Pribek

Too much of anything is too much; even coffee. This video of Dave Grohl in the studio with Them Crooked Vultures demonstrates how the java Jones can get out of hand.

As always, brew up a fresh pot and click pause on the music player located in the side bar before playing the YouTube.

When I was a kid like, 8 or 9, I got a pocket calculator. It was a big deal. They had just become affordable to the masses. My first thought was; “Wouldn’t it be cool if they would let me use this in math class!”

Of course they wouldn’t. They wanted us to learn the thought process.

Around that same time, we had a next door neighbor. A older, German bachelor guy. We kids all thought he was real mean because he would scream at us chase us out of his vegetable garden and over the fence after we went to retrieve the errant baseballs.

My dad got to know the guy. He would go over to his house and drink home brewed beer. He asked me to come with him one night; “I want you to see something. Bring your calculator”.

So we get over there and my dad asks him a math problem. A hard one like…49 times 56…

Immediately, the guy says “Two thousand und forty four!”

Turns out, the guy was a member of the Hitler Youth and being groomed for the SS. Apparently, he was trained to memorize every multiplication or long division problem with numbers starting with up to three digits. He was, literally, faster than the calculator.

The point, he explained, was to bypass the thought process to save time.

Different eras, different circumstances.

I think of that from time to time and wonder…in this digital world, a lot of the thought processes are antiquated. Should they be taught anyway, to teach how to think or, is that only nostalgia?

So, I was having this conversation with a guy who is in a “creativity” based industry other than the music biz.

I said…

“It’s easier to get a thousand people to hear your song than it is to get one person to pay $0.99 for it on iTunes. Not only is it easier, it’s obviously more important. And, all content related industries are headed in the same direction if they aren’t already there.”

Even though we were on the phone, I could sense the pig looking at a drill press look.

For thousands of years, artists of all stripe produced their works only because “it’s in ‘em and it’s got to come out”. At some point, a little money got involved because opportunists saw a chance to profiteer. That’s the old business model.

There is no new one.

Turns out, the long tail is way looonger than the experts predicted. News is that the average Spotify user has over 15,000 songs on their playlist. From time to time, somebody tells me they have one of my songs on their iPod. I always try to find a way to get around to asking; “How many you got on there?”

“Oh, around 8,000 or so.”

But, I’m happy as hell to be one of the eight grand.

The word “creative” gets tossed around like a bean bag. “I work in the creative department for BlahBlah L.L.C.” See, that used to be called “advertising” now, it’s “public relations” (a term ol’ Eddie Bernays came up with because the word “propaganda” gave the public a creepy feeling).

Truth is; it’s either coming from the gut or, it’s propaganda. Art or advertising.

Sometimes, somebody will decide to use your art, after the fact, for propaganda purposes and if so; take the money and run.

But, I look around and I see a ton of stuff about how if you are an artist you need to focus on self promotion.

The more you network, the less you create. The more you create, the better chance you have of coming up with something that might hit somebody where they live; something that would be viable for licensing.

There’s a fine line there somewhere…unknown.