...to imagine that someone, somewhere, wants an explanation of what this little adventure is all about. Hence, this blog.
I'll try to make a long story short.
For many years, mostly in the 1990s, I played in a band. I was the lead singer and wrote most of the songs. We played out a good amount and released a few tapes/CDs of our own material. We got airplay in Finland and Spain. Kids from Clifton High School in New Jersey bought our music, wore our T-shirts, and even waged an unsolicited, week-long phone and fax campaign to get us played on Z100 in New York (alas, to no avail).
Near the tail end of our heyday, a person with music-industry connections set up a couple of live showcases for us, both of which were attended by representatives from major record labels. A few said they would consider signing us to contracts if we somehow were able to sell 10,000 copies of our CDs ... in record stores ... and verify it. Of course, to do that without an established label to manufacture, distribute and promote it was next to impossible. But apparently the Dave Matthews Band and Hootie and the Blowfish had been able to do it, which made them a low-risk (and, ultimately, high-reward) investment. And that became the model for signing bands at that point.
Needless to say, we were never signed to a label of any size.
Flash forward to the present. Nowadays, for less than $100, anyone can release an album with virtually worldwide distribution via the Internet. So a few months ago, I took four songs I'd recorded, cobbled together some cover art and put out an EP. Just to do it.
And no, I haven't sold anywhere near 10,000 copies (marketing continues to be a pretty big stumbling block). But it's out there, and if Facebook/MySpace/ReverbNation are to be believed, I've got hundreds of fans. Plus, the fact that my old band got airplay in Spain helped my new band get airplay in Spain as well.
Pretty cool, no?
So now I've been bitten by the bug, and some friends and I have been recording more music, with an eye towards releasing a full-length album in 2011. I'm getting the chance to work with a lot of musicians I admire, most of whom I've known for a long time, and some of whom I'm even related to. And its fun to think that total strangers at various points on the globe are listening to my music, and might even actually buy it. Some might even steal it, which would not necessarily be a bad thing, because that would mean it's truly reached the public, like a message in a bottle that slowly bobbed its way across a vast ocean, finally washed ashore and was picked up by a curious beachcomber. Dare to dream...
Yep, that's what it's all about: dreams. Sure, I could have (and probably should have) just summed it up this way several paragraphs earlier. But that's the difference between blogging and songwriting: the latter is the art of making a long story short (usually four minutes or less). This blog, as if you couldn't tell by now, will likely be the opposite of that.
If you've made it this far, thanks for sticking with me. And stay tuned.
