sour grapes or the cold, sharp wine of truth? You decide. But it’ll cost ya… well, nothing actually
There’s a debate – which can only get more heated – about whether music should be free. About the dynamic created for makers and consumers of music by the Free Culture – or Freecult, as I prefer to call them because it sounds stoopider (of course, they’re too numerous to be an actual cult, and are in most cases motivated by the prevalent tech-enabled custom of lax, myopic greed rather than any coherent ideology). To clarify, these are the people who collect music like stamps – and never listen to 90% 0f it – rather than downloaders who then buy the product, or some of it anyway. Yes: Product.
Of course money should be involved in music. It’s been inextricably entwined with art since art existed; without patronage, no Iliad, no Odyssey, no Velvet Underground, no sustainable dance/electro music *ever* beyond the first amyl nitrate whiff of excitement, no X Factor (okay, baaad joke at the end there). True, the major labels are getting what they deserve. Unfortunately, the artists aren’t; while many I know or know of haven’t any problem in principle with giving stuff away – and this includes me – to “donate” the whole lot is, in essence, shutting out loads of artists who can’t afford to do that and sustain themselves or their work. As well as carrying a stigma of bargain-basement loserdom. This stuff tends to get downplayed in the current atmosphere of Future Boomer righteousness – or it did until recently. Strange that it’s taken so long to be examined at a grass-roots level: and what it took was a common enough, albeit unthinking, admission from a National Public Radio DJ (hardly the big bad Music Biz Man).
So yeah, £££. Obviously, it’s all in who the gelt comes from… corporate sponsorship, crowd-sourcing, arms deals… and who it goes to. On any lower echelon than superstar, it’s a vexed question (and I’m sick of labouring it, so will stop biting the hand that… sort-of… feeds now). Besides which, you can chop logic about the moral pros & cons all day, but personally? On a selfish level, I don’t really give a shit.
Perseverance for pennies: gotta be done, innit? Well, up to a point. Beyond that, it’s just slaughtering the golden goose.
If I could think of a viable strategy to get round this impasse, as hopefully someone will sooner or later, I’d be a fucking entrepreneur rather than a musician. Or possibly a writer for sites like Gizmodo.com who “refuted” David Lowery with a barrage of meaningless stats. But my point about sustainability – affordability – stands. In effect, it’s like a new form of something I’d hear horror stories about from the bad old days: Pay to Play. Who in their right mind wants that? (And uh, don’t quit the day job btw – assuming you’re lucky enough to have one.)
A Footnote: speaking of Pay to Play…
Putting together a tour without the cradle of logistic and booking support, I’ve noticed something interesting. I’m sure a lot of musicians in my kind of semi-legit position have run into something similar.
The era of literal Pay to Play (in London): a lot of venues demanded an upfront fee for the privilege of gigging to six uninterested alcoholics, the scarcely-more-animate sound engineer, and maybe two mates who were just there because they wanted into the keyboard player’s pants. A promoter with a great deal of sense and integrity (and taste, obviously, as an ally of mine) urged me on several occasions: Never, ever, ever, pay to play. It just encourages the practise, which must be stamped out. It’s clearly a self-defeating way to go, and I won’t insult your intelligence by hashing over why this individual was quite right. But a lot of venues – feeling the bite, so I fling no blame – are now getting into the habit of asking for a hire fee rather than actually promote a gig. Often, in context, this is fair enough; but the implications are uncomfortable.
This may seem rather off the point of the rant above. (God, I’m starting to moan as much as that St Saviour woman…) But it’s a symptom of the same fucked economic model. One alternative is free no-frills gigs, which in theory sounds nice but in practice means variable quality-control: there, see? Free stuff sucks. Can I buy some soil off you, please?
It’s a good one: “If these two avant-pop tracks are anything to go by then the album should be, at the least, intriguing.”
Read the article, listen to the tracks when they’re released at the end of this very month, and see if you agree. (In fact, Hard Science can be heard on the Bandcamp player at the top of this page. If you like, you can watch the video, too.)
The fifth and final story I filmed can now be watched on God Is In The TV webzine.
It is, as usual, the same old hackneyed bollocks about sensitive indie types and their dysfunctional relationships. Actually, no it’s not – not in the slightest. It’s another freaky horror story; for anyone who’s ever had a run-in with psychotic shopping centre security guards, it should give a spooky little chill.
It was a lot of fun to make, and I hope a lot of fun to watch, in its twisted way. Here it is:
This is a one-off filmed story that was hosted by God Is In The TV zine. Watch it, it’s unusual (and very, very cheap; which by the way is a good thing).
There’s one more to run on GIITTV’s site, and I’ve got five others in reserve – look out for further news.
The final part of this unearthly film’s hosted exclusively by God Is In The TV, and brings the story to a cosmic climax – with fatal (and messy) consequences for some…
As before, it’ll be available to watch here in a week’s time – but go there first because it’s stuffed with music insight and dissent. Then another story begins: Complaint From Another World, a spooky but sad little number with creepy abstract visuals. It’s an old radio thrill series, all this, but like… with pictures… and on the internet. (I’m getting addicted to those little dots. They had those on radio too.)
As before, the latest episode of this fucked-up story’s now been archived on Youtube, and on the Videos page here. Part 3’s due to appear on the God Is In The TV site in the next few days, where it’ll be hosted exclusively for a week.
In other camera-hogging news, that screen test for a film role’s been postponed till next week; such is the world of micro-budget indie film-making, apparently. Like I said, I’ll report back on it afterwards, whether I screw it up or not.
Here’s part 2 of The UnExplorers, hosted by God Is In The TV. For anyone who came in late, it’s a film of a short story; sadly, there’s no sex or violence, as that’s quite tricky when you’re alone in front of a camera (well, a little bit tricky).
Speaking of movies and that, I’m doing a screen test in 4 days’ time for the lead role in the film I randomly auditioned for a while ago (see below) – obviously I’ll write about it afterward, however great or humiliating it turns out…
The second part will be up around Tue 24th May, and so on in fortnightly installments.
I might have described these vids briefly in an earlier entry, but anyway, they’re filmed versions of some of the previously-published stories on the Writing page of this site.
By saying “filmed”, I don’t want to write cheques I can’t cash (for younger readers, those are pieces of paper – paper – that the older generation use, or used, to transmit a sum of money. It sounds crazy, but it’s true)…*
They’re lo-fi, minimal – in the strictest sense of the term – but no less entertaining for that, hopefully. Have a look.
*Note to self: be more careful with the cheap sarcasm
