What’s the Point?
Published: April 17, 2024
Not necessarily an existential question, more rhetoric.
This Friday, April 19, The Nuts — what you might call a South Australian independent music band in that we are not affiliated with Sony or HMV or whatever — will be doing an industry thing called “launching a CD”.
Yes, The Nuts will be launching Millionaire’s Mix, their new CD collection of tunes what they writ themselves and for all the good it will do they might as well launch the fucking thing into outer space.
Not bitching… but, how many people actually listen to CDs these days? How many people buy CDs; how many have actual CD players in their car now that Sony, Disney and Spotify have made deals with the car manufactures to remove CD players from the dashes of new cars and force car owners to buy a Spotify subscription? Well, not exactly force but… it’s pretty obvious what happens.
So, maybe The Nuts should put their music on Spotify. Well, what’s the point? You get fuck all for it? You can’t get on playlists because they are optimised for the name artists and their companies which then causes a further optimisation of artists/songs that appear to be “popular”.
It sounds like bitching but I’m not really. I’m facing reality like many of us have. However it hasn’t stopped the apparent stupidity of us recording our songs and committing them to a CD or vinyl hard product.
The Nuts can’t afford a vinyl release; we could barely afford to make a CD and couldn’t have got there without the help of whom we call “our own little Patron of the Arts” Terry Bradford.
He, himself — Bradford — is a prolific songwriter and producer of very good music recorded on numerous CDs which are precipitously stacking up in his shed. And while they may not have made a huge impact in the music-listening world they did topple over on the head and shoulders of a shed burglar with considerable impact, and pinned him down while Terry kicked his nuts to guacamole.
That isn’t true but doesn’t matter; what is true is that like Bradford, many of us write songs. We have idiot friends who help us arrange, produce, play and record our drivel, committing it to a recording device and then to a compact disc in the hope that somebody will buy it and listen to it. And maybe, if they or other somebodies can drag themselves away from listening to the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and the Beatles on their Spotify channels, maybe… they’ll find a song or two in there that they like.
And that raises the hope that it stimulates the need for a live performance of said music which is where the musicians really come into their own: an opportunity to play music and entertain.
If only we weren’t losing music venues faster than we lose brain cells after a night on the the piss.
Still not whingeing. Just sayin’.
Anyway come along to the Wheatsheaf Hotel (Thebarton) on Friday night — It’s free admission — and listen to The Nuts rattle off two sets of cracking, noisy, irreverent, sometimes untidy new music. Well, songs — some of the shouty stuff isn’t really music, it’s just us letting off steam. But I can assure you that much fun will be had by all and I guess in someways that is a valid point when all the other points seem pointless.
Friday night April 19 at The Wheaty, The Nuts present Millionaire’s Mix — a drink coaster for the new millennium.
As I said: not bitchin’; just sayin’, ok? That’s why we’re nuts.
You can click that scary link down there… I did; it works. No shit.