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Clay Anderson Johnson

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Blog Entries posted by Clay Anderson Johnson

  1. Do you know the difference between an outlaw and a criminal?  Most people think they are synonymous and interchangeable but they are often different concepts.
     
    Criminals are outlaws in a legal sense but outlaws are not always criminals.  Outlaw is often a cultural or artistic construct more than a legal one.  Criminals break the law, outlaws are outside it.
     
    The word outlaw originated from the term outcast.  This is someone who does not conform to the community and are cast out meaning that laws protecting them no longer apply.
     
    Bob Dylan was an outlaw because he was a folk musician who picked up an electric guitar, hired a drummer, then went to the Newport Folk Festival.  The crowd was outraged and threw a temper tantrum.  Dylan had made a giant leap forward artistically but his audience of that time hated it.  This put him outside their community.
     
    Willie Nelson is the father of a movement which is called Outlaw Country.  They were not criminals.  They were people the Nashville establishment had little use for so they then started their own little thing, a musical Cosa Nostra.  They were outside of the established Country music order.
     
    The Rastas who started performing Reggae were outlaws outside of the White establishment of Jamaica.  They truly had a unique lifestyle outside of the broader community of British influence.  They had the audacity to drop the slicked down hair and suits of most Black acts of the time.  The first photos of Bob Marley show him dressed that way.  Keith Richards remembers him like that the first time they met.
     
    Today’s Rap or Hip Hop artists are made up of people who style themselves as gangstas.  Often they are criminals of a very petty variety who package themselves as outlaws which they are not in the artistic and cultural use of the term.  The reality is that they are a conformist’s conformist conforming to all the rules of their community.  They are simply poseurs, posturing as something they are not.
     
    In other words they are often criminals who may be sentenced for petty crimes and sometimes violent.  In the worlds of Art and Culture however they draw as close inside the lines as possible in order to remain a part of their community.  In that sense are not outlaws.  They are the established order not outside it.  Their culture is money and success with all the trappings of it.  This is being oriented exactly the same as the broader establishment community.
  2. One of the complexities of life is people are similar but different.  Everyone lives at the same time both in the world they perceive and the larger world referred to as reality or a commonly accepted form of what really exists.  Even that is not the final reality.  This is why there is both Religion and Science.  Each claim to be the final arbitrator but it is physically impossible for the finite to conceive the infinite.
     
    Back to the original subject…
     
    My neighbors and I live in different worlds which overlap.  This is not to say one is better than the other, only different people with different concerns.  We all live in the same place but place value on different things for a variety of individual reasons.
     
    Still people are more alike than different.  Many people can be similar to one another without being the same person.  Many artists and bands are very similar but at the same time very different on many different levels.
     
    I have an excellent illustration of this.  I took Carlos Santana’s online course The Art and Soul of Music.  I discovered we are more similar than what I had previously thought although I had been his longtime admirer going back to his first album.
     
    This is not to imply I believe I have the talent and ability of Carlos Santana as that would be not only vain but ignorant.  He is major league, I played in a sandbox.
     
    However we have similar backgrounds starting out and conceive of many things in the same way.  Some are because of music, some are because of growing up impoverished, or some because of another reason.
     
    We both have heavy Latin influence in our music.  He was genetically and culturally in a Latino environment, my relatives were largely in Texas and Florida when there is a lot of Latin music.  So percussion is a big deal for both of us. Because we grew up with no financial advantages, we both are deeply empathetic and go out of our way to help other people.  He can do big things, I can do little things. We both married women in a different area of the same field.  He married Cindy Blackwell his drummer.  I have told my own story many times before. We both are deeply spiritual people who are not dogmatic or follow an organized religion.  We both believe in something bigger than the god of any human religion.  We perceive their gods as merely symbolic, or something beyond that religion’s authority. We both have a little training in formal music which we applied in a popular music environment.  We both play guitar in a much more melodic fashion than most Rock guitarists.  We generally don’t play riffs or heavy chord progressions, we play melodies.  Neither of us wander but are very concise. We both have identical ideas about how to run a band.  This is because he could verbalize what I had thought for years but could not put into words.  When I say “Bands which are democracies generally fail” this is a direct quote from Carlos Santana.  
  3. I view life as a combination of luck and education combined with opportunity .  I will give you a classic example of good luck.
     
    I was born into a rural backwater and married a woman who grew up in Beverly Hills whom I met at an online dating site.  High odds, not a good match at first sight.
     
    My original college education was Theater not Music.  Her entire family is composed of artists, writers, and producers.  Check the Box √
     
    She has a Gay brother, which is a deal breaker with many men, didn’t bother me - Theater education.  Check the Box √
     
    We both have advanced educations.  She has a Masters in Political Science.  After undergraduate UT Austin I have the Music and Creative Industries program UCLA and Web Development certification Cal State Northridge.  Check the Box √
     
    She was living in a classic 1920s apartment in a high rent district just off Santa Monica Blvd.  I lived in a house in Bel Air.  Check the Box √
     
    Now the biggie…
     
    We both had experience in a different area of the same business.  I knew how to produce Music Events.  She was a Political Event Producer.  Ring the Bell!

    This was sheer Luck.  The universe, the stars, God, or whatever you happen to believe in smiled on both of us.  This was Kismet.  We celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary this month.  We both have never been happier.
     
    I produced songs because I took courses in it at UCLA.  This was Education.
     
    Having the brass to convince people to let me do it was because of the overwhelming confidence level which stemmed from that education.
     
    It was not talent or being a good musician.  It was being an educated person who obviously knew what he was talking about who shoved his foot through the door.  I created my own Opportunity.
  4. This is an illustration of Good and Bad people with two different stories.  One involves me, the other involves my wife, Adrienne.  The stories are based upon actual situations.  These are what in literature are referred to as morality stories and are set in a background centered around music.
     
    The first story is mine.  I once played in a band which included two brothers, one played rhythm guitar, the other drums.  The elder was the guitarist.
     
    The guitarist was OK, basically good enough to do the job but not talented.  Like most people of that level he believed he was much better than he actually was.  He would never listen to anyone, he always knew everything he did was the right way to do it.
    Same old song…
     
    The drummer was the best I have ever known.  He could bury any other drummer I have ever played with.  He had talent in capital letters and like most people with actual ability was fairly modest.  He was the main reason I stayed.  He was more than good musically.
     
    The drummer also had a serious problem.  He was bipolar which is a physical mental condition, a mental problem caused by a physical imbalance.  This meant in addition to all the recreational drugs and alcohol he was on psychiatric medication.
     
    The guitarist never gave the drummer his due.  He always treated him as his inferior.  Not only was the guitarist a mediocre musician, he was a Bad person.  Eventually he became so insufferable that his brother and myself both stopped playing with him and everyone went their separate ways.
     
