Re: Todd Alsup

I see your gay soul/jazz singer (actually a poorer version of the terrific but not yet Lefsetz-stamped Mayer Hawthorne), and I raise you a transgendered/queer songwriter from Calgary, now a man known as Rae Spoon, who blew my mind tonight in Ottawa, seeing him live for the first time.

Rae Spoon There is a Light (but it’s not for everyone)

Jon Bartlett

For all I know Rae Spoon has camped outside record company offices and has a burning desire to conquer the world.

But I don’t think so…

Everybody in America is trying to get famous.

But maybe you can only be really good if fame is not your goal.

There is something absolutely touching about Rae Spoon’s "There Is A Light (but it’s not for everyone)" linked above.  Yes, everybody’s employing tricky videos to try and get noticed, but I wasn’t even watching this clip, I was listening in the background and I got hooked.  Who mentions Leonard Cohen and Kraftwerk in the same song?

For all of those reading this to try and learn how to make it, you can move right along.  Because to really make it, you’ve got to focus on art first, the music.  You can’t think about doing it how everybody else is doing it, but only how you can do it in your own unique way.  The role of an artist is to speak his truth from isolation, in such a way that it becomes universal.  In other words, if you’re second-guessing the audience, you’re a loser, you’re never going to make it, or you’re going to be instantly forgotten after your brief moment in the sun.

Used to be there was a cut-off.  Either you had a record deal or you didn’t.  So there were only a few Rae Spoons out there.  Now there’s a seemingly limitless quantity of singers trying to make it.  Most lousy, but they cloud up the atmosphere so we can’t see the good ones.

Rae Spoon wasn’t made for the hit parade.  It’s not about some A&R guy telling him to change his music/look/cowrite in order to make it.  That’s like trying to turn a bicycle into an automobile.  Rae Spoon is just Rae Spoon.  He’s not for everybody.  But when something is made for mass consumption, it means so little.

And the road to great success is paved with people who thought they were doing it just for a few and found out that tons liked it.  That’s the story of classic rock.  Who knew it was classic?  Who knew everybody wanted to listen to it?

When you speak from your heart, you have a chance of enrapturing me.  And I’m looking for those moments.  I don’t want to be a faceless member of the crowd, I want to be recognized for being unique, an individual, like Rae Spoon.  Maybe that’s why his music appeals to me.  He did it his way, and took the risk that in doing so, we could relate.  I did.  You?