Gig Best Quotes

When you’re applying for jobs, it’s best to be employed while doing it. You want the world to know that you’re not lollygagging between gigs, but instead have a lot of choices in front of you and are actively charting your own path.

wI don’t care what they say about Aretha. She can be hiding out in her house in Detroit for years. She can go decades without taking a plane or flying off to Europe. She can cancel half her gigs and infuriate every producer and promoter in the country. She can sing all kinds of jive-ass songs that are beneath her. She can go into her diva act and turn off the world. But on any given night, when that lady sits down at the piano and gets her body and soul all over some righteous song, she’ll scare the shit out of you. And you’ll know—you’ll swear—that she’s still the best fuckin’ singer this fucked-up country has ever produced.

I don’t care what they say about Aretha,” said Billy Preston. “She can be hiding out in her house in Detroit for years. She can go decades without taking a plane or flying off to Europe. She can cancel half her gigs and infuriate every producer and promoter in the country. She can sing all kinds of jive-ass songs that are beneath her. She can go into her diva act and turn off the world. But on any given night, when that lady sits down at the piano and gets her body and soul all over some righteous song, she’ll scare the shit out of you. And you’ll know—you’ll swear—that she’s still the best fuckin’ singer this fucked-up country has ever produced.

The modeling gig is paying off in major Martha points. They all want to be Heather's New Best Friend. But she asks me to go with her for the bathing suit shoot. I think she's afraid to screw up in front of them. Heather's mother drives us. She asks if I want to be a model. Heather says I am too shy. I look at her mother's eyes watching me in the rearview mirror and hide my mouth with my fingers. The scabs on my lips are especially gross in that little rectangle mirror. Of course I want to be a model. I want to paint my eyelids gold. I saw that on a magazine cover and it looked amazing - turned the model into a sexy alien that everyone would look at but nobody dared touch.

like a stormy sea at best. 81. Making Cents of It All With over 1,500 projects under my belt as a freelancer and business owner, saying that I’ve experimented with pricing structures may be the understatement of the year. In my early years, nearly everything was based on a fixed bid. As my client list grew, I began landing some hourly gigs, retainers, and some dedicated resource structures. Each of these pricing structures has pros and cons, for you as a designer as well as for your client. Understanding these pricing structures, explaining them clearly to your clients, and choosing the right one for the job can make the difference between a blissful client experience and your worst nightmare. Fixed Bid Fixed-bid pricing is a set scope of work with a fixed price. You tell

even. By the time things were done, I was exhausted and depressed and just really, really unhappy. We all were. But it didn’t have to be that way. That experience taught me to take agency in my own professional narratives, and that endings don’t have to be failures, especially when you choose to end a project or shut down a business. Shortly after the restaurant closed, I started a food market as a small side project, and it ended up being wildly successful. I had more press and customers than I could handle. I had investors clamoring to get in on the action. But all I wanted to do was write. I didn’t want to run a food market, and since my name was all over it, I didn’t want to hand it off to anyone else, either. So I chose to close the market on my own terms, and I made sure that everyone knew it. It was such a positive contrast to the harsh experience of closing the restaurant. I’ve learned to envision the ideal end to any project before I begin it now—even the best gigs don’t last forever. Nor should they.

***CALL FOR SUBMISSION*** Not asking for any money, I'm asking you to do what you do best. I am putting together a charity anthology where all the proceeds go to Women's Aid-Women's Aid is the key national charity working to end domestic violence against women and children. This is a cause dear to my and my family's heart. So this is a CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS to any writer who wants to have a tale included in this book. I am not looking to do a book full of stories about domestic violence. I know the proceeds are going to Women's Aid, what I'm looking for is a broad spectrum of stories from different genre's. As it is for charity, this is a none paying gig. All proceeds will go to Women's Aid. I'm looking for tales of any genre up to 6000 words, and 2000 words minimum. Only stipulation, must include a strong female character at some point, even if she only makes a brief appearance. So if there are any of you fellow writers out there who want to get involved with this project want to be included message me for more details. Submissions open until 25th July While you will not be paid for the story, you will be helping a most worthy cause, and will get more coverage for your name, free advertising is always good. Title to be confirmed at a later date. Send your submission to a_scorah@live.co.uk. Attach it as a word file, and neatly formatted 12 point roman text, line spacing exactly 12 point,

