Always trying to be social, always failing, I joined Indaba, a social music site. It is an excellent website for musicians. Collaboration is what it’s about. With the advent of low cost recording, more musicians are recording at home and collaborating over the net. Indaba is one of the good places. They have contests and you can submit music and do “re-mixes”. Famous groups put up the tracks for their songs and people use those tracks to make new music. Imagine getting just the drum track from a hot song and playing along with it to create something new.
I found that these members awesome and it was hard to compete but I did write a song or two and I deduced a few things about the music industry. It wasn’t just the advent of the mp3 that made the industry stumble, it was also the advent of low cost recording.
These days a studio that would make Elvis drool costs a thousand bucks and people are pulling it off more cheaply. With drums and loops from a machine and some talent an artist doesn’t end up in “debt” to a label. This creates, shall we say, an increase in the number of artists and in the volume of material available.
If you visited a friend in 1975 you’d know every name in their music collection. Today we have trouble keeping track of who is a star and who isn’t. Do we have star overload? Is there a limit to the number of famous names we can remember? We certainly have music overload.
With any art there is always the feeling of rolling a message into the bottle and casting it into the sea on a lonely beach. In my new thing I am casting songs into Itunes. It’s especially lonely in there. In Indaba it was, “I listened to you so please listen to me”. It’s about trying to get a bunch of faces under your song. It’s about singing to the choir, but Itunes makes me miss the choir.
Here is the song I wrote for some contest at Indaba. I never intended to release it, I may even have missed a beat, but it strikes a note. The outcome fitted the song, the bottle sank, but it’s still a good message. Even if no one hears it, like all art, it never quite was about them, was it Vincent?
Oh my pot farm it died one day on Facebook
Cause I had no friends in my social network
So I went to Indaba and I joined up
I picked up some old songs and I put them up
Oh the cold, cold wind it blows when nobody likes you, you suppose
Oh nobody will ever hear this little song I wrote
When they see my little picture they’ll skip right over it.
I’m just a little bird who sings mhis lonely song
I suppose it shouldn’t matter if no one sings along
Oh the cold, cold wind it blows when nobody likes you, you suppose
I should get another account so I could have a friend
And every song I sing he could press like again.
I sent myself a message, said I really like your songs
And I’ll be sure to listen when another one comes along……..chorus
Well they’ll put up with me cause I paid my fifty bucks
And I’m gonna stick around until I catch up
Cause every little bird that sings has a song all it’s own
And you can’t teach the bird to sing you can only sing along
And the cold cold wind it can blow…it can blow it can blow it can blow
Cause I have to like me this I know and you have to like you this you know
I know it’s crowded here but you were once alone
Look around you.You are as rare as the precious stone
So give yourself a break this year and rejoice in your song
And when I see your picture here I’ll try to sing along.
