Concentrate on your balls!

The other night I met up with a band who had come to London from the other side of the world in search of fame and fortune in the music business. I can completely relate to that. We are pirates. Desperate men in search of desperate fortunes.  

The crazy thing is that these guys told me they had read this blog. And that it had made an impact on them. That makes me feel really good. Back in my band days, I remember getting emails from fans who wrote nice things about our music. Some of it was “hey, man, love your stuff” type of praise and it was equally gratefully received. But the most memorable ones were really touching stories about how the music had affected their personal lives, helped solve problems and got them through bad times. Reading those was very inspiring. Humbling.

So, I was just chuffed to bits to find out that someone out there enjoys these ramblings.

Moving swiftly along. 

My brother Mat used to play tennis as a kid. He was good. He subscribed to Tennis Player magazine. The rag had articles about the art of playing tennis buried between adverts about booze and cars and Rolexes. The articles included tips from pro players. I remember one that made us laugh. Arthur Ashe - a former Wimbledon champ - stressed the importance of concentrating on the ball. Of course, we twisted it to “concentrate on your balls”.  Uh huh huh… check it out Beavis…

Concentrating on the ball has to be taken very literally. It means that you must concentrate on the most important thing that’s happening at the moment. If you get the ball back, the rally continues. If you start thinking about the awards ceremony, you scuff the shot, lose the point and may never reach even the quarter finals.

John McEnroe wrote in his memoirs that he would concentrate on the ball so hard that he could actually read the logo on it as it was being whacked back at him at high velocities. 

The same applies to the music business. Concentrate on things that are important right now. Ones that are under your control. Don’t worry about getting bigger gigs supporting bigger bands. It’s out of your sphere of influence. Nothing you can do about it. Nothing a manager can do about it, in most cases. What you can do is make sure that your band promotes your gigs and that your gigs are great. That when anyone sees you they see something fantastic. Don’t you worry ’bout a thing - sooner or later word will get around. And then you’ll get asked to do the cool support slots.

Don’t worry about what all the other bands are doing. It doesn’t matter that they’re crap and you’re great - and why is it that all the crap bands get somewhere while you don’t? What they do is out of your control. But you can control writing better songs and making better recordings. And if you keep concentrating on the proverbial ball, you will keep the rally going and eventually something will give in your favour.

A mate of mine is an architect, a property developer. He introduced me the concept of the COST - TIME - QUALITY triangle.  

Apparently it’s an age old concept, but new to me. You learn something new every day. It applies to making records, being in a band - all the things we in the music business are doing.

In this day and age when very few people out there seem to buy into the myth of how the rock’n'roll biz supposedly works, it is staggering to come up against the levels of ignorance that, sadly, we come up against when speaking with bands. Not all, but some.

Equally, when we discuss the realities of the business they seek to enter, it’s great when you see the penny drop. When someone gets it. Even better when someone not only gets it but decides to do something about it.

Lou Pearlman, the disgraced manager of Backstreet Boys and N’Sync (disgraced because of financial fraud for which, I believe, he is currently serving a prison sentence),  spoke at an industry conference about the “product” that is a band. He said it’s A+ songs, A+ recordings of those songs, A+ live show, A+ image and A+ story to tell. If you have all those you will find success. If one element is not A+ you will fail.  

So the cynic in me says, we deal with real artists, not fucking boy bands.

In truth, it’s the same for everyone. If it ain’t brilliant in every way, why do you think the great people of our nation would be bothered to spend their hard earned cash on it?

Click on the photo below to view a wonderful YouTube clip of David Lee Roth talking about this stuff.

Incidentally, the song the meathead interviewer refers to is California Girls, a song most definitely not made by Mr Roth. Instead, it was made by Brian Wilson. Granted, Mr Roth’s version was popular in the 80s, around the time when meathead and yours truly were into that sort of thing.

Still, give credit where credit is due. Brian Wilson made that song.

And for those who don’t know who David Lee Roth or Brian Wilson are, they are people who made music for which millions of people have spent millions of dollars, euros, yen, rand… you name it.

I digress. This free trade Argentinian shiraz is really kicking in…

Two things rocking my world right now are: the song Pleasureseeker by The Brent Flood. The other one is a young songwriter who just sent us a demo with the most wonderful lyrics I have heard for a long long time. It feels great to be working with (and possibly working with) that level of talent.

Yes, this wine is definitely kicking in now….

V.

This entry was posted on 20/09/2008 at 12:42 am and is filed under News At Zen. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.