Do you need a publicist? A publicist will tell you yes, and issue a press release to that effect. Personally, I love publicists, especially the ones I have now (trying hard to score points here). For me, they’re absolutely necessary. For one thing, I hate writing my own press releases, especially in this current era of press releases.
I just don’t feel comfortable writing details, for example, about my own outpatient medical procedure, and I don’t even understand the necessity of the negative press release. You know, the ones where you advertise your band’s instability or career setbacks. I also just don’t like writing about myself in the third person or about my bandmates as if I don’t know them.
However, what if you’re a true bluegrass do-it-yourselfer, and you just want to go it alone but you don’t feel you have the writing skills, or you just don’t like doing this kind of writing? Maybe you don’t have a record label helping with this and you simply can’t afford this kind of service. Is there help out there somewhere? There’s software that lets you do our own taxes, surely there’s something to help you navigate the world of publicity on your own.
This is where modern technology has again come to the rescue, and if you can’t use modern technology to put people out of work, what good is it?
I’m not by any stretch a techno-geek, but I do now own an iPhone. Sure, it’s an older model (it has a long antenna), but I have one. I recently updated the software, and I’m delighted to find a new and highly intuitive predictive text feature.
A while back, I took my old phone’s predictive text feature to task for wanting to write “bludgeon” every time I tried to write “bluegrass.” This new predictive texting tool is way more sophisticated. It does its best to guess what I’m thinking, so for example, if I text someone, wanting to say, “I’m going to the store,” by the time I type “st . . .” it is already giving me “store” or “state” as an option. If I touch “state” and then hit the “of” option that comes up next, it then gives me the options of “emergency” or “mind.”
This has the effect of making me question whether I wanted to go to the store at all, when perhaps my phone has a different path in mind for me.
Naturally, I started to think about this as a potentially powerful professional tool. Could I write a bluegrass band’s press release, simply following the wisdom of my phone’s predictive text? I believe so, and I offer the proof below, with a press release announcing a band’s hiatus, written entirely on my phone using just this method.
The only thing I added to this was to make up some names (the phone even assisted me with the band name), add some quotation marks, and insert one or two bluegrass instrument names. Occasionally, I typed one letter to get a few suggestions. Typing “blueg” gave me “bluegrass” right away, I’m happy to say. Mostly I didn’t type anything, simply choosing from among my phone’s options and following my destiny:
Lonesome Landscape announces, with great graphics, that they will be going on hiatus for the next two years or more.
The deal was announced in January, according to a lot of people. Bandleader Darren Concklin said that he would not have to go back to sleep now, but it doesn’t matter how many times you get the best of luck, the company has to go back to the point of having to pay for it.
They remain divided over whether bluegrass music is the only way, or even better than the other side.
“This was not a bad thing”, explained Concklin, who is the best of the best, and the first half of the most recent version of the band.
It was not immediately known whether the banjo player has to go back to the point of having to pay for the next two years of the band.
“The business of bluegrass can be a great way to get what you want”, Concklin explained, “and the fact that you can get a lot more than one million dollars worth of goods and services for the next few years makes it easy to play with friends.”
Their music video “Love the Smell of Gas” was the only thing that could have been a good idea, and it was not immediately known whether the next few remaining releases were still being held responsible for the band’s latest crisis.
Their manager, Cecelia Trundle, is quite good at the same thing as her husband was: finding the perfect way to get the best thing out of nowhere.
“It’s so hard”, said Trundle, “which is why we need to be able to do what can be seen as the best thing.”
“We’ll always love bluegrass music”, said the banjo player, “but the fact is, the only thing that would have been in my head is pounding headache.”
There was no immediate comment from the mandolin player.
So there it is. It’s a little like having your very own hand-held publicist.
This is what I imagine the first critical comment about this press release would look like if it too was written entirely in predictive text:
“The above comment about the new update is so cute and funny and cute, but it doesn’t work for me and my friends. I don’t think it was the best way to get a job, and it will not let you go back to the gym. Some people just don’t like the fact that you have to deal with the same thing over and over again. I’m so tired of being the only one of my friends to play the piano. I’m really not feeling this whole thing. I’m sorry.”
