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Money.  I hate what money does to our minds.  It’s an addiction.  And like addicts, we obsess over it, we worry about it, we fret, we consternate, and we make poor life choices to keep a steady supply of money in our lives.  But, as an experienced addict, I know that there’s no use fighting it.  Either I make a clean break, and stop using altogether, or I have to determine some way to become a functioning moneyholic.

Fortunately, I have weened myself off of money to the point that I can survive on very, very little without suffering any significant withdrawals.  But, alas, I do need it.  I need it as much as I need air, and food, and water.   (Mostly to buy air, and food, and water.) And now that I have decided to once again devote myself entirely to music, I am afraid that my supply of money is going to be seriously compromised.   And so, I have decided to do what I always do.  Write songs.  Play songs.  And hope for the best.

On Tuesday, Eric Summer and I will be releasing the long-overdue, barely-anticipated, but highly-satisfying side-project record, Television & Summer.   My hope is that we’ll generate some okay sales.  I mean, the last Get Set Go record, Fury of Your Lonely Heart, to-date has only sold a few hundred albums.  If that.   We have seriously dropped to the merest trickle of album sales.  We are on life-support and I can hear the family whispering in the lobby about pulling the plug.   But, I believe that I, through dint of hard work, significant sweat, a few pints of blood, and perhaps a kidney, can turn all that around.   And that is what I am setting out to do.

So, I intend to perform more live shows, both online and in-person.   I intend to write and record a handful of singles every month and release them, in the hopes of generating a small stream of income.  I intend to look for a publishing deal, something we’ve never before done, despite all of our success with film and television licensing.  I intend to write and record at least three albums a year.  I intend to treat this like a dayjob, where, for the most part, my customers are indifferent, the competition is brutal, and it’s easy to steal our product off the store shelves.  How I turn this into a business, I don’t know.  But I intend to spend every day working on it, until I sort it out.

So, if you’re interested, you can come along for the ride.  I’m gonna be blogging about this whole experience.  I am certain that there are gonna be many, many missteps.  And train-wrecks.  And heart-aches.  And the occasional Godzilla-rampaging-through-my-personal-Tokyo.   And all of that, I will include within this personal narrative.  I will hold nothing back.  I will tell it like it is.  And so, if, in a few months time, I end up on the street, you will, at the very least, know what box I’m living in.

But, strangely enough, I don’t think that’s my future.   Or if it is, it’s gonna be a pretty damn nice box.

 

P.S.  I’m doing a live Internet show tomorrow on a website called StageIt.  It’s another way I’m hoping to create a little revenue.  If  you can join me, I’d really love to see you there.  It’s the first experiment of this sort I’m doing.

The first thing I need to admit is that basically, up to this point, I have been, in most things, a failure.    Including the framing and structuring of that opening sentence.   Yes, you read that right.  I have, for the most part, failed at most of the things I have set out to do.  And for a long, long, long time, that sense of failure, that sense that I wasn’t reaping the fruit of my efforts, well, it basically shut me down.  I would spend months writing and recording an album, working with my bandmates to fashion the most perfect assemblage of songs and thoughts and ideas, to polish them to a high sheen, and then with ever-lessening degrees of ceremony, we would cast these records into the abyss.   Where they would wail like newborn babes for a few moments before the deafening void swallowed them whole.

The unfortunate thing about looking at my life this way was that it made writing, recording, and releasing the next record all the more unpalatable.   And so the time between albums grew more significant,  The downtime between albums became more despondent.  Because I was no longer using drugs and alcohol, I turned to other distractions.  Computer games.  Books.  Day-jobs.  Masturbation.  Netflix.  Anything and everything to keep me from actually looking at the results of another record brought into this world, stillborn, or, if not stillborn, then ignored, unfed, and doomed to die a slow, painful, and lonely death.    A record, that during its conception, its manufacture, its glorious apotheosis from germinating idea to winged (pronounced wing-ed) cherub of holy purpose, I would daydream that rock historians would someday marvel over how beautifully we intertwined both musical and lyrical themes, working them into a fabric of unbridled amazing.   Only to have that daydream steamrolled by the monster truck of reality.

