"Metallica's Vineyards"
Hark!
Years ago I remembered the angry roiling across the land, youngsters and grifters and net-geek chiselers laying on a mope-mouthed grimace of curdled ill-will over the fact that Metallica was trying to take away their all-you-can-eat buffet of "free music". What I thought of was angry, milling mobs-- the tone getting uglier with a curt laugh as Lars Ulrich, the drummer and spokesman for the business side of music, came out there like a combination between an older brother, an uncle, and the Danish owner of a wine garden and pleading with them not to loot his company's cellars, the rowdies breaking in with digital axes and pouring the casks out in the street less like principled revolutionaries but more like fist-thrusting rabble.
Yet find them far less vigorous, sun-tanned, and hardy as junior suburbanoid tight-rope-walkers of moral quandaries, all but wearing a striped "Dr. Seuss" stoner's hat and flipping flap-jacks over a stove as the herd of lower impulses fords the river, the record company issues warnings, and a few get "strung up" with fines as an example to the rest.
An act like Metallica is always put in "a funny place". As entertainment that caters to "the lower instincts", encourages rowdyism and vulgarity, and is the bane to parents and teachers everywhere, the fans must understand that it is a form of "controlled anarchy". And when someone goes to a concert where there are songs with titles like "Creeping Death", "Battery", "Seek and Destroy", (et al) you can rest assured that reasonable precautions have been taken so the concert-attendee will not only have a swell time, but their safety will be reasonably guaranteed with bouncers and a building that meets safety codes. It takes a supreme amount of discipline to learn how to play one's instruments, sing, and write songs. The quantity of personal investment, effort, and hard work that it puts a couple of dudes through "to go the distance", rising to the level where they can even be a band-- much less a successful one-- can hardly be reconciled with "the lower impulses" of the average sniggering kid out there who would be just as content "to never put in the time".
The early days of any distribution scheme "pulled along by a shoestring", is ceaselessly liberal and ingratiating and is basically "an infomercial", hopefully, for further purchases down the road. Any business entity you can think of will hand out coupons, flyers, and yes-- even free samples to get customers "coming back". Think of Metallica laying out glasses of wine with its early demo tape, "No Life 'till Leather"-- something that was crude, yes, but "smacked good" of an "early vintage"-- which was frequently bootlegged and traded around from friend-to-friend and the underground zine publishing community. Something to consider back then, was that "the technology was different". A tape, recorded off a pressed record, "took up space". . . . . and with each generation of a "duped" copy, kept getting cruddier and cruddier. Unless one wanted the recording to warble on and eventually spool apart, sooner or later you back-tracked to the official source.
By gradually generating interest around them and getting the curious to come out to their shows, Metallica eventually "got signed" and had their records distributed to a wider and broader network of locations over the years. Now they can be found just about anywhere. That "old method" of doing it, within the limits of technology, was appropriate for who they were back then. But as the market changes, up-and-coming acts are going to have to realize some things. Individual songs, opposed to music set up in the old album-format, are going to matter far more because it's those sparkling gems, less than the sale of an album, which becomes "the true infomercial" for coming out and seeing the band in concert and buying "their swag", where the true money is. Developing an underground following through a web presence, then attracting a cult-following is the future.
Something that Metallica would have agreed with. . . . .
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"You want a-nuther song? Well I ain't plain' one mutherfuckin' note until someone comes up here and puts sum money in my god-damned tip-jar! You know I only came here for one purpose. . . . . to take yor fuckin' cash! Why, I could make more profit puttin' out my meth-head neighbor's asshole and ringin' a bell, hollerin' 'Man for sale! Man for sale!'
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(Rheeee of Crickets)
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("I heard that, Missy!")
© 2010 by Insufferable Industries
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