Your Hopes and Dreams: The Industry Standard Part 2 (Finally someone else said it...)

According to Wikipedia: 

A hobby is a regular activity or interest that is undertaken for pleasure, typically done during one's leisure time. 

Okey dokey pokey. But what about if you have a regular activity that is done for pleasure but it is also your passion?  And your uncompromising soul screams to be able to make a living at it, as others have done? And you have seen these people in real life! Most of the people that have become well known for their artistic craft have had day jobs at some point and they found pleasure in what they were doing off the clock. So what is the tipping point?

Today in the New York Times, Tim Kreider FINALLY said what I have been talking about for the past forever. Here is a link to his article that hits it on the head:

Slaves of the Internet, Unite!

In his great article, he focused more on the publication of words than on Music, though he touched on it for a bit, and what he did he got right. But let's go more into that realm of Music, shall we?


Last night I attended a concert of four cover bands at a bar in Jersey City, NJ. A beloved friend was playing bass in a Pixies cover band and they, along with all the other bands, really did a great job. AND, the place was PACKED! I mean wall to wall flesh, and this sea of costumed bar revelers adored the bands and really got into the Music. It was wonderful to watch.

BUT, was anybody in any band paid? No. My friend on bass who was driving home gave me one of her "free drink tickets" that was her "payment." When I went to the bar to use it, I was only allowed to get the worst beers or a very restricted selection of the bottom shelf garbage booze. WHAT? Not only were the musicians given token compensation for their hours and hours of prep work and performance, but it was a restricted compensation, only allowing swill to be given. The worst part was that none of the Musicians cared they were being treated like this. None. 

I understand the fact that it can be economically difficult to pay a band decent compensation when it is a bad night at the establishment, but that is not the band's fault. They are providing a service. Do you think the chef at a restaurant does not get paid when things are slow for a night? Nope. It is not the band's responsibility to bring people to the place they perform. Period. If they suck as musicians, then they should not be asked back. But, as independent contractors, they are paid to play music. Period. End of argument. 

But last night was the soul crusher. This bar was making tons and tons of money. If they had even paid the bands SOMETHING, they still would have come away with a good amount of profit. But no. They gave the bands free tickets for garbage booze when they were rolling in the cash. 

And please allow me to state that, for all of their idealism, actual and theoretical, musicians respond to money. Very well, actually. James Brown had one of the best bands in the world. Why? Well, one reason was because he used to fine each musician for every time they made a mistake onstage. The Pavlovian Godfather of Soul knew what he was doing.

It is here that you may be saying that every musician gets hooked into the life they lead by swallowing the four pronged hook of Rock and Roll Mythology: "A life in Music will grant me what my heroes have: Money, Fame, Drugs, and Sex in unlimited quantities." If this fails, then they get what they deserve. But what do they deserve? 


As stated in Mr. Kreider's article, no other occupation runs on these expectations of production of a product having no value. And please allow me to state that any musician you see up on a stage that is doing what they do well has spent hundreds if not thousands of hours at their craft, and perhaps over a hundred thousand dollars and their youth getting good at their instrument. With the news media buzzing like a cloud of angry cicadas on Red Bull about health care, please take one second to remember that no doctor will do surgery for free, no pharmacist will allow you to get a prescription of cash value for free and no emergency room will treat you for free. If you do not pay,the bill will just get passed along the chain to others that do pay while all the workers in the chain do not miss a paycheck. Someone is paying, even if you are not.

As stated in Part One of this section, recorded Music has little to no value to the consumer. The only place where money is to be made is in movies, commercials, and television. All the streaming websites that people devour pay literally pennies per play. Calculate how many plays it would take of one song to pay one month's rent. Now look in the mirror and realize you are not Justin Timberlake. And now realize that you are screwed.


Placement in movies and commercials and television can be beneficial, but the bulk of what is bought is not Music made by the artist for the joy of it. It is Music made to fit a specific concept the producers have, which 90% of the time is a rip off of a popular song they cannot afford to pay for; so they hire some schlub to write a knock off of something similar, pay them next to nothing, make the writer hand over all rights to the Music, and send them on their way to make more sausage made of sounds. 

