Post by "The Freq" on Feb 18, 2015 12:37:43 GMT -5
Quite a few readers have visited my forum "Freq's Music Planet" over the past 11 years and some are carry overs from my old Musician's Central days. Some enjoy my rants and some don't but they still read my rants. One of the touchy areas for me has been the failure of local media to cover local musicians fairly which would help build a healthy music scene in our city. That scene sadly, has crumbled and failed miserably with the likes of Sootoday and Local 2 and the Sault STar. Maybe it's just me that sees this pattern of favouritism but judging from the mail I get, this is a major issue.
What happens when you have a music news media outlet favour the same handful of musicians and the same bar,and what harm can it possibly do? Well, it puts blinders on an audience who by narrow minded reporting get programmed into thinking that there are these musicians and that one bar and very little else. It also paints the false picture that these musicians are the best and the rest are not worthy of press, which we all know is complete horseshit. So by not doing any articles on musicians outside of this weird little circle, the music scene starts to fade. Just putting a weekend reminder with the bands name and the bar name and a date is NOT press even if outlets like Sootoday say it is while feeding you that line. No, it's simply hurting the music scene in general when you don't focus on every aspect of the local scene. If you don't share promotion of what our city has to offer musically and alienate 90 percent of what it has to offer only to favour your little club, then there is something horribly wrong. The disturbing part is that there is no competition for the media at all to cover more musicians than it does. But why doesn't the media do so? Well, that is the question of the decade. There is obviously this little tight unit that involves the media, a bar and the same handful of musicians. The press pumps the musicians up in articles and throws the bar in for the venue. The venue gets all the press and the same musicians get all the press. Sure, they'll throw a crumb in here and there to keep the wolves like me from howling but that's basically how it works. Now some might say this is sour grapes for the rest of us or that we're just jealous. It's not that at all. We just want to know why you're F@#king up the music scene by snubbing the rest of the local musicians?
So am I the only one that has seen our music scene get kicked in the nuts by media? Of course not. I've been doing this for a long time and music is my love. I've seen a lot of things happen in my 3 decades as a musician but I've also been part of the quest to give our local music scene a fair shake. Our local media has sadly had a finger in ruining what was once a good music scene. No, they are not totally to blame but boy did they help. The fact is, I am not the only one that thinks this way. Tons of musicians, bar owners and yes the general public have asked why other bars and musicians are not being mentioned in media articles. I posted a recent rant on my Facebook page and upon doing so got notice from 2 bar owners almost immediately that have questioned local media snubbing of events and musicians. Here are some of the issues. Local media doesn't return emails. You can send them your last will and testament and these local media snobs will not return response messages. This is not fantasy. This is fact. Even recently I've heard from musicians who sent emails and got "ZERO" response for a major musician event change. Some of the musicians even said that they'd rather get an email from the media saying "F%#k off" rather than no response at all. I have personally experienced this with Sootoday who just ignore any email I send. I'm sure my emails are sent to junk mail right away. ;-) So almost right there, we have a failure to communicate and we have a media outlet that doesn't care. There is no excuse in the world why in all these years a media outlet should snub someone interested in their service and help promote local music. So who is the dictator behind all of this? We can only guess but we do know this attitude funnels down into it's music reporters.
So the other day I had a conversation with a local promoter who in a round about way says that we should send all the info of whatever your promoting to the media. He also stated that a lot of it may need formatting and you know, a little fixing up to present to our loving media. Well, let me me just say this. Most of us are not retards and we know how to write a bio and a promo. Most of us know the music we create and most of us know how to say what we're doing and why. Most of us do not need the middle man but we do need press. So if said media will not return one single email what exactly is the point of sending a bio to our media when the pricks don't return messages? In my case, I gave up on local media promotion a decade ago. I saw this favouritism and knew that the only way to promote what I do was via my big yap and it has worked. Whether you like me or hate me there is no mistaking that you haven't heard of me. That's not an ego thing. I simple use any means to get my message or music out there. With that said though, I still don't think it's right that our local media snubs other artists that are totally worthy of promotion.
