Give something back that hurts a little – Steve Martyn

In this society of risk adverse behaviour this is something which we have to embrace in order to achieve anything that moves us beyond where we currently are. Our society is full of legislation, attitudes and belief systems which move us away from anything that hurts or is even uncomfortable.

The foods that are good for us tend not to be the most tasty, certainly not the sweetest so that has led us to obesity and all the diseases that attach themselves to that condition and those which weirdly are a form of malnutrition due to us not consuming a wide enough range of foodstuffs, considering that we are in an affluent society we eat less diverse but more in a rationalised choice.

To become a great musician or an athlete you have to put in the time forsaking other things that may be sweeter in your life, like the computer game, or all the partying (if you have a life). The hours that a good musician puts in hurt and the fact that playing the guitar for three or four hours hurts your fingers and stretches the muscles to the point of cramp let alone the disappointment of not getting it right which does your brain in.

In a way it is a form of courtship with the spirit of music and creativity and should be viewed as such. There is no plan that works in courting a prospective lover you may know what you think you are doing but unless you adapt the plan to fit the person you are not going to get very far.

Making an offering or gift in courtship must be something that has value to you and them not something that you actually want to get rid of. When you give something like that it hurts a little.

In the past the great artists and players did not have anything to lose by taking a risk because life was shit anyway so it was worth the gamble. But from our perspective of comfortable, convenient lifestyles these risks are not undertaken, to our detriment. The reality is death is going to come and get you anyway so you may as well make the most of it while you are here.

A number of the young pupils that I teach come out with remarks such as ‘there will be a cure for cancer soon’ (I remember that being said when I was a young)’ In 20 to 30 years’ time we will be travelling to Mars et cetera et cetera. All this stuff is a dream to keep us going because when we get to Mars it will not be as good as we were told. it will be like it has always been, sold to people the suckers that will be populating it will be like the people that populated America and took it away from the indigenous people.

They will be indentured labour, people that are basically slaves bought and sold by land owners, that is how it was is done in the past and that’s how the future will play out but this time it will look like you have got a work contract with a big multinational company.

Think of the things that you’ve been promised in your life and they never quite work out to the utopian vision that you’re given and yet we fall for it over and over again. Why is that? If we looked at the hard realities and realised that anything that was worth having we have to work for and pay for in sweat and a bit of pain. So ladies and gentlemen pick up your guitars and play just like yesterday get down on your knees and pray, we won’t get fooled again.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days playing in a band learn the tricks of the trade.

The Germans know how to get the dust out of cushions

In the pursuit of the weird I spent some time in Berlin with a yoga group. As with all things creative I find that there is something to be learnt from other disciplines that can shine a light onto the musical world and on top of that I am looking for interesting venues to run Bluescampuk projects from in the next couple of years.

I have never been to Germany before and the possibility of going to the Kreutzburg area of the city was a great possibility as the graffiti art bohemian aspect seemed pretty cool to me.

The Germans seem very concerned with making sure that the rules are followed and that all things are undertaken seriously including following the instructions for the dynamic meditation that we found ourselves involved in. The deep rapid breathing was fine and then we came to the section where we were supposed to let it out. At that point the room was full of Germans beating the living crap out of the cushions and pillows and screaming at the soft furnishings. It all reminded me of Richard Bandler’s description of meeting Fritz Pearls for the first time. Pearls was the originator of the Gestalt therapy which Bandler described as someone beating the shit out of a harmless looking chair whilst the assailant screamed insults at the furniture as though it was his father.

I think that playing and writing music is a good release of the inner demons and is more beneficent to the furnishings of the house. I quite like the resident spirits of my cushions and chairs and I am sure they are happier that way with me serenading them to happiness than beating them into submission whilst I undergo some form of primal therapy.

Berlin outside of the Yoga Centre was fun and I enjoyed the vibe a great deal and I would certainly go back there, not so sure about the music in Germany in general as there seems to be a time warp quality to the listening from American AOR to retro reggae and punk mixed with some Kraftwork style stuff .

The euro pop style is also still quite a thing and it makes me realise how we can never again write a Euro Vision winner we just do not have the mindset for it.

The history of music and its impact on government control is something that we in the West find difficult to understand but in East Germany music was one of the main contributors to the fall of the communist regime.

Punk was one of the driving forces in youth culture that absorbed the Stasi and it trying to control the minds of the young. Enormous risks were undertaken by teenagers not just listening to the music but smuggling bands in from the West and forming their own bands and playing in secret places often churches in the East.

