You can die from too much exposure or you can get arrested and get sent to prison for other types of exposure. As far as I can tell nothing good ever comes from it. Yet band buyers and bookers continue to offer exposure as currency or compensation. You’d think they would know better but perhaps this shady behavior gets them results. Not from me though.
Stop me if you heard my version of this somewhat convoluted anecdote before. (Actually you can try to stop me but I’m going with it anyway.) A club owner offers my band a gig on a weekend night and tells me that he can’t pay us but he knows the place will be packed so it will be good…. exposure. I grit my teeth and tell him that I need to check with the band (see last month’s column) and will get back to him. Does this guy not know you can die from some kinds of exposure or worse get arrested for other kinds, not to mention ruining your chances for elected office or a Supreme Court nomination? Being the smart ass that I am, I then told mister big shot club owner, my wife and I are planning a big party next Sunday and we need some pizzas, chicken wings, some salads and drinks for the event but we can’t pay, however, we will have lots of people there for the party and it will be great exposure for his business. How do think that flew? That ended the negotiations for this “great”…exposure gig. The good news is I didn’t have to mind, herd or round up the band.
Getting paid for gigs is a value proposition and not necessarily always about the money (some say.) Most of us aren’t trying to pay the bills by gigging and there is a whole different calculus and conversation for those that are. Since I was never very good with calculus, I’ll leave that discussion for better mathematicians and concentrate on what I know a bit about, what I call the semi-amateur market and determining what is the value proposition there. However, no matter how I try to characterize this value process, it’s always turns out to be about the Benjamins or more likely the Abrahams. It’s a shame that dollars equal respect but that’s the benchmark.
As a musician, even a semi-amateur one, you spend hours of your time learning, practicing, taking lessons, rehearsing and woodshedding. From my perspective, this time adds value to you as a musician and a performer. Not to mention the investment you have in instruments and sound equipment. Let’s not even get into the tequila costs for all of those hours spent in the woodshed honing your craft so you are good enough to play out.
This value proposition becomes more important as you get older. First of all, nobody is interested in a bunch of old folks exposing themselves, not that we’re above that but it just gets harder to do, in a number of ways. The next question is what are we (old folks) exposing ourselves for, a chance to make it to the big time? I’m not sure what the big time constitutes other than not playing Farmer’s Markets.
Even if you are only a semi-amateur musician like me, getting value and being valued is very important. The big problem for me is that I still love playing for an audience and I need to reconcile that with getting some value for what I have invested (in tequila alone) and that brings me back to my original question, what is the value proposition? I certainly don’t know.
Heck who am I kidding, as much as I hem, haw and whine about this, much to the chagrin of many, I’ll probably open my trench coat at the next opportunity to play an exposure gig. My Supreme Court chances be damned!
