Please watch, like and subscribe. This is not just a random video, this is my new thing. Stay tuned for more.

Itâ€s the most excited I have felt about music in ages. Iâ€ve been so damned over it for so long.

And now that I am enjoying listening to it again, and (perhaps not coincidentally) feeling so lost and discontent, like some spoiled, pudgy, creaky-boned teenager, despite having everything to be grateful for (middle age, you have a lot to answer for) it is making me feel like playing again. Iâ€m full of the need to croon some smooth, blue notes. To puff smokily on a trumpet. To tinkle the ivories with my long, wrinkly lady fingers.

The fact that I canâ€t play piano or trumpet is a small impediment to that dream though, I admit.

However, I do OWN a trumpet and an electric piano.

We bought the piano for the kids, and it was somewhere north of six hundred bucks, so itâ€s not a bad one.

The trumpet? Well it looks cool, comes in a sweet retro case, but whether it is a good one or not I canâ€t tell. However, one thing is for sure, I could definitely make a good one sound very bad!

Regardless, I have been having a puff and, while I mostly make godawful squawking noises, there is the odd moment that sounds nice and I think “yeah baby, groovy”.

I could dig being a cool jazz guy.

For sure. Just feels more authentic than trying to rock out. I am definitely over fronting rock bands, thatâ€s why I gave it away five or six years ago now. Just couldnâ€t hack it anymore. Too much energy required to throw yourself out in front of a bloody jet plane sized racket like that and flail and holler like itâ€s your last chance to raze the planet and violently claim the crown. Too heavy for landed gentry like me. Iâ€d rather croon whiskey lullabies through the hazy lovelorn hush.

As for the piano, well, I might take that up too. Itâ€s a more fundamental instrument for a musician. And I daresay that getting to a certain level of proficiency will be easier than blowing into a brass tube without impersonating the noise a thirteen year old elephant makes when getting surprise-murdered by a band of crackhead poachers armed with sharpened dried banana shivs while getting flicked with a wet tea-towel by his big brother whoâ€s annoyed at being made to dry when THE AIR DOES THAT IF YOU JUST LEAVE THEM ON THE RACK, MUM!

* cough *

Anyhoo, what I mean is, time will tell.

Let me put it this way, this time last month I wanted to start my own cooking show, and a month before that I was Absolutely Going To Finish Writing All My Unfinished Books. So donâ€t carve “jazz trumpeter” on that little stone tablet in your brain under the heading “The Immutable Facts About Exactly Who Seamus Is Forever Amen” just yet. Youâ€ll only get upset when I never mention jazz again or look if I at you blankly and be all “Chet Davis? Who the hell is that?” when you ask me how my horn skills are shaping up.

I have the attention span of a particularly studious finch and history shows that I am way, way better at starting things than finishing them.

Eh. So shoot me.

Thankfully, this lamb stir fry I cooked last night was created without major incident and no damage to any footwear that I am aware of.

Now, for your information, the onions pictured on the side are because Iâ€m on the low FODMAP diet right now so I mixed them in for the rest of the gang afterwards, — not ideal, but needs must.

Used garlic infused oil instead of fresh garlic, again because of the FODMAP thing, which turned out great, although I had to splash a lot on to the plate afterwards to really get the flavour. Ideally, I would cook in fresh onion and garlic in the usual manner, being careful not to burn the garlic.

The meat was delicious, two backstraps that the butcher sliced for me, warmed to room temperature and cooked fast on the wok before being set aside while I cooked the rest. Actually I started with all the meat in the wok at once but that lowered the temperature too much so I quickly whipped it all into a bowl and seared them fast in smaller batches. Iâ€ll know next time. Pan searing it on moderate-high is supposed to stop it going tough. And it wasnâ€t tough at all, so that was a win despite my fumbling about.

Better Half recommended next time to season and then quickly grill the backstraps on high heat before slicing, might give that a go. But having said that, I was pretty happy with the butcher doing some of the prep work for me! I must recommend Gregâ€s Tender Joint in Belgrave South in the Dandenong Ranges here where we live, always passionate about his product, and helpful with a hot cooking tip and great service.

The veggies I used were carrots, broccoli, kale, and green beans. Mainly because thatâ€s what was in the fridge. I was going to add peas but I thought it was enough already so I put them back in the freezer. Fried the veges up after removing the meat. Then added the steamed rice that I had cooked earlier and allowed to cool. Apparently this makes the rice grains hold together or something but having said that I have made plenty of fried rice meals recently using hot rice straight from the saucepan into the frying pan without any issue, so, I dunno, the distinction is a bit lost on me.

We have some cauliflower in the fridge too and some of us would have thrown that in but I am no fan of that particular so-called vegetable!

