Thomas Edison said, “The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “ Common sense is genius dressed in its working clothes.”
I like what Josh Billings had to say, Common sense is the knack of seeing things as they are, and doing things as they ought to be done.”
Thomas Jefferson said, “ I can never fear that things will go wrong where common sense has fair play.”
The list of wisdom about common sense could fill a book. Great men and women place much emphasis on common sense, which is simply seeing things as they are. You don’t need to go college to have common sense.
Since common sense is a vital ingredient to success, I’d like to offer my readers a Southern Gospel Music Common Sense Quiz to evaluate our industry. There are 10 questions with a simple “yes” or “no” answer. Take the test and then post the score you come up with to see if our industry has what it takes to succeed.
SOUTHERN GOSPEL MUSIC COMMON SENSE QUIZ
IS IT COMMON SENSE TO have less than 50 “professional” artists in our entire industry yet have charts with 80 positions? ___YES ___NO
IS IT COMMON SENSE TO have songs climb to high positions on the charts yet having no sales at retail stores? ___YES ___NO
IS IT COMMON SENSE TO ignore the fact that if a song is creating much action on the charts and no one is going to the store to buy it, then the charts are not reflecting the true popularity of the song? ___YES ___NO
IS IT COMMON SENSE to have radio stations that play whatever they want, with little or no regard to what is being played at other stations? ___YES ___NO
IS IT COMMON SENSE to keep the radio reports a secret, constantly creating suspicion that there is something rotten in the state of Denmark? ___YES ___NO
IS IT COMMON SENSE to believe that any radio promoter (tracker) can make calls to all the radio stations for 30 or 40 different artists and get songs charted without some help from Superman? ___ YES ___NO
IS IT COMMON SENSE to have custom recording companies acting like big shots, playing the role, yet they can’t service the retail market because their recordings are not good enough for any retail store to sell even one CD? ___YES ___NO
IS IT COMMON SENSE that these same record companies that consistently make recordings that are not fit for retail sales are given stature within our industry and are treated as legitimate record companies? ___YES ___NO
IS IT COMMON SENSE to have our artists (mostly newbies) pay for all these shenanigans while our fearless leaders look the other way? ___YES ___NO
IS IT COMMON SENSE to pretend that none of this is happening while most of us can identify by name all the guilty parties? ___YES ___NO
SCORE:
Count every “NO” answer. If you have any “YES” answers, put your glasses on, go back and re-read the questions and re-consider your answers, checking “NO” where you checked “YES.”
Truth is, every answer is a “NO” answer, meaning that there seems to be NO common sense in much of Southern Gospel Music.
It seems to me that nobody cares. Southern Gospel Music is, to me, the greatest music on earth. We have some professional artists who could out sing any artist in any genre. Yet, we continue to allow this cancer of mediocrity to exist within our ranks.
Oh for some leaders with courage, conviction and common sense.
I close with a quote by Jim Rohn.
“Failure is not a single cataclysmic event. We do not fail overnight. Failure is the inevitable result of an accumulation of poor thinking and poor choices.”
As always, I welcome your comments,
God Bless You.
Nick Bruno
http://www.nickbruno.com
Author: Nick Bruno
| Author's Website: http://www.nickbruno.com/
Written: 06/02/2008
| 
Category: The Gospel Truth
Comments: 14
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Great article once again. It's all true.
Nick, don't hold back. Good points!
Why don't the big industry leaders have a pow wow and make some changes that will effect the future of this genre? If not, isn't it only a matter of time before this music we love becomes extinct?
Nick the same thing is going on now that we talked about 20 years ago stations that play one thing and report another.people calling me every day, thats a great song where can i get it? sometimes i wonder if SOME of these artist want to sell there music or not. will it ever change? twenty years ago i thought so, now i just don't know
The big industry leaders having pow wow's is exactly what has caused the problems we are seeing.
Once upon a time the country industy leaders came together with a plan to save that format. I remember being in country radio before country was cool. People laughed at me when they knew I was playing country. Kinda like folks do today about southern gospel. The format isn't taken seriously. A pow wow of people who CAN change, like Nick, and those who want to HELP, as you suggest, SG Will, is what truly needs to happen. Will it? I sure hope so. I love the music. Found it strange today that at my chiropractor's office he had on Enlighten on XM playing throughout the rooms. Sadly though, I heard several songs that were sub-standard, hick sounding and whiney. Then there were a couple of great ones back to back. I would like to encourage and challenge all who care about this format to pray and seriously pray that God will use the right people to bring about the much needed changes and "save" as SG says, Southern Gospel Music.
I have worked quite a few Christian stations, and have been blessed to have all of them be formated Southern Gospel, a couple have tried to move to contemp but with very bad results.
As I often find, common sense is not very common. To agree with some of the other comments it seems to me that industry leaders are going to have to do some hard thinking on how to keep SG competitive in the music world - competitive enough that it can pay its way.
Nick,
I hear the term "common sense" Thrown around loosely. People tend to say a person doesn't have common sense if they don't think like the majority. I for one am what you might call a free thinker. I don't agree with the majority most of the time. So you know what the majority says.
This will be short and to the point. Until they money flow stops to the cattle recording money takers, these situations won't change. As long as there are family's who believe their little son, daughter or church group, should be on the main stage at the NQC. The money flow will feed the vultures who will take the loot and laugh all the way to the bank.
What is the working definition of 'professional artist' here ?
Just letting everyone know that this week i have received 6 calls from listeners asking where to get music and sound tracks.Do I need to open a music store? Carl
I fully agree with you Nick. Here's a question I wish someone could answer. Why do the SG record companies not release a single of an artist's project prior to the project being release? If I'm not mistaken, that's how it is done in secular music. That single is released and pushed for may weeks and months prior to the release the project. This allows for promotion time so the public will eagerly go out and buy the project when it is released. Why is this not done in SG music?
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