Or
A Warning
To All Would Be
Professional Musicians
In the Denver Area
by Neil Slade
Last night I had this dream: I was in a great big bus traveling down a winding road on my way to see "The Tallest Building in the World!". My father was driving the bus, and it was a treacherous journey. The road was more of a river than a motorway, and we were traveling against the current. We finally arrived at the monument, and as I looked out the window to see this great structure, I saw that it was the smallest of sticks only about fifteen inches high stuck in the dirt. As my dad tried to park the bus, the stream got deeper, and the road disappeared underneath a torrent of water. Out the window, I saw the remnants of another bus that has lost the battle, it's huge tire half submerged in the water. Now our bus was stuck and everybody was yelling at the driver....
Dream analysis: The little stick and the horrible bus ride was the reality of the illusion of professional musician as "the greatest job (building) in the world".
About a month ago, I ran into one of my friends who at one point in his life moved to New York City to find his fame and fortune as a professional musician. We went to college together and studied composition with Paris Rutherford, who was a fairly successful Hollywood composer. My friend went on to become one of the best piano players I have ever known, and in fact, while in New York played frequently with some of the greatest names in the jazz music world. When I saw him in the library, we were talking about what it was like after twenty years trying to make a living playing music. He said this: "I am constantly amazed by the number of truly fine musicians I know, who take thirty years to realize that the music business has nothing to do with music."
* * * * *
What is it about music anyway? Why does musical economics differ from, say, auto sales economics? It is because we live in a materialistic culture. We are not so far advanced beyond the apes. Western civilization likes stuff, like bananas and cars. We like things you can hold in your hands, and show to friends. We like toys and gizmos and colorful packages.
If you are like most people, if you had a choice between getting something invisible or getting some thing you could show off to everybody, you would get the thing, every time. Let's say you're learning how to play the harpsichord. You get to lesson five and decide, "This is too hard! I mean, I can't play Bach's Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue yet! Where is it? I don't see it anywhere!" If you haven't paid for all ten classes in advance, with this typical attitude you'll never make it to class ten. Playing the harpsichord is all in your mind, and your mind ain't that stable yet!
On the other hand, let's say there's this swell $150 beach towel you spy at Lord and Taylor's Department Store. You would give them a layaway down payment, and pay it off in monthly installments at 24% interest without blinking an eyelash. You can see and hold that towel and you know it exists and it isn't going to vaporize because of your short attention span.
Last night I was waiting to get some take-out fries at a local retaurant when I glanced at a couple of posters on the wall, one of Elvis, the other of Marilyn Monroe. It occurred to me, two of our culture's biggest heroes were dead as nails. Then I remembered watching a Grateful Dead special on TV last night, people talking about Jerry Garcia, a great creative icon dead at an early age. Frank Zappa, dead. Jim Morrison, dead. Mozart dead. Charlie Parker, dead. John Lennon dead.
There is a connection here. A truly creative musical artist pays an enormous price in this world, usually at the expense of his sanity and health. The heart of creativity requires going against the grain, seeking new modes of expression that buck the system and reject convention. It is like trying to drive a bus upstream.
When an artist makes a new path in his culture, he must necessarily remove himself
from all the pressures of financial security and peer and public expectations. Frequently this takes the form of drug use. The drug, whether it be heroin for people like Charlie Parker or Billie Holiday, or coffee and fried food, for guys like Elvis and Zappa, serve the purpose of letting the musician concentrate fully on the ephemeral process of creative expression without having one's mind be distracted by annoying thoughts of rent due Monday. Eventually this catches up with the artist, and their bodies wear out sooner than those who lead boring, but better paid and less stressful occupations. In the case of Elvis, Morrison, and Monroe, the earthquake of success and constant scrutiny was enough to drive them to find chemical solutions to the unrealistic life which the media spotlight had expected them to live in. Catch 22: Doomed if you make waves, doomed if everyone gets in your boat.