Now, before you invade a foreign city. Here’s the law: Offer the fools a peace treaty. They can remain in their city as your slaves doing forced labor for you. And if they refuse your generosity? Kill every goddamned one of their men. And take their women, children, livestock, and wealth as plunder.” The same guy raised his hand and yelled, “Can we fuck these women, too?” It was a stupid question, but Moses replied patiently, “Of course. Fuck them—use them as footstools, punching bags, scarecrows—who cares? They’re slaves! Do whatever you want with them. “Just remember, all you have to do is obey Yahweh. Then you will have no worries and nothing to fear. He will take care of you. But be careful, because Yahweh will test you. He will send false prophets and phony dream interpreters. “If you encounter one? And his predictions come true? And he wants you to worship another god? Don’t be impressed! Beware! Yahweh sent him to tempt you. “So kill anyone who prophesies in the name of another god. “And kill anyone who pretends to be a prophet and is not! “And if you find a town worshipping another god—kill everyone in it! And kill their livestock! Plunder their homes! Burn that despicable town to the ground and never rebuild it! Make it a perpetual burnt offering to Yahweh. “And whatever you do, for god’s sake, do not imitate the detestable Canaanite religions! Do not incinerate your children, or practice sorcery, or witchcraft. And don’t interpret omens. These practices are detestable to Yahweh. “Above all, DO NOT worship their gods! Don’t worship the sun! Or the moon! Or the stars in the sky! Yahweh gave those to the suckers in other nations as their gods. If you worship just one of them—just one time…” Moses shuddered at the thought. “Well, let’s just say, Yahweh is jealous—real jealous! If he catches you worshipping another god, I have to tell you that the gigs up. He’ll kick your asses out of the Promised Land. And scatter you among the other nations like snake shit scattered about the desert.”   Obey Yahweh and you will live in paradise   “Just obey Yahweh. You hear me? Obey him, and you will live in paradise. He will protect you from your enemies. Send rain for your crops. Nurture your herds. You will have abundant food and wine. Maybe free dance lessons—who knows? There is no limit to Yahweh’s love! Obey him, and your lives will be perfect. Disobey him, and you are fucked! It’s just that simple.” Moses waited for the impact of this essential truth to resister in their brains. Regretfully, it did not. But he concluded, “Anyhow, I’m one-hundred and twenty years old. I cannot lead you into the Promised Land. Joshua will lead you.” He again found Joshua in the crowd. “Joshua, come on up here!” Joshua, startled awake, elbowed his way through the crowd and

In 1991, a college sophomore studying music in the American Midwest made the mistake of selling some drugs to the wrong person. Until then, he hadn’t done much more than smoke pot and sell some of it to his friends. Petty vandalism at his high school was as high stakes as his criminal career had been. Then, as these things tend to go when you’re just 18 years old, he tried to push the envelope and test his boundaries. He started experimenting with hard drugs like LSD. But he was naive, and the brashness of youth got the best of him. He sold some of that LSD outside his circle—to an undercover policeman. And as if his luck couldn’t get worse, like a scene out of a TV movie of the week, the judge, under pressure to make an example out of this young man, sentenced him to 6 to 25 years in prison. It’s a faceless, timeless story that transcends race, class, and region. A young kid makes a mistake that forever changes their lives and their family’s lives as well. We are all too familiar with how stories like this usually end: The kid spends their most impressionable years behind bars and comes out worse than when they went in. Life on the outside is too difficult to contend with; habits learned on the inside are too difficult to shed. They reoffend; their crimes escalate. The cycle continues. This story, however, is a little different. Because this young man didn’t go back to jail. In fact, after being released in less than 5 years on good behavior, he went on to become one of the best jazz violinists in the world. He left prison with a fire lit underneath him—to practice, to repent, to humble himself, to hustle, and to do whatever it took to make something of his life. No task was too small, no gig was too tiny, no potential fan was too disinterested for him not to give it everything he had. And he did. The story is a little different for another reason, too. That young man’s name is Christian Howes. He is my older brother.

