Link: Don’t give up the day job | Rock | Guardian Unlimited Music.
Nice article about being in a band (the Broken Family Band) and not expecting it to provide your living. And they’re not doing too badly either.
4 thoughts on “Don’t give up the day job”
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Yes I read that article.
I think there is a lot to be said for artists not to separating themselves from the rest of society. Personally in my ideal world we would all do part time work – bit of that and a bit of the other but then I do have one of the dullest jobs. Too much dedication to one thing is stagnating. In an artist I guess there is also the problem of losing touch with the normal flow of people’s lives.
Interesting article. As for me I’d settle for a large and unearned income but it doesn’t seem to be coming my way.
Why the new look to the website? What has happened to the gentle tasteful violet mist?
You mean why the harsh tasteless red and black, Rosie?
Well I like to try out different approaches every year or two and this redesign’s been well overdue. I t started off as a restructuring as some of the sections didn’t make sense any more, and I wanted to use blog techniques to make additions quicker. I also wanted to use Lynsey’s cartoon of me. The first design of this site, way back in 1996-ish, was red, black and grey and I found I liked that.
I think that with downloading the days of the big glittering prizes through music royalties are probably gone. And becoming rich through music is historically exceptional. Musicians and song-writers in the pre-recording days had to have patrons. (It’s a huge subject this, how musicians have made livings.)
I can see how gigging is not such a problem to combine with a job but what is a problem for me is time for writing. Some people can dash a song down in ten minutes, for others it takes weeks and a lot of concentration and it’s hard to combine with a day job and a domestic and social life.