“Fisher Price” my first blog entry! Allow me to introduce myself formally. I go by Mirk. Some of you may have heard of me, but I’m sure most of you haven’t. Which is why having the word “celebrity” attached to the section of the site this blog appears in is kind of an ego trip.
I am many things, but a celebrity is not one of them. At least not yet anyway. What I am is a father, a son, a husband, a singer, a rapper, an engineer and a composer. But what got me up on this blog is the hat I wear when I’m making beats/producing records. If you google my name you might have to add a couple other names in to the search engine to find what I did to become fame-ish. That’s not a typo… Fame-ish is what you are when you kinda famous, but not really. Like more people know who you are than the average joe, but in the grand scheme you’re still an unknown. Like you need to add someone else into your google search to seem important… If you add Jay-Z or Regina Spektor to that search you will find out I sampled a Regina Spektor song, made a beat and Jay-Z bought it! If you look a little further in that search, you’ll discover I went to school for music and graduated in the same class as Miss Spektor. If you replace those names with Ciara, you’ll find a remix I did, or with Petey Pablo, you might find a song I produced on his last album. Or if you turn on the tube, and watch a little reality TV, you might hear a 30 second clip of one of my tracks. All said and done, I may have sold/licensed a few records, but I’m still out here grinding trying to get established.
[pagebreak]
At this point, until this Jay-Z record drops, I’m trying to get famous on what I’m doing right now! I’m the singer of a band called Mirk & the New Familiars. We’re doing our thing in the town where I was born and raised… Albany, NY. Lucky for me, and really all artists trying to come out in this day in age, we have this wonder of a thing called the internet! The world wide web… If you break down the name you will find you can actually reach out to the whole wide world on this thing! I shit you not!! Anyway, I spent a lot of years in the NYC area, but these tough economic times, have made me look for the comfort and support of home. And 10 years ago that would have been a death sentence for my career because NYC was the place to be for music.
Being from Albany, which is about 3 hours from Manhattan, I’m close enough to make my meetings, and do any sessions I need to do, but not close enough to economically gig which used to be the way for an artist to be seen… But now here I am doing gigs every weekend in Albany, getting the hometown LOVE! And I can record these shows and post them on youtube and be seen. That’s right to really to be “seen” seen, you need to have a web presence… Check! To see me do my thing, you just have to google Mirk & the New Familiars… Now I just have to do something that makes people wanna google me. Maybe I can make a silly video that goes viral, or someone important will like what I’m saying here… Maybe giving our new record away on newfamiliarmusic.com will drive traffic in my direction. Maybe none of those things will work… The point is, they might and that means I can do my thing where I’m at and still have a chance of breaking through and that’s huge! Thanks Al Gore(they say he invented the internet)…
[pagebreak]
So if I’m trying to
