Let's call that currency: gas. As in, the closer I (the artist) get to you (the media handler), the more gas I blow gently into your ear, and the more gas you feel comfortable blowing up my rectum helping to send me off into the stratosphere of indie/local fame, which by association inflates your own hot air balloon enabling you to bob along in my wind stream until you decide to cut the connection when I inevitably do something human that doesn't reflect well on my artsy-goddess-ness that drew you to me in the first place. The thing about gas in the internet age is, it's odorless, colorless and can be produced at no cost by anyone with enough imagination to give themselves the impression that they perform a function entertaining and important enough for other people to pay attention to. Lest you think I am merely pointing fingers at others, let me concede that I, too, am in part a product of my own self-manufactured gas, which I have learned to readily supply myself with as a combatant to another closely related, odorless, colorless, but far less glamourous, construction: my insecurities. The instructions are simple: stick your pride in a plastic bag and cover your nose and mouth. Breathe deeply for approximately five minutes. You will get high, and your eyes will get all glassy.
The time seems ripe for an example. Several months ago I was approached on the internet by a woman presumably working in radio. I think, but I'm not quite sure, that she had a professional job at a station, but was transitioning into a more freelance-based existence producing internet radio shows presumably from home. She sent me a simple business request for a few songs to include in the mix. I admit, my response was extremely radical in this DIY culture of everything we are currently enamored with: I directed her to my record label, which generally handles all such requests.
Burn!!!!!!
But not.
As I said, this was a business request, so there should be no need for the drama that comes with multiple exclamation points. But this wouldn't be a story about gas if it didn't noiselessly blow up in my face. So of course she did not respond to me and opted against following up through the appropriate channels. For a short time, I drove myself a bit crazy trying to imagine whether or not I did something wrong. Was I rude? Too blunt? Did I inflate my self-importance by condescendingly suggesting she approach an actual record label? Had we dated the same man years ago and I just forgot? Were we dating the same man right NOW?????
And then I caught myself. Because no matter what her reasons for her lack of response, at the end of the day I handled my business as it should have been handled: according to procedure. I should be able to assume that her response fit into the same model. Perhaps she is a budding internet superstar who has a strict policy never to deal with record labels. So be it. Might be a little odd, and maybe even counterproductive (I can't help but wonder if she would respond the same to a major-label represented artist who dared suggest she contact Jive or Warner Brothers), but that's her choice.
The super-friendly, social butterfly part of me winces a bit, though. I remember the days when I entertained the music scene from a "let's all decorate each other's lockers on our birthdays" perspective. It was fun. I had a vibrant social life, I rarely paid to go anywhere, I had flash-in-the-pan romances with guys that seemed as kooky and/or brainy and/or creative as I was. I made friends with girls who occasionally went Punky Brewsterish in their attire just like I did, and once or twice, one or two of them even wore the same size shoes. Jackpot. But I didn't get a whole lot done back then, and I got my feelings hurt a whole lot, and I even went so far as to hurt some other people's feelings. And to this day, I don't have any of those friends anymore. All of those feelings, mixed in with intoxicating music that strangely sounds way better when you are already intoxicated, didn't really produce (in me or in those I surrounded myself with) anything that came with staying power, much less moving power. I gained life experience in fluffing up my own feathers after my own actions caused them to get all wet and oily. Valuable, sure, but not altogether necessary.
So now I have learned. And now that I have label representation, you can be sure that I'm going to use it. If you can quit your nine-to-five and take a bunch of pictures in front of a logo-covered white sheet on your way into a "magazine launch," "film screening," or "t-shirt release party," then I can represent for Ankh Ba as hard as Ankh Ba has represented for me. In the end, I guess it's a relief. Chances are I don't want to be affiliated with people who don't take their own business seriously enough to respect the notion that someone else might. I can't eat gas, after all, and I imagine if I was stuck in a room with no windows and only gas to breathe, I might wake up dead.
Ankh Ba Records. We take it so seriously that we welcome you not to. Lol..
No comments:
Post a Comment