any marketing budget. Silverback Music and I are now working together with the band.

Do you feel the music business is prepared to repair itself or do you feel otherwise?

I don't think there is much to repair. Just embrace what's happening right now and work with it. Us youngsters were not around during the big money and selling album days, we grew up with the Napster revolution.

Tell us some of the challenges that your company faces today and how you are overcoming them?

I don't have much experience, so I guess my gift and curse is inexperience. It gets tricky being 22 years old and trying to work with dudes who have been in the business since before I was alive. Experience isn't as necessary as it used to be though, because passion is more important nowadays I think.

As an up and comer in this Music Industry who do you look up to?

I find myself looking on Wikipedia, researching guys like Clive Calder, Berry Gordy, Herb Alpert, Peanut Butter Wolf, Irving Azoff, Branson and Ahmet Ertegun. I am working on pulling a Jordan Bratman. I recently got ridiculed for saying "Who the fuck cares about meeting Jimmy Iovine?" Years of working under, and mimicking, Joe Rinaldi and Sat B. (Bisla), as we call him in the streets, also helps getting an understanding of attitude and respect for good international music.

What do you see in the future of the music business?

Things are good, very good. There is more music being made now more than ever; that creates business on so many more levels than CD sales so its thriving, isn't it? Where isn't there music, yo?

Quick Question Time

First CD you purchased: De La Soul or Hugh Masekela.

Best live show belongs to: Method Man and Redman sold out show in Amsterdam last month. Method Man was crowd WALKING. Not lying down but walking on the crowd, with a brown piece of rolled up paper in his hands or something. Radiohead, Michael Jackson and Arctic Monkeys performance is up there.

Last weekend, I...watched Rebelution play a sold out show at the Roxy, and sat on the computer on the couch the rest of the weekend.

Favorite word: DILLA

Any Quotes: "On the couch with a laptop" is the new "From the trunk of my car in Compton" or "My basement in Milwaukee".

TOPHER MOHR - TRUE LOVE ON THE TV SET (Los Angeles, CA)

• Preparing a U.S. tour this summer in over 50 cities starting in June

• Topher composed/produced music for Verizon, ESPN, Estee Lauder & more

• Imani Coppola a.k.a. Little Jackie co-wrote "Killer" with Topher

• Additional information at http://www.myspace.com/tophermohr

Busta Rhymes Ft. Linkin Park "We Made It" (Violator/Aftermath/Interscope/Warner Bros.)

This might just be one of those summer anthems that your audience has been looking for. The 1-2 punch of Busta Rhymes & Linkin Park has the ingredients of a multi-format smash; the type of song you hear at the end of an epic movie or a big budget blockbuster. The last time Linkin Park teamed up with a hip-hop artist, the result was Collision Course with Jay-Z. The EP was released in late 2004, went to #1 on the Billboard 200 and sold over two million units in the US alone. Could lightening strike again? Early believers include Sirius Satellite, WKQX Chicago, KITS San Francisco, WAAF Boston, KDGE Dallas, KEDJ Phoenix, KXTE Las Vegas, WEND Charlotte, WMMS Cleveland, WPLA Jacksonville, KQRA Springfield and many more! Check out "We Made It" from Busta Rhymes' album Blessed coming soon.

Give the drummer some!

This is the band you have been hearing but couldn't pick them out of a line-up. Carolina Liar is the performing name of Chad Wolfe, a singing/songwriting native of, you guessed it, South Carolina--the tiny town of Carn's Crossroads, to be precise. In September 2006 he made the bold decision to move to the hallowed hills of Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, where he subsequently met some of the best songwriters and producers in the world...who happened to be Swedish. Relocating to Stockholm to record with the famed Max Martin, Carolina Liar is now a six-piece outfit that splits time between Stockholm and Los Angeles and has compiled a sound melding the music of U2 and the E Street Band with wistful, yearning vocals in the vein of Kent, Coldplay and Keane. "The biggest thing I learned from working with Max is to not let yourself get in the way of a song," Chad muses. "Let it do its thing and live on its own. It can speak very loudly." Helping Wolfe to "speak very loudly" was the MTV smash "The Hills," which featured the entire Carolina Liar album...a nice setup for May 20th, when Carolina Liar's Atlantic Records debut, Coming to Terms, hit retail. Carolina Liar had just begun a tour and will be in Omaha, St. Louis, Dayton, Indianapolis and Minneapolis within the next week. For more tour dates, music and info, log on to http://www.carolinaliar.com.

SPECIALTY PANEL DISCOVERS THE CURE FOR LATE-SPRING BLUES: That would, of course, be new music from Robert Smith and Co., as the spankin' new tune "The Only One (Mix 13)" (Suretone/Geffen) bows atop the Mediaguide Alternative Specialty Song chart, picking up enough spins to also rank at No.3 on the Album end. The Godfathers of Goth are currently midway through a North American touring jaunt, with highlights including a show this Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl and a tour-closing gig at the legendary Radio City Music Hall in the Big Apple on June 21. For all the tourdates and updates, surf over to www.thecure.com. Also making a splash on the charts this week is another prominent old-school Alt act, Seattle's Mudhoney, who debut at No.2 on the Song side with "I'm Now," helping full-length The Lucky Ones (Sub Pop) to a No.4 showing on the Album end. Obviously, the Specialty panel has fond mammaries...erm, memories...of Russ Meyers' cinematic oeuvre. Topping the Album index this week is the new one from Mates of State, Re-arrange Us (Barsuk), with the majority of airplay being garnered by "My Only Offer," which bows at No.3 on the Song side. That sterling debut helps push last week's No.1 Album, Death Cab for Cutie's Narrow Stairs (Atlantic), down to No.2 on that chart, with the majority of airplay still going to the haunting "I Will Possess Your Heart," which rebounds to a No.7 spot on the Song chart. The only other Top 10 debut on the Song side belongs to Black Kids, who make their initial appearance on the Song chart at No.9 with "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance with You," propelling full-length Partie Traumatic (Columbia) to a No.19 showing on the Album end.

Ouch!