Inklings. Why a boring private life doesn’t work anymore. Authenticity. The Incontintental Network

Roger CortonWe need to gin up ticket sales. Give me something exciting.

JCHAs you know, that’s getting tougher with each passing day.

RCWhy? We’ve had this discussion many times. Even if you’re not touring, you’re writing, recording. That’s interesting to fans.

JCHLook, the average person in Facebookistan has more people interested in what they had for breakfast than what I’m doing. (sighs) OK, you like Lord Of The Rings and all that fantasy stuff, right?

RCWho doesn’t?

JCHCool. So I just finished reading this book ‘The Inklings’; it’s a group biography of this supposed circle of great literary figures at Oxford. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, etc.

RCThe Inklings. I’ve heard of them. And I would be interested in that…

JCH…BORRRRRRRING! These guys who wrote all this fantastic stuff were some seriously boring guys. So trust me, this is a boring book. I mean, you […]

The first of a two-part ‘interview’ I did last week with long-time supporter Roger Corton. He’s collated e-mails I’ve received on the new record and then we sat down to do an interview of ten questions. (OK, due to my penchant for ‘digressions’ there are probably more than ten. 😀 ) Also–and this is big–Roger has agreed to take over some occasional web duties for me in the (perhaps vain) hope that I’ll have a bit more time for music making. This first baby step in ceding control: he’s elected to leave this text far more ‘raw’ than I would have done . Cheers!

RCBefore we get started, I know you hate doing this, so thanks. You know it’s for your own good, right?

JCHOK, Ma. I heard an interview with Chrissie Hynde the other day that just shocked me. It was the first time in maybe twenty years I heard an artist get, in any way, bitchy with the interviewer.

RCAnd that’s a good […]

My grandfather used to go on all the time about how fascinating America was. His chief fascination was, “all the ways one can make money!” He didn’t just revel in the idea of the bazaar (a thousand shops, Sahib!). No, what got his juices really going was the creativity. He thought that when a guy came up with a particularly unique business idea? His quote: “Now that’s creative!”

(OK, so he didn’t live to see derivatives trading. I wonder what a guy without even a high school education would’ve thought of that kind of “creativity”. (My rule of thumb? If you don’t understand this kind of derivative? You’ve got no business dealing the financial kind.)

But that sub-rant aside, there are a ton of creative ways to make a living. But what my grandfather really meant was not so much the execution as much as coming up with the idea. “He thought it up and figured out how to get people to pay for it!” Right. […]

The first time I heard this word; the first time I heard that sentence, was the last time I wanted to hear that word or that sentence. My understanding is that the word came into being in the 70’s and I believe it. It is not a word created as were so many by Shakespeare or Milton. It is not a word of mercantile necessity from the 18th century. It isn’t even a word of 19th century commerce and business. It is a word of pure marketing and thus purely post-modern. Blechh.

OK, so how can I incentivize you to buy an album before December 24th, 2012? 😀

On December 24th I will be switching the ‘processor’ that connects my music to the various e-commerce sites. This is not the same as a ‘credit card processor’. Rather, this is yet another machination of the music biz. To keep out the riff-raff (get it?) every artist not linked to a major label must go through one of these ‘brokers’ in order to be […]