Music Gig Quotes

Not everyone who comes to Luna's on gig nights is here to see me. Some people are actually more interested in the coffee. Or the scones. Or in hitting on Emily." "Oh, I didn't say I wasn’t' here to hit on Em," I say. "Just that hitting on Em and enjoying your music aren't mutually exclusive.

Boys are adorable. Boys trail off their sentences in an appealing way. Boys bring a knapsack to work. Boys get haircuts from their roommate, who “totally knows how to cut hair.” Boys can pack up their whole life in a duffel bag and move to Brooklyn for a gig if they need to. Boys have “gigs.” Boys are broke. And when they do have money, they spend it on a trip to Colorado to see a music festival. Boys don’t know how to adjust their conversation when they’re talking to their friends or to your parents. They put parents on the same level as their peers and roll their eyes when your dad makes a terrible pun. Boys let your parents pay for dinner when you all go out. It’s assumed.

That’s a stupid name! Whirly-gig is much better, I think. Who in their right mind would point at this thing and say, ‘I’m going to fly in my Model-A1’. People would much rather say, ‘Get in my whirly-gig’. And that’s what you should name it.

Writing this now, God, how I miss the cultural side of the eighties - the rhetoric, the raggedy clothes, the politics, gigs you were frightened to go into, Radio 1 when it had weird bits, Channel 4 when it was radical, the NME when it had writers, and the thrill of discovering underground music and new comedy for yourself.

An essential difference between British and American punk bands can be found in their respective views of rock & roll history. The British bands took a deliberately anti-intellectual stance, refuting any awareness of, or influence from, previous exponents of the form. The New York and Cleveland bands saw themselves as self-consciously drawing on and extending an existing tradition in American rock & roll. (...) A second difference between the British and American punk scenes was their relative gestation periods. The British weekly music press was reviewing Sex Pistols shows less than three months after their cacophonous debut. Within a year of the Pistols' first performance they had a record deal, with the 'major' label EMI. Within six months of their first gigs the Damned and the Clash also secured contracts, the latter with CBS. The CBGBs scene went largely ignored by the American music industry until 1976 -- two years after the debuts of Television, the Ramones and Blondie. Even then only Television signed to an established label.

Raw, alive and honest to the point of disgusting it's listener, Placebo set out to inspire mystery and confusion. Admitting to relishing groups who could make their audience vomit with the sheer intensity of their musical vibrations, Brian clearly knew how to make an impact. Discussing sonic overload with unsettling enthusiasm, he claimed "Some frequencies can make you physically ill or make your bowels loose. The Swans used to do it. By the end of gigs people would vomit because the frequencies were so nasty.

I had a dream about you. You were a stranger playing a gig in this pub where I was waitressing. I felt like I knew you or needed to, so I asked you to have a few drinks with me. Then my alarm went off. I sat up in bed to see you still sleeping. I’m glad I decided to wear a kilt that summer while I was in school.

How amazing to go to a gig thinking of nothing but how loud you will shout; how hard you will dance; how much you will sweat; how tightly you will hug your friends, as your favourite song plays. How amazing to react to music in the way music wants you - to become an ecstatic animal.

Now I know what happens at a gig, I will be ready for it, next time--I will come in just a T-shirt and shorts and books, and fight my way to the front, like a quietly determined soldier, and then let the band take my head off. I want to walk into rooms like that every night, with a sense of something happening.

We set up our gear for the tune-up and Tony [Iommi] launched into the opening riff of ‘Black Sabbath’ – doh, doh, doooohnnnn – but before I’d got through the first line of lyrics the manager had run on to the stage, red in the face, and was shouting, ‘STOP, STOP, STOP! Are you f**king serious? This isn’t Top-Forty pop covers! Who are you people?’ ‘Earth,’ said Tony, shrugging. ‘You booked us, remember?’ ‘I didn’t book this. I thought you were going to play “Mellow Yellow” and “California Dream-in’”.’ ‘Who – us?’ laughed Tony. ‘That’s what your manager told me!’ ‘Jim Simpson told you that?’ ‘Who the hell’s Jim Simpson?’ ‘Ah,’ said Tony, finally working out what had happened. He turned to us and said, ‘Lads, I think we might not be the only band called Earth.’ He was right: there was another Earth on the C-list gig circuit. But they didn’t play satanic music. They played pop and Motown covers.

River looks at me for a beat, dragging his tongue over his lower lip before continuing. “This is how I remember it. I was singing a gig at the USC Campus Bar. During a break I went to grab a beer. I met the most incredible girl whom I don’t think even knew that I sang in the band, but loved music. We seemed to hit it off. We did a couple of shots, drank a few drinks, and talked without any pretense. I asked her to wait for me after the show. She didn’t say anything about having a boyfriend or not sticking around and then when I finished she was gone.

