A Long December

A long December and there's reason to believe maybe this year will be better than the last. - Counting Crows

Walt Whitman once said, "Re-examine all you have been told... Dismiss what insults your Soul". I am an introspective person, and I have done this more times than I can count. As the year comes to a close I feel I should share what has insulted my soul the most.You guessed it, it has something to do with music. Lots of unknown people on the internet told me this year that I will never make it.

I never got the call I was promised. I never ended up on MTV Europe like I was promised. I sank (and my parents did also because they helped) too much money for empty promises. I know the industry is hard to get into these days, but it should never be this hard. If what I am doing today was out there in the late 80s, early 90s I wouldn't have a reason to write. I would have been signed years ago.

Now, before you laugh, let me explain. Today's music conditions, whatever you want to blame them on, internet, economy, technology, have made it so that you have to be perfect or you get overlooked. Not just by the industry but by the consumer as well. Few people care about originality anymore. They might say otherwise, but they prove it with their paychecks every week. Some of you might say, "what about Justin Bieber? He made it. So it must be your voice."

I'll be the first to admit that my voice sucks. But it's better than a lot of famous artists. The difference between me and them is the recording studio, equipment, and engineer. I barely have something that qualifies as a studio, almost no equipment, and I am not an engineer though I try my best.The other difference is they had the benefit of getting a record deal in a time when a perfect recording wasn't expected. Here are just a few examples of bands and/or artists who vocally sound comparably equal to or worse than me:

Husker Du
Robert Pollard (Guided By Voices)
The Pixies
Beck
Thom Yorke (Radiohead)
PJ Harvey
Sonic Youth
Butthole Surfers
Archers of Loaf
Built To Spill
Smashing Pumpkins
Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails)
The Cranberries

If you said, "But they sound better than you," well of course they do! It is a grave injustice to me to compare my lo-fi home recordings to hi-fi studio recordings of equally lo-fi bands! Just listen to their raw un-produced tracks if you don't believe me. In some cases I sound perfect compared to them. Oh, and the same argument goes for my "sound".

DON'T WRITE ME OFF JUST BECAUSE I DON'T SOUND PERFECT! ...[sigh]... This is what insults my Soul, and I dismiss it.