Rick contacted me about the session, but he didn't know who in hell was coming in. I said, "Who you got?" He said, "Aretha Franklin." I said, "Boy, you better get your damn shoes on. You getting someone who can sing." Even the Memphis guys didn't really know who in the hell she was. I said, "Man, this woman gonna knock you out." They're all going, "Big deal!" When she come in there and sit down at the piano and hit that first chord, everybody was just like little bees just buzzing around the queen. You could tell by the way she hit the piano the gig was up. It was, "Let's get down to serious business." That first chord she hit was nothing we'd been demoing, and nothing none of them cats in Memphis had been, either. We'd just been dumb-dumb playing, but this was the real thing. That's the prettiest session picture I can ever remember. If I'd had a camera, I'd have a great film of that session, because I can still see it in my mind's eye, just how it was - Spooner on the organ, Moman playing guitar, Aretha at the piano - it was beautiful, better than any session I've ever seen, and I seen a bunch of 'em.' Spooner Oldham, the weedy keyboard player who is most known for never playing the same licks twice and who is ordinarily the most reticent of men, speaks in similar superlatives. 'I was hired to play keyboards. She was gonna stand up in front of the microphone and sing. She was showing us this song she had brought down there with her, she hit that magic chord when Wexler was going up the little steps to the control room, and I just stopped. I said, "Now, look, I'm not trying to cop out or nothing. I know I was hired to play piano, but I wish you'd let her play that thing, and I could get on organ and electric." And that's the way it was. It was a good, honest move, and one of the best things I ever done - and I didn't do nothing.

But the best gig he ever landed through acting was a lifetime loving Julia McCulley.

The Blasters proved to be the most prominent and popular of these acts by far. Originally a quartet, the band was bred in Downey, just down the freeway from East L.A. In their teens, brothers Phil and Dave Alvin were bitten by the blues bug; they became habitués of the L.A. club the Ash Grove, where many of the best-known folk and electric blues performers played, and they sought out the local musicians who could teach them their craft, learning firsthand from such icons as Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, and Little Richard’s saxophonist Lee Allen (who would ultimately join the band in the ’80s). But the Blasters’ style was multidimensional: they could play R&B, they loved country music, and they were also dyed-in-the-wool rockabilly fans who were initially embraced by the music’s fervent L.A. cultists. Their debut album, 1980’s American Music, was recorded in a Van Nuys garage by the Milan, Italy–born rockabilly fanatic Rockin’ Ronnie Weiser, and released on his indie label Rollin’ Rock Records, which also issued LPs by such first-generation rockabilly elders as Gene Vincent, Mac Curtis, Jackie Waukeen Cochran, and Ray Campi. By virtue of Phil Alvin’s powerful, unmannered singing and Dave Alvin’s adept guitar playing and original songwriting, the Blasters swiftly rose to the top of a pack of greasy local bands that also included Levi and the Rockats (a unit fronted by English singer Levi Dexter) and the Rockabilly Rebels (who frequently backed Ray Campi). Los Lobos were early Blasters fans, and often listened to American Music in their van on the way to their own (still acoustic) gigs. Rosas says, “We loved their first record, man. We used to play the shit out of that record. Dave [Hidalgo] was the one who got a copy of it, and he put it on cassette.

