JPF Home Page Forums Lyric and MP3 Feedback Lyric Feedback Forum 2 A curious question?

Stan,

The reason that mentors are less likely to post on the message boards is because often in the past, whenever they do, people generally latch on to them and start asking for "free" services etc. beyond their posts. This has happened in the past with legal experts, PR experts, songwriting educators, publishers, producers etc. That isn't neccessarily bad in and of itself (the communication part), but the problem gets far worse when 1 of the folks who make this contact act unproffesionally towards the mentor when they say they can't continue to help for free, or simply because they don't have the time. This sadly has happened on more than one occassion in the past.

Because we ask our mentors to do a lot for the group for free, it's unfair to subject them to unneccessary abuse from a couple malcontents. Even when Michael Laskow attempted to address questions/concerns that folks had about TAXI, and even offered to fly the two most vocal detractors to LA at his expense, introduce them to real A&R execs and give them carte blanche to see how TAXI does their thing, instead of accepting his offer or at least appreciating it, one (and others not involved in the offer) chose to attack him for it. That type of response doesn't make other mentors or friendly industry experts want to jump in. In the past, other mentors have made comments to try and help folks and those who disagreed have attacked them. This has happened very recently and I was disappointed that a few people unwilling to see reality choose to spoil it for everyone.

The worst fear I have is that if a mentor came here and honestly critiqued a song and found problems with it, that someone would tee off on them. To most reasonable participants here, that wouldn't happen, but again, it seems like real experts tend to bring a few malcontents out of the wordwork sometimes.

I've long wanted more direct mentor interaction via the message boards. For the most part, our mentors regularly attend chapter meetings and workshop events around the US. I may try for a test run to get some of them to do some open critiques here. Perhaps we could do it as a reward system starting with the folks who have made the most posts in a given time period to help others, will get a pro-critique themselves from a mentor on the open message boards. Anyone have any thoughts on that type of idea? That way, it pays back those who take the time from their own work to help others here.

I am always open to those types of contructive suggestions. Thanks to Stan for bringing the topic up.

Brian