Time Magazine Band
Remember that band in the bubble? Their name was..?
I can’t remember.
But I do recall them e-mailing me that this was a breakthrough opportunity, getting on a TV show, and now they could reach so many more people!
But it turned out those who cared to pay attention had contempt for them.
I’m not sure if you’re following this "Time" magazine fracas. Wherein a young band complained that they spent $100k trying to make it and…
My inbox is on fire about this! Not only with personal diatribes, but links to articles on Gawker, the A.V. Club…
You see in one fell swoop, this act made a laughingstock of itself. It believed if it just played the old game, got a moment in the sun in old media, it’d shine.
But no one reads "Time" anymore, certainly not anyone who’d be interested in this band.
But just like someone plucked Rebecca Black out of obscurity to make fun of her, this stuff is all findable online and the rabble-rousers go NUCLEAR! Punching holes in all of their arguments. Suddenly, you’ve attained a stain you just can’t get rid of. The stink stays with you forever.
This is the Lana Del Rey story.
We want you to pay your dues, we want you to be good, we want you to EARN IT! Play above your station too early and you’re gonna be excoriated.
Kind of like Alabama Shakes. What offended me was the tsunami of hype. I reacted, they weren’t THAT good! That’s why if you’ve truly got it, you’ve got to tread lightly, you’ve got to say no to the machine.
Which, to a great degree, Alabama Shakes is doing. They just played the Troubadour, not SNL. If Alabama Shakes was all over radio and TV their core would abandon them, because they’re not that great, they’re a developing act. Could be great, but it’s too soon to tell. It’s kind of like baseball, they sign these pitchers out of high school, BUT THEY DON’T IMMEDIATELY PUT THEM IN THE GAME! They send them down to the minors, for seasoning.
And it used to be you had no choice. You couldn’t be massive in a day.
But then MTV changed all that. And there was so much money involved the executives stole the music from the talent, put their own cardboard puppets in front. That’s the story of Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync, along with countless others.
Alabama Shakes could have done this same thing. Gotten the producer du jour to write and record a record with them. It’s just that that game pays many fewer dividends these days. Even if you do make it, you have less impact and make less money.
Which is why a plethora of twentysomethings are taking the opposite route. They’re not looking to sell out, they’re woodshedding, playing to the fans who care as opposed to the media which does not.
Yes, there’s a shadow conversation, but in reality it’s the MAIN CONVERSATION! Amongst like-minded people online. That’s the game you want to penetrate, not the here today, gone tomorrow media gimmick of yesteryear.
1. If you think backstage was lavish back in the pre-Internet heyday, you were never there. Maybe in New York and L.A., but rarely there either. Just a ton of cold cuts, potato chips and beer on ice. As for who was there? A ton of hangers-on, who believed if they could just be close to the icons, they’d be cool.
2. Training. Irrelevant of whether you need music and voice lessons, complaining about the price is like me bitching how much it cost to go to college and law school. At today’s price, my college is $200k for four years. Add three years of law school on top of that and this guy is bitching about fifteen years of piano and guitar lessons for 30k? (And oh yeah, I had those too!)
3. Rehearsal. We all need an office. And if you’ve got no money, make it in your home. And if that’s too noisy, move where it’s cheap and you’ve got some space, like back to Maine. You don’t have to live in the metropolis anymore to make it. The Internet is everywhere.
3. Gear. As everyone online is saying, you spent $500 to move a piano? How’s the gas mileage on that Lamborghini? Either get an electronic keyboard or buy something used or rent. Don’t put the lifestyle in front of the success.
4. E-mail blasts. You wasted a grand. I ignore that stuff, and so does everybody else. We get hipped to quality and success by our network, we hate self-promoters/hypesters.
I could go on and on but you not only get the point, you know the story as well or better than I do.
It’s a long way to the top if you wanna rock and roll.
And you don’t make it by complaining, you make it by knocking them dead. And you can do that on a Japanese guitar as well as a Les Paul. Talent is much more important than equipment. These guys are just being ripped off by an old system which is trying not to die. They’re being bitten by hucksters the same way you get ripped off on the street by the guys playing three card monte.
Laughable.
P.S. If you’re so damn great, why do you have only 98 Twitter followers?
