The Kampf – Higgs on Life in Britain

The Kampf

Chapter One

Do you remember Amway? Of course you do, virtually everyone I know has had some kind of brush with it. What was interesting about it, apart from the fact that it had me frothing with excitement over an effing bar of soap, was that a certain life-long atheist friend of mine became involved with it. It seemed the more he immersed himself into this murky world of soft-soap products the more his mental equilibrium became critically affected. I suppose it could’ve been worse, Britway, imagine that, there wouldn’t even be a product to sell, you’d just get a large bill for fuck-all basically, this phenomenon is known in the UK as a Council Tax bill. The thing is with Amway though in the end it wasn’t so much about the products themselves as about selling the idea of Amway; that is selling tapes and books on the various methods required to dupe people into signing up. At that point it became a sort of religion for some people, much like this Alpha course business. I got invited to one of those too, pffffffff. I find it hard to believe that anyone could be so desperate that they seek the answers to life and the universe from what is essentially a glorified vacuum cleaner salesman. If someone has faith brought about by a personal divine experience, fine, but don’t tell me any kind of faith or belief can come about by persuasion in this form…It’s a very slippery way of catching the vulnerable if you ask me.

I am reminded of when I spotted an advert in the local news rag, which was obviously a complete con that I fell for hook, line and sinker. The advert itself was for an auction and gave an example of the prices such as ‘camcorders for £5 and computers for £15 etc. Anyway I turned up at this alleged auction with a couple of friends, greeting us at the doorway were a couple of security guards. Anyway after a brief altercation with the said guards along the lines of ‘what the fucks this all about then’, we were all herded inside and the main doors were locked behind us. We then walked through another doorway and were confronted with, well a mountain of crap basically, old faulty electrical goods etc. Of course we were unaware of this at the time; anyway this gutter-snipe slurps onto this make-shift stage and begins the auction. He began by telling us that everything had to go, at no matter what price! Then there was some confusion when suddenly he jumped in the air and shouted “GIVE THAT WOMAN A CAMCORDER!!!!! this woman was obviously his mother but the excitement generated was unbelievable, especially when he said right who else want’s one?

Now I regard myself as reasonably street-wise but even I at one point had my hand in the air for no apparent reason. A friend said “what the ffff are you doing? I replied, I dunno!! I just want one!! Oh no, the Higg brain had been infected with consumerism…Thankfully sense prevailed and I came away from it financially unscathed. Unfortunately many who attended this auction did not fare so well and came away with not only some very useless and outdated stuff but severely pillaged wallets.

Then there’s Insurance, what was it? The Combined Insurance Company of America. I got roped/press-ganged into that too for a very short while. I’m going back quite a few years here. Advice; if you suspect hard times around the corner, ditch the woman, or man as the case maybe, immediately! Do not hesitate otherwise the consequences could well have an impact on your very existence, no no no, they WILL have an impact. I’m absolutely ashamed to admit this but I was more or less forced into signing up for this and I actually attended a two-week course in York on how to trick people into forking-out hard earned money for something they themselves will never actually benefit from. This is because the ‘Life Policy’ only shells-out when you die and just covers basic funeral expenses. Fuck me; it would’ve been easier to sell a skip full of heroin to the Arch Bishop of Canterbury. Needless to say I did not sell a single policy! Needless to say, I sound like Alan Partridge, actually there was talk of doing an Allied Dunbar but thank god I managed to escape!!

I’m wondering just how desperate people are going to get in order to sell stuff in what is a rapidly diminishing world market with inflationary living costs. Maybe there is a link between all these con-merchants and how the current music business is being run? You know, selling the idea of music, pay to play etc…It seems to me that there are quite a number of Internet companies and specialist music publications encouraging musicians to go it alone as an independent. It’s fast becoming a growth industry that, in my humble opinion, is completely embroiled in over-optimistic spin and could easily end up costing musicians much more than they bargained for…

