When it pays to pay your dues (musically)...

In this month's issue of Paste, Death Cab For Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard had an interesting comment in an essay about a meditative retreat he made recently to Big Sur, California. Future rockers, take note:

I can unequivocally say that I'm so glad we were one of the last bands to break before the Internet got crazy. We actually had some time to develop. I hate hearing people say, "I went and saw this band---everybody's saying they're really great---but I went and saw them last night and they weren't any good live." You know why they weren't good? Because they've never done more than five shows in a row, and now they're two weeks into a tour---their first national tour. They don't know how to get to the shows, they don't know how to sleep right, they don't know where to find food. They don't understand how to make a set list somebody cares about. You can't blame these bands for not being great yet. We were terrible when we first started playing.

So it does seem that there's a price for the instant celebrity that YouTube affords.

Of course, he's quick to add:

...But I don't want to go back to that period where we were literally eating mustard sandwiches in West Texas because we didn't have money.

Yummy.