Originally Posted By: Bass Thumper
But, I feel for the "small" artists that are near starving and where each dollar counts a lot to them. If they need tracks then they need them. We are afterall, in hard economic times.


If they are near starving, it is time for them to accept that they aren't good enough to make it in the extremely competitive world of music where most people in that category usually can't play, sing or write and get a job. (My friends all tell me I'm a good singer! Well, hang onto those friends.)

I see music like I see sports. One one team wins the World Series, the Stanley Cup or the Lombardi Trophy. The rest of the pack is tied for loser. I know too many wannabe types who think they are somebodies because they are BMOC in the town of 14,000 where they were born, still live (and still go to their high school's football games though they have been out of school for 50 years), and only perform where they know the crowd will be all their 65 year old friends who wouldn't dare tell them they suck. But like the old saying goes, "Will it play in Peoria?" Take your show 500 miles from home where nobody knows you and see how you do. If you play to a "lowest common denominator" crowd you can feel like a star at the level of The Beatles. Take your music to ONE showcase and see how you do. I did one of those at a bar in Santa Monica at a place called "At My Place" decades ago and I though I wowed them. There were reps there from 9 labels. Only 2 even spoke to me. The better of those two comments were "Your sound is very midwest mainstream and we already have a Johnny Cougar." I just thanked him for his input while my mind said "You just heard 6 guys from Cleveland Ohio play 5 songs written by a guy from Cleveland Ohio. We sound like where we came from."

From that day forward I realized that riding the tour bus or flying my private plane to my show at The Enormodome was not in my future and that I just didn't have "it". I resigned myself to schlepping my own gear, setting up, tearing down, driving my old car home and doing it again tomorrow was going to be my life, which is was until 1994 when I got a big boy job. And to go back out now and play with 3 people with 6 people on backing tracks... nope. If I want horns, I know horn players. If I need more singing I would only recruit players who can sing (which nobody does anymore because of tracks). I have watched solo and duo acts with tracks where even the solos were on the tracks. I would actually be embarrassed to do that.

Recently I tried to recruit to bud a band to do music of The Cure. I let that ad run 2 weeks, I was sad at what was replying, and I just gave up. I don't want to be like those athletes that hang on when they don't have game anymore, and I haven't had musical game in quite a while.