Destination: Continental Europe

Date of trip: 30 October 2009 – 22 November 2009

Traveling companions: David & Sara Surkamp, Mike Safron, Abbie Haines, Rick Steiling, Nick Schlüeter

Goal of trip: Pavlov’s Dog European Tour 2009 – Visit Dad’s resting place

Location: Saint Louis, MO; Chicago, IL

DAY 1 – 30 October 2009

Got ready for the big travel day by not sleeping a wink the night before.  I figured this way I could make sure everything was ready, my house was perfect for the open house (hey – if anyone needs a GREAT house in the Saint Louis, MO suburb boasting the best community life and school district in the state of Missouri – now’s your chance for acquisition!), and also being tired enough to actually sleep on the flight from Chicago to Dusseldorf.

The guitar was an easy carry-on.  Here’s the trick for all of you that fly outta places that AREN’T Nashville or LA: have your friend or family member hold onto your guitar bag while you check in and check your bags.  Here’s why; in Nashville and LA (but strangely enough, not New York) they see so many guitars in gig bags, it doesn’t faze ‘em.  Everywhere else, they freak out and demand that you check the bags for passenger safety and the instrument’s safety (right – like the gorillas in baggage handling give an effin’ crap about proper handling – I watched one THROW my guitar in it’s case once).

Ok, so Ma watched my guitar as I checked in.  Then she and I walk down to the concourse where we say goodbye and I go through security with a smile on my face and willing to let ‘em do whatever they need to.  When they know you’re gonna be accommodating, they let you through.  Besides, no one’s doing anything wrong – and that’s the point.  Let ‘em do their job – it keeps us safe from the wackos.

The flight to Chicago took a little bit of time since the weather was pretty bad – we must have circled O’Hare for close to 30 min.  Everything was pretty seamless in Chi. We had about 2 hours, so I got something to eat and called Julie.  I’m not going to be able to speak with Julie so easily while I’m in Europe because it costs my left nut to place a call.  Even texting is expensive (at least I can receive an unlimited # of texts).  And I wanna get the chat time in.  I’m gonna miss her for the 2 weeks before she arrives. Hey, go ahead and razz me; you would miss your girlfriend too if she was hot and a total sweetheart.

The flight on Lufthansa was great.  There was plenty of legroom in coach – which, at 6’ 2”, is always an issue for me.  Even better while I was the center seat in the center row, there were only 2 of us on the row and we each took an outside seat.  It helped that the other person was really nice.  Movie choice – total high-brow – Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  Hell yeah! Hot chicks & crap blowin’ up left and right.

So, I start my movie and take some Simply Sleep – I’m damn well gonna sleep on THIS plane ride.  The attendants come by with the meal and here’s the description (in a heavy German accent):

“We have turkey w/ greens beans, mashed potatoes, gravy and broccoli.  Or, you may choose the strange pasta.”

Wow.

What do you think I got? It sure as hell wasn’t gonna be “strange pasta.” I have pride in my Italian heritage, but I doubt Lufthansa takes the same pride in making pasta as the average 3-year old.  Bad pasta with a funky sauce can make your insides dance the Dance of the Seven Hells – screw that.  Give it to the loud mouth in 1^st class who’s borderline belligerent.  Let’s watch him squirm (WEG).

The turkey dinner was pretty good, especially for airline food. But I still wouldn’t trust the “strange pasta.”  Loved the brownie w/ whipped cream and strawberries for dessert – nice!

Ok, so I’m watching the movie and the next thing I know, I get a light tap and it’s breakfast.  Cool, must have slept a solid 6 hours.  Never happened before – so I’m really ecstatic.  I’ll even make it through the next day.

The Lemon AID is SOOOOO much better than the Katana – it acts like a truly clean boost and it operates like a good amplifier would!! Isn’t this what we all really want?! To be able to go straight into a killer amp and just let it rip?! Hell yeah it is!!

This isn’t to say the Katana is bad, it’s not. But it also isn’t a clean boost, it definitely colors the sound – a little brighter, and with the knob pulled out, a little muddy.

