Like most Americans, I don’t have much of an appreciation for Bobsleigh racing. Or at least I didn’t. Not a lot of youth leagues in Florida promoted the sliding sports when I was a kid. That being said, watching the luge, skeleton and bobsleigh events first hand, has changed my perspective.
Besides the tights, it’s a pretty tough sport. These guys lay flat on a sled (face down forwards for skeleton and on their back feet first for luge), dive down a steep ice track and hit speeds between 80 and 90 mph Not for the faint of heart and not a lot of room for error (as you saw in the training leading up to the Olympics). It is graceful insanity.
I had the benefit of working for Olympic Broadcasting for the 2010 Vancouver games and was able to sit track side for most all of the sliding events. Here is my vid of USA-1 (AKA Night Train) winning the gold medal in men’s 4 man bobsleigh. Keep in mind the difference between gold, silver and bronze is 10ths of seconds and the difference between first place and 21st place is about a second and a half. Pretty outstanding.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Thursday, May 21, 2009
REO Speedwagon, Abu Ghraib and Desert Islands
My Desert Island 5 (the five records I would want if I were ever stranded on a desert Island) are: Unforgettable Fire (U2), Shake Your Money Maker (The Black Crowes), Flaming Red (Patty Griffin), Heartbreaker (Ryan Adams) and So Far (Crosby, Stills and Nash). However, truth be told, if those were the only five records I had on a desert island, I’m pretty sure I’d eventually want to suck my eardrums out with a plunger.
Who in the world wants to listen to the same 5 albums over and over again? I don’t know a human being that could handle that. That kind of repetition is something you would have found at Abu Ghraib alongside waterboarding.
There is nothing more depressing than going through life unmoved. Static. Blasé. We all clutch to the inherent sense that we deserved to be wowed; to live in some sense of amazement or awe. But all the things we love...movies, music, cars, food…cannot escape the law of diminishing returns: no matter how great something is the first time, the more you listen to, experience, taste or encounter it, its impact becomes weaker.
It’s true. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t constantly be making and/or looking for new records. We’d be listening to the first thing that blew our skirts up. I’d still be clutching a Realistic tape recorder jamming REO Speedwagon’s High Infidelity.
But that’s a good thing…
It is because of music’s inability to ultimately satisfy our artistic/emotional itch that we push forward to find something new. We want to find something that builds off the brilliance of the old and connects with where we are and might be going.
I think that is what we are trying to do at Brite Revolution.
We are a new music destination. We built Brite to constantly bring people music from the artists they love and new artists they need to love. We cut through the background noise, find those things that promise to inspire, connect, move and resonate with people. We know the value of an artist’s back catalog, but we want to be about new experiences, new renderings of great ideas…new music.
I’m not going to lie. I still dig me some Speedwagon on occasion. Riding The Storm Out is a wondrous guilty pleasure when speeding through the back streets on the way home at 2 AM. However, nothing will replace that moment when you hear a new song that’s the perfect storm of guitar parts, lyrics and performance. When we quit having those discoveries, we might as well be living on a desert island.
Who in the world wants to listen to the same 5 albums over and over again? I don’t know a human being that could handle that. That kind of repetition is something you would have found at Abu Ghraib alongside waterboarding.
There is nothing more depressing than going through life unmoved. Static. Blasé. We all clutch to the inherent sense that we deserved to be wowed; to live in some sense of amazement or awe. But all the things we love...movies, music, cars, food…cannot escape the law of diminishing returns: no matter how great something is the first time, the more you listen to, experience, taste or encounter it, its impact becomes weaker.
It’s true. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t constantly be making and/or looking for new records. We’d be listening to the first thing that blew our skirts up. I’d still be clutching a Realistic tape recorder jamming REO Speedwagon’s High Infidelity.
But that’s a good thing…
It is because of music’s inability to ultimately satisfy our artistic/emotional itch that we push forward to find something new. We want to find something that builds off the brilliance of the old and connects with where we are and might be going.
I think that is what we are trying to do at Brite Revolution.
We are a new music destination. We built Brite to constantly bring people music from the artists they love and new artists they need to love. We cut through the background noise, find those things that promise to inspire, connect, move and resonate with people. We know the value of an artist’s back catalog, but we want to be about new experiences, new renderings of great ideas…new music.
