Working The Day Job

I've come to the decision that when I am ready to form a band, I will keep it amateur and work with people who have proper day jobs. At the moment I'm listening to a band called Arcana, which is apt because Arcana all have serious day jobs, such as university lecturer and head of marketing. They're professionals yes, but they're not music professionals. I'm sure that Arcana generates a decent income, but principally they're making their money elsewhere. I'm not naive enough to think that they're simply making music for love not money, but if there wasn't an element of that somewhere then they probably wouldn't find the time or the inclination to do it.

This is important to me because I've come to the conclusion that my differences with "professional" musicians are irreconcilible. I watched a documentary at the weekend about the putting together of a Sgt Pepper tribute album, which involved contemporary bands each recording a version of a Sgt Pepper song. I was paying particularly close attention to how professional musicians and producers conduct themselves in the studio, as I don't have that much direct experience of recording studios (apart from a music course I did a few years ago). What I found was that the ways in which they communicated are radically different from how I want to communicate with musicians I am working with. There are no specific examples that I can give; just a general sense that the lines of communication are experience- and industry-specific. Producers in particular speak and make in-jokes in cynical and weather-beaten tones that simply have no place in what I want to do. As their job title specifies, producers have made a clear and decisive choice in favor of productivity over potential, and will defend that choice with everything they have.

I know that this is the reality of the music industry, but it is a reality that I want to challenge and change. Because as far as I can see, there can be simply no excuse for the lack of an inspiration ethic. Industry-specific cynicism and frames of reference are no acceptable substitute, simply by virtue of the fact that they are divisive...ie, they draw up clear lines of distinction between those who are in the industry and those who are not. There's a similar thing in mental health: service providers vs service users, and in the adult industry too: smut peddlers vs wankers. There can be simply no excuse or justification for divisive forces at the expense of unifying forces. Professionalism may masquerade as an excuse, but it isn't. Yes there are industry-specific experiences that only the professionals have, but there are also universal experiences that we all have, and the latter are more important. And there are too many professionals who, upon becoming professionals, lose all respect for non-professionals who thus become "the market". So many musicians lose touch with the art and experience of listening, and that is unforgivable. Yes they'll listen to other people's music, but they'll listen almost exclusively as musicians and not as listeners.

If I work with musicians, I don't want to exchange knowing looks or weather-beaten in-jokes with them. I want to make them feel like the most creative and inspired musicians in the world. If I use sign and gesture to help me accomplish this, I want to do so in such a way that really makes the musicians feel as though we're doing something special and unique. Even if my technique isn't very good, the intention and the passion will be there, and that is what should count above all else. I want the creation of music to be less like a studio experience, and more like a religious experience. The clue's in the "creation" bit.

So I figure I'd be best off doing this with non-music professionals, as I figure that professionals in other industries might be in need of a decent excuse to put professionalism on the back burner for a while. Of course they will still be professional, but it is not a professionalism that is specific to the music industry, or to "making it" in the music industry. I'm particularly interested in musicians who went into non-musical industries largely because they share the same concerns about "music professionalism" that I have. I'm also interested in affiliated professions such as music teacher or music therapist, as I figure that a music therapist might give me a lot more leeway to experiment and explore than a music professional would. The important thing is to maintain the passion, enthusiasm and most of all the universal-ness of what it is that I'm trying to do. And if amateurism is a means of putting one foot in either camp and looking to build bridges between the two, then maybe that's the way forward.