As I said, a growth industry, if you sign up to garageband .com they are charging 200 dollars per track to be listed on live365.com. Apparently you get listed on a database that Live365 Dj’s have access to. There’s no actual guarantee you’ll ever get your stuff played, and if it does get played you will not receive any royalties because as far as I am aware they do not submit to the collection societies. Of course this in my view is a form of ‘pay to play’. More worryingly, it appears the Internet has spawned a number of companies that work on similar lines. It seems the industry is not exactly running out of ideas when it comes to scamming money out of musicians. I was told recently that various promoters are charging bands to sell tickets, this is pay to play…They should pay you!! And there are companies charging to enter a battle of the bands competitions…battle of the bands shows are scams to make scumbag promoters money. What do you win anyway? Take it from me, what ever it is, nobody gives a fuck…And we wonder why the music industry is so corrupt…maybe it’s the bands that let it happen……

A recent article in Sound On Sound (UK based pro muso mag for sad geeks like me who like to indulge in the monthly misery of reading about the latest gear they’ll probably never be able to afford) entitled ‘start your own record company’. Now being a very impatient sort of bloke with a very low boredom threshold I didn’t actually read the article from start to finish but from what I could gather the majority of it was about joining the royalty collection societies (PRS, MCPS, PPL etc..) which is fine but being a member of these societies does not in itself generate income. In respect of the PRS it relies on radio/tv play for royalties which are passed onto you as a writer and or publisher member. I am a member of the PRS and I have been fortunate with some radio play credits, but my god it’s not easy to get. Try getting radio play from any station in the UK that submits their playlists to the PRS. I would say almost impossible no matter how good you think your music is. The reason; the major publishers, they’ve got it sown up; it’s more or less a closed shop. What sickens me about it is that the BBC ( a publicly funded broadcaster) are subsidising these large private publishers/companies out of what is essentially public money, which the BBC are legally entitled to in that every household in the UK that has a television is legally bound to pay a licence fee to the BBC. This amounts to a whopping 3 billion a year in revenue for the BBC.

There can be no doubt that being a musician in the UK is a bit like being a leper at a health farm. Good musicians, through no fault of their own, unless you happen to be Sir Elton, by and large live outside society. If you’re a musician here in England there are only two things that command respect ‘sales’ and lineage. The most common question I’m asked when meeting people face-to-face is “how many CDs have you sold then”? The depressing reality is that the actual music is of little consequence; this is why I try and keep what I do under wraps, as it were, especially when enduring certain social gatherings, after which I usually end up saying “well, it was a pressure meeting you and I thoroughly endured it”.

It is absolutely true that the vast majority of people here in Britain know the price of everything and the value of fuck-all. Tell them you’ve sold a million albums and you can actually see the attitude change before your very eyes. Tell them you’ve not sold that many but you managed to get some decent reviews, and take it from me you’d be better off telling them that your best mate is Gary Glitter and your dad was Fred West.

The problem is- as soon as you utter the very word ‘musician’ it unfortunately conjures up negative imagery; lazy drunken drug-taking sexual deviancy and general loutish behaviour. What’s wrong with that? On top of this there are many people who simply do not understand the value of what you do as a musician, especially if it doesn’t earn buckets of cash….I sometimes think that most women think that men are born with a fucking hammer in their hands, playing the piano….that’s not a job! ..I suppose this works the other way doesn’t it, you know, most men think that women are born with a dish cloth in their hands, it is of course equally absurd.

Then there are gigs. Ah well, I’ve done my share, for most it’s a means to an end. Most musicians are not playing what they actually want in public. To me playing stuff you don’t particularly like to people you can’t stand is to be in the 7^th circle of hell which is why I rarely play in public nowadays…Is it a good way to promote yourself? Errrr, no, not really. I’ve known musicians spend their entire lives gigging and still no-ones heard of them. Recently I had a slight exchange with one of the guys that run Nimbit (download service) he was bemoaning the fact that he never gets well paid for a gig. I simply replied “what the fuck are you talking about; it’s only the likes of Sting that gets well paid for a gig”. Unless it’s a packed football stadium being televised, forget it. Playing to small audiences is absolutely fine but don’t ever think its worthwhile promotion in the great scheme of things, especially if you are trying to generate enough interest to justify the expense of recording of an album – then there’s band politics, pffffffffff.. It’s all very fine when musicians get on with each other but when musos fall out, look out!. I’ve been on stage when the guitarist and bass player have actually had a fight on stage; this was far more entertaining than the music I might add and then there was the time when the drummer actually defecated in the bass player’s shoes when they had some minor disagreement. Laugh? I nearly sh**…You must be wondering what sort of bands I’ve played in……don’t ask!