I’m not going to lie. I still dig me some Speedwagon on occasion. Riding The Storm Out is a wondrous guilty pleasure when speeding through the back streets on the way home at 2 AM. However, nothing will replace that moment when you hear a new song that’s the perfect storm of guitar parts, lyrics and performance. When we quit having those discoveries, we might as well be living on a desert island.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Historical Revision? Maybe.
I was just told by my sister that she was the one holding the fishing pole, not my brother, and that we were in Massachusetts visiting my father's parents, not on the St. John's river. There is something that sounds right about that, but I can't figure out why I have such vivid memories of that experience being in Jacksonville. Which, I guess kind of proves my point regarding the previous post...memory can be deceptive. We often remember what we want to remember. I do, however, remember this. I got a fish hook and worm pushed through my eyelid. Massachusetts or Florida, that still sucks (Up there with the time I glued my eyelids shut with airplane modeling glue or when I locked myself in the old refrigerator on our back porch...but those are stories for another time).
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Fishhooks and Eyelids
When I was about five or so my family went cane-pole fishing off the bulkhead of the St. John’s River in Jacksonville. We weren’t really the cane-pole fishing kind of family, but for some reason we were all there standing along side North Florida’s finest residents as they dropped chicken coop laying mash in the water to attract schools of mullet (if you ever want to catch a mullet, laying mash is the key. They don’t bite hooks, but if you drop the mash in the water, they will swarm to the spot and you can snag them with your line. Pretty effective, actually.)
I was too young to be trusted with a hook and live bate and I remember standing back a few feet watching as everyone plunked their lines into the brackish water of the then-poisonous waters of the St. John’s.
My brother (who was 11 or 12 at the time) is a bit of a showman and I remember his silhouette on the rough concrete bulkhead and the swooshing sound of the cane pole as he whipped it through the air trying to cast the uncastable length of fishing line. You see, you don’t cast cane poles. They have about 8 feet of line. The whole point is that you hang the pole over the water and let the filament dangle straight down. If you want your bait to go deeper, you have to stick your pole closer to the water. Watching him was like watching a scene in A River Runs Through it, minus the fly fishing rods and fundamental understanding of the fishing.
The reason this is such a pronounced memory for me is because on what quickly became his final backward cast of the day, his line laded on my face. He then jerked the pole as hard as he could driving the hook’s barb, replete with a freshly skewered dirt-worm, through my left eyelid. I can still feel the dull tug as my eyelid fought against the hook, line and pole. The swish of the line and sight of the dark worm wiggling on top of my eyeball is fresh in my mind.
I was little and screamed like a bitch. It took three people to get the hook out, but I was fine.
I can recall every detail of that story in Technicolor. It was as though it was yesterday. I can see my folks, the white caps on the river and the bend of my brother’s rod as he unknowingly attempted to rob me of my ability to blink. But no one in my family seems to recall this story as vividly as I. Perhaps it is because they didn’t have an impaled night crawler ground into their pupils by a rusted piece of metal that was piercing their eyelid, but there recollection is far more vague.
I know that memories have a way of morphing over time. Getting bigger. More colorful. That’s just part of looking backwards at things. It seems to me, however, that as the music business continues to collapse under its own weight and fall into the grave it has spent the last couple of decades digging for itself, we shouldn’t spend too much time looking back at the good old days. It just wasn’t all that great.
(I’m not talking about the music…I’m talking about the music business.)
Radio and record stores were the only means of getting the word out (besides live shows) and access to these golden roads of promotion were granted by a very little few. Long gone are the days when Johnny Cash and Elvis could glad-hand disc jockies into playing their new hit so that they could be showered with new Cadillacs the following morning. Once radio became more corporate, it has been virtually impossible for anyone without the label’s promotional machine to see airplay of any significance. It cost hundreds of thousands to promote a single into the winner’s circle of the Top 40.
What more, the cost of making records was extraordinary and record companies made usurious loans to artists. For every arena rock band with a silver spoon around their neck, there 1,000 other bands optioned to the teeth with no hope of seeing a profit in their professional lifetime.
The Internet is the great equalizer. It allows artists to build social movements. It doesn’t require a song to fit a certain radio format for it to get out to people. Artists can connect with their fans. They can blog, build email lists, run a Facebook campaign to tell people about their music.
