One of things about putting video clips onto sites such as YouTube is that you get feedback from the viewers. 99.9% of that feedback has been favourable and I enjoy it greatly. However, there’s two types of comment that I really can’t stand: the first are those who want to know the exact setup you are using including all your settings (like I am going to tell you – do you think I am stoopid or sumfink?) and those who ask: “How much did that all cost?”
That kind of bugs me because it infers that I acted like some John Paul Getty type character and spent huge amounts of money at the flourish of a pen on a cheque book in one go. Yes, I’ve spent quite a bit of cash on my gear over the years, but it has literally take me years to get the setup I want. I am not a millionaire, in fact I am the opposite. Whenever an instrument or piece of gear catches my fancy, I have to decide what other gear I need to sell in order to finance my expenditure – or at least partly finance it. It has been a long, gradual process.
Even when I was earning more money than sense, I never went crazy with my spare cash on gear. It was more about buying equipment that I knew I would use. I also have a rule – if you don’t use it, lose it. So anything that I’ve bought doesn’t get used, gets sold on pretty quickly to recoup any cash. It is a very sound strategy. <--- Oooh look, an unintentional pun. Also, why is the cost of equipment so important to people? I don't get it. Nowadays, you can buy FX pedals and what-not for a fraction of the price you would pay when I first started recording music. Now you can buy a perfectly decent multi-fx unit for £60, which fifteen years ago would have cost you £399. The same goes for recording gear. I remember how much my first 4-track cost me back in 1992 and it still brings water to my eyes. And of course, gear does not equal talent. If you are any good, you don't need much gear to prove it. I have to surround myself with racks of equipment with forever blinking LED lights in order to cover up my musical ineptitude. You see the problem is that there are people like me who actually buy equipment and do things with it and then there are those who think about buying the gear, talk about recording music and do nothing other than practice how to do runs like their favourite guitarist and nothing else. Ack - I hate guitarists! :-) Mind you, writers are the same and it reminds me of the joke about two writers talking at a party: Writer 1: So got anything on the boil? Writer 2: Yes, a story about a dystopian future where man is controlled by a hive mentality. You? Writer 1: Interesting. Mine is about the trade in illegal diamonds. Writer 2: So how much have you written? Wrtier 1: Nothing... Writer 2: Me neither... You'll only get that if you've ever talked to a writer... I found a very interesting blog by Wreckless Eric who wrote an entry that kind of echoed how I am feeling about the Internet at the moment:
The Golden Age Of The Internet
I sometimes wonder if anyone still reads this stuff. In the late nineties, the golden age of the internet, I was amazed to find that people did – I was amused by the outrage and offence I could perpetrate just by tapping the keys in a corner of my kitchen. I wrote, quite unselfconsciously, about the everyday stuff that was going on in my life, and about anything special that happened, like a gig or a recording session or something. I slowly became aware that I had an audience, and perhaps there was a point where I started to play to that, and lost a certain naive silliness. But that was back in the days when the internet was special – weird and magical, back in the days before every coal merchant, plumbing supply company and aspiring pop group had its own website.
Now I think it’s back to square one. I can think of possibly five people who take the time to read any of this. The internet is full of words and pictures, and interesting tracks and bad demos, and cocks going into arses, books and taps and kitchen fittings and directions from here to Timbuktu. Why, I even looked at that google map thing and zoomed in on the back garden of my house. I wasn’t in the garden myself but I swear you could see evidence that I lived there at the time the photo was taken – my neighbour once said my back garden looked like Beirut. The back garden in the photo looked like Beirut. Or possibly not – I’ve no idea what Beirut looks like, I’m just taking my old neighbours word for it. But anyway, the zoomed-in garden looked just like it had when he said it.
After that startlingly mundane use of this utterly cosmic technology I went on another nosy-parker-plays-at-big-brother site and found out exactly how much I paid for the house – not that I actually bought the house myself, the mortgage company did that, and made me acutely aware of it round about the 22nd of each month. I don’t know how I managed – but if you’ve been using your time and browser to their best advantage I expect you know that already.
