Tuesday, September 1, 2009

I had

The occasion to rely to something from the comfortable free for through hikers internet of this lovely Leadville Hostel.

Leadville... the last, best... of the Colorado Mountain Towns. The perfect mix of deformity and kindess that makes small town America worth being a part of....


Something in my personality makes me hate the "LOOK AT ME, LOOK AT ME, I JUST DID THIS, BUY THIS, COME TO THIS, LISTEN TO THIS, BLAH BLAH BLAH" Self promotional hell. Personally I'd rather just look weird and focus on the music. Ignore the audiance... my keyboards are turned sideways. Have some kind of lead singer even if they must stare at something. I do feel in part that the alienation and pathetic, rupert murdock enriching advertising scams we all faciliate with our own internet profiles are a signifiant part of why I became a utah river guide, why my favorite films are vanishing point and zaberiskie point, and why I am currently walking for 480 miles across Colorado to leave the stench and the nightmares and the beer and the decay of the overpriced, jobless, venerial hell of American Civilization as far away as I can for as long as I can possibly afford it. The best thing left that you can do in this country is drive across a desert into a sunset on your way to play a concert. So get out there and do it, however you can. Get the hell out of the shoebox nightmare of plasma bleech and virtual pretention.

I don't know what the answer is. But these things I do feel. As a poor substitute for an actual way out of this mess it's all I can offer at this time.

Comradely,

My humble $.02
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6 comments:

  1. emphryioSeptember 6, 2009 at 2:18 AM

    I agree with all that but: what's so great about playing a concert?

    'Utopian' communes. You're in a good position to look some up it seems.

    http://www.ic.org/

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  2. UnknownSeptember 13, 2009 at 9:33 PM

    Playing a concert is like river guiding. In the cities, in the day jobs, in the rest of the world, you're a nobody. You're a replaceable unit of labor with a fixed cost and an expected life span. You're role is to cower in fear- whether tacitly or overtly- of a power structure that hangs over you.

    On a stage, or guiding a river trip, you are empowered, you are able to shine through your own skills and talent, to entertain / help keep alive your crowd. You are indispensable and admired for who you are as a person... not just what mindless, unseen, labor you or anyone else can perform.

    It's an addictive feeling.

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  3. emphryioSeptember 14, 2009 at 1:30 PM

    Thanks for reply.

    I went rafting somewhere once either in Colorado or New Mexico. I was envious of the river guy's 'job'.

    I've never performed for an audience.

    May I ask how has the experience of being in the crowd been? My experience has been sometimes positive but often also negative. And I suspect I'd have the negative in mind if I were ever the one performing. I'd be worrying that people in the audience were in that negative mode. Negative though beyond not liking the music. Just feeling like there was something not right about so many people just standing around. So many focusing on so few... Not to mention how youth are often consumed with trying to fit in (just acting, not really being who they are.) And, primarily, there looking to get laid.

    And it seems that the audience shouldn't be more than maybe a few hundred people max. Beyond that things get weird to me.

    Mostly though where I've lived it's been either drive a few hours and see a huge concert or see nothing at all.

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  4. emphryioSeptember 18, 2009 at 4:23 AM

    Yes, I think there's something sick about a huge audience just standing around watching a very few people. It ties into the sickness of a society where art is mass produced/reproduced.

    The end result is 'artists' whom are motivated by the shallow desire to be famous.

    And really, that probably covers just about all artists who are indeed famous. As probably no one else would want to put up with that shit. Well to an extent...

    And then furthermore you've the people who want to perform live in front of a huge audience because essentially, they're power tripping. They love to be the center of attention, etc.

    What it all is, is very anti-egalitarian. And not the sort of thing any true leftist would want to be a part of.

    For that matter, anyone with talent who goes about trying to become famous must think we're living in something that still resembles a meritocracy. Which is to say a person perhaps that's young and naive at best. If not someone who believes that our society is basically working just fine. In other words: a conservative.

    OTOH I can see playing in front of a maximum of a few hundred people. I've enjoyed such concerts. I agree with Roger Waters on this and can sympathize with him spitting on an audience member at one of those massive shows they used to put on.

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  5. UnknownSeptember 18, 2009 at 4:07 PM

    I don't think anyone who's actually interacted with the music industry to the point of playing shows in different stays believes there is anything Meritocratic about it. I drove over the Sierra Nevadas in Winter through a Blizzard to play a show that promised us $200. After the show they took us to a 7-11 and bought us pretzels and potato chips. Later found out the promoter is a drug addict who does this to people all the time.

    What would a proper leftist 'job' be? To work at a unionized factory and be a good revolutionist and get social justice resolutions passed now and then and eventually quietly die? Sounds pretty lame to me... and most intelligent people I know in industrial jobs are doing all they can to get out of them because they generally don't pay well and the idea of a union actually existing that helps people as a realistic option is probably something that less than 5% of our population have had life experiance enough they might actually believe in it...

    I think it's good to want to share your talents with others, and to be recognized by your peers and family for having artistic talent. That's fine and perfectly healthy and I don't think a musician who's making good art, trying to get bigger gigs, is really doing anything better or worse than a Freemont Indian 1,000 years ago spending an entire day to chip a crude image into a rock and show it off to his friends... I think it's natural and healthy...

    What you are right about though is that Capitalism & the media industry preys upon this natural, healthy urge (as it preys upon all our urges), and turns a very few people into super-mega-pop stars (who generally go kind of crazy and become addicted to something because handling that much fame and constant attention isn't something our minds evolved to be capable of), and the rest of us, well... we work low paying jobs and save all we can and toil in greater or lesser obscurity.

    Of course it's terribly unjust or wrong... but there's really only three things you can do. The first would be to ape the Film "Airheads" and attempt some kind of terroristic action against the music industry in protest of its own structural evil. The second is to think rationally, decide the industry is evil, and sell all your music gear and try to go back to school to qualify yourself for one of those nice, cushy, 40+ grand a year jobs. The third is to just do you thing, regardless of what 'the industry' or anyone else thinks or cares, and allow it to work out however it does.

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  6. emphryioSeptember 21, 2009 at 6:35 PM

    Well, it's hyperbole or whatever about being a 'true leftist'. A silly kind of comment on my part. Nothing really wrong actually about trying to get as many people as you can listening to your music. I have just often felt something very wrong about huge concerts that I couldn't put my finger on, and I think that last post is a part of it.

    "What you are right about though is that Capitalism & the media industry preys upon this natural, healthy urge (as it preys upon all our urges), and turns a very few people into super-mega-pop stars (who generally go kind of crazy and become addicted to something because handling that much fame and constant attention isn't something our minds evolved to be capable of), and the rest of us, well... we work low paying jobs and save all we can and toil in greater or lesser obscurity."

    Yes.

    "The third is to just do you thing, regardless of what 'the industry' or anyone else thinks or cares, and allow it to work out however it does."

    Yes.

    ReplyDelete

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