Why You're too Old to Become Famous

 If you think you and your band are going to conquer the world then I got news for you. If you're already past your early twenties then odds are it ain't gonna happen. 

  Rock history shows us that musicians tend to become famous in their early 20's.  


ELVIS

First single "Heartbreak Hotel" was released when he was 21.


JERRY LEE LEWIS

  














First Hit "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On," was released when he was 22.



LITTLE RICHARD

First Hit, "Tutti Frutti" was released when he was 23.


THE BEATLES

First album, "Please Please Me," was released when John Lennon was 23, & Paul McCartney was 21.



THE ROLLING STONES

The Stones first US tour was in 1964 when Mick Jagger was 21.

PINK FLOYD

Floyd's first album "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" was released in 1967 when founder Syd Barrett was 21.



JIMI HENDIX

Was 24 when "Are You Experienced" was released.


JIM MORRISON

Was 22, when The Doors first single, "Break on Through" was released.



OZZY OSBOURNE

 






Ozzy Osbourne was 21 when Black Sabbath released their first album.


ROBERT PLANT

Robert Plant was 19 when Led Zeppelin signed their contract with Atlantic Records.




KURT COBAIN

Was 24 when Nirvana's Nevermind topped Michael Jackson's Dangerous to take the number 1 spot on the Billboard Charts.


  LAYNE STALEY

Was 22 when Alice in Chains released "Facelift"



 So you're not going to become famous. Are you going to cry? Fame is such a long shot on the level of winning the lottery. It takes a combination of Talent, Looks, Charisma, Charm, Dedication, Hard Work and Luck...lot's of luck.

  The Beatles became famous at a time where the baby boomers (children born in the aftermath of WWII) were becoming teenagers. Tiny hand held transistor radios were just coming out as well.  There were more teenagers alive in the early 1960's then at any period in history. The world was ready for the Beatles. It was the right place and the right time. Rarely does the universe line up so perfectly for something like The Beatles to happen.

But don't fret, just because you aren't going to be famous doesn't mean that you can't have a successful career making music. 

And by that I don't consider playing the local dive bar on the weekends for free beer a career. I'm talking about being able to make music for a living. It's hard, and it takes talent, and hard work, and dedication and no fucking around but if you have what it takes then it can be done at any age.

So how are the ways most non-famous full-time musicians make a living? 

 
1. Playing in multiple bands so that they gig as much as five times a week. And playing those gigs in bands where they are paid at least $75-$100 per gig rather than having to split beer money five ways. 


2. Playing at weddings and other gigs that come with a guaranteed $1000 - $3000 per gig. 

3. Teaching music, as much as 20 -40 kids a week. 
 
4. Being in a cover band. 

5. Playing on cruises, Casinos or in dinner theaters. 

6. Playing in a house band or being the solo piano player at a bar. 


The problem with all of the above is that the musicians who do it tend not to get a lot of respect, either from the music reviewers or from other musicians. Being a wedding musician tends not to be something musicians proudly announce. 

It's not considered very prestigious. The non-famous musicians making the most money are viewed rather condescendingly by local music critics and by up-and-coming musicians who think that kind of thing is akin to selling your music soul to make a buck. 

But playing original music that the bloggers love tends to be the least lucrative kind of music you can do. 


The advantage of having a day job that pays the bills is that you can do the music you love without regard to whether it pays the bills. That can be very creative."

Top Five Shitty Cover Songs Your Band Needs to Stay Away From

5.  “Crazy Bitch” – Buck Cherry It’s pretty obvious why this song still gets played. It gives the band an excuse to bring all the “crazy bitches” on stage to dance. Well, I can’t blame you. I never complain when a 20 something girl gets on stage and shakes her moneymaker. But, just listen to the song! I can’t take it seriously. Not to mention that just playing it kind of makes me feel like I need to take a shower


4.  “Sweet Home Alabama” – Lynyrd Skynyrd A cover band staple for decades now, this song is played often and often played poorly. Far too many times I’ve heard bands reduce this classic Skynyrd song to a 5 minute jam on D, C and G. There’s way more to it than that! If your band is going to do it, at least do it right. No one needs to hear another half-assed rendition of this song ever again.