    The second story involves my wife, Adrienne.  As you probably know we had a live events company, Spellbound Creative Concepts, working together for fifteen years.  Usually we worked together although sometimes there were scheduling conflicts and we were in different places such as in this story.
     
    One of the worst experiences of her life was meeting and working with Elton John.  She says he was an absolute nightmare.  It was for a charity, Aids Project Los Angeles, APLA.  She says he was bitchy, entitled, and cost the charity more in expenses than he brought in.  
     
    APLA wanted him badly.  They wanted him so badly they did things she advised them not to do.  Adrienne had been in The Business since the 1970s.  She was sitting in the bar at The Rainbow on Sunset with Led Zeppelin and their manager Peter Grant while I was still in college.
     
    Elton John demanded a choice of two suites at two different 5 star hotels to choose from upon his arrival.  This meant the charity lost the deposit on one of the suites since it was not a 24 hour ahead cancellation.  These are $3,000 or higher nightly accommodations.
     
    He got first class airfare from London to LA and back on a very exclusive flight which was approximately $10,000 each way.  He got a limo everywhere he went whether it was show related or not.  The Rolling Stones do not ask for this type of transportation.
     
    He demanded a special type of cheese which was not available locally and someone had to drive south almost to Orange County to get it.  Then he did not eat it.
     
    He  got a fully stocked bar including expensive wines with a full buffet in his suite for every meal and several other perks.
     
    What the charity got turned out to be a 30 minute show and an enormous bill for his expenses.  He soaked a charity and gave them almost nothing in return except for the use of his name.  This is an example of a very Bad person.

  5. Helping Others

    By Clay Anderson Johnson ,


    Career
    Everyone usually knows their strengths, but how many recognize their limitations?  How many people go anywhere without helping someone else other than themselves?
     
    I know my limitations because I have a lot of them.  I am not so much a creative person as I am a good problem solver.  This is because I was trained to solve problems in one way or another.  Usually this was either formal university training or being mentored by a professional who knew what they were doing.
     
    I generally write in the first person about myself and my experiences because it is an easy way to explain things in an easy understandable manner.  This is not complicated academic theory.
     
    Everything, every thing, I have ever had success with involved helping someone else to achieve what they wanted.  This is very simple but very important.
     
    I was trained to be a lead guitarist by older musicians because I knew a little bit about it whereas they knew a lot.  I deliberately looked for a working band upon leaving college.  I never wanted to form another act like The Beatles.  This is because I had a realistic goal.  It was not becoming rich and famous but to travel, to have an adventure, and not work a day job.  Music was ONE of the ways I achieved my goal.  Being a backup player for someone else helped them and gave me a job at the same time.
     
    You probably have noticed the word “Adventure” occurs quite often in my writing.  This is because all I ever wanted was to have a different lifestyle and I did achieve what I set out to do.  I retired 5 years ago at 65 comfortably, not wealthy, but secure.  I was happy doing what I did.
     
    I play guitar, keyboards, bass, and added drums only last year after taking Sheila E’s online course.  I have known many technically better guitarists and can only barely play piano at a professional level.  I sing only well enough to do one or two songs to give the lead vocalist a break during a show.  However I can do one thing extremely well.
     
    I can pick up a Les Paul, then lay down a very simple, but powerful, lead guitar line revolving around the melody of a song which elicits a good response from an audience.  This is what I was trained to do by older more experienced musicians.  I can support a vocalist with concise playing, step forward to lay down a strong, simple, solo then step back again to support the vocalist.  That’s it.  I know my place.  I achieved my goal by supporting someone else.
     
    I am not a good songwriter, that was never my goal.  However I know how to make someone else’s song work really well.  This is not because I am brilliantly creative but it is a skill I learned playing live with better musicians and being university trained in Record Production at UCLA.  I know how to make an average song sound good and a good song sound great.  I did not invent the wheel, this was something I was taught how to do.
     
    My primary skill in a studio is TALKING.  That is correct, not playing but talking about what to do with the song.  I have worked on many more studio songs than I have ever actually played on myself.  This is because I was taught in the traditional manner of production recording at a university in 1992.  What many people do now is different than the traditional method.
     
    The METHOD I was TAUGHT is acting as a cog in a wheel.  This means listening to a song, then acting as an intermediary between the artist, the band, and the engineer.  Sometimes the artist and the band were the same but usually not.  My skill is to act as an arranger and musical director who knows how to tell an engineer what to do.
     
    I have never worked with a name act or someone with a big budget.  I never cared.  I was happy  to let someone else have the glory.  I just wanted to work and go home knowing I did a good job for what I was paid.  There is a whole lot less pressure to produce some unknown’s debut than to having whomever the employer is expecting to have a hit record.   I also hope my dedication to doing a good job helped at least one of these artists.
     
    Knowing your limitations works in your favor.  Having a small success is better than having no success at all.  Few people become music stars, but many people make money with music.  Music was only one of the avenues I used to reach my goal although they all were in sync with my original goal as part of a system.
     
    Everything I have ever done is because I was trained to do it by someone else, learned from them, and then did it.  This is a very simple concept.  I added power to my package by being eager to help other people to succeed.
     
    I know my limitations and built upon my real strength.  That strength is not Music.  It is I am an eager learner and can see the bigger picture.  Trying to achieve anything on your own, concentrating only on what you already know, being focused only on yourself, people usually go nowhere.  Learning, then doing, then cooperating with others to achieve THEIR goal works really well.

  6. Branding

    By Clay Anderson Johnson ,


    Career
    Why do people become successful?
     
    Science says only 8% of people achieve their goal according to Inc.com.  However Woody Allen said 80% of success is just showing up.  Putting yourself in the public eye is crucial.
     
    I got a tiny part in a very bad Hollywood movie although I am not an actor.  I did it for self promotion.  A friend told me about an audition for a part which was a musician.  I was tall and thin with hair below my shoulders so I looked the part and got the part.
     
    The movie was horrible, I could tell that just from being on the set and I had never been on a set before.  It went straight to VHS (this was before DVD) and to the best of my knowledge never opened in a theater.  I would not have watched it myself.  However I did get them to call me by my first name because the character in the script was simply “the musician”.
     
    When I was still playing in bands, which was years ago, my press kit legitimately stated I appeared in a Hollywood movie called by my real name.  This was true and it looked impressive.
     
    If you work for someone else they will have a different goal than you.   So they want you to multitask to get as much work out of you as possible.  Working for yourself you should want to have as much impact as possible doing the least amount as possible by concentrating on one thing at a time.
     
    In today’s digital age music industry you will have to do multiple things.  This is not the same thing as multitasking.  Develop your system so you can do one thing at a time very well.
     
