Chris Preston and New Aquarius Online

Well, at least if you’re a musician engaged in self-promotion. I’ve come to believe that the philosophy of the “artist as open book” is terribly flawed. If you pollute your mind with the prevalent electronic chatter about the new music business made possible by “direct-to-fan” solutions, social networking and all that rot, you might be led to believe that using technology to get as close to your “fans” (what an awful word) as possible is the goal. Though I use these tools in the promotion of my music and recordings, I’ve been thinking about how it can blow up in your face too.

Two bands I’ve written about here, Led Zeppelin and Kiss, would have ruined their careers by becoming too intimate with their audiences. Yes, perhaps things are different now, but what would these two bands have been if the lives of their members had been documented in a readily accessible resource by the members themselves?

In the mythology of Led Zeppelin, you had deals with the devil, obscure symbols to represent the members of the group, drugs, disasters, groupies, and music that was, according to a documentary I saw about them, “Howlin’ Wolf meets the Loch Ness Monster.” I don’t believe a single one of these particular entrapments was ever addressed directly by the group. I don’t think they ever published an informal piece to “set the record straight.” The audience was left to imagine just about anything. The myth grew and grew. It was anything you wanted it to be, except like you. There were no limits to what you could discover in Led Zeppelin. It could not end because it wasn’t real in the first place. Opening the book would have blown it all to hell.

Even Led Zeppelin album cover art kept the band at a distance. They seemed to live on a planet designed just for them, a mystical place that featured monuments to gods whose names you dared not speak and rolling green Celtic geography that was literally hell and gone from Main Street USA or Times Square. They managed to perpetuate an image of dark magic, without saying a word about it.

If it existed, what could Jimmy Page’s blog have said that wouldn’t have ruined everything?

“Had a costume fitting today. I hope they get the dragon right this time. I like dragons.”

“I took a plane to Los Angeles after the show to meet this 13-year-old model I’m just mad about. I know what it looks like, but she’s just incredible.”

“I want to thank all you guys for coming out to the show tonight. Percy, Bonzo, Jonsey and I had a blast. We can’t wait to come back to Pittsburgh.”

“I’m thinking Peter needs to lose a few pounds. I’m worried about him.”

“I’ve got such a headache today. I must send Coco out for some more aspirin before we leave for soundcheck.”

“Sorry I haven’t blogged in a while. I’ve been soooooo busy with the new album. We can’t think of a good title for it though. I want to use freaky drawings and a tarot card for the cover, but Jonesy thinks it’s a stupid idea. Maybe it could be a contest! Leave your suggestions for the name of our fourth album in the comments. If we use your title, we’ll send you a signed copy a week before it’s released to radio!”

“I can’t stop thinking about burgers! Damn this heroin!”

I’m pretty good with the language, but I can’t think of an appropriate superlative to describe the lameness that would have ensued. Good Christ, Jimmy Page wasn’t human like us! He didn’t eat breakfast or get up for school or go to the dentist. He just made otherworldly sounds with guitars and laser beams went off behind him in all directions when he did it! A blog would have ruined him. A superstar must be a mystery. Maybe that’s why we have so few of them now.

Kiss might have blogged in character, which could have worked, but judging by those fake letters in Kiss Alive, the blogs probably would have been written by someone in the Glickman/Marks office and sucked.

Insert palaver about being rich and famous, hyper-sexual, demonic, from another planet, and something about cats and junk here.

It was so much better to wonder who they were under the makeup. Were they murderers? Was Satan involved? Was the drummer really rescued from death by a panther? Again, the mystery of Kiss made it work. Gene Simmons has stated since the 90s that Kiss were trying be the heavy metal Beatles. They never said it in the 70s though. On planet Kiss, the Beatles did not exist. Get it?

Kiss was best served by others writing about them (provided they could nudge the writers in the right direction). Every time Gene was pressed to explain the meaning of the fire and blood tricks, he could never make sense of it, even when he was in character. A personal blog would have muddied the waters even more. Without the distance, Kiss could never have been superheroes.

So, since I’m at least as interesting as Jimmy Page and Gene Simmons, I have to be careful when I blog. I could ruin everything. It’s a good thing that I do this telepathically. And since I’m getting off of all those pills it’s going so much faster now. Thanks to Satan and his hounds, Myra and Otis, I’m well protected here. I can almost see Earth, though these lasers cast quite a shadow across the great billows of rainbow smoke that surround the palace when I awaken. Regardless, at all times, music flows from me as breath, surrounding you with love.