There was a golden age of guitar based rock Music and that has passed, with the first ring from the death bell coming at the raising of the drinking age from 18 to 21. The next chime came with quality DJ's coming in and charging less, as well as insurance companies charging more for policies that catered to live Music. Next came digital file sharing and finally the access to free recording devices that could, regardless of the lack of ability or talent from the performer,  digitally manipulate performances into listenable pieces of organized sound. With a commodity having no scarcity and no cost of production combined with a never ending desire of consumption we are now here. But where is here?

I am not going to say that all new Music sucks. That is insane as I personally know people with inspiring talent. I am not going to say that nobody goes to live shows because I just played a show opening for and playing with the poet Buddy Wakefield and the room, while small, was packed. But I will say this: the value placed upon Music has, by all quantitative measures, reached a low point that nobody had seen coming. The Music companies which are now MULTI MEDIA companies, shall always find a way to turn a buck on sound and visuals. And never ever for a damned second ever believe that they are hurting for money. They are simply not as wealthy as they used to be, but the executives are still, and always shall be, wealthy.

No medium can truly grow when the makers of it are not given some affirmation of its value by the outside world. The makers feel disillusioned and confused, believing with everything they have that they have done great work but having nobody willing to pay for it. Please remember that this equation did not work out very well for Van Gogh. Read his letters and see how the fact that nobody would care at all about what he did led him to the depths of despair.


All creative people need time to learn their craft and this means by doing it. But it should not mean doing it for free! For a lesser rate, perhaps, but not free. If one gets paid for a job well done, one is more likely to do a better job the next time. Money is nice, ya' know? But this new system has made every musician and writer, regardless of experience and sacrifice, equal. And what is that equality?

I just played a show at a coffee house and the owner has been wonderful to me and my band. The place is clean and warm and a joy to play at. However, they pay me and the band nothing. It was never even discussed. I will play there again soon to get ready to record my solo acoustic album, as I find nothing is a better editor of songs than doing them live. But in the end, I will be doing the two hours of set up, two hours of performance, and one hour of tear down simply to be better at documenting my compositions this December when I record them. The owner of the establishment will most likely thank me for my performance, but I simply was a live iPod for an evening. My presence has no real value to him. He may LOVE my band, for which I am very grateful, but there is no exchange of compensation. 

A life in creativity is never easy for the majority of the players and I doubt it will ever get any better. The saying goes that you get nothing for nothing. 

There you have it, the new artistic equality of the digital age. 

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

ADDENDUM: I have just found out that the concert that night where my friend played bass and got swill for drinks was actually a benefit concert for the local arts association, one I know very well and deeply support. However, I had NO idea that it was a benefit because nobody announced it was a benefit, it was in no way obvious on the flier that it was a benefit, nobody from the association stated at the beginning of the night at the bar that it was for their cause, and there was no place to give additional contributions for the cause which many people would have. 

I have put on many benefit concerts in my lifetime and I have always tried to treat the musicians who gave of their time with the utmost respect. And, it is ALWAYS obvious to everyone attending that it is a benefit for some cause. If you wish to make the argument that none of the bands were getting paid anyway then I counter that proposal with the following:

Giving away your time and talent for a cause does not mean being disrespected or used.

And even if we take away all reimbursement for all the musicians on stage that night stating that it went to a greater good, I present this: one of the musicians in one of the bands helped with the complicated logistics of the night (there was another stage across town), stayed there all day to make sure everything worked out AND supplied the entire back line for the evening (the drums, the bass and guitar amps). At the end of the night, for all that, he was given by the sound guy, by a fellow musical worker, the pay for well over 24 hours of work and the use of $1000 of musical gear.......................................................................................................

$50. 

I rest my case.

Your Hopes and Dreams: The Industry Standard (Part 1)

I am (hopefully) about to start recording my new solo acoustic album due to the prodding of some close friends who, for whatever reason, really love that part of my work. But each time I am about to go downstairs and set up the mics and get this thing going, one question keeps coming up, "Why?"

While there are some dark practical reasons to get it completed, there are no real valuable answers in the either which I shall tackle here in due time

Let me begin by stating a few personal observations about the world of being a musician in the 21st century:

TO BEGIN: Basic economic concept: The value of a product depends upon the desirability and scarcity of a product.

