My first paying gig... Woo!
 

Yesterday, I got to play with a band and actually got some cash in return. It was with Aubrey Dunham (a local blues talent) <a href="http://www.bluesdog.com/">Bluesdog</a> and had a blast.

Here are a couple of photos from the set, I wish they were of better quality:

<img src="http://www.houstar.org/web%20files/toyrun04/krusty/images/DSCN0424_JPG.jpg">

<img src="http://www.houstar.org/web%20files/toyrun04/krusty/images/DSCN0425_JPG.jpg">

Aubrey is the guy in the white shirt in the middle of the second pic.

It was a toy run benefit for a local youth home, so the band played for free, but at the end Aubrey gave me $15 from the tip jar (totally unexpected). Wow! I gave $5 of it to the charity, and spent the rest at auction for a pair of cheap sunglasses.

A very good day was had by all. There is nothing like the sight of over 100 styling bikes in one place. Now I want a Harley real bad. Tony, when I get back to Philly I'm bringing the bongos, we need to jam.

congrats! you, of course, gave the union their 15%, paid into health and welfare and into the pension fund, right?

And you had enough left over for sunglasses?

(^8

NBN congrats! As a professional musician you now have two important things to do:

- At your next gig, you must stand at the back of the room slagging off the band playing before you.

- Your bongos are now not good enough, and you must buy new equipment. Unfortunately the new ones will not be good enough either, so you must repeat this until you have the most expensive, rare, vintage bongos available. At that time you must sell them and take up another intrument.

In other places on the net this is known as GAS - Gear Acquisition Syndrome

Welcome to the dark side, NBN. Getting paid is a wonderful thing. Having someone give you money just because you played a few songs makes you feel like you've just gotten away with something, doesn't it?

I have always taken pride in the fact that, one year, I actually made as much money as I spent buying equipment. It was the high point of my professional "career".

you make enough money in one night to justify buying new equipment?!?!?!?! I've been playing for some 14 odd years (and other than not having to pay for beer :) ) i don't think i've ever re-couped my expenses.. heh.. then again saving all that beer money.. hmm.. I'll do the math

by the by do either of you have links to your music anywhere?

On my first major tour I took a 15k advance to sign the exclusive contract with the artist, and promptly bought a B3, a rhodes, a whurly, a new triton, a new controller, and cases.

poof. gone.

It doesn't matter what level you get to, the G.A.S. still keeps you in the poor house. Even when I kept up on my endorsements, the hassle of fulfilling the obligations to the equipment companies nearly did me in (clinics, trade shows, etc.)

Didja get a lesley? I think they're cool ... in a hypnotic way.

sponsorships :yum:

we're going to try for them as soon as the 2nd CD comes out. [sing] All I want for Christmas is a Mesa/Boogie Road King [/sing]

When your on the stage you have to leave the camera to the unwashed.....pity.
Congrats on your pro debut. :beer:

Congrats NBN,
When I saw the title of the thread I figured you had been hired as a safari guide. :biggrin:

NBN, your name, coincidentally, would be excellent for a bar band.

You know, with you in Lawrence and me in KC, we are going to have to get together sometime. Perhaps you are free on New Year's Day? We'll be having our annual Pagan NYD soiree, replete with chili and black eyed peas, probably some games played, guitars and drums broken out, and who knows what else?

At any rate, I have uploaded some stuff that I have been part of. Two songs are mine, the rest are things that I have recorded, mixed, engineered, played on, arranged and sung, but were written by my partner of 30+ years. I hope that UT will have been working madly on some material and is soon to be able to share it with us as well.

http://www.lunalushede.org/songs

while waiting for els songs to get in mah belly at 56k, here's a link to one of our new tunes It's one of the 4 on the album where I get the lion's share of lead guitar time. Dat makes me happy. Don't get me wrong, I likes the chrunch job too.

Actually, on a related note, anyone checked out weedshare.com? Explanation found at this link

Els, Track 8 was quite nice, very true to the old ways of structure, time, etc. Made me want to pull my cloak up over my head and inch a bit further back in me stool lest I'm shanghaiied. Keep a dagger handy, they need backs in this port. I love that kind of music

Smokin', Mr Noodle, smokin'. :thumbsup:

I'll have to give this a listen when I'm at home. Looking forward to it, actually.

Els, also check out this guy. Very mellow....also very good....for one of those Rocky Mountain hicks, that is. ;)

Shades of Satriani. I likes it a lot, Mr Noodle! :thumbsup:

Attempted to buy Gashead and 3 other discs from MileHighMusicStore.com, but They demand I open an account submitting everything but a DNA sample before I can buy.
I don't think so.....name, addy and credit card info is all they need. :mad:

thanks for the kind words guys :blush:

go to Hapi Skratch and I think they have em there. Or go to the band web site that never gets updated

The 1st CD is the only one available now (it's quite good, despite the fact that I'm not playing on it :p ). We're going in to start mixing the 2nd one on Jan. 20, and hope to have it out before March.

Hapi Scratch links to milehighmusicstore.com, that's how I got there.
The band website (that never gets updated) links to Bitter-Rivals.com. They have Land Speed Record. :)
Now I have to find the 3 Dave Beegle discs.

