Friday, April 10, 2020

End of an Era



The CD Baby store is no more. Aghast nobodies, and semi-nobodies such as yours truly, are now left bereft of a place in which to send their many passionate fans to sate their unquenchable desire for our latest product. This means if I want to move any product, or my music as I sometimes call it, I must do so myself.

I am deeply ambivalent about this.

I am not a naturally born salesman, and if I were, I would have don't much better the couple of months I sold vacuums back in the bad old days before I realized I wouldn't become the next Peter Gabriel, and went back to engineering. I did write and record in yon days, but I had no way to turn that into any recognizable product that I thought might appeal or sell to the general public.

Fast forward many years.

Like many thousands of artists, I glommed on to the CD Baby bandwagon (huh, huh, get it?) and did poorly, but I did have some sales both physical and digital, and I'm sorta maybe kinda known at this point in my late blooming career. I retired from engineering after 40 years, if you're curious. Now, as I still maintain my own website, mrprimitivemusic.com, it is incumbent upon me to figure this out and setup my own bustling e-commerce page.

I'm not thrilled, but it may be the only way to unload the remaining CDs I have outside of giving them away or gifting their disposal on my kids once I depart this mortal coil. On the plus side, I have resisted the urge to purchase many things like T-shirts and other geegaws that I have no plausible way of unloading without taking a financial bath. To that end, I feel for the struggling bands that loaded up for tours that have now been cancelled and the merc they may not be able to sell and the money they were counting on from those sales.

However, if I somehow get my s**t together it may be possible for some of you, if so inclined to buy an autographed CD from yours truly, the artist.

Again, maybe.

©2020 David William Pearce

Wednesday, April 1, 2020

We're All the Same...





If nothing else, with most of us practicing social distancing, the contagion has shown us all to be pretty much the same.

What am I talking about?

In this case performers, singers, songwriters.

We all look the same now, singing from our living rooms. Now that may strike some as snarky-maybe a little-but it shows, if fact, that behind all the makeup and lights and sets and staging, and the like, is someone simply playing a song. And if it's jarring at first to see your favorite artist sitting in a T-shirt and jeans strumming out a low-fi, home-streamed song you've never heard straight up, it's also reinforcing that we all start with the same thing: an idea that becomes a tune that we lyricise in our own space.

Ok, so maybe at the top they get together in a fancier space, but you get the drift. And it makes them all a little more human.

Also, and this is sorta important, it shows that at its base, creativity happens right where you are, and as we're either encouraged, asked, or required under penalty of scolding or worse to stay home, might as well make the most of it.

And yes, I get tired of hearing that too.

I'd really like to be out and about-I get enough at home stuff like this writing you're reading (hopefully)-listening to people play and yak and drink and socialize; all the stuff humans are wired to do.

But, for now, that's not in the cards.

Groan!

So for now check out the artists you enjoy and see that they're just like us... for the most part... and don't forget the ones who aren't so well known.

©2020 David WIlliam Pearce