Page 22 - RYAN'S GIG GUIDE OCTOBER 2014

When the world still smelled of Plasticine and I
was but a large knotted school tie with legs
sticking out music lessons were a battleground
between peers; the mission to extract the most
nerve destroying wraith calls from your musical
weapon of choice and best your opponent in the
battle of ‘Miss Teaching Us Three Blind Mice’
It was a breeze for those in possession of a violin
but a right bugger for the slow lad who always got
a beater shoved in his hand and told to stand
behind the drum and to take the beater from out
of his nose
And it was during a field trip to the main city for a
sight seeing tour of the local prison that life first
taught me the valuable lesson of not getting too
close to the bars of the cells in solitary or
expecting to best a heavily muscled opponent by
way of mysterious martial art techniques picked
up via osmosis from episodes of PC Pinkerton and
Mr Truncheon applying some ‘crowd calming’
measures
As the bruises faded and my morphine was
reduced I reflected on the real lesson I learned that
day; I was in a world where if you wanted
something be it martial arts cunning or a bigger
box of Lego or to not be turned into a human
Pinata you had to work for it Hard
ROBERT BAKER
RGG October 2014 - p.22
Believing the hyperbole of hope and half truths we
steadfastly hold true (be it your skills in unarmed
musicianship or unarmed combat) is a constant
pot hole wrecking up the road we walk through
life each stumble a nose dive into bowel loosening
uncertainty every scar caused by gravity’s
inexorable pull a lesson well and truly learned
So the age old romantic notion of an A&R exec
happening past a hostelry and by chance hearing a
band of such sonic virtue as to wrest them from the
confines of a stale fag end fug and mutton chops
aplenty and propel them via private Jet to the
number one spot on iTunes is slowly becoming as
see through as my neighbors knickers
Musicians eager to embrace an ear or six take to the
streets and sing to the pigeons store sounds on
clouds and share them with a virtual world of
perfect reflections of similar minded shut ins
masquerading as a social circle
But to make your mark you must punch mighty
hard and even an established act is an army of
background hub bub and bother constant updating
and info sharing and ‘Hey look at this!’ ing a
mighty weight to lift and burden to bear
So what can you as an unsigned entity do? Well a
trip across ‘The Google’ reveals an incongruous
number of promotion services and servers
packages and promotion pimping all eager to take
your talent and trousers and Tweet your links like
an epileptic Morse Code machine for less than the
price of a case of no label lager
Dig a bit deeper in both packages and pocket and
avenues of adding ‘friends’ and upping your ‘Hit
Count’ come into play; the arbitrary agreement that
whatever the thumb is in favor of equal ‘this many’
people think it’s not shit is an easily exploited
competition of favoritism and fandom yet one still
considered as having merit in weight
Dig even deeper further still and maybe do a few
dishes and for the princely sum of just under a
grand you can see your name in the magazines and
missives of many music sites; an avalanche of
review requests and interview inquiries press packs
and promotional posters packed all posted and
pushed into the palms of potential punters and
promoters and peoples aplenty
OUT OF THE MIDLANDS