Can we make a living from prog?

chopper wrote: Interesting article on the BBC today about "has pop gone posh?". One of the answers is that there is no money in music these days so people have to have lots of money to be able to afford a music career in the first place.   http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9373000/9373158.stm

 

Edited by moshkito - January 28 2011 at 15:38

Once in a while it feels good to nibble at the fast food of tunes like "love shack" - great song! But when I want a meal that will fulfill me, be good for me, made with an art - I'll find a Rush, Chopin, Oscar Peterson. I might binge on junk food - but I'll always go back to where I find a sound that really speaks to me & brings out the best of who I am - like all truly great art. I'm sure too few of so many talented people will get the recognition or financial deserved accolades. But that's always been the case with art. People have one thing in common, they rarely realize or venerate those in their midst that truly do good with something as valuable as music verses prostituting such an art form for some cheesy one hit wonder. Django Reinhardt wasn't rich, early jazz musicians nearly starved to death & were brutalized, many classical composers were considered evil men & died penniless. (let us not forget that these forms of music were the popular forms of their day as well) I think Rush's songs like "spirit of the radio" & "closer to the heart" speak volumes to what one can expect from trying to create something meaningful in our vulgar medium of rock 'en roll. 

Gerinski wrote: I have no idea how many CDs bands like Pendragon sell per year but I very much doubt they reach 400,000. Rush's Hold Your Fire reached Gold (500,000 copies sold) in Nov '87 just 2 months after being released, but of course Rush is a supergroup.

The cult of billionaires have produced this kind of problem, where even musicians that have
millions of fans cannot make a living from their music alone.  It's sad that many antique malls have
closed down around here in Seattle over the years.   They were really a wonderful little museum of
culture and the past.  You can't trust people to do the right thing in these kinds of cases, it seems you
always have to be vigilant in educating others.

If people don't support small business, it's going to be a McDonaldville for 90% of the people.

^Clealry you havnt been reading this thread, or you would know that for the vast majority of the bands the answer is no, the best they can hope for is recouping the cost of recording/production and touring with maybe a small profit to put back into the next album.

Well Bob got dinked around just like just about everyone back in the 70s unless your manager was Peter Grant. Within a few years every live Crimson performance ever recorded will be available.  I have never minded buying CDs at gigs. I don't care for downloads because firstly I haven't a clue how to do it and secondly because it robs the artist of their bread & butter. I got an ipod for Christmas and haven't even taken it out of the package. It was given to me by a cousin as a joke.

I think the only wayto really make a bundle in the music industry is to become the next Bieber or Lady Ga Ga because the general public are sheep. Bah Bah . Could you imagine Bieber struggling through Relayer or tryig to do the multi octave yodelling in Hocus Pocus.

moshkito wrote: AllP0werToSlaves wrote:   Thank you for making one of the most genuine and thought provoking posts that I've read on these forums. Too many people argue about what's wrong and what's better, but very few take the time (hmmm...I wonder why that is...?) to find the root cause and work their way down from there. I agree, and in a sense since the media controls the perception of a people, they can thus directly bias said people. All you need to do is look around you; people can't make decisions on their own. Everything from the best car, TV, sports, video games, technology etc is all preached through the media. You are given the illusion of choice because all choices are controlled by those who run the media. Choices independent of the system are rarely if ever spoken about, because said choices usually have no benefit for the system itself. It's not really that bad here, but the tendency to always be on the side of the biggest and greatest and most known, gets to me now and then, and I tend to give the guys here a hard time on it. The biggest problem is that many of them are a bit on the side of the "media" already ... know it all, understand it all, keeper of the definitions and the sub-genre's ... and in the end, they are doing the same thing.   I'm not anti-social per se, but sometimes the "group thinking", just isn't for me. In the end, what we get is people going around saying that one is not politically correct, which is another way of saying that the Constitution is full of sh*t that no one believes, otherwise the media would not be stealing the spotlight! Specially when they go around telling people they can not donate to their favorite political candidates ... the Supreme Court should have nailed that one right away ... but they are old, asleep, and sometimes too worried about how to kill Roe vs Wade, than they are the laws they are requested to uphold!   The system here is not bad ... but the mentality for some is out of town, even if someone thinks I am the one out of line ... but I really do not think that most of these people understand the "revolution" at the time that helped define "progressive" music in the next 5 years ...   It's the craziest thing ... I guess people here think that "Revolution" and "Revolution #9" don't mean sh*t! ... and it is the voice of those that changed history, in music as well ... but music was not the only art involved.   Until they do, the definition of "progressive" will be hollow at best and the sub-genre's all being just a way of saying that something sounds like this or like that as another commercial exercise to help sell the music ... and while I have no issue with the sales, I do from the concept that ... it stops being about the music, and becomes about what I can gain from it. At that point it is no longer "progressive" ... it is "commercial", or "industrial" ...   The issue is that too much of the terminology, doesn't mean sh*t to anyone! And the lyrics and the works and the depth is trivialized by some idealistic musical concept that never existed. It could even be incidental! And worse ... typical imperialism sometimes ... one area is better than the others and given more credit, even when others had the same thing happening in other arts, that were just as important and progressive, but different -- and this is being totally ignored for the most part!   The world is flat, it doesn't exist! ... and my name is Galileo ... don't they wish!

I feel like we've been paid a compliment using a baseball bat as the delivery method.  

The 1970s were freaking amazing. Glad I lived it even though I was young I was  tuned in to bands like Focus, Yes, King Crimson & Gentle Giant by the age of 14 after my Elvis phase.

What I don't understand either is the kid's who do play want to immitate the latest metal guitar shred. Few are into or want to learn about guys like Django Reinhardt, Wes Mongomery, Talo Farrow, Joe Pass, Charlie Christian and take it from there just like guys like McLaughlin, Coryell, Holdsworth or Jan Akkerman did and developed their own unique styles. These days you go into the music store and just hear kids shredding away and it sounds redundant. They're all trying to be the next Zak Wylde.

cstack3 wrote: Vibrationbaby wrote: The 1970s were freaking amazing. Glad I lived it even though I was young I was  tuned in to bands like Focus, Yes, King Crimson & Gentle Giant by the age of 14 after my Elvis phase. What I don't understand either is the kid's who do play want to immitate the latest metal guitar shred. Few are into or want to learn about guys like Django Reinhardt, Wes Mongomery, Talo Farrow, Joe Pass, Charlie Christian and take it from there just like guys like McLaughlin, Coryell, Holdsworth or Jan Akkerman did and developed their own unique styles. These days you go into the music store and just hear kids shredding away and it sounds redundant. They're all trying to be the next Zak Wylde. Yeah, it's freakin' awful!  At least they don't butcher "Stairway to Heaven" in the guitar stores like they did in my era! It has to do with time invested & difficulty.  It's HARD to get through all that music theory, but it's the only way.  I struggle with it, and wish I had piano lessons when very small!   Modern artists don't even mess with lead guitar anymore, it's all stylized rap vocals with sound effects.  Instruments are just along for the ride.  Who is the modern day equivalent of Bob Fripp?  No one!  You named the right guys, VB!  Those jazz cats started it all!  Guys like Fripp were "classical jazz" guys, and could earn a few quid in the 60's playing dance band stuff in England.  Not so much anymore.