    The people who I have known before they made it big, which were few, had more than talent and skill.  Most name people I met was after they had made it.  One of the things they all did was promote themselves.  If you believe you are too good to do this or it is beneath you, then Good Luck.  You will surely need it.  To even get professionals to look at or work for you, you will have to promote yourself.  You will need not only good recordings but photos, a press kit, and as many fans as you can muster.
     
    Anyone who knows me knows that I consider shameless self promotion not a skill but a virtue.  This is closely related to living in west Los Angeles, home of Hollywood, for almost 20 years.  The movie studios are actually in Burbank or Century City and Hollywood itself is a dump.  However Hollywood promotes itself as Home of the Movies so people think it is.
     
    Are you following where I am going with this?
     
    Hollywood itself is nothing but Hollywood as the dream looms large in the public imagination.  You are not what you are or even what you imagine yourself to be, you are what OTHER people imagine you to be.  Promote not yourself, promote what you want other people to imagine you are.  This is NOT dishonest.  This is branding and merchandising.
     
    Let me give you an example.  There are only 129 oil refineries in the United States.  There are only a handful of really big ones.  This means all of the gasoline comes from the same place according to the region you live in although there are 10 major gasoline brands.  The additives come from the delivery driver pouring a SMALL bottle into his load or into the station’s gas reservoir.  So whether you buy by price or brand you are getting the same thing.
     
    Why are some more expensive?  Branding… Not quality, branding.
     
    There are only a few really superstar talents, they may or may not rise to the top depending largely on how they are promoted.  There are many mediocre talents who do.  Why?  Packaging, promotion, and branding.
     
    Branding and promotion are more the battle than quality.  Record companies are run by accountants.  They like to know what sells.  Selling yourself on the Internet requires promotion, there are more acts now than ever before in history.  If you want to take the battle to the enemy you have to beat him with your branding before you can ever conquer him with your quality.
     

  7. Blog Writing

    By Clay Anderson Johnson ,


    Education
    What is life?  What matters?  What is its meaning?
     
    These are questions which mankind has pondered for thousands of years.  I am fortunate in that I follow a once well known philosophy called Stoicism which answers these questions.
    Life is temporal and fleeting.  It is a moment in time and space to be savored as much as possible as it will never reoccur. It is what you leave behind which matters not what you acquire.  What is your legacy? The meaning of Life is Death.  You have a brief moment to do what you want, then someone else will replace you, then someone else will replace them in a never ending cycle. Let me give you an example of two very well known people.
     
    Donald Trump pretended to be a successful businessman, conned and hurt many people, rose to power, and became a plague upon a nation.
     
    Jimmy Carter was an Admiral in the Navy, won the presidency, and afterward helped many people through Habitat For Humanity actually working building houses himself.
     
    Which is the better legacy?
     
    I have done many very bad things, some of which were illegal, but I have never consciously or deliberately hurt anyone.
     
    I have achieved what I consider a small amount of success through three primary and one secondary avenues, one of them being Music, but enough to retire in comfort.
     
    Two of them, Music and Live Event Production, were directly related to professional entertainment.
    I played by first paid gig in 1969 at a frat party. I was professionally trained in Record Production at UCLA. My wife, Adrienne, and myself produced dozens of live events sponsored by international corporations with our company Spellbound Creative Concepts. 
     
    These sponsors include Daimler, Motorola, Pfizer, Union Pacific, and the World Bank International Monetary Fund.
     
    I can document the last statement although not the first.  You can request my UCLA transcript directly from them it was in 1992.
     
    I now make music primarily for enjoyment and I try to help other people as much as it possible for me do so.  I do not believe in Heaven or Hell so this has nothing to do with reward or punishment, only that it is the right thing for me to do.  Stoicism…
     
    I hope to leave a small legacy of doing good for other people having become comfortable, although not wealthy, myself.  In five years we plan to move to a small non-tourist town on the Gulf of California in Mexico as I already speak some Spanish.
     
    This is why I write here.  I make no money, I very obviously do not care what other people think of me, but I do have something to offer.  Both my wife and myself have been around professional entertainment for over 50 years.
     
    What I write is opinion, but it is an opinion based upon personal experience.  Take it for what it is worth.  The only thing I ask is do not mistake the reason I do it.  There is nothing in this for me but the joy of sharing by writing.

  8. Storytelling

    By Clay Anderson Johnson ,


    General
    How did songwriting begin?
     
    Most likely, although no one knows for sure, it was a form of storytelling.  People remembering and recounting events to the beat of a drum.  The drum was the first instrument.  It is still most often MY first instrument when I write because I generally, not always, write based around a Beat.
     
    I posted the beginning of Fever Tree, which was only bass and drums, on a New Music Friday.  I knew what it was going to sound like when finished although no one else had any idea it was a Miles Davis type of piece.  It was a form of storytelling which used interludes with African male singers to link modern music back to Africa.  You don’t need lyrics to tell a story.
     
    Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, The Eroica, means The Heroic.  It was the story of the French Revolution told in the different movements, I learned this is in college Music History.  Different parts symbolize different events.  In the first movement you can hear the frivolity of the court and the growing discontent.  In the second the Reign of Terror and Napoleon putting down the crowds.  He was an artillery Corporal who blew them apart with cannon.  The third movement is his rise in government ending with his coronation as Emperor.
     
    Carlos Santana did the same thing in Soul Sacrifice.  It is an Aztec human sacrifice.   It goes through the gathering and excitement of the crowd, the sacrifice walking up the stairs of the temple, then climaxes with the organ blasts being the knife, followed by the celebration.
     
    The academic community has largely changed its view and now believes oral history is quite accurate.  This is because when ideas are placed in an easily remembered pattern and repeated people do indeed remember them almost exactly for generations.  This means much of history was conveyed by songs and still is.
     
    Most ballads tell a story whether the story is true or not.  The Battle of New Orleans is a humorous retelling of an actual battle.  There are many songs about Moses which are dead serious retellings of a fairy tale.
     
    It does not have to be an epic story.  There are songs about heartbreak, joy, bitterness, love, and compassion which are brief but still stories.  There is a good chance that great epics were songs.  The Iliad and The Odyssey were epic poems passed down for hundreds of years before being written down.  There is a good possibility they may once have been sung.
     
    I seldom write lyrics for popular music but I do have a side project writing a musical comedy, Cornpone Oz, based upon the starstruck yokels who come to Nashville believing they will become famous.  This only makes sense as one of my BFA programs was Playwriting and I have a completed, but unsold, screenplay comedy Cat and Mice.
     
    These lyrics tell a story in the first person about those people, although I was an onlooker not that person.  If you would like to read them, the lyrics to the title song are posted here at
     
     
  9. THE MUSIC BUSINESS
     
    Professional Music Is A Business.  If you do not wish your Music to involve dealing with money then why would you ever choose this as a career move?
     
