Liner notes from the underground

I’m not sure if you realize this, but DJ Shadow keeps a journal of sorts on his website. He doesn’t get a chance to update it too often, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as he explains below. His journal kind of puts a human face on a man that many see as God-like. I’ve included his most recent entry, mainly because I agree with what he says about downloading music and buying bootlegs. Anyway, read on.

Hello. Sorry I haven’t written in a long time, I felt like I was saying everything I wanted to say at the shows, one on one with the crowd.

Touring is over for the time being. This will be a year of recording and experimenting, of diversions and inspiration seeking. Maybe there will be a lot of new music, maybe not.

Looking back on the past year, it’s been exhilirating, frustrating, and humbling. At times there’s been overflowing positivity and other times it’s been rough. The tour kicked ass, that’s been the shining light of the whole year, for me. It was the longest, most demanding and most rewarding tour I’ve ever been a part of, and I loved every minute of it (well, maybe not that last radio gig in San Jose!). I played to about 170,000 people this year, and it was great meeting all of you.

7 months on the road is like living in a fantasy land. All of your meals and accomodations are taken care of, you visit exciting and fascinating places, and there’s no time to contemplate failure or get depressed, because inevitably, it’s “showtime.” That’s why coming off the road is like reality smack-down. All of those little burning issues in the back of the mind come creeping slowly back, bigger and blacker than before. Suddenly there’s all the time in the world to think, and the thoughts aren’t always comforting.

There were a lot of revelations and epiphanies this year. That usually happens when I’m working hard, and I’m not mad at that, hard work is how you grow. But I definitely came to some conclusions. For example: this was the year it dawned on me that I may never reach the kind of goals I have being on a major label. I just don’t think there’s enough idealistic industry people around that want to fight convention and try things differently. Or, I should say, I can’t seem to find enough of them to fill a record company. It’s much simpler for them to just plug into existing channels and pretend to believe, at least utnil a staff economist tells them not to bother.

We’ll save the major-label-as-scum diatribe until another time. However, in a related revelation: downloading is hurting artists, too. NOBODY is selling like they used to. That means artists have to work twice as hard doing more press, more radio, clamoring for more exposure, just to get to the point they got to last time; all the while spending that much LESS time making music and being creative. Let’s all get real, it may not matter to some country and urban acts because the fan base isn’t as internet-savvy. But groups like El-P, Jurassic, Blackalicious, and myself, who have to scrap for the sales we get anyway, are getting taken out because download penetration is so high among our sales demographic. If you sell 8 million albums, and you lose out on 500,000 sales, it hurts a little bit. But when you sell 200,000 and you lose a fourth of that or more, it hurts BIG TIME. Not because I can’t afford that crystal chandelier I had my eye on; but because the labels, already suspicious of these artsy-fartsy, so-called musicians like us are going to be that much less inclined to front the money to make the next video, or to support the next tour. Like Spike Lee always used to say, “I just want to make enough money to make the next filme.” With what’s going on now, there’s a real threat in our ability to do that with our music. So if you’re downloading music, don’t kid yourself. Be aware of the role you’re playing in this ever-changing landscape of music, for better or worse.

And please, don’t buy those cheesy fucking bootlegs (Live in Austin, the Brainfreeze and Product Placement reissues, etc). The people who make them are just exploiting you and me. If you want to download them, fine, I’d rather you did that, but don’t put money in these people’s pockets, it’ll only encourage them to dredge up more inferior product. Rembmer, these aren’t fans that are making them, it’s mafia bullshit. You want to copy a CD for your friend? Fine, I do the same thing. Want to press up a few thousand and pass them off as legit? You’re a criminal. Whew, am I getting too heavy for you? Sorry, but it feels great to communicate these things directly to everyone without worrying how a jouranlist is going to misintrepret or misquote.

Where was I? Oh yea, revelations and epiphanies. Well, just to summarize, I’m very proud of having delivered a new album that was not a sequel. It feels good that it’s over, everything from here on out will be judged not only against Endtroducing, but the last album as well. It’s a liberating though. And I’m happy that I managed to put out another album’s worth of music that I know I will stand behind 10 years from now, as with the first two (Endtroducing and UNKLE). I realized that I love music more than ever before, and that I am quite happy dedicating my life to chasing the perfect song.

I’ve made some big mistakes in the last year, and learned some valuable lessons. But I guess the main thing I’ve learned is to be true to yourself and your fans. I thank all of you for visiting this site, and I apologize for not writing more content and staying on top of it to the degree that I had hoped. Look at it this way: when I’m not writing, it means I’m busy being productive doing what I love to do, making and playing music. I trust you guys enough to know that you’ll tolerate my shortcomings as long as I keep trying to make stuff nobody else is making. It’s a new year, good luck and happy trails.

– DJ Shadow, Jan. 02, 2003

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