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Working Class Rock Star
A new working class is emerging, only these aren't your typical blue-collar employees. This workforce carries guitars, microphones, and plays music that is anything but conventional.
While the typical image of a rock star is the limos, the mansions, and a wild, carefree lifestyle, filmmaker Justin McConnell of Unstable Ground Inc. is bringing to light the less glamorous side of rock n' roll in a documentary called "Working Class Rock Star".
"It's a movie about underground artists that are on a label, struggling, and have recognition but still aren't making a living off of their music," says McConnell. McConnell first came up with the idea while working with a band called Dog Fashion Disco, a well-known band from Baltimore, Maryland (who have recently broken up.)
"I realized okay, well these guys have been touring for years and aren't really making any money. So I started looking into it and realized that there is a huge amount of bands out there that tour and tour and tour, and actually have a substantial fan base, that are all broke, and get screwed over constantly by their labels, so that's where the original idea for Working Class Rock Star came from."
Working Class Rock Star is the story of three bands (Tub Ring, Bloodshoteye, and 3 Mile Scream) at different points in their music careers and their struggle across a two-year period. McConnell captures the amount of hard work and dedication that goes into being a touring musician, while outlining the lack of financial rewards from such a job. For these bands, their passion for music is most important, not money or fame.
The documentary also features bands such as Grammy nominee Lamb of God, Canada's Strapping Young Lad, as well as 40 Below Summer, Unearth, GWAR, Bleeding Through, Himsa, Arch Enemy, and Byzantine, who all offer their own perspectives on what it is to be a musician in today's market.
"[I included] bigger artists that would a. draw people to the film because they've actually heard of them and b. they have been through all of this, and some of them are still going through it, and would have that perspective of someone who's been through it and overcome."
Working Class Rock Star is a wakeup call to any aspiring musicians who are looking for fame and fortune in the music industry, an industry that, according to McConnell, is mostly made up of bands pushed into the public consciousness so that corporate bigwigs can make a buck.
"With the popular music industry, what's big is very much just a bunch of corporate marketing guys going, 'You know what, these guys caught on, so these ten bands right here, we're going to push them really hard and then everybody's going to love them because that's all that they're exposed to,'" says McConnell. "But that's not what the music industry about, and that's not what it used to be about. It wasn't like that in the 60's and 70's where it was the musician that really mattered and people would hear about the band and word of mouth would make them spread, now we've got television ads, the internet, and whoever's got the money to pay for the most press, gets the most press, it's just that simple. But it's changing. Because more of the labels are losing money, the bigger ones, and there's more independent labels rising up and… well, watch the documentary."
While the documentary mostly caters to people interested in more alternative music, McConnell is hoping to draw in people with a love of all kinds of music.
"I needed to tell the story of these people without telling the story of their music as much. That's not to say that there wasn't their music in the movie, I mean it's full of it, but I hired someone to write an original score, Rob Kleiner from Tub Ring, and he wrote an amazing bunch of music to cover the film that wasn't something that would turn people away, that would actually draw people in. So I tried to get as wide a market as possible."
McConnell has been doing work within the music industry for roughly seven years. He has worked under two major labels making commercials and marketing packages, and also under his own company, Unstable Ground Inc. which is based out of Toronto. Unstable Ground offers music videos, DVD production services, and short films. He also has a corporate division called Sagework Media, which he set up because "Unstable Ground and its imagery scares off the suits," he laughs.
McConnell has already had several offers on Working Class Rock Star, and hopes to have it available to the world by the end of 2007. For more information on Working Class Rock Star visit www.workingclassrockstar.com.
10:00 PM
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