7/18/08

An Open Letter to Musicians Everywhere (published in G-Vegas Magazine, July '08)

Because even your best friend won't tell you.


Hello, Tony Hawk Season here. You're all doing it wrong. Sorry to break it to you, but it's better that you hear it from me. I'm with the government, and I'm here to help.


PRESS

In this information age, all weapons at your disposal are armed and dangerous. The press is the prime example. If used properly, the press is your best friend and key to better shows and exposure. This is especially tough in Greenville, where objective criticism is damn near impossible to find. In a town without critics, you're going to have to go in over your head (usually a good place to learn to swim) and get yourself reviewed by a regional independent. As a musician, you need the harshest scrutiny you can stand. No one takes one sided reviews seriously, for one, and you will get your best publicity nuggets from articles by seasoned critics. Sure, anyone can get reviewed by their friend. Get reviewed by someone with experience. Get reviewed by someone who doesn't even like what you play. If you can get them to say one nice thing and nine negative things, the one nice thing will be of guaranteed veracity and quality.


CROWDS

People don't understand this, more than most things. There are bands that would rather have their start playing to the backs of sixty heads in a bar, and that's fine, but there is no future in it. It's the bands that play in front of fifteen or twenty music lovers at 21 Eleven or the Spazz (the fronts of their heads, too) that are getting written up by the BBC, Pitchfork Media, Spin Magazine and the Boston Globe and this is a fact. You don't have to be huge to sell out, lots of people start selling out while they're still unknowns. Don't take the easy way out, don't concentrate on filling Boli's with the sounds of Third Eye Blind and Cracker covers. Remember, Robin Hood always wins. Do you want to be in the same camp as the Silent Years, Make a Rising, Darren Deicide, Caspian, and Emperor X? Easy money is easy, yes, but it smudges all over your soul and is impossible to wash out.

The Deathset was a featured band on myspace two weeks after their latest Spazz show, to provide a concrete example. I can't say the same for the bands playing downtown.


KNOW YOUR LIMITATIONS

Fooled you! The title was sarcastic, as there are none. You're as capable as you think you are. You'd be amazed, but some of the best known bands out there bluffed their way to the top. Find someone who is totally out of your league, say a booking agent at a really good venue, and convince them you'll bring twice the crowd you know you can bring... then find a way to make those people appear. The best way to improve is to make impossible promises, then make them come true. Determination trumps everything, so aim as high as you dare and get to work on your poker face.


CLASSIFICATION

Don't waste time labeling yourself and especially avoid the buzzword of the day. Sure, you'll get your fifteen minutes, but then what? You practically stamp an expiration date on your product (yes, music is a product) through overclassification. In two years, people will be cracking up, saying "I can't believe we used to listen to bands that called themselves dancecore! That's the corniest thing ever!" You don't want to be the butt of their jokes. Call yourselves musicians, let the pundits classify you later. When you label yourself you also limit yourself, you lose your teeth. There's going to be someone out there who knows music better than you, there always is, who will know that No Wave is not a genre, but a band, and that Streetcore was Joe Strummer's last record... and why are you calling yourself that?


IMAGE

Okay, this could have gone under the "classification" section, but it extends beyond it. One thing it covers is ego... lose it. The desire to get in front of people and play music is egotistical enough, but anything beyond is unhealthy. Prima donnas, divas, snooty scenesters... all should be hunted down and tied to chairs, a la a Clockwork Orange, and forced to watch videos of how they behave in public. Youtubing "Turducken" should suffice.

SET LENGTH

Some of the best sets I've ever seen have only been six or seven songs long. I'm going to say it until I pass out, but quality always surpasses quantity. I've been bored to tears an hour and a half into a Pearl Jam show, and they're one of my favorite bands! Don't give me too much of a good thing, give me forty minutes and make every song count. Sometimes a band can play for an hour and get away with it (the Protomen and Caspian are prime examples) but not many acts can pull that off. Don't give an audience the chance to get bored with you. Show them what you can do and then leave the stage gracefully. One encore? Sure. More than that and I might just slash your tour van's tires.


SOUNDCHECKS

Unless you're playing for a few thousand people, just plug in and play. Seriously. You know how your amp works. It's not rocket science.


SOUNDS LIKE...

Don't lean too heavily on your influences. My stomach crawls and I die a little inside when a band tells me "Hi, we're _______! You'll like us if you like Soundgarden and Queens of the Stone Age!" See, right away the conversation is about Soundgarden. You've only backburnered yourself. If you're trying to book yourself a show, then be mindful of the way you portray yourself. Name dropping is lots of fun at parties, but you wouldn't do it at work. You don't go up to your boss and say "Hi! I'm ________! I work really hard, like you've noticed Steve doing, so I deserve a raise!"

Another thing... bands that identify too closely with their influences end up copying them. BEWARE.


CLOTHES

You should quit music the moment you feel obligated to wear any specific thing when you play. Music is a creative outlet and you should feel unencumbered by silly things like fashion or uniform. It's not what you wear, it's how you wear it. Maybe you wake up and put on a torn shirt and jeans, maybe you wake up and you want to wear a suit and tie or some wacko halloween costume or a Star Trek uniform... sure. Go ahead and wear it to the show but only wear it because you want to. I'd rather go see a band wearing Circuit City shirts because they just got off work and didn't feel like changing than a whole zoo's worth of scenesters.

By the way, everyone knows you can buy Ramones patches at Hot Topic. No one thinks you're hard core or underground for sewing them on a Goodwill jacket and sporting a sneer. That's about as punk rock as a sinus infection.


WHAT IS A BAND?

A band is a group of musicians. You can tell they are musicians because they write their own music. Anything else is a human jukebox.


THE GEOGRAPHIC CENTER OF THE UNIVERSE

Don't be a jackass. Don't go to the Big City to "make it." Are you kidding me? Is this a movie? LA and NYC are just like the rest of the country, just more crowded. Prince is from Minnesota. He didn't move. He brought the attention to himself, and all of this was in the '80s. Slipknot may be a horrendous waste of airtime, but they've been wildly successful and are from Iowa. At the Drive-in? El Paso, Texas.

Don't take me the wrong way. I know I'm brash, it's just how I am, but I'm on your side! Don't wake up in the morning and curse the Greenville scene. There are people here who know music and this place has been the springboard for greatness plenty of times in the past. Remember Valient Thorr? That was just a few years ago.

It boils down to simple astrophysics. Every point in spacetime is the center of the universe. If you already are the center of your universe, then what's the point of running off to some smogsburg to prove yourself to the disenchanted millions already there? They have the same internet you do. Let them come to you.


I wanted to give a concise set of guidelines, but something has come up and I'm obligated to throw in a postscript. Here's hoping there's space, I've already gone several hundred words over my self-set limit.

We finally did it. We killed the Spazz. We're all a little responsible, and we should be ashamed. From those of us taunting the cops to those of us defacing the neighbor's wall to those of us setting off fireworks to those of us that stopped going to shows to those of us that would rather get crunk than donate. Now we'll all be washing our hands, smug little Pilates that we are, while the underground goes through its sad death throes. It's down to house shows now? Greenville is famous for house shows, but the Spazz was a special creature... a hydra with one head left and Hercules promised he was coming back to finish the job. Remember, 21 Eleven's last show is scheduled for August first.

As prophesied, the underground will eat itself.

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