They only want to be there while you’re on top, and when you haven’t gotten a gig in a while and you don’t know how you’re going to pay your rent at the end of the month and the glamor they thought they signed up for is gone, they’re walking out the door, leaving you to pick up the pieces.

Emo developed out of the punk scene, and they generally wear black. There is, however, a great deal of angst in their music, with dramatic vocals leaving audiences at live gigs sobbing or screaming. There’s a lot of self-loathing and despair in this culture - hence the self-harm slitting of the wrists, although it's more like little kitten scratches - but to be honest a bigger bunch of dickheads you couldn’t hope to find. Can you imagine walking out of a gig by ‘Forever the Sickest Kids,’ or ‘City of Caterpillar’ or ‘….. And you will Know us by the Trail of Dead’ balling your eyes out? I mean ….. Really!!

One of my favorite “deep thoughts” on the topic occurred when one of my other bands, Loaded, was opening for Alice Cooper a number of years back. After one particularly successful show, we got to talking about Bon Jovi. In the song “Wanted Dead Or Alive,” the claim is made that “I’ve seen a million faces, and I’ve rocked them all.” All? Let’s ponder. I have no doubt that Bon Jovi had played to a million people by the time “Dead or Alive” was released on Slippery When Wet in 1986. But did they rock them all? Couldn’t it be that some dudes brought their girlfriends to the show and weren’t necessarily into their music? What about some parents? Or maybe some people just didn’t get rocked? Hey, it’s happened to me. I’ve gone to gigs properly prepared to get rocked and it just didn’t happen.

When I put together my early bands, usually some other singer who was short of one would take it away. It seemed like this happened every time one of my bands was fully formed. I couldn’t understand how this was possible seeing that these guys weren’t any better at singing or playing than I was. What they did have was an open door to gigs where there was real money. Anybody who had a band could play at park pavilions, talent shows, county fairgrounds, auctions and store openings, but those gigs didn’t pay except maybe for expenses and sometimes not even for that. These other crooners could perform at small conventions, private wedding parties, golden anniversaries in hotel ballrooms, things like that — and there was cash involved. It was always the promise of money that lured my band away. Truth was, that the guys who took my bands away had connections to someone up the ladder. It went to the very root of things, gave unfair advantage to some and left others squeezed out. How could somebody ever reach the world this way? It seemed like it was the law of life. It got so that I almost always expected to lose my band and it didn’t even shock me anymore if it happened. It was beginning to dawn on me that I would have to learn how to play and sing by myself and not depend on a band until the time I could afford to pay and keep one.

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.

music label exists for four main reasons: talent scouring, financing to rent a studio (like startup capital for a business), distribution, and marketing. From Birdmonster’s angle, they could do all those things themselves, but better and cheaper. They already knew they were talented since they’d been getting gigs. Since they could edit the music on their own computers, they didn’t need financing to rent a studio. CD Baby provided distribution to all the top services like iTunes and Rhapsody, and weekly payouts instead of payout nine months later like traditional record distributors. The effect of their Myspace page (it was the early 2000’s) and a personal email to well known blogs was greater than anything record labels could provide in terms of marketing.

Some of them assumed that they would get the gig without knowing that many of the nuances in Megadeth’s music are found in the picking hand, not just the fingerboard hand.

In most cases for most session artists, it as never about trying to take the gig away. It was a one time job. Many session players and ghost players had that duality of being creative but also clearly understanding the music business is a business.

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.

The night of the Grammys, Los Lobos were 1,895 miles from home, in New Orleans, in the middle of their first tour of the East and Southeast, driving from gig to gig in a van and sharing a single hotel room on the road. They were to play Jimmy’s Music Club that night, but repaired to a local bar to watch the awards show on TV before their set. Berlin recalls, “[The announcer] said, ‘Earlier this evening, these awards were handed out.’ And sure enough, there’s a picture of Los Lobos. So we start flipping out—‘Oh, shit, we won this thing! We won a Grammy!’ And this old drunk at the bar said, ‘Yeah, right, buddy.’ We were all ecstatic. And we get to the gig, and there’s five people there.

Bass was probably the King Bees’ closest follower, hanging out with them at Wimpy bars, coffee shops, parties, and gigs. She knew David well; he was likable, cheerful, enthusiastic, but almost bland and boring in his single-mindedness: “All he wanted to do was practice, and listen to tapes or records that he’d got hold of. That was his life. Everybody regarded themselves as an expert in music—but he really was. What made him different was he would pass a party, or anything, up if there was something he needed to do for his music. For the other kids, that was inconceivable.

