I saw a post yesterday on SG at about 1:13pm. The Smashing Pumpkins’ rehearsal space was broken into and some things were stolen – I HATE to hear about stuff like that. Many of my toys in the studio are irreplaceable tape delays with peculiar dispositions or old analogue spring reverb-y things that would be difficult to replace. I clicked on the news and read more. It turns out that no equipment was stolen – it was some photographs from the new album cover… sorry, THE NEW ALBUM cover (one of which is Paris Hilton posing topless with something SP related). So, I am screaming “HYPE!” pretty loudly on a comment there and (of course) plugging my book (out NOW!).

Contrived and slightly lacking in imagination as it might be, it is still HYPE and came from somebody somewhere coming up with a plan and a strategy. Which gets me to this week’s topic: have a fucking strategy, will ya?! Who decided not to? Is it not hip to have a strategy but somehow hip to play on the wrong night to no one? Talk about dick-shrinking ego-shredding (and I use “dick” in its multi-gendered meaning here…).

The next time you are sitting around during one of those “What If” conversations at rehearsal or in a bar, instead of going down the “When I win the lottery, I’m going to pay off your house Steve! You’ve always done great sound for us maaaaan” road, why not actually start on a path that has a beginning (right where you are now at the corner of nowhere and oblivion) and, while you might not be able to see the end, we can start to walk down that path… togetherrrrr. (OK, now I’m crying… Does anyone know how to get tears – real tears of hope – out from my laptop?)

You need to have a STRATEGY. It doesn’t need to be one that will take you all the way to the top and allow for how many wait staff you will need at the sushi bar premier of whatever the fuck it is, it just needs to be more of a strategy than NO STRATEGY AT ALL… other than the tremendously sexy cologne you are wearing: STRATEGY for HIM!

If right now you are saying, “My strategy is to let the music speak for itself,” that’s great. It has spoken to me and I’m going to punch you.

Once you can get your head around the idea that any idea is good and ten people are more than NONE, you can start to move forwards. You cannot decide to strategize 500 people into a club, but you can start to work toward getting more people to your next show and building from there. There should be a word for this… (Yes, there should Martin, you CRAP writer.) The idea that the big goal is so impossible that the idea of any movement forwards is negated… (Send your answers on a postcard, please!).

So, what is your strategy for your next show? I’m not asking you what your hopes are, what your philosophy is about Tibet or recording or colored contact lenses (that belongs in your Interesting Things to Say in an Interview file and that was last week’s column). I’m asking what your plan is for the next show.

First of all, DON’T play your local market too often. How often is too often? Well I’ll tell ya, it depends… If I made it a rule that you should have a great new t-shirt for every local show, then that would be about right. But there would be some bands who are just crazy amped-up motherfuckers who like screenprinting and making me look like an ass that would do a show each week with a new shirt and then stitch them all together at the end of the concert “series” to make a patchwork quilt of groovy-ness that will keep you warm while you snuggle and remember the great times (except watch out for all of those crusty armpits).

BUT, even if they are overplaying their market, IF they have a new t-shirt at EVERY show, then there will be all kinds of crazy Star Wars, Yu Gi Oh whatever, collect-the-set mentality people who will start going to all of the shows – NOT TO SEE THE BAND – just to “collect the set.” This also works for the lazy-ass band. If they can’t get it together to create a new shirt design more than once every 12 weeks, then GREAT. Now it’s a real EVENT. With only 4 shirts spread out over the year, there will be a greater chance of the shirt from concert #1 being lost in the wash necessitating a re-purchase. As long as you keep stock on all of the designs, you can charge way more for a shirt from a previous show because it is now a collector’s item.

Maybe, once you have 200 people regularly coming to your shows, hopelessly hooked on the gig/shirt combination and intertwined with all kinds of other extraneous human emotional goop (we met at the second concert and dated at each of the next seven – every 12 weeks! I knew it was true love when he gave me his shirt from the first show – he completed my set), the filthy American promoter, performance artist, and stock broker in you can schedule the last event: the one with the t-shirt that completes all of the other designs, is the most important part of the quilt, solves the riddle to the location of the secret jar of Preparation H and the combination to the locker with the singer’s underpants in it… You book the show at the smallest venue in town (someone’s basement, a fucking phone booth, etc.) and watch the 200 fans pay more for the two available tickets than you have ever made by performing to 200. Once the hype has died down and the death threats have stopped and you have explained to the fire department that you didn’t suggest anyone burn their partially-completed t-shirt quilts, then you can announce the “just added” second show and perform to 500 fans, wondering what all of the fuss is about.

Now, that’s strategy… and curiously, another appearance in an Arts and Crafts magazine for me.

More real work strategies and other crap next time. If you are in Chicago, my gallery show launch is tonight from 6 to 10pm. I’ll be there with large pieces from the last 15+ years from Killing Joke to Pigface and I’ll be showing some of my never-been-seen-before photos from my time with PiL… unless, of course… they’re STOLEN!