It all comes down to the graffiti I saw scrawled on one of the rafters of Nancy’s Warehouse.
Nancy’s Warehouse was a big warehouse in some kind of ugly industrial part of downtown Denver in the mid 1980s. It was rented out by some woman named Nancy, and they had punk rock shows there. There were usually a couple of bigger headliners from outside of Colorado, and then you had some of the great local talent opening up for them. Some of the local bands included the Frantix and Bum Kon and the Lepers and tons of other bands that have faded with memory, as have the brain cells that were abused at that time.
The mighty Frantix had the Online Clock philosophy.
But on this night the main headlining band was the True Sounds of Liberty from Los Angeles, and they were one of my favorite bands (still are, actually). As was typical with Nancy’s Warehouse, the band members tended to mingle in front with the audience before and after the show. (I’ll never remember the time I saw Hüsker Dü, all unshaven, unwashed and wearing thrift store trench coats and just thought they were some winos who’d wandered in from the street, up until they actually got up on the stage and started to play!)
The amazing Bum Kon perhaps didn't know it, but they also had the Online Clock philosophy.
So on this night one of the band members of T.S.O.L. somehow got lifted up the rafters and he had some kind of big permanent magic marker in his hand, the kind of marker that’s so big it kind of works the same as spray paint, and he spray painted this on one of the rafters:
Do what you want.
And the you part was underlined.
So what does this have to do with punk rock…or with the Online Clock philosophy? Well, everything, really.
See, if life there are two ways of doing anything creative. Let’s say you have a band or you write books or you make websites or anything else, just as an example. If you want a big audience and lots of acclaim, would you sit down and try to anticipate what they’d like? Or would you instead just make whatever you wanted to make, and try to make yourself happy?
With all my life’s years of experience I’m convinced that only bad art results from trying to anticipate what anyone else might like, and then pandering to that.
Can you imagine what kind of lousy music would be created by a young band that sits down in the recording studio and consciously tries to make a top 40 radio hit? Ugghhhh.
This music reference is actually more fitting than you might think at first.
Back in the 1980s, these hardcore punk bands had a lot of different motivations but probably none of these bands did what they did because they wanted to make a lot of quick cash. Instead, the kind of music they were playing was in such a niche market that they probably all realized that they were never going to see any money from what they were doing. They did what they did as a hobby. A labor of love. They just did it because they liked it.
And somehow, that made it special. There was a quality there, because it wasn’t so commercial, that made it different…better.
And here, at the time that I’m writing this, it’s been four years since Online Clock went online originally and there’s probably no way I can make an actual fulltime living from this site, as many loyal users and visitors as it has…but that’s OK. I’ve come to terms with that and have realized that I keep going with this site just because I like doing it.
And you know what? That’s enough of a reward, right there. As long as the site pays for itself and I’m able to reach a large audience with this website, that’s a very cool thing.
How many of those punk rock musicians back in the day had the chance to get their music heard by millions of unique visitors each month? (I rest my case.)
This philosophy was brought back home when I later worked as an advertising copywriter. Copywriters refer to bad copywriters as “hacks”. A hack is someone who panders to his audience, someone who writes body copy the way he thinks advertising body copy is supposed to read. This makes for trash, and is the reason why 99% of all the advertising you see is boring and unimaginative.
The Online Clock philosophy is about doing whatever the heck I want and then just living with the results.
So far, I’ve been pretty lucky – people like the site even though it’s very unconventional compared to most websites: it’s hard to find the navigation (hint: scroll down on the page!), you may not be 100% sure, when you first visit the website, exactly what it is, and there is no explanation for what it is. It’s just there.
But hey, that’s the way, uh huh uh huh, I like it, uh huh uh huh.
It’s simple and uncluttered. Do you know how few websites are simple and uncluttered these days? I can think of Twitter, possibly. But, after that, I’m sorry, but no real good examples spring to mind.
And there is nothing safe and secure in this world anyway…so if I die tomorrow and if my website explodes, never to be seen again (god I hope that would never happen), then at least I did it my way, baby.
But what about you: are you doing what you want?
I know it’s not always easy. There’s food to be put on the table, and some of us have kids.
But life is cruel and the clock is ticking.
Related Alarm Clock Blog Posts: