PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Performing for Nothing, your views?

I've played various kinds of gigs so far in my career, restaurants, small bars, dance clubs, show clubs, cruise ships, and even concerts as the warm up act for the headliner.

I've done a lot of 'sonic wallpaper' gigs where we were supposed to be background music and not listened to. We did one about a year ago, it was a tech convention, and we played while the attendees were having dinner - all gentle instrumentals. We of course did our best, and more or less played for each others ears. When dinner was over, dozens of people stopped by to tell us how much they enjoyed our music.

We play a dinner gig at a yacht club where perhaps the last half to one hour is for dancing. Low volume (about 65db in front of the stage) and gentle so the people can talk during dinner. I've gotten used to the fact that people will seem like they are not listening, and at the end of the gig come up and say, "Thanks for a wonderful evening!"

They may seem like they aren't listening, but that doesn't mean they aren't listening.

And even if they are not and you are doing it just for the money that night; what's wrong with that? How many people here have day jobs that they do just for the money?

I tried to get partially out of music twice in my life to become a weekend warrior. I took day jobs and tried to become a "normal" citizen. I guess it was societal pressure that made me want to try that.

My first job was as a telephone installer/repairman. That was before cell phones when Ma Bell ruled the industry.

Climbing telephone poles is dangerous. There are two kinds of people who climb poles, those who have fallen off the pole and those who haven't fallen of a pole YET. You hold yourself up with two spikes, each has about 1/16-1/8" stuck in a splintered pole that thousands of spikes have torn up in the past.

So one day I had this pole to climb. It was in the back yard with 4 chain link fences intersecting at the pole. Something you don't want to straddle if you fall off the pole. There were also galvanized garbage pails to add insult to the injury.

I climbed the pole and opened the terminal, and I immediately realized that hundreds of paper wasps had built their home in the terminal and weren't too happy about having the lid removed. Well doing something quickly on the pole can certainly mean a "cut out" which means you have time to say about "Oh shi" before you hit the ground. Four fences, garbage pails, and an anatomical part of me that wouldn't like that.

So I slowly and carefully climbed down the pole with my heart pounding. Fortunately I didn't get bit.

Now if I get a bad audience (which is extremely rare) or have to learn a song I don't like, I think of the wasps and everything is fine.

A bad day playing music is better than a good day at any day gig I can think of.

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Art?

The problem I see in art, is that there is an elitist group that defines what good art is and what isn't good art. Often their blessings go to other people in the elitist group regardless of talent or lack of it.

I've seen worse than those white canvases with a few brush strokes on them. Especially when it comes to installations; stacks of milk cartons, found items thrown in a trash pile, and the worst one I've seen, an old discarded mattress up against the wall covered with donuts. Art? I think not.

But if the art elitists say it's art, the sheep will follow and claim it's art.

In the late 50s or 60s a monkey did paintings and until they found out it was the artist's monkey, the adjectives just kept flying and they were considered master pieces.

And what about Pollock? I saw a documentary where a woman living in a mobile home was given a Pollock her friend bought in a thrift store because it was the ugliest painting she has ever seen.

The woman kept it, a friend suggested it might be a Pollock and it might be worth millions.

She took the painting to art dealers and critics all over the country, and they all agreed it was a cheap imitation because it didn't have Pollock's soulful inspiration in it. And these people included curators in some of the top museums in the land.

Well after some time, someone found Pollocks fingerprints on the back, had the paint analyzed and found it to be the same as the ones that were on the front and the lady was an instant millionaire and the most respected people of the art elite had to eat crow.

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It's easy to measure technical ability. As mentioned Andrew Wyeth had great technical skill, and as far as I'm concerned did great art. Norman Rockwell had great technical skill and most artists consider him an illustrator.

But technical ability doesn't make art. True art has to have something that transcends mere technical prowess. I've heard plenty of very fast bebop, country, and pop players who seem like they are just playing scales, and others who take those rapid notes and make melodies out of them.

I've heard bands doing their original songs that duplicated tired old chord progressions with uninspiring words and performed with no emotion. And I've heard original 12 bar blues tunes, performed by technically adequate musicians, but with so much soul they blew me away.

So you can't equate art with technical prowess - although if you have the talent for the art, the more technical ability you have with your tools, the better you can convey your art to your audience.

So what I think is art may not be your definition and that's OK.

Saturday at home I listened to the Moscow Philharmonic do Shostakovitch's 4th symphony - the one he didn't release until Stalin died because he feared for his very life. It's a wonderful piece of art. On the way to an errand my iPod played Neil Diamond's "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" and I'm listening to the musicians, background singers and Neil and it moves me, it's also a wonderful piece of art. A few tunes later Muddy Water's "You Can't Lose What You Never Had" came on and it moves me in a different way - and I think it's a wonderful piece of art. That night Leilani sang "Unchained Melody", her vocals raised the hair on the back of my neck and as I looked out a few couples stopped dancing to stand there and stare at her in amazement and I thought the way we covered that song, the backing track, my wind synth playing, and especially Leilani's vocals made a great work of art.

I've been a musician all my life, I've played in jazz bands where the likes of Ira Sullivan, Duffy Jackson and others came to sit in, I've played in cover bands at singles bars trying to do it exactly like the record, I've warmed up for headliners like The Four Seasons, The Association, and various Motown stars while their records were number one on billboard, and I've also played seedy dives where the only reason the band was there is so one table couldn't hear the drug deal going on at the next table.

I have no regrets, and even though I'm of retirement age, I have no plans to retire. As long as I can fog a mirror and there is someone who will want to hear me, I'll play music. If nobody wants to pay me anymore, I'll do it in public parks, at the VA hospital, for charity events and other non-commercial venues.

In the late 1980s I met a guy playing the piano bar on a cruise ship. Irving Bloom who got his start playing piano in silent movie houses. At one time he was president of the New York local of the AFofM. He was 82 years young at the time, and was curious about the synthesizers that the new keyboard players in bands were bringing on the ship. He said that if he was still in his 70s he'd buy one. Irving never lost his enthusiasm for music, was an artful player and a good entertainer as well. When I'm 82 I hope to be that alive.

Irving is now playing in the 'great gig in the sky' and while he was here he touched the emotions of countless people.

No matter what you play, if you move the audience, it's good music, whether other musicians think so or not.

I'm very glad I've been a professional musician most of my life. If I had pursued the electronics engineering that I took in college, I'd have a lot more money right now, but would I have had a happier life so far? I doubt it.

Insights and incites by Notes