We are a Mixtape
The funny thing about self-promotion is that you can't do it all and you definitely can’t know it all. Especially for a band that has been sort of making it up as we go along. One of the tactics we employ to get the word out about our band is to see what other people are doing; see if it fits us, and then replicate it (altering it slightly in the process). It's an incestuous scene. What are "they" doing - how are "they" getting those opportunities? What are "we" doing - how can "we" do that differently or preferably better? Fumbling blindly and prowling social media, various music blogs and websites until you've driven yourself crazy with possibilities both missed and misunderstood.
On the other side of the coin there are also innumerable predators out there who are looking to capitalize on the misguided exuberance or youthful enthusiasm. There are as many of them as there are bands waiting to be exploited by them. I've come close to being fooled more times than I care to share. One of the calls to arms they all seem to have is “you can't make money without money".
One part is true however; you cannot be a "success" without investment. Regardless of what you define as success, investment is paramount, but it doesn't have to be money. For every paid opportunity waiting to take your money and give you next to nothing in return there are numerous free alternatives that just take dedication and hard work to realize.
Now let’s be straight for a second, TWENTY6HUNDRED is by no means a glowing success. Our sales figures are abysmal, and if we were with a traditional record label, we would have likely been dropped years ago. Luckily for us our label is comprised of altruists that are mostly experimenting with media access. They enjoy signing artists that don't fit a particular mold, or aren't quite up to snuff for the mainstream. And that is where TWENTY6HUNDRED started. A group of has-been, never-was misfits that wanted to make a record for the sake of making the record. Becoming a band and making a go of it was always a secondary consideration. Years later we are all united as willing underdogs and enjoy our ‘outsider’ status. We are writing our own rules and taking what other people do or have done and altering it to satisfy our own ends. That's what makes the idea of self-promotion so exciting. You come up with ideas (even weird ideas) then do it; answering to nobody and seeing the results. We are experimenting constantly during the process where we've evolved from a four chord post-punk band into something more. Exactly what it is still remains up for debate, but we're changing and growing while our efforts have become more refined all while under scrutiny of the public eye. There are numerous examples of our growth on the internet, and while we thought about trying to cultivate a more refined image and eradicate some of our more pedestrian attempts at exposure, we feel that it's all us and it all needs to exist. We are an open book to the people that are interested. You can trace us back to our beginning in 2006 with blog posts, photographs and YouTube videos, and have we ever made mistakes along the road. One of my personal biggest mistakes was when I quit the band a few years back. Tired of singing and playing the same songs (as we'd been in a rut for a while lacking a musical identity) it finally wore on me enough that I abandoned my band mates. During that phase I struggled with my musical identity. I recorded a couple of independent albums before eventually finding my way back ‘home’. The problem I perceived I had was with the band and my lack of enthusiasm, however what was truly going on was that I had lost confidence in myself; lost faith in my ability to make worthwhile music. I also was trying too hard to brand my efforts into a specific genre and becoming a caricature of what I thought a rock and roll musician should be. It took a long time for me to see the truth of this and took even longer to figure out what to do about it. What I did was radical to me as I decided to embrace my own schizophrenic musical urges and use them all under one banner. Instead of fighting against it I embraced the fact that one minute I want to play a face melting rock tune and the next I want to sing a soulful acoustic ditty. All of which are parts of my personality that cannot be contained into a simple form. I cannot be boxed or packaged as one thing and be satisfied. This was a hard lesson and it took a couple of years to realize. The influences within the band are as varied as the music we create. At one point at a gig, a colleague came up to me and said the following: "I used to hate you guys. I thought your music was stupid, but then it hit me. You guys are like a hard rock Ween". At the time I think I was quite offended, but eventually it actually sunk in and I accepted the evaluation. We are a mix-tape of a band and that is the philosophy we used when we created our album Electric for All.
Now I've listened to hundreds of hours of web radio over past many months to hear what the "competition" is up to. Let me tell you there are some absolutely amazing musicians out there with some amazing songs, but the one thing that seems to be missing is variety. There is a lot of derivative music out there performed by superlative musicians and I have to assume that they fell on a groove with a couple of songs and simply settled on a template. When I go and listen to their full albums (and I do that a lot) I find I am listening to variations of a single theme. Some music doesn’t seem like inspired creations by collectives of inspired musicians, but a collection of "sounds-like" rinse repeat. For all the derision we've received for having a confusing record that has numerous vibes and styles, it makes me even more proud of what we've done. When played on these online shows I frequent, I am finding more and more that there are very few unicorns out there and lots of repetition. It's the repetition that wore me out a few years back and almost had me quitting music. I couldn't just do it to try to be successful, the material needed to be different and it had to be meaningful if only to me. I needed to express the sum total of my interests and influences and continue to grow and evolve.
Although I regularly get a bit jealous by others’ successes, like the Morrissey lyric "We hate it when our friends become successful" I also try to remember that I cannot measure myself with another person’s yard stick. It only ends in disillusionment and dejection when you can't measure up.
Back to self-promotion; we will make mistakes and we will miss opportunities, but we will not pay the sharks who feed on inexperienced artists like ourselves. We'd rather fuck up and fail on our own then pick ourselves up and soldier on. We must be authentically ourselves: Human in our approach to music creation and promotion. We prefer people to love us because of our passion energy and honesty.
It’s time for a conclusion to this blog. Here goes… We love each and every one of you that buys, downloads, borrows or pirates (yes pirates!) our music to spend any time listening to it. Even the people that hate it, I still love you because you at least listened. I might in fact love you more since an act of hate requires a level of passion that supersedes the vanilla of vague acceptance. That's when you know you're starting to catch on, when people start to publicly express dislike. I cannot wait to get to that point! I look forward to the negative tweets, posts and messages and I can't wait for people to say we suck. A strange concept, but for every person that has the balls to publicly declare that something is shit there are dozens of other people who love it. We want to hear opinions from all perspectives both good and bad alike. What we cannot abide is indifference. Apathy kills all over time and on that note, if you read this blog or wrote a comment whether good or bad just to let us know you're out there, every single one of you counts to us even if you can't stand our music.
Cheers,
Michael Atkinson
Twitter: @nefrektomy