4.  "Brick House" - The Commodores Who'd have thought that calling a woman a brick house could be a compliment. But, damn, when the Commodores say it, it sure is! but when you're shitty bar band plays it it's just lame, boring and unoriginal.


3. "Play That Funky Music" - Wild Cherry In case you were unaware, Wild Cherry were basically white guys with jewfros who thought they were black. This song is literally played by every bar band in the world.

2. “Brown Eyed Girl” – Van Morrison Van Morrison himself was once quoted as saying, “It’s not one of my best, I mean I’ve got about 300 songs that I think are better.” This song has been done to death! Maybe take it from the songwriter himself and choose another song from his catalog.

1. “Mustang Sally” – Wilson Pickett If the band at the bar is playing this song, they’re probably all eligible for an AARP membership. The women dancing to it probably are too. This song was over played like 30 years ago. It’s time to give this tired old song a rest.

 These are songs your shitty bar band needs to stay away from. There are a bunch more songs like this to but these are the first five I could think of. 

There are two schools of thought when it comes to bar band cover songs.  

PLAY WHAT THE PEOPLE WANT:  A cover band makes money playing covers and to be a successful, working cover band means playing what people want to hear. 

The first time a harmless, rich drunk lays down $500.00 and requests you play Turn The Page or Cocaine for his lovely 300 pound wife because she wants to hear it, it will get your band marketing brain into gear very fast amigos.

I once heard a story about this band playing this biker festival somewhere and kept getting requests for Born to be Wild. The singer, who hated the song, kept insisting that they didn't know it. After a while, someone hands him a note saying "Play Born to be Wild or you won't make it out of here alive". The singer turns to the band and says "I don't know what song you're playing next, but I'm playing Born to be Wild".

BUT DO PEOPLE REALLY WANT TO HEAR THAT? The same tired old songs played over and over again. Maybe you should pick cover songs that are just as cool and rocking but that people don't know about. Maybe you think you have that perfect song to cover that will blow people away like Van Halen did with "You Really Got Me" or "Pretty Woman."   Or maybe you just refuse to fall in line and do what all the other sucessful bar bands are doing. Rock and Roll is about rebellion, and the overwhelming conformity and unoriginality of everyone playing the same shitty songs just makes you sick. 

So what do you do?

The Fuck if I know...

However, the public is what you are paid to entertain. You wanna be successful?

A cover band should play to the crowd and entertain them. They aren't musicians and don't think in sophisticated la la land theory about which songs suck and which songs kick ass. They all want to party or hook up with someone. It's not rocket science. But that doesn't mean you have to play the same shitty old songs, unless of course that rich drunk drops a couple C-Notes to hear Mustang Sally so he can dance with the pretty girl who he has absolutely no chance in hell with.

Or a gnarly biker dude about three times your size insisting, and I mean insisting, that you play "House of the Rising Sun." He may tip you big time and even refrain from kicking your ass.

Now, if you were playing to a club full of musicians...?  That's different story for another day.

I'll leave you with the worst cover of Pink Floyd ever.

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Gimme a Break I'm Old

  I get slammed a lot through comments, email and in person about some of the things I say on this blog.

I'm almost 40 years old, give me a break! 

I'm middle aged and set in my ways. My waistline is expanding and my hair is graying.

I listen to the classic rock station and remember when most of the songs were just released, and first played on the "regular" rock station. 

The year I was born Led Zeppelin released "Houses of the Holy," and Pink Floyd released, "Dark Side of the Moon."

I remember the night John Lennon died.

I saw Metallica in Concert back when they still had long hair.

 I'm the musical equivalent of the old man yelling at kids to "get the hell of my lawn."

  I'm 40 years old, I don't want to be at a concert with a bunch of teenagers. If I go to a concert I want to be around people my age. Just like when I was a teenager, I didn't want to be at a concert or listening to music that a bunch of 40 year olds listened to. 

  I also don't want to walk around as a 40 year old man pretending I'm still in late teens/early 20's. Some people may be able to do that convincingly, but thats just not the kind of 40 year old I want to be. 