A friend dropped in on him after a gig and asked what was new. "Nothin' new," he said. "White folks still ahead.

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.

Musically I was fed up with the virtuoso thing. Our gigs had become nothing more than an excuse for us to show off as individuals, and any sense of unity we might have had when we started seemed to have gone out the window.

Still and again, on the page, I smithereen the five-minute rule; I take my own damned time to stretch and look around. Because music is possible, I want music. Because I skated, I want ice and air for prose. Because plot bores me and knowing doesn’t, I write to find out what I know, or if I know, or if I might know sometime soon. “Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end,” Virginia Woolf wrote, in “Modern Fiction.” She thought it, she said it, and at the hand press she and her husband called Hogarth, the press through which she published anything she pleased as she pleased (after her first two books), she sat with the weight of the words in her hands, the Caslon As and Bs and Cs, and letter by letter she chased haloes.

Directors started to see it too, so I began to get gigs in music videos, not even to dance. I guess the scar gave me a “look,” or an “edge.” It made me look like the tough guy I wasn’t, but I was happy to pretend. That’s all it felt like at first—pretending.

He had spent three hardscrabble years performing on the Chitlin’ Circuit—a route of juke joints, icehouses, and barrooms where rhythm-and-blues music was played primarily to African American audiences. Just to get to those gigs, traveling black musicians had to plan carefully in advance such things as finding food and using a toilet, simple services that were denied blacks in parts of white America.

is the strength of the songwriting. Dark Side contained strong, powerful songs. The overall idea that linked those songs together – the pressures of modern life – found a universal response, and continues to capture people’s imagination. The lyrics had depth, and had a resonance people could easily relate to, and were clear and simple enough for non-native-English speakers to understand, which must have been a factor in its international success. And the musical quality spearheaded by David’s guitar and voice and Rick’s keyboards established a fundamental Pink Floyd sound. We were comfortable with the music, which had had time to mature and gestate, and evolve through live performances – later on we had to stop previewing work live as the quality of the recording equipment being smuggled into gigs reached near-studio standards. The additional singers and Dick Parry’s sax gave the whole record an extra commercial sheen. In addition, the sonic quality of the album was state of the art – courtesy of the skills of Alan Parsons and Chris Thomas. This is particularly important, because at the time the album came out, hi-fi stereo equipment had only recently become a mainstream consumer item, an essential fashion accessory for the 1970s home. As a result, record buyers were particularly aware of the effects of stereo and able to appreciate any album that made the most of its possibilities. Dark Side had the good fortune to become one of the definitive test records that people could use to show off the quality of their hi-fi system. The packaging for the album by Storm and Po at Hipgnosis was clean, simple, and immediately striking, with a memorable icon in the shape of the prism.

Stoned Soup by Stewart Stafford Keith Richards talks Brendan Behan, Making soup, wrapped in a blanket, While in a kitchen in County Cork, Mick Jagger listens and laughs loudly. Discussing the previous night’s gig, Mick says the crowd was wonderful, Keith agrees and says so was Charlie, Keith’s lip cigarette jigs to each word. Through choking plumes of smoke, The soup is ready, Mick tries some, His notable lips curl downwards fast, He humours Keith and says it’s great. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

Events thereafter moved quite quickly. There was a handful of gigs in early 1968 where we tried playing as a five-piece. What Syd was experiencing at these shows we can only guess at: he was probably completely confused, and angry that his influence was being steadily eroded. On stage, he put the minimum of effort into his performance, seemingly just going through the motions. This lack of contribution was probably his refusal to take part in the whole charade. As he withdrew further and further, this merely convinced us that we were taking the right decision.

We are a rock ’n’ roll band. We always were. We have heavy-metal hair so you can see why so many people put us in there with that. They’ve got no brains these people who categorise you. They are at these award ceremonies – here is an asshole who is taking your money on false pretences and he’s getting the award on the unanimous decision of all those cunts who never buy records and get into gigs free (laughs).

After some more rehearsing, the Ramones—named for Paul McCartney’s touring alias during his Beatles days, Paul Ramone—got themselves a two-night weekend gig at CBGB, August 16 and 17.

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.

No musician needs a degree testifying to his or her ability to play. Every musician, however, needs the networking and support system that comes from collaborating with ambitious, creative people on a daily basis.

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.

Drinking games were also part of the gig experience including a live favourite which would follow later in the band’s career, the infamous “Wheel of Misfortune,” a huge wheel to which punters were strapped to and spun after being fed a bucket of booze through a hose. This often resulted in the victim being left in an unconscious stupor or forced them to let go a multi-coloured fountain of puke. Snakebite [beer mixed with cider] was the supposed content of the bucket but many would shudder to think what foul potions were also added to the receptacle.