Protools has allowed artists to make records in their basements and, in the right hands, those records can sound as good as anything produced in a million dollar NYC studio. This new day and age allows people to have CAREERS! And all without the help of Atlantic Records.
Listen. Don’t get me wrong. Record labels have done great things. I’m just saying that every majorly successful business model in the last 10 years worked because it created new, unheard of freedoms for the users of its product. Google, Yahoo, AOL….Brite Revolution.
Dude. $4.99. Are you kidding? That’s an extra value meal. That’s a latte. You couldn’t get two gallons of gas for that in some places. $4.99 and you get everything. New music from each artist every month. Brand new songs. On Brite. From every artist. First. Can’t get those songs anywhere else and you are getting it from ALL the artists. Plus alternate versions of older songs. That’s like 80 songs available at any given time in a month. iTunes isn’t doing that. E-music isnt’. Pandora isn't. Nobody is.
$4.99.
And we’ll even get 10% to the non-profit of your choice. That’s ridiculous. It’s offensive. And that would never have been possible in “the good old days”.
So, hey people. Let’s put things in perspective. The times they are a changing, but you know what…good! We have an opportunity. A chance to build the new infrastructure that frees the artist, the fan and the people trying to make a difference.
It’s ok to remember the good ole’ days. They gave us wonderful music. But chances are in the wave of nostalgia, you are forgetting that their was a fishhook in your eye.
Join the Revolution!
I was too young to be trusted with a hook and live bate and I remember standing back a few feet watching as everyone plunked their lines into the brackish water of the then-poisonous waters of the St. John’s.
My brother (who was 11 or 12 at the time) is a bit of a showman and I remember his silhouette on the rough concrete bulkhead and the swooshing sound of the cane pole as he whipped it through the air trying to cast the uncastable length of fishing line. You see, you don’t cast cane poles. They have about 8 feet of line. The whole point is that you hang the pole over the water and let the filament dangle straight down. If you want your bait to go deeper, you have to stick your pole closer to the water. Watching him was like watching a scene in A River Runs Through it, minus the fly fishing rods and fundamental understanding of the fishing.
The reason this is such a pronounced memory for me is because on what quickly became his final backward cast of the day, his line laded on my face. He then jerked the pole as hard as he could driving the hook’s barb, replete with a freshly skewered dirt-worm, through my left eyelid. I can still feel the dull tug as my eyelid fought against the hook, line and pole. The swish of the line and sight of the dark worm wiggling on top of my eyeball is fresh in my mind.
I was little and screamed like a bitch. It took three people to get the hook out, but I was fine.
I can recall every detail of that story in Technicolor. It was as though it was yesterday. I can see my folks, the white caps on the river and the bend of my brother’s rod as he unknowingly attempted to rob me of my ability to blink. But no one in my family seems to recall this story as vividly as I. Perhaps it is because they didn’t have an impaled night crawler ground into their pupils by a rusted piece of metal that was piercing their eyelid, but there recollection is far more vague.
I know that memories have a way of morphing over time. Getting bigger. More colorful. That’s just part of looking backwards at things. It seems to me, however, that as the music business continues to collapse under its own weight and fall into the grave it has spent the last couple of decades digging for itself, we shouldn’t spend too much time looking back at the good old days. It just wasn’t all that great.
(I’m not talking about the music…I’m talking about the music business.)
Radio and record stores were the only means of getting the word out (besides live shows) and access to these golden roads of promotion were granted by a very little few. Long gone are the days when Johnny Cash and Elvis could glad-hand disc jockies into playing their new hit so that they could be showered with new Cadillacs the following morning. Once radio became more corporate, it has been virtually impossible for anyone without the label’s promotional machine to see airplay of any significance. It cost hundreds of thousands to promote a single into the winner’s circle of the Top 40.
What more, the cost of making records was extraordinary and record companies made usurious loans to artists. For every arena rock band with a silver spoon around their neck, there 1,000 other bands optioned to the teeth with no hope of seeing a profit in their professional lifetime.
The Internet is the great equalizer. It allows artists to build social movements. It doesn’t require a song to fit a certain radio format for it to get out to people. Artists can connect with their fans. They can blog, build email lists, run a Facebook campaign to tell people about their music.
Protools has allowed artists to make records in their basements and, in the right hands, those records can sound as good as anything produced in a million dollar NYC studio. This new day and age allows people to have CAREERS! And all without the help of Atlantic Records.
