lobelia.net

A dear friend of mine recently wrote a column on a love/advice blog. His general theme was how women blame men for placing unrealistic expectations on them so that they are struggling the rest of their lives to appear young and perfect whilst men are allowed to become paunchy, grey and bald as part of the normal aging process. His consensus was that we give men too much credit. That men aren’t intelligent enough to mastermind such a skillful plan and although they are happy to encourage such “ongoing maintenance”, are not the perpetrators of pristine. He goes on to name women as the ones who place unrealistic expectations on themselves; through a competitiveness of spirit. So ladies, what do you think? Are we fighting a losing battle against ourselves?

I of course disagree with some of Kev’s article. I think men do place a lot of importance on looks. Almost all the women with serious body issues I know were told by a male figure in their young lives that there was something wrong with their physicality. My biological father told me when I was young that I was “fat” and would never get a boyfriend until I lost weight. Another friend of mine had a male family member tell her that she had “fat legs”. We’ve carried these emotional weights with us throughout the entirety of our lives and believe me, they weigh in a lot heavier than what it tells me on the scale. While it’s not the fault of the whole of the male race…I’m sorry boys but I don’t think we can totally exonerate you.

I do agree with Kev that women are competitive. REALLLY competitive at times. No one has ever been harder on me than I’ve been on myself, and I’ve rarely seen a man be CRUEL in the same way I see women be to one another on a daily basis, myself included. Why do we feel the need to do this? Why must we constantly critique the style and body type of other women? I can only speak for myself here and say that I do it because I feel inadequate. I feel some weird sense of guilt that I’m not doing more to make myself look perfect. When I see someone truly lovey, I feel the need to pick at something. It’s a type of feminine psychosis really.

In another way, I feel that we’re just continuing a trend that been going on since the beginning of civilised society. Women as the so-called weaker sex, have been expected to conform throughout history to be the embodiment of whatever trend was meant to personify femininity at that particular time. It’s all very political. What about bound feet? This was considered extremely erotic in the Qing dynasty…but beyond eroticism it limited a woman’s mobility and cause her to be dependent on her family for the rest of her life. In the 1800’s it was whalebone corsets, causing some women to actually have ribs removed in order to cinch their waists a bit tighter. All this in order to compete for a more desirable husband. Today it’s liposuction, breast implants and plastic surgery. We no longer need someone else to take care of us, so why do we still allow ourselves to compete for an ideal that is unattainable?

Because beneath the surface of our society, the perception of physical attractiveness still has a hand in dictating our place in it. I think sometimes people forget that women had to fight for that place (relatively recently I might add), that we’re still fighting. We’ve allowed society to sell us a fantasy that says if we look a certain way that our lives will be fulfilled; while we totally ignore the problems that exist beneath our skin. We’re depicted in the media as sex-objects; yet expected to be chaste according to our religion. We’ve got a lot of issues, and rightly so. Perhaps we could all take a lesson from the following anonymous declaration of self-esteem….

I am me.

In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. There are persons who have some parts like me, but no one adds up exactly like me. Therefore, everything that comes out of me is authentically mine because I alone chose it.

I own everything about me – my body, including everything it does; my mind, including all its thoughts and ideas; my eyes, including the images of all they behold; my feelings, whatever they may be – anger, joy, frustration, love, disappointment, excitement; my mouth, and all the words that come out of it, polite, sweet or rough, correct or incorrect; my voice, loud or soft; and all my actions, whether they be to others or to myself.

I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears.

I own all my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes.

Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing I can love me and be friendly with me in all my parts. I can then make it possible for all of me to work in my best interests.

I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know. But as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for the solutions to the puzzles and for ways to find out more about me.

However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is me. This is authentic and represents where I am at that moment in time.

When I review later how I looked and sounded, what I said and did, and how I thought and felt, some parts may turn out to be unfitting. I can discard that which is unfitting, and keep that which proved fitting, and invent something new for that which discarded.

I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me.

I own me, and therefore I can engineer me.

I am me and I am okay.

