At the ripe old age of 44 I pretty much consider myself an ex-musician. I studied music in college, and I spent most of my 20's and 30's playing in various bands of different genres, with the bands ranging from jazz orchestras to rock bands that had a level of success ranging from being utter failures to fairly successful at the local/regional level.
Over the past 3-4 years I started just getting burned out and tired of playing music far many reasons, and right now am pretty much at the point where I could care less about it.
I still have friends that play music and are in bands though, and now that I am more or less "on the outside looking in", I wonder how non-musicians ever tolerated me. The endless self promotion is utterly annoying, everyone wants you to come out and see their band play even though you've seen them play dozens of times previously..."dude, you never come out to see us play", "I've seen you dozens of times already, why do I need to come out again?", "Man, you havent been out this month, we got new material!", " Sorry, Ive got other things I need to do"....
Than there is the endless "look at how well I play" mentality where you stop over at a buddies house for a visit, and your not even their for 5 minutes and they have to break out their guitar and show you their latest and greatest licks for the next half hour. Dude, I know you can play well, but I came over to visit you and catch up not listen to you jack off on your guitar for an hour.
Lastly there is the "you're having a picnic"? hey man, can my band play??" lets face it, most people at the party could care less about your band and for the most part they just want to hang out and socialize with each other and not have to deal with attention starved musicians.
Unfortunately I am guilty of ALL these behaviors. I am sorry!!!
Over the past 3-4 years I started just getting burned out and tired of playing music far many reasons, and right now am pretty much at the point where I could care less about it.
I still have friends that play music and are in bands though, and now that I am more or less "on the outside looking in", I wonder how non-musicians ever tolerated me. The endless self promotion is utterly annoying, everyone wants you to come out and see their band play even though you've seen them play dozens of times previously..."dude, you never come out to see us play", "I've seen you dozens of times already, why do I need to come out again?", "Man, you havent been out this month, we got new material!", " Sorry, Ive got other things I need to do"....
Than there is the endless "look at how well I play" mentality where you stop over at a buddies house for a visit, and your not even their for 5 minutes and they have to break out their guitar and show you their latest and greatest licks for the next half hour. Dude, I know you can play well, but I came over to visit you and catch up not listen to you jack off on your guitar for an hour.
Lastly there is the "you're having a picnic"? hey man, can my band play??" lets face it, most people at the party could care less about your band and for the most part they just want to hang out and socialize with each other and not have to deal with attention starved musicians.
Unfortunately I am guilty of ALL these behaviors. I am sorry!!!
But seriously, I would rather have a devoted musician as a friend, than some sellout who never cared about music as an art form and only viewed his talent as a source of income.