Listen. Don’t get me wrong. Record labels have done great things. I’m just saying that every majorly successful business model in the last 10 years worked because it created new, unheard of freedoms for the users of its product. Google, Yahoo, AOL….Brite Revolution.
Dude. $4.99. Are you kidding? That’s an extra value meal. That’s a latte. You couldn’t get two gallons of gas for that in some places. $4.99 and you get everything. New music from each artist every month. Brand new songs. On Brite. From every artist. First. Can’t get those songs anywhere else and you are getting it from ALL the artists. Plus alternate versions of older songs. That’s like 80 songs available at any given time in a month. iTunes isn’t doing that. E-music isnt’. Pandora isn't. Nobody is.
$4.99.
And we’ll even get 10% to the non-profit of your choice. That’s ridiculous. It’s offensive. And that would never have been possible in “the good old days”.
So, hey people. Let’s put things in perspective. The times they are a changing, but you know what…good! We have an opportunity. A chance to build the new infrastructure that frees the artist, the fan and the people trying to make a difference.
It’s ok to remember the good ole’ days. They gave us wonderful music. But chances are in the wave of nostalgia, you are forgetting that their was a fishhook in your eye.
Join the Revolution!
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
An Open Letter To Bob Lefsetz
Bob,
Man, I hear you. A lot of us writing songs and singing here in Nashville do. We’ve been living this for a long time, watching the smoke rise from the funeral pyres down on Music Row.
Just so you know…there are a lot of us down here that haven’t been sitting around waiting for the Death Star sized companies to take notice and validate our artistic careers. The people that wait on record deals are the ones wearing paper hats, shoveling fries out of drive through windows. The real musicians here have hit the road, built followings and sold tens of thousands of records out of the backs of their vans. They have created careers, gotten TV and movie placements and left a boot print on the music business’ wrinkly ass.
A group of us just started a web site. It’s called Brite Revolution. We pay artists that have big grassroots followings to release new, original songs every month. We don’t recoup. We don’t take their publishing or masters. All we ask is for the exclusive rights to those songs for two months on our site. We even give 30% of our gross subscription revenues back to the artists and 10% to non-profit causes (5% goes to the causes chosen by artists and 5% go to causes chosen by users). Brite only costs $4.99 to subscribe. MP3s are DRM free and you can download all you want, as many times as you want from whomever you want.
Isn’t this what you’ve been talking about all this time? We are doing it and it’s working! People are signing up and our artists are being set free to create, the fans are getting new music all the time (40 NEW songs a month), we are able to promote proven and new talent and non-profit causes are being helped out.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this? If there is a way to make this deal better for artists and the fans, then we will do it.
We are not so arrogant as to say that Brite Revolution is the answer to everything that is wrong with the music business, but it is an answer. And that’s what the music business seems to be heading towards…a lot of different answers. As for ours, it is one that serves these artists and their fans. One that doesn’t bend over the consumer by trying to beat the digital age into submission and regain full-control over the creative process and peoples musical palates.
Don’t ream us, Bob. Just take a look. We are taking a big risk with this company, but none of us went into the music industry because of it promised security. This risk is worth it, I think. We have only been launched for 40 days and time will tell. But as far as we are concerned, there is strength in numbers and we’ve found some of the best people with whom we could circle the wagons.
Thanks,
Billy Cerveny
Brite Revolution
Man, I hear you. A lot of us writing songs and singing here in Nashville do. We’ve been living this for a long time, watching the smoke rise from the funeral pyres down on Music Row.
Just so you know…there are a lot of us down here that haven’t been sitting around waiting for the Death Star sized companies to take notice and validate our artistic careers. The people that wait on record deals are the ones wearing paper hats, shoveling fries out of drive through windows. The real musicians here have hit the road, built followings and sold tens of thousands of records out of the backs of their vans. They have created careers, gotten TV and movie placements and left a boot print on the music business’ wrinkly ass.
A group of us just started a web site. It’s called Brite Revolution. We pay artists that have big grassroots followings to release new, original songs every month. We don’t recoup. We don’t take their publishing or masters. All we ask is for the exclusive rights to those songs for two months on our site. We even give 30% of our gross subscription revenues back to the artists and 10% to non-profit causes (5% goes to the causes chosen by artists and 5% go to causes chosen by users). Brite only costs $4.99 to subscribe. MP3s are DRM free and you can download all you want, as many times as you want from whomever you want.