Empathy works wonders when dealing with the most brutal kind of criticism. The harshest of the negative feedback I received oozed with the kind of insecurity that had, for a long while, been lodged so deep within me that it had prevented me from sharing my music. I was able to recognize the ugly emotion and the place of fear that it was born from because once upon a time, I, too, had been at its mercy. The only difference was that I’d resisted the impulse to go on the Internet anonymously and be a jerk about it by taking it out on other people. The choice is always there.

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.

I was tired of feeling like fear had power over me, though, and so I made a rule for myself: Whenever I was having trouble working up the gumption to create something, I simply set a deadline for its completion and told my newfound fans about it, so that they’d help hold me accountable and follow through with it. I continue to put the rule into action to this day, and I urge you to do the same if ever you’re feeling stuck.

Contrary to popular belief, an “overnight success” has often been years in the making. In the same way that we’re only able to see the tip of the iceberg that’s above water, the general public really only gets to see the “overnight” part of a success story. A truly successful project generally takes years to build and involves a series of smaller successes punctuated by a few failures. Eventually, a critical mass of attention is reached, and the project gets launched into the mainstream, where it circulates widely, and its identity is cemented in its current form—a form that, intentionally or otherwise, rarely pays obvious homage to the years of blood, sweat, tears, and more rudimentary sounds that engendered it.

Mine is just one such story; every day, people around the world are making creative breakthroughs that change the way we live, listen, and learn. And although it may seem like these breakthroughs come about spontaneously, born from inspired bursts of clarity, the reality is that most of them make their way to the surface only after a series of disappointments, false starts, and spectacular failures. If you can find a way to smile through the letdowns, learn from the disasters, and—above all—stay loyal to the people you care about, you’ll discover that you’re unstoppable. Life is messy, and we’re all just a bunch of creeps and weirdos. And that’s okay. We are perfect, just the way we are. Now go forth and make art.

As I started to play two Mexican busboys dressed in fancy green Shamrock Hilton green uniforms rolled out a huge fifty gallon tub filled to the rim with boiled shrimp. They parked it on the dance floor just two feet in front of me. Two feet! I could have reached out and grabbed a handful of shrimp as I was playing. I was annoyed to be singing to a tub of shrimp.

The other half of everything for the songwriters is music. For the poets it’s silence, the space, the whiteness. Music for them – and silence for us – does the work of time. I think our gig is harder. Their enemy reaches out, plays chords, goes hey we could be friends if you play your cards right. Our enemy simply waits, like it knows the arts of war. Songs are strung upon sounds, poems upon silence. Songwriters stir up a living tradition, poets make flowers grow in air. Bob Dylan and John Keats are at different work. It would be nice never to be asked about this again. *

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.

I was becoming very confident in my skills as a musician. There’s an inherent contradiction embedded in practice—at least that I’ve found in my experience: While motivation to put in the hours comes from being confident in your ability to eventually master and contribute to a craft, arriving at that confidence to begin with often requires putting in many, many hours of practice. This catch-22 is the reason so many people pick up the guitar only to quit after learning a couple Jimmy Buffett songs—it’s difficult to imagine yourself as anything but a beginner when you are starting out.

I want to take a second here to talk about my decision to go to school for music, since I get asked for advice on this pretty often. If you’re a young musician (or dancer, or musical theatre actor, or any type of creative performer for that matter) and you’ve progressed in your abilities to the point that a career in the arts seems like a viable path forward, it’s only logical that you’ll find yourself considering a formal continuation of your music studies post–high school. Whether you go the route of the conservatory or enroll in a music program within a more traditional college, you’ll receive training from professional musicians, perform in ensembles alongside other talented students, and have access to state-of-the-art facilities and concert halls. The icing on the cake? You’ll get to sleep in late on weekdays, take classes that appeal to you, and surround yourself with artsy, inspiring kids who share your interests and passions. If all that sounds like a dream, it’s because, in many ways, it is. But any dream has its potential downsides, and I think that it’s important that you’re aware of them, too.

To me, the true value of college is not in what you learn but in how you go about learning. Essential, for instance, is keeping yourself open to experiencing unexpected insights, even if they conflict with previously held views. That mind-set will serve you well in school, though really, it’s a mind-set worth striving for throughout all of life.

