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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | "Bowman, KC" <kcbowman@oaklandnet.com> |
| Subject | Owsley-related |
| Date | Thu, 20 Feb 2003 09:32:56 -0800 |
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I'm a sucker for popstar biography books. Like "Chalkhills and Children",
"Saucerful of Secrets", "Shout", Half a dozen Beach Boy books, zillions of
others. I've read each one of them about 3 times or more.
And every time I read them, my eyes naturally begin to skip over the
paragraphs that detail the business side of the subject's career. A
paragraph that begins with something like, "In June on 1981, Andy, Colin,
Terry and Dave met with Virgin executives to discuss the recent discovery
that nearly $100,000 in royalties had been garnished due to a..." will get
me skimming for something more interesting like "A Kaftan-bedecked Leckie
placed the three of them around one microphone and lit a few joss sticks to
create a psychedelic mood..."
All this is to say...I've always been a little puzzled why there's so much
scrutiny about the money-and-making-a-living aspect of our favorite pop
artists. I don't really care how much money they're hauling in...or not
hauling in. Do I like the music? That's the only question.
And, basically, for the first time in the pop era, a musician can create
recordings for mass consumption with pretty much ZERO budget. Record tracks
on a home computer, make some mp3's, post 'em on a website, and practically
anyone in the whole universe has access to them. That was pretty much
impossible until the last five years or so. That's inspiring to me. That
means there doesn't *necessarily* have to be a "business component" to any
artists "bio", the likes of which I would skip over anyway.
However, I can also sympathize with Owsley...It's hard to go backwards, in
any realm, in any walk of life...Let's say you are a promising lefty
reliever at the triple-A level, with lifelong dreams of pitching in the
bigs. Let's say you get cut from the team. Your friends and family might
say..."Don't worry, you still love baseball...and your fastball is still in
the upper-80's...You can pitch for the City-league team, and utterly
DOMINATE." But one can understand this pitcher thinking..."OK my big league
dreams are not panning out...time to re-evaluate...maybe coach some High
school ball...Maybe get in to real estate...hang with my kids...anything but
pro ball." Maybe the lefty is patient to sit and wait for that 1% chance
that some major league club will come a-knockin'...and maybe Owsley is
patient to sit and wait for that call that his album has a shot at release,
and involve himself in other pursuits until then...
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