The month is off to a flying start, but let’s stay prepared for things to flatten out soon. Tourist season is half over already. I found out I missed a duo gig already. The Miramar Moose had a band no-show but I was not yet ready. They say they would have paid me just to make faces. So you know how to put this into perspective, the Moose rate of pay works out to somewhat more than twice what you get elsewhere per band member. I said, per band member. I won’t miss the next one unless everybody lets me down. I'll get back to this topic in a moment.
It was a sweltering day, 90 degrees inside my kitchen. I got exposed to such hot living in Venezuela but don’t mistake tolerating it with having an amount of comfort. Mailing a letter took me over an hour today, you get drained by any exertion. I don’t operate the A/C if fans will do, but my electric bill for the recent cold spell was $56. Half again what’s normal. That, and the scooter bill last month kept me home and quiet. Now I’m anxious to get going again.
I’m going to cancel the plans to learn the scooter electronics. I mistakenly thought there would be plenty of textbooks and instructions. Not so. It remains a matter of interest. Just not to the extent I’ll spend hours learning it from scratch. During the process, Agt. M and I looked at gears. I have never seen a dissembled transmission. The closest is a diagram or two of the workings. We have a meeting next week concerning how transmissions are rebuilt. I mean, rebuilt from what? New gears? If I learn anything, I’ll file a report here.
Bingo? Dead, maybe six people. But the show went ahead. Let’s talk finances, which include the dynamics of making money. I’ll mention music in the addendum, but right now, it is about money. I am as powerless to bring in more bingo people as I am to get the new band to play any country music. But I’m not helpless when it comes to making money. The simple combination of a bad bingo and a single great gig reverses my priorities, presto. If there is anything like a chance to have a good income from music, bingo drops to last place. It’s always been that way.
I found out backwards that the Moose pays $220 for a Friday. They never pay more, no matter what the act. Consequently, they will be showered by solo guitarists. The exact type of musical act my show is geared to combat head on. Why am I not jumping on it? I just finished saying, “Dynamics”. I had guessed the show paid $160, but we now know they are probably the highest-paying small band venue in the district. That means they’ll have the top professionals on board, most of them I’ve probably never heard of. I’ve only been to the Moose once, to a Monday Karaoke. The other time I went, it was closed.
This forces a re-evaluation, no big deal, but since nothing else is cooking today, I’ll run over them with you. Still interested? Good. Here goes. The $220 is not enough for my big band, but it is plenty for my duo. Nonetheless, I asked them to contact the drummer just in case. One session with the big band could break the solo-guitar monopoly over there without me getting personally involved. Is this cutthroat? You can make up your own mind. Nobody gave those guitarists a royal charter.
I may attend a couple of Friday shows to meet the other entertainers. There is a cheesy fellowship that exists between musicians but it is a fellowship that guitar players subscribe to only from the top down. It is a strange holdover from the 70s when the yuppie musicians had this strange concept called “not selling out”. They didn’t want to give up their principles to make money, says P.J. O’Rourke, and I agree. Yet, they seem to have done precisely that in everything they touched. Touting the message of Marxism while using daddy’s money to grab the top jobs. The only difference with music is those who never made it to the top still pretend they are one big happy family.
They are not. They just go through the motions. Guitar players are ferocious turf war guerillas. They are mad little dictators when they get in a band. They are generally so stupid they don’t realize this is their version of selling out. They spout the legends of musical Utopia, but only insofar as they talk and you listen. It’s that unsuccessful yuppie phase they never got over. They still cling to the fantasy that they can achieve success without having to do what it takes to be successful. Anyone who uses a credit card knows what I mean.
So, how do I get the Moose gig? Ideally, the big band will take one low-paying foot in the door type booking and soften up the soloists. With any luck, the Moose will make enough extra cash to realize they should book larger groups for special shows. Then the displaced yuppie guitarist would rationalize he was bested by a big orchestra but he is still, in his own mind, better. You think I’m making this up, don’t you? But if that does not happen, how do I get myself into the Moose?
My plan includes what I know for sure. I know that solo guitar players are notorious for no-shows. Not so much when times are bad like now, but I will wisely put out the word that my little band is available on short notice, that we’ll do our very best to put on a good show. I know we are up against the seasoned guitarist who knows his 200 songs and was last seen wheeling his backup band out to the trunk of his ’04 Escort. I heard the Moose did, in fact, have a no-show just a few weeks ago. The guitarist never even called in sick. And that is the arrogance I’ve been dealing with for years.
Rest assured, the grinning veneer of musical cohesiveness and solidarity will be maintained with all guitarists, with the exception of Cowboy Mike and Zack-boy. Sooner or later, my duo will be up and running. It will be an interesting social experience should such people ever find themselves facing an equally determined force that doesn’t need, much less worship, the electric guitar player. I said the guitar player, not the electric guitar. Why, I even have an electric guitar in my place. Somewhere.
ADDENDUM
This is about music, but not the last gig exclusively. Music. It’s what I do. For a living, I mean. But that’s buy default because I don’t do anything else for a living. It is not undeniable that my stage presence is different than expected and different from the band at large. Careful, different does not mean right or wrong. But I’d be nuts to not invest in more powerful bass equipment when the audience outright asks me to turn up. I just read that back to myself and it is vague. The point I’m making is that the audience is not listening to my bass because it is loud. There is some other reason they want to better hear what I’m doing.
Being “different” is not anything new to me. I don’t just mean this band, either. Here’s another example. If you talk to musicians, most of the time you will have the same old conversation as when you were much younger. The song, the artist, the year, the CD, the ho-hum. Yet, most bands would tell you it is I who have an odd way of looking at music. I can tell you the beats per minute, the amount in tips that song has produced for me, and probably how to play the guitar part. But not much else. Thus, most guitar players and I would not be able to have a meaningful discussion. It would quickly get to a tangle of words about so what if so-and-so wrote it, if it doesn’t get us hired or tipped, it is a piece of junk.
I know I’m outnumbered. True, I just said all this is neither right nor wrong, but I meant that strictly in the musical context. Beyond that, you’re darn tootin’ I think I’m right and they are all the same which in itself implies wrongness. If you talk to your average musician and then me, you’ll experience the dreadful gap between the same worn out shit over again and my completely new information. Seriously. There are few things worse in a band than some guitar player who thinks he’s better than you because he’s spent four-fifths of his life memorizing album covers. And he thinks he’s imparting something important that the rest of us, in sheer stupidity, seem to have overlooked. OMG, you mean we didn’t know that “Walking In The Sand” was written by Shadow Morton in 1964? What rock have we been living under?
So, give me some time to think this through. Do I purchase a bigger bass amp for $400, or invest in the Fishman Solo (PA) for twice that price? A bass amp would give me more punch but a PA will produce a better sound spectrum and reduce the eventual need to move two pieces of gear. Best guess is that I’ll wait to see if this gig produces more bookings before shelling out a penny. And I had better wisely wait to gauge the reaction of the band. Remember, musicians can be excessively sensitive about stage focus. Don’t be foolishly underestimate this dynamic.
And as far as I’m concerned, musicians who memorize trivia are the Alzheimer’s-to-be troop.
