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.

If I ever needed proof that the smartphone is quickly becoming the 21st century’s version of the Tamagotchi (those widely popular and extremely annoying “digital pets” from the 90′s), I found it on Saturday while waiting to catch my train back home. On a beautiful, warm, bright Saturday morning, I was shocked and intrigued by just how many people I witnessed (myself included) hunched over, faces buried in the tiny screens occupying the palms of their hands.

Based on my very unscientific observations, it’s quite easy to tell which type of current smartphone people are using:

- If they’re hunched over while flicking with their left or right index finger in different directions, or sporadically rocking from side to side or forwards and backwards, they’re more than likely iPhone users.

- If they’re hunched over working their thumbs in a twiddling motion as though practicing for a thumb-wrestling match, they’re likely Blackberry users.

- If they’re hunched over constantly rotating their phones from the upright to the sideways position, they’re likely Android or Symbian users.

- If they’re hunched over constantly reaching for the power button, they’re likely Windows Mobile users.

Now, keep in mind that I didn’t specifically mention the brand of smartphone hardware (given that only iPhones use the iPhone OS and Blackberries use the Blackberry OS, it made no sense to try and differentiate between Nokia, Samsung, LG and Sony-Ericsson devices); these traits are specific to the operating systems of the different brands, according to my observations. Now, before I’m accused of being an iPhone fanboy (which I am, admittedly and quite proudly), also keep in mind that I have tried all of the above mentioned gadgets out in various cell phone shops before and after I got my smartphone of choice, and not all of my smartphone owning friends have iPhones, so my own experiences do somewhat come into play regarding my observations. My point is not about preferring one gadget over another.

The much larger point is about the sometimes total lack of acknowledgement that other human beings exist when these gadgets are in use; if “normal” mobile phone users are bad personal communicators, smartphone users are much worse. I’ve witnessed accidents on both busy and not-so-busy sidewalks involving people bumping into each other head on while typing on their Blackberries; arguments breaking out on trains between PlayStation Portable and iPhone users regarding which device has the better games; Windows Mobile users become loud, agitated and downright violent while dealing with the slow user interfaces and crashes of their gadgets. I’ve been involved in demonstrations of my phone’s capabilities and program comparisons with other iPhone users, which is fun and interesting on the one hand; not so cool however, when having such exchanges in an expensive restaurant filled with people who just want to enjoy their meals. Nothing, though, has quite matched up to the time I witnessed a group of about six or seven smartphone users sending text messages to each other, all standing in the same room.

I myself have been involved in numerous debates over the merits of one smartphone over the other, the latest of which actually made me pause and think about how dependent on gadgets our lives have become. Does technology really make our lives easier? I guess the answer to that now age-old question is definitely sort of. On the one hand, things like smartphones, laptops, Facebook, Twitter, etc. have allowed us to increase our ability to not only communicate with the world outside of our own little boxes, but to do so extremely quickly, from anywhere. Your life can really be in your pocket, which is on the other hand one of the serious drawbacks to faster, smaller, easier technology. Sometimes a good book or a walk in the park is far more entertaining than fiddling around in Facebook with my phone.

In any case, I look forward to a quiet, relaxing evening with family, just as soon as I upload this post, water my virtual iPhone plants and feed my virtual iPhone fish.

I feel like the gang in the movie “The Warriors” must have felt as they fought their way through the streets of New York, desperately trying to get back to the comfort and safety of their home turf; they had to endure numerous hardships until they got back home (the movie was reportedly the basis for the hit song from the Beastie Boys, “No Sleep ‘Til Brooklyn”). The same thing could be said about my last two days on the road, albeit in a far more positive context.

It was a typical two-day blitz; Thursday afternoon I take the train to Mannheim (about 150 km, or 95 miles from where I live) to my teaching job at the Popakademie, teach until about 9 PM, take the train to Frankfurt to my regular gig at the King Kamehameha Club, one of Germany’s most popular clubs. (MENTAL NOTE: Do people even say “discotheque” or “disco” anymore? I hope not.) Then I take the train back to Mannheim at 2 AM, sleep in my hotel room a couple of hours, teach in the morning, and take the train to my next gig, concluded with the long train ride back home. This time my gig was in Essen, which is a 2 1/2 hour train ride from where I teach. Having to make an unplanned trip to the eye doctor on Friday due to an infection only made my two-day blitz that much more stressful.

Thankfully, my gigs on Thursday and Friday were a blast. The gig in the KingKa (our nickname for the King Kamehameha Club) was awesome as usual, especially considering that the club has been packed on Thursday night every week for the past 8 years; we worked hard to gain such a following, and it’s paying dividends; Thursday is the busiest night of the week for the club thanks to the band, and many of the higher paying gigs I perform all over Germany are a direct result of my appearances at the KingKa.

Friday I played at the Essen Convention Center (known in german as the “Messe”) for an event sponsored by the German Federation of Fitness Studios, known as the DSSV (Deutsche Sportstudio Verband), I was hired as the guest singer for the Freddy Wonder Combo, one of the busiest show bands in south Germany, with whom I performed last year in Wuppertal, together with a 40-piece orchestra. Of course I was stressed out, being that I had only performed once before with this band and we didn’t rehearse, but one of the advantages of playing within multiple pro musician circles is that we all end up having the same repertoire, thus making it easier to perform concerts without having to practice.

This band knows how to get a party going, so performing with them was a lot of fun, and ultimately less stressful for me. Especially entertaining was watching the bandleader Freddy drink beer out of the female lead singer’s shoe. The corniest thing I’ve seen on stage this year so far, and the crowd went crazy for it. I even saw a few people in the audience that I met years ago at other shows in other parts of the country, which is always a highlight for me in my travels. Of course there were very good looking people in the audience, but given that the majority of the crowd either worked at or owned fitness studios, it was hardly a surprise. Tight pants everywhere.

After the two very successful gigs, I arrived at the hotel and got what I had been longing for since the beginning of my gig blitz: a good night’s sleep.

So, what did I learn from the last two gigs?

1. I like trains a lot more than I thought I did.

2. I have a new appreciation for the phrase, “if you build it, they will come.”

3. Even in bad economic times, (most) people still just want to have a good time.

4. Nothing is more satisfying than watching total strangers dancing together on top of bars and tables Coyote Ugly style.

5. Half shirts or tops that show off the midsection should be banned for some people.

6. People who can dance love to show off that they can dance.

7. People who can’t dance love to show off that they can’t dance.

8. Guys with huge muscles don’t look as cool as I thought they did when I was younger.

9. Women with huge muscles (unfortunately) look even worse.

10. I really need to visit Spain more often.

11. Sleep is the most unappreciated human necessity. EVER.