Nextbop: But How Do You Sell It?

I suddenly realized I should probably link y'all to other stuff I write when they come up. I do have a weekly column over at Nextbop. My work there does go back quite far. I'll try to make a larger effort to connect my work and make this a catch all for most things I write on the web. So to start things off, my most recent column was on the challenge of publicizing crossover artists.

There is a certain challenge in commenting about genre bending. What may sound at the start like an overt novelty like [ELEW] or a sincere curiosity like the heavily lauded [Rusconi] can ultimately sound extremely difficult to describe to others for the purpose of recommendation. Would one’s rock-oriented friends like to hear jazz versions of Sonic Youth songs? Will others be as moved to head bang to a piano? One can never be certain about these sorts of things.

Extrapolate this idea to a much larger scale. I’m having a hard enough time doing this sort of thing as a writer to a modest audience (and hopefully growing like [the consumers of Flintstone vitamins]). Imagine the challenge of being ELEW’s publicist. Oh sure, Eric Lewis is playing for the President of the United States now and was one of the few jazz acts at SXSW (man, I really wished I could have made it there this year), but it clearly couldn’t have been easy to sell this guy at the outset.

Head on over to Nextbop for the rest of the piece.