When Joey Ramone died I spoke briefly with Johnny and he couldn't grasp how many articles and people around the world who was giving tribute to The Ramones and their legacy. he said that they were never that big and never had anything on the charts so he was amazed at how many people that it really concerned.
I guess Johnny never realized how big The Ramones really was. And that is really hard also to understand how big the storm is when you are in the center of it. At the same time is equally hard to understand how small a storm is when you are in the center of it. I was in a discussion with some colleagues and one was supporting a small party in Sweden, but he thought they were bigger. In the last vote in Sweden in his social media, that party was everywhere and he was sure that they would get over 4% of the votes which is the figure to get into the parliament of Sweden when he saw it they would get about 8 to 10 % of the votes. When the vote was over, this party had 3,5% and never got in.
This is the backside of social media. The storm is around you so you might think it's bigger than it is. Before this, it was the opposite around. Then your fame could be out there but you didn't know it in full scales, like The Ramones. They never got a hit but were big anyway. Ther positive side is that today its kind of easy to find out around social media where people are talking around you. The negative side is that you can easily kill the dream that you are big in Japan by checking it out fast.
The problem I see now is that people think that they should get treated like there were big just because they have created a small storm. In the old days the storm had to be in that size to be bigger but yes the storm has to be so much bigger today to count to the same degree.
You are not important just because you work on Universals PR department in Denmark. Just because Universal creates a lot of big artists every year, you still just a small part of a big machinery. even that one of the songs even got number one in Denmark is actually your work it could be the waves of someones work in the USA.
Just because they rotated your song on 25 college radio stations makes your music in the position that every radio station should play that song.
Just because you where in the biggest TV program in Sweden, not everyone in Sweden knows about you. In reality, pretty few know about you.
I can relate to this. When you work on a label you are the worst storm builder there is. With the smallest success and you build up that everyone in this region should know about my latest release. How the fuck hasn't they never heard about the band that had the 10th most played song on Swedish national radio this year, I think? Of course, all people in your social media network (around 2500 people) knows about it. They are probably tired of you telling about it. But since the world is much bigger just Sweden 10 millions of people they don't know about it. I meet a lady that is middle age but live in the countryside and haven't heard about the metoo hashtag. So your release is kind of unknown.
Right now I really don't know how big storm you have to create. More important how to create it. Also if I know when it's created? Is still that I can't really check on social media where I have some traction. Can I still be big in Japan since they re using other systems to listen to music? I guess one of my hopes is there.
And that hope sometimes gives people the urge to think that you should celebrate someone that really haven't achieved much and that is bothering me right now. There are too many false prophets out there.
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