10.34
Hotel Acceptable, Reading.
A gentle reading-breakfast, the breakfasting chamber full of a Saga Tour breakfasting party.
Right opposite our window is this…
… a Travelodge hotel. I wonder: what planning criteria were used in granting permission for this construction?
12.35 Problems getting online. Pooey pooey. Off to walk around the town.
15.34 Along the walkway by the hotel I…
II…
III…
18.23 A pal has reminded me of this article by David Byrne… an informed & considered overview of current options for (in the main) well-rising & established artists. David writes…
What do record companies do?
Or, more precisely,
what did they do?
Fund recording
sessions
Manufacture product
Distribute product
Market product
Loan and advance
money for expenses (tours, videos, hair and makeup)
Advise and guide
artists on their careers and recordings
Handle the accounting
I would correct the last item to mishandle the accounting & and add…
Provide a publicity department.
David continues…
Touring is not just promotion. Live performances used to be seen as essentially a way to publicize a new release — a means to an end, not an end in itself… Performing is a thing in itself, a distinct skill, different from making recordings.
Touring & live performance is a longer story, particularly when touring under EG Management is included. When the form of words is used - touring to promote the product – the aspiring musician in me feels profoundly insulted. If the act of music is only a promotional strategy, the music has just died. As a strategy, to encourage major labels to support the live performance of music in touring, it was forgivable to declare loudly on executive floors: we are off to promote our record! But to argue that musical & promotional activities were qualitatively separate events was to meet with dismissive comments, albeit rarely to one’s face.
On a professional level, the effect of performance in developing interest in music & its professors is undeniable. But if promotion is the only aim, music is pinned to earth & its winged life destroyed, before even getting in the van.
And for those who can do it, it's a way to make a living.
This is a significant part of the present-future of professional musicking: can you walk on stage & deliver? For this young player, and my band buddies of the time, this was what the musical life was seen to be. The current behaviour-practices of audient-punter-consumers with rights, 3G cellphones & onboard viddying, undermines the present-future of my own performance life.
19.05 E-flurrying.
22.35 Collecting T at the stage door & returning her to the hotel for gentling.
