Wednesday, February 29, 2012

When A Person Decides To Do Music For A Living...




...he does without lots of other things in order to do it (if he's serious, or course). While the other guys are out drinking beer, chasing women, and putting money into poker machines, the guy who goes onto a stage to give something to his audiences, as opposed to taking, is at home learning a guitar part, fiddle part, banjo part, or learning the words to a song - the WHOLE song, and he sets out to do it right. We don't get to have the family life, the home, the nice cars, bunches of friends, nice stuff; we don't make the money, and we are busy taking risks such as moving halfway across the world because we think that's where we need to be. Our paychecks are not substantial, but the prices of our instruments and equipment are. Our girlfriends or wives often feel slighted because of the time we spend doing what we do. A select few of us will never sell out, we do what we do, we do it our way, and more often than not, we go to our graves unknown, broke, and alone. We spend a lot of time in our own company, and in our own head, some of us don't fit in, or function in society, we are often depressed, bewildered, disgusted by the majority of the human race, and we are appalled at all the injustices in the world. The lazy and inept despise us for our hard work and abilities, and the appreciation that we earn, and will do anything to take us down. Music biz people go to great lengths to make our wares benefit them at our expense. The uppity and the money mongers have many names for us. The funny thing is, me, with all the grief and loss that we must live with, it's my life, I wear it all proudly, and I'm in great company - being that many artists much more talented than me (that's "I" for the grammarians) have gone to their grave living and dying with all of what's written here.

You can find me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ImTheFid

2 comments:

  1. There´s a band called Arctic Monkeys, they started as a bunch of kids doing pretty good kinda indie-noise,you can watch them in their first videos and compare it with their videos after they signed with music busic bussines to became "famousmillioncopysellers": to me, a total shit; well produced yeah, but shit anyway.

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  2. Bands almost always consist of young folks - desperately trying to make a name for themselves. Young, impressionable, gullible, easily fooled, easily convinced. The people in the business - the executives, the A & R people, the producers, the publicists - they are usually much older, much more experienced at corruption, and their sole agenda is to sell, sell, sell. They think they know what sells - they apply what they learned at their fancy universities about "Sales". What they don't realize is that that crap might apply when it comes to appliances, toys, and electronics, but it goes right out the window when it comes to art. True art needs no hype, no bullshit, it just needs to be out there where people can find it. The bad thing is that since the music business executives have total power over whose music gets out there and whose doesn't, most true art never makes it out of the garage. So, when the old bearded sheister, puffing on his cheap cigar, talkin' "bidness", the starry eyed youngsters will do whatever the lying, thieving, cigar smoking parasite tells them. This has destroyed many potentially great artists and bands, and many more have been destroyed by the Powers That Be, by being blocked, stifled, told that they cannot do this or that, that they don't stand a chance because they are not "Commercial" enough, that they need to conform, and other such blatant bullshit. Any artists over the past 40 years or so has made it in spite of the record companies, and not because of them. Yes, true art will more often than not, be stifled when dealing with record companies and FM radio. The good thing is, there are other avenues for great artists to explore, it's difficult at the moment, but it's progressing. Maybe a few of the talented will find a way before they die - I say maybe.

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