I swear, there is an epidemic of Stupid going around the new media marketing world. Or maybe it was always there and I simply didn’t notice until now.

Recently an indie label added me to their mailing list without my permission (Stupid #1). Their mailings don’t have any unsubscribe link (Stupid #2), forcing me to reply and ask to be taken off their list. This amount of stupid is typical, baseline Stupid, usually doesn’t bother me. Unfortunately, they had advanced Stupid.

Then the label argues with me via email (Stupid #3) and tells me that “If you don’t want someone sending you an email without asking, then you should not post your email on the web.” As though they were sending me an email as opposed to just adding me to a list. Not feeling sufficiently stupid yet, they then have the balls to throw this at me:

I would be glad to take you off the list, but I don’t know how to do that without taking up several hours of my time, which is rather short, since I run two for-profit businesses and a non-profit organization.
(Stupid #4)

Another savvy marketer has added me to a list and is CC-ing everyone on the list- meaning I can see all their addresses and they can see mine (Stupid #5).

This morning I found the last straw. Yet another music marketing company had been sending me emails about bands since I produce the High Orbit Podcast. Initially they added me to their mailing list without permission, but I’ll overlook that for now. They typically sent me one or two emails a month.

Then there were more.

Fast forward to the present and I’m getting damn near daily emails from these people (Stupid #6). Yesterday it got so bad they sent me two emails in one day about the same damn band (Stupid #7). This is getting ridiculous, so I asked to be taken off the list (oh yeah, no unsubscribe link again. Back to stupid #2).

Once again, I’m getting argued with via email (Stupid #3 again):

You know Matthew, I’ve had you up on my MySpace top friends for awile (sic) now trying to toss you a bone.

Apparantly (sic) your (sic) not as smart as you look.

So not only can they not spell (Stupid #8) but they think that insulting me will somehow make me change my mind about supporting their bands (Stupids #9-47)?

To all of you stricken with The Stupid lately… Grab a clue from the artists you represent: If people don’t want your emails, you don’t want to send to them. If you’re a rock band, you don’t want to force your way onstage at a country bar. All you’re going to do is turn someone who was ambivalent into someone who actively works against you.

For the record: I wasn’t there, I’m running on the video footage.

Have you ever heard of Richard Cheese? He’s the guy who takes hard rock tunes like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Down With The Sickness” and turns them into cheesy lounge numbers. It’s his shtick, and he’s made a career out of it. Sort of like Weird Al with no creativity.

It’s like he adds a touch of class to dirty, grungy rock music.

Apparently Cheese proved how completely devoid of class he is at the recent New Media Expo in Vegas. To quote some attendees:

When Richard Cheese started his performance he started complaining about the Audio levels, and from what I heard later he had demanded from the organizer that all other prior performers audio levels be at a lower level then his.
Todd Cochrane, Geek News Central
[Video from the event can be found at this link, assuming Cheese hasn't sued him yet.]
[Too late... you'll have to find video on your own, it seems.]

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I know that a lot of my fans are either musicians or new media types, so rather than just quietly postpone the house tour until September, I want to talk about what I think happened.

First of all, the obvious reason I couldn’t do the tour was the coalition of high gas prices and low ticket sales. I’m not going to hide that fact, the ticket pre-sales weren’t enough to cover the gas alone (and occasionally I do like to eat while on tour, too). With dead dinosaur juice topping $3.78 a gallon this spring, the break-even bar is getting higher and higher.

So if not a 2-week road trip, what did I get out of this?
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Hmm… I should probably be documenting stuff that’s happened up here in [tag]Rhode Island[/tag]. Sorry I’ve been a bit lax, there’s been a lot going on!

Our first week of shows were rather nice. The two days before the 4th were P to the A to the CKED. By 3pm both days it was a solid mass of meat, [tag]bikinis[/tag], and [tag]beer[/tag] undulating before the band shell. The two days after… were a bit sparse. Cooler weather rolled in and left us with a small but appreciative crowd (meaning high energy, low tips).

You should see how people rock out to [tag]Sweet Caroline[/tag] by [tag]Neil Diamond[/tag], though. It’s off the hook.

I’ll get some visuals soon, and kudos to [tag]Chris Penn[/tag] for lending us a video camera, too. Hopefully it’ll arrive on the island today.

Update: Oh yeah… if you want to check out a LONG conversation Kevin and I had about [tag]musicians rights[/tag] in the [tag]new media[/tag] world, catch the video here:
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