I wasnâ€t following a recipe which is always a dicey proposition when youâ€re a total noob in the kitchen like me, and couldnâ€t decide if I was making an “Asian” dish or just … whatever … but it worked out fine. Olive oil, rice bran oil — I prefer the rice a little bit oily, thatâ€s better than too dry anyway.

For flavour the usual salt and cracked pepper, some Fish oil, Braggs All-Purpose Seasoning, and some wheat-free Tamari — all of which in the passion of the moment, I forgot to check for FODMAPs but my research this morning leads me to believe we are in the clear. Anyway, only little dashes of each until the thing was tasting right. You donâ€t wanna splash too much Braggs in and regret it! I would have used Worcestershire sauce but I presumed it would not be FODMAP friendly but I just googled it and apparently it is, so there you go. You could also use sesame oil after for flavour, but I find it a little bit overpowering.

Anyway, it was yum and I had a ball cooking it. Life is good!

Creativity is one of the best ways to future-proof your career, because process-driven work seems likely to get continually chipped away at by software, (which FYI, is eating the world).

Creativity happens to be my scene. Always has been.

But what if you aren’t so comfortable and free with creativity?

Well, my first piece of advice about being creative is: Donâ€t think, donâ€t judge, just make a Thing.

Hereâ€s what Iâ€m getting at.

Sometimes, usually when I have just enjoyed some coffee, I indulge in some freewriting, which is basically just tapping at the keyboard, writing non-stop without necessarily knowing what to write about and certainly not stopping for spelling and punctuation. That’s what I’m doing now, but by the time you read this, I’ll have (hopefully) cleaned up all my typos.

The reason I like freewriting is because it’s a way to surprise yourself and discover something new. I find that if your mind is sort of stuck in Nowheresville, you can tap into a wellspring of inspiration that exists inside of you by just poking away at the keyword.

Of course it doesnâ€t have to be a keyboard. If you want you can draw, paint, sing, play guitar, scratch patterns in the dirt with a stick, whatever. And it only needs to take five or ten minutes. The point is you just start doing something– anything–and before you know it, youâ€ve made a Thing. 

It may not be a great Thing and you may not even like it – but I donâ€t think that matters. What I think does matter is that, if you have this latent desire in you to create, that you just honour this compulsion by moving your fingers or vocal chords or toes or whatever and making something happen. 

Whether it is good or not is entirely subjective, so forget about that, it actually doesnâ€t matter. What matters is how you feel about yourself and what youâ€ve affirmed within yourself–that youâ€re a doer not just a dreamer. Then, at the end of the day you can sit back and flick on the telly and say to yourself “Hey, I wanted to do something creative today and I did, so hand me the chocolate, yo.” 

Not unlike this blog post, really.

I just read this interview and the above quote in particular got me my mind racing. Especially about this: If you are running around saying that you want to be “a successful musician” – what does that actually mean? What will you be doing from day to day when you are a successful musician?

When I started out in music I knew what I wanted – big crowds, pretty girls falling at my feet, free beer and weed – and a get-out-of-work-free card that lasted the rest of my life (which at that point I saw lasting until about 1998 if I was lucky).

Well I got the first three for a while before the sum combined effect of these gifts on my little boy mind caused a complete blow-out and I went off the music scene radar. And now, at the youthful age of not quite 35 I am playing a kind of music that I can see myself playing when I am 95 and I am eager to get out there and “be a successful musician again”. Not because of the same reasons though. Not because I need the ego trip – but just because I enjoy making music. Not because I think “I’ll be happy when” but because I am happy now – even when I am not (weird but true) – and this gives me a a kind of freedom and confidence to just do what feels right. And not because I want to get rich but (call me a hippy) because I am abundant.

So I have my new CD. And I have well and truly returned to live performance. Yup, I am slowly but surely getting my thang back on the boil.

But what does this actually mean?

Well I know what it doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean hedonistic excess for me anymore – I’m over it. And it doesn’t mean ‘not having to work’ because I love my work which is more like play and have no desire to give most aspects of it up.

And it doesn’t mean “Rock Star”. That concept is hackneyed and irrelevant as far as I am concerned although I concede that this may just be because I am, like, totally ancient.

And I don’t want it to mean countless gigs in front bars full of barflies who don’t care about my music. Why would I bother with that strategy? Popular wisdom has it that you do it to build a following – but is it really an efficient way to do that? I seriously doubt it. All those hours spent negotiating with horrible grumpy egotistical promoters just for that? Pah.

Personally I think that what is called for is a new model. This may not be revolutionary for others, wiser than I, but for me it needs to get clear in my head if I am to take my new music and get it heard by a decent amount of folk who will appreciate it.