As has been stated literally thousands and thousands of times before, the digital age has made just about anyone able to record/have access to sounds and then edit it into some sort of shape at a quality, speed, and cost that only a decade ago was only dreamed of. The problem is that the unholy alliance of bootlegged software and bootlegged music has made matters exponentially worse. It has not made the playing field level, it has made it a vortex.

We seem to be at a point where the value of recorded music is approximating zero while the desire for music seems to be at an all time high, both points of which are a result of technology. Never before in the relatively short history of recorded music have we been able to carry with us so much music for our personal consumption. I say this only speaking of the personal storage devices. Once the Digital Cloud becomes the norm, all bets are off, the game is over as access to almost anything will be available to anyone with the right technology that will only come down in price over time. I find this to be both depressing and a tad scary for every creative thinking person out there.

Years ago, only the few record/CD collectors of deep obsession could have collected enough recorded music as to outweigh the amount of time they would have in their theoretical lifespan to listen  to it. Now, that is commonplace. People I know download complete catalogs of artists in no time at all from bit torrent sites. years and years worth of an artist's work collected for free within less time than it takes to heat a Pop Tart. See the problem?

(I am no expert on this, so please feel free to consult the work of John Berger and the like, but here goes...)

The history of Music (using the definition of- rhythm, sonority, and silence) is, at the very least, as old as the human race. The female voice is (approximately) one octave above that of the male and the child's voice an octave above that. Any melody sung by the three at the same time would be within that octave "harmony".  2000 B.C. is where the first music notation starts and it takes about 3900 years before the recording of music starts. With sheet music/notation, the best one can get is an interpretation of what the original composition sounded like. With the recording, one can hear exactly how the performance sounded.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, now thanks to the digital age, the triumph of mathematical perfection, and cost effectiveness over human inconsistency,  the reality of what is consumed as music has been bent at a right angle. The performer of the music has become merely the clay of the product, not the finished stone. And to all my recording brethren out there, allow me to state the following: WE ARE ALL GUILTY! I have used pitch correction tools to edit the living hell out of my own and others performances. Why? Speaking only for myself, two words: TIME and MONEY. It was cheaper for me to have the under rehearsed singer do a mediocre job and edit it later than to spend weeks getting it right when there was a cheap option available that has become the industry standard.

Oh yes, the "Industry Standard".

99.9% of all music heard these days is computer corrected. The artificial has replaced the human as the standard. No, really. Pop musicians (which means "popular" which means "consumed and accepted by the masses") either are singing along to pre-recorded back-up tracks live or are being auto-tuned when they perform live. The standard is no longer analogue, but digital. Human performance is no longer acceptable.

In the documentary "Sound City" all of what I am talking about is played out and discussed by those who made their career within the time of analogue gear. It is an amazing documentary about how digital technology transformed the art of recording music. I cannot recommend it enough to everyone who cares.

One thing I found stunning was about how, in the old days, the goal was to find "The magic take", the performance where you get "lightening in a bottle". You see a young Tom Petty go bonkers in some home footage after doing a song over two dozen times (or something like that). Even better is Dave Grohl talking about the recording of Nevermind, which was done at that studio and how he loathed using a click track to record the song "Lithium". While there were overdubs, the music was recorded  by human beings who could do the performance. This is the former generation.

I asked a high school age guitarist this past week about recording his music, as well as that of other bands. He says he has never used any whole takes and did not record more than one instrument at a time. Even then, he just edited the takes to make the finished piece. This is the new generation.

If something is constructed by a machine to the point of mathematical perfection, can it exist as a piece of art made by a human? Is there a balance? Well, sure. I am not anti-synth or anti-Protools. My favorite example is Trent Reznor who has been using computers to make his music since the beginning of his career as NIN. The man uses a computer to make music and it is stunning.

Maybe it is all in the vocals?

The human being reacts most strongly to another human being. The voice, even without language (or with pseudo-language as in the case with Sigur Ross), the ear perks up and finds the human connection.. (I think the sales of music with voice/vocals as compared to instrumentals will back me up on this.) And how many instrumentalists can you say you can pick out by ear after one listening? Eddie Van Halen, Michael Hedges, and Jeff Beck come to mind about having a truly unique tone and there are others. But vocalists have a way of just putting a tractor beam on the soul.

