Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Inlander]

with pineapple

Support band?

[ViolentDove]

Patrick, most musicians have a day job. Even the good musicians. You might as well get qualified to do something that pays better than pulling beers, though this need not necessarily involve college.  Also, getting qualifications/jobs that relate to music can provide you with valuable contacts and skills that will do much to further your musical career. Most of the time getting gigs is more about who you talk to than how good your music is.

The only band I personally know that are signed to a label and tour internationally are unable to make a living solely from their music, so I'm not particularly optimistic about anyone's chances, really. However, one of them works as an audio engineer. Consequently he's able to save the band large amounts of money any time they record by doing the engineer work himself, and getting free studio time at the place he works. He also meets large amounts of other bands, managers and various people involved in the music scene on a daily basis, which makes getting gigs a whole lot easier.

That said, your friends should probably be a bit more understanding... college is not always the only or best option.

[David_Dovey]

However, one of them works as an audio engineer. Consequently he's able to save the band large amounts of money any time they record by doing the engineer work himself, and getting free studio time at the place he works. He also meets large amounts of other bands, managers and various people involved in the music scene on a daily basis, which makes getting gigs a whole lot easier.

Thissss

[tania]

yeah i know you are sick of hearing this but i'd recommend it as well because, frankly, it's always good to have some kind of income you can live off of reasonably well no matter what happens with your life, which usually requires some kind of academic qualification. at the risk of sounding patronizing, right now it might seem kind of easy cos you are living with family but once you get to the point where you have to regularly pay for things like rent and bills and car insurance and groceries and all that crap, you might regret not having pursued higher education.

when it gets to the point of "If your music doesn't work out, you're fucked" that doesn't exactly provide me with much encouragement to do anything. That's roughly equal to saying "Well, I have no faith in your music. And since you're not going to college, when your music inevitably fails, you're fucked."

wait, what? no one's saying your music will fail, they're saying you should have a backup plan. which, as much as you seem to want to interpret this as a personal attack against your music, is excellent advice for absolutely everyone no matter who they are or what they want to do with their lives. i think most people would respond to the statement "if i don't end up doing [this specific thing] with my life, i'll be totally and completely miserable forever!", no matter who that person was, with some skepticism and advice to consider other options. ever heard the phrase "don't put all your eggs in one basket"? as good as your music might be, the sad reality is that a lot of people really don't get to do what they want with their lives because life can be kind of unfair like that and you got to be sort of realistic about what might or might not happen.

like already mentioned, college obviously isn't for everyone but it might be a good idea to consider backup options regardless. also, try not to twist around things your friends say to make out like they're terrible and unsupportive, i'm pretty sure "college is a good idea" means "college is a good idea" and that's it.

[ampersandwitch]

I will punch them.

Don't punch your friends for wanting you to succeed.  What the fuck.

[jhocking]

And looking at things from the other direction, note how many of the musicians making decent money aren't any good at all. Monetary success as a musician has so little to do with musical talent, it would be comical if it weren't depressing.

[Inlander]

I think it helps to look at your creative career and your professional career as two completely separate things. To use myself as an example, I've had two books published, I'm working on a manuscript for a third, and I've got various other writing projects more-or-less constantly on the go. I consider myself a writer. But it's not my job; in fact, to date I have made precisely no money at all from any of my writing. I have a full-time job which pays well enough for me to live, but is flexible enough to allow me to write at the same time. If I didn't have that job I'd probably still be writing just as much, but I'd be fucked.

Don't assume that you'll be able to get by simply through your music, and don't assume that if you have to do things in your life other than your music then your musical career has somehow failed.

[jhocking]

I fear succumbing to the depressingly frequent transition from an artist who teaches to a teacher who used to be an artist.

[jhocking]

In this economy, even the mentally ill have tightened their purse-strings. 

[Scarychips]

Who'll pay for that trip?

[Johnny C]

First person to link an article complaining about a recession within Second Life wins a trip to intensive care.

I've heard the opposite.

The downturn of the economy is affecting Americans all over the country. Skyrocketing gas and food prices has lead many Americans to stay in and "party" in virtual worlds, such as Red Light Center, that let you date, socialize and partake in risqué activities without even leaving your house. Red Light Center has seen a 400% percent traffic increase since last year, with users totaling more than 2 million.

[Hat]

Look its not a virtual recession its a virtual market correction come on

PS Hey internet what up, yo.

Just ducked into uni to check my grades and download some hardcore pornography and it turns out I passed two subjects I thought I was going to fail and even got a grade high enough on one of them to keep me on my path to doing honours in it.

