Séamus Anthony - words and music

So it’s early morning Day four of the 7 Day CD Sale Plan and I am up early because things are running a little behind (and because my eight month child doesn’t really let me sleep much anyway!)

Things are not running behind in an “Oh Crap - this is going badly kind of way” but more like in a “It’s cool - I still got this under control” kind of way.

Day one went fine. Day two also except that Steve told me that first we’d better move this blog to my new hosting on our own server. This took some time and now this morning we do the mailing list thing (behind the scenes tech stuff done already) and make sure the RSS feed is hunky dory.

Day three I was so busy at work I plain forgot to go buy CDs but I can make that up today. Which leaves me with today’s task which is to set up CD Baby page.

Couple this with all the work I have to do for bread-and-butter it looks like it’s going to be a busy day!

Okay, so my CD is ready, the recording that is. It’s not perfect but it is beautiful. So I want to start getting it out there and into people’s CD players, iPods and the rest. And I want to get from here (CD not available for sale) to there (CD available for sale) in seven days by Doing One Thing Every Day. Here’s the plan:

DAY ONE: SUNDAY

Begin CD Manufacture Process

Yesterday I looked at prices to get a run of CDs professionally produced. Unsurprisingly, it costs a pretty penny and I don’t want to fork out 500-800 dollars just to end up with 300 CDs that I am sick of under my bed. That would be hard to explain to my partner!

What I want to do is make a run of 10, sell them at a profit, then reinvest the profit back in and make a run of 20, sell them at a profit, etc, etc until I have built up enough money to get a professional run of 100 or 500 done.

Some people might cringe at the idea of selling homemade music Cds but not me. I think it will add a nice touch to the product because let’s face it, mass produced CDs are just that, they lack any personal touch whatsoever. So the first thing I am going to do today is get started making 10 CDs at home. They won’t be perfect, but they will be unique little works of art, and if someone who buys one says it skips, well then they can ask me to send another one.

I will ask my partner to do the art because she is a great talent. And she doesn’t read this blog, so I am not just saying that.

I will also begin to burn the discs on my iMac and personally sign them, just because I have tickets on myself so that one day they may bring the purchaser the ability to sell them for big bucks on e-bay and go on a nice holiday ;-).

I will need to decide on a name for the CDs and do a double check to make sure there aren’t any last little tweaks I should give the mixing so that I am not overly plagued by self-loathing for the rest of my life (musicians will know what I mean by this).

I predict that getting the Cds made will take a few days; I will need to steal moments to burn them off when I can around changing nappies (diapers) and heading into the office to sell advertising space and other such drudgeries and adult responsibilities. And it will take my partner some time to design the art.

DAY TWO: MONDAY

Fix RSS subscription and add a mailing list to this blog

There is no point having a blog and attracting visitors if I don’t offer them the opportunity to return and get involved, and (frankly, from a hard-nosed marketing angle) if I don’t “gather their data”.

Now just the other day I noticed that RSS feed button up top isn’t working. I had a quick look, but I am no geek and couldn’t see what the problem is. (STOP THE PRESS! I just tried it again and it seems to work, so I dunno, maybe it’s ok, maybe it’s buggy, why don’t YOU give it a go right now and test it out for me? Leave a comment below if it doesn’t work.)

And I need a mailing list so people can subscribe to that so that I can contact them every now and then (only when I have something to say - I HATE over zealous mailing lists and usually unsubscribe if I find myself getting too many emails).

Monday and Tuesday I have to work full days in the city at the office (that’s three hours per day of commuting right there) so will have pretty much no time to scratch myself, and I am useless git when it comes to geekery anyway so I am going to ask my friend Steve today if he will fix it up for me tomorrow. Hopefully he will say yes! Otherwise I could feasibly stay up all night taking way too long to figure it out myself. We’ll see how that pans out - but it will get done.

