To celebrate 92 years of Finnish Independence I beat the English 3-0 tonight in a squash match played at the tail end of a hellish hangover, courtesy of The Animal Farm Xmas do… Thanks to all those who came to the Esteban gig. What a fine fine show it was, too! Thanks also to Lost Aura for providing stellar support.

Been reading a business book called Wikinomics, a book about the growing trend in getting a lot of people to pitch in to a project. Crowd sourcing, I believe, it is also called. Works wonder in big scientific projects and small community stuff alike. A lotta cooks don’t spoil the broth, as the updated saying goes.

I thought that it would work well in music, too. Like, wouldn’t it be great if a lot of artists would share their knowledge on promoters and venues? On media contacts? So we set up a google document into which I invited a whole bunch of people to enter their contacts from within their sphere of influence. The idea being that a band from Manchester will know the Manchester area and a band from Bristol will know the Bristol area. If both bands share their info, both bands will know both areas well. Both can go on to great gigging success from there. Of course, an enterprising band will find out all this info anyway, but the point of doing it ensemble is to ease the burden and get information flowing.

The take up, to my surprise, was a bit on the reserved side. Maybe there are deep seated jealousies and rivalries at play here. I think that those are dumb things. Share and share alike. If you want to be cool and prosperous, give me a shout to take part in this.

Selling Out – I Would If Anyone Was Buying

Back in the day, when the band I was with was touring the world, I was often asked by journalists about selling out and whether we would ever do it. I was baffled by the question and on occasion asked the journalists to describe what selling out looked like. To this day I haven’t got a satisfactory answer out of anyone.

It seems to centre around the fact that at some point someone does something so good that people start buying it in numbers. As in, The Chilis brought out BloodSugarSexMagic. That was the point at which they sold out, accoding to a mate of mine who was a hard core fan.

In the independent punk world, in which yours truly cut his teeth, it was all about resisting the charms of big record companies.

In my personal experience, all businesses operate according to the laws of economics, including the coolest indies and the biggest majors. If you don’t make money for them, you won’t be a recording artist for too long.

As an artist, I always wanted lots of people to love my stuff. If I’m honest, I thought that anyone who didn’t unreservedly love my stuff was an idiot. After all, as artists we feel that our music has a divine right to be popular. Consequently, it would have been intellectually dishonest of me to say that I wouldn’t ever want to sign with a major if that major would have afforded me the distribution and marketing to reach the widest possible audience. And if that audience really loved my record, I would have been chuffed to bits.

So, I fail the sell out test miserably. I positively want to sell out, if anyone’s buying.

And Here’s The Caveat

But, you see, sucking Satan’s cock isn’t my idea of a great night out. I don’t consider selling one’s music through an indie any different to selling it thru a schmindie. What matters is artistic endeavour. If you start off with the position that you do this because you bloody have to, because you want to create art that satisfies your thirst to create something that hasn’t been done before, you will always be cool. Doesn’t matter how you sell it and in what quantities.

What gets me is that so many people in the art of making music settle for so much less. They conform to the idea of what a  band in their genre should look, sound, smell and feel like. They go through the motions of being in a band. Noise for intro, four bars of punk, screamo bit, followed by mosh pit bit. Or, if you’re in another genre, perhaps you introduce beat, tell everyone who’s in the house, remind people of the respect you no doubt have in your hood, introduce guest vocalist who talks about nice cars.

“Great!” says the marketing guy.

“Bullshit!” says anyone with a heart.