Notes,

For me, I was blessed to have an experence in my late teens to tour with many of the 60's recording acts back in the 1980's. I got to learn a lot about the "business" of music that gave me insight. One was the curse of the "Hit".

Follow my logic on this. I like to use the Rolling Stones, "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" as my example. Figure it is 1964 and two guys come up with this song. They gather their blokes around to jam to it. Soon, they are in rehearsal for the recording. Given the potential for many retakes in the recording studio, coupled with the rehearsals, they probably have played that song a couple of hundred times by now. And this is before the first Disc Jockey airs it. Hey, it's a hit. So, they travel and play that song at every concert. By 1966, the Stones probably played that song several hundred times by now. Little did they realize that decades later they would be doomed to play that SAME SONG a million times by now. And each time they do it, they have to look like it was the first time they played it... 50 years later! Echoes of Ricky Nelson's "Garden Party" now comes to mind.

So many bands make it. And the very hit they "make it" with becomes the albatross upon their neck. And Ricky said it best, "I would rather drive a truck." When I talked with many of these 60's recording artists decades after they had their hits, I sensed the same burn out.

Well, I just wanted to point a reality to those who dream of what it would be like to "make it." I think of myself as having made it. Here is my spec for that definition. I get to play my instruments when I want instead of when I have to. And I don't have to play if I don't want to. (That's the best part) I write the songs I want and it does not matter whether they become a hit or not because I don't have to play them again if I don't want to. And the best part, I get to enjoy my family with the privacy of an unknown artist. I love it!