Nowadays, it seems to be getting easier and easier to piss off musicians in your local musicians community. No doubt some musicians have really short tempers and they go off on a lot of things even the small stuff. I’ve been a part of the musicians community for many years so I have seen their behaviors over the years of my life.

If you don’t want to piss off a musician then don’t do or say these things:

• Criticize their playing or singing: A lot of musicians around here can’t seem to take criticism that well even if the criticism is constructive. They may not respond to it so kindly. I’ve seen musicians defend themselves each time they’re criticized by somebody. I’ll never forget the old local music message board days. It’s still a problem today.
• Say you’re not into playing music for the money: This seems to upset some musicians for whatever reason. Each time I say that I don’t play music for the money at all and I just play music for the love of it… that seems to offend some. It only seems to upset musicians that likes to make money for playing music. There’s nothing wrong with having an opinion of playing music for free and playing music for the love of it. Not sure why they get upset at this one. It’s either out of jealousy or they can’t take the truth.
• Say you’re not into this to become a rock star or an established act: Many musicians are into it to become rock stars. They all want it, they just won’t publicly admit it. You want to say that you’re not into this to become big stars and just want to play for fun, you might upset some in the community. I’ve seen it happen before and even I’ve experienced this. I don’t play music for fame and popularity. All that is cool but that’s not what I do this for.
• Tell them that they have a huge ego problem: This one will pretty much do it. Tell them that they’re ego-driven, arrogant or full of themselves or whatever, they’ll become immediately defensive. If they refer to themselves as a “humble” person then they probably aren’t. If they’re getting mad then just proved that they have an ego-problem.
• Tell them that they have an unprofessional attitude: This one will do it too. If you tell them they have an unprofessional attitude, they’ll go off. Many musicians around here can have negative attitudes. There are a lot of jerks and mean people out there, trust me. Not all musicians are the same and not naming names, though.
• Tell them they aren’t a real musician: I’ve seen this a lot over the years. A lot of musicians want to say that they play their instrument on a professional and advanced level, but when someone comes around and say they don’t… watch out. They get all mad for some reason.
• Disagree with something they’re doing or something they said: They don’t seem to take disagreements with you so well either. You want to say that you don’t agree with them of how they’re promoting themselves or how they’re booking their gigs when all you’re doing is looking out for them but they get all pissed off anyways.
• Have differences of political views: Politics in the musicians community seems to be a real problem. There’s a “right vs. left” problem in the musicians community too. Some musicians will kindly accept others political views if they’re different but most of them don’t most of the time. A musician has conservative views other liberal musicians around the scene won’t take it so well and vice versa.
• Tell them that they don’t need to do band competitions just to get somewhere like “Battle of the Bands”, voting contests you see online and on radio stations… things like that: I was never a big fan of competitions for bands that you see out there. Most of them are a “scam” anyway and most of them are looking to make a quick buck. I never did band competitions of any kind and I avoid them like the plague. If other bands and solo artists want to do ’em, that’s fine by me. They’re just not for me. That’s not what I do this for.
• Tell them that you don’t need to do crowdfunding to make an album, go on tour or release an album: I never agreed with all that pledgemusic, kickstarter and gofundme bullshit. I avoid that crap like the plague too. I hate it when bands and artists do this shit too. It’s their prerogative if they want to do it but not for me. I would never start a crowdfunding campaign when I do an album and I usually never donate to other bands either. I never once donated to a crowdfunding campaign. It’s all ridiculous, in my opinion. I don’t need to take money from fans.

Well there you have it, hope you enjoy the read.

Kev

I’ve been saying for a long while now that local music in the Capital Region and liberal politics have been a pretty big problem. I’ve been noticing that for a while and I’m not afraid to be realistic about it. Why is most of this area’s music scene being a bunch of liberal loudmouths and SJW’s? Lets make some observations shall we?

Well, a lot lately, I’ve been noticing some online websites that promotes local music, but at the same time they promote liberal propaganda. I believe that all started with the now defunct Metroland newspaper. When the Metroland used to be around, they would use the paper to promote the local arts. That’s what the paper used to be about really, but mostly I see them using the newspaper to promote liberal politics and local music both at the same time. Now that the Metroland is out of business due to not paying their taxes of their office building, they have now transformed into The Alt which is an online only kind of paper thing.

The Alt is kind of similar to Metroland. They promote the local arts, local music and they promote liberal propaganda as well. This week, I started looking at the The Alt website… check it out here: http://thealt.com/

As you can see, the Alt website has gotten much worse with their liberal bias. The Alt is a lot more further left than the Metroland was, in my opinion. The Alt is ultra-left as you can see in their political blogs on their site.

A few articles on there that got my attention were David King’s articles on the NRA. He’s just another anti-NRA nutjob. His two articles that he wrote on the NRA that I read are worthy of a blog response and I’ll respond to his opinion articles in another blog post some other time, but I must say those David King’s hateful ranting toward the NRA and law-abiding citizens were comical to read. You can betcha I’ll have a lot to say about his opinion pieces. I’ll respond to his NRA articles soon so stay tuned, y’all. It’s gonna be good and I’m gonna be honest and brutal. David King just doesn’t realize that the more he bashes the NRA, the more it’s gonna get people interested in joining. He’s just being an NRA salesman and that is all.

Anyway, back to the Capital Region and liberal politics, what is going on here, ya know? It’s very sad to see all this and disgusting too. Why can’t we all just shut up and play the music? If there is one thing that I can think of that is hurting this area’s music scene, this is it. I wish the local music press would stop talking about liberal politics ’cause that is not a good way to promote local music. If you think being political loudmouths is gonna bring people out to the gigs then you’re delusional.

That’s probably why I’ll never gig again. I don’t think I will and me gigging out in the scene won’t happen anytime soon ’cause I’m tired of the liberal SJW’s that are out in the scene. It’s not just online websites that are the problem, the local news like WNYT, The Post Star, The Times Union, etc. They all can be just as bad with the liberal bias. Liberal bias is everywhere in Upstate NY and quite frankly, I’m pretty sick of it. All the local news and local music press that promote liberal politics, they always go by what the mainstream media does.

The local music scene in the Capital Region is full of liberals. The reason is that the local press seems to ram the liberal propaganda down our throats. The mainstream media is responsible for that too.

I used to support the local music scene ’cause I love live music and I love performing live myself, but I can’t support the local music scene anymore with the way it’s going. I’ll always make music, though ’cause that’s what I do. I wish all musicians and promoters around here would just shut up and play the music. Instead, they’re all being political activists which really saddens me.

Kev