Things have been a bit busy around here but I’m finally getting back to updating you on what’s happened of late with sonicbids. Lou Paniccia is a credit to the sonicbids team as he is so on top of everything that’s going on out there and fielding complaints and comments and getting a resolution or at least setting the wheels in very quickly. It must be a pretty difficult position to be in given the controversy of late surrounding their business practices. Lou assures me that they are doing their best to resolve all the issues so please do not hesitate to contact him.

So here’s my original list of unresolved issues and Lou’s answers (quoting his emails with permission) to what is going on with them…

Music ¬ The Sound of Independents and The Indie Music Fund have placed you on Standby. You can view the messages they have sent you in the My Submissions tab of your Submit to Gigs section. Both appear to have you on Standby for this long duration because they wish to keep you on file: The Sound of Independents is waiting for the appropriate program to put you on, and the Indie Music Fund is still generating funds to reach their first milestone. Sonicbids assists you in getting your EPK to the promoter, as well as ensuring that they view and consider your EPK but once there is a notification, it is up to the artist and promoter to begin correspondence (kinda like buyers and sellers on eBay).

He then provided me with email adresses for them.

We talked with the New Music Showcase Television Show (Season 3) promoter yesterday, and they should be updating the status for submissions that are past their status notification due date in the next week or so.

We have not contacted the promoter for GuitarTam Music just yet, because they have status notifications set to get back to artists within 60 days of their submission (this would be July 5 for you). You can see the status notification date by clicking the “Status” button next to your submission under the “My Submissions” tab in the Promoter Drop Box. That being said, I noticed this promoter commented on your blog post.

Considering that GuitarTam was the one company I didn’t take a swipe at in my original post, I can safely say I won’t be hearing positive news about my submissions there. Here’s an excerpt of her comment to me…“Additionally artists that make multiple submissions of the same type of song does themself a dis-service you would be much better served to select two very different styles. I don’t need to hear the 300th singer songwriter submission that has hit my box for the day. I’m sure your turn of lyric is fantastic, but what sets it apart from the other 299 I JUST HEARD…. nothing then skip on to the next one.” Nice. You can read her comment on the first sonicbids post.

So there you go. I really do think that sonicbids is trying to do right by everyone. I also think (speaking for myself here) that a lot of us don’t have time to go chasing up promoters when they don’t respond (she says writing a 2000 word blog). I was on tour 7 months out of last year, I barely had time to answer emails and quickly update my sites. I think that’s what I believed I was paying sonicbids to do. The responses that I received from promoters within sonicbids were little more than form letters. None of them had my name on them. If I had gotten a personal email from the promoter telling me they were keeping me on standby to consider me for future shows then none of this would have been an issue. In turn I would have known I could contact the promoter directly.

Moving on….Amy from Clatter (they’re amazing…go have a listen!) posted a very open and honest response in the original post:

ClatterAmy said:

That’s funny, I’ve been thinking a lot about SonicBids lately. We recently received an e-mail from them saying the status of one of our submissions had been updated. We were declined for something we submitted to in July…2003!!

We actually canceled our SonicBids account last year. After spending over $300 in submissions alone (talk about feeling embarrassed!) it finally dawned on us that it was nigh on impossible to be selected out of the gazillion bands who were submitting entries. Now, this isn’t necessarily the fault of SonicBids; it’s hard to vie for a slot in a large festival or conference no matter how you submit your material. But when we saw that random clubs, including one in our hometown, had listings where you could pay $5-10 to be considered for a show, that just seemed weird. That smacks more of pay-to-play, but what’s worse is there’s no guarantee you’ll even get a show.

What has been irking me this week is that there are a couple of opportunities we’d like to be considered for but the only submission path is through SonicBids. I’ve written to ask if there are other options but have gotten no response. I suppose festivals, clubs, tours, etc. get enough entries through SonicBids to keep them plenty busy so missing out on a few outsiders isn’t any big deal to them, but I find it frustrating.

Well, like everything else in the music business, this is fluid and before long another paradigm shift will push musicians and industry folk into a completely different mode of communication. But I still can’t help but feel a little duped.

