Weightless music vindicated?
Jan. 6th, 2010 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vostoklakeI am increasingly coming to terms with Vostok Lake's defiantly underground/no-commercial-potential status. In short, this is because the music industry is collapsing all around and the last thing any sane person wants to do is to win a free ticket on the Titanic (that Swedish guy who Leo diCaprio beat at cards in the James Cameron movie must have outdrunk the rest of Belfast for two solid weeks).
But to give a case history: I have recently fallen in love with Repo! The Genetic Opera. Some call this the Rocky Horror of the 21st century, and while certainly that level of kudos is extremely premature, it is certainly playing in a similar ballpark of cool. (Other people hate it with a passion, some for no better reason than Paris Hilton's in it. Considering that she plays the spoilt, vain, drug-addicted daughter of a very rich man, I can see how she got the part, and how she plays it with surprising competence.)
But anyway! Repo! existed in various forms in live-on-stage format for going on 10 years before they made a demo film and got picked up by a major motion picture studio.
Pros: a film got made, with serious-business talented stars (I was sold on the description "gothic rock opera with Giles from Buffy and Christine from Phantom of the Opera"), DVDs distributed even to my backwater part of the world. The authors found their audience on a global scale.
Cons: since the film is defiantly niche-marketed, the mainstream critics hated it and weren't shy in saying so. Therefore: the film lost money. Therefore: the studio now own it until hell freezes over, or it makes another $7 million for them, one of the two. You can't even do the stage show any more because they own that too.
Tool said "I sold my fuckin' soul to make a record". Tool are worshipped worldwide. To make my record - called by trustworthy reviewers easily the best thing I've ever done - I bought a few grand full of cheap and/or second-hand equipment, made a lot of false starts while teaching myself to use it, and took seven years to come up with a complete set of songs. Hardly anyone knows it exists, and fewer care. But I have my soul. Who got the best deal?
Anyway, the tour is being booked. Keep checking that page. Or book one for me in your home town! I'll go anywhere in New Zealand, or anywhere world-wide given a travel subsidy and free lodgings.
But to give a case history: I have recently fallen in love with Repo! The Genetic Opera. Some call this the Rocky Horror of the 21st century, and while certainly that level of kudos is extremely premature, it is certainly playing in a similar ballpark of cool. (Other people hate it with a passion, some for no better reason than Paris Hilton's in it. Considering that she plays the spoilt, vain, drug-addicted daughter of a very rich man, I can see how she got the part, and how she plays it with surprising competence.)
But anyway! Repo! existed in various forms in live-on-stage format for going on 10 years before they made a demo film and got picked up by a major motion picture studio.
Pros: a film got made, with serious-business talented stars (I was sold on the description "gothic rock opera with Giles from Buffy and Christine from Phantom of the Opera"), DVDs distributed even to my backwater part of the world. The authors found their audience on a global scale.
Cons: since the film is defiantly niche-marketed, the mainstream critics hated it and weren't shy in saying so. Therefore: the film lost money. Therefore: the studio now own it until hell freezes over, or it makes another $7 million for them, one of the two. You can't even do the stage show any more because they own that too.
Tool said "I sold my fuckin' soul to make a record". Tool are worshipped worldwide. To make my record - called by trustworthy reviewers easily the best thing I've ever done - I bought a few grand full of cheap and/or second-hand equipment, made a lot of false starts while teaching myself to use it, and took seven years to come up with a complete set of songs. Hardly anyone knows it exists, and fewer care. But I have my soul. Who got the best deal?
Anyway, the tour is being booked. Keep checking that page. Or book one for me in your home town! I'll go anywhere in New Zealand, or anywhere world-wide given a travel subsidy and free lodgings.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 09:05 am (UTC)Poor Anthony Head, we'll call him Giles forever. Or at least until the next time he gets a major part in a genre series, only just managed to get out of always being Chekov by becoming Bester of Psi Corps.
Anyway, haven't taken the time to congratulate you on getting Small Group Psychosis out, so congratulations! And congratulations on not being soul-less. I hear that sucks.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-01-06 09:25 am (UTC)Some of us will of course always remember Tony Head as Frank'N'Furter. :)