The Lemon AID, however, is clean. I can get a great clean boost with or without the extra “hair” on it. I can then also – and I have complete control over this – color the sound to cut highs or re-voice the sound. You have NO control over this with the Katana, and I haven’t seen the RC Booster with this much capability either.

This is extremely useful when you’re like me – a mercenary musician that is lucky enough to occasionally score overseas gigs. What this means is that when you’re overseas, they have different power – 220v instead of 120v – so you can’t use your amp, even if you could afford to ship it over. Bummer. So you rent a backline, and what happens is you’re never really sure what you’re gonna see when you get to the venue. It could be a Marshall, Fender, HiWatt, or something that is a complete POS. You wind up relying more on your pedalboard for your tones than you do your amp. Not optimal if you’re a tone freak, but the best working solution nonetheless.

Ok, why is that important? Typically, most boosts really only work well with a given amp, and on other amps they don’t give the desired response. As guitarists, we’re typically tone-chasers. We work long and hard to craft the perfect tone whether it’s for a clean sound, crunch sound, or blazing overdriven solo sound. Thus we find gear that works well in OUR rig. Maybe not in a different rig, but in ours. So, what happens when you run into different amps? It’s not your rig anymore, is it? Are you gonna be the guy going out and getting different pedals to match whatever helter skelter amp is it the venue? Really?! You HAVE that kind of scrill?

Nope, you aren’t gonna do that because it’s a supreme Pain In The @$$ and you’re a busted @$$ poor musician . You want to find the best tone possible for your rig. I did, and that’s the LemonAID. I may only do better if I cough up for Rockett Pedals’ Rockett Boost (but $400 is too pricey for me right now ). The thing sounded great through my ‘75 Marshall Mk 2 50w head – absolutely stunning. Sounded great through my ‘64 Fender Showman head as well.

What I found on this recent tour (I’m writing this from Germany right now) is that it can be tailored to work well with many different amps! Praise God Almighty! I have a sound that I can work with!! I can retain all the rich overtones that start to flower, bloom and cascade out of my instrument just the way I want. It’s truly fantastic and inspiring.

Go check one out (click on the pic to go to the site and look for a dealer near you). You’ll go to a “boutique” guitar shop more likely than not. Yes, it’s pricey at $189, but if you LOVE good tone you’re gonna wanna have one (maybe two).

Peace,

B

Value

I rented a Hyundai.

They pulled up this eggplant colored piece of shit, with the Coke-bottle flairs over the rear wheels, and I winced.  A Hyundai?  Wasn’t there anything else?

This was it.  We’d already waited in line for twenty minutes at Enterprise.  This had just come in.  Had just been cleaned.  There were no other cars.

So I got behind the wheel and took off down the expressway.

A thousand miles later, dropping off the car in downtown Boston, I regretted parting with it.  I debated making an offer for the automobile right there.  I’d become enamored of its purple color, had bonded with this machine with absolutely no rattles, great sound insulation, decent handling and phenomenal gas mileage.

That’s right, a Hyundai.

I remember the early nineties, when Eileen bought one.  For less than $5000.  A true POS.  With a carburetor after everybody had switched to fuel-injection.  This rickety machine truly decomposed on the go.  Parts were always falling off.  It’s a wonder she could drive it to the junkyard.  Where it went, when its value had been used up, but long before the death of other cars born that year.

And when people started showing up in Santa Fes a decade and a half later, I thought they were just too cheap to buy a CR-V.  Or a RAV4.  That’s how I knew someone was a cheapskate, if they bought a Hyundai.  A Korean car?

But that was before Samsung became the new Sony.  Before everything we thought we knew turned out to be wrong.

I drove BMWs for thirty plus years.  They are the ultimate driving machines, or one of them, but not only are repairs ultra-expensive, they’re frequent.  The purchase price is just the starting price.  Budget thousands a year just for maintenance.  And, if you read the car magazines, you’ll see that they’ve had numerous problems with their BMW test cars, like engines seizing up.  As for Mercedes…  Great car, but they don’t handle like a BMW.  And if you’re not looking for that handling finesse, maybe you should consider a…Hyundai?

