Follow Your Dream

We hear it all the time - the winner of Pop X Idol Factor in their first interview, after being asked what advice they would give any aspiring performers: "... if you stick with it you'll make it, you can be whatever you want to be, you can go all the way if you believe in yourself...etc". What utter tripe.

If you believe in any of this, I'm sorry to dash your hopes, but it's actually some of the most irresponsible advice you'll ever hear, and it just leaves poor old Simon Cowell to pick up the pieces by telling these people how bad they really are.

Ever noticed how it's never the failures who say 'follow your dream'? Well of course not. They would say "Don't waste 10 years of your life on a futile quest for fame when you haven't got a hope in hell due to the fact that you have no talent at all."

I was chatting to Trev from the band the other day - not a real chat of course, we only communicate through highly amusing and abusive emails - about how it all turned out ok for us in the end. We, like thousands of other bands, honestly believed we had what it took to 'make it'. Maybe we did, but there's more to it than that - stuff like who you know, right place right time and all the other cliches.

We spent a good few years of our early twenties working part time jobs to give us time for the band. Rehearsals and a couple of gigs every week, and saving money to get CDs recorded and pressed. Our highlight was being played on Steve Wright's breakfast show on Radio 1 - but of course nothing happened from there, and we drifted into full time jobs and, fortunately, the real world.

I'm just glad we never took that staple advice "Follow your dream - if you believe in yourself, then you'll definitely make it". It's no coincidence that this advice is doled out by those who have actually made it, and not by the thousands of forty-something has-beens who have wasted a good part of their life still trying to 'make it'. Sad as it sounds, I'm glad we got jobs/careers, as we can still enjoy the whole music thing, but enjoy a whole other life too.

I still believe we are a great band, but it's too much of a gamble now - we all make a reasonable living, and even if you 'make it', it's no guarantee of fame or fortune. I was listening to Chesney Hawkes on the radio the other day. That guy was such a legend with just one song - wonder what he's doing now. The bass player from the Boomtown Rats is a plumber, I know that much.