So you ask, what is worthy of promotion? Well, the most obvious is music releases. I think every artist that has a release of some sort locally should have an article. Creativity of original material is always an interest to the public. Does it have to be a hard copy of something? NOOOOO! And that's where Sootoday sucks. The day of the album is done and releasing a single song is still news. If you don't think so then you better go back in history when singles were a massive part of radio in the 40's 50's and 60's. Some bands never even had albums. Music is turning back to singles and it's still news. On the flip side... A release party for music is news. Promotion of this just helps in every way possible plus it gets the community in support mode for an artist. Come on media. You can't pick your favourites. ARe you telling me you don't have the time to do a small write up on every artist that might release something? Even if you did a block of 5 artist releases for the week or the month. Like give me a break. How lazy are you??? Then we have zero coverage of cover bands. Why? Our media thinks that playing cover songs doesn't warrant press. Really? Cover songs made a music scene for decades and now you're abandoning it? Some might think that creating music is harder than cover songs. Really? Well, some might say that some do original music because they don't have the capability to do covers. In my opinion, both original and cover bands are news. If a cover band does a charity event for MS does that warrant any media? Of course it does. It's telling the public that this band is doing something right for the community. Then you have special events for Bon Soo and similar shows. There should be news on them because that's part of our city heritage. A weekly showcase of a band or musician is also great. So why is this not happening? It's simple. The media is lazy and the media are snobs. So because of this laziness, they stick to one bar and the handful of musicians that play this one bar and promote the snot out of them and do nothing for the other bars or musicians. If by some small chance they promote another bar it's because their favourite musicians are for some reason or another playing that bar. Take our Rotaryfest concerts that are held every year. What bands get the articles and photos most of the time at this event? You guessed it. Cover bands are not worthy if you follow our media and neither are bands that go against the media grain. I've been part of that exclusion twice at Rotaryfest. So while all this favouritism happens and the snobfest continues, our local music scene, that once had some life, is dying and your media helped put a nail in it's coffin. Recently, a local band called Mojo with a solid following has being doing jam nights at the local bar The New American. They also tried to get a jam night going at Docks recently and sent notice to Sootoday. As "USUAL"..........no reply from Snobtoday. I've gone to these Mojo jam nights and a lot of local musicians have shown up for these fun jams. Local media had not. Jam nights are great for exposure but the bottom line just fun and they should be news worthy. Wake Up Sootoday.
Years ago, there was a local musician named Ray Cave who did a weekly article on every band in the Soo and it was published in Soo This Week. That small article with a photo did more to help local bands than anything Sootoday has done because 1. Ray took the time to talk to the band in person 2. He actually listened to these artists and their music and 3. he always returned emails and phone calls and 4. He never played favourites. Quite simply he wasn't a dickhead like the media we have now. We also have Mike Caruso who loves music and video tapes a lot of local talent. He has recently started a "Band of the Week" article online but if it wasn't for him, the media could have cared less. Mike is loyal to music promotion, one of the few left.
So with media having it's own head shoved up it's own ass, most musicians in this city will never get that proud feeling of support from their community because local media will not write about them. Nothing beats the first time you have an article written about you or the first time you hear your music on your local radio station. The problem is...we don't have a radio station (Q104 doesn't count) and we have online media that could care less about you so much so that they can't even reply to emails. WE don't have a TV station either. Now that is pathetic isn't it? In my case, I've released numerous CD's with bands and the only write up I got was for a band called Rainhorses and we had to pull teeth for the paper to write about our first CD release. None of the other releases got one inch of press. The first time I heard our music on the radio was on an American Radio station. It was actually played more than once. Then, our local country station played one of our songs once and then slid the CD into the garbage pail. They had zero interest in us what so ever. After that we did shows out of the city to huge interest and got press on radio including the CBC. Sault media were quite simply....idiots and did NOTHING for us.
Then like many local artists, other bands I was with released CD's and sold lots of them and got zero response from media for CD release parties, concerts, fund raisers. All snubbed with zero response. I've gotten numerous letters from local musicians of exactly the same bullshit from our media. It will never change. For me, I became an advocate for fair press to help support "ALL" local musicians. I gave up totally on our local media long ago and will continue to hammer the public on how biased our local media is until we have a fair playing field of promotion. Without fair promotion from media, our local music scene will not recover. The snobfest continues to this day and this past weekend is a good example. There were 3 concerts for Bon Soo and the media didn't show up at any of those events. One of them was an event I was part of. The media was even nice enough to print the wrong date for the event haha. NICE!