Happened to me again in Denver.  Enterprise once again.  They were going to give us an HHR.  I’d rented a Malibu, not bad, but I’m not gonna drive around Colorado in this miniaturized imitation panel truck from the thirties.  No fucking way.  Didn’t they have anything else?

The clerk winked and said he could offer us a Hyundai…

SOLD!

That Sonata was smaller than the Azera I’d rented the previous fall, but just as lovable.  I’m telling you, if my present car got totaled this afternoon, I’d buy a Hyundai.  Why waste all that extra money on a shinier nameplate?  It’s just a car.  And, unlike its American counterparts, Hyundai is more than a car, it’s like a pet, it’s adoptable, you fall in love.

I mention all this because my eyes bugged out when I read the sales reports.  Yup, Cash For Clunkers ended, and sales swooned.  The right wingers thought the program was a disaster, everybody worried about the future.  You see GM’s sales dropped 45% from September 2009.  Chrysler was down 42.1%.  The Japanese superstars?  Toyota fell 12.6%.  And Honda 20.1%.  Granted, Ford only dropped 5.1%, and that’s good, but in the entire top ten, only three automakers showed increases.  The aforementioned BMW showed a slight uptick, of 3.6%.  But the fifth largest automaker,  Hyundai, sold 31,511 vehicles, a whopping 27.2% INCREASE!  And its Korean brother, Kia, sold 21,623 autos, a 24.4% increase!  HOLY SHIT!

Seems the brand is no longer tarnished.  People don’t think twice about buying a Hyundai.   They want something good, at a fair price, and they’re flocking to the Korean manufacturers.

What this means is it’s never too late for the music industry to regain the hearts and minds of the consumer.  But it must offer good products at fair prices.

Instead, the labels have been like GM.  Help us out!  Do something about file-trading!  Meanwhile, the consumer doesn’t want this overpriced Top Forty beat-driven crap.  Not in quantity.

And concert tickets?  I’d say they’re at Mercedes-Benz level prices, but they’re more akin to the numbers for Ferrari, or Rolls Royce. Maybe U2 and the Eagles can command such high prices, but most people can’t afford them.  And buying a concert ticket is worse than buying a car.  With the Internet, you can now comparison shop for automobiles.  The dreaded sales manager routine, the endless rip-off negotiation, has been to a great degree decimated.  But who knows what the price of a concert ticket will be until you click through to the final Ticketmaster page.  The add-ons are like undercoating and floor mats, shit you don’t want that they insist you buy.

And I don’t want to hear one more motherfucker say that lowering prices devalues the product, not fucking one.  People aren’t resisting Hyundais because they’re too inexpensive.  Hell, now Hyundai is marketing the Genesis, an almost as good Lexus/Acura/Infiniti for almost ten grand less.

This is the era of value.  Rather than insist that the customer come up to your price point, come down to his.  Meet him halfway.  Show that there’s a partnership, the same way Hyundai agreed to let you return your car if you lost your job.  An idea so good, other manufacturers imitated it.

People are hurting.  They want entertainment.  But they feel priced out by the music industry.  And they’re sick of being fucked in the ass. Time to rebuild.

Amen.

Now go forth and spread the gospel.

Well, here I am almost two weeks after my computer crashed, and I still have issues to work out.  Nope, the machine is running fine – Macs usually do better than PCs in this arena.  The issue is all those little things that we all install on our machines that make them “our machines.”

One of these is Tweetdeck, which I found incredibly useful.  I could arrangement the folks I follow into nice little groups – family here, musicians there, friends here, news there, blah blah blah.

So I go to download Tweetdeck and the program has changed.  I’m thinking, no problem, updates are generally a good thing.  The problem is that they changed the thing enough that 5 can no longer make columns and put things where I want. I have lost my main conduit to the outside world!!  Whatever shall I do?!

Yeah, I know.  This is a little less serious than forgetting to empty the litter box.  However, it gets me thinking.

I got along just fine without all that stuff no less than a few short months ago.  Maybe 6 of ‘em.  So what’s my problem?  My problem is not wanting to figure out something new.  Liking the way I got comfortable doing things and being too lazy to figure out the new way.