Isn’t this what you’ve been talking about all this time? We are doing it and it’s working! People are signing up and our artists are being set free to create, the fans are getting new music all the time (40 NEW songs a month), we are able to promote proven and new talent and non-profit causes are being helped out.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this? If there is a way to make this deal better for artists and the fans, then we will do it.
We are not so arrogant as to say that Brite Revolution is the answer to everything that is wrong with the music business, but it is an answer. And that’s what the music business seems to be heading towards…a lot of different answers. As for ours, it is one that serves these artists and their fans. One that doesn’t bend over the consumer by trying to beat the digital age into submission and regain full-control over the creative process and peoples musical palates.
Don’t ream us, Bob. Just take a look. We are taking a big risk with this company, but none of us went into the music industry because of it promised security. This risk is worth it, I think. We have only been launched for 40 days and time will tell. But as far as we are concerned, there is strength in numbers and we’ve found some of the best people with whom we could circle the wagons.
Thanks,
Billy Cerveny
Brite Revolution
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Brown Liquor and Pork Rinds
My friend BJ was working as a second engineer at a studio here in Nashville a few years back. They were recording a southern rock record for low rent version of Molly Hatchet and I had heard so many tales of their musical Redneckery I swung by the studio to see for myself.
BJ met me at the door with an impish smile and lead me to a vocal booth that smelled like cigarette butts and whiskey mixed together in someone’s armpit. The band had left for the day and he laughed pointing to a music stand. There were wrinkled lyric sheets penned by a semi-literate hand, a hip flask of Jack Daniels that was 1/3 full (I’m an optimist) and a small Tupperware filled with cigarette ashes. The container was sealed with clear boxing tape; an impractical choice for an ad hoc studio ashtray.
BJ picked up the little tub, laughed and tossed it to me saying, “This is the lead singer’s father!” It took me a second to digest what he meant. I looked at the dust in the container, back to my friend and then back to the Tupperware.
I was holding the cremated remains of this man’s dead father.
Apparently, the lead singer was a family man. When the time came for him to make a real record-album in Nashville, he cracked open the Maxwell House can which held the leftovers of his Dad, grabbed himself a scoop and toted it all the way to Nashville. His father had now been played as a shaker on just about every track on that record. Yes. A shaker. I swear.
You don’t see this particular breed of redneck very often. I grew up in Jacksonville, FL, the home of Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38 Special and Molly Hatchet. We bred them special down there. So, I know rednecks and these boys were pedigreed southern dirt-rockers. I hadn’t heard a note, but I knew anyone that used a deceased relative as a musical instrument pumped out musical brown liquor and lyrical pork rinds.
I have a soft spot for guys like this. Maybe it’s that I still take a morbid pride in the fact that my hometown’s chief export was southern rock, but there is something more, I think. Guys like that are authentic. They embrace who they are and for better or worse everything they do is an expression of that. Sure, they are capable of posturing, but there aren’t that many posers in that kind of music. Their extravagances are generally rooted in some truth about themselves.
Don’t believe me?
Then ask yourself, how many people you know that want to be perceived as a dead daddy shaking redneck? The answer is none. These people are a curiosity. Something you don’t set out to become. You have to be born into it. Like royalty or NASCAR. It is some inverted toothless Darwinism. BUT, if you combine that with musical talent you have a story worth telling. A character piece. Something worth listening to.
I’m not arguing that in order to be seen as authentic you need a homemade tattoo. And I’m also not saying that authenticity will make you a good musician/songwriter/artist. But I am saying that you can’t create truly great art without being authentic.
Don’t get me wrong…there is a place for Christina and Britney – but ultimately, we desire the kind of music that is a reflection of something real.
It’s easy to become a pure imitator of what we think is great and how we’d like to be perceived rather than who we really are. Most of us have spent too many hours thinking about how we wish people would think of us as artists (and people), rather than trusting who we really were. Artistic greatness occurs when you can keep the power of influence and imitation in its proper perspective.
