fattening frogs for snakes

[Upright Bill]

Teaching jazz is like fattening frogs for snakes. I don't teach, but I tell kids at clinics what I'd do if I did teach at a University. I'd put them on a bus and paint the windows black, give them ugly uniforms and 400 pieces of music out of order that need all sorts of doubling (clarinet, oboe, flugelhorn). I'd drive them around campus for 30 hours in circles, going nowhere. Then I'd stop, [drop] everybody off, put on the plastic uniforms, set up on a dark stage with no sound system or sound man, tune up, call out a number 1479!...[They'd have to] scramble to put their music in order "All right, now put it all away, hang up your uniform, get back on the bus and drive around in circles for another 30 hours." After a few days, I'd ask them, "Now, who wants to make this their life?" You can save people a whole lot of trouble, because this is what the music business is. It's not about the music. The music is easy! It's all that other stuff. To play with young energy is simple, but to sustain a career in music takes a lot of dedication. You may major in Coltrane, but you gotta play Britney Spears on tour for a living.

- Phil Woods (in Downbeat magazine)

Made me feel better about the place I'm in musically right now.

[Jim Alfredson]

Bill, good to see you here again! Hope all is well, despite the ominous sound of that post!

Maybe I'm just young a naive, but the music industry is changing rapidly. The old guard is dying and a new one is rising in it's place. I'm not saying people don't want to listen to crap still (for the most part they do) but it is now possible to do things your way and find the audience that wants to hear it, without going into debt to a major label.

The festival and college gig circuit is where it's at!

[Upright Bill]

Thanks Jim, I still pop in now and again. "Stuff" getting in the way, you know how it is.

I stopped playing other gigs to play just Jazz and just Double Bass a couple of years ago and basically the net result has been that I've stopped playing out completely. I got a call last night to do a classical guitar gig, passed on it, and its been bugging me all day.

[alankin]

At a few recent jazz shows, I've noticed an increase in the number of people in the audience with no grey hair...

I've wondered what brought them there...

Edited April 7, 2005 by alankin

[MartyJazz]

At a few recent jazz shows, I've noticed an increase in the number of people in the audience with no grey hair...

Were they bald?

[AllenLowe]

it's called hair spray -

[Soul Stream]

I think the best advice I ever heard about anything was "Do the best you can with what you got where you are."

If you're a jazz upright bassist in a town with no demand for that...well then you have an instant hobby. GIGS make a professional musician, we all know that. I've come to the conclusion that GOOD music is music is music. Wanting to play Coltrane in today's environment isn't very realistic unless you live in NYC maybe.

You can't play stuff that has no audience. Music is a communal event. Keeping playing is more important sometimes that what you play.

You gotta think about WHERE you are. I live in a horrible place for organ jazz. Since I stopped trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, I'm a lot better off. It takes the pressure off of a no win situation. You HAVE to have an audience. If I can't play standards for a living (hey, "F" a restaurant, that ain't jazz), then I'll play something else. In my case that's blues and soul for the moment. Nothing wrong with that. I'm learning as much doing that as I did learning "Lover Man." It's all good if you make it that way.

Edited April 7, 2005 by Soul Stream