News and Ideas from the Bleeding Edge

We seem to be on the edge of a paradigm shift. Orchestras are struggling to stay alive, rock has been relegated to the underground, jazz has stopped evolving and become a dead art, the music industry itself has been subsumed by corporate culture and composers are at their wit’s end trying to find something that’s hip but still appeals to an audience mired in a 19th-century sensibility. – Glenn Branca, NY Times

We are living through an amazing time in the arts, the beginning of an epoch. Artists of all types, (even those of us with limited resources), have access to tools that hadn’t been dreamed in the “golden era”, fabulous instruments musical and technical. Everything has changed- the playing field, the game, the players.  This presents us with a challenge, but luckily we threw the rulebook out with the old game.

We must seize this moment. WE THE PEOPLE, the artists, the musicians, the dancers, WE can write the new rules, and take back our art from the puppetmasters. We can go around their weakened forces, directly to our fans.

We are talking  revolution, here, and what the new post.alt music business 2.0 will look like.  If anything is certain, it’s that you will be in control of your art and your business if you intend to survive- and you will be using any and every tool available, to make your music and to get it into the ears of your listeners, wherever they are.

I won’t go too deeply into music production tools (although there may be a bit about the Death of Autotune (2009), sticking mainly to the marketing and distribution of your “product”, the micro-business of you or your band.

Yamaha CX5M, c1984

Musicians were early adopters of computer tech. It all started, for me with a Yamaha CX5M in 1984, hooked to a DX7.  The evolution to an Atari ST in ‘85 and an internet connection was logical and orderly, and I had email (Compuserve, 1987!) for about a year before I had anybody to email to.  But I knew then, it was something that could be leveraged, a huge network I didn’t pay for, a pipe of ever-growing size from my computer to yours! Practically free, I could send a song for a song, and it changed my life.   The wires  and the satellites are  there, we can use them willy-nilly. How do we do that? How can we make the most of it?

Answering this and looking ahead, this is all about surviving in the real world by utilizing the virtual world.

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Pretense is firstly “an allegation of doubtful value” (MW).  I’m a huge fan of Orhan Pamuk- there’s a guy who is very interested in pretense, and the eternal quest to find out who he really is, not who one thinks is or would like to be. He says we go to the movies and own a lot of useless stuff to gain a few moments (or hours, or a lifetime) of respite from our “selves”, diversions to avoid thinking about who we really are. It’s a primary theme in his books- it may be THE main challenge for any artist.

Pamuk is from Istanbul, and his stories are laced with pashas and sultans,  high rankers in the Ottoman Empire.  They are forever disguising themselves and escaping the palace and trappings, eager for some honest interaction and  a break from being the living projection of their subjects.  They wear a costume and play a role as a commoner, to find out who they really are, and then return to the palace to resume their full-time gig, acting the royal role. Read more

If you walk too quickly through automatic doors, expecting them to open as usual, you may be making a false assumption. Pay attention

Blogging the Future

Cause that’s what you really want to know about.

-gl

This no-brainer of a strategy comes straight out of the Republican playbook, and you’ve got to give them some credit- just use it towards better ends, please. I did music for a documentary on Jesse Helms a few years back, and spent quite a few hours listening to Jesse’s henchmen describe how they put Senator No into office and kept him there for years. The smart guy was Richard Viguerie, a long-time politico/marketing genius, credited with “inventing” direct mail marketing. He holds up his left hand, back to camera, and then describes going “around the blockage of Dan Rather, CBS news, the NY Times, the liberal media”, his right hand moving around the left, like a shark going for the kill- “straight to the voters”  with his direct mail appeals.

That’s what the modern musician can do, if he/she/they can leverage the internet, really use the tools that are available- and there are plenty- to get and keep fans. Who are you trying to reach? Where are they hanging out? At a nearby club? At the country club? In front of their computer??

Answer one question at a time, add your own, and stay tuned!

Pioneered political use of computerized direct mail. That technology was the Internet of its day: it enabled conservatives to get around liberals’ dominance of the mass media; it allowed thousands of conservative candidates, organizations and causes to get their messages to grassroots Americans. – RV

A song is worth a thousand pictures.

A interpretation of Duke Ellington’s Melencholia, I’m playing the piano at the Rubber Room in Chapel Hill:

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Folk music??  I don’t know.  Download the MP3