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Bad Music Investment
This is written with the genuine intention of advising musicians and those who would invest in those musicians. This relates to contemporary America’s tendency to give rise to various bands of musicians who create music with the aspiration of being the nationally recognized musical act and reap all the benefits of such status.
This writer is a very good musician. A bassist, which, for those who do not fully understand the personalities of people in relation the instruments they play, exudes a more priest-like quality than drummers or guitarists. Bassists are stereotyped as boring and background characters while indeed it is the frequencies we contort that people feel; folks will buy subwoofers for their autos and home theater systems to feel those frequencies.
Bassists by nature can move in and out of genres of music with a fluidity other instruments lack; it is far easier to be a rock bassist and a country bassist than it is to be a rock drummer and a country drummer. It is not impossible for musicians playing other instruments to transcend genres, but the stylistic forms inherent in various genres are easier to traverse for bassists.
That being the case, this writer has had the pleasure of rehearsing, recording, and performing music with many people in the last twenty years, and in this post modern American society I have discovered a truth regarding the modern composers of musical arts:
Musicians are bad.
Not all musicians, mind you, but sadly it seems to be the rule of the day notwithstandin g exceptions to that rule.
There are many musicians who spend their time and energy perfecting their craft. Many who commit their resources and money to production of their craft and with diligent care and social honor create works that are worth nominal attention in the least, and public celebration at the best. Some of these persons are academically trained and many are self taught.
There are, however, many more musicians who embody despicable characteristic s of selfish, malicious and genuinely unkind behavior towards other persons for the sake of their own selves. This self-centeredness that makes ‘networking’ and ‘online plays’ the highest care of musicians preys upon the courageous humility, the selfless expression, honest performance and other qualities which endow musicianship with a sense of dignity.
The blame can be erroneously placed upon various elements, but the root cause of the epidemic degeneration of the dignity of musicians is clearly and solely the musicians themselves.
I have spent time much of my time in various musical projects which have, for various specific reasons, failed to be sustained as musical products to be included in the larger national economy.
Any music will be able to find an audience provided it can be sustained as a consumable product for a long enough duration of time. Of the projects I have been part of through the years, some were very good products, some were less so, but all failed due to the very plain and clear collision of personalities. For all the specific reasons that each musical project may fail, all such reasons can be classed into two categories.
Bad Music Investment 1:
Whatever the genre of music, the energy of a live show decides the temperament of the crowd the band plays to. Many musicians either convince themselves they need a certain level of intoxication to be free of their inhibitions on stage OR they attempt to recapture the feeling of performing (which is a great feeling) by seeking the feeling of self importance that can accompany intoxication off stage. This is the age old warning to musicians to employ temperance. This category includes bands that remain sober until achieving a modiwent of fame and then increase their level of inebriation gradually until they implode. Such musical projects are like a great looking car that falls apart if driven faster than 15 MPH.
The difficult aspect of acts in this category of Bad Music Investment is gauging just how much of a drunk the musician(s) is. If the investor remains sober for usually three or four performances and finds that the potentiate is not getting thrown out, arrested or passing out, it can be construed as a green light for the further development of the act. Be warned that getting to know all facets of your investment is key; spend time with the act off stage. Going to rehearsals and spending downtime with the act will give you a clear view of the ability of the act to remain a stable investment of your time or money.
Bad Music Investment 2:
For all the headaches that come with being connected to a band that gets drunk too much or too often, the other category consists of far more insidious horrors. The musicians that populate this category of Bad Music Investments have increase in numbers over the years and with the onset of internet technology allowing them to build their own EPK (Electronic Press Kit) and build up a presented personality that, after awhile, they start to believe is real. These musicians are self-centered, usually moderately sober, and exude a snotty attitude that rivals the stuffiest of Victorian era shirts. Believing they can view themselves as “product,” they are a selfish bunch that tend to think they are the god given grace of new music in America. The personality slightly varies from person to person, but to give true to life example of the musicians in this category of Bad Music Investment, I must relate one specific experience I had.
Being in a band with Robbie Hazen was no more or less enjoyable as a middle of the road pop rock band is expected to be. At first I thought the web pages he maintained, the biographies crafted by his parents that made his talents appear glorious, the online blog updates and such were calculated actions which he differentiated from himself. It became clear to me that he believed his own presented personality when he required me to deposit $2,000 into a “band bank account” (which I would not have access to) for the opportunity to go and perform music on a do it yourself tour with little to no return. When told that such is not a prudent business move, I was immediately dismissed from the band. The pay to play scheme is old in the music business, but it seems musicians have decided to use it to prey on each other.
Perhaps, though, it is not really malicious but rather genuinely thoughtless; folks who pump out what they desire themselves be may start to believe the persona they present in the electronic forums. The exaggerated self convinces them that they are stars in their own minds; blind ambition like that should be legally allowed seeing-eye dogs.
Whatever the case, musicians in this category tend to seek only for themselves, as though they ARE the be all and end all, and that leads to an inflated sense of entitlement that allows them to believe they need not pay back monies invested into their projects. Have these musicians really not yet learned the workings of a business: a composer hires musicians. A band leader pays his band or he is not a band leader, but just a new form of con-man in the music industry.
Be warned, this new form of musician will bilk and jilt whoever gets in his or her way while heading towards some big pay off. It makes me wish the old cigar chomping record execs were still around to put the young fools in their place: if you are a musician, you should exude humility, deliberate care and, most of all, kindness towards other musicians. Leave the business side to business folks and let them leave the music to you.
So with this new, alarming, category of musicians in Bad Music Investments being a wicked cross breed of record exec and musician, with the stereotypical bad traits from both sides, what hope is there for American society to produce culturally relevant and innovative music?
It may be that a turn back to those who were academically trained in music is in order. Perhaps, we, as a people should start looking towards our conservatories and universities for composers of music; leave the music to the musicians. Let everyone else who enjoys playing music do so with comfort and ease and without polluting our shared cultural space with the multitude of short songs that not only convey very similar emotive messages but also use similar chord structures and rhythms.
We in America are more than our pop culture portrays us to be. Perhaps we should commence celebrating learned masters of music rather than regular mediocre innovators.
That’s not to say we should shut out innovators all together, it is just saying that it may be time to raise our expectations as consumers of music.
Then again, the parade of young singers channeled through the pop culture pipelines do keep the kids occupied.
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