If you make music or do anything creative, you probably experience at least the occasional loss of confidence. I’m sure it happens to everyone, but in the world of independent music, you have a lot of reasons to lose confidence. To quote Rocky Balboa, “It’s racket where you’re almost guaranteed to end up a bum.” You create your music despite all imaginable forces against it for a world that doesn’t actually need it. I found that with the wrong mindset, I didn’t even need “the world” to sabotage my efforts. I could do it very well on my own. In recent years, I’ve trained myself to monitor my mindset constantly. Now, instead of wasting energy on defeating myself, I bask in the energy of “owning my thing.”

Your “thing” is whatever it is you do. Whatever you’re passionate about. For me, it’s making my records, performing and writing. The wrong mindset would enable me to ruminate on the possibility that it doesn’t matter to anyone but me whether or not I ever play another note or write another word. Or worse, there’s always the What if they hate what I do? thing. (First of all, who’s they?) There are innumerable ways to drain your confidence without interacting with a single other person. All of them probably have something to do with trying to control what can never be controlled, like other people.

For me, the correct mindset is that no one can do my thing. No one. Since I can’t control the response to it other than letting everyone know what I’m doing, I have no choice but to embrace the vocation I’ve chosen, to find every possible way I can to see it as beautiful and miraculous, because it is.

The thrill of having created something or succeeding in something fades eventually, but you owe it to yourself to stay in that place as long you can. Since it may be all you get from your thing, and you can’t control anything else about it, never cheat yourself out of that feeling. It’s what I call “owning” it. Having done something that’s very important to you, you have the right to glow in it. You have the absolute right to “own” it. Wow. That seems more important, doesn’t it?  How many rights do you have in your life that you routinely pass on? If you exercise your right to own your thing, it will resonate with others. If you have no reservations about what you do, and you do it to the absolute best of your ability, the response takes care of itself.

So, spend the energy removing reservations and doing your best work. (Here’s another confidence building fact: The quality of your “best work” changes all the time. Yesterday’s best might be different from today’s.) See what you do as the miracle that it is. Never pass on your right to own it. Your passion has no choice but to come across and inspire those who are inclined to be affected by you.

Some musical examples of “owning your thing”

Feel free to offer other examples, but mine will be musical. 

 Kiss

They must be first. One of my all time favorites, but that doesn’t matter. I show them here on a carousel in their movie, Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. Deborah Ryan, who also appeared in the movie in the role of Melissa, was featured on a recent DVD release of the movie (Attack of the Phantoms) doing commentary.

She described working with the band outside of their superhero personae and how she didn’t know about Kiss in the 70s when she met them (preferring stuff like Al Jarreau). Because she was not a fan of the band, one of her comments truly inspired me to this way of thinking. She described how impressed she was with the way the band completely “owned” those costumes, looking completely comfortable when so many other people would’ve felt ridiculous. In 1977, it was easier for them to “own” their thing, but I can’t even imagine what it took to own it in 1973. They must have just thrived on rejection. Very inspirational to me.

Jon Bon Jovi

I can’t say I was ever a fan. It had been a while since I’d thought of why, but I remembered the other day. A Bon Jovi tune, “Born To Be My Baby,” came on the radio in the car. As I listened, I remembered that it Jon’s phony bullshit pronunciation that always turned me off. It wasn’t baby. It was buyeeba. He did it in every damn tune. It wasn’t you give love a bad name. It was you give love a buyadd nuyame. I tried to describe my annoyance with it to my wife. The best I could come up with was that it was so… gay. If I produced those records, I’d have told him to knock it off.

Guys I knew always hated Bon Jovi. There were plenty of reasons. Here’s another perfect example of owning it. Jon wanted to be Bruce Springsteen. He loved the Jukes. He would never be as respected, but it didn’t stop him from owning what he did. If he would have been influenced by what my friends in New Jersey used to say about him, old Jon wouldn’t have achieved such great success. He could never have controlled what we thought of him. I’m sure he learned that not everyone will like you. You just have to do your thing.

Led Zeppelin

In this one instance, they were definitely owning it against massive resistance. I never thought Led Zeppelin would ever have had a problem like the one they’re having here. Here, the band is playing in France on what looks like a television show, but their target audience definitely seems absent. The only thing missing are the crickets, but the band doesn’t hold back. They never stop being Led Zeppelin. Plant screaming “Communication Breakdown” at old women in pants suits sitting with their hands folded. Every time I see this clip, I feel queasy because I’ve been in this situation myself. You’re doing your act for the wrong people and they just sit there like oil paintings. When it happens, I feel like crawling into a hole somewhere, but no matter what, you can’t. You’ve gotta own it.