
Lt. Bob
Spread the Daf!
A musician that gets that distracted by things he has no control of is a pain in the ass. That's the same guy that also plays like crap on a song he doesn't care for or plays like crap if he doesn't like the venue or the dressing room or how someone looks at his date. I hate guys like that ..... I don't hire them again ..... and they're the guys that the other players talk about when they're discussing who they don't like to work with.MOFO Pro said:Come on... a musician playing through gear he doesn't like is an angry frustrated artist... ...
The reality is that you play with what you got and you get what you can afford. Sure, everyone prefers the best but lack of the best isn't gonna stop someone that really has the music jones .... it'll only stop posers.
Charlie Parker ..... one of the greatest players in history played a lot of his most famous stuff on a piece of shit plastic sax ..... he didn't like it and it was a total piece of crap that I've never heard anyone say was anything else but crap. And he was on record as saying it was a terrible horn. But it was all he could afford so he made some of the most important jazz music of all time regardless because that's what he had.
I have good gear ...... but if tomorrow all I had was an Epi LP jr and and piece of crap student horn I'd still be playing ..... working all the time and, after an adjustment to the crappy horn, making decent music with it despite its' limitations.
It always amazes me how many times when I say this someone pops up to tell me what a real musician thinks. I've played about 11,000 paying gigs and I've done absolutely nothing but play music for 40 freakin' years and I know pro musicians as well as anyone here and better than most and if someone really has the music in their blood they'll find a way to make it with what they can get their hands on and there's plenty of historical examples to back that up. When I'm looking for people to play gigs ..... I'm looking for someone who talks about playing ..... if I hear them talking about nothing but gear and how, "Oh, I have to have this or I just can't play" ..... then I can be pretty sure they're fairly amateur by my standards.
I'm not[/] saying that good players don't care at all about their gear. Hell, they're gonna be far more aware of what constitutes good gear than anyone else. I know good saxes better than anyone here ..... but if my ax got stolen and all I could get was a Jupiter piece of shit then I'd be gigging with the Jupiter and I wouldn't think of it at all while I was playing ....... I'd still be trying to play stuff that people would talk about and unless the horn was totally unplayable I'd find a way to do so.