A friend of mine is a full-blown concert pianist. Despite having studied under anybody who’s anybody unfortunately he’s never really achieved what he intended or deserved for that matter, which is a terrible shame but it has to be said the classical world is every bit as competitive if not more so than any form of contemporary music. Anyway nowadays he lives as a virtual recluse, I went to see him the other day to admire his new acquisition, a brand new Steinway. My immediate reaction was utterly shameful because instead of admiring the sheer beauty of this instrument I blurted – blimey album sales aren’t too shabby then? Anyway thankfully this indiscretion was immediately forgiven and I got down to discussing music, life and the universe as I invariably do. He does have a couple of albums out incidentally but they’re not doing all that well from what I could gather. Anyway, it turns out that the Steinway was not the result of any musical success; he was able to buy it because he inherited some land and sold it for building. This is interesting because in our local music shop, quite a big one as it happens, you never find any actual musicians in there, it’s full of estate agents, solicitors and the like buying gear for their talentless off-spring. Very few musicians I know of could actually afford to go in there, let alone buy anything. Anyway I suppose there’s not really much point in installing sophisticated electrical equipment in a hovel…

My trouble is that I’m not a businessman, I’m no marketing expert, I’m not a record promoter, I’m not an audio engineer or producer, although I do claim to know what good production is. And, I’m not a music manager and I’m certainly no lawyer, although I did take on a case (civil action) as a ‘litigant in person’, against one of the largest law firms in the country. This was the third most stupid thing I have ever done which might be the subject of a future chapter and will probably have you all pissing yourselves with laughter when I tell you about my confrontation with a judge and two barristers.

I’m more or less convinced that with the exception of the judge real success in the music business depends upon the involvement of at least some of these aforementioned entities, you will only get so far without them. Of course there’s always the odd exception but as a general rule of thumb, I believe it is a truism.

The music business is one of the largest businesses in the world and if you exclude the people that work in that industry by going it alone as an independent you are going to feel the squeeze at some point, that’s why it’s a closed-shop. If you become popular as an independent the doors start opening a tad, but at what point that happens is anyone’s guess. When it starts affecting their trade perhaps? If this happens then you could be heading for more problems than you bargained for. I’ve heard of a number of cases where bands have been signed, paid off (advance) and their projects immediately shelved, and there’s nothing they could do about it. Why, I don’t know, I suspect it has something to do with whose toes you’re treading on higher up the food-chain. In other words you could be being signed purely to protect their other interests? This of course only happens at the very commercial end of the market which, it has to be said is completely flooded with product.

I remember when I started out; having been a victim of an independent record company that went out of business and took all the multi-track tapes with them, I decided to go my own way. Sod it! I thought, if they could do it, which they self evidently couldn’t, I could! Labouring under a massive miscomprehension and a ridiculous sense of optimism I ventured into hitherto unknown territories. I decided to raise some money, pull in every favour know to mankind. Oh and write some new material, find the best musicians I could, that would work for peanuts and or just their expenses. I was determined to control my destiny and not be at the mercy of bureaucratic incompetence.

Following the nightmare of trying to keep the recording costs within my budget I somehow ended up with a finished master, god knows how? The stress was so great that at one point I went home, decided to go for a walk and got half way down the road before I realised I had a loaf of bread under one arm! It got to a point where my parents very nearly ended up having to bail me out financially, how embarrassing is that! So what you’re listening to is essentially my inheritance. As I said, I laugh in the face of profit. On top of this though most of my friends thought I was absolutely stark raving mad calling myself Higgs Boson…… Oh how they laughed! – What’s wrong with being a Cornish pirate anyway?

Anyway after this I had a couple of well connected friends who I thought could advise me on marketing etc. One of them just happened to play golf with the head of EMI (Europe) apparently he told him that he had this mate who is releasing his own album and does he have any advice? He replied ‘that’s fine but what he’ll find is that there aren’t enough hours in the day’. How bloody true that was, and still is! You see what many independent musicians fail to realise is the shear amount of work required not to mention the know-how, and it’s the know-how that’s important! That and a shit load of cash.

