LIFE IS TENSION

To be alive is fraught with tension – a delicate balance of having your shit together and being moments away from everything falling over the rails.

People talk about the “hot new thing” because of tension. Taylor Swift has a big tour. Great! I’d love to go. Tickets are $1000, and the nearest tour stop is five hours away. That’s tension.

There’s no tension in posting a song on Spotify or uploading a video to YouTube. That’s the easy part. Telling someone, “I posted a new single on Spotify,” is easy. An AI bot could write that. No tension.

Time to up the ante. Send the link to only ten people, and then see what happens. Show your next film or gallery with only a cryptic map to a secret underground venue under the local college water tower. Limit the number of people that can attend your next Zoom meeting.

When everything is available for everyone, there’s little incentive to pay attention; it’ll be here tomorrow, digitally or available to purchase on Amazon.

FRIENDS SHARE

Great bit from Looking Sideways:

Let’s face it, being an independent creative person amid this onslaught of algorithms and homogenous content is bloody hard and endlessly soul-destroying. Sharing your friends’ work is good for the soul, hugely encouraging for them, and a vote for the type of creative world we actually want to live in.

HOLIDAY SELLING

Photo by Seth Werkheiser

Recently I did a Klaviyo “check-up” for a record label and found they had two abandoned cart flows going at the same time (which meant every user got TWO emails to remind them of items in their cart – ooops).

I’ve been using Klaviyo since 2020 for music labels (including Death Row Records).

The holidays are coming up – if you need a second set of eyes on your email marketing setup (Klaviyo mainly, but I work in Mailchimp a bit, too), let’s connect: hey@sethw.xyz

WORK TOGETHER

I love that Mastodon and Lamb of God – two of biggest names in modern metal – teamed up and released a song after touring together.

“We [in Mastodon] were just talking about the possibility of doing more collaborations because we don’t do it enough and it’s a fun thing to do,” said drummer Brann Dailor in an interview with Rolling Stone.

These two bands didn’t need to do something like that this at all – they’re already legends, selling out venues and plenty of vinyl over the years.

Even if you’re not in a band, DO COOL STUFF WITH OTHER PEOPLE, FRIENDS.

When asked why they didn’t release the song before they left for tour:

“The music industry is a complex and at times clunky behemoth. It’s not like we wanted to just put it out on YouTube, like, “Check out our song,” with a picture of me and Brann, like, “Er.”

YES. Don’t just put it up on YouTube and make an IG story saying, “CHECK IT OUT.” It don’t work for Mastodon, it won’t work for you.

BYE, DAD

Last week was a lot.

I found out my dad died on July 30th, 2024.

We don’t know the exact time he passed, but he died alone in a trailer park in Florida. We didn’t have much of a relationship in the last seven or so years of his life for reasons I won’t go into, but I want to share a bit about his music.

My dad was an absolute music theory genius. He spoke in keys and modes and time signatures. He could play multiple instruments, listen to a song once, and play it for you backward and forward.

When I was a kid, he played in a country rock band called The Buckaroos, playing at ski resorts on the weekends and clubs during the week. He made good money playing guitar in the eighties.

Live music started to fade in our area, so he started teaching music out of his house. One of his students was a fiddle player who moved to Nashville and toured with a notable country artist or two.

In his later years, he’d seek out bass players and drummers, always looking to form a jazz trio. He had some luck getting gigs back in PA and later in Florida.

But when these groups fell apart, so did he.

He would still play at home, with his little Polytone amp that he bought in the 80s, playing his be-bop jazz and whatever else came out from his decades of experience.

This is from my recent post “Outdated expectations kill creative dreams,” over on Substack.

That photo at the top of this post was from dad’s old digital camera. It’s so old it takes 2AA batteries.

THE ALGORITHIM IS NEVER SATISFIED

As usual, Seth Godin sums it up in ‘Feeding the algorithm.”

“If you’re posting on social media or any platform with an algorithm, the real question is: do you work for the algorithm or are you committed to working for the people who want to go where you hope to take them?”

I love this; “are you committed to working for the people who want to go where you hope to take them?”

I’m off social media because I don’t want an algorithm shoving garbage into my eyeballs every minute. Sure, there’s sometimes a sliver of good stuff, but I’m no longer interested in sifting through garbage. Not for anything.

Some people are afraid to leave social media. Literally fearful. It’s the FOMO, not being up to date, missing what friend’s are doing.

I do quite well not knowing what my friends are eating for breakfast, thank you.

THE BAR IS LOW

Listeners have unlimited options. They have probably 25 albums they could recite word for word and another 10 they put on for a good cry or workout.

Expanding on your “NEW SONG, CHECK OUT IT” messaging is the very least you can do.

BETTER AMATEURS

I’ve heard the song a million times, but hearing guitarist Joe Gore talk about it just gives it so much depth. Like, I can’t even imagine standing in the same room with Tom Waits, let alone making music with the man, and hearing Joe talk like that – even with all his knowledge and skill – it’s just so heavy.

Love the concept of turning the artists into amateurs… using “inferior” equipment, no time to really come up with parts, everything in two takes, and Tom needs to be done by 5 so he can be home with his kids. Man. This is a great interview.