It starts that someone that is your friend suddenly has seen or met an artist in some unusual place. Weddings or vacations are not that unusual. They think they have found the artist of a lifetime. I guess it is the situation as well. Like when you are on vacation that cheap wine was much better on your vacation then the bottles you bought to bring back home.
Maybe that is the reason why your friend actually thinks that you should all your trust into a 40-year-old sing-songwriter that has been playing in a bar in a tourist hotel for the past seven years. Even if you explain that it's not that good they just roll their eyes and ask what they should do to get this guy on the top chart, he really deserves it.
Of course, this is a hopeless case. The reason he is on this spot is that he hasn't the drive enough. when you work in the business you kind of see that straight away. If he was gods gift to mankind musically he would have gone somewhere.
I was on a showcase in NYC with a very big A&R from a major label. We where backstage talking to a band she was working with. Laster on another artist came in a girl with a guitar. She sat down and played some songs as a warm-up. She talked a bit with us complaining that it was so hard to find the right people in the business especially the A&R:s we kept our poker faces and she played another tune. She was good, I admit it. Then the A&R asked some questions. How long she had been in NYC? The guitar girl told us that she had been in an art school and moved to new york seven years ago. she also revealed that she was 28. The A&R asked a bit of her home town and what inspiration she had. After a while, it was her time to go on stage and she went out.
I looked at my friend and just said: She should just have known what our profession is.
It doesn't matter my friend said. She gave it away quite quickly. I mean if she has spent seven years here in NYC and hasn't gone anywhere it's something wrong with her drive. It should have happened things already if she had what it takes. I mean the songs are good and there is talent there. But she has spent to a long time just wandering around making nothing. So not interesting.
As a professional, you just see it like that. This girl is the person my friend will drag along ten years later. and then it's even more too late.
What really makes me puzzled is when professionals do the same mistake. Especially people that have a job to bring new talent forward. This morning I just had that. A friend that has a job to bring local talent forward. He was presenting new acts for me. The first he brought up was an artist that my friend had on his label some years ago. First of all these persons in this band have had like six different projects. Soon a project is not going good they jump off and just change the name. It's not like we never have seen them in the business before. Then they are 45 and play punk music. Okay, fun but not interesting. On top of that, they have families and can't tour. Why on earth are you presenting this hopeless case to me? Why support something that is really going nowhere?
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