Hey everyone. After observing lots of best practices from other Substack writers, I’ve decided to declare Sunday as my release day going forward.
For the sake of finishing my novels, I’m going to release ultra-brief stories along with an original illustration. These stories will take you five minutes or less to read.
I couldn’t do a voiceover this week as allergies have caused the toad to roost in my throat once again.
Enjoy!
Kevin
Once I attended a rock concert in a small back-alley club choked with smoke and stacked shoulder to shoulder with warm bodies.
Toward the end of the nearly three-hour show, there was a sudden break in the music and the lead singer strode to the front of the stage. He took a slow drag from a cigarette. Then, with a sly-looking grin, he said into the mic while blowing out a billowing stream of smoke, “Okay, let’s have them—bring them up.” He gave a curious beckoning motion with his hand to come forward.
A small surge of fans burst forth as if they’d been waiting the entire show for this very cue, cutting swift paths through the crowd toward the stage. They began sliding homemade labeled CD cases across the stage in the direction of the lead singer. Some fans were daring enough to hand them directly to the singer as if that was the only delivery method acceptable to them . All the fans turning in their CDs seemed adrenalized with hopeful, nervous energy, some wearing tight-lipped expressions and averting their eyes, or flashing shy, cautious smiles.
The lead singer continued his chain-smoking, nodded, and gathered up the offering of a dozen or so CDs and put them in what looked like a personal bag beside the band’s oversized beer tub just south of center stage.
“They like to help up-and-coming bands,” my superfan friend Jeff explained.
The band was called Guided By Voices. According to Jeff, the fascinating ritual I had observed occurred at every show: aspiring bands were encouraged to submit their demo CDs directly to Guided By Voices or as their fans called them, GBV. If GBV liked the disk, the as-yet-undiscovered band was on the fast track to getting signed. A GBV urban legend circulated that The Strokes were discovered in this exact manner.
Here was a band, not mainstream by any stretch of the imagination, but still popular enough to get paid doing what they loved, that recognized their power to help other artists—and included it as part of their own performance no less.
An inspiring example of artists communing together at all levels—even if the final payoff only comes as hope.
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Thanks!
Kevin