“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side.”
―Hunter S. Thompson
I’m about to leave my part-time position at a boutique publicity agency, where for the past year I’ve been handling inbound sales and writing strategic marketing and album release plans for fellow independent artists. It has often been quite gratifying to chat and commiserate with musicians a lot like me, who aren’t looking for fame and fortune, who know they’re making good or even great work, and who wouldn’t mind it if a coupla ten thousand people around the world eventually heard it and enjoyed it and bought some stuff. These have been our ideal clients. I have been privileged to serve their needs by selling them high-value custom service packages at a reasonable cost, then choosing a few to work with directly. I’ve heard some excellent, unique music and gained some friends and future collaborators.
Unfortunately, these simpatico types were steadily being drowned out by the irrepressible jerks, the ingrates, the whiners, the poor listeners, and the willfully delusional who sometimes overrode my or my boss’s client-vetting sensibilities with their okayish talents and relatively dollarful marketing budgets.
I’ve begun to feel trapped in a funhouse mirror, watching bloated cartoon versions of my own hidden asshole/artiste. I will admit, for example, that when I released the 2021 album from which you’ll hear a few songs below, I fancied somehow landing a spot for me and my full band as SNL’s musical guest. Of course, I’d also be asked to appear in a few skits because I’m just that damn good at everything, you see.
Such self-fluffing usually ends around the time you get your first quarter BMI streaming royalties payment and calculate your after-tax earnings as being almost enough to buy two fancy Old Fashioneds at the Gen Z hipster cocktail bar down the block. Your companion will offer to cover the tip.
In any case, I understand implicitly why middle-aged wannabes harbor grand fantasies of delayed showbiz exaltation. What I don’t understand is the stubborn insistence that they’re truly meant for big things, or even small but still highly exclusive things, like headlining as a complete unknown at one of the few remaining high-end NYC jazz clubs despite your pitch problems and boring repertoire, or landing the cover of AARP—just like the recent ones featuring Bruce Springsteen and Bonnie Raitt—even though you’re a 60-year-old non-famous singer-songwriter who, because you’re a Nashville insider who once happened to coproduce a novelty project for Sting, feels entitled to skip a few hundred steps.
Some of our wealthier clients take the “dress for the job you want” concept too seriously and think they can get away with abusing their hired helpers just as they imagine the superstars must do.
It’s the sense of entitlement that kills me. I know it’s a coverup for the shadow self, for unacknowledged deep-seated self-loathing. I’ve done my own hard work detoxing from a milder case of such bullshit. Now I would like to remove myself from the presence of all grownups still stuck in this childish diabolical dialectic, thank you very much. It’s boring and icky, like being the only sober person at a very drunk party.
I’ve put in my notice and it has been received with kindness and empathy by my boss. (I assume she must have considered me a good client when I was on her roster a few times in the past 10+ years, or else wouldn’t have hired me last November.) Recently I’ve had to write several detailed plans for my last few clients—one of them an absolute horror show of bad manners and belittlement (a woman only a few years older than me who treated me like a child), and two of them pure delights. I put the same amount of creative thinking and research into the plans for angels and the plans for assholes. The upshot is that I have no leftover creative-writerly energy at this moment. (Isn’t it amazing how many words I used to say that I have nothing to say?)
Instead, here are some of the songs for those who only know me here at Substack. INNOCENT MONSTER (2021) contains ten of my best lyrics/compositions/arrangements from the previous 12 years. I’m on piano & voice. I was supported by an amazing vocal coach to the stars-turned-producer who worked for almost free, by some of my favorite killers in the rhythm section, and by a small army of gorgeously talented guest instrumentalists and background vocalists who came in for overdubs. We finished all but the final vocal tracks just before the pandemic shutdown.
After a 6-week period of mourning and self-pity, I got sick of my own boo hoo hoo and bought a Focus 2i2 audio/digital interface, an SM7B mic, and a full license for the free demo copy of Reaper DAW I’d been playing with. During that first pandemic summer, I sang 6 to 10 hours every day and taught myself how to record professional vocal tracks in my tiny, sweaty office overlooking the back alley in my pre-divorce South Baltimore home. The final tracks were all single takes without any comping (i.e. cutting and pasting from different versions), although I did punch in (i.e. resing) an occasional pitchy note or unclear lyric. Yes, I’m totally bragging because I too am an asshole-artiste but at least I’m self-aware.
WARNING—SAVVY BRAND POSITIONING STARTS NOW. Rolling Stone (India) called INNOCENT MONSTER a “soaring” album that “balances darkness and mirth.” An old acquaintance over at Splice Today labeled me a “caustic rock diva,” which I of course took as the best compliment ever. Stitched Sound compared me favorably to both Brandi Carlisle and Norah Jones, which is great even if over-the-top because I’ve been waiting forever to hear someone mention a “comparable artist” other than Fiona Apple. And a blogger in the midwest penned this capsule review:
An art chick that's been knocking them dead in Baltimore for years steps up to a national platform to bring her jagged little paths to the masses. Arty without the art clichés, there's skills to pay the bill underneath it all but you've got to be listening in the pomo/post-genre set of ears to really get it.
See? I’m already way famous. Y’all just late to the party. Look for me on the cover of AARP magazine any day now.
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Your choice, of course, but you should be able to double-click to watch these lyric videos on the page here without opening YouTube in another browser window.
Here’s a big old-fashioned gospel-rock love song that can’t help itself and simply must throw in a few climate change references.
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I think of this song as Quentin Tarantino shoots a heartfelt love-and-murder ballad in a forgotten Utah desert motel but no doubt your mileage may vary.
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I wrote this way back in the GWBush era. It seems evergreen.
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If “Mark Me” was the hot start, “Petting Zoo” is the chilly beginning of the end.
I hope you hear something you like. Next Tuesday I’ll return to rampant word-slinging.
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Thank you Sandhya, I'm recovering from eye surgery and am supposed to be avoiding too much reading for a while so the musical interludes were very enjoyable for me. I especially liked the one re: Tarantino and from the Bushy days (can't see the titles while I'm poking a comment one key at a time on my tablet) and the Hunter Thompson quote gave me a good chuckle. Your voice is very beautiful. Interesting to hear someone you've only read before speak, even more so sing.