DAY THREE: TUESDAY

Buy All Needed Materials

Like I said, busy with day job all day (and of course family responsibilities at night until I pass out from exhaustion) so have to be real about what I can do. Let’s just make it that I go to the shop and buy nice quality blank CDs with cases and some paper to print the covers on (recycled of course). This will give me an idea of what I will need to charge for the CDs to make a modest profit, although I will also need to factor in postage, and potentially other hidden costs yet to be identified. It is (admittedly boring but) VITAL that I keep a track of this.

DAY FOUR: WEDNESDAY

Organise Online Sales Systems

I will set up a CD Baby page and a way to sell to Australia and New Zealand without CD Baby (silly to send CDs to the US just to send them back again - and environmentally unfriendly). Will also explore other avenues and ebay.com as well. There goes a few hours right there, potentially.

DAY FIVE: THURSDAY

Organise Sales Page on this Blog…

…and some kind of BIG noticeable graphic on the home page to encourage people to go and look at it - and buy a CD

This may take Steve’s help again.

DAY SIX: FRIDAY

Finish Manufacture of CDs

This means my partner will need to have finished the artwork, I will need to have set up the printer (it’s been in the box since we moved house), I’ll need to print and crop the covers, finish burning the discs, and apply labels to them or print on them (ooh just thought of that, might need to do that before I burn the discs? Not sure, will research).

DAY SEVEN: SATURDAY

Post 5 CDs off to CD Baby and upload all sales material to website and announce to the world in general that they are on sale. I don’t care who buys them, even if it’s my own grandmother, but they gotta pay full price.

Then it’s time to start working on a serious CD Sales Marketing Plan, and a gig or two wouldn’t go astray either. Oh well …

One Thing at a time! Wish me luck!

… to get some music action happening in my life again. That’s the plan. And preferably it should be the “biggest rock” (the action that will achieve the most out of the available range of possible actions) but I am pretty much happy if I do something at least. And practising* doesn’t count - this is about getting it out there. Practising is about being ready for when you are actually out there.

So today I didn’t have a lot of time but I finally managed to spend some time pimping my myspace page (yes like a big old kid).

The most exciting thing that I did there was add a RSS feature to it so that this blog gets fed into the myspace page.

Damn! Somebody might even read it! Then I’ll be in trouble!

Yesterday’s thing (similarly busy day) was that I struck a deal with Steven Mills . He is going to use me as a guinea pig for his new system of promoting yourself effectively across the web. Which means I should soon be getting heaps of eyeballs and ears checking out my tunes and mad bastard ramblings …

Not sure what I will do tomorrow … maybe something more “real world” orientated?

(*practising? practicing? I can never figure it out. And who cares really?)

Yesterday I was mooching around in the garden, organising the firewood when I found one big lump of gum that was too big to fit into the wood heater (we live in the hills so all this kind of thing is par for the course).

I grabbed my trusty axe and started chopping to split the big lump in two.

Two hours later, and after much grunting, groaning, swearing and a zillion axe blows I was still going - sweat flying everywhere, alcohol being skulled back to kill the pain, a mad glint in my eye - and my girl was starting to get a bit worried.

I knew it wasn’t the most useful usuage of my time but I didn’t care. Why? because I am a stubborn little shit and I don’t like to quit until something is bloody well done already. So I kept at that lump of concrete masquerading as wood until finally after 2 and a half hours it eventually split.

I then held the pieces of defeated wood aloft, standing admist the splintery carnage of the battle and let out a macho roar (and my girl called me a tosser - but that’s beside the point).

The point IS that I am a stubborn little shit and I don’t like to quit until something is done properly. And frankly, when I was younger I started something - becoming a professional muscian - and I didn’t finish it (for various reasons, none of them good enough) and I just can’t live with that. Call it pride. Call it stupidity. Call it what you will.

I don’t care what you call it.

You see, last November, when my baby girl was a newborn, I was staring at her sleeping in my arms and I thought to myself “What am I going to tell her? That I just gave up?”

Fuck no. I want her to learn that the persistent win, not just the talented, or the lucky, but the PERSISTENT.

So here’s the deal. Stupid and pigheaded and unrealistic as it may seem, I resolve to do at least one thing everyday to move me towards my goal of becoming a professional musician until such point as it becomes reality.

