The Reel Peel: Taking Aim

Sound Peel will be exploring different realms of music, with a heavy focus on music as art instead of as product. Unfortunately, society generally tells us that there are only two positions for a musician (or an artist for that matter) to find themselves in: famous or failure (Oh no!). In reality, pursuing art or music as a career, or more importantly as a life choice, is really no different than choosing any other path for your life. You have to start somewhere, sometime, and you may put a lot of time and money in to it before you are satisfied (just like an engineer, doctor, or farmer). A local musician's work is no less valuable than what you may hear on any mainstream radio station. In fact, it can be better in many ways: for instance, by NOT being jaded from conforming to a marketable image all-the-while struggling with the balance of creating product versus creating true art... (Whew! I was just dying to get that all out).

Seriously, though, let's take a look at what's going on in our own local scenes, others' local scenes, and in regional, (and yes) national scenes. Let's look at musicians the way that any artists should look at each other, and I think we can find hope yet. Perhaps we will find that there is more out there than what Clear-Channel tells us, than what Wal-Mart sells us, and maybe... just maybe, we will find a little i n s p i r a t i o n.