Devin Townsend: ”Yhtyeemme ei tulisi taloudellisesti toimeen ilman maksettuja meet & greettejä”

Kanadalainen muusikko Devin Townsend on kertoillut viime aikoina varsin avoimesti haastatteluissa musiikkibisnekseen liittyvistä ongelmista. Nyt Devin on kertonut tuoreessa Noiseyn haastattelussa oman mielipiteensä ns. järjestetyistä maksetuista meet & greeteistä. Devinin mukaan yhtye ei tulisi taloudellisesti toimeen mikäli maksettuja meet & greettejä ei järjestettäisi fanien kanssa. Voit lukea lisää aiheesta tästä: 

“I have two thoughts on the matter and they cancel each other out, so that kinda sucks. The music industry is really difficult. The overhead for me to do this is fucking crazy; we have to pay around $14,000 a month just to function. We didn’t tour for a year so I had to come up with fourteen grand a month just to keep everything going, then when we do tour, it’s fucking expensive. $1,000 per person to fly shit class from Vancouver, too. A lot of the times, fans may think bands are taking the piss by simply doing a meet-and-greet, but if we don’t do them we simply can’t do what we’re doing. It’s not like we do them then get a bonus at the end of the tour.

On the other side of it, if you’re in the band and you’re hypersensitive to people’s energy, like I believe I am, meet-and-greets fucking beat the shit out of you. Not because you don’t want to meet people, but because in order to do it correctly, you really have to invest yourself and be present and ready to talk to people and sometimes accept hyperbolic praise or criticism, and you have to be emotionally resilient enough to not let either… I mean, it’s about them.

Artikkeli jatkuu mainoksen jälkeenMainos päättyy

They’re paying for a moment and your job is to be present and that’s really challenging on tour. If you think meet-and-greets are fundamentally stupid then you’re never not gonna think that. Some bands are like, ‘Fuck that, you can come meet me at the bar.’ I never go to the bar and if I am at the bar, please don’t talk to me because I’m there to hang out with my friends. We try to do the best with our packages, but at the same time there’s still people who are critical of it.”