What is your job?

[Robroy]

The "flood of bad musicians" is not happening. It happened 50-60 years ago, when everyone wanted to start a rock band. Now they're too busy doing other things.

Well, maybe it's that back in the day people even liked bad ones. I remember before I was ever a bass player or even in a band, I was just trying out some Karaoke. One of the songs I did was "born to be wild". Then one day I walked past a bar and the band was doing "born to be wild". I remember thinking, "Sheesh, if that's all it takes to be a lead singer in a band, I could blow that guy away. This was around 1996. It was the first time I even bothered to notice that there are a lot of bad bands out there.

But back then, there was a lot more demand than there is today. Then again, maybe I'm comparing my Kentucky experience today with my Seattle experience. In seattle, theres seemed to be a lot of bad "originals" band. For every modest mouse or Nirvana, there were a couple dozen bands that were simply not worth your time.

There is a documentary about it called "will play for beer". It's free on amazon prime right now.

 

[Frank77]

Hey, I didn't say you were not allowed to prefer running an alcohol advertising agency to playing your bass, I just said that personally I think that's kind of sad.

And when did I say that, exactly?

You may be anti-alcohol, but the horse you're sitting on seems, like, suuuuuper high.

 

[MrLenny1]

I'm the bass player, make the band sound good.
Make people stay, drink and we get paid.

 

[Eilif]

As a bar band you are adding money to the owner's bank account. You are fooling yourself by thinking a bar owner would build a stage for your tombstone legacy. Yes there are cases where the bar owner is a rich guy who just wants to be known as a guy who has top bands. But he certainly won't stay in business paying you $100 per man if the drink and food sales don't support it. It's a two way street whether you like it or not.

... Here in Arizona many nights I am the only guy in the band who brings friends. Other say it isn't their job its the bars job. I have mixed feelings on that. I think we as a band have at least a shared responsibility to help keep the establishments alive...

I definitely agree you have to earn your keep an it has to be worth it for the bar. However, even within bar bands I'm not seeing bringing friends as my job.

If a bar is expecting you to help bring in customers, then that's a simple function of playing well and raising the profile of the bar. I play well, the bar promotes us, people come an enjoy themselves, purchase liquor an hopefully leave wanting to return to that bar.

If a bar is expecting you to "bring your friends" then
- they are getting desperate
and/or
-you're probably not gigging all that often
and/or
-likely you're playing a short set on a list of other original music acts.

Most of my gigs (mostly cover band, 3 hour gigs) are almost an hour from where I live. Even if they weren't, I'm not dragging my friends out more than once every couple months. This band is gigging almost weekly and our job is NOT to bring people to every gig.

My job is to play well. The bar's responsibility is to choose bands that will bring in customers (I hope we're in that catagory) and promote the fact that they are playing. If the bar brings people in the door we will keep them drinking and send them away happy. If people aren't coming in the door, the bar either needs to promote the event better or -if our presence isn't helping- fire us.

 

[jamro217]

If so, the same with everyone elses day jobs.

True, but you don't make plans with your buddies on the weekend to build submarines, pump cesspools, pave driveways, or clean gutters because you love doing it. We're not talking about performing unpleasant tasks strictly to put food on the table. First, there isn't enough money or benefits for most professional musicians to live above the poverty line. Next, there is the uncertainty of the work schedule. Even last week's number one hit maker better have a follow up, or else. Not to mention the amount of time one devote to this art. Doesn't leave much time for moonlighting (or daylighting, as most gigs are at night). People usually pursue music for other reasons and the ultimate goal may stray into other areas, such as beer salesmen for the venue. My next band will play "Lady Marmalade" as part of the truth in advertising laws if we're only in it for the money.

 

[matthewbrown]

The day my job as a bass player becomes a seller of alcohol I will stop playing.
Fortunately I went to school and have a day job.

