Do Musicians Need The Internet?

The BBC had a story on their site asking the above question. The answer, as pretty much anyone knows, is yes. Of course we do. The major labels are pretty stuffed - apart from a couple of old fashioned big and stupid examples of the bad old days (Lady GooGoo, to name but one) - and most people seem to have given up buying CD’s and so on. I still know a few people who buy those little shiny discs but the vast majority are downloading their stuff from various legal and illegal sources. The upside of this is the democratising of music. Anyone can plug their laptop in, bash a tune out and have it available for download from iTunes in a couple of days. The downside of this is that there is a massive amount of stuff available. Bands from all over the world can distribute their music globally for a tiny amount of money and some of them reap the rewards. Not many of them do because very few artists have the spare cash or time to be able to promote themselves properly.

So, as the sun rises on Hot Donkey’s fourth EP (entitled ‘Rides Again’ - available now from iTunes and all good download stores and so on…), I thought I’d try to figure out a couple of ways to spread the word.

The first idea is to stuff this blog full of things that are in the Top 20 search terms on Google in the vain and pointless hope that this blog will turn up in a search result. The problem with this is that I’d have to write a blog that included such things as corned beef, cabbage, St. Patrick’s day, Sean William Scott, Raymond Davis, The Lincoln Lawyer, clemson, discovery education and Guinness. This information (correct as of 6pm Wednesday 16th March) might be useful but not if you consider I don’t know who Raymond Davis is. Or what a clemson might be. I’ve heard of The Lincoln Lawyer but I can’t bring myself to write about it because it involves Matthew McConaughey and I don’t want to vomit all over my Mac.

The second idea is to get some gigs booked. Daryl, my esteemed colleague and Donkey Brother, is currently working on this and we have a window in our hectic schedule that should be enough to fit at least one gig in. Unfortunately this gig will be mainly for people that already know us so I can’t see it bringing much in the way of extra revenue in… Somebody recently said that they used their music as an advert for their gigs. This would probably have come from a person that had a) free time and b) a burning desire to stand on a stage. I have neither. Instead I have a) no time and b) indigestion.

The third idea was to run naked through the streets of London waving a flag with the Hot Donkey logo and web address on it but apparently the police would frown on this. Plus it’s cold and I have the awful feeling that I’d end up looking like a shaved Macaque with a Chipolata amateurishly glued to the front.

The fourth idea is to get my extended network of friends to post links to our EP on their Facebook pages and Twitter feeds. I am not convinced this would help much either. Most of our friends already do this and, without wanting to sound in any way ungrateful, I still don’t have a Ferrari or a custom built musical gold toilet. I’m thrilled that so many of our friends like our stuff and want to help spread it about and I hope they carry on doing so. I’m less thrilled by my overdraft and would like to find new and exciting ways to make it go away.

We just need to get our stuff heard by people that don’t already know us. We need ordinary humans to find and love our stuff. This could be tricky since a lot of ordinary humans clearly have the music taste of a demented ocelot with tinitus. How else do you explain the charts? Or Susan Boyle? I mean, the massive sales of her album can’t all just be down to the fact that a lot of people still seem to find it amazing that a woman who looks like a fire-damaged carpet remnant can actually sing in tune.

So, if anyone out there has any ideas of how to spread the word then please do leave a message or get in touch via our website or Twitter accounts. One of you might actually be a marketing and publicity genius but you just don’t know it yet! Anyone who comes up with a great idea will get a special present. I’ll figure out what that is later...

In the meantime I’ll get back to my head scratching and hope that somebody accidentally orders 12,000 copies of our EP.

Stuff Not To Be Talked About

Those of us who are terribly cultured and handsome know that there are a few things that should never be discussed over dinner.