    Pablo Picasso was a great artist.  He was also a great businessman.  So was Salvador Dali.  Business and art have lain side by side since the beginning of civilization.
     
    Michelangelo didn't paint the Sistine Chapel because of a burning desire to be creative.  This was a job.
     
    Ludwig von Beethoven wrote his 9th Symphony to poke his thumb in the eye of the Catholic Church because of their presumptuous arrogance irritating his patrons at the Austrian Court.  This is the reason for the pagan imagery.  He was a businessman.  He had a publisher.  I learned these things in a university Fine Arts Music History course.
     
    No matter how much you may dislike it everything you will ever be involved with will revolve around someone making money.  If you are good at Music and want to pursue it other than as a hobby bite the bullet.
     
    At some point, if you have a successful business as an artist and a performer, you will most likely need:
    An attorney A booking agent A costumer A manager An office A publicist A publisher A record label A recording distributor A recording studio A road crew A security staff  
    There are probably more but this is just off the top of my head.  You should have gotten the point.  You will not have to deal with all of them personally but they will be there.  They will all have to be paid somehow whether it is directly by you or it is from your Music earning them money.  They will not work simply because they like you.
     
    Form a business and open a business bank account to write off your expenses.  I formed my LLC directly with the State of Maryland using their online form for a filing fee of $100.
     
    I average around $800 monthly in ordinary expenses which comes directly off my gross income as business related.  Most of my activities can be written off as education, research, all of my musical instruments, their upkeep, and accessories along with software subscriptions,  memberships, my web domains (5), my web hosting.  The list is endless.
     
    I have $9,500.00 in business expenses to declare from last year which includes the studio in my home which formerly was only a bedroom.  There is no more bed, only a desk, computer, amplifiers, keyboard, work table, and an accessories cabinet.  I will have at least that much this year as I already have around $2,500.00 worth at the end of the first quarter.  This includes no travel or lodging expenses as I have not left home.
     
    This is an international music forum with a 20 year history.  If I wanted, this Blog could become a business activity and the time written off as a publicity expense.  I could base the rate on previous tax returns and back the claim with a union scale chart.
     
    Thank you and good evening ladies and gentlemen!
     
    Encore
  10. Goals and Systems
     
    We will assume you have read Part One.  If not, it would probably be a good idea to click on that link and do so.
     
    Now you have completed the first three steps.
    You have confirmed by other people’s reactions you really do have talent. You realize what you are going to give up in time, money, and aggravation. You know how you can possibly fit in.  
    Now we are going to move along to Goals and Systems.  Goals are important but it is the System you use which will get you there.
     
    The first part of setting your Goal is WHY?  Why do this at all?  You already know there are a lot of possible down sides.  Is this a need, a want, or both?  What made you choose this avenue?
     
    Is this a romantic fantasy?  Do you want an audience?  Is this a step toward a larger Goal?  Is this a compulsion?  Do you want the money, the attention, the satisfaction of doing it?
     
    I fell into doing this.  My Goal was to get out of Dodge, have an adventure, and not work a day job.  I hated where I grew up, I wanted more than a dull routine, and I didn’t like the idea of being told or expected to do something which profited someone else more than it profited me.
     
    Music was ONE of the ways I accomplished this Goal.  It was not the only way.  So for me it was only one step toward a larger Goal of becoming financially independent.  This was an avenue.  It was not the destination.
     
    I was a Musician who used that Skill to make money.  I did this in order to become financially comfortable along with owning an event production company, a commercial web development company, and being a free lance graphic artist.  This is creating multiple income streams.  This is a System.
     
    This is why I was never interested in stardom.  Fame was never my Goal and I never considered myself to be musically exceptional enough.  I am good, I am NOT Jeff Beck.  This is having Realistic Expectations.*  I have been in a band which might have had a shot at fame if not for other circumstances, but even if it had it would still just have been a step toward my real Goal.
     
    I started playing music in Jr. High (Middle) School band.  I got kicked out because of my inability to sight read.  This is hilarious when put together with the fact I ended up as a Bandleader/Producer in a studio. (Irony never sleeps)  This shows that for every rule there is an exception or an extenuating circumstance.
     
    I was able to do this because:
    I could read music, just not quickly or well. I was taught The Nashville Numbers System by older musicians. Popular Music is extremely simple.  
    This meant I could read something, quickly memorize it, then play it back from memory. You could not do this with Classical Music.
     
    I moved on to playing Acoustic Guitar and then Electric Guitar in my bedroom.  I fooled around and copied records as most do.  I have never been good at chording a guitar BUT I was very good at playing single notes and had a naturally good ear for Melody.
     
    Melody is a very important concept as it is the one of the two bases of most songs which sell.  A chord progression has little to do with it.  A chord progression only supports the Melody.
     
    Most people attempting to write songs get this backwards because they write on an acoustic guitar not on a piano.  They start with a chord pattern then try to put words (Lyrics) around it and then find a Melody.
     
    The BEST songwriters I have known start with a Melody or a Beat.  A Beat is a rhythmic pulsation.  There are many extremely successful one chord songs.  Google it.
     
    Because I could play single notes well I concentrated upon this area and became a good Soloist and Lead Guitarist.  Find out what you do best then target that area.  I obviously can play chords and have to do so but that is not my strength.  Build upon your strengths.  You can shore up the wall later.  This is a part of a System.
     
    In college I started playing in bands, none of which were very good.  Although this was where I discovered I had talent.  People liked to hear me play and were impressed.  THEY thought I was good before I ever considered it anything other than having a good time.
     
    This was the encouragement needed to go further and deeper.  I was actually in twin BFA programs in Theater, one in Writing, the other in Stagecraft.  These led toward forming the event production company and what you are reading now.  This company was another avenue toward my Goal.  None of these things were the Goal in and of themselves.  The Goal was being my own man and not working for the man.
     
    None of the bands I played with in college were serious.  After leaving there I decided to find people who were serious and find a working band who would hire me.  I became someone else’s follower and learned from them what to do.  This is part of a System.
     
    One of the most important things they taught me was to be as simple as possible and not to overplay.  Your friends may think this is cool but if you overplay at an audition for a professional band it will be the last time you will ever see them unless it is from the audience.
     
    Now, what is your Goal and what will be your System for doing it?  I can tell you what I did and show you things you can do.  I cannot tell you what you should do as only you can find your own path.
     
    ******
    Know who you are talking to and where their perspective will be from.  When your friends, your relatives, or your co-workers tell you how good you are, take as a complement.  When people who are professionals start talking about your career it is time to listen.  They have better things to do with their time than to talk to you for no reason.  These people know what they are talking about and mean what they say.  
    Part Three
  11. What do you want from life?  I knew what I wanted from an early age.  I wanted an adventure!
     
