Jeremy Larson

On Opportunities

Elsie and I were doing some thrifting today, and had an interesting conversation.  It appears that both of us get emails regularly from people wanting to know the answer to one question- "How did you get where you are today?".  For this blog post, I will ignore the fact that it feels a little bit arrogant for me to even answer the question, and I will answer it.  I'll try to keep it simple.

1.  I don't believe in getting your "One Big Break".  You have to put yourself into positions where you can get one of the ten thousand "Little Breaks" that you need to move forward.

2.  I don't care what you say, most everything is a "Little Break".  No single opportunity has ever panned out to be much more than a small stepping stone in my career- including TV and film placements.

3.  I've done TONS and tons of free work for people to build up my resume.  I spent years of my life working for free, and now I am getting paid.

4.  I have friends that are more famous than me, and I'm not talking about people I made friends with to get an opportunity.  I made real genuine friendships with people that I respected.

5.  I developed a skill that not a whole lot of people can do- I write, record, and perform string arrangements by myself.  This has taken me years of my life, and I will continue working on this for the rest of my life.

That's it.  It's near impossible for anyone to say they have become "the best" in their field, but it's a reasonable goal to be the "hardest working" in your field.  

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Letters To My Younger Self- Fame

Dear 18 Year Old Mr. Larson,

     I might as well remind you of something you already know deep down.  You don't want to be famous.  Yes, you may think you do, but you don't.  Here are a few reasons why:

1.  You like your privacy WAY too much.

2.  More than likely, you'd have a manager, publicist, and a whole team of people telling you what to do and when.  You really don't like having other people dictate your schedule.

3.  You haven't listened to the radio in.... Well, you've never listened to the radio.  Why do you want to be on it?

4.  You hate small meaningless conversations on the street.

5.  You dislike getting your picture taken.

Let's face it, it doesn't really work to have it both ways.  You want your music to reach everyone, but you'd prefer that they don't know who you are?!  You will realize later on that one of your favorite things in life is working with people that are more famous than you.  It gives you a chance to step out into the spotlight for a moment, wave hello, and then step into the background where you are comfortable.

Sincerely,

Your nearly 30 year old self.

Thank You!

I will never again go to a music blog before consulting with all of you first.  Great recommendations!!  I was able to add another hour and a half of music from your comments.  I'm trying to build a playlist that is about 7 hours long, so whoever is working in the store only has to hear each song once a day.  (Spoken like a true musician...) So, thanks again!

I know I've been talking a lot about all the different things I'm trying to do this fall. Some of them are working out, some may not work out.  But it looks like I have finished making instrumental versions of "They Reappear" and "Salvation Club" - to be released in November.  Why instrumental versions?  I get a lot of emails from people wanting to hear or potentially use instrumental versions of songs for their video's or websites.  This will make it easier for everyone to simply download the tracks they want to audition, rather than emailing me to make one specifically for their project.  My new website will include a price sheet for this type of thing.  Oh, I guess this would be an ideal time to mention- I'm building a new website!  It will have, among many other things, all of my albums streaming, and both live DVD's streaming as well.  You will love it.  I'll talk more about this later.  I suppose that's all for now.  Thanks for reading!

Jeremy

Stupefy

I'm paraphrasing here, but I heard a quote from Trent Reznor that went something like this, "It took them two generations to convince us that music wasn't worth paying for." -something like that.  Now, you could take that in the context of illegal downloading, or this way:

 

Before you read on, I must admit, that I have NOT researched what I'm about to say, so I reserve the right to change my mind later.

First of all, as a consumer, I think it's awesome.  I may even sign up for Spotify.  (But I doubt it)

As a musician, I'm pretty astounded.  Everyone views music as this weird exemption to the rules.  If you were a coffee shop owner, and someone setup a coffee stand right in front of your business, and gave away all the drinks on your menu for free, you would take issue with that.  I guess people view music differently because we have been convinced that music should be free.

When I watch the video above, it's almost heartbreaking, but for a different reason than you may think.  I don't have any hopes of ever making a good living off of selling music.  I gave that up last year.  I'm deeply bothered with the fact that there is currently no remunerable value attached to music.  A lot of the bands you listen to took out a small fortune (sometimes the equivalent of opening a small coffee shop) to make that album.  They labored over it, and loved it.  It is now expected that their masterpiece should be yours at no cost.  A new system needs to be in place.  Elsie had this idea:

Much like the ad revenue program that youtube set up last year, bands with high traffic on their page/songs for a site like Spotify, would share in the ad revenue.  Since people visit the site- not because they love the site itself, but because of the bands that are exploited- the bands should get a share of the ad revenue.  (I'm assuming since Spotify is free, that is how they make their money).

I've heard from many of you on this subject, and you all seem like you really love music.  I would love to see a change here.  Much in the same way that there was a "Fair Trade" movement for coffee, I'd love to see one for music.  I would support a site that was kind to it's artists.  I think a lot of people would even pay an extra nickel per song if they knew that the band was being taken care of.  I know, it's hard to beat free, but "free" over time usually ends up meaning "without value".

...........................................................

I did a little research after typing this up, and it appears that Spotify is attempting to pay the bands with ad sharing.  HOWEVER, it's a pathetic sum.  You can read all about it here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/aug/17/major-labels-spotify

Make sure to scroll down to the part about Magnus Uggla, it's key.

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy

Thrift Finds

I don't really feel stressed about our wedding, even though I probably should by now.  But oddly enough, I had two dreams last night about our wedding.  In the first one, we didn't have time to rehearse, and I didn't know where to stand on the stage.  No big deal.  In the second one, we were using a discman to play all of the wedding music and the batteries started dying while everyone walked in.  So I started trying to fashion an instrument out of the power chord for the discman (then why did we need batteries?!?) and my phone charger.  I was trying to make music out of the buzzing and humming sounds they created when they were fused together.  Very strange.

Elsie and I started thrifting again yesterday.  I found a few things, my favorite being the sweater.

Thanks for all of the helpful tips on lighting websites!  I've been checking out a few of them and have already learned quite a bit.  I really appreciate your help!

Thanks for reading.

Jeremy