Sometimes I just Get Tired (music business)

Subject: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Feb 04 - 05:01 PM

Sometimes I just Get Tired - of my beating my head against the wall. The business can be just so effing hard to crack! You let up for one minute, you're dead in the water.


DAMN!!!

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: GUEST
Date: 10 Feb 04 - 05:02 PM

the music business, that is.

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: Amos
Date: 10 Feb 04 - 05:19 PM

I find it exhausting to have to rely on a spiritual activity for my income. Sometimes it gets demeaning as well. That's whyt I keep my day job. And yes, I think music is a spiritual activity, absolutely.


A

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: GUEST,Cookieless Wesley S
Date: 10 Feb 04 - 05:51 PM

Guest - How about some more details so we can offer suggestions/condolences/moral support ?

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: GUEST, Hamish, no cookie
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 03:12 AM

It'd be lovely if clubs kept phoning up and offered a chauffeur-driven lift to well paid gigs in a geographically well-planned and convenient sequence with appreciative audiences. But most of us have to work a whole lot harder and settle for rather less. Find the compromise that's right for you.

Some people are so driven that they dhave to put in the hard work and aren't satisfied with less. I was listeningto the documentary about Dido the other night. She toured all over the States for 18 months doing anything from launderettes up and doing gigs on people's front porches as local radio prizes and gigging, gigging in front of however few people turned up. But the groundwork certainly paid off. Oh, and she's pretty and talented (allegedly. I don't see it myself!) But the point is that her breakpoint is very high on the work to gigs ratio. I couldn't do it. But then again I have a decent day job and a family. And I'm (slightly less?) pretty ;^)

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: Mooh
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 09:00 AM

With the onslaught of disco, disc jockies and karioke in the late 70s, paying gigs dropped off dramatically. Pay wise we still haven't recovered. Frequency wise we never will recover unless we're willing to travel much further for the work. For a number of years I left the business altogether but came back to it after I started a family.

Performing opportunities are much different for me now as I concentrate on recording, weddings, nursing homes, fundraisers, the odd festival, and self-promoted concerts. No more bars, except as a guest of another performer.

To take up the financial slack I teach private guitar, bass, mandolin (and occassionally banjo) lessons. The instruction business is surprisingly tiring and rewarding, and I'm hoping to make it full-time next year (I hold down a mediocre part-time job too) as my waiting list certainly indicates the business is available. I teach about 5-6 hours/day.

There are days when I long for more performance opportunities, or buyers, or recognition, but I figure the trade off is that I get to work at home most of the time. Besides, I wouldn't want to peak too soon.

Until the arts rise to the prominance and importance of sports, war, criminal behavior, gambling, substance use and abuse, we'll always be scratching and clawing our way to a living. I won't say we should suffer for our art, but maybe suffering has become a necessary part of our art. Sigh...

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: Bobjack
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 09:04 AM

Get a proper job you hippy!

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: Amos
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 09:18 AM

Bobjack,

You gotta put a smiley face in those nasty remarks, or you end up looking like a dysfunctional, calloused, meat-headed redneck! :>)

See? **BG**

A

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: Bobjack
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 09:23 AM

I am a redneck! I live in Hull, England, and have no time for Hippies!!

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: Rapparee
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 09:38 AM

Real, live, bands used to perform at weddings; now they have "disk jockeys." Real, live people used to perform in taverns; now there is kareoke. Real, live people used to give concerts; now there is bad rap, bad rock, and what passes for music is volume.

I want a real, live person piping (anything but "Amazing Grace") at my funeral. And a real, live choir singing "Dies Irae" and other things. I don't plan to go anytime soon, but I think that having real, live people beats the hell out of a boombox and CD.

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: Mooh
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 09:41 AM

Hippy! That's a lark! You'd be surprised how popular a hippy is when he's the only local who will teach yer kid to play an instrument. Mooh.

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 12:25 PM

Bobjack, this hippy issue you appear to have a problem with, can you date it in anyway, any incident in your life when it first started, childhood maybe. I've met lots of hippies they are very colurful people with lots of imagination and beads. They smoke jazz cigarettes but what the heck - how can we help your fixation ?

