Re: [Harp-L] Reality check?

[Seth Galitzer <sethgali@xxxxxxxxx>]

I live in a small(ish) college town.  Most of the other bands here are 
hard rock/metal bands, and mostly aren't very good.  My band tries to 
capitalize on the fact that we are indeed quite musical and play our 
instruments with some proficiency.  We are very different from most 
everyone else who plays here.  And even so, we only get booked in about 
three places around town and don't get paid very much at all.

I had always attributed that to the fact that bar owners here just had 
no taste and only wanted to book bands who played original music (even 
if it had no redeeming musical value).  From the conversation here, it 
would seem that's just how it goes.  We have seven people involved in 
our band, and are lucky to take home more than $40 per person on a given 
night.  That's after playing three full sets and doing all of our own 
sound.  Obviously, we aren't doing it for the money, because we sure 
aren't getting paid what's worth our time.

Technically, we are a cover band, since most of the tunes we play are 
covers.  However, we're covering tunes most people here haven't heard 
of, or at least not heard recently.  And to comment on the previous 
comment about "staying true to the recording", we don't follow that 
rule.  I play sax solos on nearly every song and our harp player does, 
too, even on ZZ Top tunes (we play a couple of those).

So what do our fans like?  Anything that gets them on their feet, 
whether it's a pop song or not.  Stuff like Mystery Train, Big Boss Man, 
Looking Back, anything with a fast shuffle.  We also do some Allman 
Brothers, Elmore James, Canned Heat, Floyd Dixon, JB Hutto, BB King, and 
lots of Eric Clapton, Gary Moore, & Peter Green, and much more.  I think 
we get a pretty good variety in there.  Still, even with all that, and 
after gigging for three years, we don't get no respect.

I guess that goes with being a bluesman.  Following a long tradition of 
getting no respect outside of our musical circles.  I guess it's the 
best I can do for being a white Jewish guy in the middle of Kansas.  So 
here's to us, the unknown bluesmen (and blueswomen).  Long may our harps 
wail free.

Seth

Bradford Trainham wrote:
> I struggle with this question a lot too.
> One side of me says that I have ideas, that I've turned them into songs and
> that I should own them/appreciate them/promote them and so on. 
> The other side "gets off" on the sorts of experiences you described with the
> Oldies bands and suggests that connecting with other people is what music is
> all about. 
> The market obviously tilts toward what the audience wants and I can't
> imagine humanity evolved enough to have custom allow for a musician's
> creativity once he has "given the people what they want". 
>  (harp content???)  I find myself trying to sneak harp into cover songs
> where there wasn't any in the original.
> Sometimes, as in Eric Burdon's take onSee See Rider, the band will allow it.
> But when I tried to get the lead guitarist to trade off riffs at the end of
> ZZ Top's La Grange, I was politely told that there wasn't a harp in the
> original and that the band tried to play it "just like the record". 
> In a huff, I inwardly asked no one... "What, pray tell, is at all original
> about that song?"..., but fortunately, that one never made it out to the
> level of public scrutiny... (Until now, right?) 
> It seems that creativity would only be honored within a system of patronage,
> and, as you pointed out earlier, with the economy imploding and the word of
> the day being caution, I don't think we'd better hold our collective breaths
> waiting on that well-moneyed patron...
> Brad (Somewhere between See See and ZZ) Trainham


--
The beatings will continue until morale has improved.