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You are so clever with words... have you ever dabbled in writing music reviews for one of those free local entertainment periodicals that seem to exist everywhere? You could be the MUSIC NAZI who shows up at clubs to listen and critique the bands.



Pat, I do that NOW without having the job. One of my friends says I am so brutal she will never go see a band with me again.

But I believe in these three things.

"Go big or go home." If you want to play Let's Groove Tonight, hire a horn section. You can't do EW&F music and say "Aaah... we'll just leave the horns out." Leave the horns out? Of Earth, Wind & Fire songs?

"Be on time and on target." Harmony MUST be accurate. No harmony is better than BAD harmony.

"Don't give it away for free." Bands around here are playing for $300 anymore. Thus they play with a non-singing power trio and a girl vocalist, yet try to do music that at the very least needs a keyboard player. This one could have also been called "Pick music that fits your instrumentation."

I have a friend who sings with a bigger scale band. They do classic Motown. The trumpet player if consistently flat, and the sax player has no imagination. That is SO boring to listen to. But they work, and here's why. If you go to places that cater to older people who go out maybe twice a year and have no basis of comparison, ANYTHING is going to sound good to them, like those people who only hear live music when they go to a wedding. A musician (like many of us) who played (or plays) for a living for so many years is going to have a more critical ear. In college they teach a concept called "Levels of listening", where the more you know ABOUT it, the more you will hear as right or wrong. I can go see a band with 3 other people and all 4 of us will hear a different band. One will drool over the girls hooters, another may hear how bad the mix is, another may notice the drummer's meter, etc....

MANY years ago, when one of the nieces or nephews got married, I don't know which one, they had this awful band that they used because they were friends and did it just for the dinner and open bar. I was sitting with my older cousin, an amazing piano player and the reason I started music by age 5. He was the special older cousin who we all had in our life. I was still playing full time then, so I still had chops. Somewhere in the 2nd set I pulled (I think it was) my niece aside and told her that John and I would love to get up with the band if they didn't mind. They were fine with it. I went out and got my sax from the trunk and we got up to start the set. John played the keyboard player's rig like it is SUPPOSED to sound, and once the ancient Chinese secret called "tu ning" is applied to a sax, it works out better. 8 bars into the first song, I leaned over to the tenor player and said "Pull out on the mouthpiece. You have been sharp all night." And told the trumpet player the same thing. Suddenly you had three horns all in tune, a piano player who knew music, and we did a bunch of Motown stuff that FINALLY had the guests up dancing.

Now, was that really "brutal"? Maybe it embarrassed them, but geeze if nobody tells them.....

And THAT is why I shouldn't review bands.

The topic of musicians being too lazy to write or too scared to perform originals I will save for another time, but that's in there too.

I am using the new 1040XTRAEZ form this year. It has just 2 lines.

1. How much did you make in 2023?
2. Send it to us.