How to Make it Big!

“Crazy people are not crazy if one accepts their reasoning” – Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Of Love and Other Demons

Telling my teachers and career advisor that I wanted to be a Rock Star didn’t, on the whole, go down well… the most frequent warning I had repeated to me was; “For every thousand bands that form, only one ‘makes it’”… Like they knew what they were talking about or something…

But despite the fact that this opinion was delivered by rote, never coming from someone with any experience in the field, the statement does have some truth to it. Having done a little work in bands, I feel able to offer some thoughts…

Firstly, and most simply, for every thousand bands that form, only one tends to actually take the prospect seriously, and have the stamina to take the challenge on properly – both artistically and practically; gotta have songs… (remember I am talking about rock bands, who tend to use actual instruments… things get simpler if you start talking about boy/girl bands and all that…)

The second, and much more significant, point is more subtle…

The person who starts being in bands, and is of the mindset to be part of that ‘one in a thousand’ band, very rarely realises, at the beginning, that they are, in fact, utterly deluded… in most cases, the majority I would argue, the person thinks that being a rock star is an attainable career goal, which is clearly delusional… but for a very plain reason, having little to do with ‘odds’ and absolutely nothing to do with ‘talent’… In the majority of cases the neophyte adopts the delusion of a Rock Star as a care-free, free-willed artist and explorer, assuming this to be the required qualifications of a full-fledged Metal Lord…

Just like I did…

The true nature of a successful Rock Star is quite different… the person who will become Iconic, a legend of the Genre, is the person who sees the implicit financial and commercial aspects of the nature of modern popular music… their basic operating principles are not progressive in anyway, but are grounded in business entrepreneurship. The successful band, the ‘one in a thousand’ that ‘makes it big’ will have members who embody the profit-making agenda…

Not that this means that the music itself will be trite and worthless… but when it isn’t, it’ just an accident a fluke… look at Tool, specifically ‘Hooker with a Penis’[1]… great band… under no illusions…

…the primary idea of any ‘successful’ band, like all modern businesses, is not to produce goods, but to produce a brand that sells stuff… sells anything…

…and that’s why Metallica Guitar Hero exists…

Things, of course, don’t have to be like that… you could actually take Music seriously… actually explore the limits of your own musical imagination, as limited or as expansive as they may be… nowhere near as glamorous as the ‘dreams’ that are handed down to you, but you will be in the dubious situation of thinking for yourself…

Bing!x – www.bing-em-all.blogpot.com

[1] Aenima, ‘Hooker with a Penis’ http://www.toolband.com/album/index.html

Freaks is grass roots...

Every other Thursday for the last month I have been helping out at a place called the Vault. The place has a reputation for being a bit of, err, drum and bass/speed garage[1] place… basically not a Rock vibe at all… but on Thursdays the venue has started putting on Rock shows; band based shows… and that’s why I’ve been helping out… however things have not gone swimmingly at all…

Trying to set up a Rock night in Roth is a fucking cool idea… trying to do it using the framework of profit making is probably not the coolest thing in the world and, if truth be told, a little daft…

The place is apparently a 400 capacity venue, has a large bar downstairs where the concert room is and a smaller bar upstairs where the entrance is… the venue itself has a goods entrance – good if you are lugging heavy amplifiers , cabs and drums – and has a small backstage area… the stage itself is respectable enough… I’ve played much more incommodious stages...

The trouble is that no one has been coming to the shows… £4 on the door helps to explain that… especially when there is a gig at another venue, on the same night that charges f**k all on the door… see, I think that the problem is that Rock or Metal, like other fringe music genres, relies on a strong sense of solidarity, about building a scene, where the few separate Freaks can meet and let loose in a place where they can get their tunes administered to them at the volumes the music was designed for…

You can’t just get a fairly cool room, book a load of local Yahoos to come a make a f**ing row and then charge people £4 to stand in an largely empty room and clap politely… the promoter was bemused; “why didn’t the bands bring people? If there are 5 lads in a band, they must know 5 other lads… we should charge the bands for playing if they don’t bring people in…”

…chances are mate, the kid is probably in a band with the only other people he knows… unless they are indie kids… I’ve never understood it, but that lot always know loads of folk…

What we can learn though, is the importance of developing new ‘institutions’ by nurturing latent and dispersed interests that are common amongst an emerging network of like-minded people… at least; it is important if you want an enduring and wholesome institution… anything built on the principles of profit, by it’s nature, can only exist if it makes cash… happiness, fairness, positive contributions to society, all this can happen too, but only by accident, as a side-effect, only encouraged if it is thought to stimulate profit in someway…

…what a revelation…

And we shouldn’t be surprised that a non-establishment-oriented project, based on top-down Establishment operating procedures, went tits up…

Look at Libraries, Youth Services, Worker Education Association… there are attempts run all from the top with Managerialisms and Jargon… Who knows how to run the Library better than the people who work there? Who knows how to help young people better than people who help young people? As for the Workers Education Association, well, there’s a reason we don’t know what it is… it don’t make cash… ‘tain’t ‘posed to…

To achieve different objectives you need to reform basic operating principles; if you don’t, if you try and create something cool within the Establishment framework at some point your project will become bent or twisted to accommodate to the pressure exerted by the framework itself…

Rotherham Renaissance got back in touch with me[2]; they got some Man, some big ‘executive’ male to explain to me that “There are currently no projects proposed which will employ wind or hydro electric power, however, solar panels will be introduced as part of the refurbishment of Rotherham Rail Station.”[3]

I suppose I can’t claim that energy issues didn’t even cross the minds of Elite planners of Rotherham future, but it is obvious that their thinking was something like ‘it would be nice if we could have green energy, but if not - never mind…”

…like peak-oil or sky-high energy bills are optional… it’d be nice if we could deal with those things, but if not, never mind…

Bing!x - www.bing-em-all.blogspot.com

[1] Don’t know what those words mean… I heard someone say them…
[2] See Rotherham Renaissance Pt 1 + 2 @ www.bing-em-all.blogspot.com
[3] Private Correspondence from Mike Shires – reckons he’s an Implementation Team Manager… I assume he’s something to do with Rotherham Renaissance…