Anathema goodbye...

I get sad every time I see this, and how so many folks and bands get hurt.

However, I also have an issue with the development of STREAMING as a way to create some revenue for a band, and how one place tried something strange and weird, and the result ... no reviews. It's like no one went in the first place ... no one saw anything! (I think there was one mentioned that was different!). No one knows what the other bands were like!

The technical world, has to come to the help of the "art" of music, unless they all are a part of the "machinery" of the "corporate house" that owns the ISP's, the equipment, and your Internet connection ... Comcast, Spectrum or anyone else, are not going to help you ... why? THEY HAVE NO INTEREST IN IT WHATSOEVER, and besides they would rather push their prairie patties to make you think that is what the world is about ... more living room crap! Steaming, too!

I don't have an answer ... but some of these bands, may have to think ahead some, and go look elsewhere other than the "music business", because the music business as we "know it" (gotta be kidding me!!!) is long DEAD and was dead BEFORE the problems that we are all having these days.

I don't want to see ANATHEMA, or any other band, have to say goodbye, and then one or two other bands follow suit. And I, honestly, am not sure that "streaming" is for everyone ... but these bands have to learn to get along with more young artists, young film makers, and young theater folks in directing and lighting to learn to do something more interesting with their music ... the current presentation, the same as everyone else's for the past 50 years (!!!!!), is no longer a good venue for what you really want to do ... heck, give me a camera and I will come over and film anything you have written ... and it will be different and make SW's stuff look like a badly thought and designed film (and cheap!!!) presentation for his show! Yes, money could be an issue here ... but all I would want is a roof, and a place to sleep each and everyday, and a little food ... money ... I don't have anything to pay for ... it doesn't matter to me!

... AND, I have about 15 songs "filmed" and written down from various bands ... a video could be made of some of them, but I don't have the permissions or the camera to do it with (a reasonable video that can plug into the computer!) ... but the one I did at school (UCSB) was not finished (I got badly sick and in bed for 7 days during the week prior to finals!!!) ... but I presented for the class what I had, film wise, with a cassette playing the soundtrack ... and the class professor (a USC Graduate Student doing a thesis on directing) said ... that was one of the best and most intelligent filming he had seen ... and the concept alone was worth it ... everyone else had nothing but living room or outside vignettes. 

In my case, and with permission by Kevin Ayers and his folks, I filmed "Once I Awakened" and had other bits and pieces of music that made it look like there was a dream before, and a dream after ... and a lot of it ... get this ... OPEN CAMERA ... half the shots were things that I did on the spur of the moment and they came together very strongly!

Anyone, can do these things ... but the band, or musicians, has to be aware and capable of allowing the folks that do these things to interpret things ... Kevin, obviously, (or at least the folks around him) probably thought that it was just fun stuff ... yeah, it is ... but in the end, for what I did and have written since? 

ITS MY VISION of a lot of music ... and I love to picture it ... it's like painting on a canvas, and the visual comes alive, or writing it on paper (or computer) and the story is ALIVE!

THAT IS ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE, and little will inspire you more!