Wednesday, September 16, 2009

Indie

I'm an indie comedian. I have an indie comedy album.
What this means, in my case at least though I doubt I'm alone in this, is that the record labels I submitted to turned me down. They took a pass on my album.

There is no shame in that, and I knew that I'd be happy to DIY it but hell, if someone else was going to put up the money and advertise and do this on a bigger scale I wasn't going to tell them not to. In fact I was willing to take the steps necessary to make sure they knew I existed, just in case they didn't want to reject me.

So now I have an indie release and that is a marketing point. I sell it as an indy release by an indie comic. This is sincere though. I really am proud. I'm proud of being rejected or more accurately I'm proud of not letting the rejection stop me. I'm proud of doing it anyway. I will not let some suits or guys conspicuously not wearing suits, guys sporting pony tales, I will not let them be the arbiter of funny. What the hell do they know? My mom thinks I'm funny! So I asked her loan me the money to make the album. (Actually I hit my dad up, but mom sounded funnier.)

The word indie has taken on some other meaning though. It's a genre now based on a certain sound apparently. All of the "indie" bands I see boasted in the hip indie magazine are signed to the indie arm of a major label. They're not indie, they just sound indie? So, they just sound like they'd be rejected? But they weren't? Do their mom's even like their sound?

And I find myself in a position to defend my comedy and it's indie-ness. Um, it's indie because I owe my dad money. See that piece of punctuation at the end of the last sentence? That's a period! Dad doesn't have a pony tale. When someone with a ponytale pays for my album to be pressed and buys me a few lunches to boot, then you can grill me for my indie credentials, for now, screw you, I'm indie.

So anyway, please, go to one of these large corporate websites and buy my indy CD or take me out to coffee and I'll sell you one cheaper.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/keithlowelljensen

http://www.amazon.com/Moon-Live-at-Lunas/dp/B002IV5270/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1253168228&sr=8-1

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You should post show dates.