Written on February 21st, 2010. Filed under
Scribtotum. Tagged with
Music,
performance,
Personal.
I used to play a lot of gigs at coffeehouses, cafes, and bars. Me, my voice, my acoustic guitar and a stack of notebooks and loose sheets of lyrics. At one point in the early nineties, I was doing three or four gigs a week, mostly at independent coffeehouses from San Clemente to Long Beach.
When I performed, I worked my ass off. All the same… I was, as the kids today like to say, Doing It Wrong.
Why would I say so? I’ll tell ya.
- I played mostly originals, which resulted in being ignored or irritating the folks who wanted to hear covers that could soak into one ear and drain out the other while cleanly slipping past their brains.
- When I did play covers, I didn’t play anything anyone knew. Examples:
- Instead of Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” I’d play his “Powderfinger”
- Instead of Bob Dylan’s “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” (which I dropped from the repertoire when Guns ‘n’ Roses picked it up) or “Blowin’ In the Wind” I’d play “Positively 4th Street” if I played an Dylan at all. I was more likely to play Leonard Cohen, really… and not (usually) freakin’ “Hallelujah.” “Famous Blue Raincoat,” baby.
- Acoustic versions of decidedly non-acoustic songs like Madonna’s “Like A Prayer” or Judas Priest’s “Breakin’ the Law.”
- Likewise unpopular (to most) punk and post-punk tunes from X, the Blasters, the Replacements, Joy Division and so on.
- I didn’t get paid. Well, almost never. Sometimes it was free coffee and tips… I might leave with fifty bucks; more often I left with less than I brought in and a sore stomach from too much caffeine and not enough food.
Playing in coffeehouses can really, really suck. Sometimes you’re competing with coffee grinders, milk steamers and blenders. Sometimes you’re competing with the clientele: I once pissed off a table of ten people because my being there, sweating and singing my heart out, disturbed the fucking-can-you-believe-it “Magic: The Gathering” card game they were playing. That was extreme. Usually it’s just folks who would rather study or talk to each other than listen to you.
And yet, despite Doing It Wrong, despite the apathetic and sometimes hostile audience… I’m gonna be doing it again. Because I like playing music and it’s been too long since I’ve regularly done so in front of an audience.
Since, as we have established, playing coffeehouses can really, really suck, I plan on offsetting it with shows at your house, because you, dear reader, are, like, the opposite of suck.
Yeah… your house! If you’re within one hundred miles of zip code 92345 and can get me at least a hundred and fifty bucks, I’ll do two forty five minute sets in your living room. I’ll throw in high-quality MP3 downloads of the original music I perform there for every one of your guests who wants to give me an e-mail address.
If your house is farther away from me than one hundred miles, let’s work something out — it’ll probably involve food and lodging and a little more monetary compensation. We can talk about it. Or, for a hundred and fifty bucks, I’ll do a private virtual concert via the Interwebs that will be exclusive to up to twenty people — same deal, MP3s included.
Honestly, though, I’d rather play for you and as many people as you can squeeze into your living room, in person.
So let’s do that!
Meanwhile, tomorrow I’m calling the local coffeehouse about one of those potentially awful gigs because they invited me to do so.
Rawkin’!
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