Adam Schatz is a musician, writer, record producer and human being. His band Landlady has three records out and another on the way. He most recently produced Allegra Krieger’s album The Joys of Forgetting and has successfully cooked pad thai, soup dumplings and bagels since the pandemic began. He has a monthly Patreon page and that is currently his only monthly income, isn’t that cool? His favorite new hobby is getting emailed by coffee shops he’s been to once. Find him on Twitter here and hear Landlady here.
(Photo credit: Sasha Arutyunova.)
Pip pip, how’s everyone doing? Bad? Let’s get to it! I’m back with a new edition of “Problem Solving with Adam Schatz” where I, Adam Schatz, try to solve the music industry’s most pressing problems as a way of putting off dealing with my own issues.
This month’s topic: The Wrong Free Stuff
Now, we all have been alive on this sorry excuse for a spinning orb long enough to know that just by waking up every morning and spitting into our spittoon we’re participating in capitalism. Sure, the spittoon used to be forged by a guy in town who liked his metal molten and his lovers impatient, but now if you turn your spittoon over you’ll be sad to see a Target logo, and while the rage may drive smoke out of your ears, you’ll be disheartened to read a “Buckets by Chanel” imprint on the bottom of the bucket. Is nothing pure anymore?
The answer may surprise you. Yes! Nothing is pure. We’ve blown it! Even the smell of a fresh flower can trigger an allergic reaction on par with the Hindenburg explosion, and you know those fresh rose allergies didn’t exist before the Reagans started sneaking microplastics into our chocolate milks at school.
But there’s hope! Being alive in such a stupid time gives us musicians one grand benefit: you can’t sell out anymore. It’s simply impossible. Sure, Beach House can keep their song out of a Volkswagen advertisement, but they can’t avoid breathing in air on the daily that comes loaded with enough auto fumes to cause their doctor to declare them “20% car” by the end of their lives. The veil is off, the shards of our industry are being propped up by an alternation of family money and blood money, so we might as well take the free stuff from a brand when we can get it.
So what’s the issue here? Well. When you begin your triumphant limp down the winding road of success in music, you’ll begin to notice a pattern. Yes, sometimes there is free stuff, but it is always the wrong free stuff. Let’s work our way through the big three, and consider some alternatives.
1. Alcohol
Number one with a bullet! Catalyst of cocktails! Wrecker of families! Poison in a bottle! That’s right baby, from your earliest days as a pre-post-punk songwriter, you are lured into the doofus economy of rock & roll with the promise of free drinks. But as your buzzkill gym teacher always reminded you before taking the dollar you found on the ground and pocketing it for himself (for the new dodgeball/Marlboro Light fund) nothing in this life is really free. In the case of alcohol at a bar you’re performing in, they’re giving it away to you at cost, and marking that under “G” for “good deed” rather than under “F” for what F usually stands for.
Alternative Solution: Cash Equivalent
Imagine a world where the bar just gives the band the cash equivalent of what the free drinks are worth to the bar, then let the band members who want to drink spend that money on beer (at cost) and the band members who don’t want to drink put that cash in a bad cryptocurrency investment. Sure, we knew that PabstBlueRibbonCoin was going to flop, but it’s a failure far more exciting than when you accidentally kick over a draft beer onto your Rat pedal right before you’re supposed to rip a solo.
2. Clothing
I’m saying clothing, but what I really mean is Vans. It’s Vans. It’s always, always, always Vans. The sock of shoes. The disposable razor of shoes. The poorly made shoe of shoes. There’s a reason Vans has free shoes to give to anyone who has considered strumming a guitar, and I think it has something to do with a Producers-esque scheme where they can actually make more money as a company if they never sell anything. Then, they monetize the footage of countless singers parading across the stage at Bonnaroo, slipping on their grip-less Vans, flying into the air like Harry and Marv on the ice. While these shoes are free, they are ultimately a burden, and being a brilliant artist is burdensome enough. These voices in my head, all competing for attention, eventually taking turns shouting “You’re talented! You’re humble! You’re physically fit!” My life is torture and these free bad shoes aren’t helping.