The greats are “The Greats” because they succeeded despite the status quo, not because of it. What Willie, Cash, Waylon, Bono, Cobain, Vedder, Presley, Stills, Taylor and Garcia all had in common was they did what they did when nobody else was doing it. And the reason that nobody else was doing it was because these people’s music grew out of their unique experiences, limitations and talents. Tapping into that is the only way to really believe what you do as an artist…and I don’t care if you are a redneck or playing the hand bells at the First Baptist Tabernacle of Shekinah Glory, if you don’t believe it, nobody else will.
(this blog also appears on www.briteentertainment.com. Also, be sure to check out my music on www.briterevolution.com)
BJ met me at the door with an impish smile and lead me to a vocal booth that smelled like cigarette butts and whiskey mixed together in someone’s armpit. The band had left for the day and he laughed pointing to a music stand. There were wrinkled lyric sheets penned by a semi-literate hand, a hip flask of Jack Daniels that was 1/3 full (I’m an optimist) and a small Tupperware filled with cigarette ashes. The container was sealed with clear boxing tape; an impractical choice for an ad hoc studio ashtray.
BJ picked up the little tub, laughed and tossed it to me saying, “This is the lead singer’s father!” It took me a second to digest what he meant. I looked at the dust in the container, back to my friend and then back to the Tupperware.
I was holding the cremated remains of this man’s dead father.
Apparently, the lead singer was a family man. When the time came for him to make a real record-album in Nashville, he cracked open the Maxwell House can which held the leftovers of his Dad, grabbed himself a scoop and toted it all the way to Nashville. His father had now been played as a shaker on just about every track on that record. Yes. A shaker. I swear.
You don’t see this particular breed of redneck very often. I grew up in Jacksonville, FL, the home of Lynyrd Skynyrd, .38 Special and Molly Hatchet. We bred them special down there. So, I know rednecks and these boys were pedigreed southern dirt-rockers. I hadn’t heard a note, but I knew anyone that used a deceased relative as a musical instrument pumped out musical brown liquor and lyrical pork rinds.
I have a soft spot for guys like this. Maybe it’s that I still take a morbid pride in the fact that my hometown’s chief export was southern rock, but there is something more, I think. Guys like that are authentic. They embrace who they are and for better or worse everything they do is an expression of that. Sure, they are capable of posturing, but there aren’t that many posers in that kind of music. Their extravagances are generally rooted in some truth about themselves.
Don’t believe me?
Then ask yourself, how many people you know that want to be perceived as a dead daddy shaking redneck? The answer is none. These people are a curiosity. Something you don’t set out to become. You have to be born into it. Like royalty or NASCAR. It is some inverted toothless Darwinism. BUT, if you combine that with musical talent you have a story worth telling. A character piece. Something worth listening to.
I’m not arguing that in order to be seen as authentic you need a homemade tattoo. And I’m also not saying that authenticity will make you a good musician/songwriter/artist. But I am saying that you can’t create truly great art without being authentic.
Don’t get me wrong…there is a place for Christina and Britney – but ultimately, we desire the kind of music that is a reflection of something real.
It’s easy to become a pure imitator of what we think is great and how we’d like to be perceived rather than who we really are. Most of us have spent too many hours thinking about how we wish people would think of us as artists (and people), rather than trusting who we really were. Artistic greatness occurs when you can keep the power of influence and imitation in its proper perspective.
The greats are “The Greats” because they succeeded despite the status quo, not because of it. What Willie, Cash, Waylon, Bono, Cobain, Vedder, Presley, Stills, Taylor and Garcia all had in common was they did what they did when nobody else was doing it. And the reason that nobody else was doing it was because these people’s music grew out of their unique experiences, limitations and talents. Tapping into that is the only way to really believe what you do as an artist…and I don’t care if you are a redneck or playing the hand bells at the First Baptist Tabernacle of Shekinah Glory, if you don’t believe it, nobody else will.
(this blog also appears on www.briteentertainment.com. Also, be sure to check out my music on www.briterevolution.com)
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Nerf Broadswords and Texas
About a mile or so from my house is a huge park where once a month a group of dweeby-twenty-somethings take a break from their jobs at The Comic Book Exchange to don medieval costumes and beat the shit out of each other with foam rubber weaponry. I’ve pulled into that parking lot on more than one occasion to watch as grown men and women in tights, tunics and chainmail attempt to cleave each other in twain with Nerf broadswords and claymores.
The eccentricity of this pastime is easy to see, but one thing that has always struck me about it is the price these people must have to pay in order to pursue Middle Earth reenactments as a hobby.
