Dan, if you were googling your name and found this, we need to talk dude. Email me.

So this guy Dan Kennedy wrote a book called “Rock On: An Office Power Ballad”. The book takes place around 2002, when Dan got a job working for a major record label. One that I work with/for also. It’s hilarious and basically encapsulates most of my thinking during the short downhill ride I’ve had here.

As a newbie in this world, you can’t help but think that the music business is all strippers and blow. You picture the days when guys in suits shot the shit with Jimmy Page over whiskey and water on a Wednesday afternoon. You picture a floor full of spirited people, speaking their minds about the one topic they all share a love for: music. You picture all of this, for whatever reason, maybe you heard stories, saw a movie, or read a book that painted that picture for you.

The reality is, well…a lot different. More hilarious, stupider, and really ridiculous, and silly, and a whole shitload of other adjectives to describe absurdity.

The reality is that the music business is a slow moving, slow thinking, foolish animal run by egotistical has-beens and staffed by extremely intelligent young people who hold a valuable connection to the culture of music. A connection whose value goes unrecognized. The young are underpaid, the old are fattened and out of touch.

And that says nothing about the current state of things. Labels are crumbling, especially the majors. They didn’t just miss “the” boat, they missed the boat, the dingy, the liferaft, and the friendly Tortoise who floated by and offered to lend a hand. The misfires on the end of the major music business did exactly what misfires do – either nothing happens, or they blow up in your face, removing noses to spite the rest of the business. These missteps (more “mis” prefixes please) are also hilariously misguided.

That’s what Dan wrote most about, the ridiculous and absurd misadventures of record label executives. His position in the book is of a guy right at the verge of it all coming down, right before the label went public, right before the first major bloodbath of firings and lay-offs. He got canned, like so many others, around 2004 and the point of his book is that he came and went at the right times, when the spirit was flickering and the glow was fading. Bubbles bursting, etc…I could go on, but won’t.

Well Dan, I’m still here man, and somehow, somehow, it got even worse. I too entered this business all idealistic about it, only to realize that 1) its just a damn office job and 2) no one really knows what the hell they are doing here 3) to constantly compromise your own ideas/opinions is almost necessary to survive here.

Case in point: I was out last night at a label event. These happen often but not as often as you’d think anymore. Budget shit. Anyway, one of our labels is rolling out a boy band. That’s right, a boy band. Straight up Nsyncing ship here, New Kids on the Crack Rock. The formula for this band is basic and unchanged.

So we all went out last night to see this spectacle, to check out the new boy band put together by an A&R who has an unbelievable amount of credibility in the boy band field, because, well, he was in one. A big one. And this A&R guy is basically the coolest fucking guy you could ever meet.

I’m sitting there, and I realize (as Dan Kennedy often did) that I was expected to quiet my inner snarky guy, clam up the hipster bullshit, and kick the robots from MST3000 out of the theater. My real opinions of this music could not show through among 40 of my co-workers. I was expected to blandly nod my head and say things like “I could see how the kids could really get into this.”

I know half of the other people in the room also thought it was ridiculous, but being that A&R guy who set this up is cool as fuck, and he has experience. He has experience loving and being a part of the kind of music that I only have experience hating and talking shit about. He was better suited for the job, so I rode for his cause.

As they dance and jumped and pointed and lip-synced, I realized that that’s the weird thing about the music business, you end up riding for causes that you normally wouldn’t even lower the kickstand for. Causes and sounds and ideas that are so ridiculous, but “doing ridiculous shit” is basically in your job description if you work at a major. The difference is either you buy into it (Dan’s VP of marketing who wore sunglasses in conferences) or knuckle up, do your work so you can eventually start your own shit (me, most other assistants).

The fact is, this boy band will probably be successful, at LEAST with the Miley Cyrus/Jonah Brothers set, and they’re the only damn people who buy records anymore anyway. So it was a good move and I’m not going to knock my A&R friend for having that foresight. I am just going to be honest about how I feel about it, like after the show, when I met their manager.

“What did you think of the show?”
“Honestly, It wasn’t my type of music. I didn’t like it, but my opinion doesn’t really matter because it’s not FOR me, there’s people out there that would love this shit”
“Yeah that’s what we’re going for”
“Oh, you work with them?”
“I’m their manager.”
“Oh nice, yeah man. They do everything right to be a boy band, its solid, digestible pop music and that’s what it should be.”

Bland as that sounds, that’s probably the most direct exchange that guy had all night, I’m sure there were so many others in there who would just tell him how “fucking awesome” their performance was, or something. He got it too, he understood what he was selling and had no delusions about his role.

