| Am I Alone in This? Bill Bottrell in the January 2001 New Settler |
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they were successful, and they filled up every club they went to. People were singing with them. In the middle of the rust belt. In 1992, 93, they were doing earth anthems and playing djembes. They had two female lead singers and one male and they were just a fabulous outfit. Everybody who showed up loved them. And they were making a living. Well, then Mercury Records called me up - bigshot producer - and wanted to have me hear these guys and produce them. I heard them, I loved them, I said, "Yes, I want to produce them," and I made a record of them just playing live in my studio-very cheaply. And they went back to their work and sold a lot of records. But! the next time I met them, they were different people. They'd been touring, they'd been going all around the country where the record company told them to go. One of the female members quit. And they |
had lost their vision - I think. And I think they couldn't help but do that in the face of the system they were trying to work in. How do you get your music out and avoid being coopted, morphed? BILL: That is the problem. I don't know. I'm doing my best for myself and my band. There is so much more I could do and I don't know how. We need an alternative - more than ever, we have no alternative. It needs to be conceived and invented and put together. A whole system of independent music. I know what the building blocks are. I'm no architect.I don't have the discipline to put something like that together. But first of all, young musicians need to see that it is okay to play locally. They need to see that playing live is what musicians do. And I guess I'm trying to |