Re: Why SHOULDN'T musicians be paid?

[paul <phaslem@wightman.ca>]

>If you want a decent chance of getting people to pay you a working 
>wage for something you do 8+ hours a day, consider doing something 
>really useful--like plumbing.

I found this to be a very interesting statement; does that mean that 
you don't consider what you do as a musician to be useful?

It just happens that what I do for a living is plumbing, and I work 
in maintenance at a hospital. So I do consider my plumbing work to be 
of importance, like last week when I repaired a leak that had just 
flooded out an operating room. And yet I would say that I've made a 
greater contribution to the world through my music than I'll ever do 
with my plumbing work. Last year I had someone come to me with a 
story that they had just come through one of the worst years of their 
life. She said "whenever I felt I couldn't go on anymore, I listened 
to your music and it helped me through" Now that's pretty useful 
stuff..... and I'll bet there's plenty of stories like that from 
various people on this list who have created incredible music that 
has touched peoples lives. I'm glad there's folks like Rick that are 
still out there and able to make some sort of living, it gives me 
hope that our society will some day value its artists enough to 
support them instead of just tolerating them.

Oh and by the way, I only make $25.00 an hour as a plumber, which 
does require a 5 yr apprenticeship, a license that has to be renewed 
every few years and lots of additional training and seminars to keep 
up with the current changes to the codes and equipment.

Paul Haslem
Ontario, Canada
www.dulcify.ca