    The first time I ever ran away from home I was six years old.  It wasn’t the last either but I finally made it through high school and left for college.
     
    I grew up in a cow patty of an oil field town in west Texas by the name of Sweetwater.  It was a place where people got drunk on the weekend and got into fistfights for fun.  It did not take me long to realize this was no way to live while I was watching Leave It To Beaver on TV and watching surf movies shot in LA at the movie theater.
     
    Ironically the name Sweetwater came from it originally being a land scam which most of west Texas was.  People from the east coast were lured there by false advertising buying land they had never seen in the early 20th century.  The water actually came from Bitter Creek which was alkaline in content which made the town’s next biggest industry two sheetrock plants.  The third was a SAC base outside town, Avenger Field, which, during WWII, had been one of the delivery points for aircraft being in almost the exact middle of the country east to west.  This meant many of the fistfights were between the airmen and the locals.  This was a horrible place to raise children and even today is plagued by drug abuse, violent behavior, and alcoholism.  But I digress…
     
    The majority of people wander through their lives like cattle (another Texas reference 😁).  The biggest losers I have ever met were not those who died broke but those who had a dream they never followed.  These people were unhappy, frustrated, and malcontent no matter how much wealth or status they did or didn’t accumulate.  Their situation was worse than the drug addicts I have known which would be several, at least most of the druggies were happy.  The saddest part is that this all happened because something else was always more important than what they actually wanted to do.  Show me an unhappy person and I will show you an excuse.  I am rambling again…
     
    If you want your life to be just like everyone else, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.  The corporations of the world should be indebted to you even if they aren’t and you are expendable.
     
    If you want to make a hobby of Music that is certainly preferable to being a gun enthusiast in my book.  Kudos on that choice!
     
    If you want to have a career, it is going to require several things.  The first is a realistic assessment of what you have to offer.  I mean a really hard, cold look.  Most people who believe they have talent don’t.  If people say ”That’s nice” when you play rather than “Wow” that is a good indicator.  THIS DOES NOT MEAN YOU CANNOT IMPROVE.
     
    So if you are in that situation polish what you are doing.  If the reaction does not improve you probably didn’t either.  After several cycles be happy with your hobby if your audience reaction does not get any better OR try a different audience.  It might be THEM if you are playing for the same people.  Someone else may fall in love with you.
     
    The second thing is evaluate what you are willing to give up because it will be a lot.  It will be a lot of time, a lot of money, working with people you may wish you had never met, along with a lot of rejection and bitter disappointments on many different levels.  If you are a delicate flower and envision working with everything you ever wanted in a friend or coworker this is not for you.  Although there are some areas where you can work cloistered in solitude.  It will just not be in a stage act.
     
    Sounds fun and exciting, huh?  This is the definition of glamour, the illusion of beauty where there is none.  This is a hard, hard way of life.  It is too hard for the average person.  It is great if you succeed but remember also that Success does not always mean stardom.  There is a lot of money to be made in Music if the general public never knows who you are.  Lots of Music people labor in ignominy but it is generally lower paying if you are not in one of the unions which also give you more benefits such as having a pension plan and residual payments for your work.
     
    It may also take a long, long time.  I used to drink at the bar with and watch Stevie Ray Vaughn with Double Trouble playing at Shakey’s Pizza on Guadalupe in Austin.  Talking with any of them was no more unusual than talking to the bar tender.  Stevie had  been recording for years and was becoming well known among musicians but he could not draw a crowd.  This changed when someone who was more interested in musicianship and already had a crowd booked him, The Montreux Jazz Festival.  He had been recording over a decade at this time and actually was booed at the festival.  BUT after the show he met David Bowie.  This was the fabled “lucky break” which almost NEVER happens.
     
    Stevie later got pissed and quit Bowie’s tour because he was only being paid union scale rather than a cut of the show although he was playing before thousands who would have never seen him if not for that tour.  This put him in the public eye through being on the tour and playing on Let’s Dance which was an enormous hit.  This broke down the wall.  He came back to Texas famous.
     
    My wife Adrienne, who I did not know at this time, was friends with David Bowie from long before this and speaks very highly of him as a person as well as an artist.  She thinks this was a temper tantrum over a perceived slight and unrealistic expectations.
     
    Current union tour scale is $275 per day of the tour plus $100 for a rehearsal, all expenses paid, plus $35 per diem on a playing day or $75 on an off day.  This is $1,925 a week with every expense paid plus whatever the per diem is and for rehearsals.
     
    The third point is decide where you fit.  What do you do best?  It might be songwriting. There is a lot of money in it IF your song is a big seller by you or someone else.  If not, you will most likely not see a dime.  If you are in a publisher’s writing stable you do not get paid unless you sell a song.  Zip, zero, nothing…
     
    Do you sing? Is that singing good enough to put before an audience?  Anyone can sing, the question is how well?  Plus you will be front and center, can you be entertaining?  If you sing very well but are shy there is still good money to be made by joining SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists singing on records, commercials, and for films and TV.
     
    Do you play an instrument?  Do you play it well?  If so, do you have any sophistication and taste in the way you play music?  If no, you are a potential Metal player.  If yes, there are a world of options.
     
    If you want to make it strictly on your ability to play an instrument, if you are an American or a Canadian, pony up the $300 a year to join AFM, the American Federation of Musicians.  It is loaded with benefits even if you never play a studio session.  There are insurance programs for you, your family, and your instruments.  There are loan programs, travel discounts, and many other perks. There is a NO PLAY list of abusers, crooks, and cheats.  Many artist tours will not hire you unless you belong to AFM.  If you are not serious enough to spend $300 on your career, you are a bad joke at this level unless you are the artist.  Cut, take, end of commercial…
     

    As long as we are on the subject, session players get a bad rap, although I have never played with one who wasn’t a union pro so that could make a difference.  The guy who owns the studio down the street is most likely using scabs not paying for union musicians.  In the US or Canada unless you are paying everyone at least $144 an hour and twice that for the band leader plus 14.09% in benefits they are not union.  If you are working doing music for a business and you are not union yourself if they bring in “session players” they will not be union either.  
     
    What you will find with union musicians is they are as good as they are directed to be.  If you have a meandering direction so will they.  If you are weak and bland they will be following your lead.  I have a friend in LA whose players are out of control.  He is lost which means so are they.  However these same people played for Curtis Mayfield, Luther Vandross, and George Benson as well as several others on hit albums.  This is because there was a shot caller running the show.  Someone has to drive the car, it will not drive itself.
     
    Famous Session Players
     
    If you want to be the artist, not a band, but THE artist.  You had better be multi-talented.  Most singer songwriters never go anywhere because they cannot hit all the bases.  They play Writers Nights for donations and restaurants.
     