Forget the hours these men have spent convincing their mothers to sew royal crests onto their pajama tops. Forget the amount of time it takes to carve a realistic looking quarterstaff out of a push-broom handle. That’s nothing compared to the social repercussions of wearing a hooded cloak or joking with your best friends in Elvin while in public. You can bet your 20-sided dice that these were the kids that were stuffed in lockers and logged countless frequent flier miles on the wedgy nail.
And yet, they persevere. Month after month. Year after year. They light the fires of Gondor and gather at public parks around these United States to do battle. And, you know? You have to respect that.
It’s their gig. Understand it or not, somewhere along the way they made a choice. A choice between what might have been more socially expedient and what they really loved. Sure these guys might not have the normal trappings of the adult life (like a home address that is not the same as their parents), but they know their passion, have weighed the cost (one would hope) and live it out. And that’s cool.
Last week I was at South By Southwest (SXSW), Austin, Texas’ annual music festival. This is the biggest industry wide event in the world and every singer/songwriter, butt-rocker and industry type alive packed onto 6th street to sing their songs, swap business cards and be seen.
I’ve always disliked music festivals. They tended to be depressing reminders of just how hard the music business really is. The thousands of attendees were a physical representation of the odds against making it. They were a reminder that success was not a fore drawn conclusion, that pursuing your dreams of rock stardom didn’t make you special and that most people just don’t give a damn about your new record. Going to a music festival was like being on a high-wire and looking down.
But what always bothered me the most was the idea that these festivals were about discovering and breaking new acts. That you could be playing on some forgotten stage in a dark corner somewhere and Rick Ruben would pop out and hand you a million dollar record deal. That I quickly discovered was utter and complete nonsense.
SXSW is spring break for A&R guys, lawyers and music execs. It is an opportunity to flex expense accounts, see some buddies and cast the impression that you knew something about saving the music business from itself. I’ve been doing this for 13 years and I have never seen or even heard of a band that went to SXSW without some pre-existing mojo that came out with any real, new traction in their career. But last week in Austin I was giving a new perspective.
I was walking against the flow of people on 6th street at midnight and stopped dead in my tracks. I watched the throngs of white guys with dread locks, pink haired scrawnies in skinny jeans , heavy metal hair-farmers, and bed headed emo kids move past me. The scene reminded of the people dressed like pixies in the park back home.
Music was a hard life. It was a tough choice. It had consequences. People didn’t choose this path for the easy money. Most at SXSW didn’t have a huge record deal or a sugar daddy in the wings. They were songwriters and musicians that had jumped headlong into this career because they loved the music. The consequences were just the cost of doing business. SXSW, however, was one of the few opportunities these musicians had to come together with other people that shared a common experience.
It was a time to be with others that understood what driving across state to play for a disinterested crowd and a tip jar full of change felt like. It was a place to meet people that didn’t look at you like you had just peed on the carpet when you told them you slept in your car in between gigs. They new all about the emergency change bucket you’d cash in at Coinstar when the Ramen noodles were gone and money was tight. They knew about the hours of entering email addresses into a data base to keep fans current (the older ones remember sticking the stamps on the post cards). They knew about the shows where you played to a room packed to the walls and the ones where you just played to the walls. Most had or knew somebody that had sold a body fluid for extra money. They had weighed the cost and made their choices. SXSW was a place they didn’t have to apologize.
I don’t care what you do, everybody has their version of chainmail in the park. Yours might be cooler (God help you if it is not), but you still do it. It is easy (even when you are part of a specific culture) to snipe at people from the sidelines. Most people, however, don’t go into the music because it is a place they will find respect. They don’t do it because they make a ton of money. They don’t do it for the job security, 401k or great medical benefits. They do it because they love the music.
SXSW is a chance to remind ourselves that we aren’t crazy for picking this life…and if we are, at least we aren’t the only ones. It is a chance to rub shoulders with people that speak the same language. SXSW is our version of strapping on embroidered tights, raising a goblet of frothy ale and listening to the dulcet clash of steel blades engaged in the pitch of battle…at least until our mom’s come to pick us up.
(This blog also appears on www.briteentertainment.com. Be sure to check out Billy's new music on www.briterevolution.com)
The eccentricity of this pastime is easy to see, but one thing that has always struck me about it is the price these people must have to pay in order to pursue Middle Earth reenactments as a hobby.