Now some may say that we have this new VM online radio thing and this is a plus for musicians. Really? It's only good if the people promoting it feature "ALL" artists but from what I've seen, it's featuring the same Sootoday bands and musicians it's pushed for a decade. There is no difference. haha WAKE UP PEOPLE! Don't get me wrong. the guy doing the videos is a talented guy with a camera and he's a good musician too, but the videos are of the clique that always gets the press. It's worn out and we're all sick of it. Here are some words of advise from Glen "the freq" Thomas. Tell us something we don't know about local music and musicians. WE know about Jay CAse, we know about Frank Deresti We know about Dustin Jones.. We've heard about them for years. Like shut the hell up already and tell us about someone we don't know about. We're absolutely sick of hearing you stroking their dicks. I mean for shit sakes local media, stand up, open the door, walk outside and explore the local musicians and find a NEW set of stories. You've milked this other decade long clique story like a dead horse and it's time to move on.
Now for reporters. How can anyone give credit to a reporter who continues to write and photograph the same story over and over and over again. If you continue to stroke these reporters egos with that kind of reporting, then you all need to go live in a cave some where and live life feeding off each other. Some of our local reporters egos are so huge that being a snob is part of the job. In my opinion if you can't take photos of all bands in an event then you have failed your job. There is no excuse. If you do the same thing for a second event and not take pictures of all bands, then you're in the wrong field or you're a prick. If you're hired to do an event, it takes only a few seconds to capture a photo of a band. If the bands show up on time, why the f@#k don't you? No excuse.
For years I've asked one local reporter for photos they took of a show I did with a band years ago. I got no reply. I'd send another email saying I will gladly pay for the photos. No reply. I'd ask this person to come to a CD release party. No reply. 3 events my band played with other acts. no show for my band thus no photos of us in media. Need I go on? Of course I will. Numerous local bands who have taken part in events in the city and yes even on the outskirts of town got "no reply" from our wonderful army of reporters and local media. Snubbed for some reason that we will never know. ;-) If local media thinks that there are only a few disgruntled musicians like myself having issues with this, they are sadly mistaken. It's a growing movement. You see, the underground music scene has always been strong and we will support each other when something like this biased reporting crap defaces the local music scene.
I feel for the musicians local media constantly writes about because they don't realize that with all the press they constantly receive, it actually makes the majority of us want to throw up. Their music and images have over saturated our local market and our minds to the point we don't even read the posted shit anymore from local media. This is fact. You have created the Nickelback effect for them and we hate Nickelback. Of course, these musicians stay quiet through all of the negative shit because they are getting unlimited free press but too much of a good thing will come back and kick you in the ass. So local media, you have us barfing our guts out now especially since VM is now fondling and ass kissing those same musician. Yup, continue to wreck the music scene with that narrow minded reporting.
The laugh for me recently, was the local Bon Soo concert with Treble Charger. Who the f$#k ass kissed to get the band Lake Effect to open for Treble Charger? Did the promoter of this show work for Sootoday? Come on.. tell me. I'm dying to know. There are a number of local original bands that were more suited for the opening slot but Lake Effect gets it? Now you know why most of us didn't go. Total mismatch of music. How could such a mismatch happen? I can only guess. wink wink. I find this totally laughable because Treble Charger was very up front years ago about how much they thought the Sault Sucked and media included. That's why they left...DUH! To see good ole' Sootoday sucking Treble Charger's ass was the laugh of the week. Did they even write about the first band at all? Post a video?? I must have missed it with all my Treble Charger laughter.
In closing, I will not stop nagging about our media until I see a change. So far, the ass kissing still continues. Don't get me wrong. I've stated many times that I have nothing against these musicians for their talents but let it be known that "Your press bum buddies" are making a laughing joke of you by smothering the market with your entities. Remember how Nickelback annoys people? You're the local version. Had local media not saturated the market with the same story over and over, and talked about "all" musicians, this would not have happened but now you have to take your medicine.