Seems back in the day when I was learning and building my chops on guitar, I didn’t shy away from those things that were tough and uncomfortable, as a matter of fact, I attacked them and conquered them so I could use these new skills as a Boy Scout might display honor badges (not very musical sometimes, but I was a teenager).

I certainly don’t treat my fitness this way.  Working out can definitely be uncomfortable.  Trust me.  No… really.

Nope, I think it’s just then when it comes to computers, I like to have things the way I know ‘em.  Change is something I do when I initiate it – not when it’s thrust upon me. However, life ain’t like that.  The last year has taught a lot of us that lesson, if we didn’t already know it.

So, what’s the lesson plan here?  I seem to be just rambling, and that’s probably because I need my Ritalin.

I think it’s the reminder that you have to go with the flow.  Keep my goals intact, but understand that reaching them may not be the straight road I initially planned.  It’s been tough relearning that one every now and then.  But again, I now have to remind myself of it.

Ok, that’s outta my system.  I gotta go install Tweetdeck again .

SkullCandy Inkd earbuds in Blue - click to go to site

Okay, nothing big here, but it’s one of those small things in life that can really affect the “secondary” quality of life.  I’m talking about headohones/earbuds here.  I’ve been dealing with a sub-standard set of earbuds for about 5 months.  Why?  ‘Cause I’m too freakin’ cheap to go and get new ones until it’s absolutely necessary.

Well, what this means is that I’ve been doing my many sessions of cardio with screechy music in my ears, as well as listening to my computer in public through the now-defunct high-end screech-buds.  Well… NO EFFIN’ MORE!!

I went to my local big box establishment and purchased some relatively inexpensive earbuds for my iPod so I could do my cardio w/o thinking about doing my cardio.  Guys, you know what I mean – nothing sucks @$$ more than having to do cardio without a distraction.  I’m thinking I’ll go in and get whatever Sony thing will fit the cash in my wallet.  Nope, the sales dude saw me come in and said, “you want something you can work out in w/o being bothered with outside noise, don’t ya?”

“Um… yeah.”

“Check these out.” He then hands me a set of Asyms by a company I’ve never heard of – SkullCandy.  Now, I didn’t opt for these, b/c my wallet was a size 20, not a size 40.  So, he turned me on to the next level – the Inkd (in blue of course).  I was in need and they were cool looking and better specs than the Sonys and as good as the Bose at half the price.

I get to the gym, which is playing it’s usual mix of rave/dance hall/disco that’s all made with loops by some non-musician that never tires of hearing a shitty sounding bass drum and yet can’t seem to sync it up with the actual beat of the song he’s “remixing.”  I open the package and pray that my little gamble works – I have way too much cardio ahead of me and a size zero wallet now for this to fail.

I set up the elliptical machine for maximum impact and went for it.

Lo & Behold!!  No outside crappy music perturbed my ears! The sound was great! It was full!  It had no harsh frequencies!! My wonderful workout mix was Alive! ALIVE!!

Um… sorry ’bout that.  It was just really cool.

The clarity of the music was inspiring.  So much so that I was able to achieve a personal best of 400 calories burned in 16min 20 sec.  Yup, I was a big, sweaty, happy dude.

This is what I’m talking about re: secondary quality of life; I have a better musical appreciation experience, and it inspires my performance to a better performance that can also make me better in mind, body, spirit or performance.  Music is a special thing.  When it’s good it’s better than almost anything.  And when it can be heard in the best possible conditions, it’s even better.

So… click the pic to surf to the site where you can learn more about the earbuds.  If you’re in need, you’ll be very happy.  You may be able be able to get better, but you’ll PAY dearly for it.  As for now, I’m a believer.

Peace

See The Changes

Remember the RAZR? Back in 2003, executives were overpaying to be the first on their block to sport the ultra-thin mobile device.  Then came the hipsters.  And eventually the kids.  You could buy a RAZR in different colors!  You could get one for free as wireless companies fought for customers.  Motorola was rolling in dough.  Motorola was the dominant player in American handsets, featuring a market share far into the double digits.

