Oh the horror of being small. Ask anyone. It sucks. I’m not just talking about being 5’8” in a world where the average male height seems to be 6 foot a million inches. I’m not simply referring to driving a Saturn in a world of SUVs. I’m talking about being in a small, independent band. I’m talking about working at a small business. I’m talking about that horrible powerless feeling that comes with knowing that in the big scheme of things, the people you have to rely on simply don’t give a fuck about your business.
Whether it’s my recent experience with BlueCross BlueShield – where I’ve got a contract that says one thing and they simply WON’T solve the problem – or knowing that calling and complaining about some bug with my computer will be more trouble than it’s worth, every day I see the unfair side of uncontrolled capitalism. It’s nothing new, so please, just excuse my rant.
“Empires bought stability at the price of creating a parasitic court; monotheistic religions bought social cohesion at the expense of a parasitic priestly class; nationalism bought power at the expense of a parasitic military; socialism bought equality at the price of a parasitic bureaucracy; capitalism bought efficiency at the price of parasitic financiers.” Thanks Dr. Matt Ridley (“The Rational Optimist”).
In our capitalist society, humanity and quality get pushed to the side in favour of quantity and profit margin. There’s no pride in our world, it’s just about getting things done – and not to the best of one’s ability, but with as little as you can get away with. And I feel the drag of this lowest-common-denominator. When met with this constant malaise and the inertia of “good enough”, I can feel the desire to just sit back and ignore my audience, and brush off my customer, and to just SIT.
See – a very bad cat. And yet you’ll notice there sure are a LOT of photographs of her being bad. You’d be correct in assuming that to a certain extent this means we encourage her sins. I guess it’s cause she’s so DAMNED CUTE!!!
Fortunately (?) I’m a creature of pride. I need to stun people and flirt and charm. And sometimes I’m good at it and sometimes I’m bad at it – but I don’t know how not to try to do it. Striving is what we’re built to do as humans, but now we’ve got an immense societal pressure to simply scrape along the bottom. A large corporation doesn’t have to worry about the tiny ones, the tiny ones have to step carefully to avoid being crushed by the large ones. We’re not seen as part of the structure, we’re seen as a small trickle in a revenue stream to be abused and squeezed, scolded or ignored.
Wal-Mart can DICTATE their supplier’s prices because they often corner the market of distribution. It doesn’t matter what the production cost of the actual widget is, Wal-Mart is replacing the market pressure of consumer demand with a monopoly on the distribution of those widgets. Sell them at Wal-Mart’s prices, or don’t sell them at all. And they carefully strike a balance just ABOVE starving their suppliers out of existence.
ilyAIMY, the House of Musical Traditions, to a certain extent the school system that Heather works in when we’re not touring… we are all tiny fish at the bottom of our food chains, battling bigger bands, bigger brands, bigger stores, more “important” government programs. We have to creatively use what little we’ve got, be very careful with what little we get and generally try to maintain our dignity as the venues and suppliers and politicians hand us their scraps.
ilyAIMY’s been moving up in the world. Perhaps it’s merely our self-perceived value – we refuse to settle for as little as we used to. As always, there will be those who look at our business model and think of us as stunningly successful, and others who are disgusted at how we just give it away. In turn, I look at some other artists and think they’re really screwing their audiences and being unfair with their venues (and frankly aren’t worth the money), and I think that other artists are cheapening the field as a whole, making venues believe we should play for tips and encouraging audiences to feel we should be giving our music away for free.
I keep telling myself I need to take it easy after a KramerBooks show – and then I keep booking things where we’ve got to be there by 11am or so. There’s nothing quite like playing a show that’s a benefit for building the route by which you need to get to the show. It was a bit tense getting the gear down the under-construction woodland stairs, but all the volunteers stepped to one side and saluted us with their shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, and that was kind of fun…. sort of like being saluted by a peasant rebellion. Our little stage at Lockhouse 8 performing for National Trails Day for the Potomac Conservancy.
Working at HMT I’ve got a fresh appreciation for how a small business fights every day. Unable to get the lowest quantity discounts that Guitar Center or Best Buy gets from the same suppliers, we still have to compete with their prices. We pride ourselves on our service and the overall experience of our shop, but are too small to fulfill everyone’s needs. Our suppliers recognize that we have a very narrow bargaining position and there are those that don’t even feel obligated to answer the phone… we only order x thousand dollars a year and they figure (usually correctly) that we’ll just take what we are given. We’re kept waiting for things that the big box stores receive immediately, we have to fight and whine and pester – what gets more attention? The squeaky wheel? Or the 400 pound gorilla? It’s a constant struggle.
In a perfect world, the marketplace WOULD be better if there were just the big box stores. They’d care about the shopping EXPERIENCE and they’d be able to fulfill everyone’s needs. They’d repair every single thing and they’d STILL offer amazing prices. They’d change our their fluorescent bulbs with something a little more aesthetically pleasing and their sales staff would get a kick out of their job and above all, they’d care. But it’s not a perfect world. No matter how hard the kid in Guitar Center works, their bean counters will be dissatisfied. They will look at ways to squeeze, and the consumer gets caught in the crush. I think of us small creatures as keeping the big ones honest… but it’s really not an easy job – and if the big corporations are FORCED to care about people, the environment, the world – we call it communism.
No wonder everyone dreams of being a superhero. No wonder our vigilante movies get more and more violent. The system just doesn’t have space for us little guys and yet we’re imperative. An iron maiden that keeps us alive and kicking despite the damage, despite the constant message that no-one cares, despite the feeling that everyone’s simply out to screw us.
Nothing new. Excuse my rant.
