I've been playing a bar every other Monday night for 3 months now. It's an easy-going, mostly hippie crowd and that suits me. Moreover, there's a certain type of person who just doesn't show his/her face there; that suits me too. It's a symbiotic relationship.
Last Monday, my friend asked me to play with he and his brother at a different kind of bar, a preppie, bleach-blonde, button-down meat market for lawyers & society wannabees. OMFG.
So here's a lesson. Be true to your audience. Yeah, it's good to step out of your comfort zone and play to an "alternative" crowd from time to time, but learn yourself, learn your audience, and value the symbiosis over the paycheck if you can manage.
...but last night, I was one of 4 guitarists who each played a set at a local bar. My set was I play those wonderful, introspective little tunes by brilliant writers, songs bar regulars wouldn't know, songs most have never heard. Aside from a few PA issues (me being the first on the lineup), it turned out pretty well.
Playing out-of-the-main-stream songs in bars is generally a bad idea. Of the 20 or so in the club, I broke up one conversation at the bar, they all turned to watch, listen, and ask me about the artists after the set. That was the highlight of my evening.
Clear Channel Communication Inc. owns more radio stations than the next 4 largest corporate station owners combined. Clear Channel dictates our tastes, placing Ashlee Simpson style pop manufactured garbage above those with talent.
Go to ClearChannel.com, find your local Clear Channel stations (my little town has 5). Call your local station to make a request (i.e., contribute your opinion to their marketing machine). Request that they get the hell off our airwaves, making room for real artists, for diversity, for someone who cares about your local community and local artists.
I listen to myself and to those artists I respect most. I listen to the differences and I hear what's missing. Learning the technique is the simple part. Knowing the nuances for how, when, and to what degree to decorate; having it come automatically; that is the difference between a technician and an artist.
I know you and I like the same artist and tab the same songs.
- Please learn what a capo is and notice when the guitarists use one. - Please actually GO to a concert and watch the guitarists. Take note of songs with capos. - Please don't take it personally (voting no) to everyone who tabs 'YOUR SONGS'.
I appreciate you've worked hard creating your tabs. You've worked much too hard. You've created some very difficult tabs out of some that are fairly simple. I've seen Rhett a dozen times. I've made notes for most songs. I tab according to those notes.
This is not a competition. Both capo'd and non-capo'd tabs belong here.
Voting 'no' to good tabs that disagree with your own is bad for the community. Play nice.
I just met up with a guitarist named Jacob who's half my age, brilliant, energetic, and has no hesitations about going on stage in a pink bikini and thrashing about along with a few hundred college faithful. That was me back when Sid was alive. Now I fiddle around with James Taylor-ish acoustic nonsense. F*ck I'm old.
Hey Jacob -- I'm glad you took the wheel. Enjoy the ride.
I became aware of and began to despise corporate / manufactured music during the so-called disco revolution. If this was a revolution, I was revolted. These were the hay days of Kool-Aid, manufactured for the masses. As a burgeoning musician, I hated it.
I remember in 1978, on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, seeing a live report from the Sex Pistols first US show in Miami as I recall. It was depraved, raw, raucous, and unique. In 1978, my world opened up and there was no looking back. Along came Mark Knopfler, Stan Ridgway, David Byrne, Jeff Tweedy, Ben Harper, Lucinda Williams, Aimee Mann, and many others.
I don't mean to belittle Ashlee Simpson, Justin Timberlake, or that bald Spears chick, but what nonsense. If you must hire someone to write your music, someone to play your music, solid-gold singers to supplement your music, multi-track digital orchestrations to fill out you music, dancers, light shows, pyrotechnics, and mega T-shirt promotions, you really need to be classified as a performer, not a musician.
So corporate performers, supplemented by mass marketing machines roll out schlock to the Kool-Aid drinking masses. Songwriters, artists & musicians are left to struggle. You don't have to like it, but you might as well accept it.
It's the Zen of life. It is what it is. Too bad raw talent doesn't count for much.
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crookedpath's blogs, last updated : March 27, 2009