Today Motorola is number four in the U.S.  With a measly 6/9% share.  Furthermore, the phones it sells are not expensive and full-featured, Motorola’s barely makes a dent in the smartphone market.  Nokia has almost three times its overall market share, and all the profits are going to Apple and RIM.  Motorola is in turmoil.

Motorola focused on fashion.  Doesn’t the mainstream media tell us that’s what people care about, especially those pesky kids, who need a new mobile phone long before their contract is up?  You need pink to match your outfit.  Or do you?  Suddenly, you want a phone that does something, that has great usability, that allows you to get your e-mail and surf the Web.  Motorola didn’t focus on these features and now the company’s in a mobile death spiral.

Does this remind you of the major labels?  Somehow, they believe it’s still about momentary hits.  Let’s find someone good-looking, put them together with a beatmaker and convince radio and TV to play their track.  Only one problem…  If this paradigm is even successful, almost no one wants the album.  And no one believes the follow-up will be any good.

I read a fascinating story in the “Wall Street Journal” by Terry Teachout.  Entitled “The New-Media Crisis of 1949″, it chronicles the advent of TV, half a century ago.

Everybody who pooh-poohed the new medium was left behind.  Fred Allen, a big radio star…a has-been once TV took over.  But radio was better, it required you to use your imagination!  Isn’t that like labels telling customers that CDs are better than MP3s, and you need to buy the album?

Those companies that survived the transition from radio to TV invested heavily in the new medium, and lost a ton of money in the process.  NBC was losing the equivalent of $116,000 A DAY on their TV network.  But once you could simulcast a show across the country, people not only stopped listening to radio, they stayed home from movies and bars to watch Milton Berle.

Uncle Miltie was smart enough to transition to the new medium.  If you’re a recording act, are you wise enough to do the same thing?

Did you catch Thom Yorke’s statement that Radiohead wasn’t going to make any more albums?  Just tracks, that they would release when finished?  You could pooh-pooh his ideas, but isn’t this the guy who was ahead of the curve when he left the major label, asked his audience to pay what it wanted and still sold the CD and MP3s and made a fortune?  Much more than he would have made if he stayed at EMI?

And speaking of EMI…and Universal and Warner and Sony, they’re the antithesis of NBC back in the early days of television.  Rather than invest in the future, take losses in anticipation of making a killing when the penny drops, they’re hemorrhaging brain power and worker bees, all in the name of paying big execs millions and maintaining profitability (in that order).  No one’s doubling down.  You don’t see Jimmy Iovine forgoing his salary, setting an example when things are tough, like Rob Katz, Chairman of Vail Resorts.  If record execs are leading by example, they’re telling us to party like it’s 1999, that good times are FOREVER!  But my bank account says otherwise.  The mainstream media may be talking about a recovery, but everybody I know is in deep doo-doo.

We’re switching to files.  It’s just a matter of when the transition is complete.  Record companies controlled physical distribution, what have they done to control online distribution other than to sue file-traders?

They’re protecting their old business model.  Wouldn’t a seer say to start signing career artists?  To not even worry about hits?  If the money’s in touring, wouldn’t you be interested in a sustained road career rather than a momentary hit?

The labels have squandered their future, and they are never going to recover.

But too many of the acts are crying in their beer too.  You’ve got songwriters lamenting they can’t get paid.  Sure, the old days were good, but they’re through.  Publishers have to go to a percentage rate in order to facilitate new business models.  But they won’t, only hurting their fuel, their writers, who keep the enterprise alive.

It’s about an ongoing relationship with fans.  Monetizing wherever you can.  Fans want a lot of material.  If you’re releasing one album every three years, marketing this same project around the world, banging on the door of every potential buyer to get him to take notice, you’re doing it wrong!  The future isn’t about mass, the future is about niche.  Swing for the fences at your peril.  Go for the big check and you might lose your audience.

So the power moves to the touring business.  And agents and promoters only care who puts butts in seats.  They don’t care about your Mediabase numbers, never mind your SoundScan figures, they want to know how many people are willing to pay real money to come out and see you.  And if it’s not many, they’re not interested.  Anybody can put their music up on the Net, but not anybody can get a promoter to take a chance on them.  And, live venues are limited, the same way radio was.  Everybody can’t play every night and draw a crowd, there aren’t enough people, never mind enough people paying attention.