    This is usually is because they are not entertaining.  Their songs are not good enough to keep peoples attention or they are not good enough as a performer or they do not understand the difference between a set and a show.  Amateurs play a collection of songs which is called a set.  Professionals play an order of songs which is called a show.  Thus the term Show Business.
     
    Part Two

  12. Mediocrity

    By Clay Anderson Johnson ,


    Musicianship
    What is the worst quality of any artist?  By this I mean related to the art itself not interpersonal relationships or bad habits.
     
    It is not lack of intelligence, artists do not need to be intellectuals.
     
    It’s not even being bad.  People who are bad usually know it and try to compensate in other ways.
     
    The worst problem is mediocrity, the gray area between good and bad.  This usually shows first as a lack of taste and discrimination.
     
    The dictionary definition of taste in art is “the sense of what is fitting, harmonious, or beautiful; the perception and enjoyment of what constitutes excellence in the fine arts, literature, fashion”.
     
    People who have no taste do not know what good is, they only know what excites them.  People who have taste sense what is good.  This is a perceptual sensation more than it is knowledge.
     
    Having taste is the ability to have an emotional response to art to distinguish between good and bad as well as the gradations between the two.  This is being able to innately discern degrees and nuance.  This is largely inherited through cultural conditioning although often wealthy and well educated people still have horrible taste.
     
    Mediocrity can also stem from not wanting to learn and to not be able to accept criticism. This generally comes from the belief they know everything already resulting in:
    Not realizing that in music a poem is not the same as a lyric and when set to music it is not a song, although it can become performance art by adding a visual presentation in a video. Overplaying being confused with skillfulness or dexterity. Being overtly artsy and pretentious in word choice being perceived as equaling culture and refinement. Imitation being substituted for creation. Lack of direction appearing as being artistically adventurous. Often the former problems arise from being completely self taught, these are not qualities learned in a school.  Not that being self taught is in itself bad, but I have met more than one self styled musician who has never bothered to learn the basic principles of music.  For the most part they were guitarists.  Simple basic principles which are never learned can have catastrophic impacts.
     
    I knew a guitarist who could not advance because he had never learned to count time, the beats in a measure, although he could play a very simple, basic rhythm pattern.  This meant he could not stop playing and count the beats in a rest before he resumed playing.  There are probably many more who struggle with this same, very elementary, problem.  These are guitar beaters not guitarists.
     
    Many may have never played a song which was not in 4/4 time so that is all they can do because that is all they know.  They may not know what a time signature is or what it means.  This is self limitation which comes from not caring enough about what they are attempting to do to learn the basics.  Usually they believe they already know everything just from beating on a guitar which they learned from copying an actual musician on a recording or a watching a video.  They simply copied something rather than learning why it worked and then wandered off alone into their own version of what music is.
     
    One of the most fascinating things I have found about people who cannot accept criticism is it most often comes from a feeling of inferiority not one of superiority.  They have a subconscious need to defend themselves in whatever they do because of their own perception of themselves as being weak not strong as they would have you believe.  They project their own failures, faults, and weaknesses onto others.
     
    You see this all the time in politics and politicians.  You may see it when someone posts for Critique.  You try to be helpful but then are met with argumentation and hostility about how theirs was the obvious correct choice.  They have a deep seated need to prove themselves.  They project their own shortcomings onto someone else who is only attempting to help them in order to strengthen their own work.
     
    Mediocrity originates from someone who either cannot tell or cannot accept the fact that what they are doing is less than good from another person’s perspective.  This is why it is worse than being bad. These are people who are gray in ability who actually believe they are gleaming white.
     
    People who are bad work to become better.  People who are mediocre believe they are beautiful already.  People who are really good fret about whether something is good enough and want friends to tell them if something is wrong.
     
    Some of the most skilled people here post on New Music Friday in order to hear if something is not working or can be improved.
     
    This is one of the great paradoxes of life.  People who can play but have no talent often believe they are artistically great.  The people who are really good always question themselves.  The really talented people always look for ways to become better.
     
    Carol Kaye, who is now 87, is often listed as the most recorded musician of all time.  She played bass guitar with the musicians known as The Wrecking Crew of the Los Angeles studios heyday.  There is a documentary where she talks about the first time they heard The Beat Goes On.  They thought, “Jesus, what a piece of garbage.  We will have to pull a rabbit out of a hat to make this work.” (Actual quote from Carol Kaye)
     
    Her bass line with one accented note brought that song to life.  Sonny & Cher were smart enough and humble enough to let them add to a song which in turn made their careers.  Better musicians took a song that they thought was horrible and by everyone working together produced one of the sixties’s biggest hits.
     
    Listen to a version of the original recording then listen to a performance of it from The Sonny & Cher Show.  The original is great, the TV show version is only mediocre.  This is because the TV show bassist does not add the bump in the bass line.  One accented note in the bass line makes the difference.  Carol Kaye has discriminating taste.

  13. Dynamics In A Band

    By Clay Anderson Johnson ,


    Musicianship
    Dynamics In A Band
     
    There are three primary traits in choosing musicians Skill, Talent, and Imagination.  It is rare to find all three in one person and it not necessary to have all three in one person for success although it certainly can’t hurt.
     
    I only score Medium in Skill, but High in Talent and Imagination.  I am technically not stellar but I can hit the target on emotion.  This means I can sometimes make a piece sound better than a more skilled musician who has less feeling and emotional depth.
     
    Most studio musicians score Skill - High, Talent - Medium, and Imagination - Low.  Jimmy Page became wealthy and owned a bookstore in London as a studio player because he scored Skill - High, Talent - High, and Imagination - High.  This was before ever moving on to The Yardbirds which eventually became The New Yardbirds and then became Led Zeppelin.
     
    Below is an analysis of three world famous bands based upon this dynamic.
     
    Person/Band
    Skill
    Talent
    Imagination
    Led Zeppelin
     
     
     
    Page
    High
    High
    High
    Plant
    Medium
    High
    Low
    Jones
    High
    High
    Medium
    Bonham
    High
    High
    High
     
     
     
     
    The Who
     
     
     
    Townsend
    Medium
    High
    High
    Daltry
    Medium
    High
    Medium
    Entwitlsle
    High
    High
    Medium
    Moon
    High
    High
    High
     
     
     
     
    The Experience
     
     
     
    Hendix
    High
    High
    High
    Redding
    Medium
    Medium
    Low
    Mitchell
    High
    High
    High
     
    All of the three were groundbreaking acts.  All of the three had hit songs.  All of the guitarists and singers never did anything of any significance after their drummers, all triple Highs, either died or left the band.  Jimi Hendrix only played with Buddy Miles for a short period before bringing back Mitch Mitchell.
     
