Well, if Gaetz can't be confirmed, maybe we'll get Ken Paxton. 🙄
I've been pleasantly surprised at how much good music can be found outside the confines of "the complex". Hard working folks who just enjoy what they do and don't seem to pine for great popularity. With a little business and marketing savvy, one doesn't have to be doomed by the complex or by Spotify.
(1) Mixing and mastering! Some of my favorite parts. Still can’t wait for the album!
(2) Re: music culture, Nashville, etc. Some thoughts for your Friday piece. There is no upper limit on good music that can be created. But I think there is an upper limit on music (good or not) capable of capturing a wide audience and selling millions of records. Not every artist can be Taylor Swift, because the world can’t support 100 million (probably more musical artists out there) Taylor Swifts. Which leads to a thought I have long contemplated: what is the proper role of music? Go back before the phonograph, and there are very few musical celebrities. The few that existed really only entertained the exceptionally wealthy and privileged (i.e., the common man in 1815 hadn’t heard a whole lot of Beethoven). But man is a musical creature. We sing, we dance, we make instruments sing. For most of human history, that meant church music or (presumably—it isn’t well documented to the best of my knowledge) work songs and drinking songs. The Taylor Swifts of the 100s, 1100s, and 1800s were still making music; they just made it for their localized communities. Perhaps part of the issue with Nashville is that so many of those aspiring artists want to record in million dollar studios and release songs that will be global hits when they would do far better playing a bar in their hometown.
The proliferation of music as performance art rather than communal engagement seems to gut human artistic creativity by making it the domain of those skilled enough or sexy enough or with the right connections or whatever to gain a billion followers online. We, culturally, have ceded it to the musical elites when music rightly belongs to all of us in the context of our small worlds.
To continue rambling, when I visited Hawaii, I went to a bar. There was a karaoke machine there, largely unused. A man stood up at one point and sang a song (I wish I could remember which one off the top). It was atrocious. He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. And I loved it. Because you don’t have to have Adele’s voice or John Mayer’s guitar skills or Paul Simon’s songwriting to make music. You can just sing. The world would be a better place if more of us sang more often, just because we are human, not because we’re the next American Idol.
I couldn’t agree more. 💯 Be content with a modest (but still sizable) following of loyal fans and an artist will never lack. But also: maybe the industrial machine could figure out that a hundred or hundreds of locally popular artists together can be as lucrative as a single superstar? Nope. They'll never stop chasing it. But artists need to stop chasing it. Great thoughts and thanks!
Well, if Gaetz can't be confirmed, maybe we'll get Ken Paxton. 🙄
I've been pleasantly surprised at how much good music can be found outside the confines of "the complex". Hard working folks who just enjoy what they do and don't seem to pine for great popularity. With a little business and marketing savvy, one doesn't have to be doomed by the complex or by Spotify.
(1) Mixing and mastering! Some of my favorite parts. Still can’t wait for the album!
(2) Re: music culture, Nashville, etc. Some thoughts for your Friday piece. There is no upper limit on good music that can be created. But I think there is an upper limit on music (good or not) capable of capturing a wide audience and selling millions of records. Not every artist can be Taylor Swift, because the world can’t support 100 million (probably more musical artists out there) Taylor Swifts. Which leads to a thought I have long contemplated: what is the proper role of music? Go back before the phonograph, and there are very few musical celebrities. The few that existed really only entertained the exceptionally wealthy and privileged (i.e., the common man in 1815 hadn’t heard a whole lot of Beethoven). But man is a musical creature. We sing, we dance, we make instruments sing. For most of human history, that meant church music or (presumably—it isn’t well documented to the best of my knowledge) work songs and drinking songs. The Taylor Swifts of the 100s, 1100s, and 1800s were still making music; they just made it for their localized communities. Perhaps part of the issue with Nashville is that so many of those aspiring artists want to record in million dollar studios and release songs that will be global hits when they would do far better playing a bar in their hometown.
The proliferation of music as performance art rather than communal engagement seems to gut human artistic creativity by making it the domain of those skilled enough or sexy enough or with the right connections or whatever to gain a billion followers online. We, culturally, have ceded it to the musical elites when music rightly belongs to all of us in the context of our small worlds.
To continue rambling, when I visited Hawaii, I went to a bar. There was a karaoke machine there, largely unused. A man stood up at one point and sang a song (I wish I could remember which one off the top). It was atrocious. He couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket. And I loved it. Because you don’t have to have Adele’s voice or John Mayer’s guitar skills or Paul Simon’s songwriting to make music. You can just sing. The world would be a better place if more of us sang more often, just because we are human, not because we’re the next American Idol.
I couldn’t agree more. 💯 Be content with a modest (but still sizable) following of loyal fans and an artist will never lack. But also: maybe the industrial machine could figure out that a hundred or hundreds of locally popular artists together can be as lucrative as a single superstar? Nope. They'll never stop chasing it. But artists need to stop chasing it. Great thoughts and thanks!
So balanced, Brian. Thanks.