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: Juan Kerr
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 12:30 PM

"They came to the revolution in their daddy's cars" John Sebastian,Woodstock, 1969.

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: Megan L
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 03:27 PM

bobjack can't help it after all Hull was actually a misspell by the original mapmakers *:-)*

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: DonMeixner
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 04:54 PM

Guest,

I guess it matters to what level one is trying to "Crack" into the business. I have for years done open mics and library and nursing home gigs and I am usually well recieved and well regarded where I go.
Can I earn a living at this level?

Nope. But I am in the business at that level.

When I play in "The Irish Band of Local Note" we gig many times in a year and we are well paid for our work. We must be well recieved because we are called back to those venues often enough so as not to be desparation bookings. I am in the business at that level too. We make some nice change but could we earn a living at this level.

Nope.

I think realistically a single person has to earn at least $35,000.00 US a year to take a living out of the music profession. Thats 235 gigs a year at $150.00 per. Then you have to pay taxes and expenses from that same $35K. By the 40% of this money is chewed up in taxes and road expenses you are left with just about enough to pay for your living at home expenses. Or enough to allow you to live frugally.

Without health insurance.

I kow that things are different everywhere and everyone's situations are different too. In theory you work that much you get better known, you can raise the price and things are better. But you may get sick or brak a bone or one of another insults to the business and you end up averaging $ 150.00 per for 235 gigs a year.

It can be discouraging. But there must be something in performing that makes us willing to work hard and long for little or no. Thats why I have three jobs.

Don

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: ReeBop
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 05:14 PM

I'm tired...and I agree with Don...We work and work for what we love...and we learn to live frugally in order to stay alive while doing it. But, yet, I haven't givin it up, even though I know life could be "easier" if I took a job outside the music business.(still thinking about it)

Yeah...I think we all need to encourage eachother. I've always lived in various households of musicians who are willing to pull eachother up and push eachother through and sometimes that still isn't enough from feeling discouraged...

all I can say is: Hey, it gets better...think of these times as the rough spots...(and if anyone feels like encouraging me...please feel free--I need it too)

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: GUEST
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 06:01 PM

Hey Bobjack,

Don't sweat it. I'm sure hippies ain't got time for you either.

:-)

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: dianavan
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 07:59 PM

I know what a redneck is. You get a red neck from working in the sun day in and day out, right?

Whats a hippy, Bobjack? I've been called a hippy many times but don't quite get it because I've always worked. It feels like an insult. I think name-calling is juvenile. Sometimes its racist. But what is the purpose of calling someone a hippy and what does it really mean anyway? Just a meaningless expression from a hateful person?

d

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired
From: GUEST,reggie miles
Date: 11 Feb 04 - 11:13 PM

Some folks just don't have definitive answers when questioned about the names they use to describe others, or the choices other folks make, like whether or not getting a job is actually important enough to bother with. It was common during the first great depression, to call the unemployed, bums, even though many did not consider themselves such. Hobo was the term they used to describe their condition. A hobo was willing to work for a meal or whatever was offered in recompense. Bums were those that sought handouts but were not willing to work for it. Nevertheless the two terms were often lumped together. The latter was often used to describe the former.

There's a wonderful song that I have a couple of versions of on 78rpm. My favorite version is by a fellow named Lazy Larry (Howard Johnson). It's called "Who Said I Was A Bum?" I've been playing this song for years. It very playfully blurs the differences between hobos and bums.

On a more serious note:

There are a great many folks today who are unemployed. They are standing in food bank lines, and unemployment office lines because of the greed of white-collar thieves, the callous disregard of profiteering CEOs, stockholders, and shortsighted legislators. These are good folks who have lost life long job situations due to the present attitude in America that places profits before the needs of American families. These families dedicated their lives to developing businesses that are now turning their backs on very people that helped them become the success they are today. This is how we in America see fit to reward these hard working folks for a lifetime of loyalty and service. It's turned into a stampede, U.S. businesses rush to ship American jobs to other countries where the cost of labor is just a fraction of what it is here in the states, just so that a select few at the top can see a little more $. Watching this happen, as it has been so often here in the good ol' U.S. of A., I'm not surprised when folks question whether or not they should even seek employment. I certainly wouldn't call them names because of their lack of employment or their choice to remain unemployed. Where's the profit in trying to build a life for yourself and your family when some slick CEO can so easily rob you of your life savings, your retirement funds, and those of a great many others, and then walk away smiling all the way to the bank.

