"Uncle Russ" wrote in message
...
In my wildest dreams I can't imagine playing for a club audience larger
than
30 people given my current status as the best kept secret in jazz. We're
not
talking about rock, rap, hip-hop, blues, or even smooth jazz. We're
talking
about traditional, tasteful small combo stuff. Whom would we open for --
Miles Davis?

It's unfortunate that we haven't seen Steve Holt around for a while because
I'd be very interested in seeing how his efforts have gone towards promoting
his CD "The Dream". But he'd been doing rather expensive promotions, flying
to LA, Nashville, etc., as part of a winner of a Songwriter's award program
(I believe they got him the spots, he furnished the travel). It's hard
work. In jazz it's almost impossible.

DC is a jazz centric club environment, but still with GW and Georgetown here
there are lots of little alternative clubs, so to some it becomes a little
confusing as to what's available. But DC's history in jazz doesn't seem to
promote it currently all that well. Hell, we had some guy trying to bring
in Chicago and New York jazz on an ongoing basis as if DC had never heard of
jazz before. Too many greats come from here and too many of today's greats
are still based here and not getting recognition, but the effort to import
jazz didn't work too well.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio


Were it possible to get onto even the very parochial traditional jazz
festival circuit (Dixieland, Swing, semi-Bop) -- still a longshot and a
year
away -- we might sell some CDs since the audiences would be bigger. But
locally? Forget it.

Russ

WESTLAKE PUBLISHING COMPANY
www.finescalerr.com
WESTLAKE RECORDS
www.westlakerecords.com


"playon" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 4 Jul 2004 16:05:42 -0700, "Uncle Russ"
wrote:

I completely agree with Bob Olhsson ... having learned the hard way
what
he
so succinctly wrote.

I'm lucky enough to own a small magazine publishing company that earns
me
a
decent living. When I returned to jazz, I expanded my company to
include
music CD production. I bought good gear and discovered my photography
studio
doubles as a good music studio. With the help of Ben Maas (whom I met
on
this group), I recorded and produced my own album. I used my writing,
photographic, and computer graphics skills to create artwork, liner
notes,
and a website with free sample downloads.

The album is for sale not only on my own site and from advertising in
my
own
publications, but also online at Amazon, Tower Records, CD Baby, and
half
a
dozen Internet download sites (like Apple I-Tunes). I sent a copy to
Fred
Kaplan, the author of the article at the beginning of this thread, and
he
failed to acknowledge receipt of -- let alone review -- the CD. A
couple
of
less well known people did review it (very positively). Even without
paying
a publicist, I even got my fair share of air play on a few all-jazz FM
stations around North America.

Big deal. After 9 months, I doubt I have sold as many as 60 albums.

Yeah but do you ever play anywhere? A pal of mine sold 170 of his CDs
at one recent concert where he was opening for a name act & he
routinely sells dozens of CDs at his smaller gigs.

Al