Diary of a Portland Musician Corporate problems in an indie world by Mr. Indie SOLO STUFF. Everybody has their SOLO STUFF and everybody references their SOLO STUFF like we're all supposed to be so goddamned impressed that they have SOLO STUFF. How a two-word phrase can be so pretentious yet barbaric is beyond me. Hi Carl, I've been working on SOLO STUFF lately. How would you like to release it? He wrote back. You said The muthafuckin' Plural Males were gonna tour! Bitch, I ain't doin' nothin' for yo' ass befo' that shit happen! Suffice it to say, I was quite taken aback by this response. Whoa! When did Porkless Pie Records become a major label? I thought Carl was concerned with releasing quality music, not setting deadlines for his bands in order to make himself a profit. Dearest Carl, I'd love to tour but seeing as how our drummer's in school and the tour I tried to book this summer completely fell through, I'm not sure how to make that happen any time soon. After waiting for his apology for a couple hours, I received this: Oh, you whiney little bitch! You think you's the only muthafuckin' band that has trouble tourin'? You givin' up too easy! You ain't done shit fo' me besides recordin' this album, and now you talkin' all crazy and shit about SOLO STUFF? You don't know shit about what it means to release an album! Bitch, you need to concen-muthafuckin'-trate on The Plural Males! Wow. I knew Carl was a businessman but this honestly blew me away. This was a whole new side of him. I felt like I was being lectured by my boss! What the fuck? I play music because it's my passion, because it's my anti-job, and I associated myself with Porkless Pie because I thought they understood my ideals. Now I'm getting shit because I'm working on SOLO STUFF before going on tour with my band? Okay Carl, you're starting to piss me off. Firstly, I tried to book a tour to no avail, and since Rod's in school there's not much I can do until his next break. Secondly, how dare you say that all we've done is record an album! We've been working our asses off for the last 2 1/2 years, about 3 months of which was spent on the album. Fuck you. I guess that last one convinced him that I was pretty upset, because he wrote back and semi-apologized.
Right about now I bet you're wondering what my fucking point is. My point is this: we all (hopefully) play music first and foremost because we love it. We love the craft, we love playing shows, we love touring, all that. It's easy to trick yourself into thinking that by being an "independent" musician, whatever that means nowadays, you can avoid all the bullshit "music biz" issues that you hear so much about in the major label world. Wrong. Granted, labels like Porkless Pie are much less likely to fuck you over than Warner Bros., but that doesn't mean that money isn't a concept in the indie world. In a way, indie label owners have to worry about money more than majors because they're the ones taking risks on bands they like instead of releasing 45 minute-long commercials on disc. All the indie label owners I know are struggling almost as much as most decent indie bands. Carl's not a bad guy, he just has a mortgage and a family to support, so his priorities are understandably different from mine. Therefore, unless you choose to go completely diy, you're going to have to deal with stupid shit that has nothing to do with being creative. I guess it's the trade off for the relatively huge amount of exposure independent labels are able to offer bands these days. All names have been altered to protect the privacy of persons/entities involved. Any similarities to actual persons or events are probably pretty acurate, but you can't prove anything. |