 Now I'm not saying that all new music sucks. I'm sure there are some great acts out there doing outstanding work these days. I just don't feel the need to go seek them out. I'm set in my ways. I already have a ton of great music on my I-Tunes these days.

I like what I like and I'm entitled to my opinions.

 I'm married and have a full-time job and kids. I don't have the time to surf Youtube or Itunes all day looking for new artists, just like when I was teenager and could spend all day long on MTV. I barely have the time to keep up this stupid blog.

 I've been accused of being closed minded and not just because I don't listen to a lot of new music but also because I don't like other genres like country music. After all why should I knock them for writing a hit song when what the hell did I ever write?

 All I'm going to say is that at my age I think I'm allowed to be a little set in my ways. I think it would be more absurd for a 40 year old man to like every single little teenage music fad that came out. 

  I'm like a fine wine. I've been aged and season to like what I like.

 If you're young and think I'm just a closed minded fool, then all I gotta say is, You'll get there too someday. 

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. and I'm entitled to mine. But still geez, try to take it easy on the hatred sometimes. If you're that bent out of shape by what I write about, don't read it. Or go write your own blog about it. 

On second thought...keep reading, I need the readers.

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The Three Archetypes of Guitar Players

Carl Jung had 4 archetypes, or stages of life. Here they are summarized:

1. The  Athlete: the stage where we are preoccupied with how our body looks. This is the stage where we tell ourselveses, "'I am how good I look, how strong I am, how fast I can run, etc...

2. The Warrior: the stage where we seek to earn, accumulate and conquer the word. The stage where we ask, "what's in it for me?"

3. The Statesman:  the stage where we realize we are not what we accumulate and thus ask the question, "how can I serve others"

4. The Spirit:  The last stage where we ultimately realize that we are spiritual beings having a human experience, and not human beings having a spiritual experience.

Jung said everybody goes thru these stages. Not everybody will spend the same amount of time on each stage. Not everybody will go thru each stage in the same order, and people can change back and forth between stages, but these stages are present as we go thru life. 

__________________________________________________

I'm proposing my three archetypes of guitar playing: The Guitar Player, The Musician, and The Artist. 

THE GUITAR PLAYER

Guitar PLAYERS, are simply your everyday amateur guitar enthusiasts. Guitar Players for the most part rarely leave the safe confines of the bedroom, though emerging occasionally to jam with friends, play at Guitar Center or the occasional party, or college campus quad.

Every great artist or musician first starts off as a guitar player. Guitar players won't usually be found in bands, and by "band" I mean a band that has graduated from the bedroom, garage, party stage and is an actual working, gigging band .

Guitar Players come in many ages and many different levels of proficiency. Many guitar players strive to become "musicians" or artists, while some are content to remain guitar players their entire lives. 

THE MUSICIAN

 The Musician is a working guitar player. They may not be rock stars, the level of pay on the musician level can vary greatly but all musicians share the following points in common. 

* They play in public

* They're make a living or are trying to make a living playing

   music.

* They self-promote their projects 

 

The Musician varies from the street performer busking on Fisherman's Wharf, or the Las Vegas Strip, the shitty Van Halen cover band you saw playing in a casino last weekend or  any number of people probably on your Facebook friends list who is constantly, plugging, and self promoting shows, and self made albums. 

Some musicians have conquered their local or regional circuit and may have a small but loyal following that allows them to make a modest living, while some may be playing in dive bars for beer money,  some may be playing on the street corner literally trying to survive

While the Guitar Player may or may not ever want to perform publicly, the Musician NEEDS to be in front of people.

THE ARTIST

   While The Musician and The Artist can both play original music, what separates them is this:

The Artist unlike the musician is not motivated by money or fame in order to create.

   The Musician can become successful enough to where he no longer needs to create in order to pay the bills or reach a certain level of fame. Now he is an Artist and creates because he chooses to. Now he creates because there is something inside him he has to get out and whether it ever sells a single copy is irrelevant. 

 You don't have to be famous to be an artist either. It seems rare these days but some are born artists and become musicians from day 1 with no concern about money whatsoever and seek only to create for the sake of creating. 

