In my last piece I concluded with a joke I often use that goes, “He’s just been added to the top of the list of people I’m glad I’m not.” Though I must assert that I’d never want to be anyone but me, I thought it might be an interesting exercise to make that list. I can’t ever finish the list, nor can I put it in any order, but I’ll start with just a few that I know I’ve made my little joke about. Please feel free to add to this list. It can be very life-affirming. :~) Here goes…

Tony Van Veen

Tony is the president of Disc Makers, popular manufacturer of CDs for the independent recording industry. Disc Makers has been doing it for a very long time and countless independent artists have manufactured their CDs with Disc Makers. I’ve used them too (with more than a little difficulty). Tony thought it might be a good idea to expand the empire by acquiring the top independent music store online, CD Baby. Think of the packaging possibilities! Since the Disc Makers age began, CD Baby has been on the Hell express, taking years of goodwill, trust and brand confidence and wiping their asses with it. The CD Baby redesign/overhaul is the business blunder by which all future blunders will be measured. A perfect example of what happens when a great independent company changes its motivations from passion to profit. I’m thrilled that solving that problem is someone else’s job.

Gene Simmons

I’ve been a Kiss fan for all of my conscious life. Gene used to say things that I found inspiring. In the early days of my music career, the confidence that Kiss had in their outlandish stage show and in their own convictions saw me through many times of doubt. At least we weren’t being laughed at like Kiss, and those guys made it through. Gene was a big purveyor of the “fake it ‘till you make it” approach to self-promotion. It was fun to emulate that too.

I’ve acquired some wisdom and experience in my life and I know what it’s like to have your big mouth get you in trouble. However, it seems that Gene Simmons has gone from promoting himself to working very hard to make sure that no one could possibly like him, just so he can say that he’s rich and that he doesn’t care. What a trap he’s built for himself!

If you lie enough, there is no truth. If you talk a lot about how big your penis is, everyone knows for sure that you have a small penis. If you say you don’t care what people think enough, it become apparent that nothing matters more to you. Gene has just turned 60. He has to find a way not to hear everyone laughing at him. With each passing year, he will have to find more ways to boost his ego all by himself, since fewer and fewer people will be willing to help him. I’m glad that unlike Gene Simmons, I don’t have to be right all the time. Keep the house and the TV show and who knows what else. I’m thrilled that I’m not Gene Simmons.

George W. Bush

How could I not mention this guy? A failure in mostly everything, so notably that there are countless books about it. They may even mention his arrogant stupidity and ineptitude in our children’s history text books. Only time will tell. As I consider all the time W. surely has on his hands now, I’m reminded of how glad I am that I’m not an alcoholic, have never used drugs and have never been arrested.

Any game show host

I don’t have a name to go with this one because I don’t watch enough television, but I would definitely not want to be one of these guys. As I understand it, many of them are actors. I know what it’s like to aspire all of your life to some creative and artistic height. As a musician, it keeps me going. However, as an actor, if you take that job in Hollywood, just for the money, just for now, and the game show takes off, you become the game show. Good Christ! I’ve heard about how all the Family Feud hosts have committed suicide. No Shakespeare, no Academy Awards, no transition to director. No, you’re the Wheel of Fortune guy.

Notable cool exception: Chuck Barris. Chuck was awesome. I wouldn’t want to live with ol’ Chuck’s demons either, but he was awesome.

A little while ago, I wrote a piece about how much of a disappointment CD Baby had become after their site overhaul. I was almost immediately contacted by Kevin at CD Baby, who offered his personal e-mail address to solve my problem. (My problem was that on Emusic, my second album was classified as soundtrack/ambient or something, which virtually guarantees that no one will discover it.) Here we are, weeks later, and the album still hasn’t been correctly categorized on Emusic. Oh well, so much for the personal touch.

Someone searched for “CD Baby disappointment” and found my blog. I think that’s hilarious. She commented to detail her own problems with CD Baby and I tried to put her in touch with Kevin. He suggested that she write to help@cdbaby.com because he was going out of town.

I’m watching the forum for CD Baby members and a lot of us are going over the side, looking for other distribution services. I know I am. People are telling stories about over two hour hold times for a call to their support line. People have even resorted to using the forum for support communications because they feel that their e-mails are being ignored.

It occurred to me that CD Baby made good sense when we didn’t have so many tools available to us to sell our own recordings online. CD Baby and other online stores are good for the discovery of new music. If you’re there, anyone browsing for new music could find you. For that, it’s valid, but as CD Baby continues to erode its own credibility on all fronts, I think it’s time to consider handling some of the CD transactions myself. Maybe all of them. Why not? I’ll be looking into that and other digital distributors in the coming weeks.

I’m just glad that I don’t have a new album coming out right now. I’d rather figure out all of this ugly business stuff now before I have a new release to promote. There are a fair number of people who have a new release right now. Since many of these artists have grown accustomed to CD Baby coming through for them, they are being seriously sabotaged.

