My reposting of the song from last December must not be taken as a farewell to Larry Otway and his wonderful work. He will continue to tell us of woes and joys, and long may he live to do so. My purpose is to gently say it's time to move on.

Larry, you bemoan the lack of commitment among the musicians with whom you have worked, and you tell us this has been an on-going problem as twenty or more people have passed through your band. Rather than blaming individuals, either yourself or those former band members, and rather than blame the particular culture of New York City, let's play Marxian for the moment and presume for the sake of argument that the lack of commitment is indicative of the socio-cultural superstructure. What we need to do is look deeper at the underlying economic relationships, in particular the realtionship of each individual to the means of production.

The first and most obvious is that you are the band leader and they are the workers. We know that you have gone out of your way to be a good boss and to make certain that your band members get paid fairly for their work, just as I am certain that Fred Engels took care to see that the workers in the factory he owned were treated well and paid fairly. But your good intentions and good deeds do not change the fundamental relationship bewteen you and them. Given that reality, their lack of commitment is more than understandable. It is what one would expect, not because they objectively lack commitment, whatever that may mean, but because the boss and the workers view the concept of commitment differently.

Now, I don't want to portray you as the Evil Capitalist. You are not. You are as très petit as petit bougeois can possibly be, and we certainly can have a discussion about the role of the petty bourgeoisie in the advanced capitalist world. Very often their position is much worse than that of the traditional worker, and that fact is not lost on corporate leaders who frequently prefer outsourcing production to small businesses and to the nominally self-employed, in lieu of hiring more workers, particlarly hiring more workers under unionized conditions.

Ah, but I digress.

Maybe, had Sorcha Dorcha been cooperatively owned and managed, lack of commitment would not be a problem. But there would have been another a certainly greater problems: your lack of final artistic control. That is the dilemma all artists must face. Either the vision and the direction are yours, in which case you are the boss and you shouldn't expect others to share your level of commitment. Or else you become part of some collective, in which instance the vision and direction are yours only in part.

My advice, which I shall repeat for the last time, is that despite the concern you have stated, the time has come for you to go solo.

--- Steve