 In the last few years I became frustrated over the fact that I was a guitar player "borderline" musician but was not an artist. As a kid I just sort of naturally expected that once I picked up the guitar and learned my first few chords that the floodgates would instantly open and original music and songs would just flow naturally and effortlessly. But they didn't and I beat myself up about that for a long time, and made myself feel bad because I had this stupid notion that it is MANDATORY that every guitarist MUST create original music.

But thats bullshit.

I'm a descent guitar player with the potential to be a good musician, but I am not an Artist. I don't create anything original, and frankly I don't really have a bold artistic vision that I need to share with the world.  But I've only in the last year that I finally accepted that, and believe that

 it's ok to JUST PLAY GUITAR.

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Pull Your Damn Guitars Up!

WHY YOU LOOK LIKE AN ASSHOLE WHEN YOUR GUITAR STRAP IS TOO LOW

  I view these kids who play with their guitars too low in much the same way I view these kids who walk around with their pants hanging around their God damn ankles.

 

 It doesn't make you look cool, it just makes you look like an ignorant, uneducated piece of trash.

You kids pull your god damn guitars back up!

I'm almost 40 now. Since life expectancy these days is roughly 78 years, that technically puts me in middle age. My beef with douchebags who wear their guitars too low makes me the musical version of the angry old man who's always yelling at the neighborhood kids to 'get the hell off my lawn!' 

I believe in first impressions. For example, when I see someone wearing their pants around their ankles I get the impression that this is someone who mistakenly believes they look good when they really don't and are willing to stick to this erroneous belief even at risk of ridicule, unemployment and profiling by law enforcement. 

When I see someone wearing their guitar too low I get the impression that this too is someone who mistakenly believes they look good when they really don't, and that "looking good with the guitar" is ultimately more important than anything you actually play on the guitar. 

   And as a lifelong guitar player, I hold the instrument in a much higher regard. Yes the way you play is important because playing a certain way is better for your technique. 

 I also believe that if you wanna play great music then you need to look like you're playing great music. 

But I think its disrepecting to the guitar and to all the great guitarists in history to view your guitar as nothing more than simply a fashion accessory. 

Wearing your guitar too low also hinders the rest of your band as it doesn't present the music very well. If you truly did care about image then you would never wear your guitar like that.

  What do you think presents the music better?

  someone who wears their guitar this?

or 

someone who wears their guitar this?

 

 Besides, the lower your guitar hangs, the harder it is on your fret hand wrist, and your technique will suffer as a result. 

  In the photo above, Prince, shows how its done. You should have the guitar no higher or lower than belt level. This length looks best and is easy on the wrist, unless you have short alligator arms which in that case you may need to stop reading this and seriously consider changing hobbies.

 CORRECT. One again take note of the fret hand wrist and how it is resting in a natural, un-inverted position.

 Incorrect. Playing like this will also make you an alcoholic and will eventually kill you as Steve Clark has already so masterfully shown us. 

 

Correct

Incorrect 

A NOTE ON JIMMY PAGE

Techically, I would call this too low, but Jimmy Page is an exception to the rule. His arms are so damn long that he can comfortably play this low. Note how his fret hand wrist is still in a natural, unbent position. 

  Also, he's not calling attention to the fact he's playing low. 

He's doing it with class unlike the following douches below...

   

HOWEVER

  

If you're wearing pants and you wear 'em too low you look like an asshole but if you wear them too high you also look like an asshole. 

Don't rest the guitar on your belly, it looks lazy. Also note how wearing the guitar too high also leads to the un-natural position of the fret hand wrist.

Besides, wearing your guitar that high does not give the impression of confidence. It just makes it look like you're trying too hard, and you have not yet reached the level where you can just let it rip without a care in the world

like this...

Who do you think looks like the more confident, able guitarist? 

 

 someone who plays like this

  

someone who plays like this?

or 

 like this?

The first two DOUCHEBAGS just look like they're playing guitar. 

Hendrix and Gilmour look like THE GUITAR IS PLAYING THEM.

And that right there is the next level I want you to reach. 

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