They call it “playing” but in reality, Music is a rough business.
I never made a dime as a musician, but I lived on the fringe long enough to see that as a rookie engineer I worked less, and made more money than ordinary musicians playing bars and weddings etc.
Artists have to agree on the art. That alone is tough enough. Practice hours take all your free time if you’re learning new material. That makes everyone testy. The actual performances are burdened with lots of unpleasant traveling, setups, breakdowns, pack-ups and load-outs.
Then you end up with damaged gear, canceled shows, lots of stress when one of a thousand things goes wrong with the gear, the staging, the power, lighting, crappy acoustics, and club owners who want to diddle you around about the money.
In the end, all of us ended up leaving music behind and working in other jobs. One guitarist ended up married to a rich widow and doing random studio work. Fill-ins for no-shows etc. One became a school administrator. One a typical hausfrau, one a grocery manager, one a Xerox tech. One got drunk and ran into a truck at 60 mph.
One guitarist OD’d in the bathroom of a local restaurant named Hendrix.
Me? I dropped the Music, drew building plans and played with computers, over 40 years, from 1975 to 2017.
Notice how I called it “playing”? Playing is a term of endearment. Like I “play” with my fish. I play the Speed Demon.
Yesterday I played with the hose and algae scraper for 3 hours.
