Giving Up
I want you to listen to Fred Armisen on Alec Baldwin’s “Here’s The Thing” podcast. Because he talks about giving up.
Sometimes you’ve got to do that.
Fred was in a band called Trenchmouth. With his buddies. For ten years. They toured not only the U.S., but Europe. With no roadies, lugging their own equipment up stairs, sleeping on floors. And Fred loved every minute of it.
Then he saw a forty year old drummer doing the same and he said “I don’t want to be that guy.”
There’s a fallacy that if you just work hard and long enough, you’ll make it. People heard about the 10,000 hours but didn’t bother to read Gladwell’s book. There are other factors, like timing.
I know this myself. I was frustrated with my reach and then all of a sudden the Internet blew up and I could reach people around the world for free! Before that… Positively desultory.
But even if the timing is bad, maybe you’re just not good enough. It’s hard to accept, but it could be true. Instead of slogging it out, maybe you should move on, consider music a hobby. Fred still plays his drums, just not professionally.
And there’s always a story behind the story, it’s never as seamless as these successes portray it. But Fred started filming bands (videotaping, before the YouTube era) at SXSW about their careers, using funny voices, and he built an audience for his productions. He went on tour with them. After playing with the Blue Man Group in Chicago for two years. Sure, that was drudgery, but he got paid and he learned so many things. Like the audience is there to be entertained.
And then, Fred moved to L.A. And he made friends.
That’s how you make it in the music business. On both sides of the fence, businessman and player, via friends.
And now he’s on SNL and “Portlandia.”
And none of that would have happened if he continued to believe he must be a musician, that it was his only option, banging his head against the wall as his audience aged and he starved.
You can play. You can be a fan. Not everyone has to be a professional. Not everyone is gonna make it.
Fred dreamed of being as successful as the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
It never happened.