You see as part of this advice I was given a copy of a marketing and costing schedule for the band Blur; album: Parklife. This made very interesting reading, apart from an admission to the illegal practice of fly-posting, EMI spent 100k just on the initial launch party. Now on the face of it this would seem like wild extravagance, but is it? Put all the top music journalists in one shed, ply them with drink and goodie-bags, what have you got the following morning….great reviews – sales skyrocket, well that’s the theory. This of course is nothing new but to think you can get anywhere near the same results by just hanging an album out on the net as an independent is completely absurd!

I’ve had people on here saying I’m talking crap because their daughter or whatever is an independent musician and they are really successful. Yeah, whatever…Well, many people claim to be successful but success is relative is it not. My brother for instance lives in a hedge, but he’s happy, so ‘he’s a roaring success story. Not so much being in the gutter and looking at stars as being in the sewer and dreaming of the gutter!

What I have come to realise is that when other people’s livelihoods depend on your music you stand a much greater chance of success. That’s not to say there’s not a balancing act to play here because it is possible to get tied up with a small independent label and for your career to go absolutely nowhere, because they don’t have the financial clout to get your music the publicity it may or may not deserve as the case may be. And of course they control your destiny because they have you under contract! The EMI schedule also made me realise that I am standing at the bottom of a very steep curve! Especially when I talked to the head buyer of a national shop chain who simply said unless you have a substantial ad campaign (100k plus) he could not even contemplate stocking my album. This didn’t really come as a bomb-shell but it was very disappointing. In conclusion; without mainstream distribution you have very little!

All I’m saying is that when people like Joni Mitchell retire because they can’t stand what the music industry has become its time to wake up and smell the coffee, which is somewhat ironic given that her latest release is being promoted by Starbucks. According to Joni they have great distribution. How the fuck did a coffee retailer get great distribution? It’s a funny old world!

Let me just say here that if you intend venturing into a music career unless either you or your parents are a multi millionaires just forget it. The point is that extremely wealthy people can afford to fail time and time again before something takes hold. Look at Simon Cowbell, even this man went into bankruptcy back in 89 and was forced to move back with his parents, who, well his father was at the very top of EMI…say no more… I can only comfort myself with the thought that wealth at some point becomes a source of deprivation, unless of course I become rich and then it’s all perfectly acceptable. lol

I have previously said that many of the problems in the music industry are down to all these rappers and hip-hoppers etc. I don’t know so much? Maybe the problems are more closely related to all these old bands re-releasing old stuff time and time again, flooding the market and soaking-up all the cash. As you know many of these old bands are fabulously wealthy and as a consequence have enormous advertising and tour budgets. Independent acts have no way of competing against the shear monetary power of these old bands. They also control significant sections of the media. You can barely pick up a life-style magazine without a double page editorial of some octogenarian duffer aimlessly meandering around his multi-winged mansion wondering where in the hell he is. This festive season the shops are literally flooded with the Rolling Stones, Led Zep, Floyd etc. you name it they got it out there for sale….Don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against them releasing new stuff, although I can’t quite believe any of them still have the energy. Are they still on drugs? Probably; beta-blockers, Movicol and warfarin, to name but a few? It won’t be long before these festivals they play at will have to install easy access ramps and a team of surgeons on stand-by in case one of them needs a triple bypass. When are they going to retire?

So then, what next for the Higg and this so-called life in music? Well – I’ve said this before and I think it’s worth repeating. When you attempt to climb Everest in a pair of flip-flops at some point your feet will drop off and you end up dying alone, in agony! – blimey I’ve cum all over Eric Cantona….

Actually my next project will be a cheap to record solo piano effort with maybe some mild synth-like embellishments. Basically, these are pieces I’ve written over the years, some new some old. Don’t be fooled by the recording costs though, to make a solo piano album interesting is a bit of a personal Everest for me. I intend to release it on vinyl only and to buy it you will have to write to me in person and explain why you would like a copy. You will of course have to include a full CV with your application. You may be lucky and be granted an interview whereby you will be given the opportunity to expand your ideas and demonstrate your worthiness and ability to understand what it is you are listening to…This of course fly’s in the face of popular business sense but the thing is, I have followed expert advice and I’m still absolutely fucking nowhere so I think I’ll turn the whole thing on it’s head, see how far I get? Probably nowhere…….

What!

Contradictory.

Me?

NEVER….

Your eternal friend in oblivion…..

Higgs