Needless to say, I needed a significant shift in perspective.  And that, my few remaining friends, is what I am happy to announce.  A brand new, shiny, luxury perspective with all the trimmings, all the extras, and all the add-ons.

Basically, it comes down to this.  I’m not a failure.  Sure, I don’t sell that many records.  But, hey, we do sell records.  People, for reasons unbeknownst to me, still buy our albums.  Even the new ones.   We have tens of thousands of fans across the planet.  Sure, we don’t know how to get in touch with them.  But they’re out there.  They’re the ones that have watched our YouTube videos over a million times.  And they’re the ones that post the occasional tweet about the band.  Or mention a song in a blog.  They might even be you.  But the thing is, we’re much, much better off than we were when I started this band with Pat and Amy in 2002.  And it is only due to a lack of effort on my part that we’re not doing more, selling more, engaging more with our fans.

So, I have decided to re-engage.  In every way.  Expect Twitter posts.  Mostly silly.  (Find me at MikeTVofGSG) Expect daily blog entries, because I intend to chronicle this new perspective.  And expect lots and lots of new music.  The good thing about owning our own record label is that I can release albums and singles whenever I want.  So I’m gonna do that.  And it’s gonna be amazing.  For me, anyhow. I hope you get the occasional kick outta it too.

And there will be more.  I’m not 100% certain what more.  I have been putting this whole thing in motion for the past few weeks but it has only been able to become a reality…well, it actually won’t be a reality until Saturday.  But come Saturday, I am Mike TV, utterly-broke but again FULL-TIME, outrageously honest and occasionally daring songwriter.   And I intend to spend every waking hour working towards a future that allows me to keep the full time, keep the honest, keep the daring, but hopefully shed the broke.  Or maybe just upgrade to working poor.  I can be comfortable with working poor.   Anyhow.  Good things are in the future.

Expect nudity.

 

 

 

There’s this really amazing poster that an old friend of mine, Soup, had hanging on his wall.  It was for a Spiritualized album called, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in space.”  And that title just blew me away.  Mostly because it was such a simple idea, we’ve known it since we were kids, but the majesty of it, the mind-blowing awesomeness of all of us careering through space, for a brief moment, was made new.  Every day we travel thousands of miles.  Always on the move.  We’ve been, all of us, to different parts of the solar system.   The homeless, school-kids, postal workers, tap-dancers, porno stars, truck drivers, baristas, mariachis, even our pets, every living thing on the earth is a space traveler.  That, for me, is pretty jaw-droppingly awesome.

In fact, when you take the time to consider anything, I mean, really consider it, it blossoms into a whole spectacle of brilliant magic.   For instance, I have some plants in my apartment.  I’ve had them for twenty years.  For twenty years,  I have managed to keep these plants alive.  And I was wondering, do they like me?  Do they know who I am?  I mean, not in the sense that they might be able to articulate it, but I’ve been feeding them water and giving them new soil and taking care of them for 20 years.  And I have no idea how long they’ve been around before me.  I mean, what if, twenty years ago, I purchased plants that were hundreds of years old?   It’s strange to think that I am responsible for anything’s life, considering how badly I’ve managed to muck up my own.   But here they are, just surviving.

I used to really want super-powers as a kid.  But I think about my plants and wonder if, you know, if they could think, if they would be thinking, “Ah man, I wish I could move around like that.  I would love to jump out of my pot and just run around. Or play that guitar. Or jump on that bed.”   I mean, it’s entirely possible that to plants, we’re gods.   I guess what I’m saying is that it’s a pretty incredible time to be alive, floating through space, living as a human.  I got really lucky.  And I’m super grateful   I know that I don’t express that often.  But I am.  I love my life.  And the people in it.  And the fact that I get to make music and write songs and give back to this spectacular spectacle of majesty and magic.   But then again, that’s just now.  Come calling in a couple days and I could very well be miserable again.  But that’s just it.  It just keeps happening.  The world keeps floating, plants keep growing, and I get to be a part.  A very, very small part, mind you.   But a part, nonetheless.

Smashing through walls like some miniature hulk,

M