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I want you to spend a lot of time with this book over the next year. In our SPINME.com teleclasses, I tell folks that when you use the techniques you’re about to hear, you can land your perfect gig in about a year. In each section, you’ll notice two types of special paragraphs. The first looks like this:

Whenever you see this, we’re using the fictional story of my friends Eric and Jennie. The names have been changed to protect the guilty, but I assure you that the stories and experiences represent what really happened to the hundreds of artists I’ve had the privilege of working with and talking with over the past ten years.

The other technique I’ll use in the book is a set of prompts that look like this:
Whenever you see this, follow the instructions and jot down your thoughts on the subject. Better yet, put down this book for a few moments and open up your personal journal.

A wise artist once told me that you create your own reality, and that the only way to let the universe know about the kind of reality you want for yourself is to write it down.

That advice hasn’t failed me over the years.

Therefore, don’t expect to gobble this book down at the beach on a sunny weekend and have the next five years of gigs already booked before the sand’s out of your shoes. I want you to make a personal commitment to spend the next twelve months getting your perfect gig.

When you do make the commitment, I guarantee that you’ll learn a whole lot about yourself, about why you’re really attracted to a career in entertainment, and about what you hope to get out of it.

THE ADVENTURES OF ERIC AND JENNIE

I’m gonna tell you a story about two artists.

Long before this book was even a twinkle in my eye, I had the pleasure of meeting Eric and Jennie in the small college town where we all hung out after graduation. They’re two of the most fantastic artists I’ve ever met, and I’ve enjoyed watching their careers advance over the years.

By 1996, Eric had moved back to the city where he grew up. He dominated the local music scene. I saw his face in all of the alternative newsweeklies. He must have played out every single day for a whole year, and he loved every minute of it. In ‘97, I watched Eric play in front of two thousand people. He was opening for a hot national act the same week his own major label album hit the store shelves. By the summer, Eric hit the road with a major festival and must have played for a million people. Really exciting stuff, and I loved reading his e-mail from the road.

Meanwhile, Jennie took a totally different approach to building her career. She stuck around our old college town, playing every open mic night she could find in a fifty-mile radius. She tolerated the gripes of her fellow artists, who complained about how hard it was to find an audience for the kind of music that they liked to play. I can’t remember if it was the audiences or the other artists who drove her to leave that cozy little village.

She wound up in a big city, where she competed tooth-and-nail with hundreds of other artists who played the same genre she practically owned in that small town. We spent plenty of nights talking long-distance about the challenges she faced as an independent artist in a difficult music scene.

It’s years later, and I’ve watched Eric’s and Jennie’s careers play out even further.

Sadly, one of them has totally dropped out of the music scene.

Can you guess who’s still playing out today?

It’s Jennie.

When I tell that story to people who sign up for my classes, they usually guess Eric. And when I was new to the music business myself, I would have assumed that as well.

It’s today.

Jennie plays out once or twice every weekend to audiences of a few hundred to a few thousand. Jennie loves the smaller gigs, because they remind her (and her fans) of those early days in college bars. Plus it’s so much easier to sell out a small room at higher ticket prices than the other way around.

Eric, meanwhile, grinds it out as the manager of a chain-operated record store. He’s happy to exist at least on the edge of the music scene, but he’s still got a long way to go before he pays off the $150,000 in “recoupable expenses” that he racked up from promoting his first album.

His garage bursts with crates. Each crate contains three hundred copies of his second album, which Eric’s manager was sure would rocket to the top of the charts.

Two weeks before that album’s street date, an overseas conglomerate bought up his label. He found this out via a telegram from the road.

The new company wouldn’t release his record. Nor would they let anyone else - their lawyers claim he can’t record again on his own until the label releases three more of his albums. His new label rep, when she does happen to return his calls, reminds him that they’re never going to actually release any of those albums, even if he manages to get them recorded. No specific reason why, other than “Your sound doesn’t fit our new image.”

Sometimes, at Eric’s holiday parties, he gives away copies of that “lost” second album.

He’s right - it would have been a huge hit.

EXERCISE

Why do you think Jennie, who had such a slow start and never signed to a major label, ended up succeeding, while Eric’s career stalled?

Write down your answer, and refer to it as we move through the book.

When I ask folks to tell me who they think outlasted the other, they usually say Eric.

Face it: there’s nothing as sexy as stardom. The fact that you’re up on stage in front of two thousand screaming people means you MUST earn money hand-over-fist, right? The mainstream recording industry works hard to maintain that stereotype.

“Burn bright, burn fast” describes many of these artists, lucky enough to attract attention from some label reps with money to burn. Success at the major label game requires a lot of luck and a whole lot of venture capital. I know folks who’ve found it easier to win at the street corner numbers games in South Philly.

Eric’s story exposes our prejudices about the recording industry - and leaves out the kinds of details that Steve Albini brilliantly depicts in his infamous essay, “The Problem with Music.” Steve uses a graphic example, and shows you how a four-member band can wind up $14,000 in debt to a record company that ultimately rakes in $710,000 in profits from the first album alone.

Next Chapter: Big Elephant Dollars

For old skool readers, I am trying to clean up a few typos and totally outdated references as I post these chapters. Depending on which edition of the book you own, you might notice a few sentences changed or redacted.

It’s funny to look back on this manuscript after six years. While the content is still totally on the mark, a few of the references are more dated than I would have expected. First, most artists find out that they’re dropped from their labels from Pitchfork or from a blog before they get any kind of notification from their label. If such a courtesy were extended, it’s probably by BlackBerry. Though it’s pretty funny to think back ten years and remember what it was like to actually get a telegram sent to a club or to a hotel — the least personal way possible to get a message to someone outside office hours, when you were sure to not be able to place a return call.

I used to have a bunch of footnotes for industry terms like “street date.” When I wrote the first articles that evolved into GYBA about a decade ago, you used to have to explain this stuff. Now it’s part of common language, because it seems like everyone’s got a project dropping. And that’s another term I never thought would enter the mainstream.

I named “Eric” and “Jennie” in the book after two friends of mine who I worked with in college radio who married, launched a record label, and had a very charming child. The parable has nothing at all to do with the real-life Eric and Jennie, nor do I mean to denigrate retail workers (heh, heh). I was inspired to write this when a friend of mine bought new shoes in New York City and was waited upon by the lead singer of a band we had really loved in college. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than encountering someone you admire forced away from their passion.