Creatives & Conflicts of Interest

Posted by Pinky on Mar 30, 2010 in Blog | 3 comments

When I moved to Nashville in 2000, I was the furthest thing from a country fan.  Pearl Jam was my band.  Tool, Alice In Chains…  the same stuff every other red-blooded American male that was in high school in the early-to-mid 90′s was into.  Working for those guys was my dream, but it was a long, winding road to get there.

By 2003 I was fairly well-established in Nashville, and as you might expect, the majority of my clients were country artists.  By that time I had softened quite a bit and learned to love the genre for the people, process and incredible talent that goes into making a hit country song.  But one of my accounts really made me think a lot about ethics in creative occupations.

Toby Keith was the big artist on DreamWorks Records at the time, and DreamWorks was my biggest client.  He was known for such catchy sing-a-longs as Should Have Been A Cowboy, Wish I Didn’t Know Now and I Wanna Talk About Me.  But in 2003, the United States began its assault on Afghanistan, and Toby began his assault on the intelligence of the American public.  His classic line, “We’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way” was just the war-cry that that every idiot out there who thought world peace was just a matter of blowing some stuff up was waiting for.  And it was my job to promote it.  And that sucked.

But you know what?  We do a lot of things that we don’t particularly like to survive in this world.  Some more than others.  But it occurred to me last night as I was driving home from a meeting that, working in the entertainment business, we often start our careers with the intention of living vicariously through our idols.  We literally strive to go and give back to those artists that have affected us deeply, emotionally and indelibly, usually in our youth.  We are driven by pure passion and emotion.  And as a result, we often feel betrayed, or dirty, when we have to apply our skills to artists that don’t necessarily ring our chimes.

Now I’m not saying it was “right” of me to promote an artist with a pro-war message when I personally was against the attack, but I’ve done my share of belly-aching over doing things I don’t like because, as a “creative type,” I sometimes feel that I shouldn’t have to.  I admit it.  I’m spoiled.

And that’s about all today’s post is really about.  Sucking it up sometimes.  I would love to hear your stories about doing things you didn’t like at the time, only to realize later that it was more about having an attitude problem than about being the one person on the planet Earth that didn’t have to do something unpleasant now and then in the name of making ends meet.  Lay it on me.