This. I realized very soon after I became a full-time musician that I did not want to play in clubs whose primary purpose was to sell alcohol. I was able to snag a couple of GB gigs in my home state that put me through school and added to my income. But I only played in a bar band once since I first started, on a cruise ship. And that's a different sort of gig. My role now is to provide background music for restaurant patrons of all ages. I occasionally play a bar/restaurant gig, where there's a lot of drinking, but it's more of a pub atmosphere.

Playing bars is, IMHO, a terrible way to make a living and not conducive to making music.

 

[Luciferiad]

I sometimes wonder if we haven't got our relationship with promoters and venues backward. THEY want US to put people in their seats, but then add a bunch of stipulations, or do things like raise their drink prices.

But I guess that's basically being a musician. And around here, choices are pretty limited on venues, especially for an all-originals band. It's okay. I'm in it for me, and for what my bandmates and I create. That's all.

 

[Don Hergert]

Yup, in the venues that I gig at, drinking does occur, but never heavily...

I gig regularly in two Gospel bands. My band job is to encorage, lighten hearts and help people be happy. You do have a choice about what environments you want to play in.

 

[StraffordMike]

Thank you for supporting someone who cares and tries to make a difference.

Hope your cynicism will get you far, I know it's a much sought after quality these days.

It ain't cynicism it's pragmatism. I'll second the good luck, now send it back cause I'm in the same boat. The road you're traveling ain't easy.

 

[fingerbun]

Thank you for supporting someone who cares and tries to make a difference.

Hope your cynicism will get you far, I know it's a much sought after quality these days.

I’m curious how old you are, and what experiences you have.

 

[jamro217]

Except that if the baseball team sucks, people will be less enthusiastic about attending, beer sales (and ticket sales) will decline, and the team owners will think about replacing coaches or players. So actually, they do; the players have a market incentive to play well because that's what entices the crowd to spend money and guarantees they can keep working.

Otherwise it's a problematic analogy, because baseball has a pretty fixed set of rules and all the players need to do is play well. Music, on the other hand, has a much wider variety of choices of WHAT to play - genres of music, or song choices. If a standup comedian decided to use monologues from Shakespeare comedies for his act, he might perform them brilliantly, but even so never get a return booking - it's not what the ticket buying public wants to hear on their night out. If an athlete in a town that had lots of baseball fans decided he was going to play cricket instead, just because it was what he liked, then however good he is at it, he's probably not going to find a lot of success getting hired to play in ball parks. So actually, yes - the athlete has to play what people want to watch, and play it well, or they won't pay (whether for tickets or beer) and he'll be playing in his backyard.

What an interesting viewpoint. Thank you. I was playing devil's advocate to a degree. You spoke the truth about gigs drying up and lost opportunities for repeats, but didn't acknowledge the fact the some club owners feel it's up to the band to work for them, without paying. Part of the door and $200 for a snowy night in February is little more than a paid rehearsal. We're not tavern employees, we're contractors who provide entertainment. Do you think the tavern owner would expect the electrician or plumber he hired to do dishes and take out the trash for less than minimum wage? Highly unlikely. There's a thread about playing for free at a club in Vegas with your own PA for the chance to make money. Unfortunately, you sometimes have to give away free samples to expand your market. This still doesn't bode well as a business model for our industry. Maybe I'm bitter after decades of disappointment, but the whole art versus job dilemma sickens me. In a few more years it'll be the end of the road for my working career, then a band situation will be quite appealing, indeed. The interaction with an enthusiastic crowd, special musical moments on stage when you seem to drift off into some magical sonic territory, the joy of playing your bass alongside other live musicians, instead of your monitor. Now that gear is light enough to lug around, why not ?

 

[Bassbeater]

I will literally operate a beer tap with my right hand and play hammer-ons with my left hand if the house provides wireless.

 

[fhm555]

...Or in other words: Make music for people who actually appreciate and care about music, opposed to spewing out under stimulating generic crap without any personality, character or real substance whatsoever made for the sole purpose of exploiting the general public's musical ignorance to make money out of their need for easily digested background entertainment to distract them from their miserable meaningless life.