Catch you doggs later.

PPS Mountain Goats in two weeks Jodizzle it is on

[David_Dovey]

Kickass Brett.

Patrick, do you think that if you go to university it will serve as a "fall back"? And that if you have something to fall back on, you inevitably will?

Also, what is your actual plan for a career in music. Are you simply planning to write your own music, put out records, tour and be a rock star, or were you planning to become an actual professional musician, in the sense that you want to do session work and other non-idealistic musical stuff? Maybe we are taking granted that you don't actually have a realistic viewpoint on how life as a musician works?

[ViolentDove]

Dear Blog Thread,

So, my boss told me today that she doesn't have enough money for me to continue working next year. This is not altogether bad, as I've been trying to juggle full time science work, studying at night-time for a grad. dip. in journalism, writing articles, playing in a band and DJing, and also trying to find time to stop my girlfriend from breaking up with me due to sheer neglect. It is not as convenient as it could have been, as my boss had agreed for me to move to part-time work on the hypothetical new contract, which would have been super awesome.

So now I'm confronted with the situation of have a fair bit of money saved up, and two months of no paid work or study. I'm tossing up between a holiday, massive drug-fueled bender, or trying to find an internship.
 

[Blue Kitty]

Dear Blog thread

Completed my monthly ritual of uploading a new avatar and adding the old avatar to my quiki page (I guess I should edit the information and not just the avatar gallery).  I was curious to see how many I had accumulated so far so I began my count.


I have used about 53 avatars.  I guess the tiger woman walk one was my 50th.  I think I may have a problem.

[Jace]

Guys, I am getting a new job. I'm pretty sure of this since the company has fired 2/3 people who had the position I am applying for.

This is most excellent.

[Jimmy the Squid]

I've now been at my new job for two days. It's still just training and I'm getting a little worried that all they're done so far are tell us about the company and the kinds of things the company does. Things we already know. Things we do not really need to be told again. Honestly I would much rather be learning how to use the computer system that I'm going to be spening 90% of my time on but I guess there are some more days in the training to get to that.

Also I'm slightly worried about how it's going to go if I need days off. I didn't realise that when we put our availability for shifts down prior to the start of job that that was the only time we tell them when we are available. I assumed that, like every other job I've ever had, shifts would be organised based on weekly or fortnightly availabilities. As it stands I'm available 6am-10pm, seven days a week for the rest of the term of my employment there. Hopefully I will be able to change this at some stage as I would like to have time off for myself at some point.
I really can't wait til my first pay comes through though. The last few weeks have been really tight for me, financially speaking and I've been mooching off my girlfriend for a large portion of those few weeks. I'm starting to feel kind of bad about it as she doesn't make a huge amount of money as it is, being an apprentice and all and so I'm slightly depressed since I don't think I'm really treating her like I would like to. Also while walking around the shops on Sunday (which was also our two year anniversary thing) we were talking about moving in together at some point, which I think is nice.

And a final thing, today while on my lunch break I managed, through sheer clumsiness, to pour half a large bowl of boiling water all over my hands. I'm in quite a lot of pain. Seriously, ow.

[Lunchbox]

Today I was excited that I had enough money to go into the computer shop and get my old laptop back! They were retrieving all of my stuff from it because the power supply went. I have lots of music and documents and photos on my old laptop. The music is very important to me! As are many of the documents. All of the good images I have saved on Flickr, so it wasn't so important to get those back.
I booted up the external hard drive that I took in for them to use and couldn't find the folder marked 'backup' that the guy had said he'd put everything in. Instead there is a folder named 'Laptop Pictures" which yes, does indeed have a lot of my pictures, but also about half of them are corrupt and uh. Lots of them aren't mine.
Jimmy and I found horrible porn on my hard drive that I did not put there at all! It was horrible. So bad.
I want my music, dammit.

[KvP]

I got my American Gov't. project back today, and under the 105% grade the instructor had wrote "I saved your paper for last because I figured it'd be the best one." So I got that going for me, and that class is pretty much a guaranteed A now. If my uninsured friend hadn't come down with the flu for the third time in as many months it would have been a pretty rockin' day.

[Jimmy the Squid]

105%

This is not possible. Explain yourself.

[Tom]

Extra marks awarded as per the marker's prerogative when marking without a strict marking criteria?