So you’ve got the touring end of the business, Live Nation and Ticketmaster, trying to survive in the new era.  They’re selling acts data and sponsorships.  The labels are pushing mysterious radio numbers.  Sure, there are performance royalties involved, but a hit doesn’t generate the revenue it used to, how are you going to help me make money, help me improve my margins?  The labels don’t care about this, they just want to tie up 360 degrees of your rights.

Knowing exactly who your fan is, that’s the key in the future.  And so far, the acts do it better than the labels.  But, if you capture the e-mail address at the point of ticket sale, and you continue to market to those who want messages, targeted missives, not spam, you can build something.  But old wave thinking is short term thinking, we haven’t got time to invest in our future, we’re focused on the bottom line!

Don’t focus on albums, focus on fan relationships.  A dedicated fan will want all the material, in whatever form it can be acquired.  He’s going to want the bootleg and the authorized live performance.  When you give away music, you don’t lose money, you invest in your future!

The Internet is the new medium.  It’s not only killed physical retail, it’s put a huge dent in radio and now television.  To try to corral people into old behaviors is as fruitless as getting people to refrain from buying televisions in 1949.

We live in an attention economy.  How can you get someone’s attention and keep it?  Advertising doesn’t work.  And train-wrecks and spectacles get no repeat viewing.  You’ve got to start small and honest, the antithesis of major media, who try to dun us into paying attention with their saturation advertising campaigns.  HELLO!  WE’RE NOT PAYING ATTENTION!

Who says the revenue generating transaction must be for recorded music on a disc.  Didn’t Radiohead sell an expensive collectible box of “In Rainbows” two years ago?  Why aren’t labels selling collectives on everything?  Because people don’t want a collectible of the crap being purveyed on Top Forty, it’s got no intrinsic value.

So know that if you’re an act, you’ve got start slow and small.  And sans perseverance, you’ll have no success.  You’ve got to develop, not only your marketing, but your music.  No one can predict when you’ll break through, nor what will cause your breakthrough.  Could be a track, could be a show, you’ve got to try things, always asking yourself what your fans desire.

In 1949, the public no longer desired radio.

In 2009, the public no longer desires CDs and commercial music radio.  Rather than try to prop up the old, invest in the new.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204683204574357332713730174.html
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Visit the archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/

Check it out

my thoughts on what to do as a new / unknown artistI posted a message on Twitter yesterday stating I thought The Beastie Boys and TopSpin Media “got it right” regarding how to sell music in this day and age. Here’s a link to their store:

[illcommunication.beastieboys.com]

Shortly thereafter, I got some responses from people stating the usual “yeah, if you’re an established artist – what if you’re just trying to get heard?” argument. In an interview I did recently this topic came up and I’ll reiterate what I said here.

If you are an unknown / lesser-known artist trying to get noticed / established:

* Establish your goals. What are you trying to do / accomplish? If you are looking for mainstream super-success (think Lady GaGa, Coldplay, U2, Justin Timberlake) – your best bet in my opinion is to look at major labels and prepare to share all revenue streams / creative control / music ownership. To reach that kind of critical mass these days your need old-school marketing muscle and that only comes from major labels. Good luck with that one.

If you’re forging your own path, read on.

* Forget thinking you are going to make any real money from record sales. Make your record cheaply (but great) and GIVE IT AWAY. As an artist you want as many people as possible to hear your work. Word of mouth is the only true marketing that matters.
To clarify:
Parter with a TopSpin or similar or build your own website, but what you NEED to do is this – give your music away as high-quality DRM-free MP3s. Collect people’s email info in exchange (which means having the infrastructure to do so) and start building your database of potential customers. Then, offer a variety of premium packages for sale and make them limited editions / scarce goods. Base the price and amount available on what you think you can sell. Make the packages special – make them by hand, sign them, make them unique, make them something YOU would want to have as a fan. Make a premium download available that includes high-resolution versions (for sale at a reasonable price) and include the download as something immediately available with any physical purchase. Sell T-shirts. Sell buttons, posters… whatever.

