At the risk of dispelling a myth, I have a day job. In fact, we all do. Of course, in an ideal world we would all be able to devote all our time to the wonderful pursuit of writing, playing and recording music. However, because we all have selfish little habits like wanting to be able to buy food, that's not the reality.

When people, especially people I work with, find out that I'm in a band, almost without fail they ask "So are you trying to get signed then?" to which my response is always the same.

No.

Here's a fuller answer. There are a number of reasons for this. I have been in other bands before (although I don't like talking about it here; it's a bit like discussing your exes with your current partner) and, generally, if anyone in the band thinks it's going to be the Next Big Thing they tend to be rather disappointed when it doesn't happen. Then they start trying to figure out why (ignoring the obvious reason that the bands that do make it are pretty much a statistical anomaly). In the absence of any reasonable thought, they start to blame themselves or, more likely, their band-mates. Then the recriminations start, then the arguments, and a once brother-like group of people go their separate ways, rarely speaking again.

As such, when I was asked to move in to Ether City, I needed to be clear that we would be doing this for fun, and that nobody thought that the big-money record contract was just around the corner. Happily, that is the case and happily, that's one of the basic reasons that the band line-up has remained the same for so long. That and the fact that, at the risk of sounding twee, we all like each other.

In any case, the big-money record contract is never around the corner, for the same reason that the pot of gold is never at the rainbow's end. If bands that get signed are an anomaly, bands that aren't then ripped off by their record company are so freakishly rare as to almost be the stuff of myth.

Record companies exist to make money. They are businesses, they have shareholders, we live in a capitalist world. Like it or not, that's a fact. However, the music buying public are both fickle and predictable at the same time, God bless you. You know what you like and what you don't. You will buy what you like. You like Band A and buy their stuff. Say there's another band (Band B) that sounds just like Band A. In the ideal business model, the band would be signed up and make lots of money for the record company. However, half of Band A's fans might buy it, while the other half say "Band B are just imitation Band A, I'm not buying their stuff." Which is entirely reasonable. However, the record company require insurance against this in case nobody buys Band B's stuff. This is where advances and so on and so forth come in to play. The record company merely lends the band the money to make, market and sell the music. The record company then recoup the money from the sale of the records. They have clever accountants and lawyers, and so are able to recoup more than they spent before they even consider actually paying the band anything.

Even huge bands fall foul of this. When Mark Owen left Take That and released a solo album, he was delighted to hear that he had paid off the recording expenses. He was less so when told that he had only done so from his share of the money Take That made - and they were MASSIVE at the time. When someone who was probably in the top 5% of selling acts at the time can't make money, what hope is there for the small acts?

(I could go into the piracy arguments now - inasmuch as "are the artists really losing out when people download their material illegally, if they're not making any money anyway?" but that's a different matter.)

SO, the band are completely independent and happy to remain so. This means we have to bear the costs for everything to do with the band, but our music is ALWAYS free to those who want to download it. We do have a PayPal begging bowl if you want to pay any amount for the music, and this money goes in to a bank account from which we do not (cannot, in fact) draw a salary. It's purely to pay for the upkeep of the band, equipment, batteries, and whatnot.

All that said, if anyone from Calvin Klein wants to offer one of us a lucrative contract for modelling their pants, I can recommend Bean.

Much Love,

Captain