Anyway, I hadn’t had one of those moments in this business in a long time. Deep in the trenches of the farthest reaches of weirdness I realized that Dan Kennedy was right in his book, and that there is a thin line between compromising your ideals and staying true to the business you believe in.

You hear that music business?? Even after all the bullshit you’ve thrown at me, I still vaguely defended one of your boy bands. You hear that goddamn you? You still have me in your ranks, and faithfully so. Part of the few, the proud, the soon to be unemployed. So quit fucking with us and give us our just desserts, or else we will turn our backs and walk the fuck out, taking every bit of swag and all the free Cd’s we can carry.

Ah, who are we kidding, we’re not going anywhere until you fire us. We don’t have any skills…what are we going to do? Learn how to arc weld?

Love,
Guy Hands’ Left Hand

Check out The Onion AV Club’s interview with Dan Kennedy here. Good stuff.

Since I can’t watch this at work, I’m storing it here until I can get to a safe computer. This HAS to be amazing.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnL1xE1WFe0&hl=en]

Wow…ok I’m back.

I guess I never left much warning about where I went. I just spent the past 6 days in Phoenix with my family, I think.

How was it? Ask me in three weeks and I still couldn’t tell you. I’ll do my best here, but I will warn you, this involves a lot of rambling, complaining, and meandering.

Prior to my trip I was pasty, thin, worn out and ready to jump from this stupid barge in New York. I was in a deep rut with a lot on my mind. Those of you who know me know exactly what was on my mind. I was laid low, and only emerged for some classic gladhanding and light partying. I didn’t have the stones to pull off much else, I guess.

My self confidence was straight in the shitter. I found myself questioning my every action, racked with regret and self-loathing in most every situation.

I would say I was in need of a vacation. Phoenix was going to be it man. I was going to get away from all of my problems, get some sun, drink some beers, and hang out with my family. I can’t say I was too “pie in the sky” about my trip, but maybe I set myself up for disappointment. Mainly in the “get away from all of my problems” part of that list.

Matthew Dear – Deserter
This song helps explain….

When you are on vacation, they say you “don’t have a care in the world”…I now wonder if “the world” includes the goings on inside your own mind. I didn’t have a care in the world outside of my head, but inside, damn. I had no aggressors, yet I was under attack…my ex-girlfriend wasn’t browbeating me into shame, remorse and sadness, my job wasn’t stressing me out, my family wasn’t doing anything but smiling, and the sun wasn’t doing anything but shining. Yet, floating for hours in the pool, behind the darkest sunglasses ever, I was confronting horrors. And I had all the time in the world to do so.

A lot of meditation types say that in order to rid yourself of negative emotions you must enter them completely, feel them to their fullest extent, and then realize that they are just emotions passing through you, that they don’t define you. This might be true, or it might just be an ample justification for the madness I was putting myself through that entire trip. That thing I wrote about being able to put yourself in a euphoric state with nothing but the power of your own mind goes both ways. With nothing but your own thoughts, you can take yourself to hell and back no matter how blue the sky is.

I had no distractions. Maybe that was the problem an all fronts. Distractions, distractions…damn. I ditched my blackberry, mostly ignored my phone, and did as much as I could to cut myself off from this blog, my job, and most of my friends. On one hand, distractions have brought me nothing but trouble…New York City infects a lack of focus into everyone who sets foot into it. There is simply too much to do here, and to give in to all of it becomes terminal. My relationship, now ended, may have died due to this affliction. Or maybe, again, I was justifying.

Regardless, without distractions I was able to sort through most of the terrible things I have done in the past year. You ever have one of those moments right before you fall asleep where you cycle through the events of your day until you get to the particularly embarrassing or stupid ones? Maybe after a night of drinking? Like, “aw man, yeah I probably shouldn’t have told that girl she smelled like a stripper”? Or something like that…well it was like that, times about a million.

Why was I focused on these things? Why wasn’t I stopping to smell the roses? The answer is simple. I was depressed. Thoroughly. What caused the depression? Breakup. Pure and simple, this was heartbreak, coupled with aftershocks of self doubt, loathing, and wounded pride.

So everything I did in Phoenix was colored with the same low grade depression as my little nature walks inside my own head. I saw Ogre, and that was amazing. He and his girl are f-ing perfect for each other, whether or not they know it, and my favorite part of the trip was my first night and subsequent morning with them. We caught up in the sun, drank beer out of can koozies with humorous phrases on them, laughed and ate brats, only to fall asleep early and get up even earlier.