[Social Bacon]

Mmm, for once the mention of grades makes me happy. I recently rocked a macroeconomics midterm and got 98%, got 92% on a politics essay that I finished 45 seconds before the class started, wrote a microeconomics midterm that I know I aced, and am working on a research essay (The Impact of Russian Heavy Industry on the Outcome of World War II) that I know I will ace. Sorry to gloat, but I need to, because I know I'm going to bomb next semester when all my difficult courses begin...

[evernew]

I am packing my shings for a long time away from home.
And in my head my laptop is singing "should I stay or should I go" in an eerie tin-can voice.

[Patrick]

Also, making 'good' music doesn't always equal $$$.

In fact, it only equals $$$ for an absolute minority of people.

You must have missed the part where I know this already and don't really care if I become part of that absolute minority or not. I don't care if I have to work some shitty job for the rest of my life just to support myself. I can live without a lot of shit.

Edit: Also, I never said anywhere that I planned to support myself entirely with my music. That would be (a) arrogant and (b) entirely unrealistic. I wouldn't turn it down if such an outcome became available (barring certain circumstances, but eh, details). I'm just saying, I feel that college isn't right for me, and I'm sick and tired of having my friends try to force it down my throat anyway. I don't believe that college is the fix-all cure for not having a foreseeable career path, and especially not for a high-school dropout who never gave two shits about school anyway.

[Gilead]

Dear Blog
Today I glazed a giant ham, for reals.

It was very exciting.

[jodizzle]

Dear bloggles,

Today the power company came and cut off our power!  They just showed up at our door and were all oh hi, we are cutting off your power now!  My housemates and i were all...wait..what? WHY?  They shoved a piece of paper at us and said: THIS SHOULD EXPLAIN IT, then stole our power and left.
So we apparently have an unpaid bill we never ever recieved, and we got no notices about it or had any idea we had an outstanding bill at all! But we did have no power today!  We had to go pay $200 cash for this bill of an undisclosed amount (which we still have not seen) to get the power switched back on today. We are lucky I keep a good stash of backup money in case of emergencies or we would be sitting around in the dark right now.

Also workers came and woke me up at 7am by walking around on our roof removing asbestos. The upside was I looked out the door and was surprised to see about 6 cute shirtless guys milling around the front yard.  AWESOME.

Also AARRGHH THERE IS A CRICKET PLAGUE AND CRICKETS ARE ALWAYS JUMPING ON ME AND GOING DOWN MY SHIRT AT WORK AND IT IS HARD TO UNLOAD PALLETS WHILE JUMPING AROUND YELLING GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT

[Inlander]

Also workers came and woke me up at 7am by walking around on our roof removing asbestos. The upside was I looked out the door and was surprised to see about 6 cute shirtless guys milling around the front yard.  AWESOME.

Ah, erm, no, the upside is that you don't have any fucking asbestos in your roof any more.

[jodizzle]

well YEAH Harry, if you want to look at it THAT way. 


Spoilsport.

[Ladybug]

You had cute shirtless guys removing asbestos from your house? That does not sound very healthy. Man, when they found asbestos at my elementary school, they shut it down completely for a few days while men walked around in white suits looking like they were heading for outer space with massive vacuum cleaners, cleaning every surface they could find, and they also stole our jello and lemonade. And then they proceded to keep the library closed for a couple of weeks, while they vacuumed every goddamn book in that library.

Dear blog thread,

I have my first exam tomorrow, and I have literally no idea how it will go. I don't think I've ever had this kind of weird feeling before an exam before, and when looking at old exams, I feel like I know absolutely nothing at all. But I've read the compulsory reading and I've done the exercises and I'm currently browsing through a set of 1609 slides, and a lot of the stuff looks familiar. I hope he doesn't give us an evil exam

[jodizzle]

Well they were only shirtless when they were not with the asbestos, they had big red suits to wear, but when they wern't on the roof it was too hot to wear them.

It is summer here!

[öde]

THERE IS A CRICKET PLAGUE

What the shit? And you're still trying to convince me Australia's a lovely place!? You have plagues! That shit is medieval!

[Inlander]

well YEAH Harry, if you want to look at it THAT way. 


Spoilsport.

I am not spoiling anybody's sport! I am just saying that your sport will not be a lot of fun if you're dying from an horrific lung disease!

[jhocking]

Jimmy and I found horrible porn on my hard drive that I did not put there at all! It was horrible. So bad.

Man how do you accidentally fuck that up? The guys at the computer place are maliciously fucking with you. Perhaps this is the nerd equivalent of construction workers making catcalls at women passing by.

an horrific

oh god I hate this. The worst part is that I know it's correct with your accent.

