In which I give naked clickbait much more attention than it deserves

There's TONS of this stuff out there. 

UPDATE: Ari Herstand at Digital Music News has also ripped the guy a new one.

Here is something which is at best is clickbait— some drone working for some website desperate for traffic writes something outrageous, with some thin pretense of seriousness, to get people to click through to their site, which will use the data to make themselves a more attractive prospect for advertisers. At worst, it's a form of gaslighting— an abusive person taking advantage of others' insecurity to make them feel worse, more in line with the abuser's own self-loathing. It's probably both: a crappy site engages a bitter, failed talent to vent his resentment, to the satisfaction of the lowest needs of all involved. Whatever these creeps' motivations, the piece does point to real misconceptions held by a lot of musicians about the music business. And these same complaints come up again and again from anti-artist types, so maybe this will give you some fuel for dealing with them.

I will pay them the respect of letting them live up to their values, by not supplying them with a direct link, thereby tainting them with the resulting filthy lucre. If you want to search for it, it was printed on the web site of some free paper in St. Louis [oh, the hell with it— here. tb]. The introduction:

You've seen those memes: the ones about how musicians spend thousands of dollars on gear, hours rehearsing and loading/unloading, and drive 40 minutes to just play a show for $100. How noble and brave our poor musicians are, selflessly sacrificing themselves at every turn for a chance to do what they love while constantly griping and whining about every aspect of it. So of course they deserve to get paid -- they're performing a vital service to our lives, just like an ambulance driver. 

Although musicians are indeed shafted by entire industries that are built purely around their creative output, truthfully, they don't deserve to get paid anything. Now tremble with indignant rage as I explain precisely why.

And with that, here we go: one writer's idea of “Why musicians DON'T deserve to get paid.” I have to warn you, my commentary may be quite unintelligible with typos, as I am totally trembling with rage at the power of this schlub's words:

6. Most Music Sucks Honestly, most of everything sucks. Most architecture sucks. Most visual art sucks. Most writing sucks. Falling in line with this noble, sacred truth, your music also probably sucks. Do you really think you deserve to get paid for sucking, just because you took the time to suck?

Well, yeah. Of course. Are you stupid? This is America.

Obviously, no one is paid based on whether they “suck” or not— not even architects! They are paid based on the fulfillment of a contract with a client, a formal arrangement with an employer. In any field you have to have some kind of appeal to your customers and clients, but that's a very different thing than sucking according to some bargain-basement music writer.

There's more of this sort of thing after the break:

I get mail

I'm not going to deface my blog with
that ugly-but-apt universal troll illustration,
so here's a photo of uber-troll artist Jeff Koons.

Hey, a bona fide troll— my first in four years of blogging. Someone wrote to me to register his displeasure in re: this video of me playing a timing challenge— the purpose of the video was just to document an exercise, but this person was insufficiently entertained. For your amusement, here is our correspondence. Know going into this exchange that a) I don't believe anything he says about him actually being somebody, and b) his amateurishly phrased “criticism” regards perhaps the one area of my playing which I have always been 100% confident.

To: Todd Bishop

From: Han Solo [??? -tb]
Subject: Dude...
Is this you in this video? Doesn't matter how well you're keeping time. Conviction and feel is awkwardly missing.

To: Han Solo

From: Todd Bishop

Subject: Re: Dude...
Hi Han- First, I want to say I've been a fan of yours since I was a was a little kid- what you did in that scene with the T.I.E. fighters was awesome. Yep, that's me. As a professional drummer, it actually does matter how well I keep time. The video isn't meant to be a performance, so I dig that it's not real exciting to watch— sorry if you were misled about what to expect from it. Anyway, thanks for your comment. tb

More after the break if this kind of empty drama interests you: