Was in the dressing room after another hockey game loss and one of my teammates said he was reading my blog and getting a good kick out of it... i had to spoil the moment by asking "which one"... I, without thinking, was generally curious but then shifted the focus back on my man who was smiling remembering a story he thought was hilarious, but then he had to answer the name of the blog and became confused like it was a test of sorts. I realized what i had done smiled and said i was glad he enjoyed it... that's why you do "art" right... it's a personal thing where maybe you can brighten some body's day with something you did. That's the way i see it... the hard slough of the music industry is a soul killer, and it's bull shit too, just like the world economy is bull shit, and the idea that we can't afford to not turn our freshwater lake systems into trailing pond toxic zones for short term economic gain is bullshit. You either get it or you don't, or you don't care to get it for some reason or another.
It just seems like we are all focused on the wrong things... remember distraction is a human strong suit. It looks as though i threw a hissey fit on "facebook" the other day when i mentioned that only one person who i had given a "download card" for my new record to actually downloaded it. That's the problem with soundbites... My point being that over the years i have released 13 CD's and numerous tapes and there is always this idea of getting the music out there, wherever the hell "out there" is. i always remember seeing sealed copies of my CD's in used CD shops.. there was even a report of the Knocking Dog "simplex" album in a CD store in Drumheller in the free bin on the sidewalk still with the wrap on the plastic holding the plastic... Kind of a victory given the song "the Drumheller Boogie" was on that CD.
This is fine, nobody is asking for shit so you dump it on them, and that's what happens... i myself have plenty of CD's people gave me that i never got around to listening to. I think that was the cool thing about tapes... you would hand make like 30 of them and it would take you a long time and then you would give them to people who you know would listen to tapes... You know the Mule would listen to a "roadbed" tape, or an "8 minute MAN" tape, or a "Restore/ 21 Tandem Repeats" split tape... and there would only be a few of them. You made some music and you shared it with your peers, and later a tape would come back your way... perhaps somebody would put out 2 tapes in a row and you would feel shamed and get back to work.
I think with CD and digital... well the limit was originally 1000 and then 500 copies of CD's... so you had way more shit than you could ever deal with, so rather than learning to deal with it, you figure i should just get the music out there and give it away... which is the biggest mistake you can ever make... if you are giving something away then it is worthless. Like the classic coffee story... some dude started charging more for coffee and people paid more gladly thinking that they were getting something gourmet, something special. the other mistake fools make giving away their music is they give it away to other fools trying to "make it" in the business, and those people only care about themselves... which is not a knock on them... that's what they are supposed to do... community is a mirage when the shit hits the fan.
So anyhoo, i have a stack of download cards now for my latest album, and the neat thing about that is you get a report on any activity... if somebody redeems one of them is shows up in your accounting. I mean the basic idea of getting a CD out (now) is to get that CD into the MP3 player of the person, because that's how most people listen to music... for good or ill... so if you give your CD away it is just another piece of plastic that becomes somebodies garbage which is bad for all, and in the end you don't even know if it was ever heard, which was the basic point in the first place. With the download card you can shoot at about 2% and know it, and for sure it is good to know how you are doing. And that's all i ever really wanted to know.
I remember i met a guy one time years after i gave him a copy of "Roadbed-Represented" and he loved the album, and he said "it's so rare that somebody gives you a CD and it's any good at all". That was good advise... i didn't see it as advise at the time, it was just a statement, but the point is you don't want to be that person giving away your "product" (loath to use that word), because you are just showing that your product has no value. It might almost be the worst way to get people to listen to your music.. quite seriously. I know that after somebody heard a song of mine on the radio they took a different approach to the idea that the music i made was any good... I think there is some thing where by people need to hear of it from another source but yourself. otherwise you are just shilling, and that's always bad, and shilling is what has driven some of the most of the talented people i know out of music.
For me physics was always my strong suit... light mathematics but it was how to apply the equation, or when to apply it for that matter. From where i stand, any equation that has an artist do all the fuckery that is necessary to achieve success, is bull shit... never mind some of the loathsome pap that is turned out but focus more on the psychological damage done to young people trying to achieve a dream that was never really their original dream in the first place, but rather a status. But i guess status is the new world order... your status is important and people can comment on it and share it and even like it. Sure there are things i would like to be that I'm not, but that's what happens in life... and in the end it's all just memories... right Mule?
No comments:
Post a Comment