Danny O'Brien's posted a fantastic essay about the "middle-class of fame" — people who have a kind thin, widely dispersed celebrity (one person in every town likes your dumb net-comic) and whether this new kind of celebrity points to a future of more evenly distributed fame.
Groovelily, the band I went to see, are in many ways, poster children for the middle of that fame curve. They're not a super-famous act, but they are deeply loved, with a "street team" of 300 volunteers who flyer and promote them in their towns, and a range of fans and casual supporters who'll let them play gigs of over two thousand in some venues, or twenty or so in my friend's house. Surrounded by an audience of their fans, they're happy and hardworking, and as far as I could see doing just fine financially.
A lot of their songs, though, speak of the hardness of that road: the envy of the success of peers. The self-doubt that eats at you when you don't get that break: that leap up the spike to the top of the curve. The emotional core of their songs described the state of that life as one of perserverance until you reach a glorious goal; the most self-referential of the musical archetypal song plots.