So you think I'm an idiot? "I don't care". If you're too narrow minded to see the damage to our local music scene media has caused then you deserve to be laughed at. On the flipside, if I'm so wrong, why does local media read my rants on Facebook and on this forum? Yes folks, they do and it bothers them. It sends one local reporter into a frenzy every time I open my mouth I even have the CEO of Video Media knocking on my Facebook door to be a friend. But why should I answer? Why should I talk to any of them? We've all experienced years of the "snubfest", with no response or no shows by media to our events because they were too busy hanging at Lop Lops interviewing their buddies. Why should I lift a finger when many many bands have gotten absolutely squat from them. My response is simply this. Change the format of local music reporting and video. Include everyone. Include the artists in their own environment. Not Lop Lops environment and not Sootoday's environment and definitely not VM 2 member environment. Stop catering to the Lop Lops format for f#$k sakes. We want to see bands in their full blown environment!!!!! GET IT! If you can't fit the full band in there then get a bigger place or video on location (promotes the band and the venue). Full bands, full packages, full gear, full volume. How can you not understand that?? Who the hell wants to see a cut down edited acoustic version of bands all the time. I don't and neither do most other people. "Unplugged" was a great concept years ago but it's time to move on. So you say all bands should be able to play acoustically? BULLSHIT~! Some of us didn't buy an Iron Maiden album and say.. Man, I can hardly wait to see their acoustic set. Give me a break. We want bands showcased in their proper setting playing their music how it was meant to be played. The music scene is crashing and you need some power and energy to kick it back to life. Unplugged Lop Lops format isn't going to cut it. The world doesn't revolve around that Lop Lops format Sootoday. Stop being so stupid and snobbish and find out what you don't know of local music. Sadly, you don't know much.
In closing, if you agree, message me on Facebook or email me here. If you don't, then piss off. This is not a debate. You can just "Stick With the Clique" if that's how you feel. As for music reporting, there are two people who can do it better than local media at this time. One is Rob Figures and the second.. yours truly. You know why? Simple, we don't have our heads shoved up someone's ass. ;-) So why don't I do it full time??? Easy.. I'M A MUSICIAN!!! I didn't buy thousands of dollars worth of gear and spend 30 years learning how to play instruments to become a reporter. If I was a reporter I wouldn't be one for Sootoday that's for sure. YUCK.. the smell in there would be horrible. ;-) Bottom line is, I would report on the entire music scene because then, and only then, would it make it grow and become vibrant again. Most of all, I would fight for a local music station that plays rock and indie music. We need it and we need a local TV station. I know that will never happen but that's part of my solution. Online radio just doesn't cut it.
Freq Out ;-)
What happens when you have a music news media outlet favour the same handful of musicians and the same bar,and what harm can it possibly do? Well, it puts blinders on an audience who by narrow minded reporting get programmed into thinking that there are these musicians and that one bar and very little else. It also paints the false picture that these musicians are the best and the rest are not worthy of press, which we all know is complete horseshit. So by not doing any articles on musicians outside of this weird little circle, the music scene starts to fade. Just putting a weekend reminder with the bands name and the bar name and a date is NOT press even if outlets like Sootoday say it is while feeding you that line. No, it's simply hurting the music scene in general when you don't focus on every aspect of the local scene. If you don't share promotion of what our city has to offer musically and alienate 90 percent of what it has to offer only to favour your little club, then there is something horribly wrong. The disturbing part is that there is no competition for the media at all to cover more musicians than it does. But why doesn't the media do so? Well, that is the question of the decade. There is obviously this little tight unit that involves the media, a bar and the same handful of musicians. The press pumps the musicians up in articles and throws the bar in for the venue. The venue gets all the press and the same musicians get all the press. Sure, they'll throw a crumb in here and there to keep the wolves like me from howling but that's basically how it works. Now some might say this is sour grapes for the rest of us or that we're just jealous. It's not that at all. We just want to know why you're F@#king up the music scene by snubbing the rest of the local musicians?
