Indi music and the thinking man

A new album is like a kid - Some sweat the small stuff - going over and over all points in pre - production and post production to create a very expensive piece of work that has had all the texture and grit harmonically milled out of the good stuff that it often began as, leaving all the texture and flavour of a No-Name Turkey Frank. There are countless examples of seminal albums that were put together over the course of a weekend - a week or a month. Usually, a new and inspired writing team are able to mine each other's talents
- all the while heightening their own skill set under the pressure of not wanting to
appear weak by comparison in this all important area. The contrary is more often the case, writers block, or partially completed opus' that shrivel in the sun without the lifeblood being supplied to the vital components. Pressure grows with each subsequent release, Even in this world of "vanity publishing" and independent record companies, your reputation is often all you have, and one dropped ball will likely cause the few outlets such as festivals and the all important folks at FACTOR and SOCAN to place you swiftly on the back burner.

Either way - there is no white knight on a steed to carry you to fame and fortune. In the mold of a previous standard contract - a new band selling 1 million units would clear about $25k pr. member (5 member band) after the jackals had had their share, a paltry amount considering a million LP's or CD's sold in Canada is almost unheard of. Later deals and increased leverage brings higher returns, publishing (artists can now no longer be swindled out of their entire publishing credits - only 50% can be wrested from their hands by publishing companies). It's hard to be a musician - a real musician today. A commodity that has always had to live the hardscrabble lives of it's followers, music has become a tawdry, free blow job giving tramp trying to give you the hickey that says to everyone to "Keep Away"! and the art of lovemaking is long ago lost on an industry, and a generation that had applied all the grace and reflection of a Gypsy Minivan salesman. Nothing new there, but every time I sit down to write, I can't help but think to myself "Will anyone ever hear this"?. Will they give a damn? And each and every time, after I have my moment of reflection I just figure - "Fuck em - I'm having fun"!

Boobs, boobs, boobs.

The love affair with the female breast has existed as long...well as long as females have had breasts. Now, don't kid yourself; as much as we men love boobs, women love them even more. The power of the mamary gland is something we all (well the lucky ones) get very familiar with the delivery of warm, nourishing food in the very early stages of life. Somehow, the size and pride of said glands transmitted a message of health, vitality and a standard of female excellence that is out of scope with their actual benefit once past this original intention. Boobs become sexual. Boobs become the very essence of female power and control. As there is this mutual love-in with these great bumps, it was natural that the two camps - those who own the boobs, and those who want to touch them, have joined in a strangely justifiable way to ghettoize all other forms of cancer over the past five years. Breast cancer is the darling of every fundraiser, corperate teaming, ground roots campaigning, and government commitment - at the expense of other form of this insideous disease. so here is a shout out to Joe Boxer and the Princess Margaret Hospital for their fundraising campaign to combat cancers below the waist. Sure - the ones that kill guys too, like colo-rectal and testicular cancers, as well as the epitome of womanhood - and the one that fell my hero, my mother at the age of 59 - ovarian cancer.
Thank you for doing the right thing at the right time.