Gentle Giant’s Derek Shulman – HuffPost 7.28.14

Mike Ragogna: What advice do you have for new artists?

Derek Shulman: Well, obviously, the record business these days is almost nonexistent, but music is still integral to everyone’s life. As far as new music is concerned, I would say don’t just look to get your music on YouTube or Facebook and hope you’re going to be famous because you’ve had a hundred million views, because it doesn’t work that way. What you have to do first is make yourself a better muscian for yourself first. If you’re in a band, make sure your band becomes a better group, musically, in whatever genre you’re working in. Be great, not good. You’ll never have any success if you’re just good. If you want to be the leader in any field, whatever it is, you really have to not look at someone else’s place on the charts and say, “Wow, I could be that,” you have to do it on your own, and you have to do something that is only yours alone and be great at it. In some respects–and this is on an ego push myself–you asked about being a part of a prog movement. We didn’t know what prog was, we were just a bunch of musicians who said, “Let’s get together and make a band.” We had no idea what it would sound like, but we had a bunch of really good musicians making ourselves better for each other. And if we made ourselves better for each other, perhaps the city would like to hear it, and then it went from there. We really worked hard at it and played and toured and, lo and behold, some people came along. The year after that, a few more people came along, and we were able to build a career and make a living. And we didn’t listen to the radio apart from toward the end perhaps. The music I guess still lives in that respect. In so saying, it appears that if you do that, the music will survive.