Séamus Anthony - Doing One Thing Every Day

Ok so I still need to get the actual discs out there, they are on my desk still (got distracted by work and baby and a lot of expensive unpasteurized cheese) but meanwhile I uploaded all six tracks to Myspace so you can actually listen to and apparently download them there as some thing they call an Mp3, or something …

If you do download all six songs and want to try and imagine what they would be like if you were listening to them on some antiquated format like a CD (thing we used to use to listen to music, don’t worry about it) then just think in your mind like this “This see-dee is called “Dogs May Bark”, and you’ll do fine.

Meanwhile just a did a whip through my RSS. Here’s the highlights.

If you have been labouring under the misconception that you are at all big, then Albert 2.0 should help you to get a little perspective on your delusions of grandeur. Thankfully he will also inspire you to achieve great things, like downloadable snacks, surely the next big breakthrough in food since the much maligned microwave. Seriously the author has a point, I spent years shooting for the quickest route to the stars only to get to 34 and realise that if I’d taken the long way round I would be there by now. Oh well. Fuck it.

Greg showed me how The Material really know how to pimp the crap out of their myspace page, and I gotta admit it beats mine, but then I’ve got the sound muted to save from waking up the baby, so who knows? Maybe my tunes are actually better? (Did I mention my songs yet?)

I noticed (how could you miss it?) that The Material have a song on a thing called Rock Band. I took one brief look at that and shrank back into the safety and warmth of my grandpa cardigan. None of that computery-gamey type shit for me thanks!

Meanwhile Andrew Dubber well and truly K.O.’d any delusions I may have held that the Long Tail was in anyway a good thing for small time hucksters like you and me. That makes two useless tales in my life. Stupid dog knocked over my early morning chow earlier, spent the first ten minutes of my day mopping up the carpet. Then get this, he vomits as a second act. Big dumb piece of poo. But you gotta love his style.

At the risk of sounding vaguely serious, I loved this line from the ubiquitous Seth Godin:

Hope. Do you offer hope for something really big in the future? Maybe just around the corner, but perhaps in the long run… What does it look and feel like? Are you drawing a vivid picture?

You see, that is what I have always believed that musicians provide as a benefit to the rest of us. Actually not musicians but more specifically Rock Stars: Hope that there is a way out of the Blah. (The fact that I ended up quite liking the Blah is besides the point; most people don’t.)

Just read this blog. The dude is your new guru. That’s a full stop to the left there (or a period if you prefer, but in Australia, I assure you, we definitely do not).

While you are reading it, listen to my six new tunes (well, the recordings are new) and remember…

“Dogs may bark, but the caravan moves on…”

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Now all I need is an audience, maybe even two

Yep I have extracted the songs from my iMac and am sitting out in the Office of Imagination and Procedure listening to myself really loud while the wife and baby sleep inside the house (Duh) and thinking “this shit is cool dude, you are ok”.

Couple this with the fact that I am pretty sure that the young lady who works in the video store has thang for moi, I could still be onto something here

(Really the guy who started that wink thing has a lot to answer for - EVERYTHING I say is said with a wink).

Yeah so that’s my thing for today. Tomorrow I’m just gonna call the nearest CD burning dudes and place an order.

One Thing Every Day, dude*, what about you?

*I know too many winks AND too many ‘dudes’ but what can I do, dude, I’m like a refugee from the Bill and Ted Gen, man. And that rug really set off the room, y’know?

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!

Well, it’s almost like this blog was a placeholder in a way, because not only have I finally got myself an actual “Office of Imagination and Procedure” than I have decided to change the sub-header of this blog in order to really focus its purpose.

I am now changing “Words and Music from the Office of Imagination and Procedure”, poetic as that may be, to “Diary of a Crazy Musician Who Refused to Give Up”, because, frankly, that’s what I am.

And there you have it.

*Twenty minutes of fiddling around with the computer (and growing increasingly agitated) later*

I was going to include a screen shot of what it used to look like but I couldn’t do it, and now I’m drunk and more to the point - I’ve run out of beer and I couldn’t give a fuck about the stupid screenshot anymore so you’ll have to look it up on the way back machine if you know what that is and are really that bored.

And I had all this other inspiring shit to say but now this whole screenshot business has just pissed me off. When did words like “screenshot” even become part of my life anyway? It sounds like some kind of technical term that only porn stars and their camera crew would know about.

And come to think of it, that’s my whole point.

But more on that later. For tonight I changed the sub-title and that’s all he wrote. So goodnight to you.