Pay for local musicians in
area venues is no better to-
day than it was in the 80s
(except if you have your
own wedding band and a
good business sense.) Lo-
cal gigs pay peanuts, and
Pay to Play is alive and well!
(I’ll address that in another
column, as well as the fool-
ishness of club owners who
don’t keep and maintain a
piano.) In many fields you’ll
find workers complaining if
they haven’t had a raise in a few
years. How about decades?
My friend, Marty, is a master
pianist who’s played all sorts of
gigs, in every kind of setting in
his 68 years. He told me, “I can’t
take it any more---driving into
Manhattan, to the Village, Rock-
efeller Center, New York Sports
Club, or the like, dealing with
the traffic, leaving home early
enough to allow for hold ups in
the tunnels.”
NJ STAGE 2017 - Vol. 4 No. 8
There’s the wear and tear
on his high mileage 12-year
old car; the gas; the tolls; and
the stress of finding a place to
double park close to the venue
to unload his piano, amp and
other gear. Sometimes he has to
carry equipment through bus-
tling kitchens with wet, slippery
floors, dodging cooks and serv-
ers with huge trays of food.
Once the gear is in the party
room, it’s back in the car on safa-
ri; looking for that parking place
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