ClatterAmy said..

Hey Lo,

Thanks for forwarding the message from the Sonicbids Artist Relations manager. For those who are following this thread, the Sonicbids folk do a good job of making sure any complaints or concerns do not go unanswered, including mine. Their diligence is commendable, and practically unheard of in the music industry (and the world at large, I’m afraid!).

We can’t wait to come back to the UK! We’ll count on you being there!

The last thing I have to talk about is the disappearing comments that Lou made on another site claiming that sonicbids were not being investigated by the FTC. He saw a mention of this on either mine or Steve’s twitter and emailed to say thanks for the heads up…that they were erased due to an overzealous spam filter. I’ve never known spam filters that target already approved and moderated comments, but I am only relaying what I have been told. The comments are now back along with an explanation.
Here’s details if you want to follow up on the sonicbids site as detailed in Lou’s email,

We’re working on a number new features that will fix most of the submission problems we’ve been hearing about. I recently announced one of the new features we’re building to improve the submission review process here:

http://lounge.sonicbids.com/200/

We’re also in the process of checking in with existing promoters to help resolve any open submissions that are overdue for a status update, like yours was. In your post, a good place to direct your readers where they can track our progress on implementing features that resolve existing issues is the new Builder’s Blog we put up (http://lounge.sonicbids.com/category/authors/builders-blog/). It’s one thing to express our good intentions. We know that delivering on them is all that matters. We’re investing a lot of time, energy and money in the service right now, and this is where the improvements will be announced on an ongoing basis.

I still have the same issues I had with sonicbids when I began posting about this but they are trying hard to fix the problems. They are listening folks, so if you have something to say please say it.

Is sonicbids past it’s days of usefulness? I say yes, and here’s why.

I have been weeding out things in my musical life lately that just don’t work for me. My electronic press kit with Sonicbids was one of these things. I’ve been with them for about 3 years, 2 of those at $5.95 and 1 year @ 10.95 for a supersonic account (wow do I feel stupid). So that’s a little over $275. That’s no small change to a person who does music for a living. I even had sonicbids set up as my website for about 6 months. This got me up to #3 on the most viewed sonicbids EPK’s on their website, just under John Gorka. Still in 3 years, I didn’t get even one tiny piece of work from them. Perhaps I should first explain how sonicbids works, for those of you who may not know.

As an artist, you pay a certain fee to sonicbids each month to set up an Electronic Press Kit. I remember the days of printing out photos and press and endless hole punching getting together press kits to send out. It was hell and very costly to do, so when I started with sonicbids I thought it was a genius idea. Then sonicbids brings in promoters (who are not charged for membership but are charged a one time $50 fee from the money they collect from their listings) The promoters can list opportunities, they might be music showcases like SXSW, or perhaps the chance to be a part of a monthly podcast. I know some great promoters who have used sonicbids….including Dave Cool who did the documentary “What Is Indie???”. I think sonicbids worked very well for him and he was able to get some great indie artists for the film.

Here’s my problem with this model. Sonicbids seems to make a lot of money for itself, but as an artist, you are totally screwed. Not looking so good for a business that is supposed to be a service for musicians. In my opinion, sonicbids EPKs do less for you than a good website and some widgets from reverbnation would. In turn, you pay a fee to have an epk, you pay a fee to apply for opportunities, and sonicbids gets paid AGAIN from the promoters themselves. They boast getting artists 36,000 gigs since September of 2007, Don’t you think these numbers seem a bit low? When over 35,000 artists sold a CD on CDbaby just in July of 2007, and over 21,000 received a PAYMENT that month. I can’t believe it took me so long to realise I was being cheated.

So over the course of my time there I applied for 10 opportunities. That’s not very many really…but then I was not a very heavy sonicbids user. Out of those 10 opportunities which cost me $119 to apply for….I was not selected for 5. Now here’s the part that really chaps my ass and is the reason I’m taking the time to write this blog. I am still on standby (waiting to hear) for 3 opportunities, two of which are over a year old, and there’s been no status update on 2 other things I applied for.