First, find a job with no relationship to music.
For one you will need a way to support yourself. Barring a trust fund or something, we all gotta make a living, and as you so adeptly observed, musical schlock sells to people too busy working to dissect the genius of music created for the sake of principle rather than profit. Instead they waste billions supporting drek that is at once safe and familiar, never takes chances, never ventures to the jagged edge of uncertainty or into the abyss of the unknown. They fear change, things unfamiliar, and simply reject them out of hand without so much as a by your leave. So yes, you are on point when you believe people with miserable lives will not support greatness and instead continue paying good money to wallow in shallow puddles of banal musically mediocre corporate product, thus making gozillionaires out of the clueless knobs producing that repugnant affront to principled music and the artists who dare create it.
Honestly though, who would ever want to sell out and be a gozillionaire who retires at twenty nine when you can stick to your principles and scrape by with a hundred of fans until you die homeless and pennyless at seventy two.
But hey, at least your death will insure you get a couple tracks on K-Tell Records latest compilation entitled “It’s all About The Principle (Vol XLIX)" featuring artists who never sold more than 50 records over the course of their career.
So yeah, you’ll need a day job to keep the wolf from your door.
Hope this helps, and I anxiously await news of your first release. Best of luck with your music.

 

[socialleper]

I'm talking as a band. Make people dance? Sell beer? Entertain? I've watch many posts about making people dance. But I remember the old days when you had to sell beer. There were so many crappy sounding bands out there but the ones that got the gigs sold beer.

Right now our drummer turns down free drinks from drunk patrons. Our guitar player turns down tequila shots. Unheard of in the old days. You don't have to drink it, but you should damn well accept it! In fact we used to encourage it by constantly holding up empty bottles or telling people that we would like to dispel the rumors that the band doesn't drink. Or holding up a bottle and yelling cheers every other song, etc.

There's the story about the bar owner who doesn't understand why sales are down. "I've got the best dance band in town, the dance floor is full all night long but my beer sales haven't gone up". Well if they are on the dance floor all night they aren't drinking. Plus their beer is getting warm so when they do get a chance to drink they blame the bar for warm beer. I could go on and on about this, but back to the original question...

Create an emotional connection between me and the audience. To share a moment.
I'm a musician, I'm the product. The venue I'm playing on gets the benefit of having me play there, otherwise their dump would be empty. To me the venue is a means to an end, not the end. I'm sure the venue owners feel differently, but good bands go on to play better venues. The venues stay where they are. Audiences don't care about the venue, they care about who is playing there. Just like people don't really care about the record label or the producer, they just care about the band.
That's why I don't understand how the musicians became the piggie bank for everyone else to hold by the ankles and shake every nickle out of. I'm the creator, everyone else is just trying to get a piece of what I'm doing. Venues, labels, streaming services, instrument companies, studios, etc wouldn't have anything if it wasn't for musicians. Yet, musicians are treated like $#!+.

 

[Old P Bass Guy]

No prob. Here it is: https://www.amazon.com/Practicing-M...preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch

Thanks, just ordered it.

 

[2tonic]

I book bands for an establishment. The goal of any band that plays there is to sell alcohol. I'll give you 2 tries. If the till wasn't good one of those nights there won't be a third.

This place is a distillery wth no dance floor. A sit down and listen atmosphere.

So , if I read you right, a successful band is one that drives an audience to drink?!

 

[hrodbert696]

What an interesting viewpoint. Thank you. I was playing devil's advocate to a degree. You spoke the truth about gigs drying up and lost opportunities for repeats, but didn't acknowledge the fact the some club owners feel it's up to the band to work for them, without paying. Part of the door and $200 for a snowy night in February is little more than a paid rehearsal. We're not tavern employees, we're contractors who provide entertainment. Do you think the tavern owner would expect the electrician or plumber he hired to do dishes and take out the trash for less than minimum wage? Highly unlikely. There's a thread about playing for free at a club in Vegas with your own PA for the chance to make money. Unfortunately, you sometimes have to give away free samples to expand your market. This still doesn't bode well as a business model for our industry. Maybe I'm bitter after decades of disappointment, but the whole art versus job dilemma sickens me. In a few more years it'll be the end of the road for my working career, then a band situation will be quite appealing, indeed. The interaction with an enthusiastic crowd, special musical moments on stage when you seem to drift off into some magical sonic territory, the joy of playing your bass alongside other live musicians, instead of your monitor. Now that gear is light enough to lug around, why not ?

