Music Before the Money

Except for the first few New Year’s gigs I didn’t like doing them much. Oh the money was great but, like many a gig, the people on the floor were having the good time. And I wanted to join them.

New Year’s gigs are hard work especially if you’ve never been to the venue before. There is such a chain of things that can go south, from the contact person being an idiot to the job itself. And then there are the botch-ups that happen in between. That said, most of the times it went over well.

As in a wedding the band and the food make the occasion. I have never been to a New Year’s job where the food was bad. In a few occasions there was lobster and each member of the band got one. Not bad, huh?

You always had to have a time-keeper because no one wanted the responsibility of screwing up the countdown to the New Year. I have heard where the guy in the band dedicated to keeping time lost time and had people in the crowd start the countdown without the band. Can you imaging having to switch to Auld Lang Sine in the middle of a song because you were on the wrong time?

I’ve seen one fight and one woman rushed to the hospital where she had the 2nd baby born in the New Year. On one occasion the power went out just after midnight and didn’t come back on. The band was sidelined but the people partied anyway.

In 1995 i was on a cruise ship sitting on the docks in Newcastle, England. The ship left shortly after the fireworks went off. On New Year’s Day we were in sub-hurricane winds and waves. In Bergen, Norway, nine ambulances showed up to get people with broken limbs and other maladies off the ship.

In 1980 I split my pants when I stretched to pick up the drummer’s stick. I heard the rip and was glad I was a keyboard player because I never went out from beyond the boards until the gig was over.

From 1996 to 2004  I was at White Point Beach Resort and we would all go out to the ocean afterward. In all those years January 1st was always calm and moonlit.

I lied. I really liked playing New Years. Because now, I just watch the band!

Happy New Year and I hope things begin to calm down out there.

A year ago I wrote a series called Piano Bar Primers and in Piano Bar Primer IV I encouraged new players to “get in front of people” and think about the money later on. In today’s economy and the way things are going with entertainment serious players and bands have to make their own way. Gone are the agents who can pot you on a tour of bars, lounges or cabarets because these venues just don’t exist in the numbers that thy did 20 years ago.

After speaking with many musicians in the area I come to find that a qute a few great musicians do not have a New year’s gig. As for me, since 1973 I have missed playing only 7 New Years (8 coming up and the last 2 were because I didn’t want to play). So that’s 27 times I played New Years!

My drummer pal, Rob Filek, came up with an idea that we didn’t have time to put into focus this year but could well go over next year. Get 5 groups together, rent a hall and sell tickets. Because when you think of it the food isn’t what you go out for it’s celebrating the New Near with cheap champagne and your friends!

If you are starting out in a band you don’t have to wait until a big celebration to get your own venue going. My first gig was at Carol Huba’s party where we payed for $2. We played the same 10 songs over and over and what we gained was a following. This is how it gets going and this is how you begin to get gigs.

Every musician has a friend who couldn’t sing a note but is a good talker. Okay, try him or her out as a manager. With Facebook and the other social media on your side your manager don’t have to waste money on newspaper ads like we had to or phoning for hours. However, even when we had a successful touring band we always phoned people when we got into their town.

So just because the bars don’t want you there are lots of people who wouldn’t mind hanging around a band and put them to work on helping you put on shows.

This is how it starts . . . and Rob reminded me that this is the way it had always been for new faces.

“Going down the old mine
With a transistor radio.”

- Van Morrison, Brown Eyed Girl

When I watch kids bopping down the street with wires from MP3 players flipping in the breeze it always reminds me of my first portable music machine, a Sony 2 transistor radio with a black leather case. The radio was about 4X the size of the first iPod and had holes in the tight leather case for the speaker and slits to adjust the volume and to tune in stations. The radio wasn’t mine but I absconded with it. My brother won it is a newspaper delivery contest and he wasn’t into hauling it around so I pinched it.

In 1958 an upstart Japanese company struggling for post World War II prominence began manufacture of the TR-610 making it the first transistor radio to reach the masses. Texas Instruments had one for $50 but the Sony came in at under $20. Now the portable record player with the 50 foot extension cord and the car radio had serious competition.