One person on the CD Baby forum had a great idea: Roll the site back to to its previous incarnation. It’s probably the best thing they could do. Just restore the site to when it worked and spend the next year testing your “overhaul” until it actually works. Seems to make sense to me, though there are probably details I don’t know about that would prevent such a simple solution from being implemented.

There’s this psychological encouragement exercise for people who are complaining about their lives. It’s said that if everyone could lay their problems out on the table and trade them for someone else’s, everyone would see what’s out there and end up taking back their own problems.

This has never been more true in this situation with CD Baby. From a business perspective, Tony Van Veen, the DiscMakers president who took over CD Baby, has been added to the top of the list of people I’m glad I’m not.

A while ago, I swore off writing about the Band of Brothers. I wrote about some of my interactions with the members, which produced some negative backlash in the band that I found very upsetting. It called into question the value of my experiences as a member and I decided, for better or worse, to discount them from that point on. However, in view of the band’s internet activity concerning the recent fiduciary unpleasantness, I feel justified in commenting about the Band of Brothers one last time.

For those of you not hip to what’s happened, the BoB played this place called the Castle Tavern in Greenwood Lake, NY last Friday. The band played two sets only to find out after loading out that the owner refused to pay our agreed-upon guarantee. Though something strange was in the air, I didn’t know all about this until the next day. Since I have the longest drive, I took off before the post-gig business had begun. In those situations, Brian holds my share until I see him next.

It should be noted I’d never heard of this joint and it took a while for me to get up there. Driving through those dark back roads to the gig, I could feel what I was in for. The place was a dump. The band set up on a concrete slab that served as stage. It had a sofa on it. Even though across the room was an open-air bar facing the lake, it reminded me of playing in the basement of someone who had long since quit paying the rent. Some tables were arranged in from the of the “stage.” When I walked in, no one was in this “restaurant” area. A plate with a half-eaten burger and fries had been left on one of the tables. As I loaded out at the end of the gig, it was still there.

I didn’t have to think very much of myself to believe that the Castle Tavern was beneath me.

I haven’t been excited about some of the places the BoB has played, but I joined the band because Brian is a significant talent whose work I respect. I felt I could make a contribution to his well-deserved success. I met him a long time ago, and he has always had the elusive quality of a born performer.

However, I believe the Castle Tavern incident is the culmination of a series of events that teach a valuable lesson:

Everything counts.

Everything. It matters what you play, where and why. How you present yourself to the audience counts. The way you think of your career and your music counts. The universe is listening.

In my career, I’ve heard musicians say that it isn’t about the money. Even now that money has been essentially stolen from them, some members of the BoB are saying that online. Some have argued that the music and the fraternity of the band is the most important thing. I’ve heard it said that it doesn’t matter where we play, as long as we keep playing out.

Why then, is everyone so upset that we got stiffed by some low-life?

The universe is listening when you say to yourself or out loud that you’re not in it for the money. I believe that whether you like it or not, you alone are responsible for what you draw to yourself. It’s the law of the universe, or God, or whatever you choose to call it. I believe that ill-fortune has been drawn to the band on occasion because of the message being sent out. 

I know that the money counts. Though I’ve played for free, I’ve never rationalized playing in some shithole bar by telling myself that I love playing this music so much that I would do it for free anyway. However, I joined Brian’s band because I believe in him and his music. For that reason, I’ve gone where the band goes and have had little to do with that end of the business. Perhaps that’s why I’m not as upset about this as I might have been years ago. I don’t like being stiffed any more than any other musician, but in a certain way, what to expect from a pig like Mike at the Castle Tavern but a grunt? It could be argued that to expect anything else might be your own fault.

The venue counts. Not that “prestigious” rooms matter, but I believe that the place you play should be one in which the people who appreciate your music can feel comfortable in. One that you feel comfortable in yourself. How can someone feel comfortable in the Castle Tavern, eating in an un-air conditioned room in which flies are buzzing around an abandoned plate for 3 hours? I didn’t expect anything from these people. Interestingly, nothing is what we got.

If you reinforce in your mind that you’re a great band and that people at your gigs just don’t get it, that’s what you’ll draw to you. I have a lot of experience with that flawed thinking early in my career. Negative thinking will bring negative events into your life. The universe makes no distinction. There is no good or bad in the universal mind, only equal choices. We all get to choose. The only challenge is to overcome yourself and choose what you really want.

There’s some talk about small claims court and the guys are doing what they can to spread the word about how unscrupulous the Castle Tavern can be. I don’t feel as compelled to do that as I might have once, but that’s fine. In fact, small claims court might be an interesting experience. Who could ever side against a band who played in good faith? Maybe we’ll get a chance to find out.

I think it’s more important here to have learned that everything matters. For the money we lost last Friday, it wasn’t as expensive as it could have been.