Don’t have a TopSpin as a partner? Use Amazon for your transactions and fulfillment. [www.amazon.com]

Use TuneCore to get your music everywhere. [www.tunecore.com]

Have a realistic idea of what you can expect to make from these and budget your recording appropriately.
The point is this: music IS free whether you want to believe that or not. Every piece of music you can think of is available free right now a click away. This is a fact – it sucks as the musician BUT THAT’S THE WAY IT IS (for now). So… have the public get what they want FROM YOU instead of a torrent site and garner good will in the process (plus build your database).

The Beastie Boys’ site offers everything you could possibly want in the formats you would want it in – available right from them, right now. The prices they are charging are more than you should be charging – they are established and you are not. Think this through.

The database you are amassing should not be abused, but used to inform people that are interested in what you do when you have something going on – like a few shows, or a tour, or a new record, or a webcast, etc.
Have your MySpace page, but get a site outside MySpace – it’s dying and reads as cheap / generic. Remove all Flash from your website. Remove all stupid intros and load-times. MAKE IT SIMPLE TO NAVIGATE AND EASY TO FIND AND HEAR MUSIC (but don’t autoplay). Constantly update your site with content – pictures, blogs, whatever. Give people a reason to return to your site all the time. Put up a bulletin board and start a community. Engage your fans (with caution!) Make cheap videos. Film yourself talking. Play shows. Make interesting things. Get a Twitter account. Be interesting. Be real. Submit your music to blogs that may be interested. NEVER CHASE TRENDS. Utilize the multitude of tools available to you for very little cost of any – Flickr / YouTube / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Twitter etc.

If you don’t know anything about new media or how people communicate these days, none of this will work. The role of an independent musician these days requires a mastery of first hand use of these tools. If you don’t get it – find someone who does to do this for you. If you are waiting around for the phone to ring or that A & R guy to show up at your gig – good luck, you’re going to be waiting a while.

Hope this helps, and I’ll scour responses for intelligent comments I can respond to.

TR

Whaddya tell a guy who’s getting ready to buy what could be considered an “I’ve Arrived” moment for guitar players, but doesn’t play for a living?

I told him to get it if he can – That way I can borrow it .

I remember being a boy and Farrah was EVERYWHERE!  Of course, like every other red-blooded, hetero male, I thought she was it.  She was the hot girl from Logan’s Run.  So, when Charlie’s Angels hit the tube, I was a happy young lad.  My mother had a friend that knew Farrah’s agent, Jay Bernstein, and I was the proud recipient of the famous Red Swimsuit poster – SIGNED! It said, “To Billy, Love Farrah.” It came along with a signed glossy as well.  This was right before they started appearing in every store known to mankind.

I thought I was In-like-Flynn, the Man, etc.

Of course, I wasn’t, but that didn’t matter.  The guys I hung around with all wanted to see it & made fun of me relentlessly for having it, but years later they all admitted they were just jealous.

Farrah was always a symbol to me of being a young boy, relatively innocent, and life was good AND easy.  Life’s still good, but a little more complicate as an adult .

Michael Jackson was always the young Jackson when I was a kid, and then Off the Wall came out.  Wow, I wanted to be starting something, too.  I played drums back then, and I was playing along with that record all the time.

By the time Thriller hit the stands, I was playing guitar, and “Beat It” was the riff to learn.  I never did buy the album.  Why should I?  All my friends had it and it was all over the radio.

Ed McMahon brings out a lot of sentimental, nostalgic stuff.  When I was young, I remember living with my Grandparents while Ma was finishing her degree.  Occassionally, my grandfather, Nonno, woud let me stay up and we’d watch the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson (& Ed McMahon, of course).  Anytime I ever heard about or saw either Johnny Carson or Ed McMahon, I always remember sitting on the floor in the den and looking back and up to Nonno.

Nonno rocked.  He really was the Man.  He and my Dad.

I’m really going to miss these three American icons, and the memories they elicit.