On Being A Musician

there seem to be two types of new musicians that hit me up- whether via myspace or in person:

1) the type that wants me to hear their demos

or

2) the type that wants me to tell them how to make it as a musician

the question is this: what is "it"?

yeah, it sounds like a Clinton deposition ("what IS the meaning of IT?")

so i'm going to say this to everyone so i may not have to repeat it again in a crowded club during the third opening act's set and blow out my voice

just keep doing it yourself for as long as it makes sense

i know, i know..."DIY" is such a thrown around, often-used, often-abused term...but it's true, true, true

if you're a musician in a new band- unsigned especially- you have to get a couple of things to shine thru those rose-tinted "we're gonna sell a million records and be as big as Zeppelin" glasses you've been wearing pretty fast:

1) it's no longer about how many records you sell. it's about how much money you make at selling the ones you do sell

soundscans and that entire generation of determining a band's worthiness to live by a sales figure is out the door (and not soon enough.) who cares if you sell 70,000 units on a record label if you'll never see a penny for any of it past that initial advance you got? what the hell is the point? (which goes to a future post i'll make- you may not even need a record label anymore either. set your own label up and keep everything in-house or hire independent contractors to do your marketing and publicity. how is this possible to even consider? because retailers are becoming less and less useful to you as a band. more later on that..)

but- back to my point- if you sell 30,000 records on your own, directly to your fans, and you can quit your day job and have some money in the bank for the upcoming tour, fixing the van or for the next studio time- isn't that the point?

because it sure is now.

there's no one in the industry to impress anymore. it's not about showing how big you are. it's about showing how smart you are.

and- why turn over your work to someone else to own and that you'll only end up fighting with forever to get the rights back to, and, at the same time, end up being indentured to financially just as long?

2) merch is your game, man. don't blow it.

there's a standard rule of thumb in business when you're dealing with customers, and, in your case, your fans: your best customers are your current ones and the second best customers are the ones you recently lost (figuring they'll be the easiest to get to come back and try you out again.)

your fans are dedicated to you. they love you. they get what you're about and they want to own everything you create. some of them are going to be asses and download all of your music for free and not buy much at all. i don't think those people are real fans. they're just lazy. kinda like those friends that come over to your party and don't bring anything. they're just moochers. so don't work for them- work for the ones that own two of your shirts, the ones that bought your pins, all of your stickers, and will buy the limited-edition CD jewel-cased packaging you did when you reissued your first few EPs together as one album. these fans will keep you out of debt, gang, so treat them like gold. 

figure out how to treat them like gold.

and 3) digital-only releases are the way to go. keep the hard-cased CDs around for special-packaging. if you really want to create an actual CD to hand out, make it special or keep it cheap. you got two ways to go on that. if you're just trying to get your name out at first- then either go digital-download card or a cheap CD package. past that, once you get a fan-base of a decent size built up, then start creating limited-edition CD packages for your real fans and sell them at your merch booth, but still release your stuff, on your own, digitally, for the world to discover.

past all of that- it's all about knowing how to market yourself on the internet and guerilla-marketing on the street.

it's the wild west right now in the music business so there are no bad ideas.

no one knows what the fuck they're doing and that's the fun part.

i've got more thoughts and i'll share them in future postings, def.

thiago's look at me pissed off because i haven't played with him tonight. he's got his rope in his mouth and he's whining...

typical boy.

-mike

On Craig Owens

This is a really painful first blog to write, actually. I wish it could have been about some of the other dozen topics I had been kicking around the past week in my head but today kinda changed all of that.

At about 12:05pm today, I got an IM from photographer and close friend of Craig Owens', Nicole Rork, letting me know about a posting Craig had made to his website 18 minutes earlier where he admitted that he had tried to overdose yesterday afternoon (Sunday, July 20) at his home in Michigan. He went on to say in the post that he had been to the ER during that afternoon, was released and was planning to admit himself into a "mental clinic", as he described it, but that he was okay and that everything was going to be fine.

It was so strange because I just had received in the mail from Amazon.com a copy of the Chiodos Bros.' The Heartless Control Everything and was opening the box the moment Nicole IM'd me with the news of Craig. Just weird.

I then made a flurry of phone calls to his publicist, manager and Chiodos band mates, confirming the story and learning that Craig was already back home and resting with his family.

AP has a cover story with Craig coming out in a few weeks (I wrote it) and in it he describes how hard it has been for him to get used to the constant criticism a band receives as they get bigger. He's just a super-sensitive guy: in one sense, he cares immensely about you but in the other, he really does get hurt by many of the flippant negative comments posted on message boards. He's been struggling with this for quite some time and it's only gotten worse as the pressure has increased on he and the band to take it to the next level.

When I went up to his place to do the interview for the story, it was the first time I had gotten to spend more than a few hours with him and I really began to see that other side of him that not a lot of people have seen regularly: He's always full of ideas, his talents and heart are huge, and he can read anyone like a book, instantly caring about them. He loves horror movies, basketball and reads a crap load of books. The guy is just a decent person.

But he's had his struggles and now has a growing support group of friends and industry people that are surrounding him with help, love and advice; telling him to ignore the critics and believe in himself thoroughly- not just when it comes to his career (which is in full-motion currently.)

Chiodos performed an absolutely-killer set at the Detroit Warped tour last Friday (7/18/08), he has plans for more Cinematic Sunrise dates and a solo gig in Pontiac, Michigan on July 26th, and his record label is repackaging Bone Palace Ballet with a DVD and four new Chiodos songs for a holiday release. He has plenty of things to look forward to over the next few months.

When I was speaking with his management and band mates, they had asked me if we would not run this story about his suicide attempt as they had talked to Craig and he had decided to delete the post to his website. They just felt that this was more of a private matter and that he needed to deal with this with his family and not in the public eye at this point as it would have caused even more pressure on him and given him more questions to answer. So, I obliged and didn't run it today out of respect for Craig, despite his original posting of the news to his website for less than an hour.

Despite what you may think, this give-and-take between artists and press happens all the time. If you work with them in their time of need, they learn to trust you and the relationship you have with them just becomes more solid. It's that "off the record" trust that comes with being a journalist. I've been doing this for 23 years and it wouldn't have been the first time we had been asked for some privacy on a matter with an artist.

Later this afternoon, absolutepunk.net ran the story anyway with a link to the original cache from his website of his journal posting of the story. By 13 pages into the news post on absolutepunk, there were comments from posters saying he was a failure at killing himself, unsubstantiated rumor-spreading of Craig punching girls and further slagging on his band and he, personally.

I dunno, sometimes doing the right thing is just better and I know I'll be able to live with myself about not running it when I could have.

I hope you're well, Craig.