Early in my happy adventures as a gigging musician, putting my ragbag of borrowed licks and boundless, puppyish enthusiasm before very kind audiences, I had an epiphany. Whatever my ambitions, I was not required to have mastered the piano completely before playing for people. The jazz world may be strewn with mighty saxophonists who turn up to gigs bellowing “any tune, any key, any tempo”. To me, they are God-like figures. But I did not have to be, indeed could never be, like them. Instead, I simply had to be able to play the tunes I was performing at that moment. Back then the audience did not need to know that there was not much else beyond the 10-song set they’d just heard. I would still be, and indeed remain, the best jazz pianist of all the British restaurant critics. There’s a lot to be said for being good over a narrow bandwidth; for doing a small number of things really well, rather than trying to prove your exhausting high-trapeze virtuosity.

Scott thrived on being a novelty, buzzed on being the latest, greatest person you’d met. He poured his energies into winning new acquaintances over like a top salesman with his most potentially lucrative client. He’d have effectively been auditioning as a future best man from their first handshake, whether he got the gig or not. Scott, she had realized only with hindsight, liked to overwhelm people.

I’ve learned to envision the ideal end to any project before I begin it now—even the best gigs don’t last forever. Nor should they.

He was probably visiting Ravi, Nora thought. Ravi was her brother’s best friend. While Joe had given up the guitar and moved to London, for a crap IT job he hated, Ravi had stuck to Bedford. He played in a covers band now, called Slaughterhouse Four, doing pub gigs around town.

No matter who you are or what you’ve accomplished, if you’re working for someone else, you must always have humility about your role. Try looking at it like this: When you’re hired to play background music, you’re essentially filling the same role as an ice sculpture. Sure, you’re playing music, but you’re meant to blend in as atmosphere. No one throws a party and thinks, “Man, I’d really like to bring in an ice sculpture that shows up late and half-sculpted, refuses to pose in place and keeps sliding around, and then demands to be compensated in full despite pulling a premature meltdown and leaving before the night’s over.” Similarly, no one throws a party and hopes that the hired musical performer arrives without a suit, refuses to turn down the volume after being asked twice, and then insists at the last second on being paid in cash instead of by check because rent is due. If you agree to be an ice sculpture, be the best damn ice sculpture you can be.

A school in the East Midlands, new term 1981-82. A new boy enters the class and is introduced by the teacher. He has spiky hair and wears a T-shirt, Doc Martens and tight denims with tiny turn-ups. He is instructed to sit [in] the nearest empty seat. The boy beside him has a flat-top and wears a tartan shirt, crepe shoes and loose denims with big turn-ups. As the latest addition to the class takes his seat he mutters to his new neighbour “Rockabilly bastard!” “Fucking Punk” replies his schoolmate, and they glare at each other menacingly. One year later they are wrecking wildly together at a Meteors gig – best of mates.

You will never feel “ready” or “comfortable with” putting your work out there. It is so important to make peace with and internalize this idea. If you’re a musician and you’ve just written a song that you’re on the fence about, the best time to record it is right now. If you’re a filmmaker and you want to make a movie but don’t have the best equipment, the best time to begin making it is right now, with whatever equipment you can get your hands on. If you’re reading this and have a feeling that this might apply to you, set my book aside, get up, and go do whatever creative project you’ve been putting off—you guessed it—right now.

knowing that I wanted to be a piano player, and knowing that practicing, of course, was just something piano players did, I turned my daily practice into a habit. Now, habits get a bad rap; we tend to think of things like biting our nails or smoking when we talk about them. But really, a habit is defined as “a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up.” Tooth brushing is a habit (for most of us). So is showing up to work on time. Those are some good habits. Habits can be good; say it with me. Once you’ve trained your brain to view practicing as a habit, the next step is finding the motivation to adopt that habit. The key to motivation, I’ve learned, is coupling your profound inspiration to a strong belief in yourself, and that’s not something even the best teacher is able to instill. It has to come from within. Building a strong core identity to drive your motivation requires first believing that you’ll eventually master the skill you’ve set out to learn—no matter how farfetched that might initially seem to yourself and others. Having the correct image of yourself is really key here; you have to think of yourself as the thing you want to be long before other people think of you as that. You may only have taken one trumpet lesson and sound horrible, but you still must think of yourself as a trumpet player in order for the habit to stick. You are whatever you do repeatedly. Practicing became such a constant in my day—and in such a natural, unforced way—that I hardly had to think about it. It had become, in other words, a habit.