So am I the only one that has seen our music scene get kicked in the nuts by media? Of course not. I've been doing this for a long time and music is my love. I've seen a lot of things happen in my 3 decades as a musician but I've also been part of the quest to give our local music scene a fair shake. Our local media has sadly had a finger in ruining what was once a good music scene. No, they are not totally to blame but boy did they help. The fact is, I am not the only one that thinks this way. Tons of musicians, bar owners and yes the general public have asked why other bars and musicians are not being mentioned in media articles. I posted a recent rant on my Facebook page and upon doing so got notice from 2 bar owners almost immediately that have questioned local media snubbing of events and musicians. Here are some of the issues. Local media doesn't return emails. You can send them your last will and testament and these local media snobs will not return response messages. This is not fantasy. This is fact. Even recently I've heard from musicians who sent emails and got "ZERO" response for a major musician event change. Some of the musicians even said that they'd rather get an email from the media saying "F%#k off" rather than no response at all. I have personally experienced this with Sootoday who just ignore any email I send. I'm sure my emails are sent to junk mail right away. ;-) So almost right there, we have a failure to communicate and we have a media outlet that doesn't care. There is no excuse in the world why in all these years a media outlet should snub someone interested in their service and help promote local music. So who is the dictator behind all of this? We can only guess but we do know this attitude funnels down into it's music reporters.
So the other day I had a conversation with a local promoter who in a round about way says that we should send all the info of whatever your promoting to the media. He also stated that a lot of it may need formatting and you know, a little fixing up to present to our loving media. Well, let me me just say this. Most of us are not retards and we know how to write a bio and a promo. Most of us know the music we create and most of us know how to say what we're doing and why. Most of us do not need the middle man but we do need press. So if said media will not return one single email what exactly is the point of sending a bio to our media when the pricks don't return messages? In my case, I gave up on local media promotion a decade ago. I saw this favouritism and knew that the only way to promote what I do was via my big yap and it has worked. Whether you like me or hate me there is no mistaking that you haven't heard of me. That's not an ego thing. I simple use any means to get my message or music out there. With that said though, I still don't think it's right that our local media snubs other artists that are totally worthy of promotion.
So you ask, what is worthy of promotion? Well, the most obvious is music releases. I think every artist that has a release of some sort locally should have an article. Creativity of original material is always an interest to the public. Does it have to be a hard copy of something? NOOOOO! And that's where Sootoday sucks. The day of the album is done and releasing a single song is still news. If you don't think so then you better go back in history when singles were a massive part of radio in the 40's 50's and 60's. Some bands never even had albums. Music is turning back to singles and it's still news. On the flip side... A release party for music is news. Promotion of this just helps in every way possible plus it gets the community in support mode for an artist. Come on media. You can't pick your favourites. ARe you telling me you don't have the time to do a small write up on every artist that might release something? Even if you did a block of 5 artist releases for the week or the month. Like give me a break. How lazy are you??? Then we have zero coverage of cover bands. Why? Our media thinks that playing cover songs doesn't warrant press. Really? Cover songs made a music scene for decades and now you're abandoning it? Some might think that creating music is harder than cover songs. Really? Well, some might say that some do original music because they don't have the capability to do covers. In my opinion, both original and cover bands are news. If a cover band does a charity event for MS does that warrant any media? Of course it does. It's telling the public that this band is doing something right for the community. Then you have special events for Bon Soo and similar shows. There should be news on them because that's part of our city heritage. A weekly showcase of a band or musician is also great. So why is this not happening? It's simple. The media is lazy and the media are snobs. So because of this laziness, they stick to one bar and the handful of musicians that play this one bar and promote the snot out of them and do nothing for the other bars or musicians. If by some small chance they promote another bar it's because their favourite musicians are for some reason or another playing that bar. Take our Rotaryfest concerts that are held every year. What bands get the articles and photos most of the time at this event? You guessed it. Cover bands are not worthy if you follow our media and neither are bands that go against the media grain. I've been part of that exclusion twice at Rotaryfest. So while all this favouritism happens and the snobfest continues, our local music scene, that once had some life, is dying and your media helped put a nail in it's coffin. Recently, a local band called Mojo with a solid following has being doing jam nights at the local bar The New American. They also tried to get a jam night going at Docks recently and sent notice to Sootoday. As "USUAL"..........no reply from Snobtoday. I've gone to these Mojo jam nights and a lot of local musicians have shown up for these fun jams. Local media had not. Jam nights are great for exposure but the bottom line just fun and they should be news worthy. Wake Up Sootoday.
