Are you saying that musicians won't continue to write and perform unless they make obscene amounts of money on tours?
Well, no. I'm just saying that recommending as a general principle that people not attend live concerts is kind of insulting to musicians, most of whom are dead broke, and who would be even more dead broke but not for people paying the cover charge, or the ticket price, or whatever.
With a few exceptions, musicians don't make much money from recordings. They generally get a very small percentage of the sales, and they often spend a lot of that paying back the record company for production and marketing expenses. It's a tough business.
And I can't imagine David Bowie putting on a bad show, but to each his own, I guess.
Are you saying that musicians won't continue to write and perform unless they make obscene amounts of money on tours?
Well, no. I'm just saying that recommending as a general principle that people not attend live concerts is kind of insulting to musicians, most of whom are dead broke, and who would be even more dead broke but not for people paying the cover charge, or the ticket price, or whatever.
With a few exceptions, musicians don't make much money from recordings. They generally get a very small percentage of the sales, and they often spend a lot of that paying back the record company for production and marketing expenses. It's a tough business.
Yeah? Really?
Perhaps I'd be more accurate to say "big name acts", rather than live musicians. It seems it's the celebrity that ruins the genius and the audience. I heartily recommend that folks provide their custom to live musicians performing in local small to medium venues. Coffee houses, parks, pubs, schools, Elks, dance halls, theaters, whatever.
There are lots of various kinds of musicians, too. I have a neighbor who is a flautist with the Symphony and a chamber music group. She's never had her name in print but for performance flyers or the local rags. She loves it, is a professional and union member. Then there are the folky travelling groups that do the pubs, like my friend Kevin Shay and his Wamadoole Dingbats pals (the last I heard)...he's got a union card, too, and has had some pressings on CDs. Worth seeing live, both. These are not "big name acts" like Sting, or David Bowie. They all have, other, real world jobs. Their crowds don't spend twenty minutes screaming, often over their first number, and the tickets (cover charge) didn't match that for a seat at the Rose Garden. They think touring sucks.
There is a line...between musicians who flog out either a slim living or have a "hobby" of music, and one of the "artistic geniuses" who have "altered our understanding of aural aesthetics" who charge exhorbitant fees to show their bodies on stage....no matter the physical or mental condition.
And, I'm curious. Do you mean that it's more expensive to go into a studio, put down your tracks, and then turn it over to the record company to do the rest, than to go on the road, where the musician has to pay for transport of him/herself and whatever instruments and equipment needed, pay the techies and the roadies, pay the venue owner, the marketing, the ticket services and the accommodations at each and every site? And rake in the dough? It seems more draining that the put down some tracks, stamp it, package it, label it and sell it.
Every musician I've known has gone through a long period of grueling touring before they cut their first set of tracks, and felt relieved that because they had done so, they could finally cut down on the all the crappy touring. It takes a little of both. But it seems when the "big names" want to rake in some big dough, the do a tour....it helps sell CDs.
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And I can't imagine David Bowie putting on a bad show, but to each his own, I guess.
Well, it was crap. I was heartily disappointed, and it in no way impressed my teen Kyrgyz guest.
The last decent big name act I saw live was Pink Floyd. And they did it in worse venue, before the Rose Garden Theater of the Clouds existed. It was in the Memorial Coliseum, a music averse cube of glass and concrete. I expected the worst, and received the best. It was the first, and best, quadraphonic concert I've ever attended. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention was decent, too....but that could well have been due to reasons exogenous to the music scene.
About every six months I go on a "What is David Bowie doing" kick, in hopes there is something, ANYTHING... On my most recent such bender last month I'd read that he had gone back to calling himself David Jones and he appeared committed to enjoying a total retirement from music. His website hadn't been updated in years. I was most melancholy.
This is fucking unfathomable. It's like, uh, without fathom!
Yesterday morning, the local radio station shitheads played an excerpt from the new song, then had listener shitheads call in to say whether they liked it. None did. Because they were shitheads. "Oh boo hoo it's so melancholy and like totes sad and stuff." Many of them said they were big Bowie fans, too. I'm not a huge fan, although I like a lot of his stuff, and I rather liked what I heard. Especially the atmospheric guitar and such. Fuck the local shitheads.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
When I was fourteen, one of my friends moved away. To mark it, she, my best friend and I had three sleepover and movie nights. On my night I took them to see The Man Who Fell to Earth at the local art film theater. I can still see the dirty looks I got from them as we left the theater. I don't think they'll ever entirely forgive me for the traumatic sight of Rip Torn's penis.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
Re: David Bowie appreciation thread
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