The best thing for being sad,’ said T. H. White’s Merlin, ‘is to learn something.’ All of us have to live our lives most of the time inside the protective structures that we have built; none of us can bear too much reality. We need our books, our craft projects, our dogs and knitting, our movies, gardens and gigs. It’s who we are. We’re held together by our lives, our interests, and all our chosen comforts. But we can’t have only those things, because then we can’t work out where we should be headed.

I think the best gig we did with the original line up was at the Aquarius club,” recalls Kip. “About 250 people were packed in there and the place was buzzing. We had a big crowd going nuts, people were falling all over the stage, and we were completely covered in spit… so I guess we went down really well!

The Internet, I was learning, is a place for growth, a medium where anyone with the right idea, some talent, and a lot of ambition can go from anonymous to beloved almost instantly. Indeed, it’s often the best place to launch your idea and pull in potential fans. However, the fact that it’s a medium on which free content is broadcast around the clock means that it’s also a place where the advantage of being an established incumbent is minimal. Put simply, everyone likes the shiny new toys.

Sure, Phoebe’s a spy. I always knew it.” Sometimes it was best to go along with these things. It helped him fit in. Of course once the gig was up, he was going to find a way to get Si back. Alex McKay sighed. “He’s going to need proof. God knows I did. “Yes, I need proof.

It's better to be treated as a paper airplane than a fighter jet. When you are disrupting, the best possible start-up scenario is to be dismissed, even ignored, just as Blockbuster ignored Netflix—right up until Blockbuster was "netflixed."17 Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU) is a good example of an organization that took on fly-under-the-radar market risk.18 A decade ago, SNHU was a two-thousand-student college with declining enrollment. Instead of trying to increase enrollment by competing for Ivy League-caliber professors at the high end or with government-funded community colleges at the low end, the university chose to play where no one else was playing—online. There was no guarantee that students would be interested in online degree programs. But because SNHU took on market risk, playing where no one else was playing, and there were many students looking for the flexibility provided by online courses, it is now considered the Amazon of education, with thirty-four thousand students enrolled. SNHU is in the process of jumping to yet another growth curve to decrease the cost of a college degree by measuring competencies rather than credits. One student demonstrated all 120 competencies in one hundred days. His associate's degree cost a grand total of $1,250. A good example of taking on market risk in personal, career terms is Amy Jo Martin, founder of Digital Royalty. In 2008, of the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on advertising and publicity by the NBA, very little was allocated to social media. Martin saw an unmet need, and leveraged her expertise to persuade the Phoenix Suns to hire her as director of digital media, a first-of-its-kind position within the NBA. Martin's clients have included Shaquille O'Neal, and she has more than a million Twitter followers. Her gig sounds fantastically fun, but at the outset people wondered if it was even a job.

To create your comedic MAPP, you start with the purpose. Why are you writing humor? Is it to motivate or to entertain? Is the humor for a speech, a presentation, a comedy gig, or the classroom? The purpose gives direction and meaning to the material.

way that you see me? Broken heart that won’t lay down Is this the way you would be free? To take your life without a sound Is this the way that it should be? It’s not the same without you around…oh no-o-o…   It gave me frigging goose bumps. Seriously, I thought I might start crying like I had in college, so I pinched my arm hard enough to leave a bruise. Hearing two extremely talented people—world class musicians—perform my creation to such perfection with such inspired passion… well, frankly, it made me much more grateful to be alive. Not to mention it crushed any remaining doubts I had as far as holding our own against the very best talent the non-country music industry has to offer. Our rehearsal was one of the best we’ve ever had. High energy and inspired play… I thought we better have a frigging shower in our dressing rooms at our upcoming gig if we performed anywhere near this level. We were sweating like pigs, man, but someone told me once that pigs don’t sweat. At least not like us.