Years ago, there was a local musician named Ray Cave who did a weekly article on every band in the Soo and it was published in Soo This Week. That small article with a photo did more to help local bands than anything Sootoday has done because 1. Ray took the time to talk to the band in person 2. He actually listened to these artists and their music and 3. he always returned emails and phone calls and 4. He never played favourites. Quite simply he wasn't a dickhead like the media we have now. We also have Mike Caruso who loves music and video tapes a lot of local talent. He has recently started a "Band of the Week" article online but if it wasn't for him, the media could have cared less. Mike is loyal to music promotion, one of the few left.
So with media having it's own head shoved up it's own ass, most musicians in this city will never get that proud feeling of support from their community because local media will not write about them. Nothing beats the first time you have an article written about you or the first time you hear your music on your local radio station. The problem is...we don't have a radio station (Q104 doesn't count) and we have online media that could care less about you so much so that they can't even reply to emails. WE don't have a TV station either. Now that is pathetic isn't it? In my case, I've released numerous CD's with bands and the only write up I got was for a band called Rainhorses and we had to pull teeth for the paper to write about our first CD release. None of the other releases got one inch of press. The first time I heard our music on the radio was on an American Radio station. It was actually played more than once. Then, our local country station played one of our songs once and then slid the CD into the garbage pail. They had zero interest in us what so ever. After that we did shows out of the city to huge interest and got press on radio including the CBC. Sault media were quite simply....idiots and did NOTHING for us.
Then like many local artists, other bands I was with released CD's and sold lots of them and got zero response from media for CD release parties, concerts, fund raisers. All snubbed with zero response. I've gotten numerous letters from local musicians of exactly the same bullshit from our media. It will never change. For me, I became an advocate for fair press to help support "ALL" local musicians. I gave up totally on our local media long ago and will continue to hammer the public on how biased our local media is until we have a fair playing field of promotion. Without fair promotion from media, our local music scene will not recover. The snobfest continues to this day and this past weekend is a good example. There were 3 concerts for Bon Soo and the media didn't show up at any of those events. One of them was an event I was part of. The media was even nice enough to print the wrong date for the event haha. NICE!
Now some may say that we have this new VM online radio thing and this is a plus for musicians. Really? It's only good if the people promoting it feature "ALL" artists but from what I've seen, it's featuring the same Sootoday bands and musicians it's pushed for a decade. There is no difference. haha WAKE UP PEOPLE! Don't get me wrong. the guy doing the videos is a talented guy with a camera and he's a good musician too, but the videos are of the clique that always gets the press. It's worn out and we're all sick of it. Here are some words of advise from Glen "the freq" Thomas. Tell us something we don't know about local music and musicians. WE know about Jay CAse, we know about Frank Deresti We know about Dustin Jones.. We've heard about them for years. Like shut the hell up already and tell us about someone we don't know about. We're absolutely sick of hearing you stroking their dicks. I mean for shit sakes local media, stand up, open the door, walk outside and explore the local musicians and find a NEW set of stories. You've milked this other decade long clique story like a dead horse and it's time to move on.
Now for reporters. How can anyone give credit to a reporter who continues to write and photograph the same story over and over and over again. If you continue to stroke these reporters egos with that kind of reporting, then you all need to go live in a cave some where and live life feeding off each other. Some of our local reporters egos are so huge that being a snob is part of the job. In my opinion if you can't take photos of all bands in an event then you have failed your job. There is no excuse. If you do the same thing for a second event and not take pictures of all bands, then you're in the wrong field or you're a prick. If you're hired to do an event, it takes only a few seconds to capture a photo of a band. If the bands show up on time, why the f@#k don't you? No excuse.
For years I've asked one local reporter for photos they took of a show I did with a band years ago. I got no reply. I'd send another email saying I will gladly pay for the photos. No reply. I'd ask this person to come to a CD release party. No reply. 3 events my band played with other acts. no show for my band thus no photos of us in media. Need I go on? Of course I will. Numerous local bands who have taken part in events in the city and yes even on the outskirts of town got "no reply" from our wonderful army of reporters and local media. Snubbed for some reason that we will never know. ;-) If local media thinks that there are only a few disgruntled musicians like myself having issues with this, they are sadly mistaken. It's a growing movement. You see, the underground music scene has always been strong and we will support each other when something like this biased reporting crap defaces the local music scene.