We were banned from Canterbury Art College because our roadie, Mongo Tom, drank our after-show beer and wine, got on stage and people thought he was the support act. He stripped naked to the background music, put Billy’s drum sticks up his arse, and began to gyrate while balancing our last bottle of wine on his head. You should have seen the faces of the punters as they walked in. After this hilarity, he disappeared. He got in the back of his van, passed out and shat himself! Very runny it was too; he rolled around in it for a few hours until we had finished our set. All was going well until I went to find him. When I opened the van doors, the smell was bad; he staggered out crying, ‘Help me, Lee!’ I ran a mile. “As we were packing up the gear he went back in – no one would go near him – and removed all the fag machines from the walls! These were hidden in his van. Then he turned up at the after-show party at one of the student union houses. He got in every bed to clean himself up, stole all of the girls’ underwear and generally made an arse of himself. That was the only gig that he did with us. He eventually ended up in nick for drug smuggling!

The most difficult battles we face in life are those we wage within. Self-doubt, feelings of unworthiness, and fear of rejection: This is the trifecta of demons that holds us back from reaching our full potential. We’re not born with these demons; for proof of this, one need only look at how free and uncensored young kids are. By the time most of us reach adulthood, however, we’ve devolved into a tangle of insecurities and negative experiences. From what I’ve seen and from what I’ve suffered, I’d wager that perfectionism hits artists the hardest. Artists—whose very calling is based on the expression of feeling—tend to be more introspective than your average human being and spend much more time living internally. Releasing a creative project out into the world requires ceding a part of yourself to the world and exposing it to the slings and arrows of external criticism. So, it’s only natural that the artist, aware of the vulnerability and invitation for judgment inherent in the act of creating publicly, would take painstaking care to ensure that whatever is released into the world is as close as possible to “perfect.” If left unchecked, this tendency to obsess and strive for perfection can lead the artist to devote months, if not years, to producing a single flawless creation. The truth of the matter, though, is that our actual creations will never be so perfect as we’ve dreamt them to be; they can only be perfected in the sense that, when released, they exist. Sometimes, it takes losing control to gain control over this obsession with perfection.

think this inclination artists have to bury what’s rough and not yet fully formed is a huge mistake. Fans want to witness the growth and maturation of the artists they love; they want to see the messy false starts, and they recognize that these early works are intended to be representative not of an artist’s entire output but a piece of it. And that piece—every piece—is essential to understanding and appreciating the whole. A body of work, no matter how masterful, is nothing without its individual parts.

Over the years, I’ve made a habit of asking professionals with unlike areas of expertise for advice whenever I find myself venturing out of my comfort zone and into theirs for the first time. It’s a habit that’s served me well time and again—and certainly far better than letting ego stand between me and the information I need. There’s no shame in allowing yourself to lean on others’ expertise and become the student again; the only shame would be in not returning the favor should your wisdom be sought out someday. Most people—myself included!—love doling out wisdom, especially on subjects they’ve dealt with for most of their professional lives. It’s a big, confusing world out there, especially in the entertainment industry, and it’s important to actively develop for yourself a team of unofficial advisors that you can turn to for help in navigating the myriad decisions and dilemmas you’ll undoubtedly encounter in life. As

I was becoming all too familiar with the phenomenon that is the YouTube comments section. It was—and still is—a strange, sometimes ruthless place where you can observe our society slowly learning to get used to madness born out of the collusion of anonymity, freedom of speech, and the ability to say something to the entire world at once. Before the Internet, most people didn’t have to go through life reading vile insults directed at them on a daily basis, a phenomenon that is now familiar to most artists who release material digitally. And although reading negative or even downright cruel comments may initially prove disheartening, it’s not necessarily a bad exercise for an artist looking to develop a thick skin.

I was learning that part of being a good music director is being able to put aside the desire to control the output and allow others the opportunity to do what they excel at doing. It seems like a simple concept, but in practice, it can be a difficult experience—particularly for the ego—to permit things to drift away from your original vision and assume a more collaborative format. Give others a chance, and you just may find yourself surprised—and your ego rightfully humbled. The fact of the matter is that all great projects are collaborations; it’s up to the person in charge to guide the process in a positive and fruitful manner.

Truth be told, though, stress is an integral part of being successful. Even after achieving a rewarding career, expect the relatively simple stresses of being able to pay your bills to quickly be replaced by the more complex stresses of managing multiple projects and many different individuals.

To get back into the creative groove, I need to be relaxed enough to allow my mind to drift, with no thought of deadlines or other obligations. Of course, creativity usually needs something else, too, to flourish, and that something is what I call creative hunger. For me, it’s the name for what happens when creativity is mixed with profound inspiration. If you aren’t filled with creative hunger, then it’s all too easy to put things off, rationalize that a project is too difficult to tackle, or decide that you would be just as content watching TV instead. Ambitious young people generally start off with a great deal of creative hunger, but as they age and experience tastes of success here and there, the drive has a way of dissipating. After you’ve got a hit under your belt, it’s tempting to simply keep enjoying the fruits of the labor you’ve already harvested. If you want to stay at the top of your game, though, it’s imperative that you stay hungry.

