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A reviewer turned me down, when I asked her about sending a review copy of "Drive."
She said no, because Iguanodon Smile is a label.
Having endured so much hassle in dealing with labels, she said, she has put in place a new policy. She deals with artists only, not labels.
If an artist wants to send her a CD for review, fine.
If a label, not so fine.
I gamely pointed out I was among the players in this band, and in this project. It was me, Mark Rich, writing to her, not some thing named Iguanodon Smile.
My being a player in the band amounted to nothing, in her eyes. The fact of my being a label cast too dark a shadow. To have received a CD for review from me would have been too distressing.
A part of me understands. Independent musicians and labels are told by more knowledgeable members of the scene to show our teeth. Lots of teeth. All the time.
We are told to be always in your face, your mother's face, and your whole family's face, including your thrice-removed-by-broken-marriages cousin, the reviewer. If not in your face, then we must be at your back, tapping on your shoulder yesterday, today, and tomorrow, saying, "Remember me?" You go to a restaurant for a fine meal, hit a movie for some mind-numbing joy of the exploding-car sort, and then sip a nightcap to apply the last layer of white-out to your exxed-over day of toil. Then comes that tap-tap upon the shoulder. The lowly independent label has crawled in bed with you. "Remember me?"
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This is how the label woos its public. Rather, this is how the label or band publicist woos that stand-in for the public, the media.
My shoulder-tapping finger goes woefully unused, most of the time. I have found little time to bug anyone about anything. It is remarkable enough I got around to asking this reviewer if she would accept this selection of home-produced songs, for free.
I would happily bug people, had I the time. As it is, I am a writer of words and music who has assumed the mantle of being a music publisher. On top of that, as music publisher, I am pretending to be a label, to reach those goals a publisher must reach for. On top of that, as a make-believe label, I am further pretending to be a publicist, tapping on shoulders, riding bell-bedecked white horses, petting the heads of friendly dogs, and shoving flyers in the alarmed faces of drivers stopped at red lights.
I must be making an apology, of sorts. Since I do not do these things very well, I must be doing a poor job of being a music publisher pretending to be a label that pretends to have a publicist.
Yet I had her fooled. What a deep and daunting shadow I must have cast the day I sent that e-mail.
Before someone says I am trying to do too much, in doing all these things, let me state flatly that I do too little.
Let me also say what a fine and happy thing it is, to be doing too little.
After all, I am a minor player in a world full of players. I am a publisher small to the vanishing point in a world of publishers. As label or publicist, I cannot even be seen.
Except on that glorious day, a few weeks ago, when someone saw me in mystic splendor, a bulky Iguanodon of eons past rearing against the sky, with two thumbs up.
That a plant-eating dinosaur will put itself more in the potted philodendron's face than the reviewer's seems to have escaped her.
The usual reason likely applies. Huge, 2-D threats that they are, plant-eating dinosaurs have roared at, chased, and bitten hapless humans for millions of darkened movie-theater hours.
This is to say her mistake is a common one.
People go to their graves thinking they are plants.
In any case, as a label hardly even seen, I see it as only fitting that I do too little. To do otherwise would be unbecoming.
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A certain safety exists in starting small. I believe this.
Look at the other way things might go. We have all seen poor souls thrust too soon into the spotlight. Some of these poor souls get cocky and suffer bad attacks of high nose. Those are the successful ones. Others end up half a million dollars in debt to a record company. Sometimes these latter folk end up musically destroyed, as well. Destroyed talents, lives and careers are among the riches disbursed by record companies to their musical workers.
Alack and alas for these poor souls: yet they are the very leading lights held up to us as emblems of what we should be.
The safety to be found in starting and maybe staying small is an old and simple safety. It is the safety of being solid. It is the safety of being in balance. We are not so subject to the shifting of winds. What we do is what we are. In each small event, we can feel the weight of an action that is ours. No giant wind-machine of lucre-levered hype fans us forward. If we move forward at all, we do so because we have taken steps. The footprints trailing behind us are our own. No one walks before us with pocketed coins a-jingle, telling people they will like us, they will need us, they will buy our music.
Eventually we may receive help in doing what we do. If that time does come, the help may be welcome. In the meantime, doing the little bit we can do ourselves should prove enough, even when it is too little.
Mostly it consists of playing music.
As to that shadow, cast against the sky --
The shadow of a label, and nothing more.
Tremble if you wish.
Plants do it often.
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Cheers,
Mark Rich
25 April '02
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