‘Morning, listeners. Bit late starting. Sorry. Here’s the Flaming Groovies.’
– Helen Garner, ‘Did he pay?’ from Postcards from Surfers
As an incurable romantic, and a sort of delusional lazybones, my position has always been that good music, once generated, will eventually find its audience. The quality of the work will, in the end, override the media saturation that pervades today’s world, and bring it to the top of the pile. Perhaps the artist will have to, like, die first – that’s been known to happen before. But all the same, distinctive artistic product will earn the place it deserves in people’s affection and amass eternal respect in the process.
This is such utter horseshit, let’s be honest. Where does it come from? It’s so obviously the most indulgent variety of wishful thinking available, and so manifestly untrue. Why not go one better and emulate Juan Antonio’s dad in Vicky Cristina Barcelona, making your perfect, beautiful pieces and then keeping them to yourself? Then you’re untouchable. No-one deserves your superior craftsmanship anyway.
News flash: self-promotion is not, it seems, in my character. I have the gift neither for talking big about myself nor for seeing endless opportunities to talk so. I know there are people who are stunningly capable in this area, and rise to a sort of ruthlessness in their pushing of the barrow. And I’m sure they’re doing well and I wish them health and happiness. But it ain’t me.
Which is why it’s taken me so long to re-inaugurate my YouTube channel and put some of my work up for people to hear there. Maybe about seven years ago I was doing a bit of this and even filmed a standard tune each week. Then I got tired of that and took them all down. But it’s impossible to ignore reality, and although my very brief flirtation with Spotify has been concluded, thirteen cents later, it seems that YouTube is a reasonable way to advertise. At least there you can choose which tracks people can hear for nix and don’t have to go giving away entire albums.
Here is my channel. https://www.youtube.com/user/pixisnix – there’s even an icon you can click right here!
‘Morning, listeners. Bit late starting.’ But go along, subscribe! It’s mostly stuff off albums just now but there is one otherwise unrecorded original and I’ll do a bit more filming by and by. This is the effort I can make.
In other news, I went for a job. This called for a large measure of unaccustomed self-aggrandisement. I did my best, but I didn’t get it. hashtag disappointed hashtag a bit cross hashtag bored
20/vi/2017