I feel for the musicians local media constantly writes about because they don't realize that with all the press they constantly receive, it actually makes the majority of us want to throw up. Their music and images have over saturated our local market and our minds to the point we don't even read the posted shit anymore from local media. This is fact. You have created the Nickelback effect for them and we hate Nickelback. Of course, these musicians stay quiet through all of the negative shit because they are getting unlimited free press but too much of a good thing will come back and kick you in the ass. So local media, you have us barfing our guts out now especially since VM is now fondling and ass kissing those same musician. Yup, continue to wreck the music scene with that narrow minded reporting.
The laugh for me recently, was the local Bon Soo concert with Treble Charger. Who the f$#k ass kissed to get the band Lake Effect to open for Treble Charger? Did the promoter of this show work for Sootoday? Come on.. tell me. I'm dying to know. There are a number of local original bands that were more suited for the opening slot but Lake Effect gets it? Now you know why most of us didn't go. Total mismatch of music. How could such a mismatch happen? I can only guess. wink wink. I find this totally laughable because Treble Charger was very up front years ago about how much they thought the Sault Sucked and media included. That's why they left...DUH! To see good ole' Sootoday sucking Treble Charger's ass was the laugh of the week. Did they even write about the first band at all? Post a video?? I must have missed it with all my Treble Charger laughter.
In closing, I will not stop nagging about our media until I see a change. So far, the ass kissing still continues. Don't get me wrong. I've stated many times that I have nothing against these musicians for their talents but let it be known that "Your press bum buddies" are making a laughing joke of you by smothering the market with your entities. Remember how Nickelback annoys people? You're the local version. Had local media not saturated the market with the same story over and over, and talked about "all" musicians, this would not have happened but now you have to take your medicine.
So you think I'm an idiot? "I don't care". If you're too narrow minded to see the damage to our local music scene media has caused then you deserve to be laughed at. On the flipside, if I'm so wrong, why does local media read my rants on Facebook and on this forum? Yes folks, they do and it bothers them. It sends one local reporter into a frenzy every time I open my mouth I even have the CEO of Video Media knocking on my Facebook door to be a friend. But why should I answer? Why should I talk to any of them? We've all experienced years of the "snubfest", with no response or no shows by media to our events because they were too busy hanging at Lop Lops interviewing their buddies. Why should I lift a finger when many many bands have gotten absolutely squat from them. My response is simply this. Change the format of local music reporting and video. Include everyone. Include the artists in their own environment. Not Lop Lops environment and not Sootoday's environment and definitely not VM 2 member environment. Stop catering to the Lop Lops format for f#$k sakes. We want to see bands in their full blown environment!!!!! GET IT! If you can't fit the full band in there then get a bigger place or video on location (promotes the band and the venue). Full bands, full packages, full gear, full volume. How can you not understand that?? Who the hell wants to see a cut down edited acoustic version of bands all the time. I don't and neither do most other people. "Unplugged" was a great concept years ago but it's time to move on. So you say all bands should be able to play acoustically? BULLSHIT~! Some of us didn't buy an Iron Maiden album and say.. Man, I can hardly wait to see their acoustic set. Give me a break. We want bands showcased in their proper setting playing their music how it was meant to be played. The music scene is crashing and you need some power and energy to kick it back to life. Unplugged Lop Lops format isn't going to cut it. The world doesn't revolve around that Lop Lops format Sootoday. Stop being so stupid and snobbish and find out what you don't know of local music. Sadly, you don't know much.
In closing, if you agree, message me on Facebook or email me here. If you don't, then piss off. This is not a debate. You can just "Stick With the Clique" if that's how you feel. As for music reporting, there are two people who can do it better than local media at this time. One is Rob Figures and the second.. yours truly. You know why? Simple, we don't have our heads shoved up someone's ass. ;-) So why don't I do it full time??? Easy.. I'M A MUSICIAN!!! I didn't buy thousands of dollars worth of gear and spend 30 years learning how to play instruments to become a reporter. If I was a reporter I wouldn't be one for Sootoday that's for sure. YUCK.. the smell in there would be horrible. ;-) Bottom line is, I would report on the entire music scene because then, and only then, would it make it grow and become vibrant again. Most of all, I would fight for a local music station that plays rock and indie music. We need it and we need a local TV station. I know that will never happen but that's part of my solution. Online radio just doesn't cut it.
Freq Out ;-)
