I’m one of those awful teachers that play in a band. I make no apologies for this fact, for unlike ALL the other teachers’ bands in the world, my band is extremely brilliant. Check out our Myspace site for undeniable objective proof of this fact (please note: depending on your taste, you made find us incredibly rubbish).
As we all know, the music industry has experienced a few changes of late. As an unsigned indie-rock outfit, we have no allusions as to what the future holds – and it doesn’t involve six album deals with major recording labels, that’s for sure.
What it does involve is getting to the stage where we are selling thousands of records as downloads via itunes and other digital providers, and selling out venues in our local town i.e. Berlin. And doing this alone, without proper management, studios, producers or promotion. Or any money. The cool thing is, this is actually nowadays very possible.
The recordings we have online were produced by us alone, and they sound pretty good. Deals can be made which get well recorded music onto itunes without huge amounts of money changing hands. Email lists, Facebook events and a fair bit of word-of-mouth can usually mobilise 100 – 200 people to get down to the gigs, and if you’re playing a decent venue at the weekend then twice as many will come along anyway to see what’s going on (we had 130 in last night, but that was a Tuesday, so fair play). Forget the sixties, the punk revolution, Madchester – there has never been a better time to be in a band than right now.
www.stephen-mortimer.com 
Hmmm, maybe the future is no more big name bands and high profile concerts and events – rather a proliferation of individual unique outfits each with their band of loyal followers, in the flesh and virtual. Thousands of them, all over the place, bit like schools really. And all the musicians more than a bit like teachers whether they like it or not!
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Nicely said, Andy. I agree that bands are going through some sort of Darwinian development, even though the school analogy seems nice enough. But then maybe it’ll be more community based. People are happier being close to bands as apposed to earlier conceptions of ‘idolizing’ certain people i.e. bands.
However, Steve does give the impression of ‘teaching’ the crowd what to do (Please ask Steve for the live recording of our ‘Waschhaus’ gig for proof). In any case, if I’m not incorrect, the general idea is that the mass needs a leader, right….?? Oh well, f*** the theory and lets see what practicality has to say.
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Once a teacher always a teacher I reckon, it’s in the genes. However it’s not just he role of bands that’s changing, it’s teachers and schools too. Schools are getting looser and more community focus. The world is changing faster and faster and the fruits of the future are for those who lay up with the pace. Who’d have thought, 12 months ago, that an American president would capture the heart of Africa as Obama has done?
I like the Darwin reference Jesse – adapt or die – Dawnrise looks to be doing just this. I’ll ask Steve about the Waschhaus recording – all very interesting!
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