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Re: should musicians have a second job?
If they want to eat. Being a pro musician was great when chemical amusement was free and the girlfriend and I lived on her student loans. American loopers, you need health insurance or else you are royally ****ed when you get ill or injured. Living outside of the established economy is grand fun until serious life changes occur. I am happier now in my middling health care job while not dealing with the business side of the music business. Lets' face it, alot of the people you have to deal with in the business are pretty reptilian. Every club you play, every event, every booking agent is a boss. Wedding gigs were even worse. Don't get me started. Now, I have one boss. So I started to realize there wasn't much freedom in that life. I had a lot of bosses and four bandmates. It was all of the irritants of marriage without sex.
Musical freedom? Bravo? I enjoy it now because it is special and not a matter of economic survival. It is a blessing. Not a necessity.
Ransacker
-----Original Message-----
From: mark francombe
Sent: Jan 13, 2011 5:10 AM
To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
Subject: Re: should musicians have a second job?
I think this guy should run ... not walk into the real world...
Its just not possible to survive without a fucking job... sure some of us might be able to include music a bit in our day-jobs, but Im sure most don't.
The years I was a pro musician were great, but the day they stopped I had to get a job, Im not a technically skilled musician, so Im never gonna go and audition for another band, or do session work. I was not educated as a musician, and strangely enough in the real world, employers wanted to see my exam results, not my CD´s....
My advice, stay at school, get a job .. and THROW your freetime into your passion... one day they may swap places... or else you might end up being an old sour old wantedtobe.
That article? not much more than a thinly disguised CDBaby advert... as in... you poor musicians, we understand, we can help!
Mark
On Thu, Jan 13, 2011 at 10:27 AM, Per Boysen
<perboysen@gmail.com> wrote:
Yes. It was a very interesting article. I'm a happy subscriber to the
CD Baby DIY podcast where I think the author is quite active as well.
However, in one regard I think the article is rubbish. The main
question whether a musician should have a second job doesn't really
concern anyone else except for that particular musician himself. I
have personally tried both ways and experienced good and bad sides.
Setting up your life to depend all on musician generated income may
help to quickly make you a better performer, since you get a lot of
training in that field, but in the long run it may limit your options
for experimentation needed to develop whatever you do into something
new and different. So the choice for direction actually comes down to
your artistic ambitions too. A good compromise that I have gravitated
towards by time is to set up your life with a "second job" that is
related to, helps and benefits from your work as a musician. Drawback
on this strategy is of course that you are not free to pick the best
paid "second job" so you may have to work harder to get around. One
point here however might be that it will be fun to work harder if you
do fun work.
Greetings from Sweden
Per Boysen
www.boysen.se
www.perboysen.com
www.looproom.com internet music hub
--
mark francombe
www.markfrancombe.com
www.ordoabkhao.com
twitter @markfrancombe
http://vimeo.com/user825094
http://www.looop.no