In some ways, Puddles was made for the modern Internet age. He’s a reflection of our loneliness and confusion in a world that’s come to be increasingly characterized by those emotions. Humans have never before lived in a time of such constant stimulus and abundance of choice, and part of me wonders if experiencing life as one big dopamine rush isn’t making us less happy instead of more so. In the end, aren’t we all just wandering through life with a suitcase and a lantern, searching for a place where we belong?

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.

My salad days—that time when youth, enthusiasm, and idealism all combine into one exhilarating and unstoppable force—were officially over. The salad days don’t last forever, and neither does Internet fame. Quite simply, there are a host of new, exciting creative exploits happening all over the world at any given second, and the novelty of “the hot new thing” is doomed to wear off eventually. When that happens, there are only two paths forward: to give up or grow up. Let the growing pains commence.

A word to the wise: If ever you should feel like you have too much choice in life, remember that life still makes a good deal of choices for you. You can only play with the hand you’ve been dealt, and options that you have in one moment often disappear the next if you don’t make moves to capitalize on them. The beauty in this is that drastic change is the catalyst for personal growth, and personal growth is a vital component of the artist’s life, with each phase of it bringing new challenges, new opportunities, and a new perspective.

Successful is a relative term. You can be considered successful by your peers and not feel accomplished at all if you’re constantly comparing yourself to the world’s most influential people. If you’ve ever thought that your happiness levels would radically change with success, I can assure you with complete certainty that you’re wrong. Sure, you may experience some temporary spikes in happiness, but after a while, it will return back to its baseline level, just like always. Once upon a time, I found it baffling that people who seemingly had it all could ever be anything less than happy with their lives, but getting to the other side gave me a new perspective. If anything, more extreme highs make the lows that much harder to handle. And since past success doesn’t guarantee future success, chances are high that there will be lows.

Lots of artists wonder how to get a record deal, as though everything is easy street after that one hurdle is cleared. The fact of the matter is that if you need a record deal, you won’t get one—at least not anymore. Today, being a talented singer, a great songwriter, or an innovative composer just isn’t enough to land a major label deal. Today’s labels are looking for safe bets with proven track records of ticket sales. In fact, most of the great artists from the past that we love probably would not have gotten record deals in today’s market. It’s important to understand this because many assume that record deals are just awarded to the most talented individuals. The modern-day record industry excels at expanding upon existing commercial success, but it’s no longer interested in nor deft at scooping up raw, unknown talent and sculpting superstars.

The great paradox of the age we live in, then, is that it’s one in which it’s exceedingly difficult to secure a record deal, and yet pursuing the path of an independent musician has never carried with it more potential upside. Another way to look at it: For the first time in the history of recorded music, you now have the astounding ability to become your own record label.

What we’re told as children about the value of “waiting our turn” doesn’t necessarily hold true when you get off the playground and into the world of adults. Waiting around in the hopes of being discovered as an artist has never been a good strategy. Go ahead and be impatient. We only have thirty thousand days on this planet, give or take, and the typical life span of a career in music is a small fraction of that. You don’t need to do the math to get the message: There’s not enough time to be wasting it waiting for someone else to decide when you’re up for your time in the spotlight.

Whenever you hear “it’ll never work,” in response to an idea you might have, take it for what it is: a challenge. Standing out from the crowd requires real mental toughness, and if you can’t stand up for yourself when people try to shame you into abandoning your dreams, you’ll never be prepared to face the obstacles that come your way when you finally do start to experience success. When someone challenges your vision in a way that doesn’t sit right with you, don’t waste your time arguing with them or trying to change their mind. Instead, thank them for their concern and just continue on your journey.

Indeed, the people you surround yourself with will become the most important people in your life. If that thought doesn’t scare you too much, you’re probably doing it right.

