Keeping It Real.

I'm starting to look at the sort of gigs/venues I've been playing for the past year in much the same way a low self-esteem woman looks at her unemployed fat slob of an abusive boyfriend drooling in front of the TV and realizes she just might be able to do better.
Friday was ABSOLUTELY one of those awful gigs I wrote about a few months ago, and I didn't even fall flat drunk on my face. File under "Dues: Paid."
It was the venue's fault- my guys and I were, if I may be so bold, awesome. Between the four of us, we spent a lot of time hauling around a lot of cumbersome musical equipment (next hit single: The Heartwrenching Ballad of Davey's Acoustic Bass With No Case) over a lot of pavement to get ready for Friday, and man do I feel friggin' SPECIAL. There was a moment on Friday night when I stopped to breathe for a second... looked around me... and realized that I was actually on stage with four of the best musicians I know, all of whom came together to play this gig at this deplorable little venue with me. WHOA.
Yeah, so the venue screwed us. They put us up an hour late to milk every last dime out of our bar crowd, the price of entry was your first born, they didn't pay us, and there would have been a MAJOR improvement in the sound if we'd substituted a baby monitor for the PA system. Whatever. I think people understand what happened. These places get away with this kind of thing all the time. A lot of acts, singer/songwriter types especially, keep grinding it out in these joints, misguidedly believing that we should be grateful to any place that will allow us a moment on stage. Well you know what UC Lounge, and every other Lower East Side hell-hole that still exploits that idea of the long-gone "romance" it once had to lure impressionable musicians like Charlie the Unicorn into Candy Mountain, only to spit them back out with no kidney? SUCK IT.
However, I do not for one second believe that anyone who wants to play music should skip this part... it's necessary. There is a current trend in our culture that... well, to say that we are being led away from first-hand direct experience is a bit of an understatement. I would say that we are being programmed to experience reality in a flat, removed, two-dimensional manner... similar to that of the experience of watching television. Everyone is so eager to be endorsed by the System, so anxious to hurry up and become an image, an icon, a virtual-reality of themselves... to imprint themselves onto the masses via pictures, video footage and recorded sounds. Almost asking to exist by proxy in the minds of the collective conscious known as the public. There is no interaction. Everyone is vying to become the Ultimate Facebook Status. Catching my drift?
I myself am guilty as hell of this last part, much as I loathe to admit it. To be fair, I think New York has contributed to making me this way. I am working to amend that. I've always been an incredibly insecure individual, and our culture teaches us that the remedy for insecurity is not introspection and moral self-betterment contributing to a fundamentally positive image of one's character, but by piling on the narcissism and building taller and taller monuments to ourselves. I am here to confess that I've fallen for that trap hard, and would like to repent of that. I went on to my beast of a Facebook profile the other day, and set two albums full of vain and self-glorifying pictures to Private (well, my Mom can still see them) because, really- what's the point? Attention? To get people to come to my shows and listen to my music? Um, right. People look at pictures like that and say, "Wow, I bet she's an incredibly talented musician!" about as much as they look at images of Rupert Murdoch and assume that he spends his free time volunteering at homeless shelters. I'm still working up the guts to go in and physically remove some of those narcissistic images one by one from my mile-long roster of profile pictures. After this little revelation, I kind of don't want to look. Worst part is, I haven't really recorded much MUSIC. I've spent TONS of time in practice, writing, and playing out, but have committed almost nothing to record (a total self-contradiction, in that I have committed myself to record in an extensive visual archive, yet have held out on creating any concrete and quantified versions of my music under the seemingly noble pretense of maintaining the experiential, living, interactive element of it all, i.e. "keeping it real"). So an overabundance of images + lack of anything substantial to show =... uh... what does that equal? Exactly.
That's where the hard work comes in, and at least I have that. Back to the point, which is the transition of the reality of collective culture from direct and first hand to living everything as if it was scripted for screen. A musician at heart must endure the trials and tribulations of the early phases, or we'll never deserve to reap the benefits of being an autonomous creative creature free to dance between the gridlines of the Matrix. Before people have tour managers and roadies, labels and perks, music videos and covers of magazines, I believe it is important that they haul the equipment, get screwed over and leave unpaid (frequently), play to empty houses, understand that they are absolutely meaningless to the bars and venues (which I believe are like a micro-representation of the larger, even less caring Industry) and can recall the stench of stale urine and beer without trying. I also believe it's important to go through phases of self-assessment and self-doubt, much like I'm going through now. Looking at yourself honestly to make sure you're doing this the right way, for the right reasons. That you believe that you're not only worth looking at, but even more worth listening to. And most importantly of all, you accept that if you do not "make it", your life is not over- that just because I'm out here doing this right now, working as hard as I can and wishing with all my heart that someday I'll have the privilege of doing what I love for a living, that does not guarantee that it will happen. I'm learning that at the core, the love of playing has to be enough.
Yes, I am a believer in learning the hard way. That's why this blog is called the Musician's Grind, not The Aspiring Pop Star's Quest For a Fast-Track to Fame. But neither is it the Pathetic Noisemaker's Grueling Stations of the Cross. Damned if the Lower East Side becomes my Calvary.