STOP WHINING, EMO JERKS!

I am so sick of reading about successful musicians who bitch about the stupidest things. You’re successful, making at least as much money as you would be working at your previous wage slave job, and you’re being paid to do what you do best and what you love to do, so shut the fuck up.

Every time absent mindedly pick up a mainstream music magazine I read some disgusting crap about some emo-soft-rock-generic-top-40 kid who made a record in his basement and is now on a major tour across America. Said kid bitches about how his poor introverted self has to perform in front of hundreds of people every night and how it’s SO HARD to do and it’s oh so torturous. Or I read about the major label artist that has had major label funding since 1989 and is thinking of switching to releasing only 8 to 10 song EPs because “recording 16 songs when you only have 6 months to record an album is way too stressful.”

Hearing that kind of shit makes me want to vomit blood into a jukebox. 6 MONTHS TO RECORD AN ALBUM? I’m lucky if I can afford a WEEK to record 16 songs. I’ve never actually been able to afford a solid 7 days to record. The last time my band recorded a CD, we had a luxurious four days in the studio to record, mix, and master our CD. The actual recording of the songs is done in about 2 ½ days, with the rest of the time going to mixing and mastering. Most musicians can’t afford the luxury of spending 6 months in the studio, unless it’s a home studio and you’re recording yourself, which is truly stressful. It is way more frustrating than just playing in a studio setting, or even performing because you’re doing two or three jobs when you should be just focusing on playing well.

Performing live, you neurotic emo introverted fuckers, is a PRIVILEGE. It’s an honor to be able to get up in front of a crowd and perform for people that appreciate your music and pay high ticket prices just to see YOU, so shut up and stop your fucking whining about how hard and torturous it is for your shy major label funded flat saggy pantsed ass to play in front of people. If you didn’t want this life then you shouldn’t have asked your mom and dad to pay for that talent agent to solicit your alt/indie babybarf compositions to every major label indie imprint on the planet.

My dad, in his misguided but loving way of trying to be encouraging of my musical (non-profitable) career, shows his support by buying me a subscription to Rolling Stone every year, which is where I’m reading all this pathetic bullshit. Rolling Stone has really interesting news stories usually, but the music news is purely payola-oriented and has pretty much nothing to do with how musicians really live or work in reality. What they write is almost pure fantasy and hype, which they are paid to do either directly or indirectly by the corporations that fund whatever musician that happens to be “popular” that month. They repeat stories constantly and rarely do I relate to anything that they depict as the life of a musician. The disgusting things that they quote mainstream musicians as saying made me so sick and angry that I actually for the first time in my life went and bought a year’s subscription to Maximumrocknroll magazine, which covers mostly underground punk and Actual Real Life experiences of musicians, writers, and photographers. I usually just pick MRR up when I see it at record stores or shows when I see it, but lately I have really needed a constant dose of reality to counter the bullshit that RS spews out constantly. I’ve actually stopped reading it because frankly, MRR has things I relate to a lot more. I take it to work and leave it in the break room for my co-workers to enjoy, because really that’s who the mainstream is for, working class heroes who will most likely never taste the sweetness of playing rocknroll, in front of people or otherwise.

There’s a time and a place for musical fantasy bullshit. That place just isn’t in my brain.