Here’s what they are and the dates I applied.

On standby

Music, the sound of independents. (Radio Show)- Applied May 17th, 2007

Indie Music Fund-Applied May 25th, 2007

Waiting for update

New Music Showcase Television Show-Season 3-Applied December 4th, 2007

GuitarTam Music, Placement in Film, Television and New Media (Afraid of the Dark)-Applied May 5th, 2008

GuitarTam Music, Placement in Film, Television and New Media ( Wake Up and Lose You) May 5th, 2008

The last two things I can still give the benefit of the doubt as they’re more recent. But don’t you think I should have heard something by now from the other three?? A bit dubious eh? And doesn’t sonicbids have someone to chase up these people who have created opportunities and then not updated? It’s like a contest that no one ever wins. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t feel cheated.

I must also add here that I do know people who have gotten work through sonicbids. My buddy Rob Szabo was a winner in the Mountain Stage New Song Contest the same year as Ingrid Michaelson. I’ve known dozens of people who got a showcases at SXSW. But don’t you think they could have done this without paying $6-11/month to sonicbids? I say yes. Spend your money on something that will help drive your career. Chase up your own opportunities. Get your stuff up on cdbaby. Get a reverbnation account. Perhaps it won’t take me so long next time to get a clue. [edit...if you want to know more including reading an email detailing the service and fees from Panos Panay..the owner of Sonicbids...click here.]

So, the car, Red Rover has finally died. Even though we didn’t use him very much…it was nice to know we could if we needed to! We’ll miss you!

So Cat and I were taking the train from Fareham back to London today, and we decided to go to Waterloo and get a bus home. I laid my head against the window in order to sleep as I always do on trains. About 10 mins into the journey, I opened my eyes to find that we’d stopped. I didn’t feel jerking or hear any noise that I recall…but the other passengers said that they felt the train stop abruptly with a jerking motion. We were in the first or second car and were inside a tunnel. A few minutes after we stopped…Cat asked me if I smelled smoke. I did and for a second I panicked, thinking the train to be on fire. I calmed myself down just as a lady ran past yelling that the train was on fire, EVERYONE GET OUT!

People were definitely panicking as the conductor came on the loudspeaker to tell us that there was a fire aboard the train, and no to panic, but at this time they did not know where the fire was exactly. They told us to move to the back of the train. As I recall there were a few people scrambling over one another…a bloke cursing his head off at people pushing and trying to get out as quickly as possible. The smoke got worse as we walked forward so that a lot of people were covering their mouths with their shirts. We found out later that we had actually walked over the fire which was underneath the train. As we passed where the fire was, the next train car was on the outside of the tunnel and I began to feel better seeing steps going up the side of the hill, knowing that we could bust a window out if we had to in order to get out.

Cat had been amazingly calm throughout the whole deal, and was pretty hacked off at a young guy that tried to climb over a young family with a baby. When the whole ordeal started she actually had the presence of mind to gather up her paper, which she had not yet finished reading…as people screamed and pushed past us.

They moved us to the last train car and as they could not get the fire out, had to evacuate us via a ladder pushed against the side of the train. They moved us up the side of the hill around a lot of posh houses….(all of whom refused us sanctuary in their driveways I hear) so we were stood on the side of a rocky embankment for around 2 hours until cabs came to take us in groups of 4 to the nearest train station so that we all could get home.

Cat was a jewel though all of this…not frightened, rallying every one’s spirits with cleverness and making friends on the rocky slope. She was also quite happy about being surrounded by some cute firemen. All in all, not something I ever want to go through again, but happy to be in such good company. The people were all very patient and the train crew really did their best. The children amazed me the most. After we finally got back to the train station via taxi and back on the next train to Waterloo…we saw a family that had been sitting in front of us on the first train and a little girl that had been talking to us. They were visibly tired and shaken from the incident but all still smiling and happy. As they got off the train, we all waved goodbye having shared something deep and indescribable. And while I know I’ll not see them again, I’ll never forget their little faces, waving happily outside the window of the train.