[Gemmwah]

Blog Thread,

My personal statement is kicking my arse. I don't remember it being this hard to write before. And I'm more passionate and focussed than I was before! I've read 2 sample ones, my sister's and my friend Leigh's, and I still don't even know where to start, or where to go with it. I wish I still had my old one, I could totally just edit it.

[jhocking]

Personal statement? Is that like the cover letter for a job?

[Gemmwah]

It's kinda like a cover letter, I guess, but it's for my University Application. I think the fact that it's so important is what's stopping me from getting it done, because if it's crap then I won't get in.

[Gilead]

THERE IS A CRICKET PLAGUE

What the shit? And you're still trying to convince me Australia's a lovely place!? You have plagues! That shit is medieval!

I was in the filming of Australia last year when there was a moth plague.

Have you ever been around gigantic movie spotlights in a moth plague? That shit was apocalyptic.

[jhocking]

Oh you're talking about a university application. Nevermind, I know what you mean now, I was just confused because I assumed you were talking about a job application. You guys have different words for everything else, so I figured this was another name for something.

[Inlander]

The worst part is that I know it's correct with your accent.

What do you mean, my accent? Do Americans and Australians say "H" differently?

[Boro_Bandito]

Man I get the feeling that not everyone in Australia has an accent that could shame Cockney rhyming slang. I mean, maybe its just because people wonder why I don't have an ultra strong Texan accent and its just because maybe not everyone in the world's a fuckin' hick or hillbilly. I have heard Australians speak who do not sound like Steve Irwin at all.

Also, this thread has 89 pages. What the fuck people.

[Liz]

Someone please hold me I don't think I can take more classes today

Oh Jens, you know I would if it were at all possible.

[McTaggart]

I think an Australian would pronounce it 'orrible rather than horrible? I'm not sure.

Only when it's followed by the word bastard. And even then not when we mean it.

[0bsessions]

Today the power company came and cut off our power!  They just showed up at our door and were all oh hi, we are cutting off your power now!  My housemates and i were all...wait..what? WHY?  They shoved a piece of paper at us and said: THIS SHOULD EXPLAIN IT, then stole our power and left.
So we apparently have an unpaid bill we never ever recieved, and we got no notices about it or had any idea we had an outstanding bill at all! But we did have no power today!  We had to go pay $200 cash for this bill of an undisclosed amount (which we still have not seen) to get the power switched back on today. We are lucky I keep a good stash of backup money in case of emergencies or we would be sitting around in the dark right now.

This is delightful to me personally, because all I can picture is a dude dressed up like the Hamburglar running away from a dejected Jodie folding out her pockets. Over his back is a large sack with a big lightning bolt on it (Which is how we know her power is in it).

On a more serious note: either it's a mistake or, no offense, you have no one to blame but yourself or your housemates. Bills come monthly and shit gets lost in the mail a lot. If you're living on your own, you need to keep track of these things and not rely on this shit getting to you in any reasonable fashion. If it's been two months since you paid your electric bill and you haven't seen a notice, you should probably call the power company or check your online statement.

[jhocking]

I think an Australian would pronounce it 'orrible rather than horrible? I'm not sure.

That is what I meant, and if that isn't true then I simply don't understand saying "an horrific" because H is a consonant.

Incidentally, the main word where I see people do that is "hotel" (ie. people writing "an hotel.") I'm not sure why, other than I guess "hotel" is probably the most common H word in typical modern day conversation.

[Ladybug]

Blog thread, I hate the Oz kernel language.


(Also, I suspect that piece of code lacks one "local X in ... end".)

[Gilead]

Argle I am trying to apply for film school and the damn online application won't take me resume, or any of my other resumes. It will take random word files I try to upload, but nothing that is actually relevant.

I hate you technology >: \

[jhocking]

Does it have to be a Word file? You might try converting it to PDF (use a free PDF printer like PrimoPDF) and upload that.

[0bsessions]

That is what I meant, and if that isn't true then I simply don't understand saying "an horrific" because H is a consonant.

Incidentally, the main word where I see people do that is "hotel" (ie. people writing "an hotel.") I'm not sure why, other than I guess "hotel" is probably the most common H word in typical modern day conversation.

I hear it most often with historic. I'm not grammatically perfect, by any means, but it's one of those things that drives me absolutely batshit.

[Gilead]

That did not work either unfortunately. I'm going to take an anger dump.

[jhocking]

@gilead: Well fuck. Is the application deadline soon? You should email their webmaster about the problem, maybe attach your resume to the email.

@jon: Oh yeah I see "an historic" sometimes too. @#$%@^!