Death Or Glory

Our once (and future?) logo

One of my first and most potent lessons in sales and marketing happened before I was, well, in the field. I cut my teeth as a DIY indie musician, leading a rock band for much of a decade, with a few hundred gigs in a bunch of areas. (Above, you'll see our logo. Bitchin', no?)

While the band was unsuccessful commercially, I learned great life lessons from the experience, and made some truly lasting relationships. It's also been a big part of my professional life as a consultant, because at its core, stage time is stage time, and it's fairly impossible to be too nervous in a corporate setting. The latter isn't going to boo, clear the room, or throw beer at you. Well, not often.

We're now coming up on a meaningful anniversary for the band, which has led to a spark of interest from some of the alumni... and there's the quality of what Seth Godin refers to as an idea virus here. I'm finding myself looking back through old track lists, mulling over what covers might work with those songs now, asking friends and players for ideas on staffing the holes in the lineup, daydreaming about T-shirt designs and so on, and so on.

All for a business that failed financially before, and will most assuredly fail again, at least in terms of time and money spent versus any income brought in. There's no hue and cry from our fan base because, well, there wasn't really a fan base to make that hue and cry. Even bands with fan bases are incredibly challenged in the current market environment, since digital distribution of music has been a simple case of devaluing the income potential for the musicians. If we do this again, it's strictly a hobby for the "benefit" of friends and family, even if we were to somehow attract outside attention.

Which makes it Art, perhaps, or something a little more onanistic. My thoughts so far are to play gigs rarely if at all, put new songs up on a web site for voluntary payments, and in a flight of fancy, replace or supplement all of the old T-shirts. If time is made for this, it will be to just do the stuff that's fun, and none of the stuff that isn't.

What's not fun as an indie musician? Grubbing for gigs, begging radio stations to play you, journalists to review and cover your events, and doing everything you can to drum up a crowd with sweat equity. And that all happens before the gear moving, fights with sound personnel and gate keepers, and so on. Even all these years later, with the fading of memory, I've got no inclination at all to spend time schmoozing gatekeepers, or finding someone to do that for us.

And yet... I can't completely separate the urge to create from the urge to find a market, because both urges are, well, creative. Asking me to make without marketing is like asking me to write and not record, or rehearse without performing; a near impossible separation of what has always seemed like a paired process.

Besides, imagine if we were, well, so much better or more successful at the enterprise now that we're older and filled with the knowledge that we aren't going to ever make a living from music.

It's, well, keeping me up just thinking about it.

Just like in the old days.

Play me out, Joe Strummer...

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