Freedom doesn’t necessarily come from working for yourself, or from setting your own hours, or even from never having to worry about money. Freedom is a state of mind. It’s the recognition that pursuing what modern celebrity culture has a way of telling us we should want in life—fame, fortune, accolades—will never lead to contentment. Freedom is about surrendering control and letting the chips fall where they may—and knowing that you’ll be okay.

through. A professor had met his wife years before at a Dresden Dolls concert, and now she was in a coma following a car crash; he sent me a necklace of hers as a keepsake. These were “real” people with “real” jobs, making society work. And there were a lot of them. I would take in all these stories, and one by one, ten, a hundred, a thousand stories later…I had to believe it. I would hold these people in my arms and I would feel the whole synchronicity of life and death and music envelop us. And one day I turned around and it had just happened without my realizing it. I believed I was real. I had just finished a gig in Perth and was driving to a fan’s house, to crash with the Australian crew, when Neil called me from New York. He said, My dad just died. What? He died. My dad just died. He was in a business meeting, something happened with his heart, and he fell over, and he’s dead. Oh my god, Neil. What could I do? I was about as physically far away from him as I could possibly be. We had only been dating for about three months, but it was long enough to have started falling in love. Do you want me to come to you right now? I’ll get the first flight out, I offered. I’ll just get on a plane and come be with you. No, darling. He sounded like a zombie. Stay there. Finish your tour. Go to Tasmania. No. I’ll come. Really. I want to. No, don’t. I’m asking you

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.

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.

Brian Wecht was born in New Jersey to an interfaith couple. His father ran an army-navy store and enjoyed going to Vegas to see Elvis and Sinatra. Brian loved school, especially math and science, but also loved jazz saxophone and piano. “A large part of my identity came from being a fat kid who was bullied through most of my childhood,” he said. “I remember just not having many friends.” Brian double majored in math and music and chose graduate school in jazz composition. But when his girlfriend moved to San Diego, he quit and enrolled in a theoretical physics program at UC San Diego. Six months later the relationship failed; six years later he earned a PhD. When he solved a longstanding open problem in string theory (“the exact superconformal R-symmetry of any 4d SCFT”), Brian became an international star and earned fellowships at MIT, Harvard, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He secured an unimaginable job: a lifetime professorship in particle physics in London. He was set. Except. Brian never lost his interest in music. He met his wife while playing for an improv troupe. He started a comedic band with his friend Dan called Ninja Sex Party. “I was always afraid it was going to bite me in the ass during faculty interviews because I dressed up like a ninja and sang about dicks and boning.” By the time Brian got to London, the band’s videos were viral sensations. He cried on the phone with Dan: Should they try to turn their side gig into a living? Brian and his wife had a daughter by this point. The choice seemed absurd. “You can’t quit,” his physics adviser said. “You’re the only one of my students who got a job.” His wife was supportive but said she couldn’t decide for him. If I take the leap and it fails, he thought, I may be fucking up my entire future for this weird YouTube career. He also thought, If I don’t jump, I’ll look back when I’m seventy and say, “Fuck, I should have tried.” Finally, he decided: “I’d rather live with fear and failure than safety and regret.” Brian and his family moved to Los Angeles. When the band’s next album was released, Ninja Sex Party was featured on Conan, profiled in the Washington Post, and reached the top twenty-five on the Billboard charts. They went on a sold-out tour across the country, including the Brooklyn Bowl in Las Vegas.

The acid opened the door, but the truth of the music was there to carry me away. Throughout their gig, I was one with god.

could never get anything going in Toronto, never even got one gig with a band. So I moved instead towards acoustic music and immediately became very introspective and musically inward. That’s the beginning of that whole side of my music.

Each of these monumental performances was a highlight of my career, but my anxiety about all of them paled in comparison to how nervous I was for this event [playing with my daughter]. The fact that it was just a gymnasium of parents sipping iced, non-fat lattes while fingering their cell phones made no difference to me. I was there for Violet and it was crucial that this performance go smoothly. So every spare moment I had from that day forward was spent preparing to be her flawless musical accompaniment.... this is the most important gig of my life, I thought.

In the end, it is your responsibility to read the small print, whether it is for gig contracts, record contracts, investors, management, booking agents, or anything else. You can blame everyone else for your mistakes, but when you make them, you end up being the one who has to pay.

With their big hit, PiL had reached a whole new generation of fans, and the gig had sold out very fast. But right down at the front were a crowd of about three to four hundred hardcore, old-school punks who had come creeping out of the squats of Camden and Shepherd’s Bush to greet their hero. To

We got stiffed on the gig and drove back to Waco in silence. The sun was coming up over the Brazos when we got back to campus. That was the end of my career with Ramsey Horton and the K-otics, but I had learned his Floyd Cramer licks, without which I would not have known what to play on the Rolling Stones’ session in Muscle Shoals.

This is the flip side of the soul-sucking cubicle-dweller jobs we assume are where dreams go to die. All those books aimed at convincing you to go follow your passion are based on the assumption that if you do so, your life will automatically be more fulfilling. But then let's say you become an entrepreneur or hit the road with your band or land a gig writing guidebooks that takes you all over the world. You can still discover that--gasp!--it's not all it's cracked up to be. Being fulfilled is all about the day-to-day details, and if that involves schlepping your instrument from one gig to another in order to cobble together a living, it may be that there is no piece of chamber music beautiful enough to save you from your misery. And then you have to be smart enough to change course instead of clinging to some idea of yourself or the thing you wanted.