This is a big call. But I don’t need to be Bono or Mick Jagger or anything, just earn a modest living playing music. Of course if I earn zillions, then fine, that’s cool, I can roll with that…

So what did I do today? Well the single most important thing (the Biggest Rock - Google it) I did today to sit down with Steve, my partner over at Rebel Zen and start learning how to run an effective social media marketing campaign. This means I will begin to build traffic to this site. I did other things too, like buy seamusmusic.com for my “static” music site, join Twitter (despite my reservations) and cancel the hosting I have here so that I save myself $150/year (all adds up), but the “biggest rock award” for today goes to the social media marketing lesson. very powerful Over at RebelZen.com, for example, Steve rustled us up 177 unique visitors in one day in our first week of the site being “live”. As for this here blog, well I think it’s pretty much just a few everyday, but soon … things will be different (cue evil laugh) Moo-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha!

Crusty 35 year old rockers with family responsibilities and a real job are supposed to give up - right? … Yeah, right … as if …

When the music is in your blood it’s in your blood and no matter what your age you should never let it slide because you KNOW what happens then right?

You start to slowly, bit-by-bit, go completely fucking insane!

I know this, but like a lot of musos, I haven’t always been focussed enough to practice this. It’s like, one day I was always rockin’ out, or crooning a sweet ballad or whatever in front of crowds of either the proverbial man and his dog or (I kid you not) crowds as big as 5000 people, and then I wake up and although I have NOTHING to complain about (beautiful partner, baby daughter, home) BUT I only ever seem to pick up my guitar and give it a bash out in the shed late on a Friday night when I’m half pissed. Or, let’s be honest, totally pissed.

Well, fuck it, this has to change and right now.

So I will be documenting my efforts to get back on the old rock n’ roll horse right here so why don’t you get with this whole RSS thing and subscribe and follow me as I have another crack at it.

And look, don’t get me wrong, I am not an idiot, well not totally anyway, I KNOW I am too old to be some kind of teeny heart throb or whatever - but who the fuck wants that anyway? And it’s not that important to me to become some hugely famous rich dude, either (although I could try it on for size, just to see how it fits, you understand!) - I just want to play some music again man; solo, with others, in dive bars or (even better) on professional stages in front of decent, music lovin’ crowds again.

Let’s face it - what muso doesn’t want that?

The only thing that stops us is OURSELVES, man!

Time to stop making excuses and start making music again!

Ok so it’s morning now and rather than being drunk and cantankerous, I am slightly hungover and cantankerous, but this is ok.

And while I think my subheader, “diary of a crazy musician who refused to give up” is pretty darn embarrassing and lame, it does at least point to the purpose of this blog, which is to tell the story of my pigheaded decision to revive my “career” (I use the word loosely) as a musician, at the slightly crusty age of not-quite-35 and now that I am well entrenched with a baby and ‘real job’ and all those things that are supposed to make you give up on such silly adolescent fantasies.

I think I will write a static “About” post about this. so go there and read about it.

Meanwhile I have a few things to sort out, and the first is:

The Name.

back in the day, I was the only Seamus rock singer in Adelaide (I live in Melbourne now) and that was all that mattered.

Nowadays of course we compete with the entire planet for our name and frankly, there are a shitload of Seamus’s out there and they all seem to be singers. Most of them use a surname of course, but I’ve always been a bit of a tosser and preferred the single name thing, yes, like Madonna or Sting or whatever. A bit sad I know but bugger it. And anyway, do this for me, google Seamus Ennis (Ennis being my surname, not Anthony, that’s me middle name).

See what I am up against there? I just can’t be bothered taking that guy on, he got there first basically.

