No, Dougan did not teach at MTSU when you were there, smee. He's a great guy and has some good stories. He knows more about music than anybody in the program. Fischer knows a lot but not as much as Dougan. I have to admit though, as far as music business is concerned, I learned the most from Matt O'Brien. He's a good guy who can relate to kids and the "real" music world and knows a lot about the business. he's also helped out a lot of students with their music careers.
My thoughts on the RIM program, now that I'm an alum, are mixed. I definitely think that you get out of it what you put in. Students are given lots of opportunities to make contacts and get (relatively) hands on experience. On the other hand, I do think that the RIM program is turning into a factory, producing like-minded kids who graduate without any creativity and an inability to think outside of the Nashville box. The instructors would like you to believe that shmoozing, not good ears and music taste, is the most important factor in making it the biz. They can teach you how to be trendy and who to hangout with and where and how to hype the shit out of somebody, but the sad fact is if you don't already have a NATURAL sense of this stuff (or a sense of how to see through the bullshit) BEFORE you go into it, you're just going to end up like every other mid-level kiss-ass industry exec (unless of course your willing to fuck or suck your way up).
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the production side where most of the instructors and virtually all of the students are clueless to the most influencial and seminal aspects of the industry. I can't tell you how many "studio" classes i had with kids who had never heard of Phil Spector or Brian Wilson for chrissakes! The building blocks of the industry! I'm not joking! Or conversely, kids who had never heard the ramones, never heard the kinks, or would say shit like "i don't like rap" in reference to hip-hop in general.
Of course, its not a crime to be uneducated on music history. Some people come from one-horse towns void of outside culture. But thats where the RIM program is supposed to come in and they fall pretty flat.
Look, I could go on and on about this but this is already too long. Ironically, I'm writing this as I look out into the lobby of the Renaissance, full of pseudo-hip Contemporary Christian Music executives, all kissing ass and hyping themselves in that fake LA facade. They definitely put the Contemporary into Christian Music. This room embodies all that is wrong with music today, secular or christian or whatever. Jesus, I wanna puke (no pun intended). Is this the fate of RIM graduates?
Now I'm gonna go listen to some Joy Division...
"Is this what you want you want to do with your life, man? Suck down peppermint schnapps and try to call Morocco at 2 in the morning?"
Quote from damon on Apr. 2, 2003 at 9:58 PM
