Well it's heartening to see so many people who actually care about what they do, but disheartening to see so many people who still don't and who use their audiences as a barometer of how much they should care. Here's why that is, as Stuart Smalley says, stinkin' thinkin'...
(lecture mode ON)
1. True, the gear you use is irrelevant to the audience. Nobody ever walked out on my bands because I didn't have an SVT and 810. And as long as it works and is enough to satisfy the volume requirements of the band, it's usually fine. But if gear doesn't matter at all, why don't we all just play the cheapest basses we can possibly find with bad fretwork and super high action through $20 guitar amps? Because it's a distraction to the player. Nothing I hate worse than having to fight my gear to do my job. I want my gear to work with me, not against me, so that I can put 100% of my energy toward playing well and doing a good job and 0% of my energy trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
2. Audiences are a lot more sophisticated than you think they are. Lots of musicians love to think of the audience as drunken idiots and they're the big smart superstar musicians landing from heaven to enlighten the rubes with their superior intellect, but the truth is you're not. In any given audience, there will be drunken idiots, sure, but there will also be people who have experience with playing and singing music, and some might even actually play bass better than you. And just because they don't fawn over you and your gear and ask you questions about it doesn't mean they're know-nothings. But what it does mean is that your superiority complex is deeply rooted in feelings of insecurity, so you take it out on your audiences to feel better about yourselves, especially if you're not going over.
3. Audience members aren't the ones signing your paycheck or calling you to offer you a gig. Other musicians are. Agents are. In passing out business cards to non-connected audience members who say they have gigs to offer, maybe one in 50 will actually call you and ask about booking your band. Then maybe one in 10 won't balk at your price and try to lowball you so badly you blow them off completely. So if you're using drunken audience members as your barometer, just remember that they're not usually going to be the ones who will hire you...but that one pro guitarist or singer or agent in the crowd who you don't notice might. Do you want to make a good impression from the getgo or do you want to spend the next 5 years convincing them that they caught you on a "bad night" when in truth you just didn't care enough to put forth a real effort for the drunken idiots because you're so superior in every way?
4. This is Talkbass. We come here in part to nitpick about gear and why our gear isn't doing what we want and look for solutions. Nothing I love better than turning 90% there into 100% there. 90% there isn't good enough for me. Even 99% there isn't good enough. And I may not always use the most expensive gear in the world but I want it to be 100%. All of it, even the cheapest of the cheap. I've helped people do it on here and they've helped me. And still, at least once a week, someone makes a snide comment like, "While you're all on here talking bass, I'm in the real world PLAYING bass." Well Mr. Smart Guy, I'm out there playing bass, too, and so are a hell of a lot of people who are on here, so shut up. The hunt for 100% is a very noble pursuit because when you're 100% there, you can go to your gig and not think about anything but playing well and putting on a good show. And there is nothing in the world wrong with that.
(lecture mode OFF)
no matter what. These nuances are hardly only noticeable in the bedroom though.
