Hear I sit, listening to downloaded clips from one of Edmonton’s new rock bands Living Illusion. My editor forwarded a press release he received from the bands 21 year old marketing director, band manager and lead guitarist Shane Lamotte titled “The Future Of Today’s Musician”.

Interestingly, the gist of the release was not directly promoting the recently released album by the band, but was a discourse on musicians taking business into their own hands by choosing to be independent of multi-million dollar corporations. “ Musicians are becoming successful self-employed business owners, not just talented artists” states Lamotte and he goes on the technological advancements in video, music recording and the growth of the internet that have made it possible for musicians to get songs to the market without “a lucrative bank roll”. The press release ends with its first mention of the band and again is not a direct sell for the album, which probably wouldn’t have attracted my editor’s attention, but rather reads like a article or a mission statement for indie bands and labels. “If we’ve written, produced, engineered, marketed, promoted, managed and sold records for our own band, what sense would it make to have someone else take over so we receive 5 cents per CD we sell? All we’re doing is cutting out the middle man and taking the power back.”

Living Illusion definitely takes its own advise to heart with all the manufacturing and promoting of the album being done ‘in house’. Design, layout and printing of the CD cover and insert is now possible with a good personal computer, web site design and management facilitates the bands needs on many levels such as booking tour dates, building a data base of fans, press, distribution and generally making the whole band package accessible to the world.

I called Lamotte for an interview and was struck by the industry savvy displayed by the young musician, though his day gig as a marketing rep has clearly helped him in the various hats he wears in the band. Their CD release party at the Sidetrack Café in Edmonton was well received and was captured for an upcoming video release. The video already has a destination for release, YNN (Your Music Network) is a video broadcaster focused exclusively on independent videos and are awaiting Living Illusion’s first video.

As any good marketer would do Shane got around to trying to place product here in Edson. As we SCENERS know, Scribes & Vibes Books & Music has a great Indie CD section and even brings live bands to the store so you can look for look for Living Illusions to be on sale here in our SCENE soon. If you can’t wait that long, and why would you when the band experience can be had right now by going to their website at http://www.livingillusion.com. Click on to the future of today’s musicians yourself and remember that it’s great to be SCENE and heard, here and there, everywhere on the world wide web.

By Lee Frezen