The morning after, they went to work, while my brother and I drank coffee and hung out with their puppy. I also got the chance to FINALLY see the Playboy with ‘6′ from Battlestar in it (Thanks Ogre, I will dedicate the first one to you). Yes I know I’m a dork, but you need to stop sleeping on that show. The new season starts this Friday and its going to be a burner (burner? really?).

Anyway, where was I going with this? Oh yes, suddenly I was on vacation and no distraction was enough to blind me from the glaring weight in my chest. What’s the deal with that? After that first day, when not even a naked Cylon could beat down my depression, I knew I was in for a weird trip.

My family showed up that morning, and while it was great to see them, it was funny how quickly the old family stresses rear their ugly head. It didn’t take long for my Mom and Sister to give my Dad shit, for me to start getting aggravated at my Dad just at their suggestion and then deciding I was wrong, for my brother and I to start beating up my sister, for my brother to start beating me up…it was classic and we fell into our roles instantly. We were the family in the rental car, taking a family trip, gritting our teeth and calling it “bonding”.

It was great because it was easy, and easy wasn’t distracting enough. Easy is great when it comes to family, but it wasn’t enough to keep the self-loathing at bay…

So I spent more time face to face with my demons, the more time I spent I realized I needed to escape. I was the only one causing this hell, no one else was doing it to me. My brother always says I have an “overgrown conscience” and that I beat myself up too much for when things go wrong. He’s right, I was whooping my own ass up one wall down the other. I needed to get out of this fight, call it off, throw in the towel and start finding my teeth in the crowd.

But I couldn’t. I was in some kind of slow-diving auto pilot. Like Marvin from the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the little robot who was programmed to be depressed all of the time. I couldn’t help it…

Was this kind of thing necessary? Does a person need to go through this kind of shit to make some kind of realization about themselves? I guess so, because my depression stayed with me.

I carried it into the club in Phoenix. Phoenix is like a miniature LA. All of the girls are unbelievably attractive in that “airbrushed centerfold” way, and all of the guys are all douchebags of the highest order with stupid haircuts, “product”, and shiny t-shirts with skulls on them. Me, my brother, Ogre, his girl, and two of her friends all went to a place where the girls dance to songs from 4 years ago on the bar. The only highlights of the night were a regrettable incident in the bathroom (who flushes an air freshener?) and my inadvertently hitting on a bride-to-be (what’s the sash for? oh you’re getting married? awesome!). Yup, that was it. Its not to say that we didn’t have a good time, but for whatever reason (the diluted rambling above maybe?) the whole scene seemed alien to me. These people were all so crazy looking and uniform and false that I found myself longing for a smelly dive bar where everyone hates themselves more than the other patrons.

Misery loves company, right? No one here was miserable.

If you are still reading to this point, damn. Thanks I guess…this kind of rambling is pretty damn obnoxious I know, but hey sometimes it needs to happen. This, like everything else is another distraction…the only difference between this and any o
ther distraction is that it comes with a bit of catharsis. I’m trying to be as honest as possible here, it makes me feel better.

On our last day I was floating in the pool on my daily stroll through the “bad part of town” behind my eyes, and I started thinking about the name of this town…’Phoenix’. Was that the idea? Were you supposed to come to Phoenix, burn up in the desert, and fly home a new person, a new being? Or maybe just all the sunburn, molting and skin-losing gave way to a new person underneath, but only in the physical sense?. Did I peel anything off me? Was I burning up to become something else? Either way I was going to call it a transformation, to give some meaning to the garbage I was feeling. I was going to label it profound and force myself to learn lessons.

Or it least I was going to write about it here…

I’m back now, I’m all tan, and I feel alright. I’m going to quit bitching and start getting my shit together. I have some great friends out here, and I will spend time with them. As far as work, my situation right now affords me a lot of opportunities so I am going to knuckle up and grab some of those opportunities, maybe change my venue a little. I can also write a little bit, so I am going to get some more gigs doing that. Why not? Its just me now. And girls? Sheesh…I mean, I can get a girl, but I don’t think having one is going to help me right now. I’ve got some personal maintenance to do.

My trip to Phoenix was not bad, by any means. It was necessary. I know that now, that when you are feeling something, it is a natural consequence of something you saw or did. The trick is to follow the strings back on the negative feelings, to find the source of them. From there you can start yanking, cutting, and re-tying as you please.

I’m glad I horrified myself in the sun. I’m glad it left me back here all distracted and scared again. That trip to Phoenix was the hardest lesson I ever had to learn…

Maybe more later, but I will spare you for now as I am not far enough away to make some profound conclusion out of all of this.. Again, thanks for reading. I will be back to the usual fare soon.