Kristin Hersh is still my hero.

She totally nails so many things I've been thinking of in regards to my life playing music in her latest blog post over at Throwing Music.com.

I've spent a lot of time lately worrying about the future of my band and what it means to love doing this as much as I do but realizing it is highly unlikely it will ever make us a ton of money to live off of. Or even a modest amount of money to live off of. I will always love playing music, that is undeniable. But I will not always love working some shitty job to make the money I need to live my life day to day while what I truly love doing gets constantly put on the back burner. Or the back, back burner. When I worry about it my thoughts tend to be of the variety that my band could never have the kind of mainstream success necessary to Make It. We're all in our early 30s which is not ancient but it's not exactly youth-marketable. 2 of us are gay but we're not the fucking Scissor Sisters so we can't be marketed as some campy, gay confection that makes everyone who listens to it feel really safe. And while a bunch of people have said our music is "so catchy" and "should totally be on the radio" we're not nearly generic and soulless enough to actually make it there.

But lately I've been wondering if any of that shit should even be a goal. Reading Kristing Hersh's blog post really tickled that idea some more. Why is it about playing the game the normal way? Why is it about pressing our faces to the glass of one concept of success and just sighing and wishing we could get in? It is a really sad and funless position to be in and I think it's starting to hurt my fucking back, always bending over to peer through the cracks into Their World. I need to focus on our world and everything we can do with it.

I don't have any quick answers yet and maybe it's naive of me to think there's actually some "alternative" (ah, remember when that word meant something other than the kind of music that gets sold to kids who shop at Hot Topic?) But I can't believe that the only solution is to get tarted up like Rilo Kiley on the cover of Spin magazine, throw a glossy sheen on every song and pray that enough people buy it that I don't need to go back to my day job. Here's to fucking finding that other path.