Back in the saddle

So I’m back.

And what did I do over my summer vacation? I spent oh let’s say a hefty portion of the last three months attempting to remove myself from promotional mailing lists, for one, and, secondly, deleting emails that arrive that via that feckless mechanism. It turns out that extricating oneself from a mailing list is not as easy as it should be, since PR folks have long since adopted the strategy of creating stand-alone lists for each of their projects; to remove myself from one of them does not often end the stream of emails arriving from any given PR person and/or agency. It’s wac-a-mole city.

And why have I been trying to reduce the number of emails I’m receiving? Because I’ve realized that it’s the endless, faceless avanlanche of promotion that has been getting me down, not the music itself. And—with apologies to all hard-working music PR people out there—I have also realized how very few times any of their emails have introduced me to a song I end up featuring here. Which is to say: among the many ways that Fingertips is out of step with the music industry in 2018 is the fact that it almost (but not quite) goes without saying that a band employing professional PR assistance is a band that is not going to interest me musically speaking. And let me immediately follow that up with the contrasting fact that there are a small handful of PR people who do, semi-consistently, promote music that I do in fact like. I’ve just finally been realizing that I can pay attention to them and ignore everyone else. I believe in the synchronicity that brings bands I like to the attention of PR people I like, and am at long last ready to act accordingly.

If, in eliminating bulk emails almost entirely from my life I miss out on maybe one or two songs I might otherwise feature, it’s a price I’m willing to pay. I feel much lighter in this regard than I did a few months ago.

As for the larger-scale question of whether it still seems useful and relevant to people to be featuring free and legal MP3s, I guess I’ll skirt that for now and just keep at it. I received enough heart-warming feedback back at the start of the hiatus for me to know that there is an appreciative audience for what I do. Not necessarily a large audience, but an appreciative one. Unlike the model of success presented to us by both the internet and, alas, by our tragically incapacitated US President, I do not need large numbers to prop up my sense of self. No one should; in any case, for me, ever and always, quality trumps (pun intended) quantity. Try it yourselves and see how it goes.

So, I guess I’m saying that things here will continue more or less the same as before. I will still be reviewing free and legal MP3s, and creating monthly(-ish) playlists. I may or may not decide to post the reviews in batches of three, as previously. I’ll see how that goes. It might be only one at a time, sometimes, or two. But the output here will more or less resemble what it was pre-hiatus. It’s my inbox that’s going to look and feel a lot different. Thank the lord.