Alternative Solution: Free Cleats!
Where’s the Umbro stage at SXSW when you need it? I want it to rain down cleats with arch support and tiny black shorts, then we can have a healthy scrimmage before watching the headliner go on.
Second Alternative: Cash Equivalent
3. Instruments
Now I know not everyone is getting free instruments. In fact, most of the people getting a free guitar, bass, snare drum or wireless MIDI kazoo are the exact people who could afford another one of those things. It’s no mystery why those with the highest visibility are the ones being gifted the items of actual merit (and I’ve even benefitted from this on occasion, which is why I’m writing this column under my nom de plume “Adam Schatz” and not my real name, Rob Thomas). Now plenty of friends of mine get a free instrument from time to time, and they’re not millionaires, but the fact remains that there’s plenty of things we could use more than another guitar, and there’s plenty of people out there who have no instruments whose lives would be immensely changed by the appearance of one.
Alternative Solution: Sponsor A Kid
The big brand can swoop in and give each of us a wallet-sized photo of a kid whose first guitar was bequeathed to them in our honor. I can get regular updates on the songs cute little Zachariah is learning and how practicing his instrument is causing his cute little GPA to plummet.
Second alternative: Instrument Removal
We are gifted the tools to carry out a heist on an artist who has recently been given a free instrument who absolutely does not need a free instrument. The big brand provides us with a bag man, a getaway car and driver, demolitions expert, pickpocket-y person, and we get to keep both the night-vision goggles and the stethoscope you use for safe cracking. Whatever synthesizers we make off with will be thrown off the back of a truck to children in a city where that artist never has toured again because they don’t “cheer loudly enough.”
Third Alternative: Cash Equivalent
♦
“What the hell, Rob Thomas!” you might say, “if none of this free stuff is good enough, then what would you prefer? No free stuff?!” To which I’d reply “No, you fool!” as I sprint away in my free Vans, before the soles give out and I tear both my ACLs.
WHAT FREE STUFF ARTISTS MIGHT ENJOY INSTEAD:
- Healthcare (to help sort out these pesky torn ACLs)
- Free electricity from ConEd in exchange for us posting a cute picture on Instagram every time we use electricity
- Shit, I’d gladly play on the Wind Farm stage at Riot Fest if a giant windmill could blow me back east on a hang glider
- More free healthcare to get some medication to help me focus more on writing columns and less on imagining how cool I’d look grabbing onto a hang glider 100 feet above I-80
- Free product from the various manufacturers of ergonomic chairs, saunas, books that are challenging to read but not too challenging that they make you feel stupid, comfortable winter hats, accounting software, positive affirmation tapes, mouth guards, expensive face lotions, ball and paddle games, puppies, kitties, birdies (that go to sleep when you go to sleep), razor scooters, expensive pesto, robots that teach you how to stretch properly and also will fight beside you in the coming techno wars, fog machines, bubble machines, bread makers, bread takers (if you’re gluten free), head massagers, those cool portable DVD players they used to sell in the Sharper Image, old Sharper Image catalogs, playing cards, waffle makers, waffle takers (see before) and high speed blenders.
- One last bit of free healthcare to help with issues related to the high-speed blender and other ailments you remembered the moment you got home after seeing the doctor last.
And more! Remember, just because everyone tells you you’re not worth more doesn’t mean you can’t convince yourself that you deserve better! So the next time someone offers you a free pair of Vans, you look them square in the eyes and tell them that you won’t accept any less than a Saucony. And when they tell you you’re pronouncing Saucony incorrectly, that’s when you grab the phone out of their hands and sell it for its cash equivalent on the dark web. The dark web is just what I call the whole internet now, because it makes me feel so bad.
See ya next time everybody!
