About me
subject appears to be a white male, early 50's, pathologically tall/skinny. brain patterns show evidence of a life in alcohol - first swimming in it then running from it. fingers show wear from years of guitar playing. heart presents slow repair, through writing, from being broken by rock and roll.
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You Are Not a Cowboy, You Do Not On a Steel Horse Ride
As I make the move from artist to art salesman, going from that place where my art is my heart to the place where it's just another piece of product, I've been stymied by the whole 'marketing' thing. As a wanna-be rock critic I've not been able to help but notice, and bemoan, the stratification of the music I love into the dreaded niche market. Emo/Screamo/Alternative this that and the other, punkfunk, Christian Metal (!) etc.. So I've been banging my head against the proverbial wall trying to figure out into which box the Simmons-compiled 'Punk Rock Blues' CDs fit. It's neither Punk Rock nor Blues, nor any form w/a capital 'F'; it's simply what it is. Which makes a ton of sense to me, but none at all to the presumed millions out there who might possibly come across my stuff in cyberspace.
Ah, yes, the people: that amorphously ill-defined globular mass of folks who booed when Dylan went electric and made kazillionaires out of Hootie and the Blowfish, to name one. The housewives and husbands for whom music is just another distraction. The type of people who believed Bon Jovi when he said he was a cowboy and on a steel horse did he ride. Well, I hate to break it to you, Mr. and Ms. America, but Gregg Allman wasn't born on the back seat of a Greyhound bus rolling down Highway 41 either.
Rock history, like most history, is mainly lies.
So, maybe I should come up w/a few of my own?
The bottom line for any musician/band is that they exist in space and time and fling their wares at the masses on stage and record. Anything beyond that truth is smoke and mirrors; the all important image. So, once again, I have to invent some kind of image to sell myself to the masses. Let's see....... I got the mental hospital/rehab hook. Perhaps I can sell my wares as a kind of end product of the entire baby boomer experience. Kid gets hip to rock in the '60's, halfway drinks/drugs himself to death, records the dissolution and comes out the other side sober, sadder, wiser, stronger and with a tale to tell and crap to sell! Sort of like Daniel Johnston w/out an ounce of the innocence. And by all means, buy as much Daniel Johnston as you can. He's so much better than me it ain't funny.
Not bad, but hardly the type of persona that moves units in the 7 figure range, no? I've got to come up w/something less pathetic than 'survivor'.
The 'has been who never was' hook has potential. Here's a guy (me) who's been making 'records' as long as, say, the Clash (even longer since I've never 'broken up', althought here were weeks when I wasn't speaking to myself and we all know that's what spelled the end for Aztec Camera) but never marketed them. The whole 'body of work from a stranger' hook. I don't know. There's got to be a way I can write my stuff up so it stands apart from all the thousands of other strangers who's bodies of work are crowding the freebie sites alongside of my tunes.
There's always the 'frustrated novelist' hook, or as I call it, The Lou Reed Defense. This is when an artist attempts to escape a self imposed 'rock and roll ghetto' mindset to present himself as a serious writer who just happens to use guitars and drums to tell his story. Hell, Lou Reed ain't made a decent Lou Reed record in years, maybe I can present myself as the New Lou Reed. That whole New Dylan riff never hurt anybody, right? Right? Naw, Old Firbank's got enough trouble without having me on his faggot/junkie ass. Although the old death dwarf denies having been either anymore. (Give it up, Lou, we have pictures, fer chrissake!)
Acvtually I am a frustrated novelist. Like many of my generation I've been writing at (as oppossed to actually writing) a novel for the last 10 years. It's semi-autobiographical (surprise!), but, really, so much shit has hit my personal fan that I spread it out across 3 different characters. Two musicians, one a succesful male singer/songwriter guitarist who moves through the early days of Punk, through New Wave sellout-manship, ultimately getting sober, finding God and a comfortable, albeit unchallenging,, Elder Statesman status as a Christian Rock Star, the other a female Punk purist who sings her songs of hatred for, and suspicion of, God and all his salesman well into her 50's. The 3rd leg of this crew is a rock critic, Eric, who knew both the other characters as kids and dogs their careers throughout the book. Well, like life, someone gets 'saved', someone dies of drink and someones finds confort in their seething. As soon as I figure out which character, if any, is the hero here I'll put it all together. The themes I want to work with include artistic motives, the responsibility of the artist/critic/audience to the art and just what exactly constitutes 'salvation'.
It'll be called 'This Evening's Entertainment' and wll include a CD of original music written specifically for the book. Along with the character's tunes (even Eric gets a record and I can't wait to record his stuff!),. I intend to build a complete rock and roll mythology for the book's 'universe'. And in my rock and roll universe I give the King's crown to Little Richard, but in the book (for purposes of copyright infringement and an expressed wish to never be bitch slapped by Little Richard) I'm gonna call him the Lightning Bug. There;'ll be an obvious Beatles, Velvets, Pistols, Nirvana etc, but I'm gonna invent, write and record it all.
So maybe 'Punk Rock Blues' is this: a stunning notebook of wild ideas from an unknown artist just now bursting forth from his self imposed shell of alcoholic isolation; a sketch pad for the upcoming major work which he's sruggled his entire life toward achieving. But these records, America, safe in the knowledge that I, Tim Byrnes, will use the money to not only write the Great American Rock and Roll Novel, but record the album of music to back it up.
Somewhere Lester is shaking his head.
Posted by: timbyrnes at 16:46 |
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