Bermuda Shorts - James Patterson [17]
Some nights we play four sets, or sixty-four songs. Al will laugh that the more sets we are required to play, the less we get paid. The really high-paying gigs only want one set.
In our career, we’ll never have less than fifteen hundred college and public radio stations playing our CDs every day. Most times, the number of stations playing our stuff is closer to three thousand, but, remarkably, we don’t chart on the boards that rate such airplay because “there’s no category for you guys.” So a major label band with a mere three hundred stations is Number One. When we began this adventure, we also had three hundred commercial open-format stations playing us in heavy rotation. By the time our second album came out, that number was down to twelve; the rest had either been bought out, changed format, or been driven out of business. By our third album, two commercial “alt” stations remained; by our fourth CD, there were none. The clampdown on stations playing independent labels was complete. To survive, we had to call individual DJ’s around the country with specialty shows merely to get a spin.
At the noncollege venues—bars, folk clubs, concert halls, alumni gatherings, conventions—a similar paradigm to the love us/hate us/don’t know what to make of us routine is in effect. Since we are very good at what we do, we make it look easy. And because it looks easy, we get this kind of comment:
“So you guys just read the paper and write this stuff. Anyone can do that, right?”
“Well sure, go ahead,” I suggest, as though in full agreement. “I tell you what, we’ll be back in four months. You write some songs and we’ll let you get up between shows and you can play them. You can’t beat an offer like that.”
“But I don’t play the guitar, I can’t sing.”
“Ah, I see.”
Others condemn us for being subjective liberal partisans in our gags and more serious material. “How can you call it entertainment if you have an opinion?” is a frequent query. “Why don’t you give both sides a fair shake?” they scold.
“Well, I tell you what,” I answer. “You spend half your life learning to play an instrument, devote yourself to studying all you can about the genre you want to perform, then quit your job and put all your time, money, and effort into finding venues to play in, risk your health, your family’s well-being, live hand to mouth never knowing if it’s all going to come crashing down and put you out on the street as soon as your schedule runs out, no pension, no health care. Do all that for the paltry sum they charged you to get in here tonight, and then you tell me how objective you’re going to be once you step up to that microphone.”
But here’s the one I love the most: “So, what’s your real job?”
During the height of the Reagan Conservative Era, we find that audiences, perhaps a full third of them, had lost—or I should say more accurately, had never cultivated—the ability to suspend disbelief. These are people who interpret the Bible literally, but not the Constitution.
In radio and print interviews, we call it “theater-phobia,” a scary mob-directed need to have whatever is put before them be as unchallenging, unthreatening, and black and white as possible. The audience members can’t tell they are being set up for a punch line, and so can’t get the punch line. From the stage, we see in them a frightening refusal to invest themselves in the entertainment they have paid to see. They are either completely for us, completely against us, or complacent to the point of sitting there stupefied.
My partner is tall, dark, and traditionally handsome. I’m short and fair with long curly hair, and pretty damn good looking, as well. As a gag, we introduce ourselves as brothers.
“Twins, can’t ya tell?”
“Same father, different mothers.”
“We were joined at the nose at birth,” I love to riff on Al’s prominent proboscis.
One reviewer, in print, actually asks, un-ironically, “Why would two musicians, who are clearly unrelated, try to pawn themselves off as brothers?”
We are constantly researching, attempting