A Pirate's Life... August 19, 2012 17:20
Being a musician - a full-time, career musician - is not one of those paths you choose because you think it's going to be consistent in any way - financially, critically, how "in" or "out" you are with whom at what time and over whom and what they have influence - one cannot control these things. These things are virtually guaranteed to continually fluctuate over the lifespan and career of a musician. It's a path that is chosen out of either necessity or greed&ego - hopefully the former. When positive things happen in our career, we are thrilled to be moving toward the top of the wheel. These are our benchmarks. Sometimes we have to beg, steal (only in fractions of pennies - Office Space style) and borrow in between these benchmarks in order to maintain our lives and our creative lifeforce.
The friends and family of (hopefully talented) musicians are pretty lucky - just because of all the free live entertainment. They rely on us to entertain them fairly constantly and we rely on them for a place to stay, people to yell really loudly in the audience, people to tell us how awesome or horrible our new songs are, and just generally support us on our wildly varying trip to the top.
This brings me to the concept of merchandise. It's basically a free exchange of all these ideas - self-designed, still attempting to please people aesthetically - and a way for people to both show their support and actually give support in doing so. Hook yourself up with some. Check out the promos going on right now they're pretty nuts.
Love and other drugs,
Morgan