End of rant….

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired (music business)
From: pavane
Date: 12 Feb 04 - 06:36 AM

Over here in UK, the Government is just as bad as the CEO's.
Their incompetence results in them taking and spending far more of our money than is necessary, and they destroy the wealth-creating sector by introducing stealth taxes because they promised not to raise income tax. (like stopping pension funds from reclaiming tax on Dividends - resulting in reduced pension fund values. No-one notices until they come to draw their pension)

They have also introduced licencing rules which will result in far fewer venues for live music (Probably not allowed to pipe at that funeral without applying for a licence 6 months in advance..)

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired (music business)
From: Juan Kerr
Date: 12 Feb 04 - 06:43 AM

Goodness, I can feel the draft from those kaftans from here!

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired (music business)
From: pavane
Date: 12 Feb 04 - 06:48 AM

Mrs Pavane works as a singer, pubs, clubs & nursing homes in UK
This is pop/easy listening, not folk, although sometimes I do go with her, and we play some folk - Welsh and other Celtic tunes and the odd song (always goes down well)

She currently has 120 bookings for nursing homes up until end of 2004, total income expected approx UKP4600. Adding perhaps 30 pubs & clubs at c UKP120 making a total of just over UKP 8K or maybe $14k
From that, deduct travel expenses.

As you say, you can't make a living on that basis. (But a nursing home is for one hour only, plus up to 1 hour travel, so it is not full-time.)

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired (music business)
From: Bobjack
Date: 12 Feb 04 - 07:20 AM

juan,
    You sound like my kind of chap, do pop round sometime and I will rustle up some nut cutlets and a bottle or two of dandelion wine.
       altogether now........"This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius.........

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired (music business)
From: MikeofNorthumbria
Date: 12 Feb 04 - 07:34 AM

Some good thoughts in this thread - reading them jiggled my rhyme-box, and this fell out:

Here's to the toilers whose teams have been downsized
Here's to the workers whose jobs were de-skilled
Here's to the losers whose products got outsourced
Here's to the companies take-overs killed.

Restructured, redeployed, casualised, laid off,
Hired by the hour, paid off on the spot,
We're the new flexible just-in-time labour-force:
All bloody hippies now, like it or not!

So grab your guitar and get out on the highway,
Look for an audience, sing what you feel,
Don't be a pawn in the games played by Management -
Their world's the fantasy, our one is real.

Mostly I just dream about this. Although my working conditions continue to deteriorate steadily, they're not bad enough to make me jump ship ... yet. But good luck to all those that do.

Wassail!

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired (music business)
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 12 Feb 04 - 08:46 AM

Bobjack, "This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius" checking on Aquarius star sign for today tells us..

"Low self-esteem will hold you back. If you're looking for excuses, surely there are less damaging ways of ducking a commitment. Other people's opinions are more crucial than you might expect. Although Aquarians have a strong independent streak, they're perfectly willing to commit to the right partner"
Don't understand it myself but I'm sure it means something to someone.

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired (music business)
From: Juan Kerr
Date: 12 Feb 04 - 08:49 AM

Damn fine idea Bobjack. I will send a PM to you for more details. We could have a splendid evening listening to my vast collection of Grateful Dead LP'S.
                   peace and love,
                      Juan.

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired (music business)
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 12 Feb 04 - 09:01 AM

I forgot to ask, whats in dandelion wine ?

Subject: RE: Sometimes I just Get Tired (music business)
From: GUEST,Ozzy
Date: 12 Feb 04 - 09:09 AM

Didn't I bite the head off one of those hippy things?