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Posts about Leadership
On December 3rd
covering Culture, Leadership, Music
Last night the Future of Music Coalition threw a fundraising party for Sweet Home New Orleans. It’s an organization that helps musicians in New Orleans. Guests of honor were Al “Carnival Time” Johnson and Mike Mills of R.E.M.
There’s a lot of concern on the long-term impact on our culture from the Katrina debacle — the loss of the next generation of musicians that might not be nurtured in NOLA. This is consistent with the FOMC mission of creating economic and policy conditions that will allow musical culture to thrive.
It was a very relaxed affair, with informal but nice food and drink and easy mixing with the headlining guests. After a while Mike mounted the little bandstand and played a few songs supported by local musicians, including a lovely one about baseball — I believe it’s the one he composed for the Roberto Clemente tribute titled Gift of the Fathers. He finished with a stirring Don’t go back to Rockville, in tribute to our proximity to the suburban Maryland town. Then Mike stepped down to the edge of the bandstand to play backup when Al “Carnival Time” Johnson took the stage. Read more »
On November 29th
covering Business, Leadership, Music Ensembles, Performance Psychology
Here’s a blog post about business startups that has a lot to offer for people in performing groups. Go read it.
On September 28th
covering Business, Culture, Leadership, Music, Music Ensembles
I’m at the Dewey Beach Music Festival in Dewey Beach, Delaware. I’ll be presenting tomorrow to musicians attending the conference.
It’s a nice conference, well worth attending. I like these regional music conferences. Earlier this year I was a panelist at the Hyperactive Music Festival in Albuquerque.
They are different in some important respects from psychoanalytic conferences. The dress code is a bit more casual, for one. The daytime is all business and after dinner it devolves into multi-venue pub crawl. Not for the faint of heart. I was impressed with the quality of young bands and artists trying to find an audience. These people are creating our culture. Read more »
On August 20th
covering Conflict, Leadership, Music, Music Ensembles
Here is my August column at Atlas Plugged. It’s based on an essay by Robbie Banuelos about a “last straw” moment that led him to quit a band. I’ve recieved some nice notes from musicians about this one.
How Bands Die, Part 2:
QUITTING THE BAND OVER A SHIRT?
In the music world the long odds are against success and a band is way ahead if it has worked out the basic issues of who’s in charge and how its conflicts will be handled.
There is a short band memoir by guitarist Robby Banuelos that begins “I was once in a ‘punk’ band that asked me to change my shirt before a show. I remember thinking ‘what the hell…’ ”. Banuelos tells the story of joining a band through Craig’s List, and being ill-treated by the somewhat older musi- cians who hired him, and finally quitting in mid-tour when he is asked to change his Levi’s button-up shirt for a black t-shirt before a show. Read more »
On July 29th
covering Conflict, Leadership, Music, Music Ensembles
My July 2007 article for Atlas Plugged. The title says it all:
A newly formed band has the life expectancy of a mob informer in prison. If you are involved with bands, you know how hard it is to keep them together. The brutal economics and Darwinian pressures of the music life are often the cause.
However. It might actually be a good thing for some bands to die quickly so the members can learn from their mistakes and go on to form new bands. Besides, if some bands didn’t die, the entire surface of the earth would soon be covered in bands.
But some bands die before their time — the songwriting is good, the gigs and fan base are there, they may even get a sudden burst of success, and then they just implode. This is a shame, and it’s preventable. The culprit? Human nature. Here are just a few of the ways bands destroy themselves, and some things you can do to make sure your band still has a pulse.
WHEN MINOR FRICTIONS BECOME HOMICIDAL RAGE
Imagine you have a tiny pebble in your shoe giving you a slight irritation. Now imagine you’ve walked five hundred miles with that pebble irritating you… Read more »
