Gone to the Dark Side

I've gone to the dark side and opened up a MySpace account for RadioFreeLopez. I've been thinking about this for awhile and even though I loathe the place for being clunky and ugly, it is a great place to network especially for musicians. I found this out when working with my friend Alice DiMicele. She really got possessed and went crazy gathering 'friends.' Old friends, new friends, musician friends, fans. She was able to connect with folks and put out some preview tracks before she officially released her latest CD. You can put a musicians song on your page so it makes for great viral marketing to be there as a musician, sharing your stuff with other folks and spreading it around the web. Along the way she even found some of my friends that I had lost touch with years ago cause they were led to her site and saw my name on her page.

Now my pals Esther Golton and Wholewheat Radio are there too. I decided to get with the program and have RadioFreeLopez go down the dark hole with them. Esther is releasing a new CD this fall and it's great to hear a track and see her putting everything in place as she embarks on this exciting next step of her musical journey.

For RadioFreeLopez I just want musicians to know we're putting on some great shows here on this little rock, and let them know they might want to consider taking a little voyage across the water. Hopefully this won't become more of a time waster for me and I won't get inundated with spam or too much mail. I'm already getting a fair bit of inquiries from the RadioFreeLopez website from musicians wanting to play. I'm having to kinda weed through the chaff a bit. I only have so much energi, and am doing it for free at this point, all $'s going directly to the artist minus venue costs. I'm narrowing it down to only putting on shows that I am passionate about and have time and energi for. One show a month is really about the max I can do.

It's hard turning people down. I have to learn to be polite and not personal. I'm also getting quite a number of inquiries from islanders who have great ideas, or cousins or daughters who play music and would I like to........???? Probably not. Once people realize you can pull off stuff they are all over you for putting on their passion. I'm letting folks know they can rent my sound system for a donation for things they are passionate about. So far no takers. I guess the passion dies when they have to put their own time and energi into it and not have it done for them.

I'm not sure where this is all going in the long run. I'm rethinking and chewing on my present scenario as I'm not independently wealthy and there might be some clever ways I can dream up where I could actually get paid for this. That wasn't the original intent but it sure would be a bonus besides the wonderful feeling I have from filling up our old halls with great music and seeing people smile. Meanwhile I'm readying for the next show coming up tomorrow; The Foghorn Stringband, and RadioFreeLopez has made a little presence on MySpace. So won't you go down the dark hole with me and be my friend?