I have just listened to Mr. Noodle's recordings. I am now going downstairs to smash my guitars and take up basket weaving. Sheesh.

Damn...fine...work! Terrific recording quality as well. When you become rich and famous, do remember us little people here?

yeah, i just got my hapiskratch newsletter that extolled the virtues of this milehighmusicstore thing. pfft.

if you order from bitter-rivals, you will just be getting them from mike (the founding 'head and my friend since 5th grade) so if you have any trouble there, let me know and i'll give him a heads-up. You might be able to get Dave's stuff from other online outlets, like Guitar Nine.

Dave's world-class, as a person and a musician. He makes Mike and me (and 90 percent of guitarists in the world) look sick. He produces GasHead stuff as well as lots of other local bands. Check out his 2 acoustic titles - he's just phenomenal.

If anyone wants a GH or a Dave CD and can't get it through the online rigamarole, just PM me and I'll figure a way to mail ya one.

OK, ordered Gashead from Bitter Rivals and Beegle discs(4) from Guitar Nine which offered me "Guitars At An Exhibition Vol. 2" compilation CD featuring 17 tracks by some of the hottest independent guitarists out there in rock, fusion, progressive, neo-classical, shred, heavy metal and acoustic." for free. I had to check off whether I wanted it or not. Uh...free....well duh. :biggrin:

Came home to find my order from Guitar Nine in the mailbox today. :D

lemme know what you think of the Dave stuff. Just went down to his house the other night to listen to the solo he put on our new CD. I hate him. I'm throwing my guitar in a chipper.

Good to see that this guitarist envy thing is all relative, no matter one's skill level! :D

Outstanding! I'd downloaded several of his cuts so I'd had a taste and wasn't disappointed with the 3 CD's even once. Also Forth Estate, Dustbuster Demos is cool...cut 17, Rythm Solo....bass & drums..knocked my socks off. :D

Oh and the freebie guitar disc is interesting but a little disconcerting if your mind wanders. 17 tracks of different Dudes with different chops will jar you sometimes. ;)

Guitar is cool that way. There are so many different ways to play it and so many interpretations of how it should sound that it's accessible to anyone. And even though there's friendly competition sometimes, if you get a bunch of guitarists in a room together, they'll spend the whole time talking about how cool they think each other's playing is. That, and making fun of lead singers.

I've never been able to listen to those. It's like getting a case of aural ADD. Two minutes of shred followed by John Denver followed by someone playing a sitar with his toes...

GasHead disc from Bitter Rivals came yesterday and it's more gooder than I'd hoped. :3eye: Can't wait for the next one in March.
Oh, the jewel box had taken a pretty good beating from the USPS but the disc was cool. Now where did I put those 333 extra jewel boxes. :haha:

Mile High
 

Well I just chimed into this, and as the owner of MileHighMusicStore.com, and Hapi Skratch, I am always looking for feedback. The store script we got for this requires all the information that most any site does. Go to bn.com, bestbuy.com, and most any big online retailer and they ask for a lot of info, including DNA just like us. We didn't set the fields, it came preset like that, and we can't change it. Hopefully we'll have more control over the backend when we launch phase 2 of the site sometime during the second half of the year. In the meantime, it's a good place to get a lot of happenin' Rocky Mountain based artists, and we will be adding to our catalog significantly over this coming year. New Gashead will be out in March. It rocks, it shreds. Also, there will be a Dave Beegle Acoustic Mayhem DVD and CD later this year.

www.cduniverse.com is another site that has most of our catalog, and it's a pretty good site. They might request DNA when you setup an account as well. Not sure on that one.

Oh, you've fallen into my marketing scheme for selling oscommerce maintenance contracts. Please see my work at itsaboutmusic.net, where over 5000 songs are offered for download after sale. This site is maintained entirely by scripts that automate the store once music files are uploaded. Please hire me to do similar work for you. I'm cost-effective and reliable. Thank you.

Hi Morris, welcome to the Cellar.
Sorry if you're offended by my reluctance to *just answer the damn questions*. :) I won't buy (no pun) *but everybody does it*, because I've proved that's not true.

I'm sure the aggravation and expense of setting up an e-commerce operation must be daunting. You may feel it's all about the music and completing the sale is a minor detail but the devil is in the details. You could have a Cray Super-computer running a completely automated operation or a little old lady with a quill pen and a bunch of elves. I don't see anything but what's on my screen.

The point of contact is where I get an impression of who you are....what you're about and makes or breaks the deal. I may be an anomaly but I'm not alone out here and we will take the time and trouble to circumvent retailers that are too intrusive.

You've got a super product! Let Undertoad make your fans (customers) happy with a pleasant interaction and you can get back to the music instead of having to listen to us whining maggots. :lol:

May be? :)

Bruce is definitely an anomaly...a decent human being. If we had about 5 billion more of him, all the talk on the Cellar would be about recipes, parties and vacationsm, because everyone would be so amazingly decent to each other.

Todd
 

Todd - I'm interested in backend web help. Email me at morris@hapiskratch.com

I'm not offended by any remarks for the most part, none I've seen on here. Online ecommerce sites are daunting, and oscommerce has its downfalls.

MoTron! what's up.