Thursday, January 26, 2012
In the Biz / Off Beat How to rock like the 1%
Posted by Gabe Vodicka @gabevodicka on Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 4:37 PM
Having been on both sides of the music machine (the music and now, uh, the machine), I'm frequently saddened but rarely surprised by the depth of the devolution from DIY garage band-ism to overpaid PR flackery, from three chords and an attitude to pay-for-play and Dad's credit card. This stuff is wild, y'all! Bands aren't really bands anymore; they're just teeny, tiny corporations. But as we know, corporations are people, so boom-ba-ba-loom-ba-wow.
But I guess I've still been holding out to a degree, harboring some essential smidgen of naivete, some shard of innocence that allows me to get by day to day without giving up and wandering the streets, searching for change on the ground, humming that goddamn Adele song that's objectively pretty good but then you hear it a thousand times and it starts to sound like nails on the world's longest chalkboard but ANYWAY.
The point is, TIME has an awfully depressing story (via Gawker) guest-written by a young and optimistic indie rock band called Two Lights, a band whose music is actually not all that bad (again, objectively, in a Coldplay sort of way), but who claim - nay, boast - that they've spent over $100,000 to date trying to kickstart their music career.
We've been mentored by former British rock stars, posed for photo shoots, hung out with models, worked with Grammy-nominated producers and rocked some of the top clubs in New York (places like the Mercury Lounge and the Highline Ballroom), opening for some of our favorite bands.
But wait! The band goes on to explain that, despite their extravagant lifestyle, "we're broke" (aww!), explaining that all their (parents') money has been frittered away on band-related expenses, including:
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.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.
Emphasis mine. Because obviously bands can't make it in Atlanta.
There's also voice, piano and guitar lessons (gonna get all real talk and say if you need lessons you probably shouldn't be in a band, seriously) and $25,000 worth of musical equipment. I'll give you a minute.
There's an important political analogy in here somewhere, but I'm too despondent to find it right now, so I'll settle for that lazy headline. Excuse me while I go find that one Minutemen album I honestly never really liked that much and make myself listen front to end, full blast, with my head right by the speakers. (Is this that politics of envy I keep hearing about?)
Comments (7)
Showing 1-7 of 7
ok I'll bite and expect no one to care - spent over 7 years rocking with small labels and releasing records independently - in LA of all places to not stick out at all - but none of us moved there to be in the industry, and we did not focus on or think about being commercially successful really until deep into the journey - it was about having fun - so even with different motivation (and no models on our arms homey - we drank budweiser and hung at the local bowling alley) we still spent tens of thousands of dollars (of our own cash and credit - love that debt!) on gear, cd pressing, rehearsal room rental, phone and mailing costs (this is before everything was done on the internet and booking shows took mailing cd's and cold calls), van purchases, monthly payments and unending repairs, paying for studio recording time and physical tape (before pro tools) then buying a pro tools rig after they came out, and yes, our horn player, drummer and singer DID take lessons from advanced teachers to perfect the craft - this was in addition to and after thousands of woodshed hours, so yes they were able to play their instruments - as the saying goes, even Olympic athletes have coaches and the Beatles has a producer in the room - but yeah, I get your point - we lived dirt cheap in bad neighborhoods (these guys could move off Manhattan), buy used gear, do their own promo work, dont go to expensive clubs, etc etc - silly stuff these guys - our first tour with D.C. ska punk wierdos The Decepticonz was called the "No one Came Tour"
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Having done time in many under-successful bands, I certainly appreciate the costs/debt necessary it takes to establish yourself. My beef with these guys is really more a beef with the industry - and with their bratty, clueless woe-is-us attitude. Also, Bud and bowling sounds pretty ritzy to me. You know how much those shoes cost?!
Zounds! Congress needs to intervene! We've moved so far from our founding fathers' vision when even $100,000 won't catapult limp-wristed FM radio smegma to superstardom.
"But we were so CALCULATED. We had TRAINERS. And AGENTS. And FOCUS GROUPS. And STYLISTS. Won't SOMEONE pay attention to us?"
Getting TIME Magazine to run this story was the biggest break these rubes could have hoped for -- and they will forever after be known as the band that whined their way to semi-popularity.
Wow. Whining about how hard it was to make music sounds really, really weak, man. But Antipollution/profoodchain's rant sounds even weaker. Instead of spending time drinking beer and bowling, maybe you should have spent time writing better songs. There's no mystery to it. You were just in a shitty band - fun or not, dude.
Hey GFH - the counterpoint was we busted our asses for years spending our own money, and using our own business skills to advance the act - but hey, yeah, judgments about musical quality without hearing a note really make sense - 350 shows across 42 states, radio play on over 25 stations, including 8 clear channel stations, thousands of records sold without any label budget say you don't know shit about music you have never heard - get bent
Bask in the glory of what was, Antipollution/profoodchain, but it boils down to this: you put everything into it, with the exception of songs that were good enough to support a career. If anyone still cared, you'd still be in that band. I have a dollar that says it was a ska/reggae/jam band. Wait....wait....a punk band with a real "message."
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