After the Gig Newsletter
Not so Tenacious D
Morning Thoughts
Don’t take anything personally. Adjust expectations and move on.
ATG Podcast
Tonight I will be live streaming for patrons only on Patreon at 8pm eastern time. I will be showing you a new song i’m working on, warts and all.
Last week I sat down with producer Ed Valauskas for an upcoming episode of After the Gig. Before every episode there is a little pre-show ramble/catch up. This time the pre-show hang was in a state of the art ATMOS mixing studio. This Patreon post features very famous recordings that I can’t share publicly without having it taken down. I hope you will check it out, and consider becoming a member of the After the Gig community on Patreon!
Music News
This past week, the band Tenacious D canceled the remainder of their tour due to comments made by Kyle Gass, the band's co-founder.
When bringing Gass a birthday cake on stage during the performance, Black asked for him to make a wish. Gass replied with “Don’t miss Trump next time”, which sparked outrage across the internet. There are many articles about this saying pretty much the same thing. Here’s one I randomly picked that you can check out.
Fallout: Jack Black acted quickly in canceling the tour and all future plans for the band. Gass has since issued an apology on instagram that he took down a few days later. As of right now, there haven’t been any other statements.
Thoughts: Any comments or rhetoric about violence towards anyone is completely uncalled for. Unfortunately Kyle Gass isn’t the only one making comments like this, but he’s one of the only people i’ve seen lose their livelihood, friendships, and had their reputation severely damaged. A quick scroll through your facebook feed will show you just how careless and disgusting people are with their words. Keyboard warriors have dehumanized the people we see on TV and the internet, forcing us to escalate and lose every particle of common sense we have left. The arguments don’t make sense, the facts don’t matter, and no one is willing to admit when they are wrong.
My takeaway from this is that we need to remember we’re talking about humans with families and people that love them. No matter what you think politically, wishing harm on anyone is wrong. I also think that people make mistakes, and shouldn’t be thrown out with the bathwater. I don’t know what the relationship between Jack and Kyle was like, but I'm not sure there’s any coming back from that.
Next, I’m also thinking about the band members and crew that just lost all of that work. We can only hope that they will be compensated for that time lost, but that is never a guarantee.
Finally: We all need to take a second and think before we speak. We’re not perfect, and we will make mistakes, but a good rule of thumb is not to wish violence on anyone. Seems like a no-brainer to me.
I hope you have a wonderful Sunday and week ahead.
That’s all for now
-Jesse
PS. Substack freaked out and put all of these subscribe buttons below that i spent the last 20 minutes trying to get rid of. 🤦🏻♂️