G. Michael Vasey's Blog: The Wacky World of Dr. Vasey, page 17
July 2, 2019
Fire 2019
So another remixed song – this time its FIRE! I liked the original but I learned so much since I originally recorded it that I couldn’t resist tweaking it….. have a listen – I added harmonies and made it a bit more rocky…
The next song will be all new!
Meanwhile, Far Away remains by most popular effort with over 8000 streams on Spotify alone!
Thanks….
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June 26, 2019
Vitriol
They tell me on the radio
Repeat it on TV
They tell me what I should believe
Convincing words and stories
Switch the channel for an alternate view
The scientists say it, so it must be true
False news is everywhere
What can I believe?
Bitcoin will make you rich
Hot girls in your city waiting
Get a date with me, I’m hot as hell
And if you want, I’ll sex you
This spam is everywhere
Ubiquitous across the web
False news is everywhere
What can I believe?
Reality is hard to find
The truth harder to discern
We are bending with their words
Dancing within their stories
Playful play things controlled and abused
I am no longer amused
False news is everywhere
What can I believe?
The kaleidoscope of life
Is a multi-colored joyride
Pushed and pulled from place to place
In the ride from cradle to grave
A drug induced lifelong rave
False news is everywhere
What can I believe?
Vitriol is the answer
If you can understand?
In this lies the truth
Vitriol is the way there
If you have ears to hear
And eyes to see
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June 6, 2019
Marketing – It’s all about Marketing
I have just spent hours this week trying to find ways to market my music and books. I’m a professional marketing person with a reputation for doing solid work but when it comes to marketing my stuff we are talking a different level of scale.
Let me give you an example.
I release a song – like this last one. I post it to twitter, Facebook, etc. – all the usual sites. I write a blog about it. Result – nothing …. people are too busy and quite honestly I’m selling something new every 5 minutes….
OK – let’s get clever then. I know, lets make a video to promote a song – like this one perhaps?
Now that takes time… hours. I like the result – so now what? Yes – post it on Facebook, twitter, write a blog etc. So what did I achieve? Well, I now have a song that no one heard and a video that no one saw.
There must be another way?
I think, I google….
Eureka – Playlists! People like playlists and play them…
I create a playlist – like this one
Takes a while but I do get to listen to some great music. I pay a few USD to get it on a site where other artists will submit music too taking some of the work out of it.. I like this playlist thing and I will do more…. It’s fun and if people play it, they will play my music too.
So..Yes – post it on Facebook, twitter, write a blog etc. So what did I achieve? Well, I now have a playlist that no one listens to, a video that no one saw, and a song no one heard.
Hmmmm??
What else can I do. Facebook Ads? I spend hours trying to figure out how to do that and end up simply frustrated. Facebook it seems doesn’t want me to advertise links off of Facebook unless I get a PhD in using its ad creation software. OK – Reddit? Yes! Wait, unless I spend the next 6-months posting interesting stuff and getting comments, I won’t be allowed to post the stuff I want because I’m not heavyweight enough on the site.
So what else can I do?
This…
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What is it?
Good, I’m glad you asked… Its a QR and you can get your mobile phone to read it and it opens to my Spotify page….
So, I’m off to the print store. I’m gonna print 100’s of these babies and leave them everywhere… the curious will discover my music….
Maybe.
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June 3, 2019
The Early Years – Remixed
In the three years since I made The Early Years, I have learned a lot. So, I went back to that album and reworked all of the songs… I dropped a couple that I didn’t think were very good and hey presto, a new version is out and I really like it.
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The Anatomy of Love – Video
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May 20, 2019
When Things Don’t Seem to Add up
Last night, I somehow ended up on Goodreads. Its not a place I go very often to be honest. I noticed a whole bunch of reviews for my books that I had never seen before tho so I read a few. I then clicked into a few other pages of the site before finally going back to my author profile. It was then that I noticed it.
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Before I go on, a few years ago, I put out a book about the Black Eyed Kids. It did OK. I followed it up a bit later with a bunch more stories in a short book called the Black Eyed Demons are Coming. It did OK too. While the first book was a bit of research into the BEK stories, the second was just a bunch of new stories I had come across. One night, bored, I thought I’d put both books together and create a new compilation of the two called The Chilling True Terror of the BEK. It sold really very well.
So, as I flick through Goodreads last night, I noticed something strange…
Review rankings of the three books as follows;
Your Haunted Lives 3 – The Black Eyed Kids – 4.24
The Black Eyed Demons are Coming – 3.82
So, this makes sense to me…. The first book is longer, quite well researched and much more than a bunch of short stories. The second is a bunch of short stories only….
But what is this?
The Chilling True Terror of the BEK – A Compilation – 3.79!
So, the combination of the two books has a lower review score than the two components? How on earth is that possible? It’s the same stuff, packaged together and CHEAPER than buying the two books independently…???
I drilled into the data a bit – number of reviews and so forth but I could find nothing weird. So I have to assume then that readers find a shorter, more expensive book to be better ?
Can that be a fact?
Really?
And you know what, it’s the same on Amazon USA site too…
Any opinions welcome….
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May 19, 2019
Life Has Never Been Like This…
It’s easy to moan about modern life…. and a lot of people seem to do so. For me, though, modern life is amazing. I mean, here I am 59 years old and I’m doing my day job, writing books, making music, taking photographs and so much more. Not only that but I’m actually having a bit of success doing it. I wonder what other generation of humanity could boast such a feat! Most previous generations were focused on one thing – survival.
