My first gig was at Rocky Shores on January 3rd, 2008. The first song I performed was my own composition 'Early bird swimming'. Tishe Trottier and Fabs Sinatra had helped me get to the point where I was able to stream up my sound and just about stumble through a full set online. I shall always be very grateful to them for their enthusiastic help in getting me started.
In the early days I played mainly at Rocky Shores, Shore Babes, Taff's Bar, and The Vibe. I then quickly added Sailors Cove as one of my cherished regular weekly gigs. I learned a lot in the early days, especially about the technical side of streaming my music up to the web and optimising my sound in terms of mixer, mic and what have you. When occasionally I decided to use my electronic piano (not often because I am not a good pianist) I found the need to move beyond my Edirol box and I got an Alesis USB mixer. I've been with that set up for some while now. I also got a much better mic (an AKG 414).
During these early days I got a taste of the griefers and that is something that will always taint an otherwise pleasant show. On one particularly memorable occasion I got caged while performing at Taff's Bar at a time when there was no manager present to deal with it. The owner of the venue was very good about it when I talked afterwards. The time I was playing the gigs was difficult for the regular managers to log in (in terms of their rl committments) and I was not able to put in my own Show Hostess at that time. So I decided to move on, with no hard feelings, and that terminated my regular gigs at Taff's.
By the time I had done 30 gigs in SLTM I had settled down comfortably playing at Sailors Cove, The Vibe and (when Rocky Shores closed for the re-build) Cascadia Harmonics. Later I added C&K Mall to this list. I have also played a reasonably wide variety of other venues, mainly as one-off or occasional repeat gigs: Stage Bar, Crystal Sands, Woodstock, Boogie Beach, Heron Park, The Lift, Bara Bar, Apollo, The Smoldering Joint, Mediaculture, Hummingbird Cafe, Merry Pranksters, The Backyard, The Jesters, The Bushy Beard, The Crown and Pearl, Moon Shadow, Cuddlers Cove, Havens Paradise, Groningen Centrum, JSP Island, and Mash Rhodehouse. Apart from these public shows, I have also done a couple of private functions. For some time now Annabel Joubert has taken on the role of Show Hostess for me and sends out notices for my up-coming gigs, as well as enrolling those at the gigs who wish to become a member of my group or fan base. I am also grateful to Madelin Benelli, too, for her support at the gigs.
I have read and contributed to the pages of the SLTM forum for live musicians SLMC (http://slmc.myfastforum.org). I have to say that my experience of this forum has been highly ambivalent. I read it because there is useful information for musicians embedded within the wide-ranging threads. However, I find some of the posts within this forum to be rude and thoroughly unpleasant. As a result, I do not particularly enjoy reading within the SLMC and nowadays I do it largely as a musical chore that needs to be done. I guess the bulk of my own posts tend to be light and humourous, sometimes posting at greater length if there is a serious topic I feel the need to say something about.
Setting aside posts where people are being unpleasant and thoroughly insulting to one another, I also feel that there is an opacity in the language in which many of the other posts are written. My first language is British English and I often find it hard to understand what precisely is being said in the posts that are written by some of the North American contributors. Frequently, cultural knowledge is assumed in their writing that I simply do not possess. Informal turns of phrase and the use of terms embedded in localised North American English vocabularies also make the going difficult. I have been trying to think how I would write if I wanted to emulate this style, deliberately infusing my prose with my own cultural bias. One thing I could do would be to include a liberal sprinkling of cockney rhyming slang or maybe toss in a few Geordie phrases from the North East of England. I mention this merely to illustrate what I think sometimes happens in the SLMC but I have no intention of doing this, since it is an international forum. I know of at least one European who has excellent English (but for whom English is not the first language) who has given up on the forum. I think without a doubt reading the SLMC forum has been the most unrewarding aspect of participating in the SLTM music scene.
I play mainly my own original compositions and I have spoken with a few musicians who also perform largely their own material. There appears to be a feeling that this is not a particularly easy thing to do. You have to work hard to get the gigs and your remuneration is unlikely to be at the higher end of the scale, as these things go. The view is that if you want to capture large audiences and big tips and/or fees, then you should be playing a nice set of covers. Certainly people who do that seem to be at the top of the game, although I would hasten to add that I think some of them can play their own compositions too but don't do it as frequently. I don't think this is very different from the situation I find myself in, in real life. I will pontificate, briefly.
At a national and international level, you are not really going to be hugely successful in the music business if all you do is hash out covers. It is original material that is likely to be most successful in terms of airplay, downloads and what have you. However, at a local level, you will probably do much better if you can play songs people know. The songs that people know will, by and large, be the songs that have had maximum airplay, high downloads, etc. So, unless you can almost magically (or by dint of really hard work and slog) break into the rarefied atmosphere of national and international airplay and big downloads, you will not have an easy time if you are playing orginal material on a local platform.
The internet confuses the situation for musicians playing their own compositions. Because it is the internet, it feels as though you are playing on an international stage, and to some extent you are. The stage is international because the handful of people who turn up to listen at Cascadia or Sailors Cove, or wherever, come from the States, Europe and maybe NZ or Oz. But they are usually a small audience of 10, 20, maybe 30 max. And the music is not being broadcast, it is being streamed to these specific individuals.
The way forward, then, for musicians who are composing and playing their own material is to keep plugging on. Some might choose to take a manager or agent to help them get better and more lucrative gigs, and good luck to them. Personally, I definitely do not wish to go down that path and I am keen to maintain full independence as a musician. I think that we have to build up our own group of loyal listeners who come to like our particular music (our style of composition, the content of our lyrics, our delivery, and so forth). If we are to retain their interest in our work, however, we will have to keep writing so that they frequently hear new material. The sorts of people who seek out original musicians will want that, I think. So there is lots to do. Playing original music on the internet is every bit as challenging as doing this in rl, probably more so.
There is one major difference between playing on the internet and in rl venues (such as British pubs) and that is the extent to which singing to backing tracks is likely to be accepted. The sorts of live music venues I play in rl would not accept someone sticking a backing track into the mixer, although there would be club venues where that was perfectly acceptable. I have noticed that the distinction between live music and singing to backing tracks is much more blurred in SLTM. Maybe it is an age thing. Perhaps I'm just old-fashioned. I think I have run out of steam here. I'll stop now.
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