Removing Creative Barriers
The Music Stand focuses on emerging American Indie artists. Our staff is comprised of established musicians and visual artists who have lived through and contributed to the renaissance of the ‘60s and ‘70s music scene. We wish to mentor the next generation of creative talent and assist them to gain a meaningful foothold in the 21st century. We are about preserving the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll. We are independent, self-reliant, gorilla-thumping, dream makers.
If you are a musician or group who has recorded a professional concept album (Pink Floyd—The Wall; Jethro Tull—Thick as a Brick; The Who—Tommy) and would like to be considered for inclusion in our next issue, please forward your music to: The Music Stand, PO Box 3285, La Mesa, CA 91942. Include a check for $25.00 for our review and consideration. OR go to www.musicstandpublishing.com and submit online. You are also required to visit our KickStarter page to help in the funding of our next issue by donating at any level.
The digital era has eliminated the requirement for a vinyl record or compact disc and enhanced the end user’s access to music through streaming services for digital downloading. The LP jacket, once coveted and collected for its artwork, has virtually disappeared over the past 30 years, although it has made quite a comeback over the past decade. In most cases the artwork for an album has been replaced with a minuscule digitized image.
Until the launching of The Music Stand the prospect of packaging one’s recorded music with a meaningful printed visual image has been severely compromised. All of the iconic artwork and imagery associated with an LP served as an integral component, linking the music to a larger and more compelling story. Frankly, it was a major driver in getting music heard and purchased at a record store. We sometimes bought and collected an album strictly because of the jacket’s artwork. And what a great canvas for seeking an autograph!
Now that this medium of music distribution has evolved, along with the brick-and-mortar stores that sold them, the question arises “How do aspiring musicians get their music noticed?"
The Music Stand is intended to bring together musicians and songwriters with selected visual artists in a novel and collaborative medium. More robust than the once-coveted album jacket, these multi-page, illustrated magazines can provide a even broader introspection of the music’s message and lyrical sense than the traditional LP jacket, allowing for more behind-the-scenes insight into an artist’s background. There is sufficient space within this conceptual canvas to embellish each and every song with relevant and compelling illustrations, lyrics, liner notes, or whatever else can be imagined to make the music more enriching to the listener. In today’s world, music is virtual—songs are made accessible to the consumer thru QR coding and digital streaming.
Through its KickStarter initiative, The Music Stand‘s goal is to invite all music lovers to participate in this enterprise. We’ve assembled the team to make this happen and the only component missing is your original music. We see this as an innovative and affordable means for helping aspiring songwriters to gain access into the walled music business, and by doing so unleash new and inspiring songs into the world. Otherwise, the doors are virtually inaccessible to the newcomer, with the climb to stardom seemingly insurmountable.
It takes an extraordinary effort to become a proficient musician and songwriter, and without a vehicle for attracting an audience to your work, those dreams and creativity stagnate. Music itself, man’s greatest and most potent form of communication, withers and dies in the process. We are already seeing it succumb to such extreme formulation within the current paradigm that it is time for a phoenix-like rebirth across the entire music industry. The 21st century needn’t be, as Don McLean lamented, “the day the music died.”
"The magic of the record store, with kids saving up their paper route cash to buy the newest release, bringing that album home, ripping off the cellophane, putting the vinyl on the turntable, placing the needle on the groove, sitting back and drifting away into the music while looking at the album art and reading the liner notes. It was a time when your favorite bands were larger than life! And if you were lucky enough to buy a double album it was perfect to roll a joint on.”
