Liner Note #44: October 2014

Whoops, I missed September’s liner note entirely. It’s been kinda busy. I do have some site news to catch you all up on, though, regarding Daron’s Guitar Chronicles and related stuff:

1) Livejournal mirror works again. — Turns out the WP to Twitter plugin I installed when I upgraded WP somehow broke the LJ plugin, but I’ve nuked it now. Those of you who read on LJ or Dreamwidth at work because DGC itself is blocked, rejoice! Sorry about the interruption.

2) Wattpad re-read barreling along! — Thanks to ChrisK. who has been helping me keep a new chapter hitting Wattpad every day, including Saturdays and Sundays. That means every day you guys can “star” a new chapter over there (Wattpad’s version of “like” “upvote” “favorite”) and help us find new readers. If we keep it up, we have a good chance for DGC to become a Wattpad “Featured Story”! (And please comment? Comments count for a lot.)

3) You can always upvote DGC at Top Web Fiction: http://topwebfiction.com/!

4) KICKSTARTER Fulfillment! OK, now we’re really getting close. 🙂 I’m waiting for the final corrections I sent to the designer to be input to the layout, and I have to finish the Timeline! And I’ll get the details on T-shirt sizes and styles this week so I can send out the surveys to all backers. I’ll work on that timeline… tonight!

Daron: Okay, are you ready for something less serious after all that?

ctan: Sure.

Daron: I thought you’d be amused by this list of World’s Richest Guitarists which I first saw on the Gibson website but which comes from TheRichest.com. Can you guess who is on the list?

ctan: Eric Clapton, Keith Richards?

Daron: Clapton’s number six, $250 million, and Richards is number two, at $340 million.

ctan: I don’t know. I figure whoever is on there has to be someone with both longevity and a lot of record sales over a long period of time, but also enough name recognition to have endorsement deals, music used in ads, etc.

Daron: You’re right about that. Jimmy Buffett tops the list. Net worth: $400 million.

ctan; Of course! He’s a whole industry. I hadn’t thought of him as a guitarist but yeah, of course.

Daron: Not surprising to see Tom Petty on the list either. But… Dave Grohl?

ctan: Dave Grohl? Of Nirvana/Foo-Fighters?

Daron: Yeah. Definitely the youngest one on the list.

ctan: He’s involved in so much besides just the Foo Fighters, too. He’s everywhere, it seems. Every time I turn around I see him involved in something. Documentaries, charity events, he’s even in this:

Daron: Wild. It’s interesting to me that they seem to have equal numbers of male and female performers, no?

ctan: If you don’t count the Beach Boys, and you count the one group of five singing together (is that One Direction? I’m guessing…) then yeah, you have ten male artists and ten female artists. And if you count the orchestra musicians whose faces appear, I think the women have a slight edge.

Daron: Do people even realize it didn’t used to be like that? Orchestras were very male-dominated and pop music went through a pretty stupid time in the 1980s and early 1990s when it was like people had forgotten how many records female artists could sell, or something.

ctan: Check out that other list from The Richest, of last year’s top grossing musicians.

Daron: Is Beyonce at the top?

ctan: No! Surprisingly she’s only at #10. And I would have thought Jay Z would make this list, too, but maybe he had an off year? But Lady Gaga is high on the list, too.

Daron: Wow. Some of these are listed as earning $3 million per city on their tours. I know that’s the gross income, not the net, but man. I’m trying to do the math in my head. Venues are the same size, you know.

ctan: I know, but look at the places Beyonce’s going, for example. Sun Life Stadium in Miami. Gilette Stadium in Foxborough. These are 50,000+ seats each, and you’ve got tickets going for $50 to $250.

Daron: Fifty thousand seats at fifty bucks each is, wow. Two and a half million dollars. Even if your expenses are high, they’re not THAT high. We were lucky on the 1989 tour that we were banking, what, $20,000 a night? I mean net income after expenses. And it could have easily been half that if Carynne hadn’t put us on a shoestring.

ctan: Well, maybe it’s useful to see that difference, given what Ziggy’s going to try to do.

Daron: No spoilers, you said.

ctan: Right. Here, look at this. One of the odder gigs I can imagine anyone having:

Daron: That is awesome!

ctan: It’s call the Rodafonio. There’s a whole collection of videos of the thing in action here: http://factoriacircular.wordpress.com/videosrodafonio/

Daron: While we’re sharing street music, I think this link came recommended from ChrisK? It’s one guy (Bryson Andres), a violin, and a repeater effects pedal. I’ve seen a lot of buskers use this pedal but this guy is one of the best:

ctan: What else you got?

Daron: Dunno. What else you got?

ctan: I want to remind folks who may be writers or publishers that the Bisexual Book Awards is now open for nominees for this year. Details online at the Bi Writers Organization: http://www.biwriters.org/bi-book-awards/. Assuming we get the book out in time, which I think we will, I’ll be submitting the Kickstarter omnibus to it. After all, I think more people you know identify as bisexual than anything else.

Daron: And some of us who don’t might kind of fit the definition anyway?

ctan: You said it, not me.

Daron: Just being realistic. I’m not good at identifying with any label, really. Oh yeah, which reminds me, we just missed Coming Out Day.

ctan: Well, and Bi Pride Day was September 23rd. Also known as Bisexual Visibility Day and Celebrate Bisexuality Day, depending on who you’re listening to. All of the above.

Daron: How fitting.

ctan: I had a minor rant on Tristan Taormino’s podcast the other day, actually. We were taking questions from listeners and one asked the “but is using the term bisexual bad?” because it supports the gender binary? And I said something like “Many of us started using the term ‘bisexual’ before there was anything else in common use that wasn’t one of the big binary category words like gay or straight. It was the only word that wasn’t at either extreme and the word doesn’t SUPPORT the gender binary so much as acknowledge that the binary categories exist and therefore something has to be outside of them.” I have to go listen to the archive of the podcast to get it right. Well, actually, if any of you are interested it’s here: Sex Out Loud Radio: Cecilia Tan on BDSM, Rock Stars and Fame

Daron: You do realize that we better stop doing this liner note and prep tomorrow’s actual chapter.

ctan: Oh crap, you’re right. Let’s get on that.

4 Comments

  • Seana says:

    LOVE the videos. I mean, how cool is Rodafonio…made me laugh. And I doubt most of those people hearing Bryson realize he’s using a petal…that it’s all him. Wow. Thanks for sharing!!

    • ctan says:

      Well, it is all him, it’s just him and himself. 🙂 And yeah, corwin says if he ever did Burning Man or something like that he’d want to build a Rodafonio!

  • Bill Heath says:

    Thank you for shining a tiny light on collaborative creativity. Daron used to count which songs were his and which were Ziggy’s. This time he wasn’t sure which parts were whose. That is a creative experience approaching the divine.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *