Donna Williams’ Blog

INTERVIEW WITH AWARD WINNING SINGER SONGWRITER JANETTE GERI

Hi Janette,

DONNA WILLIAMS:
1) Give us a brief synopsis on who you are, what you do.

janette:

I’m a singer, songwriter, music producer, and teacher. i make cds, i perform at music venues and festivals. i have always been a performer, but i sometimes work at other things to make a bit of extra money, or have a bit of fun. i’m a student of human nature, a philosopher, meta physician, and not a bad chippy!

DONNA WILLIAMS:

Yes, you certainly are a fab chippy. I’ve seen you in action. I was the one holding the nails and falling through the ceiling

2) There’s a lot of young musos out there trying to make their own independent albums. You’ve done this journey back in the old days where the hard grind was real life performances with physical people in real spaces watching, judging, hopefully enjoying even buying your music. The youth of today were born in the 80s and 90s when even discos were dead and live bands were already replaced with lip syncing models who couldn’t play instruments. Tell us about the REAL WORLD. What was it like?

janette:

It can seem like the world is a totally different place these days, but go easy on ‘the old days’ yes? i’m not all that old - only 40 something, but i have seem some interesting changes in my short life already.

I don’t think the world today is all that different apart from the new ways and means we can interact with it. I know this has a big impact on us all, and certain pleasures and skills have changed or seem to be disappearing. But that’s part of every generational change, and with each change there are new pleasures and skills to play with.

I think that people still need and want an experience of music, or any and all art, that is nourishing and of value to them. I see that people still go out to hear music, and live performance is still an essential way to experience music, as well as being an essential part of how a musician builds a career.when i play i still have actual humans in front of me ( they look pretty real…) and they respond the way they always have. I don’t think the new technologies have replaced the need for human and artistic contact.
i do think audiences have higher expectations though because of our overall growth. They have become much more informed and sophisticated because there is simple SO MUCH out there, and so much of it it marketed in a way that bombards you. i think that higher expectations are actually a good thing. They encourage artists to strive and be more creative and disciplined, or they could…
as for making and independent cd now, it’s great!! it’s never been easier, never been so affordable, so accessible, and the ability to reach so far has never been easier because of the web and various ways to be out there. It was harder 10 or so years ago, and heaps more expensive!!!

DONNA WILLIAMS:

Yes, and you are a wonderful teacher, I might add. Very autie friendly too. People might be interested to know you teach recording skills.

3) Remember the days when musos could be, well, //interesting? They were all ages, sizes, looks. There was no one size fits all nose job or breast implant and clothes and style were so individual. Youth today believe they are gaining individuality by representing themselves as these little cartoony things on line called Avatars. Most look like rehashes of various Bratz dolls or Anime characters and they almost always look like trendified 16-25 year olds. There’s no bald heads, no spare tyres, no wrinkles or flabby butts. Do you buy this as individuality? Where do you think we’re going with this stuff?

janette:

Oh yes there are - flabby butts and bald heads….I think it’s just part of every generational shift. perhaps i’m naive, but if you look at human nature and human needs over the time we’ve been on the planet it hasn’t changed all that much. I think the media machinery likes to push the stereotypes, it likes you to believe that their version of beauty is the one to go by, but i think people are smarter than to buy it all the way.
one thing i love about the music business is that you can be any size or shape, any colour or style. One great outcome for things like myspace and youtube is that we can all get out there in all our eccentric glories!! i believe these avenues Are so popular for exactly that reason, which says to me that the basic human animal is pretty much the same, and pretty smart too.

DONNA WILLIAMS:

4) In online dance clubs people’s Avatars dance. It all looks pretty standardised to me but people really seem to think they are dancing by proxy through these little onscreen characters. Of course, to me, they’re just sitting in a chair, circulation like hell, exercising their fingertips. Real performers in the physical world move, dance, feel the music not just act out feeling the music. What’s the joy of really dancing feel like? Tell us before we all forget?

janette:

i love to dance , i love to move. just to run, to sail, to ice skate, to lay still and let the breeze dance over me. Life is movement,is it not? death by definition is NOT moving. and to feel swept up in a song or a rhythm and let yourself be carried by the music is for me one of the greatest pleasures of being not dead.

DONNA WILLIAMS:

Didn’t know you skate. Let’s go do the nostalgia thing and go skating together?

5) You folks perform in real life music venues. They’re places where people can gather, say stupid things, make social mistakes, embarrass themselves, feel awkward and sometimes drink a bit to juggle all that. But online people can keep all these ‘flaws’ to themselves, present a sort of ‘perfect’ social self with all this edited out or exploited for effect depending on their audience. Why do you think its important for us to be flawed people in our real lives, let it hang out, have somewhere to let our hair down and be our real selves IN REAL LIFE PHYSICAL COMPANY?

janette:

because it is how it is. we all would like to change the rough bits in ourselves, so i can see the attraction in the perfect make believe world,
but it’s not satisfying long term. we are designed to steer away from sham and falsehood to survive - we know for instance that a mirage of water in a desert is pretty but we will die if we don’t get a real drink. so i think the survival instinct will win out. and we are pleasure seeking creature too. the pleasure of touch and the joy of real acceptance for all our flaws far outweighs the fun of a bit of pretend.

DONNA WILLIAMS:

I could frame that comment.