Adele comes to mind here. When she opens her mouth, God enters the room. Look at the video to her Bob Dylan cover of  "Make You Feel My Love". She does not lip-sync the video, she actually SINGS in the video. I have been blessed to know people who could and can do the same. One of those people, Steve Hajdu-Nemeth was in my bad The Post-Modern Tribe until he passed away from cancer. Susan Shaughnessy is another who has shared the stage with me who can do the same thing. Mary Ann Wilson too. And there are others. Like I said, I am one blessed man.

Which leads me to this beautiful topic: So if I were to record the acoustic album, spend hours and hours of my life alone in my studio then spend about a thousand dollars mixing and mastering it to a professional level,..... then what?

Don't everyone yell at once....

"Why Don't You Teach Music in Schools?" (or How I Haven't Been able to Live with Others)

Two (or more) Masters and the Pesky Problem of Physics

"Why don't you get a job teaching music in schools? You're a great teacher and you could do your Music there and have a steady paycheck."

If I hear this statement, or a variation on it, one more time, I may snap and go Fed Ex on someone. (I say Fed Ex because I am not sure, when you read this, if the Postal Service will still be in business.)  More times than a freshman girl gets offered a Long Island Iced Tea at a frat party, I have been told by people that I, a guitarist and composer by training and vocation, should get a job as a teacher in the bureaucratic machine of the public school system. All of these people, so open to guiding my soul have one thing in common: NONE OF THEM ARE MUSIC TEACHERS WITHIN THE BUREAUCRATIC GRINDER OF THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM! NONE! ZERO! THE VOID!

I have met many a high school and college music teacher, and many of them are wonderful people, more patient and kind than I could ever be even if I were given a daily regime of  Xanax and absinthe. They work hard and have to put up with the living hell of attempting to have a beautiful garden grow within the Psychological Super Fund site of the contemporary childhood/adolescent life.

Every one of them seems to have a look of longing and weariness. When I tell them I teach independently and have put out six albums and am continually writing, their eyes grow cloudy. They are all people who want to compose their own magnum opus but cannot find the time due to the insane demands that their career takes upon them. If I could translate that look in their eyes into eyes it would say one thing, "One day. Yes, one day I WILL write that piece, that concerto, that album. Maybe he has...... but I have health benefits! AND PAID VACATION! THAT IS JUST AS GOOD AS WHAT HE HAS!"

Here's the catch,:I STILL haven't written my magnum opus and I do not have any paid days off!

The dream goal of the independent artist who is able to do whatever they want whenever they want does exist, but has the rarity of say, something between the number of quality Christian Slater films and the number of left handed unicorns. Almost all the arts have the strange default scheme where the artist, unable to get enough money from simply creating, must teach. The less commercially successful but more respected the writer, the better the odds that they will be stuck with making lesson plans. J K Rowling and Erika Leonard will never set foot in a teachers lounge, for professional reasons at least. Trust me.

There is nothing wrong with teaching. It is, at best, one of the noblest professions out there. The presence of some teachers has changed the course of my life and help me realize what my potential I had. Some were horrible. Some were forgettable, but the ones that resonated with me could never be replaced or replicated. The point here is that only one teacher I had, the late great Noel DaCosta, did not seen to complain about his lack of time to write. I could see that he wished he had more time, but he was such a generous soul and dedicated teacher that he just wrote when he could. The other teacher, James Oestereich, is finally starting his first album of original music after decades of composing and performing his own scores for theater over the past three decades. The fact that he himself is finally working on his first "solo" recording also shows that there is never enough time for anyone.

Annnnnnnnd then there is the story of minimalist composer Philip Glass who worked blue collar day jobs such as taxi driver and furniture mover for many years. How long did he have to do this work? The true legend of him driving a cab after the debut in November 1996 of his influential opera "Einstein on the Beach" hits the mark. He made time to write when he could until he could live of commissions and royalties.

At the end of the equation, composition becomes a job like any other. You have deadlines to meet and egos to stroke and immature people with your paycheck that can make you feel like a circus bear being led around by a string and conductors who feel they know the piece better than you and the wonderful wonderful musicians who feel your music is beneath them and are only doing it for the paycheck and so on and so on. It can become a disgusting process of which I have only given you the barest of details. (If you care to see how getting grant money is, please watch the movie "Fight Club" while drinking Mescal or "Million Dollar Baby" while drinking Tab till you pass out.)

