LOVED THE JUNIOR BROWN!

Here’s a song by James Mcmurtry(yes, larrys son) with a wicked slide show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTW0y6kazWM

Alex – is that you? Great video – thanks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTW0y6kazWM

Those chicks were awsome…if any of them have a new band, I would like to know.

As for you Fini, thanks for the back-handed apology. Nothing like sincerity. You said “The days of average musicians living like kings and queens are over, if those days ever existed in the first place. Most musicians struggle for dinner.” Friend, those days have never existed. That doesn’t mean you sell out to survive. My husband’s been a working musician for over 40 years. I know it’s tough, believe me, and I don’t need the “It’s O.K. to be a shill, because I need to put food on the table lecture” I’ve heard it for the last 30 years and look were it’s gotten us.

If anyone is lecturing anyone here it is you. It’s more than ok to take the works that you have created and offer them to anyone who wishes to pay you for those works, its called being a responsible working musician. A responsible working musician seeks out every way possible to promote their music and get paid for it. To not do everything in your power to make a living from your music is lazy and irresponsible.

It is not the musicians’ fault that corporations or the people who own and run them behave badly. Many times, the musicians’ works in question were sold by their publisher to the advertiser without consulting the musicians that created it. Of those who actually are consulted in the process or who seek out TV or movie placement of their songs or who seek out advertisers to use their music, these folks are considered particularly shrewd artists.

Your resentment of musicians who “sellout” is hollow. As I stated earlier, the moment your husband decided to make music his primary income he sold out. If his or your moral repugnance at selling his creative works to advertisers is an issue its because you or he have decided to make it one. This does not make you morally superior to others. We all have sellout moments where we break down and deal with the corporate folks, every single one of us, including and especially you.

You may consider selling your house, it was probably developed on land that was habitat to a squirrel or racoon or something. You definitely want to sell that car that guzzles so much gas and quit funding the Wahabist regime in Saudi Arabia who fund the schools that create the terrorists we are all dealing with now that feed the BushCo fear factory. You’re gonna want to get rid of all those sweatshop sewn clothes you and your family are wearing, and the exploited labor picking your vegetables and slaughtering your meat for your meals would probably appreciate your hunger strike that will make them lose what miniscule income they make from being migrant farm workers.

No American is morally superior in the corporate blame game. Please come up with a new schtick to hate musicians with other than “don’t be a corporate shill”. If you harbor resentments because your working musician husband has not had financial success in 40 years of playing, I suggest you work that out with him.

There are millions of people in the same boat with your husband, including my oldest brother who has been a working guitarist for 36 years. Myself, I have been working as a recording engineer, live audio tech and club DJ when times are tough for 18 years. Refusing to pick up an oar and row along with the rest of us just creates opportunities for another oarsman to get promoted to the poop deck.

One more thing, being the wife of a musician is nowhere NEAR the same as being the musician. If you want to lecture me on any other topic you yourself have experience in, I’m game. Until then, I suggest you think long and hard about lecturing musicians on what they do with THEIR creative works. Glass houses and all you know.

So as I see it, questions about associating with corrupt corporations shouldn’t be tests of individual morality, but should be questions about how best to pursue institutional change. I think there’s room for debate here. No need to be doctrinaire. Once in a while a bunch of creative types will get together, in a bar room much like this one, and come up with a way to at least momentarily turn the tables on the powers that be.