Alien Nesby aka A23P aka Al talks about dealing with changing circumstances as “riding the waves.” I don’t know if he came up with it originally. If you have ever been surfing, you know that you need to just let the board move underneath you. I’ve only been surfing once, but I remember this ethos.

Being in Minneapolis, riding the snow is something I know more about, but the truth is also true of hydroplaning in general. If you start to slide, you should not over-correct. Let the car or bike go where it needs to go. Which is not to say you have no control. Just standing on your board and doing nothing is going to land you in the water, and just letting the car drive itself is going to end you up in a ditch. There is a reason why Waymo only operates in warm weather climes!

I’m not sure how the metaphor goes really for the organization. I feel like we have been a boat in a gale rather than a surfer, but nonetheless the waves must be ridden.

And much like surfer that learns to intuit the waves, I think I may have figured out where the waves have been pushing the organization.

I guess if you look at the folks that have been involved, they have largely not been people we think of first and foremost as musicians. Omar, for example, is a musician, but most people probably think of him as the head of Netlabel Day. But musicians are the lifeblood of, well, music, whatever the license. And this tension has caused us turbulence.

I’ve been focused on some sort of federation from the beginning because I see it as the only viable path forward. We simply do not have the means to literally recreate a community hub like the old FMA.

It should be remembered though that the old FMA didn’t start out allowing musicians to upload their own work, and it is, in fact, this decision, that may well have led to its downfall. The original FMA was focused on curators.

Curators can be podcasters, videographers, review sites such as clongclongmoo, events such as Netlabel Day, websites such as dogmazic and netlabels. And of course many curators are also musicians. I already mentioned Omar, but Mike at blocSonic, Donnie Ozone of Tha Bloc Report and Tom Ray of Lorezno’s Music also come immediately to mind.

This significantly reduces the scale of what we are trying to do. Let the curators deal with the musicians. Let the curators deal with the fans. If the curators have needs in reach musicians and fans, then we are here to help them.

This does not mean you need to be a curator to be involved in Friends of CC Music, just like you don’t need to be a tree to be a part of an arborist organization! Also, if you join our monthly CC Listening Parties, then you will be an official curator!

If this sounds like something you would like to be involved in, please let us know!