Welcome to the Fog Machine

This entry is part 1 of 12 in the series Navigating In Fog: Thoughts on the Music Business

Back in the 1980s, Jeff Calder played in a band called the “Swimming Pool Qs.” The band built a regional following in the southeast, and eventually spent some time on a major label. After the band was dropped, Calder wrote an essay about the experience for Atlanta’s alt-weekly, Creative Loafing. He titled it  “Living By Night in the Land of Opportunity: Observations on Life in a Rock & Roll Band.”

Throughout the essay, Calder refers to the music business as the “Fog Machine.”  He likens it to an “impenetrable fog, a place where nobody really knows where they are going or what they are doing, a place where confusion generally reigns supreme, and things happen that seemingly defy logic (yet in hindsight fit into a set of patterns that is distressingly logical).”

Calder nails it. Appearances can be deceiving. People who seem to know a lot often don’t. People who seem ignorant sometimes know quite a bit (they just aren’t telling anyone). An aura of unreality surrounds just about everything. And nobody wants to be exposed as a fraud.

But ultimately, everyone faces the same reality. The market is fickle. Things change constantly, while always staying kind of the same. And it’s easy to feel like a fraud sometimes, as you fumble around in the fog.

So don’t let insecurity stop you from getting out there and doing it, even if you feel like you don’t always know what you’re doing. Trust me, you’re in good company.

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