Yeah, I get you. The one thing is that, when it comes to value of work, there's the essential and the inessential. A bar with no band will probably still have customers who will show up and drink. But a bar with a flooding toilet or no lights will lose those customers fast. So the plumbers and electricians can count on the customer NEEDING them and can charge accordingly. If the band charges $500, it's a perfectly reasonable amount in terms of the musicians' skill, investment in gear, and time; but if a bar makes $1200 on a night no band is there and $1500 on a night the band IS there, then the band isn't worth it. They spent an extra $500 and only took in an extra $300. It's a marketing expense, but like I said, as "product" advertising it's not a sure fire strategy by any stretch. As an "image" strategy it might, though.

 

[2tonic]

An estimated 88,0008 people (approximately 62,000 men and 26,000 women) die from alcohol-related causes annually, making alcohol the third leading preventable cause of death in the United States. The first is tobacco, and the second is poor diet and physical inactivity.

Just a side thought... baseball players don't have to make sure the "paying customers" are buying their $8 beers at the game, do they?
Didn't think so.

Leading cause of death worldwide......
Being alive.

 

[heynorm]

I’m 67, playing over 50 years. Our job as a rehearsed band is to bring in and entertain enough people to pay a cover and to eat and drink alcohol or sodas so the club can pay us and make money on top of that.
If the numbers are consistently down they replace you.
Occasionally I do benefits for free, too. But, at this point in my life it’s not worth it to drag out myself and gear “for exposure.”
Just my two cents. Now, get off my lawn.

 

[bolophonic]

I'm talking as a band. Make people dance? Sell beer? Entertain? I've watch many posts about making people dance. But I remember the old days when you had to sell beer. There were so many crappy sounding bands out there but the ones that got the gigs sold beer.

Right now our drummer turns down free drinks from drunk patrons. Our guitar player turns down tequila shots. Unheard of in the old days. You don't have to drink it, but you should damn well accept it! In fact we used to encourage it by constantly holding up empty bottles or telling people that we would like to dispel the rumors that the band doesn't drink. Or holding up a bottle and yelling cheers every other song, etc.

There's the story about the bar owner who doesn't understand why sales are down. "I've got the best dance band in town, the dance floor is full all night long but my beer sales haven't gone up". Well if they are on the dance floor all night they aren't drinking. Plus their beer is getting warm so when they do get a chance to drink they blame the bar for warm beer. I could go on and on about this, but back to the original question...

No offense, but your entire post is about beer sales, tequila shots, drunkenness, drink temperatures... that’s cool if that’s what your whole concept of music revolves around, but I think there is more to being a bassist than chugging shooters and breathing beer farts all night. YMMV, of course. JMO.

 

[2tonic]

The CUBS, for decades never had to worry about how bad their team was... the bleachers were filled every day with the same unemployed drunks yelling profanities at the players, year after year. Their on field performance dictated their future careers, not beer sales. Harry Cary was the beer salesman for baseball in Chicago and the bars around Wrigley are filled with drunks all year long.

Those "unemployed drunks" are lawyers, stockbrokers, and practitioner's of various professions, who have embraced gameday as the new good time, and forsaken night clubs and live music venues full of artsy-fartsy "feel my creativity flowing" ensembles, that couldn't rock their way out of a wet paper sack even if they were playing their dad's pointy guitars.
Long gone are the days of Haymakers, Kinetic Playground, Thirsty Whale, B'ginnings, Midway Ballroom, and Mothers.
Hard rockin' bands used to be able to build a rep, create a draw, have a hand in preserving venues for them to perform in. Then they blew it for themselves by misunderstanding their roles and biting the hand that feeds them.
Nowadays, it is what it is.