Take what you can get within the Golden Age of Live Music.
I played a show on Saturday night, a split set between solo acoustic and full band back at a cafe I have mentioned here before. The owner was very nice, but again, no pay was given nor discussed. I knew that going in but did the gig to prep for recording a new solo acoustic record and to keep the band in touch with the Music. There will be a decent amount of shows coming up in the upcoming months and, while we all love each other dearly as friends, we all need to both rehearse the tunes and do them live, which is where the accidents can raise you shine brighter or dig a deeper pit of embarrassment. Like anything else, you either use it or lose it.
Most every book ever written about a life in the creative arts is about someone who is successful. This makes sense on a very practical level as who would you rather read about: The Life and Times of Picasso or The Life and Times of Bob Slogum? Yeah, there you have it. All narratives have the underlying thread that, no matter how lousy the point in the narrative, the narrative wins in the end by the simple fact that you are reading their book. So, if some former rock god tells you that they wound up playing in a cafe for six people, this is most likely after their exile from the spectacular kingdom of stardom, money, sex, and drugs and, by the mere architecture of the narrative, a stop on the way back into the kingdom via a different route. This return is executed by having made all the connections in their glory days and accessing them again in hopes of finding one thread back into the maze.
This is where that beloved chestnut of "doing it because you love to do it" kinda hits a snag. Performance is, by definition is when an artist or artists performs for another person or group of people. If this situation lacks an audience, it is called a "rehearsal" and is not the same thing. Music is unique as it can be done in both performance and in private and still excel. The act of writing words is a private matter and, judging by the content of the internet, everybody and their hamster is now a writer of some blog or book or screenplay. You never have to leave your room to get published.
Strangely, the same thing is now true for Music, although the noose got tied with the computer as one need not perform Music live to put on a live show. The dubstep phenom Skrillex (Sonny John Moore) goes onstage with no more than a thumb drive to plug into the laptop provided. People love it and the man has made many many millions at live shows for hundreds of thousands of people without a callous on his fingers nor a node on his vocal chords. Live Music does not even need performance anymore, hence the thousands of lights and other visual tech innovations that make every EDM live show a visual orgasm. And, well, yeah, the drugs help too.....
So, if the Music making the most money live (EDM) is based off of a Music that does not need to be performed while on stage YET is considered "Live", where does that leave us? Sure, the computer could fail and things would still ride that "playing it dangerous" live feel, but does that count? It is a known fact that most live singers who do a full out uber-erotic Zumba class while performing simply lip sync and have done for many many years. Does their aerobics class count as a Music performance? Broadway now has many people lip-syncing to prerecorded tracks because it is physically impossible to hit all those high notes perfectly clear night after night. And, since Broadway is an investment, one must take the safe way and not lose ANY money and keep the people in the over-priced seats happy with a mechanically perfect performance.
I did not grow up in the days of the Golden Age of Live Rock Music. Recently I was at an orientation for a new job and the older men their were talking about all the glory days of the 1960's and 70's and how they used to play. The guy next to me had steady gigs, but he was in a Dave Matthews Tribute Band. Original Music was on nobody's plate.
It seems that the general rule of this place of change rides along the fault line of technology and goes something like this...in reverse order.
Today, Music performed live instruments has been replaced computer based music with very little human performance needed. If there is a human performance, it is normally digitally modified to the mathematical standard of a passable representation of a performance. Computer adjusted performances that could pass as human performances have existed pretty much since the use of the Synclavier Music Synth and Computer in the 1980's. Computer pitch correction for live vocals was possible but very expensive. (1980's and 90's)
Live performance of Music was replaced by the multi-track recorder where separate parts could be layered onto each other with each performance able to be done again and again till the desired quality was attained. The flip side of this was that performers of this Music now had a new standard to go by. You had to sound as good as the recording, the reference point of that the audience would have. This changed the landscape as Musicians had to deliver live performances on a whole new level as the expectations were different. (1960's onward)
Recorded Music in general changed the game. Once the record player got within the price range of the general public, records sold like crazy. People wanted to hear Enrico Caruso sing again and again that they made his 1904 recording the first million selling sound recording ever. The people wanted it and they got it. A few years later, the invention of the radio upped the stakes because now you did not need to own the recording to hear them. On could now be introduced to Music that they would never have been exposed to outside their travels in life.
Go back a few hundred years an you get vocal Music being replaced by the presence of stringed instruments. Technology made the 88 key tuned piano possible in Bach's time.
Keep going back several hundred years and you get the flip from written Music to Oral Tradition and improvised Music. Standardized Music notation was the first recording device, the means by which a piece of Music could be performed again and again with certain regularity. Before that, it was passed down from person to person.
As far as live performance goes, the beginning screw happened with the jukebox. If you have ever heard of the term "Juke Joint" it refers to Jukebox Joint, or a bar where there was a Jukebox instead of live Musicians. This was the big first swipe at live Music as every bar had a live musician in it. Granted these were not all high class establishments, but it was a place for live Music. Eric Satie wrote his most famous pieces, "Trois Gymnopedies" at a bar called "Le Chat Noir" in the Montmartre section of Paris.
When big bands were popular, musicians had plenty of gigs playing everywhere. But this changed with the advent of rock and roll and a small band taking its place. But there was money to be made where the jukebox did not reign. Bands could get gigs and people played around a great deal. You could even make a living at such a thing. Learn those damn tunes as good as the record and get out there!
It was the raising of the drinking age that did in live Music. Without going into the minutia, this was the beginning of Pay-to-Play. Bar owners saw a huge decrease in their revenue and in order to make sure they got their money, they made bands pay money to play their famous places on horrible nights to be sure they got SOME money in even if nobody showed up. In the end, it will always be about the money. Always.
There is still live Music at parties, but there seem to be less parties than there were years ago and if there is live Music, it is normally a DJ. The people throwing the party get to call the shots and if the people love EDM, then so be it.
The age I lived and worked through was in no way, shape, or form "Golden". It was, however, different. Even at my first real show as a solo acoustic artist in New Brunswick at Cafe News, I was given some money for the performance. Something. I think it was $25.. But I was learning my way and paying my dues and did not expect much. The road ahead was expected to be without much pay, but I knew that and it was my time for learning how to do this craft of performing and to learn more about Music in one show in San Francisco or Malta than I would via months of rehearsal alone in a room. Gigs were auditions for the next level, hoping Fate would arrive and transport one past the velvet ropes and onto the next evolutionary stage.
There were more places to play than there were now, though it was always a thorn in the eye to get a gig and everyone expected to have me bring people. Club owners sucked and all of us hoped that it would all be part of "paying our dues" till we got to the Promised land of some sort of deal. But one by one the clubs closed up and live original Music here in Jersey became a mockery of what it once was to the point right now where I cannot even find an affordable place to rent out to put on a show with friends.
And, yet, this is a Golden Age in may ways. There are 7 year-olds playing guitar solos that boggle the mind. Hundreds of thousands of people making Music and posting it. Instruments are more affordable and PA systems, when not run by a brain damaged troglodyte, sound better. People have access to more learning tools than before. The stakes have been raised because you have to be better than what can be seen on Youtube or whatever. And PLEASE let me now forget about recording gear! Digital has changed the paradigm. What would have cost a mortgage back in the day is now either an app or can be bootlegged for free onto a laptop costing less than the cost of a new sofa. Microphone technology has also made home recording painfully easy and of decent quality.
But will someone's home recording done on an iPad or laptop sound as good as the Who's "Who's Next?" or Queen's "A Night at the Opera"? No. This Golden Age has its limits, as does every Golden Age. So, within this Golden Age, take what you can get.
And may you have better luck than me....
