I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a nerd. Always have been. I’m a tech junkie, but only in the years that I’ve owned an iPhone have I realized how dependent my life is on technology. Most musicians in today’s world are slaves to modern gadgets, and this became all the more apparent to me this past weekend.

My journey into tech purgatory started on Thursday, with my teaching job at the Popakademie. I was armed with all the tools I normally use to do my job: laptop, iPad, audio interface, microphone. My students are preparing for their semester exams (each student must perform a 45 minute live looping set using only their voices and a “loop station”, either hardware or software based), which require loads of tech that should all work together seamlessly. It didn’t always quite work out as planned. As much as I love my gadgets, I don’t think I’ve ever cursed them as much as I did in those two days. The iPad didn’t properly sync with the software on the laptop. The laptop didn’t keep it’s Wi-Fi signal, very embarrassing when trying to give a demonstration. Despite all of that, it always amazes me how quickly some people adapt to new technology. My students’ technical prowess restored my fascination in all things electronic, at least temporarily.

The technology love/hate fest continued on Saturday, at a private party I performed at with two colleagues, a female singer and a DJ. We performed our show half playback, the DJ started the playbacks from his rig, which consisted of a laptop, two turntables, a DJ mixer and the apps Final Scratch Live and iTunes. Almost the entire time we were singing, the DJ was fumbling with his equipment trying to get it to work properly (it eventually did), which was a big headache, at least for him. Somehow he was able to keep the music running without a glitch, a testament to his skill as a DJ. He later explained to me that if his system were to go down, he could continue his set almost uninterrupted with only his iPad. Groovy.

It was on Sunday that my love for tech was put to the test. In my rush to leave the house to catch my train to the next show, I left my iPhone – the one piece of tech I use religiously to communicate with the rest of the world – sitting on the dining room table. I had no way to communicate with my clients, or to find out where I needed to go. Or so I thought. Though I left my trusty iPhone at home, I had my iPad with me, and on it I had my wonder-weapon app Skype. It worked without a hitch, which is by no means the rule; more the exception. My faith in technology had been restored. 

How do you feel about gadgets and technology? Leave a comment!

As a child, I always dreamed of traveling to great European cities. I’ve had the great fortune to visit most of the cities I’ve dreamt about, and this weekend I performed in one of my greatest childhood dream cities: Athens, Greece.

My road trip started on Thursday, when I spent two days in Mannheim, Germany teaching at the Popakademie. It’s getting close to semester exams, so I spent the time preparing my students for their big day; a 45 minute live looping performance. After my time there I travelled to Aschaffenburg for rehearsals and a gig in the evening. The gig itself was fine; I performed with a talented up-and-coming singer named Jennifer Washington. After three hours of sleep in my hotel it was off to the airport and my highlight gig of the week in Athens. The flight was full, the food was, well, airplane food (need I say more?), and the drive into Athens was interesting, to say the least. 

The venue was an open air club on the beach, and the guests were all employees of a very large telecommunications company. All of the musicians were colleagues and friends of mine, so although I went into the situation blind, the show went off without a hitch. 

It was this latest trip to Athens (I’ve performed here three times before) that made me realize that through my job, many of my childhood dreams have indeed come true, if not totally in the way I had thought they would. I’ve visited almost all of the European cities I dreamed of visiting as a child: Athens (I loved Greek mythology as a kid), London (my favorite European city), Paris (art and culture), Stockholm (I’ve always been fascinated with it) and many others, and on top of all that, I get paid to go to these places. 

Sometimes musicians who work a lot tend to take for granted the good fortune they have, being able to travel to exotic places to work. We often complain that many in the traditional work force don’t see musicians as having “real” jobs, but given that through my job I have been places that most people with real jobs can only dream of going to, that’s a characterization that I can happily live with.

There are certain undisputed truths about being a pro musician in Europe, particularly in Germany, where I work most of the time: you’re always asked to do more than you want to; you’re always treated well, but never as well as you think you should be; and the cleanliness of the bathroom in your hotel room has more of an effect on your performance at the gig than you would like to believe.

On this past five day road trip I travelled to the towns of Bregenz, Austria (directly on Lake Constance, the body of water shared by Germany, Austria and Switzerland), Mannheim, Cologne and Hamburg, a total distance of 1909 kilometers (1186 miles), all of it by train. I performed three shows with two different bands: the Bregenz gig was for a conference of IT professionals, the Cologne show for a dentist’s conference, and the Hamburg show for a large Hamburg-based logistics company. All three shows were fine as such; the same patterns evident at all these types of events were on full display: band arrives for setup and soundcheck, band waits around for food and drinks backstage, band performs, people drink, people start to dance, band finishes up, band packs up stuff, band goes home. Client is happy, band is happy.