    All of them had at least two members who scored High in combinations of either Skill, Talent, and Imagination.  Most of the players were High in Talent which like Imagination cannot be learned.  Many musicians who have some Skill believe they also have Talent on a level which they do not possess.  This is similar to believing you have discriminating taste based upon something you learned from a magazine rather than a book.
     
    Led Zeppelin was finished after the death of Bonham.  Bonham is widely regarded as the #1 drummer of all time by many drummers and was equally as important as Page for their sound and direction.
     
    The Who trudged on playing their hits after Moon died but was artistically dead as Townsend had Talent and Imagination but Moon was too much of a driving artistic force behind the band even though Townsend wrote the material.  Townsend has talked about this in interviews.
     
    One lesson to be learned from this is a the wrong drummer will kill your act faster than almost anything else other than a wandering lead player or a poor vocalist.  Ringo Starr was an excellent drummer although his sound only really worked well with The Beatles.  He later had hit songs but not because of his drumming.  Charlie Watts had very un-flashy drumming but was the backbone of the Stones because he understood, as did all the others mentioned, that the purpose of a drummer is to accent the other players not act as a metronome for them.
     
    The majority of drummers do not understand this and fall into rigid regimentation.  This makes them worthless in a sophisticated, progressive setting unless all you want is a tapping in the background
     
    Remember you are not your audience and you are not your potential career promotion professional.  Your buddy, the rambling lead guitarist you think sounds great because he has a little Skill but no Talent, will kill your record deal in a heartbeat.  What Music Business people look for is professionalism, solid, clear direction in playing.  They generally know nothing about musical talent and imagination but they know what works in widespread practice for selling things.
     
    So when you pick a musician what are you really looking for?  Do you want someone capable of contribution and expansion?  Do you want a highly skilled person to raise your sound quality or as a soloist?  Or do you simply want someone to fill in the space because you believe you are a star in your own right?
     
    Donald Fagan and Walter Becker of Steely Dan were only Medium in Skill but very High in Talent and Imagination.  Through a succession of lineups they surrounded themselves with some of the most highly skilled players available.  There are many different roads to choose from.  Discrimination in who you are willing to play with and why will most likely be one of the biggest deciding factors for success.
     
  14. What makes commercial music successful?
     
    There are four components to having successful commercial music and an act.  These are Melody, Beat, Lyrics, and Performance.
     
    Any of them can be the driving force behind a song.  You have to have a combination of at least two for success.  No matter how good the first three are, a bad Performance will sink the ship unless your goal is to sell the song to someone else.
     
    The Performance is major.  The song will be played for an audience.  The audience wants to be entertained.  They do not generally care if you are poetic or musically accomplished.  They want to be amused and distracted from their everyday routine.
     
    Professional Music is not an Art, it is Show Business.
     
    There are classic examples of people who were more than good and made it on performance although they may not have written the material.  Have you ever heard of Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley?  Great vocalists, great performers, wrote very little or no material.
     
    Name the successful people or acts which had great material but could not perform.
     
    Many people might say Bob Dylan, that he could not sing.  This is nonsense.  Bob Dylan was a Stylist.  A Stylist is someone who may not be a strong singer but can strongly put a song through to an audience on an emotional level.
     
    Mick Jagger is a Stylist also.  They both have limited vocal ranges but can emotionally reach an audience.  Madonna is also a Stylist.  Huge names but not good singers by the classical definition.
     
    A good portion of the material from the first Led Zeppelin album is alleged to have been stolen from other artists.  Regardless of how they did it, they could perform.  Not only could they perform but every band I have ever heard who tried to copy their style only partially understood it.  This is why the would be copycats usually were a droning wall of noise.  Audiences didn’t care, they simply wanted to be entertained.
     
    I chose Led Zeppelin specifically because they understood what most bands in their genre don’t.  This is called Arrangement.  Arrangement is Who Plays What When.  This could better be described as when not to play combined with Call and Response.  Call is a statement from a vocalist or instrument, Response is the reverse statement answering.  Listen to Black Dog.
     
    Page, Jones, and Bonham had all been studio musicians who had known each other for years playing behind other artists.  Jimmy Page played on Goldfinger.  All of these people had learned music by playing for highly professional arrangers.  They weren’t a bunch of buddies who formed a band.
     
    This is why their music is so good although most of the material was performances more than well written songs which could be copied by someone else.  To the best of my knowledge almost no one has recorded a copy of a Led Zeppelin song other than Stairway To Heaven.  However the value of Stairway To Heaven is estimated to it having made around $550,000,000 in a plagiarism court case.  The movie Dazed And Confused wanted to use the Led Zeppelin song performance for the film.  The value of the performance was more than the budget for the entire movie.
     
    You might be wondering what my point is.  The point is very simple.  You may be a great poet or an accomplished composer but at the end of the day it is how well you can communicate EMOTION to an audience.  The world revolves around Myth not Reality, Style not Substance.  If it revolved around Reality there would be no religions or political parties.
  15. Just what you want to be, you will be in the end
     
    This is a line from The Moody Blues song Nights In White Satin.  The song has charted time and time again for the last 50 years by different artists.
     
    This is not about the band or the song.  This is about the inherent truth contained in this line.
     
    You are what you believe yourself to be.  If you believe yourself to be someone you will become that person.  You cannot create talent but you can create opportunity.  You can create dignity.  You can create respect.
     
    None of these things will happen if you believe yourself to be the victim of your circumstances.  All my life I have watched people fail because someone else controlled their destiny.  I have seen some really talented people become beat down, screwed up, and broke because someone in the “system” they envisioned told them they could not do something or it won’t sell or some other reason.
     
    I have known people who have become drug addicts and alcoholics because of this.  I have known people who committed suicide with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a .357 in the other.  One of my closest friends did this, someone who watched our wedding gifts while my wife and I went on our honeymoon, someone who was married to my wife’s best friend.
     
    There Is No System.  For everyone who tells you No there will be most likely someone who will tell you Yes.
     
    Willie Nelson wrote hit after hit after hit in 1960s Nashville recorded by other people.  He could never get support for himself as an artist because the established hierarchy did not think he fit.  He spent every dime of his royalties promoting his own small tours.
     
    In 1970 he left Nashville and moved to a ranch in Bandera outside Austin.  As fate so had it he played a free political fundraiser for Democratic candidates in Zilker Park for a bunch of hippies from the University of Texas.  He played those hits.  They could not believe he had written the songs they had heard for most of their lives.  Word spread like wildfire.  Austin was an important place in their world.
     
    A bunch of hippies at a free gig catapulted Willie Nelson to being a successful, well known artist.  This was the beginning of Outlaw Country music.  Someone who had been shunned by the Nashville establishment became bigger than any star they had seen since Hank Williams.
     
    Never take No as an answer, go to someone else.  Carry yourself with grace and dignity.  Sooner or later you will find the respect you deserve.
     