So here is the model I have in my head – well it’s a model in the making actually and far from complete (and assumes that great music is being made else why would you bother). It draws on Seth Godin’s “Purple Cow” book and the business strategy called “Blue Ocean Strategy” so instead of being a blue ocean it is a purple one to combine the two (very similar) theories.

My Purple Ocean Music Marketing Model

1. Use Social Media to promote music:
   
   

I know, revolutionary hey? But actually it is.

If you were to successfully use social media to actually sell a largish amount of music then you’d be a God in my eyes because you’d have done it from your lounge room which is actually very flipping revolutionary.

And in my limited but rapidly increasing experience with using SM it is not just a case of jumping up and down screaming “look at me, look at me”. You have to have something to say otherwise you might as well not bother. I suppose there are people who do this already. Be cool to know who and explore their methods.

2. Do Purple Gigs:

Seriously you don’t want to be stuck in front of a screen all the time as this will never come close to the sensation if playing live. (I mean it’s just crazy how much screen I do these days and yet ten or twelve years ago I didn’t have so much as a hotmail account and everything to do with music had nothing to do with computers for me then.)

But like I wrote earlier, I don’t want to do the same old rounds of crap gigs all over again. I might take the easy gigs that come my way but I am sure has hell not going to invest bulk time and energy into chasing two bit gigs. But how to approach playing live then?

Well, I have this model in mind of basically just copying what theatre people do which is they book out a theatre and pre-sell the tickets so that on the night they know how many crew are going to be there and all the emphasis in the lead up to the night is on the actual show itself.

None of this madly texting everybody at 6pm to try and convince them to come out to some crusty bar to hear you sing. No way, instead the idea is to book one night in a small theatre, pre-sell the tickets and then make sure it is such an awesome show that word of mouth kicks into gear and the venues start getting larger.

Think about it like this: Hit theatre shows don’t do endless gigs in two-bit dive bars. They rely on good self-promotion and then word of mouth based on the quality of their show.

3. Sell Across My Brand

What I mean by this is:

• I, Seamus Anthony, am a brand. My brand is that I am a musician, a writer, and an entrepreneur.
• Giving away music is an excellent promotional strategy but relying solely on music sales is a poor business strategy.
• So I will give away as many mp3s for free as people are willing to take. I will also sell them to those who are happy to buy them and will also sell other forms of music like CDs, USB sticks and live shows.
• But I will also sell across the brand into my other offerings. For example, at Rebel Zen me and my business partner Steve have released an eBook I wrote about how to get high without drugs, call Psychedelic Meditation.

So you might come across my free mp3s, dig them, dig my blogging style here, also get into my writing style over at Rebel Zen and then buy the e book.

Voila. I gave away music and free blog content to sell a book. And that’s just one cross selling example. I have many more. But I’d rather do them than hypothesize about them.

• This is where the Blue Ocean theory will come in because a lot of musicians don’t offer other services and products. Ok it has been done – Henry Rollins’ spoken word for example – but it isn’t wide spread and I am not aware of anybody who has offered the kinds of stuff I am thinking of.

4. Start Pumping Out New Music – and partner up to do it.

Although ‘Dogs May Bark’is a 100% solo effort, and while I will surely do more solo stuff, I am currently preparing to team up with some other dudes to release music under a couple of different names. I don’t see why you wouldn’t. Mixing it up with dudes always makes for different music than I would just make by myself, and if one project takes off, then I suppose we’d just run with it. Meanwhile you could cross-sell the acts amongst each other.

5. Re-Package the Past

One thing I think is a real shame is how some bands burn really bright for a while and then just get forgotten because they are not then re-packaged and re-marketed (yeah, I sound like a corporate tosser I know, can’t help it, I flick from business to artists brain really easily, but really I am just a nuff-nuff in a funny hat).

For example I was in one band called reckoning, and not to blow my own trumpet but well, you know, Bwaarp! So me and Peter from this band are getting back together this summer to record new music and meanwhile we are going to put together a website and a best of compilation (plus make all the mp3’s available for sale too) of the old band because it was a great band and more to the point, when I get into a new band or solo artist, I always want to know what other stuff they have done, so I assume that’s how other music fans also think.

So yeah, don’t let the past just die (but focus on making new music of course). Your history gives you context and depth.

6. Just Study the way things are done and try to do new things. (or if not new then just plain excellent).

If any readers could offer some ways to help invent a truly different music marketing model then I’d love to hear them so leave a comment (so far very un-comment-y visitors to this site, I see the stats but I don’t get much feedback, speak up! I love it!)

Enjoy this post?

Then why not
click here to Subscribe by RSS

Or fill in the form below to receive updates to the blog by email. (I hate spam too so relax.)