That rare person who has 1,073,741,824 bytes of memory will say, “I’ve got a gig (and I’m not talking music).

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.

with jazz and folk musicians, everything was expected to be thrown into the crucible of a gig to see if it sank, floated, or maybe even flew.

The gig ends and my friends appear out of the glue.

Once I’m finished writing a song, my job is done and my only input is: please perform it often and loudly and sell many, many copies. If I want to do an artist thing, then I’ll go write a song for myself and go perform it the way I want to. But if you buy it, you can do what you want to and I’ll be happy. I don’t want to be a producer or a performer, I want to be a writer. And letting it go after you’re done writing it is a big part of being a writer. I’ve never had any problems with the way any of my songs have been recorded and I’m not sure I’d tell you even if I did. My mama says, “Don’t shit where you eat.” I’m pretty hopeful and confident about the future. I think I’ll continue to make a good living at this and have lots of fun. Unlike performing, this is a field you can grow old in. The performers have to put up with the youth culture bullshit more and more lately which is one reason MTV looks so good and sounds so bad. But the writers can be old and ugly ’cause no one ever sees them. A lot of writers are in their fifties or sixties. I see myself like that one day. But whether I’m successful or unsuccessful, this is something I have to do. I mean that. If I don’t spend a certain part of most days with the music, I get very unhappy and cranky. I’d do it even if I weren’t getting paid for it. So right now, I am very grateful that I don’t have to have a day job to support my songwriting habit.

Ari [Up] hides nothing from our audiences: if she’s in a bad mood, she shows it, and if we happen to be on stage when she’s not happy, she just does a shit gig. There’s no You’ve paid money to see this so I’m going to give you a good time, or I’m not going to let the band down – she’s just grumpy and uncommunicative. This is a good thing in many ways, we’re against faking it, we tell it like it is. People in bands are just like the audience: they have good days and bad days, we’re not pantomime or theatre, we’re no different to anyone else. We don’t see ourselves as entertainers, trying to make the audience forget their troubles for forty minutes. We see ourselves as warriors. We’d rather people confronted their anger and dissatisfaction and did something about it. Like Luis Buñuel said, ‘I’m not here to entertain you, I’m here to make you feel uncomfortable.

I have a goal: learn to play guitar in five months and be ready for the New Slits gig. I feel like a contestant on the reality-TV show Faking It. Take a bored Hastings housewife and turn her into a punk-rock guitarist in five months. [...] I ignore the pain of the wire cutting into the pads of my fingers. I don’t watch TV, read newspapers, meet anyone for coffee or lunch or do anything that will take a second away from my playing. I just do the minimum I have to do domestically and that’s it. Everything else stops. I take the guitar with me wherever I go, it’s always in the back of the car; if my daughter’s at a tennis lesson, I sit in the car, push the front seat back and practice whilst I wait for her.

Please to See the King is a piercing, keen-edged record, perhaps the closest a British act has come to what Bob Dylan, speaking of his own recordings of 1965–6, called ‘that thin, that wild mercury sound … metallic and bright gold’. The title, taken from the song ‘The King’ that Carthy introduced to the album sessions, was spoken, according to custom, by ‘wren-hunters’ who went knocking on doors and requesting money in return for a peep at the slaughtered bird in a coffin, bound with a ribbon. And like the wren-hunters of yore, the early Steeleye found themselves in the midst of a difficult economy, hawking their wares around the country at a succession of student-union gigs, in the community which was most receptive to this new incarnation of folk music.

time. The first Fairport Convention gig as a four-piece (with original, short-lived drummer Shaun Frater) took place on 27 May 1967 at St Michael’s Hall in Golders Green. Even in that momentous year for rock music, the date was auspicious: Are You Experienced? had been on the streets for a week and a half, and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was five days away. As they

It wasn’t investigating my family history that put me on the lookout for cooperatives. I started looking because of stirrings I noticed as a reporter among veterans of the protests that began in 2011, such as Occupy Wall Street and Spain’s 15M movement. Once their uprisings simmered, the protesters had to figure out how to make a living in the economy they hadn’t yet transformed, and they started creating co-ops. Some were doing it with software—cooperative social media, cloud data, music streaming, digital currencies, gig markets, and more. But this generation was not all lost to the digital; others used cooperation to live by dirt and soil. The young radicals turned to the same kind of business that my buttoned-up, old-world, conservative grandfather did. Following them, I began following in my grandfather’s footsteps before I even knew it. Both