Iwe only had one radio station in my area and it used to play rock and roll from 4 to 4:30 on week days. the rest was Perry Como and The Living Strings and such. So it was at night when i would take the radio outside and look up at the stars thinking that I could see this invisible magic carpet to the great songs down south in the U.S. called “the skip.” Ham Radio guys named it this because powerful radio waves from the U.S. bounced of the ionosphere and into the little tuner in my Sony. Then the tunes would spill out of the 2″ speaker for maybe 30 seconds at a time before another song or a religious station would cut in. And this is how it was all night long. So I got pieces of a pile of songs!

I never went anywhere without my radio. Even if “square” music was playing the Sony was a companion because I knew that when the sun went down I would be in “Music Wonderland.”

You hear them often. The sound is unmistakable: tonal buzzing. They are called kazoos, or “poor man’s harmonicas” and almost everyone has played them.

A kazoo is a tube, either made of plastic or steel, where one end is flattened and the other end has a small opening.  On top of the large, flat end there is a circular disk a wax-paper is stretched. This wax membrane acts as a resonator in a similar manner as wire coils do on a snare drum. The kazoo is played by humming or singing into the large end which produces a buzzing sound in any tonality that the player wants.

The kazoo is actually from a family of musical instruments that originates in Africa called “mirlitons,” instruments that make their sound by vibrating with the human voice. Therefore the humming voice causes the wax paper resonator in the kazoo to vibrate and the barrel of the instruments projects the sound outward much like a wind instrument.

Steps to Playing the Kazoo

1. Buy a kazoo, either plastic or steel barreled.

2. Putting the wide part into the mouth “hum” or try talking.

3. Sustaining notes are created by purring or clicking the tongue.

4. Now, try to make “da -da-da” sounds.

5. A  “wah-wah” effect can be contained by holding the fingers of one hand over the disk of the kazoo and wafting them as you play.

Okay, so the kazoo is not a serious instrument in the manner of a clarinet. But it is the “peoples’ instrument” because anyone can learn to play it within minutes. Give it a shot and see if you can get great new sounds from it.

Most people recognize that there was a certain time period when guitars were made better than others. Most guitar enthusiasts and experts agree that this was in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Terms like “pre-CBS” and “solid top” became buzz words for guitarists who wanted a truly fine instrument.

About 25 years ago, in the early to mid-1980’s, a movement of buying vintage guitars began that drove up the price of these instruments, especially Fenders and Martins. The problem was that many of the buyers were not even guitar players, they were guitar amateurs with a lot of money who wanted great investments and bragging rights.

Back then most professional musicians could barely afford to stay alive let alone begin to buy rare instruments. In fact, unless you had one already, after the 1980’s they became way out of reach. many now hang in behind glass cases in Japan.

So, what are we talking about? Well, those in the know claim that Fenders were best before CBS bought out Leo Fender and began mass producing his great guitars. Post 1965 Fenders and Gibsons, then, were thought to be of poor quality. With Martins it was after the demise of good Brazillian rosewood, which was up to 1969.

George Gruhn Picks the Era’s

What were the great eras for guitars? Guitar builder and seller George Gruhn, whose shop is in Nashville, tells it this way:

1. Martins (Mid-1930’s through 1939)

Using the “high-X” scalloped bracing these Martins are considered by most musicians to be the best Martin guitars ever made.

2. Gibson F-hole Archtops (1922-42)

This is great because I have one of these. it is a 16″ body, plain, “V” neck, arch-top, F-hole with a non-cut-away body. This was the “big band instrument” because its violin–top let the percussive sound penetrate the brass instruments in the band. In fact Joe Pass once said, “You can’t hear it in the band until it stops playing.”

3. Epiphone Archtops (1931 through World War II)

These are on par with the Gibsons.

4. “Pre-CBS” Fender Guitars and Basses (from 1950 to early 1965)

A no-brainer here. CBS did to Fender what AMF-Voit did to Harley-Davidson in the 1970’s. (They were not very good motorcycles at the time!)

5. Gibson Electrics (1936-65)

The pick-ups in the Ted McCarty era of Gibson were outstanding, especially the humbucker. The semi-hollow body design and Les Paul models put them above Fender and Gretsch for variety of guitars.

Unfortunately my 1957 Gretch did not make the list. The quality of thses guitars did not match their competition.