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"The best thing that can happen to you is you get a record deal. The worst thing that can happen to you is you get a record deal."
This sage and sane bit of insight -- feel free to use it as a mantra or koan, if you are a meditative musician -- came from the lips of Planet Melvin's lead singer, when we talked with him after a show this spring.
Melvin should know. A gifted songwriter and manic performer, in his years as a musician he has seen his songs enter the airy upper regions of CMJ and MTV charts.
No doubt as a result of this, Melvin has seen more of the bottom side of success than your average musician.
I do not know as a fact that he has, but am guessing it, based on another comment of his.
He said the big acts of MTV were a bunch of guys up to their ears in debt to their record companies.
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I did know this, about those poor souls who look so successful to the rest of the world.
They look successful.
They are not successful, however. By and large they are not, in any case.
My thought, in fact, is that since the "rock star" is an illusion created by and held by a consumer public, and is an illusion presumably held only in cultures we regard as culturally "advanced," most people in our world must be spending their entertainment dollars in support of illusions.
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This is a more pleasant way of thinking about it than the alternative that occurs to me:
That people are spending their entertainment dollars in a way designed to reinforce their status as sterile drone-insects in a world in which only corporations are monetarily virile.
We usually think of corporate drones as being the white shirts inhabiting postmodern cubicles. We think of these drones as the yes-sayers whose horizons are the bottom sills of tenth-story windows. We think of these insects as the ones entering glass doors in long lines in the morning, and departing at nightfall to form vast ant-lines stretching for miles down our fenced-in highways.
Yet I more often see another kind of drone-insect. This kind forages for sustenance by working a day job, only to send the results of this foraging to the queen corporations. In exchange for this foraging, these drones are given bits of sweetness they are told they need and will enjoy.
Unlike true ant colonies, in which infant insects are fed regurgitated fodder, in corporate colonies it is the adult human drone that is fed pre-digested pabulum.
Musical pabulum, often.
As I said, it is more pleasant to think of that rosier image of our times:
The majority of people are spending their entertainment dollars in support of illusions.
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Even those who realize their money is supporting a corporation, not the artist whose music most attracts them, however, still have the feeling that at some basic level they are supporting this thing called music.
Yet music seems not to even enter the picture, in many cases.
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" ... with conviction,
from California ... "
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I made my most recent observation of this in a fairly poorly written June 27 article from Gannett News Service about a new band being hyped as the Next Best Thing.
The article turns out to be about a star record producer. This producer was the force, apparently, behind some big-selling hits for recording corporations; and this producer, according to the Gannett writer, had "anointed" the new band in question.
To quote this article, with the word "they" referring to the band, and "he," to the famous producer:
"'They could be the next big thing from Iowa,' he said with conviction, from California."
I suspect producers are good at speaking with conviction, from California.
While this producer was speaking with conviction, from California, the young band members were still living off their parents, in Iowa.
To run a variation on Melvin's koan:
If this band's record does not sell, their problems are just starting.
If this band's record sells well, their problems are just starting.
They too, are drones, even though Gannett News Service has anointed them in its own backhanded fashion:
"Like all true rock stars, they hate homework," says the article.
Just like all true rock stars.
Hating homework, of course, is the thing. The article breathes not a word about the actual music.
It also breathes not a word about this Next Best Thing being a bunch of boys who have signed their economic souls to a queen corporation.
I suppose the lessons we take are these: first, that in being interested in these Next Best Things, it is not a matter of being interested in their music; and, second, that the selling of their economic souls is not a matter to mention.
As must be the case with all true rock stars.
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It happens that the credit card company that provided the piece of plastic that enabled me, as Iguanodon Smile, to meet expenses in issuing our first CD, Drive, went into receivership in February, a fact unknown to me until today, as I am writing these words. As of tomorrow, the piece of plastic is just a piece of plastic.
Or, rather, several pieces of plastic.
Naturally I am expected to cover the remainder of the debt. I can do so, and so I will. The payment schedule is not being accelerated, although that is not a big issue.
It is not a big issue because of this:
Small fish, small pond.
This is what I am and where I am, and what we are and where we are, as a band.
Had I been a true rock star, and indentured to a queen corporation, all the money I had earned in my life would not be adequate to repay the corporation for the debts it had assigned me in order for it to make profits.
Fortunately, neither the best thing nor the worst thing that can happen to us has happened to us.
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Cheers,
Mark Rich
10 July '02
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You may still read the May essay here.
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