Playing to nobody (was inaccessability of music)

["Gary Lehmann" <hqr@cox.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: RICK WALKER [mailto:looppool@cruzio.com] 
Rick wrote (out of sequence)

>the busload of insurance salespeople arrived and we finally began to play.
We were going nuts because we very close to the people coming and they 
wanted us playing background music as they walked in.
All 50 of them walked in; walked right by us in a cluster and climbed the 
stairs to go to dinner and disappeared.
it didn't take more than a minute before they were all gone,  tops!!!!!!
the gig was over!!!!!!


--->I do this kind of gig all the time--it's called "meet and greet"


>My brother and I got a live looping gig doing ethnic fusion with a lot of 
syncrhonized looping down at the Monterey Bay Aquarium.

The gig was for the top 50 life insurance salespeople in the United States.

We got to the gig,    sussed out the room and begin to set up our rather 
elaborate setup.

Once set up (it takes over an hour for this complex set up with multiple 
instruments)
a woman came in the room and said,
"Oh no, no, no,    you are in the wrong spot.........I need you to move to 
the other side of the room."

I argued politely with her but she was adamant.

We hurriedly moved our equipment to the other side of the room.

Then her boss came in,

"I'm sorry, but you are set up in the wrong place.  You need to be across 
the room there........(where we had just
set up)."

By this point I was hopping mad and stressed and I protested vociferously, 
but he was our boss and we were compelled to
move back to where we had been.   We never worked for them again, so I 
imagine that my protest wasn't taken well.

--->This sort of thing happens with corporate gigs--they don't really have
much consideration for the musicians


>luckily, it was a very lucrative gig, but boy did I feel like a glorified 
servant that day. 

-->Ah, that's because you were, Mr. Rick.
Mr. Rick did not mention the time he came all the way to San Diego to play 
a
gig with me for less than half a dozen people. It was me, him and Luis
Angelo--my friend Harvey Starr came (I was using a Ztar) and a bass player
named Are Jay who was on the LD list at the time also showed, but it was
mostly unattended--and we played anyway!
Gary (who has made a living playing to nobody)