PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic What to buy a musicstudent who has everything?

I think of two events:

An acquaintance on stage responding sharply to a comment from the audience - "Some of us do this to keep a roof over our heads and put food on the table for our wives and children".

Someone signing on as one of the roaming musicians for the London Olympics in 2012 being asked "What do you do for a living?", answering "I'm a musician" and getting the response "I know that, but I want to know what do you do for a living". Twice.

Sometimes one despairs.

It is kinda funny in a way .. some people don't think it's really work.
Those people have no idea.

I've worked just as hard on a mix or learning a part as I have on programming an app.
They are both enjoyable to me, but both are still work.

Recently someone complained about how much I said it would cost to do what they wanted .. my response was "go ahead, you do it then".

/Not only is it work, but you have to know what you are doing (ie training/education) to even attempt it. That means putting time in, which has value

I was playing a bar in Erie PA about 1991. We were big at that club so people knew to get there early. On a random Friday night there was a guy with a horrible Hawaiian shirt and his dowdy, mousey wife sitting at the first table directly in front of the stage left speaker. That was also the side of the stage I was on. About 4 songs in he yelled up that it was too loud. T turned to the guys with my hands up in a "hold on" gesture and said to him "You got here an hour before we started. When you got here EVERY table in the room was empty. You picked THAT table in front of the PA and you didn't make the correlation between distance from a speaker and volume? You have somebody cut your food for you, don't you?" Everybody laughed at both the joke and the guy at the table. About 3 songs later he yelled something else really stupid up at me. I smiled and said "Buddy, you do NOT want my complete attention." and we finished the set. Midway through the second set he interrupted again and yelled "Hey what do you do for your real job? I KNOW it isn't music." Again, smiling, I said "You're right. Most of the time I am downtown lining up guys to bang your wife (I didn't say bang but had to here)." He immediately stood up and started to come toward the stage. Our security guy, a LARGE former cop and general badass, stepped in front of him and said "Bad idea. Sit down and let the band buy you and your wife a drink." He didn't say another word.

The next night? Yep. He was right back at that same table. (With a different ugly Hawaiian shirt.) I got the feeling he liked the attention. At the end of the night he came to the front of the stage and waved up to us and said "You guys must work really hard at this because you are really good! When are you here again?" I made sure it was ME who addressed him and said "You can actually be a part of making that happen. Tell Angie (the owner) you liked what you heard and you will be back whenever we play." Shook his hand and they left.

People tend to see that 3 sets of 60 minutes each and not seem to grasp that it takes time to learn the music, or see the mountain of PA and individual gear that we lug in and out. And that doesn't take into account the individual practice time. If you do it right, it is absolutely real work.

I may have figured out a loophole for you married guys to buy whatever you want. Or this may be a long standing practice. I have never been married long enough to find out.

Just left your wife do the same thing!

When she complains about you buying a new guitar, just point to the dining room table that seats 10 that she bought even though you haven't had dinner guests in 9 years. Or mention the membership to the gym she can't even find with GPS. Or the Wedgewood china set for 8 that has never been out of the cupboard.

That should settle it!

Yep that will settle it!

In lieu of flowers send a donation to eddiesdumbideas.com

That's to help fund the doghouse he'll need to build for himself, right?

Realistically, this did work fairly well with my previous relationships. My exes had some very expensive hobbies - one collected dolls worth multiple thousands of dollars, and another was a fellow musician with a collection of saxophones, piano, cello, charango, etc... They sometimes made what I spent on instruments look like peanuts!

It also made my divorce very easy - you don't touch my guitars, and I won't touch your dolls

For anyone interested in where that Blue Street Brass Trumpet ended up... You can hear it in the instrumental break after the second verses. https://soundcloud.com/dan-hoch-784636941/she?si=0e3c64f9cfd6412fabd0022d06fd0a4a&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

So all that remained from the (seemingly) endless series of pictures from the studio redo, here is a video explaining the wiring. You should be able to see it from the link, but Youtube is often stupid with permissions. Someone tell me please if you can't get to it.

The wiring game

Note that is hidden so it doesn't show up on my channel at all, just from the link.

Video comes across well.

Makes me think of two things. First, this instructional video will be great to leave for the beneficiaries of your last will and testimont. And second, I really need to open up my wallet and buy some more stuff while I still can.

LOL! Everything is cataloged into a spreadsheet with serial numbers, price of the item when new, and what I paid for it. Guitars, synths, all of it. My executor knows who the guy is that owns a music store who will help her price everything for the estate sale. That spreadsheet includes TVs, computers, cameras, lenses, everything. She also knows who to contact to format all my hard drives before sale, the cop to contact to find legal buyers to buy my firearms, and things like one of my best friends being allowed to pick ONE guitar to take, who is named to receive one of y keyboards. and things like that. Whatever profit is made in that estate sale will be donated to the shelter where I got the dog before this one, though I have to amend that to split it between 2 shelters so the one where I got this dog is included.

As far as you buying stuff, between Reverb and you local Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace if you use The Book of Face, it's out there! Just tell the kids they will not be getting money when you die.

Neat and practical layout.

By half way through I was convinced that this video was made so that you could remember how you put it together in case something stopped working

And What?! No Lava Lamp

I did the same with all my computer/music gear for insurance, photos/spreadsheet.

Cool video. My only tip is to do cell phone videos in landscape mode. Watching the narrow width recording only works if you're watching it on a phone.

Well, I DID sketch it out in Paint and save a copy.



Honestly there's a story about that. There was a guy named Cecil Ramirez who was a jazz dude in Sacramento. When Covid shut down touring, like many musicians he started streaming with a tip jar. He got a lot of Brian Culbertson's people so he had a pretty mice following.

And then...

One Sunday night he streamed at 7pm as usual.

From a hospital room.

He went in for some tests and it was determined that he had pancreatic cancer. I don't know what he opted to do about treatment, if he was in chemo or not. Brian started a Gofundme to help offset his medical expenses with a goal of $20,000. Donations started coming in. Well, Cecil didn't make it, and the donations continued to help his widow with the bills and the funeral and all of it. It ended up just over $35,000. Even my cheap azz donated, because he was truly just a great guy who was great to his fans.

One of the running gags on his stream was the lava lamp. Fans were going out and buying lava lamps and sending pics showing them off. I ended up with 3 of them, because I am a smart azz that way, and teased him that while he is immeasurably a better musician than I am, that I had more lava lamps. He was also a level 2 sommelier and I sent him a bottle of wine from a local vineyard, explaining that the wine from the Great Lakes is pretty good too, just like "you Napa Valley snobs!"

He came home from the hospital, and so weak he could barely speak, he continued his Sunday streams. I tuned into one and he looked like a skeleton. I had to click it off immediately. Gamer that he was he wanted to stream until the very end for his fans.

When I got word that he died, I turned off those lava lamps, and they will remain off in his memory.