I often look up the chords for guitarists, since I don’t, as a rule, play chords on the bass. It turns out even the notes I make on music is illegal infringement. Tablature is considered a “notation system” and an outfit called MPA (Music Publishers Association) deems that is the same as copying sheet music. Selling or giving the tabs away is, in their opinion, like “stealing the sheet music from a store”.
Of course, they make big issue that theft deprives the creators and discourages new talent. This is crap. The musicians make plenty from conventional sources and there will always be new people breaking into the business. As I’ve said, let the musicians perform their music live (like they should) and you wouldn’t have this mess. It is really the music companies losing money and as far as I’m concerned that is nothing but a racket anyway.
As a defense, I point out that I truly do re-write the bass lines I play except to the simplest music, which after a while becomes public domain anyway. In the formative years, bass was not seen for what it was: an absolutely necessary instrument. Name five hit tunes with no bass. See? But I can name you twenty with no guitar. I understand that because early bass was often played by guitarists, it took time to achieve its proper position. (To this day, I still meet guitarists with a 1960s mind-set who view the bass as “accompaniment”.) Anyhow, my argument is that I cannot “copy” bass music that was never there. The MPA begs to differ.
Finally, a real customer in the shop, made my day. He needed to know the complete methods of creating and copying disks. That takes two well-paid hours to learn. Most people who copy are squeaking by with the bare minimum. Doing it right takes time. My question is did I get a compliment or no? The customer called first and somehow pictured anyone with my computer knowledge as being under 25.
Arnel the Awesome and I had a half-hour phone conference this morning. I’ve got the work as soon as I’ve got the guitarist up to speed. There are almost no “locals” left doing prime times at the best locations on the Broadwalk (Hollywood Beach). That means the Rip Tide, The Walkabout, and Toucans, regular bars that pay musicians a living wage per performance on the best weekend time slots. Plus tips. While Karaoke doesn’t count, as luck would have it, Big Jim does a Karaoke show. The Rip Tide bought a system and asked him to run it for them.
So I’ve got people on the inside begging for that third band (mine) which understands the value of cooperation and rotating the best gigs. I don’t have the trained guitarist or the vocal skills to do it on my own. What a situation to find myself on this, my fifth year in the area. I’ve still got three directions to go but can only manage one at a time. I’ll be watching the situation closer than ever, since I cannot wait that more than another month to get going. Otherwise, it may mean yet another wasted year.
I watched TV last evening. Sometimes it is good to realize Americans don’t have all the idiot lawmakers on the planet. It seems England is considering outlawing airbrushed pictures. A heavily airbrushed photo of Twiggy, the 1960s model, showed her using an age cream to make her look twenty. In real life, she is a shriveled up old prune with white hair and jowls. It reveals the political clout of the media that no politician or lawmaker wants to tackle the real Grendel: misleading advertising. Of course, if I were Chevrolet, Dell, Sony and a host of most, I’d be really worried if they did. The only American products that work as advertised are made by Gillette.
Something else that should be banned are those grinning scumbuckets that generation after generation go on about how if you really want something, all that matters is how motivated you are. Nonsense. Motivation is but one factor and that shrinks to nothingness in the face of inherited wealth, white-collar crime and even dumb luck when it comes to financial success. So I wish they’d all can it because it is bad advice that focuses on a tiny minority of cases. Them and that crowd with the theory that word of mouth is best. Bull donkey. Bad news travels at Mach 1 million. Nobody knows the best form of advertising but for certain it isn’t words. (Words are the worst form of advertising called Telemarketing.)