That relationship with music that we had in the UK in the 60s for change has lost much of its power that needs to be re found in the music that we create, but maybe without the Germanic sensibility.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk

We trade shelter for comfort. – Martin Shaw

Discomfort certainly makes you remember things; go back to some your earliest memories and they may be something like falling of your bike or having an accident which hurt. If you reflect upon those times you will remember in detail elements such as what somebody said to you, what the weather was like and what you were wearing. All this is pretty amazing because you may have only been five at the time and it doesn’t matter how old you become you still remember that event. I would say that music created with some sort of trade of discomfort has more impact the music that is not traded in that way.

The trouble with modernity and the problem with technology is they exacerbate the human trait for taking the easy and most comfortable way, it was never always like this, once being creative went with the need to suffer for your art. Now I do not say this lightly because it sounds a little tongue in cheek if not insensitive to the likes of the great artists who die young.

The above quote from Martin Shaw a great storyteller and myth rememberer is in the trading of shelter for comfort something dies in us because they lack meaning. The trading of something that causes a little pain really connects you with the work.

Maybe this is the problem we have in society that we all become a bit soft and we do not like to take a risk because it makes us feel uncomfortable. I am not suggesting we will go around whipping ourselves(or maybe we should have a whip- round) but I think that we need to be more aware in a tactile sense of the world around us without ‘skin in the game’ nothing has any real value.

Getting out of a financial fix involves pain, changes in society nearly always do, changing habits that lead to environmental damage involve us being uncomfortable with feelings like ‘why spend so much money on personal care products’when you are eating rubbish and you are overweight and no one really cares about you anyway, kind of uncomfortable.

Think of how much money you would save if you could embrace being uncomfortable about what you wear, and what someone else thinks of you. Think about how that would affect your work if you could embrace that maybe you may not need to work in order just to make money maybe just doing something you enjoy.

The problem is that we have been conditioned to look for comfort and not shelter when we get a car we are encouraged to get the one that shows status same with holidays how many of us have gone to Disney because the children have to go.

The best time for contempory music seems to be when things are difficult, the aftermath of the war which culminates in rock n roll and the blues boom and then the sixties, the rise of the heavy rock and metal in the depressed 70’s then punk, hip hop etc. Compare this to when things become more comfortable the real feeling is lost again, the music becomes complex but lifeless.

Remember a good song is a good song on just a guitar and vocal we don’t need the latest gizmo, or the London Philharmonic Orchestra .Whatever it is that you can envisage keep it simple, try to keep your life simple for instance when you teach you do not need to teach in a fully equipped recording studio. If you have one fine but it is not a prerequisite to becoming a good teacher.

So let’s get uncomfortable and go and create something amazing.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk Rock Summer school for all instruments ………

Magic has been drained out of history by the historians. Gordon White

There has been a fundamental omission in the telling of the past not just our past history but also in the way that we understand music and it is the role of magic within that story. It is difficult for us to reconnect with the fundamental belief in magic that our predecessors had and that it was infused in everything that they did and by extension music and art was used to connect with this otherworldliness. I would say that today music that is disconnected from this otherness has no inner energy this is why root styles of music frequently have to come back into the popular music arena in order to re-energise even if those musical styles are disguised as punk or grunge there is something innately visceral and otherworldly about those sorts of animal.

One thing that could be said about modern pop music is there is nothing really animal about it. It is so computerised and quantised that any essence of energy has been removed and replaced by something sterile, however if the computer becomes the servant and not the master the essence of the DJ producer can be bound into the songs, dance is a good example of this. I think the deciding point here is, were any risks taken? Producing a song by a Rihanna or a Katy Perry maybe more a case of not getting it wrong because of the big budgets involved.

We find it very difficult to be able to think in a mediaeval style because we have been told that the many of the things that they believed in are rubbish but obviously they did not think that, however if you ask yourself a question why something like ritualistic behaviour and magic systems seem to have been unchanged over a period of 2000 years then you have to ask why did they keep doing something that did not work? The logical answer to that is it did work but is only us that have rid ourselves of one of those tools from the toolbox.

I am suggesting that by looking back at styles that may influence us musically and getting to the root of what it is that drives it we can reconnect with what the music is all about and derive something from it for ourselves, if only to reanimate the music that we play. You do not have to believe only suspend your disbelief to lock into something. I would suggest Blues or Flamenco or the English folk music tradition and see what sort of weirdness you can find in there; Mojo’s, Dances of the spider, impossible tasks asked of ex-lovers etc. pull on that tread a little and see where it takes you.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk Summer school for budding rock stars.

Going for a mix and funny money

What is better 30 minute lesson for £20 or an hour lesson for £35?

Today we are entering the world of funny money where things are expressed in ways more attractive to the punter and better for you.

How many ads for insurance have you heard that state 'for only 50p a day you can have....'? If they asked for £180 for the same thing you might reject the idea straight off.

How have you positioned your teaching? If you are little Minnie's guitar teacher and it is a hobby that she does you are going to be cut out very quickly when the funds run low.

