The new tools of the trade are both bewildering and useful. Bewildering in terms of the amount of time and bandwidth a person could spend creating profiles, initializing widgets, uploading media, analyzing stats and so on. Useful in terms of creating impressions (although who knows how deep or lasting) among the multitude of thrifty jazz consumers out in the ecosystem. Still don’t know what I’m talking about? Social media sites such as Myspace and Facebook, as well as the more intriguing platforms such as Sonic Bids, Noise Trade and Reverbnation that allow you to manage an array of promo efforts such as direct mailing, social media apps, finding gigs and promoters etc. But will these tools actually help get us where we want to go? I have redefined my own concept of success as “playing at least 80 gigs per year in quality jazz venues for decent money in a given year”. I’ll let you know in a year or so if the new tools helped.

For now I thought it would be interesting to pick a three UNUSUALLY BURNING players who are still languishing in obscurity (relative to jazz celebs such as the Marsalis dynasty) and see who shows up where in the new tools of the trade. The three:

1/ Jon Gordon: Smoking alto player, winner of the Monk Competition, and all round good individual

2/ Ron Horton: Great (and virtually unknown) trumpet player and great human

3/ Rich Perry: Former Mel Lewis tenor player, unbelievably talented musician and fine human.

Just for fun we will throw in:

4/ Anton Schwartz: Winner of the 2011 Jazz Dinosaur Breed Most Likely to Succeed award and a player that is destined to climb out of obscurity. (I’m sure Anton is a great human being as well but I have never met him.)