A message from the CEO.

Since the last time I wrote a proper post, we’ve played five gigs – our first five gigs. Each of them represents a co-ordinate on an ever-steepening learning curve for me, and there has been plenty of data to process over the past few months. The bulk of the data has related to the management side of things. I’ve received a lot of advice, and testament to the tailspin our industry is in, all of it has been wildly contradictory. It’s reinforced the truism for me that no one knows what the hell you’re supposed to do or who the hell you’re supposed to do it to.

Far from being cause for despair this is actually really liberating. It says to me that pandering and compromise have been completely stripped of their usefulness– to whom do you pander? Towards what ideal or audience should you compromise yourself? Fuck it, this is license to be yourself, because if success remains elusive as it's likely to do anyway, integrity maintained is surely the best second prize.

For all its frustrations, I think this is why I’ve actually enjoyed managing the band up to this point, no matter how limited my capacity. As band members one of the only things you have control over is yourselves - you can’t control how people choose to see or portray or reproduce you but you can make sure that the source material is honest. It’s a lot easier to keep this on track when you are the nexus through which the info comes and goes.

Also, I don’t know if it’s getting older or having been crunched through the machine once before but my irrational sense of entitlement (which was raging in my youth) has pretty much been ground to dust and lost to the breeze. Every week I hear just as many new bands that inspire and awestrike me as disgust me, so who the hell are we to claim any special right? I’m not saying I’m above shouting “YOU’VE GOT TO BE FUCKING JOKING!” at the radio every now and then, but having an atrophied entitlement gland makes it a lot easier to manage the frustration and resentment of working your arse off while your wallet empties.

As you can see from the first line I actually intended for this post to be about the gigs but it went some(probably more boring)where else. Apologies, I’ll write about the gigs next.

Briscoecorp AGM 2012