Off Topic Things you learn when you get older

[adouglas]

When I was young and full of it (as if I'm not now, heh), I thought wedding bands were kind of lame. Certainly not something I'd want to do. Sort of like… live Muzak.

Y'know what? That's completely wrong. Playing weddings is a BLAST. The best gigs we have are always weddings. Last night was a helluva party….

Hope the pics, recording and video turn out well.

 

[nurnay]

Agreed. The wedding gigs I've played have been loads of fun. And they pay quite well!

 

[Holdsg]

Glad to see you are keeping an open mind AD

 

[Smallmouth_Bass]

Fun music with an appreciative and participating audience is always fun. Getting paid well is good too!

 

[keko]

I play 90% wedding gigs since 1987. ...and got no problem with that!

Multi-genre set list is my life, ..I believe!

 

[Golem]

When I was young and full of it (as if I'm not now, heh), I thought
wedding bands were kind of lame. Certainly not something I'd want
to do. Sort of like… live Muzak.

Y'know what? That's completely wrong. Playing weddings is a BLAST.
The best gigs we have are always weddings. Last night was a helluva
party .......

Along a similar vein, when I was young, on saturday nights I hadda
help Gramps get his [very early version] color TV all tweaked up so
he could watch Ed Sullivan and Lawrence Welk. Welllllll ..... Sully's
show usually had something at least kinda sorta mildly amusing, but
Welk ?!?!?!?!? GAWWWWWD !!!!

And I was SOOOOOO wrong. 40 yrs later I'm just waiting to pop out
to my dinnertime gig and the lady friend is madly channel surfing so
just for schitzengiggles I told her to stop as she hit on Welk's show.

Holy schitzenheimer ! OK, the message in the lyrics is just "quaint",
and there's a definite lack of pfunk, BUT ... the level of performance,
and sheer musicianship, was simply jaw dropping ! And this ain't no
Carnegie Hall .... this is a bunch of normal-for-the-era union guys at
work, just makin donuts you might say. Lady thought I'd just wanna
watch a coupla numbers, for laffs, but she was kinda freaked that I
watched the full show and I couldn't shut up about how blown away
I was by what I was hearing.

P.S. Sometime later I took her to hear the Marine Band at a revered
music hall, and she finally understood [she'd been really into remix
and electronica].

 

[OldManMusic]

I've learned a lot since I was a cocky 20 year old with a new '78 SR on my shoulder. I've learned that there's more than one kind of good music, that there are a lot of bass lines that I'll never be able to play, that gigs are only bad when the musicians make them bad and, like adouglas, I like doing wedding gigs. The sooner you learn that you and your band MAKE the gig, the less likely you are to be defined by where you play.

 

[MingusBASS]

Wedding gigs rule. Typically better pay, free food, no smoke, cleaner venues, and after all of the toasts/cake cutting...etc we typically have to play less than we would on a club gig. Also by the time a club gig would normally be starting, we are tearing down on a Wedding gig.

 

[lpdeluxe]

I started out playing the music I loved, and I identified with it: I was a rock'n'roller! Now, forty-three years later, I play wedding receptions, country top 40, '70s rock, rockabilly and my current enthusiasm, '30s and '40s pop with two female vocalists who harmonize beautifully. Although I mostly play bass these days, I have gigged over the years on electric guitar, Dobro and harmonica. From playing at parties I have graduated into playing everything from dance halls (aka honky-tonks) to playing harp in the orchestra pit for a university production of a Broadway musical.

I talk to kids who have their egos wrapped around one style of music and I know the day will come when they will wake up to the vast richness of music.

My life has been a hell of a lot more interesting than it would have been had I not started playing in 1970.