I see lots of people do this and you really need to position yourself as something special in her life that enriches it gives her skills that will be super valuable in the world that is coming. So things to look at,

Various payment levels that encourage people to pay for lessons in blocks and in advance.

Flexibility in the payments cash, bank transfer, cards etc.

Lesson flexibility; do they have to be every week? Could they be also be every two weeks or every month?

Encouragement for arrangements that you want; so make the time of lessons that you do not want more expensive.

Paying for a block of lessons being better financially for the pupil.

In all cases think yourself into the shoes of the person that you are dealing with and do things in such a way that helps them while helping you. So if they want lessons every two weeks well fine let them do that if that lesson would have been half an houra week then make it an hour a fortnight

The other angle/aspect that I like to do is trading skills, like lessons for computer maintenance and back up or help with book keeping. You can trade anything for lessons just think outside the box on this. Obviously not all lessons can be like this but several can be. I have currently have someone who teaches me yoga, someone who does computer work for me and someone who roadies and does other work around the house and garden when needed.

Let us be creative about what we do and how we trade that skill, there is more to business than money, originally there was no money and that means that people who have no money but have a skill or something that is an asset like a musical instrument that you can take in payment or any item for that matter then you are opening up the market to people that may not have the funds for lessons but have something else like a skill.

I find this a liberating way to think being far more democratising than just dealing with the currency that is imposed on us.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk music summer school in the amazing Tonbridge School in Kent UK

More animal

I’m aspiring to produce the “uncivilised” writing we called for in the Dark Mountain manifesto back in 2009. I think that's more about style and execution than subject matter. If your writing becomes too controlled, not chaotic enough, then you’ve lost one of the fundamental elements of what it means to be an animal in the world. The idea is to write like a mountain hare—or like a mountain. What would it be like to attempt to write from the animal in you, and from the land around you, rather than from the rational, well behaved, civilized person that you are trained to be? Our writing is too civilized now. It’s too rational and realist, too middle class and urban. The kind of stuff that we lay out in mainstream culture as the height of great literature is not saying anything about the state of the world. It’s not saying anything about crumbling civilizations or climate change or extinction, or the complexity of being human in the midst of all that. It’s fake. I’m trying not to be fake,- Paul Kingsnorth

What does this say about the music we are producing in this society? If anything it is far too controlled and not chaotic enough, however every now and again musical styles such as punk, grunge, and in the 50s rock ‘n’ roll appeared out of nowhere to turn the musical establishment upside down. It reintroduced the animal into the music that is most definitely needed today. Okay lots of music on the fringes have this animal characteristic but this certainly does not appear within the mainstream currently, maybe that is about to change.

Much of the animal nature comes from the landscape, a sort of ancestral viewpoint, the blues changed its home a number of times and changed its name. From the London streets songs to the Mississippi and Chicago and then back again to London each time manipulating its identity but retaining its animal nature.

The challenge for us as teachers is to keep hold of this essence, both of the music and of the person as they are learning. The challenge for us as performers is to keep the raw essence when we create so that it is retained as we edit and record or write it down.

We need to re-introduce that danger and risk into the work that we do, however doing normally a job does produce a series of restrictions which are matrix like. Neo had to conform to the morays of his job before finally being abducted by agent Smith and his cronies. Seems like a suitable metaphor to the challenges of being an artist in the modern work that its environment presents us.

However the modern work environment is going to rapidly change in the next few years so we may have our opportunity thrust upon us to be radical and animal.

Vic 

www.bluescampuk.co.uk three days of being immersed in music in this UK summer school

Sometimes jumping ship and taking risk is the way ahead

One of the questions that you will ask yourself is, ‘How long can I continue the type of work I am doing’. If you have a very busy schedule of teaching at schools generally what happens is during the term time you will be incredibly busy but when you get to the holiday periods the work drops off, which is ok if you have other things to do or you have enough money to take a long break.  However the problem can be that due to inconsistencies projects and other ideas do not get completed in the down times and therefore end up being on the backburner.

Gigging can get you in a similar dilemma that you are not earning enough by playing to develop new income streams and if you are busy you do not have the time to make something else happen.

Sometimes jumping ship and taking risk is the way ahead

This of course means that one has got to make a success of the it makes me me reflect on how I set up in the first place which was by taking risk and leaving a job and getting involved in teaching and performing. Things were a little bit easier then and I was blissfully naive which as something I have discussed in the past as being one of the important ingredients required for success.

One of the problems of working for yourself in this manner is there is not a career trajectory, there is no promotion to be had only new ideas to be acted upon of which many do not succeed. Often cited by people who are successful entrepreneurs is that for every 10 ideas that they have only three of them survive and succeed the other seven fail but the successes outweigh the failures.

So I am currently reviewing my jumping off point and hopefully relatively safe landing.

Vic

www.bluescampuk.co.uk