Endings don’t have to be failures, especially when you choose to end a project or shut down a business. . . . Even the best gigs don’t last forever. Nor should they.

For People Starting Out—Say “Yes” When Derek was 18, he was living in Boston, attending the Berklee College of Music. “I’m in this band where the bass player, one day in rehearsal, says, ‘Hey man, my agent just offered me this gig—it’s like $ 75 to play at a pig show in Vermont.’ He rolls his eyes, and he says, ‘I’m not gonna do it, do you want the gig?’ I’m like, ‘Fuck yeah, a paying gig?! Oh, my God! Yes!’ So, I took the gig to go up to Burlington, Vermont. “And, I think it was a $ 58 round-trip bus ticket. I get to this pig show, I strap my acoustic guitar on, and I walked around a pig show playing music. I did that for about 3 hours, and took the bus home, and the next day, the booking agent called me up, and said, ‘Hey, yeah, so you did a really good job at the pig show. . . .’ “So many opportunities, and 10 years of stage experience, came from that one piddly little pig show. . . . When you’re earlier in your career, I think the best strategy is to just say ‘yes’ to everything. Every little gig. You just never know what are the lottery tickets.

The best gig in the world is a packed bar on a Friday night. Reason: Everybody gets paid and everybody wants to get laid. Any band that can't go over on a Friday night should be shot.

I’ve learned to envision the ideal end to any project before I begin it now—even the best gigs don’t last forever. Nor should they.

The Oak Forest mushrooms for the langoustine didn't arrive in time, so we've substituted with enoki mushrooms from Champagne Farms. Also, we are adding an entrée to the menu tonight. It's lemon pine-nut-encrusted sea scallops with a celery mousse and my signature vinaigrette. It took three months to get it right, and the end result is phenomenal. So sell it." Alain paused while the servers took notes. "In wines, we're out of the Napa Valley El Molino, the Talenti, and the Chateau Margeaux '86." Alain paused and, while the servers wrote furiously in their pads, my thoughts wandered. I tried picturing the customers who might have opinions about Oak Forest mushrooms compared to those from Champagne Farms. Did they wear tweed and bifocals? Or were they übermodern with sculpured haircuts and electronic cigarettes? I shook my head, annoyed with myself and my train of thought. Let the mushroom people be mushroom people, I chastised myself. You signed up for this gig, Charlie, remember? You're living your dream, remember? Alain changed gears for a second and threw out a quiz question, one of his more sadistic rituals during family meal. "What are the six ingredients in the jalapeño emulsion we serve with the salmon?" Silence. A blonde in the back ventured, "Jalapeño, olive oil, shallots...?" More silence. "Fleur de sel, ground pepper, lemon juice," Alain finished for her, giving her an icy glance over his bearish nose. "Wake up, people. All right, here's an easy one. What's the difference between jamón ibérico and prosciutto?" Four hands went up, and Wade got it right. "Jamón ibérico is dry-cured from black Iberian pigs in Spain, not to be confused with jamón serrano, which comes from a less expensive white pig. Prosciutto is also dry-cured, but it is from Italy. It is the common man's gourmet ham, which is why we don't serve it." Wade finished with a cock of the head and a high-five with another server. Alain snorted. "Thank you for the editorial comment. Please keep it to yourself, however, when recommending the melon and jamón ibérico appetizer." He spent the next five minutes grilling the staff on the origin of our rice vinegar, what dessert wine paired best with Felix's raspberry brûlée, and the correct serving temperature of the parsnip purée.

But the best cover has to be D’Angelo, on his long-awaited 2012 comeback tour—within minutes of the first gig in Paris, the whole world was YouTubing his “Space Oddity” with our jaws hanging open. After all those years away, lost in his own personal tin can, D’Angelo came back to strum his acoustic guitar and work the hell out of “tell my wife I love her very much” line.

