This Economy and How It Can Suck My Left Testicle.
Current mood: aggitated
To start off, I'm an incoming freshman into college. I had pretty good grades, but not good enough to get any sort of "wiz-kid" scholarship. I ended up getting $1900 in scholarships, which will cover books for maybe my first year, but that's it. But everything was going to be okay because my dad was "guaranteed" a pay-raise and a bonus through his company...yeah right. That raise and bonus would have safely gotten me through my first year of college without having to worry about any excessive student loans. But today, I found out that "because of today's economy", my dad won't be receiving his pay-raise, and his bonus is going to be half of what it was originally guaranteed. Fuck this economy in it's ass. Now, I will be a burden on my parents budget in a big way, because they'll have to take out an ass-load of student loans to pay for my college. In addition to this, I have a younger brother who will be going through presumably the same shit soon, plus my mom's student loans that need to be paid off.
The military, even though it would take away my chance to do anything involving a musical career, is seeming like a very reasonable offer right now.
And, lastly, I realize this is probably something everyone goes through, but it just really pisses me off that we are spending useless money on a bunch of shit we don't need (we, meaning our government), when the common-people like us are paying out the ass for it.
TL;DR---My dad didn't receive his "guaranteed" pay-raise and bonus, which means we're going to have to take out a shit-load of student loans for my college, all because of this damned economy.
Being the chief songwriter for the metal band I am currently in, I am now faced with a bit of a conundrum. To describe the type of metal we play, think 80s thrash mixed with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Yet, I find myself currently engrossed in writing a ballad...a love ballad...along the lines of Skid Row's In a Darkened Room. Now, my band isn't even known outside of the small town we live in, but would this be considered "selling out"? I mean, we aren't even currently selling music. We only have a couple complete songs that are known of by people outside of the band (we have 10 songs total), and they aren't for sale anywhere, so I can't be technically "selling out" if there's no money involved. Unless you take this term in a metaphorical sense for changing the type of song I'm writing...but it's MY music. If you don't like it, then don't listen to it. If you think it's the wrong direction, okay, that's fine. We have plently of other music you might enjoy.
But, where does the musical artist draw the line between what he/she feels/writes, and what the fans want to hear? This is what I never understood about "selling out". We are all human, and NO human feels nothing but hate.
What are your thoughts on this?
TL;DR: I'm in a heavy metal band, and I just wrote a ballad. Selling out?
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SGstriker's blogs, last updated : July 14, 2009