So I am soon to create a static site for my music, and I need to decide on a domain name for that. Here’s an email I just shot off to my mate Steve about it. I think it explains the predicament well enough:

“Hi Steve,

do you think i should call my “static” music web page, seamusonline.com or musicbyseamus.com or seamusanthonyennis.com or seamusmusic.com or any other ideas?

remember seamusennis.com is taken, although i could get seamusennis.net but more to the point, google “seamus ennis” and check out those results, bit of a battle taking all that on!

and all the just seamus.whatevers are taken, I own seamus.net.au and i could buy seamus.asia but that seems a bit silly. although we kind of are in asia i suppose.

should i just use seamus.net.au and be done with it? i suppose the decision really is do i want people to google “seamus” or do i want people to google “seamus anthony” or “seamus anthony ennis” ?

google seamus for me and tell me if you reckon we could get to the top of that lot. there is no straight seamus contender… maybe i should just shoot for that and keep chasing seamus.com, they’ll sell it to me eventually but i think it will be pricey.

Anyway, whatever, but I need to make a decision….

Fagan was standing at a bus stop after school one day when he first saw the vision.

In his minds eye he saw every detail. The stage he would stand on. The hot lights on his face. The massive crowd stretching out before him. The three or four front rows of faces that he could clearly see: pretty young girls making eyes at him, impressed young lads watching his hands like hawks as his fingers danced across the fret-board of his shiny electric guitar. He saw himself shimmy across the stage: young, excited, totally self-assured, radiating the X-factor.

In his mind’s ear he heard the music: raw, powerful, epic, his voice soaring great heights. He heard the crowd roar after each song finished. The applause, the whistles and stomping feet.

In Fagan’s heart he felt the thrill of success, the glory of the spotlight and he knew that, for him, nothing else mattered. This was what he was born to do and that, simply, was that. He kept this vision at the forefront of his consciousness every day for the next ten years. He spent hours obsessively daydreaming the vision over and over again. He immersed himself in rock and roll culture, moving from band to band, studying the every nuance of the greats of popular music: Bowie’s different vocal palates, Kurt Cobain’s songwriting structures, what Robert Smith ate for breakfast.

When Fagan’s mother caught him in his room doing air guitar solos, he wasn’t embarrassed. Instead he proudly stated: ‘I’m going to be a rock star!’

‘But you can’t even play guitar!’ she squawked. Thirteen year old Fagan just rolled his eyes and began to teach himself to play on an old nylon string acoustic guitar that he found on top of a cupboard in the hallway. It had been left behind by somebody years ago and only had one string, but Fagan didn’t let that stop him. He made do with what he had and then when he had some pocket money saved up he bought some new strings and slowly but surely learned some chords. Straight away he began to write songs. He suspected they weren’t much good yet but it felt so good anyway that he just wrote and wrote and wrote. His mother didn’t like much noise so he had to sing the songs in his head, imaging a voice powerful and high.

Five years later when he got his first gig at the university bar, he opened his mouth to sing and realised that he didn’t sound anything like he thought he did. His voice wasn’t smooth and high, it was gruff and deep. But Fagan didn’t let that stop him. Nor did he let the too-cool drinkers in the bar deter him when they completely ignored him as he poured his heart out all over the stage.

Fagan saw no way to get what he wanted without hustling, so without a second thought he begged, pleaded and schmoozed his way into bars to play gigs. But he wanted a band. So he would go to record shops and check out the ‘singers wanted’ signs and try out for all kinds of bands. Mostly they didn’t work out, but sometimes he would meet someone who he half-clicked with so they would razzle together a band and hire a studio and record a demo. Then the band would break up, but he would use the demo to go get a gig, pretending the band still existed, then he would find a new band to play the gig.

Eventually he did find the right band: two other guys, one who was as obsessed as Fagan with rock stardom, the other who was just a walking success magnet, a good luck charm. Together they plotted and worked hard. They rehearsed every day of the week, often to the disappointment of their girlfriends and families. They hustled gigs and recorded and pushed and pushed and pushed and never took no for an answer. They weren’t cool like the inner-city kids from the private schools, with their just-so clothes and haircuts, but Fagan and his mates were hard working and above all, strategic. They went to see other bands and would stay up late discussing what was good about them and what didn’t work. They knew that above all they must be remarkable if they were to succeed. And that they must be obsessively singular in their focus. They must be monomaniacal.

At first they were nobodies on the local scene. The hipsters snubbed them. Three years later Fagan and his two friends were the biggest indie rock band in their city and Fagan saw his vision come true night after night. Huge crowds, often up to three thousand people strong. Screaming girls. Powerful music. The spotlight. Adrenalin filled nights. Autograph hunters waiting by the stage door and beautiful girls galore.

Fagan had never more than idly wanted financial riches, and this he did not get. He had daydreamed a little about traveling the world with his band, but he did not obsess about it, and thus his fame remained a local phenomenon. But he had a single, clear vision that he was not just passionate about – he was obsessively monomaniacal about it: Being on stage playing his own music in front of large, enthusiastic, receptive crowds. He focused on it day and night, at the expense of a balanced life or more sensible, security-minded activities. And thus he saw this this dream come true.

If you do the same, you can see your dream come true also – but take note – be sure that what you focus on is worth it. It took years for Fagan to get over the imbalance that his obsession caused in his life.

Actually, it’s doubtful that he’s gotten over it at all

Last night I was especially inspired by a man called Don Morgan who after spending 20 odd years developing his lifesaving “Conehead” bicycle helmet finally received the recognition he deserved last night when he won the New Inventors Grand Final on the ABC.

While somebody was always going to win the competition and while the other inventions were all frankly brilliant, the heartwarming thing about Don’s win was that he presented the human face of the downside of the struggle to achieve and of what is sometimes a curse that cannot be shaken - Unrelenting Vision.

I was so moved by his win, and I would like to openly thank Don here (not that many people read this but anyway it’s the thought that counts) for reaffirming in me the belief that if you just stick at your dream for long enough and keep working hard, you massively increase your chances of reaping the rewards you seek.

I could go on for hours about this, but I must get to work myself, but I’ll just close by pointing out the interesting fact that in order to acheive something brilliant, Don focussed - for twenty years - on Just One Thing.**

May the Force be with Don as he takes his worthy invention (literally) to the streets.

*Actually I used to be a conehead (bong smoker) but not anymore! But if I buy one of these helmets I can reclaim the title!

**Incidentally this links to a story about ANOTHER Don but that is just a fluke … or else it’s just a day for Dons, you tell me

As I was riding my bike to work today I was yet again dumbfounded by just how many friggin’ people there are on this planet. And this is in Melbourne, Australia which is busy and all but hardly the most over-populated place on Earth.

I truly had to do about a quarter of the ride at half speed in order not to bump into people or cars.

And what of it? Well, I suppose there are all the usual implications that could be waffled on about, doomsday stuff, but I might as well leave that to everybody else (because it is my belief that it is unhappiness that causes people to bugger this world up, not pure selfishness for it’s own sake, but that’s another story) and talk about one of my personal obsessions: success, more specifically, career success.

The chances of standing out in this world and being handsomely rewarded for it - or in other words becoming wildly (career) successful - are slim. And why? because there are just so many people to compete with.

There is a glimmer of hope, a method of hugely increasing your chances. But it will come at a cost, and the cost will probably be high.

Here it is: the best chance you have of becoming wildy successful is to apply Curly’s Law* and be totally obsessive about both your chosen skill and about being successful at building a career on top of this foundation skill.

I repeat - you have to be a monomaniacal obsessive. Period.

*If you read this and want to know what happened next then go here.

Here’s an example of ill-thought out software marketing from Mac. It was on the flyer in an official Mac store in Melbourne:

1) “Logic Express 8 delivers everything a musician needs to write, record, edit, mix with unmatched quality, speed and ease: $249″

2) “Logic Studio delivers everything a musician needs to write, record, edit, mix, and perform in the studio and on the stage. $598″

Given that most of us dear sweet musicians are usually broke, you think they would try a little harder to explain why I would spend over twice as much for Logic Studio. I mean why the hell would I take my software package to a gig? And how?

And anyway, if Express 8 delivers “everything a musician needs” why would I spend more? On “wants”? Which ones?