It should be obvious to anyone who actually takes music seriously, and by that I mean thoughtfully examine music itself, not celebrity or popular opinion about music, that in 99% of popular music is inferior, simplistic, and imitative of the other 1%. Who are the best selling musical artists of the past decade? Entertainers like Madonna, and downhill from there. Elvis sold because he wiggled his butt, and nothing has changed. Hello Spice Girls.
If you live in a big ugly city like New York or Los Angeles, there is the very outside chance that you can make a living with your original music, especially if you are part of that not-so-original 99%. However, the return of royalties to a recording artist are so small, you must sell a zillion records before your bank account amounts to anything that will afford you more than a one room apartment. You will in fact be a slave to a record company with a better chance of being struck by lightening than making any money. If you are young, have no family, and are willing to live on I-70 for years on end, like Ani DiFranco, you may possibly be able to find an audience without a corporate intravenous line, providing you have the right body parts pierced and the present generation can identify with you. Otherwise, you will simply be one of a cast of millions trying to sell your music like another new brand of soda pop, to a public that still wants only Coca Cola.
If you feel like you must get help from THE BIG RECORD COMPANY, you must physically live down the street from them, where you can constantly bang on the front door. If you live in a place like Denver, a thousand miles from Nashville or L.A., FORGET IT. In New York there are millions of musicians pounding on the front door of your favorite record company, begging, paying off, wining and dining, sleeping with record executives in control. Do you think they will pay any attention at all to a musician in the middle of the Great Plains just because their music is really good!?!? HA ha ha.
This is a warning to all you young optimistic young Rocky Mountain musicians out there. If you are truly a creative person, you can't be a professional musician and win. You will starve. The alternative is taking the big gamble with truckloads, boatloads, and planeloads of other starry eyed guitar playing songwriters and move into a room in New York City with 10 other people, and hope you get noticed. You could live on Interstate 70 for ten years. You can sell out, wiggle your butt and play bad music like Madonna. Or you can take some nice drug that will make you forget that you are living in a hole somewhere and not making any money, though your music sounds great.
Your Amazing Brain Adventure
is a web site all about Tickling Your Amygdala-
i.e. turning on the best part of your brain as easy as clicking on a light
switch. This is done as easily as imagining a feather inside of your head
stimulating a compass, the amygdala. The amygdala is a set of twin organs, a
part of your brain that sits right in between the most advance part of your
brain- the frontal lobes and pre-frontal cortex- and the most primitive part
of your brain- your "reptile brain" and brain stem. By tickling your
amygdala you instantly and directly increase creativity, intelligence,
pleasure, and also make possible a spontaneous natural processes known as
"paranormal abilities", although such things as telepathy and ESP are really
as natural as breathing, or as easy doing simple math in your head. The
ability to self stimulate the amygdala by something as simple as thought has
been proven in laboratory experiments, such as those conducted at Harvard
University research labs, 1999-2009, and can be tracked with modern brain
scanning machines such as fMRI and PET... Indeed, thought is faster than
light.
Other sites of interest:
EasyPaintYourCar.comis a painting site dedicated
to learning how to paint a car yourself, even if you've never painted a car
before. You can refinish your car to professional standards at home, better
than if you take it to someone else, and enjoy doing it at a fraction of the
cost of having it done in an expensive shop. You can repair dents, rust, and
use the most durable real automotive paint, and even learn to apply it
without any special or expensive gear, in a safe and enjoyable manner. Paint
your car in your garage, car port, or even driveway. You can spray, use an
HVLP gun, or even use a roller.
Easy Make A Kindle
and
Your
Own Publishing
are sites about self-publishing and writing, and how any person can publish
materials, print, online, and electronic books. You can drop out of the
corporate slave labor rat race and own your own life by writing and
distributing your own books on the subject that you know best.
InkJetHelper.comis a web site about escaping from
the ridiculous cost of ink jet printer ink refilling- and refilling your
printer for pennies instead of $70 a shot. It also has useful tips about
maintaining ink jet printers, especially Canon brand printers.
Julia Lu
Paintingis
all about the creative works of Chinese painter Julia Lu, a modern master of
oil and water color painting. Julia shares her creative secrets, ideas, as
well as her art work.
Chloe
and Erfie
