Music industry expert and Public Image Ltd drummer Martin Atkins is coming to University Galleries to give a free public talk about Chicago’s music ecosystem.
The talk is subtitled “A Blueprint for Chaos,” and Atkins has nearly 50 years of experience in chaos.
“We didn't rehearse,” Atkins said. “We dealt with the chaos. We used that DIY [do-it-yourself] mentality, which sometimes it manifests as — we're here in a club in Memphis, and it seems as though it's been robbed and trashed by vandals and it just hadn't been tidied up from the night before, and the PA system was just catastrophic, so we rewired it.”
Atkins said punk was not always about “puking in the street and screaming f-bombs." It was about tidying up, rewiring sound systems and changing some people’s minds.
Not wanting to get into the business side
Atkins saw very quickly how lack of attention of the business side of music led to a bad gig.
“I was with Killing Joke at a venue in Texas and I like to have loud monitors,” Atkins said. “I knew if the monitors weren't good, I was going to mess up my knees. And so I tell the monitor guy, ‘Hey, turn on the monitors.’ And he says, ‘Oh, no.’”
After a gig like that, and many issues with promoters’ ticketing prices, Atkins said he started paying more attention to the business side of things — tour routing, logistics, ticket prices and where their audiences were located.
“I didn't want to get into the business side,” Atkins said.
“It's an art form almost to itself,” Atkins said. “I know artists who, because of their knowledge and drive on the business side, can get further with their instrument, with their creative side of their craft.”
Atkins did not have a degree in music business at the time he started his own label.
“I was in it, and I witnessed all the failures firsthand, and I sat, and I cried, and I bled, and I went to the hospital and I lived it,” Atkins said.
His lived experience in the music scene along with no labels wanting to sign his band Pigface led Atkins to start his label in 1988: Invisible Records.
Atkins started his record label with only $60, and said “if that isn't punk, I don't know what is.”
Atkins' favorite question to ask his music business students is: “How much money do you need to start a record label?”
“Because they'll say, ‘You need 50-grand, you need 100-grand.’ No, I started my label with $60. Get on it.”
Music business educator
Atkins' route to becoming a music business educator was unique.
After starting his own record label and studio without anything more than lived experience, Atkins was asked to teach at Columbia College Chicago in 2003.
“I went to Columbia College Chicago to get some interns to help with one of these huge tours,” said Atkins. “And I did a presentation to convince the faculty at Columbia to give me some interns. And somebody on the faculty said, ‘When can you start?’ And I said, ‘I can put interns in my car now, you could help me this afternoon.’
“And they're like, ‘No, when could you start teaching?’ And I'm like, ‘Teaching? What are you talking about? I left school when I was 16 years old.’ And they're like, ‘Well, teaching touring.’ I'm like, the craziest thing I could possibly do would be to say, ‘Yes, I'll teach.’”
When Atkins started on his first day he asked the students what book they were using, and learned it was a book from 1960.
“OK, we’re not using this book,” Atkins said.
He started to write ideas down in classes, which eventually became the Amazon Music Business bestseller called Tour:Smart: And Break the Band.
Atkins now has three books about music business, a bachelor's degree in entertainment media business and a master’s degree in creative media.
“I just got my master's degree because I was tired of having people with master's degrees look down their noses at me,” said Atkins.
Talk at ISU
Atkins will be sharing his experiences, specifically in the Chicago music scene, during a free talk Tuesday night.
Before his talk, Atkins will be visiting some Creative Technologies classes on Monday and Tuesday.
Atkins shared advice that he would give students looking to go into music business: “Being creative now is an act of resistance in the face of overwhelming interference. I don't mean interference in a traditional way. I mean inside your head, mental interference, emotional interference. Making anything is an act of defiance. It's a punk act.”
Martin Atkins’ free talk will be at University Galleries on Tuesday, March 25, at 5 p.m. This event is a collaborative effort between the School of Creative Technologies and the Department of Psychology at ISU.
