Musicians want to play onstage. I get it. After half a century of performing in front of people, be it the basement and garage in 1972 to The Coral Reef in Everett in 1973, it's been fifty years of mayhem. The shows that truly mattered are ones where major acts provided the draw.
Opening for Peter Noone's Tremblers, Rick Derringer, hard rock guitarist Pat Travers (born a month before me!,) Black Flag, Stiv Bators and his Lords of the New Church, Rick Berlin's Luna, lesbian folk singer Phranc (we did Gay Pride, Worcester 1998 or so,) Johnny Thunders of the New York Dolls, 49 performances at The Paradise - Boston's Best Concert Club, there's some insane need for rock musicians to want to perform onstage BEFORE getting a hit record. Look, from the Doors to Jethro Tull the stories are legend of no one showing up for them when they were unknowns.
Given this experience, why would I want to subject myself to some pothead soundman (and alleged ex heroin addict) falling asleep at the soundboard, too happy with the ganja to respect the musicians and stay away during a show? Soundmen, good soundmen, are few and far between, with the volume at excruciating levels, and extra loud radio in between sets. So much for a social gathering.
Add inept and bungling staff - one crazed sound person in the 1980s shrieking her head off at bands, the perilous world of rock and roll most difficult to navigate with distracting booze, wild women, marijuana and insane club management throughout the decades standing in your way of your performance art.
We musicians don't think to have a contract that calls for soundpeople who won't nod off due to smoking (weed) on the job, or selling heroin behind the bar like at that venue across from the Boston Garden in the 1980s. The owner is now deceased and is praised as some kinda "saint" after his alleged "redemption." That individual tried to stab me with a knife when I refused to let him get to one of my artists. I had shut the door to the recording studio in time as he was coming at me. The artist eventually figured it out and went and got the heroin, right after I got a phone call from the club owner ..."Joe, I was coming at you with a knife. I was going to stick you."
And you think the blizzard out there right now (10:20 pm, Sat. Jan 29, 2022) is bad...
Going to a church that frowns on drugs and alcohol, as long as I've been in the music business, I see these events like a seagull over the water. Is this the way to get a recording contract and become rich and famous? Hardly.
The persistent of us reshape our world. While recording my new CD I'm planning on a feature film to promote the music. That way I'm in control.
Some Covid infested nightclub that wants to hush up a situation that - allegedly - they are required to be upfront about to minimize exposure, that's not going to get you your platinum albums, no sir.
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MOVIE MAGIC
Yes, I have scripts on paper, in my head and about to be committed to the visual medium. If they get picked up, I can make a buck. If they don't, YouTube will have them for posterity. However you have the control and you are not at the mercy of some lunatic GM screaming and yelling, or some unqualified person with a huge ego making your life miserable because, clearly, she's miserable, or some soundman nodding off at the soundboard, or door woman collecting the cash nodding off from heroin at that 1980s establishment noted above, key word e-STAB-lishment.
Was walking down the street and started saying hi to all these people I knew from the Rathskellar almost a decade before. It was like a class reunion, but unlike Ginger Ale me, they looked like they were in The Night of the Living Dead. Walking zombies. It was weeks before I realized they were all going to that club to buy smack, not to do rock and roll. Way too much junkie business for me.
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FILM, the Better Solution
I was about to get the band together to perform Get Yer Ya Ya's Out by the Rolling Stones, in its entirety. My once or twice annual appearance these days. But the thought of going into an environment where I'm wearing a mask, where a mask is required, but the venue flipped the bird to their own requirement and too many people were not obeying the rules. I never went back...and the very next night, COVID happened. The story is in a local newspaper tonight. Literally, you take your life into your hands if you face COVID or a club manager attempting to stab you while looking you in the eye in the 1980s, or a club manager/booking agent in 2022 stabbing you in the back!
At least the heroin-dealer with the knife had more honor than the sound man nodding off, rife with marijuana through his system, on the job, other club manager drinking on the job in the middle of the day, and - somehow - I'm the guy they cast libelous aspersions at.
As y'all know, I'm building an office where we will be editing films and adding soundtracks, and some of the top names in the industry work with me (the music is out there, with the credits.) There's a level of professionalism that is much more fun, much more exciting, and can give you a return on investment.
Untrustworthy and sometimes dangerous individuals yelling at you because only five people showed up, or arguing with you that "you'll never play this club again..." how immature and destructive.
Along with the alcohol and drug abuse naturally sober people (and sober people because they HAD to get sober) experience is bad enough. Add Elder abuse to that, and smears and attacks because you did a GREAT job, not just a good job, but a GREAT job, well, thank God that I'm me and can adjust and go back and play with professionals.
Because what I just experienced is amateur night and I need no voodoo or black magic, it's all so out to lunch unless Mr. and Mrs. Mommy and Daddy Millionaires keep pumping money into a black hole, with COVID, lack of attendance, and the escapees from the asylum running the business, businesses like that are going to be just another another casualty on the rock and roll highway.
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Author Joe Viglione has filmed a couple of vampire flicks from the 1970s, but is best known for his critically acclaimed 2 1/2 hour documentary on a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame artist, out worldwide on MVD. Joe has signed legendary artists like Spirit, Marty Balin of Jefferson Airplane, production deals with Motown and Grammy-winner Buddy Guy, released the first 45 solo from the drummer for the Velvet Underground, signed Willie "Loco" Alexander to New Rose/RCA, NY Doll Johnny Thunders to New Rose/Musidisc, interviewed over 1,000 film directors, actors, musicians, book authors including Jodie Foster, Michael Moore, Robert Zemeckis, The Doors (Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, Robbie Krieger, all separately,) Don Brewer and Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad (separately,) Suzanne Vega, CNN Crossfire's Bill Press, Peter Noone of the Herman's Hermits, comedians Margaret Cho, Gilbert Gottfried, Gallagher ...and quoted as a writer in the New York Times (on Jimi Hendrix,) Boston Globe (the same,) has written for the Boston Globe, Rolling Stone (online,) so many reviews and publications it would be impossible to recall. Published and thanked in many books, the indignity of some Glenn Close type taking the wrecking ball to this valuable work is what you, dear musician, can deal with. I got better things to do.
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