1) Religion. There is no quicker way to alienate people than challenging their belief system. Most people cling to their beliefs in the face of all available evidence and should you suggest that they are either misguided or just plain wrong then your whole friendship could come crashing down around your ears. I think the reasons for this are that secretly most of us realise that life is a chaotic mix of happiness and disaster with very little actual point to the whole thing. Some people choose to believe that an almighty bearded bloke is sitting up in the clouds watching over us with love in his heart and that if you are nice and friendly and don’t kick small animals then you will be able to join him and all the other dead people for the rest of eternity in what must be like some kind of heavenly Big Brother house. I don’t like most people when they’re alive and I only have to spend a few minutes with them. I can’t imagine what eternity surrounded by an infinite number of buffoons must be like. Plus it seems like we can’t have pets.

2) Sex. A quick glance around the internets will reveal that a staggering amount of perversion and variations of perversions exist. I find discussions about sex to be quite amusing, mainly because I try to prod people (figuratively speaking) until they reveal a little bit too much about their own particular kinks. It seems to me that not doing this would stop you from picking up new ideas and prolonging your own sex life. I think the reason people don’t want to talk about it is that they don’t like the idea that anyone else does those weird depraved fleshy wet things that they do. To imagine a friend of yours, naked, bent over an occasional table with a spoon between his or her teeth, scooping triple-choc ice cream off the thighs of an immigrant welder from Minsk is probably more than your minds eye can cope with - particularly if you have ugly friends. All my friends are gorgeous so I don’t mind too much but I can see why it is a subject to be avoided. Plus I like having conversations that cause you to wake up at 3am a few weeks later and go, “fuck… why did I tell him that?”

3) Politics. I’m not sure that this subject is to be avoided any more mainly because all politicians seem to be feckless shit heads who are more interested in personal gain than improving the lives of “ordinary” people. I struggle to think of a person from any of the political parties who I wouldn’t happily beat to death with my own severed leg. This could be different in other countries, of course. Not all those ones with tyrannical idiots who are currently being ousted by their loyal subjects. Maybe there is a politician or two from Holland, say, who actually still believes in changing things for the better. I’m prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt. Our current Prime Minister would be better suited as the regional manager of a BMW dealership than as the PM. Not that we have much choice in the matter…

So perhaps we can now talk about politics over dinner. However, I think there is another one to be added to the list. Computers.

4) Computers. No matter whether you love PC’s or Mac’s, if you love them to the point that you hate anything else then you are acting in the same way as a religious fundamentalist who spouts self-serving nonsense with a total absence of facts or rational thought. I’ve said before that I use both but for different reasons. I get just as annoyed by Apple fanboys as I do by Microsoft fanboys. Let us be clear - Both companies are interested in taking your money and that’s it. They don’t care if you love Bill Gates or Steve Jobs more. They just want to empty your bank account and put it into theirs. Most of the people I know who work in IT (technicians, programmers, whatever) recognise the benefits in both platforms. They have plusses and minuses. They are tools to accomplish a task. They are not designer handbags or life-changing joy-bringing problem-solving ecstasy bringers. I saw some prick in a coffee shop swanning around with a MacBook Air open in one hand and a triple-decaff soya mocha chocca espresso with cream whip and hundreds and thousands in the other. I wanted him to drop the MacBook and then spill the stupid drink on it. I’m sure some PC owners would do the same thing in coffee shops if it wasn’t for the fact that their machines look so damn ugly. At the end of the day I must refer you back to point 1. If you love or hate a PC, Mac, PlayStation, X-Box, iPhone, Android phone, whatever, to the point that your brow crinkles and you start waving your arms about then you are simply arguing the toss about a belief system. Even if you think you’re right, you’re probably not. See every war ever for arguments to back up my reasoning.

As for me, well, over dinner I would happily discuss any of the things above. I would take pleasure in disagreeing about things, raising points, listening to opposing arguments, challenging my own views and the views of those around me. Surely real friends are able to do this without resorting to angry rhetoric and point-scoring. Surely the world is a more interesting place because lots of people have different opinions. It would be weird if everyone agreed with everything I said. It would usher in a new age of enlightenment and harmony, of course, but it would be weird...