I was and still am a big Dylan fan and admirer, so I asked Bob Johnston if there was any way he could let me play on just one session. Sessions in Nashville are scheduled so you can fit four into a day: 10: 00 a.m., 2: 00 p.m., 6: 00 p.m., and 10: 00 p.m. As it happened, the guitar player they had scheduled for the 6: 00 p.m. session couldn’t make it and wouldn’t show up until the 10: 00 p.m. session, so Bob fit me in for 6: 00 p.m. I was the hungriest musician in the studio. I hung on every note that Bob Dylan sang and played on his guitar and did my best to interpret his music with feeling and passion. When the session was over, I was packing up my guitars to head to my club gig, and Bob Dylan asked Bob Johnston, “Where is Charlie going?” Bob told him I was leaving and that he had another guitar player coming in. Then Bob Dylan said nine little words that would affect my life from that moment on. He said, “I don’t want another guitar player. I want him.” And there it was. After all the put downs, condescension, and snide remarks, after all the times I’d driven to the hill above my house and shook my fist at Nashville and said, “You will not beat me.” After all that rejection, none other than the legendary Bob Dylan was saying that I might be worth something after all. It’s bits of encouragement like that that keep you going. Once in a while something just lights you up and you say, “Yeah, I can do this.

The best you can hope for at any gig is Altamont-like spontaneity where nobody happens to get killed.

And in a sense that makes us all the same. We are simply doing what we’re asked to do to the best of our ability given our talents, whatever they may be. So rather than try to compare people and talk about who’s got power and who doesn’t, I think we should all sort of just put our arms around each other’s shoulders and drink a beer and say it’s a hell of a life, you know?

And you do find those people. Whether they’re your friends, or—often you find these people that are amazing and beautiful and their whole life is about like—there are Foley artists, you know, sound effects guys, and their whole life is about trying to make this perfect “plop” sound. They’re like, “Oh, if you drop a stone in this metal basin with just the right amount of water in it, it will make a perfect “plop’ sound.” These craftsmen nuts, that’s all they do. They’re just geniuses. It’s beautiful. People who want to do the best that they can do even on something that most people don’t notice. And those are the people you want to find.

When you’re earlier in your career, I think the best strategy is to just say ‘yes’ to everything. Every little gig. You just never know what are the lottery tickets.

A micro-task is best described as a task which is simple, repetitive or highly algorithmic in nature. Each executed task lasts between a few minutes to a few hours, and this short life-cycle ensures that a task can be contracted, completed and paid for expeditiously, often within the transaction window itself

She must have been around for our first gig as “the Rollin’ Stones,” a band name Stu highly disapproved of. Brian, after figuring how much it would cost, called up Jazz News, which was a kind of “who’s playing where” rag, and said, “We’ve got a gig at…” “What do you call yourselves?” We stared at one another. “It?” Then “Thing?” This call is costing. Muddy Waters to the rescue! First track on The Best of Muddy Waters is “Rollin’ Stone.” The cover is on the floor. Desperate, Brian, Mick and I take the dive. “The Rolling Stones.” Phew!! That saved sixpence.

And of course, beginning in ’65, I’m starting to get stoned—a lifelong habit now—which also intensified my impressions of what was going on. Just smoking the weed at the time. The guys I met on the road were, to me then, older men in their thirties, some in their forties, black bands that we were playing with. And we’d be up all night and we’d get to the gig and there would be these brothers in their sharkskin suits, the chain, the waistcoat, the hair gel, and they’re all shaved and groomed, so fit and sweet, and we’d just drag our asses in. One day I was feeling so ragged getting to the gig, and these brothers were so together, and shit, they were working the same schedule we were. So I said to one of these guys, a horn player, “Jesus, how do you look so good every day?” And he pulled his coat back and reached into his waistcoat pocket and said, “You take one of these, you smoke one of those.” Best bit of advice. He gave me a little white pill, a white cross, and a joint. This is how we do it: you take one of these and you smoke one of these. But keep it dark! That was the line I left the room with. Now we’ve told you, keep it dark. And I felt like I’d just been let into a secret society. Is it all right if I tell the other guys? Yeah, but keep it amongst yourselves. Backstage it had been going on from time immemorial. The joint really got my attention. The joint got my attention so much that I forgot to take the Benzedrine. They made good speed in those days. Oh yeah, it was pure. You could get hold of speed at any truck stop; truck drivers relied upon it. Stop over here, pull over to some truck stop and ask for Dave. Give me a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks and a bag. Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer.

