On January 2nd we posted, Craigslist: Musician To Play In Restaurant. That post went viral and immediately generated more interest from musicians around the world than any article we’ve posted. It’s receiving hundreds of hits every day. Evidently, it touched a sensitive nerve and poked a bee's nest.
We’ve received letters. Here are a few excerpts (we added the pictures):
Frank in Colorado says: “...from Juilliard last year. I’m the new keyboard in town and scrambling for gigs. I have to beg my way into jam sessions and I look for crappy gigs like the one in that restaurant ad. I don’t want to play for free, but I don’t know how else to get my foot in the door around here...”
Irving in Irving, Texas (no joke) writes: “...and I have steady gigs in Dallas and Fort Worth, but if I want to play the kind of jazz I really want to play, I have to go to sessions in small joints that pay squat. I know they make mucho dineros on jam session nights. I bring my girlfriend and usually four or five friends and so do the rest of the musicians, and we all buy drinks and snacks, so, in truth, we’re shilling for the joint and paying to play to boot! It sucks, but that’s the scene and everyone goes along with it. Those restaurants have you by the cajones and the owners always cry poverty - God help the bartender that gets caught slipping you a free beer on the side!!!...”
Guillaume in Belgium wrote: “...It’s same here all Europe. Musician is slaves like jazz clown to make everybudy happy but no money to make jazz clown happy. Who pay for clown to study lessuns and who pay for many hours to practice so clown can make everybudy else happy? Nobudy...”
James in Boston ranted: “...f**king sick of it and now my axe doesn’t come out of the case for anything less that 100 bucks, period! No jam sessions, no freebies. I’ve given up being a music ho. If all of us put aside our audience-craving egos and refused to play for free, how long do you think it would take before club owners, restaurants, community theaters, church groups and the rest of the music-suckers who have been using our talent to promote themselves for years (and only paying us with pats on the back) would magically find the bucks for talented live entertainment? If all we really want to do is play music, why not get together privately without an audience? (Use an applause machine after solos, if that's what you really crave.) Symphony cats, studio cats, writers and actors go on strike when they can’t live on their pay. It’s time that general business musicians banded together and did the same. Things have gotten out of hand. NO HO - NO JAM - NO PAY - NO PLAY - PERIOD!!!..."
WooHoo, Musicians unite. No playing for free.
ReplyDeleteSee how long it takes for the users to beg for us to come back. Better yet, stand on the street corner and play whatever you want, and the money will come.
In Boston the pay-for-play thing is standard. After 25 years of actually scraping by, by playing, it was hard to get used to. I basically retired early and now I do "plenty-of-jam, no-bread" but at friends houses. It works for us, playing what we want, whenever we want, and with whomever we want. This isn't the future of jazz, it's the present. It's up to the jazz educators to change that, not help the players play better. Jazz is not dead but the audience for jazz is.
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