    I am a person, I’m not a number,
    I am a person, not a digital excuse.
    I am a person, I’m not a number,
    I am a person with a name.
    I am the voice of reason, crying to be heard.
    Listen to me, listen to the wisdom of my words.
    No one else can tell you how to realize your dreams.
    No one else can tell you what the secret really means
    Lorraine King, Tim Hamill, & Dave Parsons
  16. I want to make one thing very clear at the beginning of this post.  I have never been THE leader of a band.  NEVER!  I have owned three businesses, I have never owned a band.
     
    The biggest disappointment of my career was because the leader of the band went to rehab not once, but twice, because of being a drug addict.  This resulted in the band, The Wolves, NOT being signed to Geffen Records and becoming a national tour act with major label backing.
     
    He was the leader because the band operated with the aid of his money as he was wealthy.  This was also why he could afford to do hard drugs not because he was some low life out of disillusionment.  He did it purely for pleasure.
     
    Good bands require a lot of money and it has to come from somewhere.  Someone’s job at the garage will not be enough and if he stops working, there will be no money at all if you do not have someone booking you gigs.
     
    I have always been the willing follower of someone whose money or status kept the band alive and working.  My primary skill is being a Bandleader and Musical Director in a studio or in an act fronted by an Artist.  I acquired these skills by being a good follower.
     
    This is different from being the Artist or owning the band and making all the business decisions.  Every time I ever made money on stage I was a follower of someone who was the leader.  I have never made money where everyone voted on things.  I have not played in that type of band since college.  I direct a band in playing not the artistic or business direction.  This is what Chuck Leavell does for the Rolling Stones.  He plays keyboards and directs their backing musicians.  This is what Steve Van Zandt does for Bruce Springsteen.
     
    In early 2020 I was hospitalized with Covid-19 for 28 days and suffered neurological damage.  This severely hampered my ability to play and can no longer do so at a professional level.  This is not as tragic as it may sound as I am 70 years old, played my first gig in 1969, and I am financially secure from a combination of my musical career, the businesses I have owned, and my wife being the Executive Director of a major national nonprofit foundation.
     
    I record Music now because I enjoy it and feel I still have an artistic contribution to be made as I am musically different from the average commercial artist.  These are basically the same two reasons I write here.
     
    Based upon 50 years of experience I say a band either has to be a business or a hobby with friends there is no middle ground.  They should not function as a democracy.  They have to have a clear direction in which they are going.  They have to have a clear top down structure from the beginning.  Otherwise it will be an anarchy of “Yeah man I don’t want to do that I’ve got other plans that day.”  There would be a constant struggle for control.  To not believe this is nativity.  The least desirable circumstance is a struggle for power.
     
    I have seen this happen over and over and over again with other people’s bands.   There is no ideal world of sunshine, flowers, and rainbows in anything which makes money.  Two people can share decision making power in a band after that it becomes chaos.  Look at any major band and it will usually comes down to a center of one or two people.  They will all be contributors to the music but not in the direction of the career moves.  Charley Watts complained later in interviews that Mick Jagger made him wear his hair long.  Several members of The Mothers of Invention had the exact same complaint about Frank Zappa.
     
    Few things designed by a committee are good because the attempt is to try to please everyone’s separate interests.  This is a form of weakness because of lack of actual unity.  There is no real unity only a consensus of individuals representing their own priorities.
     
    What are the qualities of good leadership?  Someone who is a good leader thinks of the benefit of his followers in order to keep his organization alive.  Wealth and power usually comes either from some form of being the servant of others in helping them to succeed on their own or family inheritances.  The leader of The Wolves was a BAD leader because his personal whims destroyed the band.
     
    After this was when I became an AFM union member.  Union musicians have a great deal of power because of belonging to the union.  This prevents them from being abused because of the union’s power.
     
    The American Constitution is the child of James Madison which was helped to be birthed by Thomas Jefferson.  Put another way it is the result of two leaders bringing the other members to agreement not individuals finding their own path to consensus but following a path in which they were led “in order to form a more perfect union” as it reads.

  17. Learning = Earning

    By Clay Anderson Johnson ,


    Education
    Anyone who has followed any of my activities should know if nothing else I am eager to learn.  Whatever success I have had, which may not be Earthshaking but has kept me from otherwise working, is due to something I have learned from other people.  Those who have mentored me, those I have taken classes from, and those whom I have never met but read their book or taken their online course.
     
    There is a world of relevant information available to help you boost your career(s), much of which is actually free or costs little.
     
    I was very fortunate.  Even though my family had little money I was ambitious enough to work my way through my original college doing construction work.  However much of this credit also goes to those who let me work an on/off schedule and attend classes.  Everything I learned about Stagecraft, Lighting, Sound, and Set Design came from a BFA program at The University of Texas before I ever saw work in that area.
     
    This may not seem relevant to Music but for several years I owned an Event Production company which worked with B list acts working nationally in the US.  That generated over $100,000 a year in personal income doing 4-6 events.  These were only small to medium in size, not the Astrodome.  This was a part time job.  This was possible because of being trained.
     
    Before I ever met anyone higher in the Music Business than a bar owner or festival organizer I was in the Music Business and Creative Arts program at UCLA.  Once again on my own dime because I thought it was important.  I would have had no idea what to do in a studio if were not for John Boylan who taught me Record Production there.  This was possible because of being trained.
     
    Almost everything I know about playing came from being around older musicians and learning from them.  Of course I played in college bands and experimented on my own but it was being taught things like the Nashville Numbers System by them years before I ever saw Nashville that put me in the union as a session player.  This was possible because of being trained.
     
    I also got a certificate in Web Development from California State University Northridge in the 1990s.  I owned a commercial website development company in Los Angeles during the Wild West days of the Web when you could say $50,000 and no one questioned it or looked for another bid.  There were no website templates available to them, everything was coded by hand.  Once again this was possible because of being trained.
     
    Learning = Earning.  Being ahead of the game counts.  It is often said that the world is divided into those who make things happen and those who watched what happened.
     
    None of the above things happened through chance or getting a “lucky break”.  They involved learning, planning, and very hard work.
     
    Everyone stands on the shoulders who those who came before them.  My personal experience is that listening to Music and then trying to do it yourself will only take you so far.  It is far easier, quicker, and more dependable to learn with someone else’s help.
     
    You don’t have to go to college, although it certainly helps.  There are hundreds of books available on Music, Songwriting, and Music Business available for little cost on Amazon.   Youtube is filled with tutorials.  Masterclass.com where I still take classes costs $85 a year for unlimited courses.  I highly recommend Carlos Santana’s The Art of Music to anyone who plays guitar.  He talks like you are in the room with him and I learned one hell of a lot from the experience.
     
    Do Not Go By Yourself.  Invest time and money in yourself then others will invest in you.
     

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