Not having the knack but being lucky anyway.

I am a pretty lucky guy. I mean that in a lot of ways but today I'm going to focus on one particular way in which I'm lucky. Having played in bands for just over 15 years, most of which ranged from shoddy to awful I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of excellent people. Most lucky of all though is that some of these people have gone on to promote and put on punk shows as a side part of their everyday lives. As well as being an awesome thing to do in general it's also allowed me to carry on gigging, not only that, but carry on gigging with some really great bands at shows where the atmosphere is also excellent. The reason this is so lucky for me is that without these friends I would have absolutely zilch in the way of upcoming shows at the moment!!

I don't know what it is about trying to contact promoters and venue owners by myself that I seem to be doing so wrong but I really suck at the whole thing. I know I said I would rather only play the odd shows here and there rather than get sucked into the Monto Culture way of things but fuck I'm not telling the promoters that! For some reason eliciting any kind of response from people that do this sort of thing for a living is just beyond my powers, and the only people willing to acknowledge I exist outside of my circle of friends are the people that are coming at me with a contract and a demand for at least 20-30 fans who will state that they came to see me!

I wonder if I'm too polite in emails, maybe the problem is that I'm sending emails? has the counter-culture not quite caught up to this method of communication yet or does it spurn it as sending an email is not punk enough? How many times is too many when sending them another message? Will I incur the wrath of the punk police if I send more than three requests for a single response? Maybe the problem comes back to being in too niche of a musical genre for promoters to be able to fit me in to most gigs?

I love my friends for allowing me to play at shows that have numerous other acts that could take that slot. The thing is though I don't want to become a burden on them, asking over and over for them to have to make extra effort on my behalf so I can play more shows. There has to be a knack to this whole thing and unfortunately I'm falling short of the mark. I think I should talk to the guys in the Demon Smiles crew since they're practically drowning in shows these days and are clearly doing it right.

I am eternally grateful to those friends of mine that put me on at shows, because without you I literally wouldn't have a musical career.

Never thought I'd see the day. An over-saturation story...

Every now and again I'll blog about more than just how the band is doing and this is going to be one of those times. I was pretty shocked at my own reaction to something this morning and it really got me thinking. So here are those thoughts:

This video is one I took of Mike Herrera on the 27th April 2012. For anyone who doesn't know he is one of my all time heroes, and this was the first time I'd seen or heard him do anything solo acoustic before. I was blown away!! Not only was this hero doing something I had just started to do myself but he had this awesome re-working of one of my favourite MXPX tunes (we're talking top three here!!). I was so impressed that I don't think I had another topic of conversation for months after.

So excited as I was I put the video on my Facebook and set about seeing if there was any other videos of him playing acoustic stuff on YouTube. and goddamn if I wasn't dissapointed! There was a series of songs he'd done for Dying Scene and Secret Weapon was amongst them. Brilliant. This was from sessions he'd done a month before in March 2012. Later in the year he did some work with Guitar Centre (quite a few artists seem to have including another hero Tim Armstrong) and Secret Weapon appeared there too. Sweet. Another video of my idol playing one of his greatest tracks. Also there was another video for Doing Time, another great MXPX track that comes across very well acoustically. There are also other videos on YouTube including the cardinal sessions all of which are great. Then at the beginning of this year in
Feb Mike did a StageIT show, for those not tech savvy it's a way artists can do live shows and charge a small fee to see an acoustic show streaming over the web, like Skype specifically for musicians, I bought a ticket to
watch the show, but due to babies and sleep deprivation I missed it. Bugger!! what an opportuinty, but luckily for me Mike put it on his Bandcamp for download, I now own this acoustic album and it's great. Secret Weapon is the last track on there.

Then Mike also put on an old acoustic session album he had recorded way back in 2011 that had gone out of print. I thought i's have a listen, it's pretty good, a little tumbledown heavy for my liking but a good album all the same. Probably may as well mention Secret Weapon is on there.

So today I was nicely notified that Mike has released another StageIT album, which again I paid to see and again I missed (show times at 00:00 because of the time difference). I went onto his bandcamp and listened to a bit of a few tracks and then just didn't bother with it anymore. An example of why is that once again Secret Weapon was there on the tracklist.

So let's round up that timeline: - 

• 6/04/2011 - Live from the basement released on CD
• 12/03/2012 - Dying Scene sessions recorded
• 27/04/2012 - Mike plays a solo show at Banquet Records
• 11/08/2012 - Guitar Centre tracks recorded
• 4/02/2013 - StageIt show, recorded and released on Bandcamp
• date unknown - Live from the Basement released as digital album on Bandcamp
• 27/06/2013 - Mike Herrera Live released on Bandcamp

That's a lot of times that Secret Weapon has become available as an acoustic version. It makes me feel like

I'm being force fed something I used to enjoy but now I'm kind of fed up with. Self marketing over the internet has become a wonderful tool for artists, hell it's only way I get any exposure, but is Mike an example of someone who's gone too far? Should I be more grateful that I let to listen to Mike play stuff so often or was it better when I had to work to find gems like an official acoustic version of a song. When I was originally into MXPX 15 years ago I had to trawl every record store in London to find albums like Teenage Politics and Slowly Going the Way of the Buffalo. But now I can find whatever multiple times and I don't even need to do any effort to find it.

Am I just a fossil now reminiscing about trudging 30 miles in the snow for one Bad Religion album, and how it was better for me, or is there really an issue of over-saturation by artists we now have too much access to?