Entertainers of all kinds face a lot of similar obstacles, whether they are musicians, actors, poets, or comedians. My hat is off to all of them who try their hand at entertaining strangers. But as a comedian, I will admit I get jealous of musicians sometimes. Here is a list of 10 things that are different for musicians/songwriters than for comedians. I’m sure it’s not all inclusive. 1. Unless the musician invites the audience to sing along they rarely have to deal with an individual who is singing so loudly as to disturb everyone else, and when asked to stop says, “I’m just trying to help the song.” 2. A singer rarely hears from an audience member “Aw, come on, we heard you do that song last week!” 3. Musicians can practice in their garage, where they will probably suck at first but will get better and unless they’re an idiot won’t go out to perform until they know they can perform them well. Comedians can practice in a garage too, but it does little good. We have to perform in front of people from the beginning. And yes, we usually suck. 4. Musicians don’t get approached after a show and get told, “Hey, I know this chord. It’s a killer chord. You should use it in a song.” 5. If a venue is crappy and loud and people are talking, and a musician is playing people will say, “Man, I wish we could have heard better, we couldn’t hear him play at all.” If a comedian is performing people will say “No one was paying attention, that guy wasnt funny at all.” 6. If people see a concert or a musician they don’t like, afterwards they don’t say “That sucked, I’m never listening to music again!” They recognize it was that particular musician or group that sucked and not every musician is terrible. 7. Generally people know the kind of music that will be playing at a venue and don’t go there thinking “I hope they play jazz, I love jazz” and then get disappointed when they play country. (Thanks to Rich Vos for this one, who basically stated this to a disgruntled audience member during a show) 8. No one goes to a musician and says “Do you know who else has a song about an ex-girlfriend whom they still love? So and so band. You stole that idea from them.” For some reason people accept two musicians may have had similar life events happen. (Btw, this is not condoning stealing material (or songs for that matter) from another artist. That’s WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Just saying two or more comedians may have had similar things happen and they independently wrote about it). 9. On the positive side, I will admit new songwriters at least tend to write songs that aren’t almost exclusively about masturbation, poop, and racial stereotypes. 10. When people ask musicians what they do for a living and they reply “musician” they don’t get “yes, but what do you do for your job?” (Though to be fair most comics don’t make a living wage doing comedy, but that’s beside the point!)
Posted on: Fri, 28 Mar 2014 21:59:38 +0000
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