It’s not just me that is having fun with creativity. According to an article I read this morning, there are 25,000 new songs added to Spotify every day! 1 million every 6-weeks. According to another article I googled just now, there is a new book added to Amazon every 5 minutes. Let those numbers sink in. Photography has exploded in the same way. The barriers to entry have been reduced so significantly that anyone can write and publish a book and everyone can write, record and release a song. Everyone – almost everyone – has a smartphone and is taking snaps like crazy. OK, not everyone does but they could if they so desired. This level of creativity is simply unimaginable in any other era.
Ah, I hear you say, but a lot of it is substandard stuff isn’t it? Well, probably some is yes but I have to tell you, the quality of music on Spotify is pretty amazing. You see, in an effort to promote my music, I started listening to a lot of other people’s music. I started building playlists like this one for example, that are compilations of amateurs like me having a go. I can tell you this, there is some pretty good music out there being released by, your next door neighbor, or possibly – you. Same goes for books. I have read some remarkable works by all sorts of people just like you and me who thought they would take a crack at writing.
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My Playlist!
Of course, it is an absolute minority that succeeds immeasurably. For every thousands of wanna be authors or musicians, there is only one or two Ed Sheerans or JK Rowling. Quite how a person manages to rise above the background noise of tens of thousands to millions of competing works, I’m still not sure but honestly, I suspect that luck plays a much larger role than you might think. For I can tell you, there is so much talent out there finding expression. It is real and life has never before been like this….
Listen to my music here.
See my books here.
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May 13, 2019
Follow Me on Spotify
It really helps me if you follow me on Spotify…. you just go to my profile and click on the heart.
Much appreciated….
My profile is here.…
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May 12, 2019
Joining the Dots – A Short Story
It was sometime in his mid-fifties that it struck him. Sitting one night, bored behind his computer screen, he suddenly had an idea.
Increasingly feeling isolated and alone, he had begun to feel as if, somehow, life wasn’t really real. Reality wasn’t real. The feeling had started in his thirties and intensified as he got older. Life seemed out of control, beyond his sphere of influence. It was as if the world had been created just to keep him afraid and controlled. Or was it occupied? Yes, occupied. The more wars, threats of war, strikes, accidents and so on, the more occupied humans become with fear. Then there was the rise of social media and its avalanche of idiots who suddenly thought they knew more than the experts. This manifested itself as conspiracy theories, Flat Earthers, and even more bewildering and bizarre religious types who would believe that somehow and one day they would ascend physically to Heaven leaving everyone else behind. The world had slowly gone insane.
The insanity of it all was what finally broke the spell that had held him. Yes – insanity.
As he sat there that night feeling helpless, as he watched and read all sorts of fearsome news and opinions, he suddenly knew. It was as if he had always known – but some trigger had brought this knowing to the forefront of his brain. Reality simply wasn’t real. The thing was, though, when he had this realization it wasn’t simply a thought or a germinating idea. It wasn’t simply another dead end to keep him occupied. No, it was simply that he just knew that nothing he had ever believed, been told, taught or exposed to was actually reality. The effect of this sudden knowing was, of course, profound.
The idea caused him to fall into a deep and lasting sickness. Those around him were concerned for his welfare and their own. A man in a coma presents a problem on many levels – it keeps one occupied.
The man in the coma wasn’t. The man in what looked to everyone else like a coma was actually beyond reality. As the knowing or the idea hit him, he was able to exit the supposed reality and enter another version of it. Better, superior and more complete in every respect – but, in leaving prematurely, he had left his physical shell in the ‘reality’ that he exited. To his family and friends and the hospital staff, he was simply a comatose individual. His body was there and it still functioned to some degree, but his mind was elsewhere. Actually, his essence was elsewhere and his body was simply on autopilot. His essential self – what he really was – actually inhabited another place altogether. He had escaped at the very moment of his idea – his profound realization about reality.
“You see,” he thought to himself as he scanned a page of Internet, bored, “this is my dream. I am the dreamer!”
As words starkly written in typeface on white paper, it’s sort of a meaningless idea, benign even. But for his mind, it was a shock that shook his core. It sent his awareness to another place.
In that instant, he had connected a lot of dots: Dots that he had been collecting through his life as a curious questioner of stuff. Yes, people had thought him a bit dotty, or perhaps even mad, to study magic, alchemy, dreams, psychology, physics and an awful lot more but in the end… Well, it was self-apparent wasn’t it?
Dots. The dots had become a line and the line quickly became a shape, a malleable shape. He had simply made a doorway shape and stepped through it and, in doing so, he had jumped a dimension or perhaps several. He had met there his long-dead parents and many friends whom he had never expected to see again. At first, there was consternation among them; after all, it was not yet his ‘time.’
There, wherever there was, he had understood that ‘life’ really is nothing but a dream – and the aim of the dream is first to know that it is just a dream and secondly to see how to connect the dots as he had done. There was then no real need for the life-dreaming at all. While he knew that many of his newly re-found friends and relatives would soon opt to go back to life-reality-dreaming to gain the idea as he had, he no longer had any use for it. He had recognized the signs, joined the dots and seen the fear-based, occupying program for what it was – the enemy to advancement. He had advanced. Prematurely perhaps, but he had.
From “The Pink Bus” by G. Michael Vasey
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