When is it best to give up on a major life goal? Early in my career, I always encouraged patients to keep trying, keep trying, don’t let your depression symptoms fool you into thinking you can’t succeed. Often that was good advice. Some applicants get into medical school the fourth time they apply. Some singers land a gig with the Grand Ole Opry after their fifth year in Nashville. But more become increasingly despondent as failure follows failure. Sometimes a five-year engagement turns into marriage. Sometimes staying another year in LA trying to break into film pays off. But not often. Sober experience combined with my growing evolutionary perspective to encourage respecting the meaning of my patients’ moods. As often as not, their symptoms seemed to arise from a deep recognition that some major life project was never going to work. She was glad he wanted to live with her, but it looks increasingly like he will never agree to get married. The boss is nice now and then and hints at promotions, but nothing will ever come of it. Hopes for cancer cures get aroused, but all treatments so far have failed. He has stayed off booze for two weeks, but a dozen previous vows to stay on the wagon have all ended in binges. Low mood is not always an emanation from a disordered brain; it can be a normal response to pursuing an unreachable goal.

When Bill Wyman left, in 1991, I got extremely stroppy. I really did have a go at him. I wasn’t very nice. He said he didn’t like to fly anymore. He had been driving to every gig because he’d developed a fear of flying. That’s not an excuse—get outta here! I couldn’t believe it. I’d been in some of the most ramshackle aircraft in the world with that guy and he’d never batted an eyelid. But I guess it’s something that one can develop. Or maybe he did a computer analysis. He was very into that. Bill had one of the first. It satisfied that meticulous mind of his, I suppose. He probably got something out of the computer, like the odds against you after flying so many miles. I don’t know why he’s so worried about dying. It’s not a matter of avoiding it. It’s where and how! But then what did he do? Having freed himself by luck and talent from the constraints of society, that one-in-ten-million chance, he goes back into it, into the retail trade, putting his energy into opening up a pub. Why would you leave the best band in the fucking world to open a fish-and-chip shop called Sticky Fingers? Taking one of our titles with him. It seems to be doing well.

When Bill Wyman left, in 1991, I got extremely stroppy. I really did have a go at him. I wasn’t very nice. He said he didn’t like to fly anymore. He had been driving to every gig because he’d developed a fear of flying. That’s not an excuse—get outta here! I couldn’t believe it. I’d been in some of the most ramshackle aircraft in the world with that guy and he’d never batted an eyelid. But I guess it’s something that one can develop. Or maybe he did a computer analysis. He was very into that. Bill had one of the first. It satisfied that meticulous mind of his, I suppose. He probably got something out of the computer, like the odds against you after flying so many miles. I don’t know why he’s so worried about dying. It’s not a matter of avoiding it. It’s where and how! But then what did he do? Having freed himself by luck and talent from the constraints of society, that one-in-ten-million chance, he goes back into it, into the retail trade, putting his energy into opening up a pub. Why would you leave the best band in the fucking world to open a fish-and-chip shop called Sticky Fingers? Taking one of our titles with him. It seems to be doing well. Not so Ronnie’s similarly inexplicable foray into the catering trade, always a nightmare of keeping people’s fingers out of the till. Josephine’s dream was to have a spa. They opened it, it was a disaster, it fell apart and went down in a blaze of insolvency proceedings.