Song And Emotion

A song by Tesla. A good song. & my bane. This isn't the best vid in the world (the sound quality ain't great0 but it's the best i could find.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about check out the lyrics:



"I see him there most ev'ry day,
A lonely man and his guitar.
In his eyes, I see the pain,
All the faces and the places,
All the trouble that he'd seen.

There was a time,
There was a day,
They'd come from miles around.
They all knew his name.
But day's gone by are gone,
Now only memories remain.

Then he starts to play.
Suddenly the pain slowly fades away.
Tattered, torn and frayed,
There's a place within his heart
He'll always save for the song and emotion..."

It's what every musician fears I think to some degree. Obscurity coupled with old age. Music is a rough life. It's rougher when you have nothing tangible to show for it as is the case for most musicians.

No musician wants to rest on his laurels. I sure as hell don't. But there's the question of opportunity. It's not like most other fields where you can apply for a job. for gigs you have to be in the right place at the right time & after you get a steady gig it's not just up to you but the other guys in the band as to whether y'all handle things in the long run.

I'm not talking about playing your guitar on the MTV. I mean making a decent career out of it - having a good rep with agents & promoters as well as a fan base. Making enough to set some aside every year after the fucking self employment taxes kick your ass by the quarter. Avoiding landing on the "go to rehab - take 6 months back off your career' square & so on.

If everything goes right you'll be playing well into your 60's or 70's in a medium sized city that you like with your wife & kids close by & just enough to retire on coupled with the weekly gig or two just to keep in practice.

If it goes wrong you end up being a lonely man with your guitar being sung about by a rock band named after a Serbian scientist from the 19th century. That is what I fear is likely for most of us & in ever increasing proportions it seems what is likely for me.

Of course I have some control over this fate & there are some things I could do to decrease the odds but a lot of it is simply circumstantial. The music biz still operates largely by word of mouth & success in it is only slightly over-simplified as being in the right place at the right time. I can beat the pavement all I can but if my timing is off then I'm going to miss out on the decent gigs. That's just the way it is. & I'm not the lone ranger; a lot of musicians go through slumps where they can't seem to land anything decent & prospects for their future look dim.

Persistence counts for something in the biz though & I can't say I have been as determined as I should be the last few years. Really, looking for gigs takes its toll on you, or at least it does me.

Excuses aside though I never had any great ambitions; I never thought of myself playing packed coliseums & not being able to shop for fear of being swamped by fans who recognized me. I just wanted to play & at the end of my gigs have folks think back & say something like "that skinny little white boy sure could play".

It's not all ego though; there's something about playing well for folks that's as emotionally & spiritually rewarding as almost anything I've ever experienced. When some non-musician tells me that I play well I take that to mean that I touched them rather than that they are just appreciative of my skills.

That's the sadness involved with the guitar player being sung about in Song & Emotion; he doesn't have the chance to play for people anymore. Sure; money & fame are nice as is not getting screwed over & left behind, but the thing that hurts any musician most is not having a venue or outlet to play for other people. We simply want to entertain folks, or touch them, or move them or leave them with a melody that reminds them of something pleasant or sad but in either case real to them.

I can't recall if I've mentioned it here or not but all musicians do is channel emotions. That's the whole purpose of music - to express emotions that are too complex or too subtle to be discussed. Any musician that can do that is as accomplished as he or she needs to be & any who can't is not competent. When you're old & destitute & not sure where your next meal is coming from it's not a good thing but it's worse when it's because you aren't playing; you aren't moving people & being financially compensated for it.

I come from an old school of thought about musicians & music. Maybe the musicians today aren't as phased by the idea of growing old & obscure as I am & those who taught me. But as I said I think every musician fears it to some degree or another. To combat it some teach, others record & those like me just try to play as much as possible to keep it from happening; to keep from living up to the fate of the old guitarist in the Tesla song.

Will it happen to me? Who knows. It's possible & I'm at a weird place in my life anyway which doesn't decrease the chances of it, but to some extent I can make a comeback & decrease the odds of it happening or at least forestall the moment when it hits me that my memories are more vivid than my reality in the world of music.