Forget the hours these men have spent convincing their mothers to sew royal crests onto their pajama tops. Forget the amount of time it takes to carve a realistic looking quarterstaff out of a push-broom handle. That’s nothing compared to the social repercussions of wearing a hooded cloak or joking with your best friends in Elvin while in public. You can bet your 20-sided dice that these were the kids that were stuffed in lockers and logged countless frequent flier miles on the wedgy nail.
And yet, they persevere. Month after month. Year after year. They light the fires of Gondor and gather at public parks around these United States to do battle. And, you know? You have to respect that.
It’s their gig. Understand it or not, somewhere along the way they made a choice. A choice between what might have been more socially expedient and what they really loved. Sure these guys might not have the normal trappings of the adult life (like a home address that is not the same as their parents), but they know their passion, have weighed the cost (one would hope) and live it out. And that’s cool.
Last week I was at South By Southwest (SXSW), Austin, Texas’ annual music festival. This is the biggest industry wide event in the world and every singer/songwriter, butt-rocker and industry type alive packed onto 6th street to sing their songs, swap business cards and be seen.
I’ve always disliked music festivals. They tended to be depressing reminders of just how hard the music business really is. The thousands of attendees were a physical representation of the odds against making it. They were a reminder that success was not a fore drawn conclusion, that pursuing your dreams of rock stardom didn’t make you special and that most people just don’t give a damn about your new record. Going to a music festival was like being on a high-wire and looking down.
But what always bothered me the most was the idea that these festivals were about discovering and breaking new acts. That you could be playing on some forgotten stage in a dark corner somewhere and Rick Ruben would pop out and hand you a million dollar record deal. That I quickly discovered was utter and complete nonsense.
SXSW is spring break for A&R guys, lawyers and music execs. It is an opportunity to flex expense accounts, see some buddies and cast the impression that you knew something about saving the music business from itself. I’ve been doing this for 13 years and I have never seen or even heard of a band that went to SXSW without some pre-existing mojo that came out with any real, new traction in their career. But last week in Austin I was giving a new perspective.
I was walking against the flow of people on 6th street at midnight and stopped dead in my tracks. I watched the throngs of white guys with dread locks, pink haired scrawnies in skinny jeans , heavy metal hair-farmers, and bed headed emo kids move past me. The scene reminded of the people dressed like pixies in the park back home.
Music was a hard life. It was a tough choice. It had consequences. People didn’t choose this path for the easy money. Most at SXSW didn’t have a huge record deal or a sugar daddy in the wings. They were songwriters and musicians that had jumped headlong into this career because they loved the music. The consequences were just the cost of doing business. SXSW, however, was one of the few opportunities these musicians had to come together with other people that shared a common experience.
It was a time to be with others that understood what driving across state to play for a disinterested crowd and a tip jar full of change felt like. It was a place to meet people that didn’t look at you like you had just peed on the carpet when you told them you slept in your car in between gigs. They new all about the emergency change bucket you’d cash in at Coinstar when the Ramen noodles were gone and money was tight. They knew about the hours of entering email addresses into a data base to keep fans current (the older ones remember sticking the stamps on the post cards). They knew about the shows where you played to a room packed to the walls and the ones where you just played to the walls. Most had or knew somebody that had sold a body fluid for extra money. They had weighed the cost and made their choices. SXSW was a place they didn’t have to apologize.
I don’t care what you do, everybody has their version of chainmail in the park. Yours might be cooler (God help you if it is not), but you still do it. It is easy (even when you are part of a specific culture) to snipe at people from the sidelines. Most people, however, don’t go into the music because it is a place they will find respect. They don’t do it because they make a ton of money. They don’t do it for the job security, 401k or great medical benefits. They do it because they love the music.
SXSW is a chance to remind ourselves that we aren’t crazy for picking this life…and if we are, at least we aren’t the only ones. It is a chance to rub shoulders with people that speak the same language. SXSW is our version of strapping on embroidered tights, raising a goblet of frothy ale and listening to the dulcet clash of steel blades engaged in the pitch of battle…at least until our mom’s come to pick us up.
(This blog also appears on www.briteentertainment.com. Be sure to check out Billy's new music on www.briterevolution.com)
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