6) A lot of people live online or have virtual online lives now and think that online friendships and relationships are real. What do you think this reinforces about their real lives, their real relationships and where do you think this is heading in terms of the social skills, social GUTS to go to a music venue and hear a live performance, even respond to it, dance, sing along?

janette:

i think that the relationships are real, in that they are real exchanges with parts of ourselves, which is what any relationship is about if you look at it in a deeper sense. we play out bits of ourselves with friends and partners, we always have done. Maybe it’s a new learning tool, and maybe it’s a good one too. Maturity is about seeing that the other person is a real being, and autonomous sovereign being quite separate to oneself. that their needs and tastes are nothing necessarily to do with you, and that they have value, a right to respect, whether you agree, or understand, or approve, or not!and when we all get bored with cyber friends we might seek each other out again with a deeper appreciation and greater understanding.
as far as social skills go, you get blown up in cyberspace don’t you if you don’t follow ‘the rules’? so these avenues are actually still offering ’social training’, and social training is about knowing what the rules of a community are and how to operate within that community. we do risk losing some of our abilities and enjoyment of personable interaction, but again, the world is always changing, bringing new skills and challenges for us. we need to empower our teachers and educators to show good happy ways to interact with each other, and we can all help that along by practicing peaceful happy respectful exchanges too.
Ive just come back from playing at a big music festival. there were heaps of people - thousands- all out to hear music, all sitting and listening and dancing together, responding quite freely to the music and each other. all ages, all types of people. So we are still going out, still wanting to be together, still wanting a communal experience.

DONNA WILLIAMS:

Great, that’s renewed my faith in humanity or lessened my existential angst

7) Musicians used to have to wait to be discovered. Small record labels were everywhere trying to back musicians and get them gigs, get them noticed. Now the public is progressively turned off by those produced by big music labels, yet instead of this improving the profile of small labels, independent musicians gained direct sales through things like CD Baby and the like. This has lead to masses more musicians being heard but in the clutter its so hard for many to be found. Do you think that the best will rise to the top or do you think that popularity today is a very conformist thing and relies less and less on performance talent?

janette:

Big question! let’s break it down….
i don’t feel or see that the public is turned off necessarily by big or small labels, or by independent unsigned artist. I think the public is more educated and discerning -whether they know it or not- and they main way anybody gets noticed today is the same way it’s always been - word of mouth. that’s all the bigger machines are trying to do - increase the word of mouth.
yes in some ways it is harder for an artist to get through. Once you could only get a product out there if you had a big enough company behind you to spend heaps of money and marketing muscle to get you known. that assured the artist of a certain level of visibility of course. But the down side was that the artist was less in charge of their career than they can be today. The down side of that is that unless they are good at building their career - and so many artists aren’t - their career stalls through poor muscle or management.
so its swings and roundabouts - you make gains on some bits and losses on other bits, and it all evens out somehow…it’s a learning curve for everybody. When the ‘talkies’ came out, it saw the end of some long and wonderful careers because those artists couldn’t make the transition, and it saw the beginning of some fabulous new talent too.
we have never had the opportunities and challenges we have today before, and we all have to navigate them as best we can. I believe it’s a great time and a proper course, because the artists are in control of what they are creating. in time we will ( artists) get better at managing all this - and so will the con men too- and this can only be a good thing!!!
yes there is so much out there that its easy to get bamboozled. the public can get overwhelmed by choices. word of mouth is as powerful as its ever been, and i think it will become even more powerful. word of mouth has a real integrity to it as well, so if an artist is getting known that way, then its a great indication of their talent. and people still love and respond to talent. We are as weary as ever of tricksters, and even more disgusted by them .
i think a mistake here is to assume that there is only one avenue open to artists, or to assume that a new trend will totally replace everything. history doesn’t show that this is the case, and i don’t think its the case now. any and every avenue can and should be utilized by an artist to try to get known. then its up the the public to decide if they like em or not.
and yes, i think talent does get through to the top, what ever the ‘top’ means…. Not automatic, but historically probable and evolutionarily advantageous.

DONNA WILLIAMS:

yes, my existential angst again. I’ll increase the omega 3s

7) For those who still have enough social skills and aren’t so blunted they can still find motivation to leave their computer screens and venture out into the music venues of the real world, where can people find you folks, listen to your music in real life?

janette:

i play all over the place, as i mentioned , i do lots of music festivals, also pubs and music venues. people can email me at janette@alphalink.com.au for news of gigs and albums and stuff. come on out, the water’s fine…..

DONNA WILLIAMS:

For those who haven’t seen Janette and co, she’s well worth the adventure.

And for those who think music is everywhere online and there’s no reason to go hear it out there in the real world I hope people will go out and experience you folks in real life

janette:

there are great reasons to go out and be with other people.

some risks in doing that of course, but thats part of the fun…

we all know how wonderful it is to be able to share something with another person, and to share an uplifting and fun music experience is pretty neat.

there’s a private pleasure in listening to a cd or a dvd or whatever just by yourself, perfectly wonderful and valid, and there;s a whole other kind of expereince when you can share music and it’s making with a few or a lot of people at once. It’s specail, a ‘one off’. you know you are involved in something that CANNOT be repeated in just the same way. so it becomes an expeience of shared uniqueness, a shared intimacy, you are one in a select few who have a ‘private’ moment in history all together…

so please email me or visit my blog to find out more about what i’m doing, and find out about other great Australian acts as well.

DONNA WILLIAMS:
Thanks for the opportunity to interview you.
Janette:

thank you donna, it’s been a great pleasure.

DONNA WILLIAMS:

I understand, for our international readers, that Janette is also taking bookings for international gigs, particularly the UK and that anyone interested in booking her can contact you through her website.

Donna Williams *)
www.donnawilliams.net/

author, artist, singer songwriter, screenwriter.