There is no song I will not play, if I am able to play it and if I think it will go over well.

Sure, there are songs I'd rather not call because my head tells me I don't want to play them (for whatever reason), but once I start playing them, it's just music and I find myself having a good time playing them in spite of myself.

Day gig at the telephone company:

I got out of full time music two times in my life, always playing music on the weekend. I did this because I thought I was supposed to have a real job, parental and societal pressure convinced me to give it a try.

The first one was with the telephone company. This was long before cell phones.

Climbing telephone poles are dangerous. There are only two kinds of pole climbers, those who have fallen off the pole, and those who haven't fallen off the pole YET!!! And when you fall, it isn't necessarily your fault. If the pole has shell rot, or if too many people have climbed it before, it is quite possible to fall with chunks of wood still attached to your spikes. This happened to me once, fortunately there was nothing but lawn to land on.

So I was in this back yard. There were 4 chain link fences meeting at the telephone pole. There were metal garbage cans there too. If I would have fallen off this pole, landing or straddling one of those obstacles would not be very much fun (don't even want to think about it).

I open the telephone terminal, and about 100 paper wasps had decided to build their home in the terminal, and they were not very happy about having the cover opened. Now here I am, two spikes buried about 1/16" in the pole, angry wasps, and any fast or careless move means I'll likely fall off the pole and land on one of the fences and garbage cans.

As much as I hate wasp stings, that was the preferred option. So I carefully climb back down the pole. Fortunately the wasps didn't recognize me as the home-wrecker and I didn't get stung, but you can bet my pulse and respiration were going off the charts.

So now if someone wants to hear "The Theme From New York, New York", or "Sugar Sugar", or "Elvira", or the "Electric Boogie", or even "The Chicken Dance", and if my mind resists, all I have to do is think about the wasps, and it's no problem. And the funny thing is, once the music starts, I put on that musical 'hat' and have a good time playing it.

And it's give and take. I may play "Yakety Sax" or "New York" on the gig, but I will also play a number of songs that I really want to play and can't wait to call. And those requests really don't come up that often.

Some of us think of ourselves as artists and playing something like that is beneath us. And that's OK for you. But remember, Beethoven, Mozart, Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, and other composers of the most artistic and complicated music the world has ever known all have composed things on consignment that the didn't want to do but had to satisfy a customer with.

And Michelangelo didn't want to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

A highly trained chef might not want to prepare fish and chips, but if he found himself in the right part of the country, it ought to be on the menu along with his artistic specialties.

I recall seeing an interview with Tony Bennett. The interviewer asked Tony if he ever got tired of singing "San Francisco." Tony replied with something like (I'll paraphrase), "How can I get tired of that song. It's the song that put me on the map, it's the song that my fans want to hear, and it's a great song." I gained a lot of respect for Tony after that.

There are things I do not play though. I don't do rap or heavy metal. I'm not fond of either genre and fortunately the adult audience I chose in my 'business model' does not want to hear it. But if enough of my customers ask for a title, you can bet I'd learn it if I thought we could do it justice.

Some of you think that playing particular songs is selling out. To me taking a day job so I can play only the songs I want to is a bigger sell out. But that is only my personal feeling on the subject, and not necessarily right for another.

And I don't have a day job, other than gig times (which I look forward to) my time is my own and I get to pick and choose what I want to do, whether it is typing on the Internet, learning a new song, working on a new Band-in-a-Box style, or goofing off. All in all I put in much more than 40 hours on the job in a week, but other then when I wear the "Band Salesman" hat, none of it feels like work at all. That's why they call it playing music!

Insights and incites by Notes

Bob "Notes" Norton smile Norton Music
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