Best e-mail I got about this:
From: Christian Ruzich
Subject: "Indie Rock"Bob,
I’m sure you’ve seen this: "Want to Be a Rock Star? You’ll Need $100,000"
As well as the AV Club response:
"Band claims it costs $100,000 to make it in indie rock, finally rendering the term ‘indie rock’ meaningless"My friends and I were discussing it today, and the one of us who is actually in a band (Inspector Owl, check them out) had a lot of interesting stuff to say, and I thought you’d like to see it. Stuff from the article in quotes, with Corey’s thoughts afterward:
"Training. Our folks shelled out for 15 years of piano and guitar lessons (times two of us!). These days, we’re spending $250 to $500 a month on voice lessons. Cost to date: $30,000."
Voice lessons? WTF? I took two years of guitar lessons, when I could figure songs out faster than my teacher I quit and started teaching myself. That is horse shit, especially in the age of the internet and YouTube. Go on YouTube and learn a few chords. Who is teaching them how to sing? For $250 to $500 a month it better be Jeff Fucking Buckley reincarnated."Rehearsal: We rent a space in Brooklyn for $50 per three-hour session. Cost to date: $3,000."
It’s called your parents’ fucking basement. Use it, it is free. Morons."Gear. Our family has invested in dozens of musical instruments and other gear (pianos, guitars, drum sets, keyboards, mandolins, PA systems, amplifiers…). And, oh yeah, it cost more than $500 to move a piano down three flights of stairs and then up to Maine (a story for another time). Cost to date: $25,000."
You moved a piano? Are you stupid? Get a keyboard."Recording. Our recent single,â•©Summer, cost more than $1,000 to record – even though we did much of the recording and mixing ourselves. We’ve set aside another $5,000 for our forthcoming EP. Again, we’ll save money by doing much of the work in Harper’s home studio. Cost to date: $6,000."
This is actually reasonable. I will give them this."Performing. For gigs here in New York, we hire taxis to lug our keyboards, stands, guitars,basses, amplifiers and drums to and from the venue. Whatever cash we earn beyond that usually goes to our current drummer. And expenses soar when we hit the road. Cost to date: $1,000."
DON’T LIVE IN NY. FUCK!"Promotion: Once you have music out, you need to promote it. We pay a guy to send email blasts to databases of hip music blogs. Postcards, demo CDs and other materials are also essential. Cost to date: $1,000."
Hire a real publicist, not some guy who sends out email blasts… this should actually cost a bit more. $750 a month for a publicist."Lost wages. The two of us each put about 20 hours a week into band-related work. Abner (still in school) could easily make $10 an hour working at a bar on weekends. Harper (a freelance writer) has to turn down writing assignments worth around $400 a week. Cost to date: $25,000."
Horse shit. You can do your freelance writing work while being in a band and playing shows. I have a friend who toured, has 3 kids and is a freelance graphic designer, which is harder to do on the road than write. These guys are BABIES."Living in New York City. Our cousin Abby lives in Atlanta in a house – a house! – with a couple of friends. They pay a third of what we pay for our combined living spaces. New York is absurdly expensive – but the band’s future demands that we live here rather than, say, our hometown in Maine. All told, we estimate that decision costs us an extra $1000 a month. Cost to date: $18,000."
DON’T LIVE IN NEW YORK. FUCK! And if you do, live in squalor on a crappy mattress in a shitty ass apartment with like 9 other artists or musicians in fucking Flatbush.Honestly, move out of your house, move home, practice there. Get a van, go on the road 250 days a year, sleep on floors, eat cheap groceries you buy, make your own sandwiches, stop taking lessons and learn how to think out of the box, and stop worrying about being a rock star and just play music because you love it.
Idiots.
One more, from Steven Weiss:
Here’s the thing. In that little video you posted, you can clearly see that no one is in the audience at the Highline Ballroom, and that line you show outside the Mercury Lounge is for the dance club next door. That line is always there, and its never for the Mercury Lounge. Hiring a publicist to do email blasts does not get you fans. It doesn’t get music blogs to like you. In fact, it might have the exact opposite effect. You think people can’t identify a faceless email blast?(Note: PEOPLE CAN TELL! The concept you can fool everybody has fallen by the wayside in the Internet era.)