Nice Bathrooms

That being said, there are in more cases than not certain little things that can greatly influence how a musician performs their duties at such events. An example is the quality of the hotel room they’re booked in; specifically, the cleanliness of the bathroom. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m more than a little spoiled when it comes to hotel accommodations, since I’ve been fortunate enough to worked my way up far enough in the pro musician food chain as to (almost) always get a decent hotel in the cities that I perform, always paid for by the client. I’m somewhat of a bathroom fetishist; it’s usually the first thing I check when I enter a room, and over the years I’ve seen some really “interesting” things in some really top hotels, all in the bathroom. I’ve stayed in rat holes with very clean bathrooms, and in 5-star hotels with really disgusting ones, and everything in between. Let’s just say that an improperly cleaned hotel room is a mood killer in just about any situation, but especially when you want to relax before a long show, and very many of my fellow musicians (at least the singers I know) spend a large chunk of their time in the bathroom; our vanity dictates this.

Long Gigs

Roughly eighty percent of a musicians time at a company party of similar event is spent waiting. Waiting. Waiting even more. Keep in mind that the average band arrives at a venue five hours or more before the show actually starts, depending on the size of the venue, the position of the band in the overall evening plan, and the preparation and serving of the food (if there is food to served, which there almost always is). A typical show starts between 8 and 10 PM, with “dinner music”, a.k.a. “music to be ignored by”. I hate dinner music. Seriously. There’s nothing more nerve-wracking than trying to entertain people who aren’t paying the slightest bit of attention to you. It’s often the case, however, that the band will play instrumental music, so that’s a small consolation. Afterwards, the party goes into full effect.

Very often we run into the situation that the event organizer, who generally always makes a big fuss about something prior to the start of the event, will ask us for an extra set, because he or she is so excited (alcohol-induced, of course) about the great job the band is doing, that we obviously have to play longer. I attribute this euphoric attitude to the age-old notion that musicians perform on stage purely for the fun of it; in other words, making music is “not a real job”, so it should be no problem if we play all night long, as long as we get a little extra for it. “Not a real job”; I often wonder how these event organizers would react to the knowledge that many of the pro musicians they hire for their events earn probably much more on average than they do. So much for “not being a real job”…

The Gala Event Food Chain

We musicians are indeed a spoiled bunch, at least most of the time. Granted, I’ve only ever worked as a musician in Europe, so I have no idea how it is to work a similar scene in the States, but I can imagine it’s pretty much the same everywhere. Having said that, there is a certain hierarchy in the event business; we musicians are somewhere in the middle of the food chain. We very often enjoy the perks of getting special treatment from the heads of the organizations for which the event is being held, being allowed to mingle with the guests, eating the same meals as the guests, and being able to leave right after our performance is done, all luxuries not afforded to the others who also make such events possible like the technical crew, caterers and bartenders, security personnel and cleanup crew, or the event agencies themselves.

At the end of the day, however, we are no less “service crew” as the others are: we have to do what we’re told, when we’re told to do it. When we’re asked to play extra sets, more often than not we honor that request, for the simple fact that not honoring it could jeopardize our standing with the client, thus making the prospect of future gigs at other events doubtful, thus affecting a future source of income. Over the years, though, I’ve modeled my attitude toward such requests after the motto, “not all money is good money”. Sometimes, though, beggars can’t be choosers, especially if you have bills to pay and a lifestyle to support.

So, what have I learned from my latest road trip?

1. Everyone was a musician at some point in their existence.

2. For some people, speaking into a microphone is the highlight of their year.

3. If you see a group of 4 or more men huddled around the dessert table, it’s most likely the band.

4. DJ’s have a much easier job than musicians do.

5. DJ’s have a much harder job than musicians do.

6. If one person asks if the band can play longer, it’s most likely the one who will actually pay the band.

7. If more than one person asks if the band can play longer, they most likely have nothing to do with the ones who actually pay the band.

8. Sometimes we take the amount of time we spend traveling for granted.

9. As a songwriter, I envy the person who wrote “I Will Survive”.

10. As a musician, If I ever meet the person who wrote “I Will Survive”, they’re getting punched in the nose.