In the same way that a baker cannot wait until the perfect birthday cake is made, the working composer cannot wait until something is "perfect". Normally there is a due date where, by the time it arrives, you have cursed God's Holy name and redden your garments, your soul so broken by self doubt and sleep deprivation that you are ready to work changing oil rather than have to do this all over again and IT IS ALMOST READY! ALMOST! JUST ONE MORE DAY! HOUR! MINUTE! SO CLOSE!

SO!
DAMN!
CLOSE!

Duke Ellington said, "Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn't do nothing." So there you go.

The 20th century composer Charles Ives should stand out as an anomaly within all this, but, alas, does not.  For the uninitiated, Ives was, to make a very long story short, the owner of a successful insurance firm as well as a composer and church organist. He seemed to be able to juggle all the pieces of a "Normal Life": wife, successful career, children, etc, as well as be a be the composer without compromise. Throughout his life, however, had a series of nervous breakdowns, which his family called "heart attacks". While he had one of his most prolific periods after this, it is interesting to note that he created arguable his most well known piece, "The Unanswered Question", just two years prior. He would wind up having breakdowns many times over the course of his life until finally in 1927 he just stopped composing at the age of 53. "Nothing sounds right." he said to his wife with tears in his eyes. Alas, not even he could keep the balls of a normal life and the Muses in the air.

One of the last patron saints of the art world, the late abstract expressionist Agnes Martin, said that the best job for an artist is a dishwasher because it takes none of your creative soul away in the process. She was not taking in theory, she WAS a dishwasher for some time as well as a teacher and the keeper other jobs. When she had enough money to do nothing but paint, that was what she did.

I had come to this conclusion years ago but nobody believed me. I spent twelve years working as a landscaper at a cemetery and it was the best job I could have imagined. (Well, almost. My homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic, and all around evil boss for seven years of it tended to make it a tad rough.) The work itself was physically taxing, but mentally and emotionally it was an open slate. I even wrote a rock opera in my head over the course of a season that wound up becoming the completed work, "After the Valentines" with my band The Post-Modern Tribe. My body was being molded by the Spring, Summer, and Winters of New Jersey, but my mind was in an entirely different world.

I have been a private guitar teacher for many years now and have seen the decline of the popularity of the guitar as well as the corporate world turn rock music into nostalgia and music education into a hellscape of underpaid off-tour musicians create "bands" with strangers of kids and make them grind through some songs that will please their parents' hopes of some sort of return on their investment. But the corporate model does not care about the individual's unique pros and cons, nor does it care about any individual style. Contemporary non-classical music education will be what dance schools are for little children, only there will be teenagers on stage going through the motions instead of seven year-olds.

You should never go into teaching for the money. Ever. You should go into it to be the best teacher you can be and to emulate those teachers who inspired you. If you go into it for the money, at least two things will almost invariably happen. One, you will think in any way possible to kill the lesson time so you can get paid and care less and less about finding a proper pedagogy and two, you will realize that there is no amount of money you could be paid for having to deal with a student who is a human piece of apathy and you will resent them for the fact that they hold your paycheck and the relationship will turn into Nevada's dependence on gambling.

I have seen immense talent almost ruined by teachers that were so ill qualified and apathetic that they should be taken out and have their fingers broken.

If you have a day job you can tolerate and does not suck your soul out, please just get on with your creativity in your downtime. There is no great moment of clarity other than when you first see that you have your own voice and begin selling your work. If you have a great passion to be creative, remember that the word "Passion" means "to suffer". You cannot get one without the other. And suffering will always be there, regardless of whether or not one aspires to great heights of artistic expression.

If you are a parent, be an amazing and loving parent above all else. Don't make me go off on the DESPERATE COSMIC NEED for better parents rather than better artists!!!! One of the few pictures of Rothko smiling is when he is holding his young child. Same for Bartok and his children.

And to all you caring and teachers out there, I tip my hat to you. Be good and caring teachers because you never know what impact you may have.

Now stop reading this and go make something Beautiful.....



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