Practical MIDI

No, this article has nothing to do with the Ben Stiller movie of the same name. Last Saturday our local museum held a nostalgic display event featuring the rock and roll bands that originated from my hometown and the surrounding areas between the fifties and the eighties. A few weeks prior to the event most of us musicians received emails asking us to submit photos, thoughts, memories, memorabilia and even some vintage gear that they could display for the public. We all got name tags, which was a good thing since NONE of us looked like the photos on the wall that had been blown up to giant poster size.

I was there early so I got to see everyone as they filed in and shared memories from the past fifty years. As the area musicians came in, my initial thought was, “Okay, I see their grandfathers, but where are the musicians I knew back in our heyday?”

Wait a minute; these ARE the musicians I knew. What happened? Well, life happened. We all aged forty-five years, put on a few dozen extra pounds, either lost our prized hair or it went gray on us. Arthritis claimed a couple of former guitar virtuosos who couldn’t make a barr chord nowadays if their life depended on it. Apathy claimed a few more souls who’d played hot and heavy back in the day but when the novelty wore off, they eventually dropped out of the music scene to take their rightful places on the merry-go-round of life. Death claimed its fair share of coulda-beens. However, I was surprised to find quite a few of us die-hard musicians who are still out there plying our trade more than four decades later.

Funny this is, that in our minds we are all still seventeen. Our bodies just won’t go along with that notion. We’re also playing a lot of the same songs we did when they were brand new and climbing the Billboard charts. I guess the music from that era has stood the test of time. However, some songs fell into the category of, “If I have to play this tune one more time I’m gonna open a vein.” We still play some of those dreaded songs, but only if prompted by a healthy donation to our tip jars. Other forty-five-year-old songs still manage to bring a smile to our faces and we play them with just as much enthusiasm as we did back in the day.

Some of us took day jobs and relegated our playing to the weekends, while there were still a few musicians in the crowd who took the job of rock-n-roller to heart and have done ONLY that since their teen years. Nine-to-five jobs are for suckers, and although I often thought I’d love to be able to play for my living, I’m also a realist who knows that being a self-employed musician doesn’t pay the health insurance bills or allow you the standard two-week vacation every summer. If you don’t play, you don’t get paid. Besides, I think that if I HAD to play to sustain my lifestyle, the fun would drain out of it in a hurry and it would become the dreaded three-letter word—JOB.

I ran into a guy there who said, “Back then our main goal was to grow enough hair to cover our ears.” To which I replied, “My ears are still covered by hair, but these days it’s sprouting from inside my ears.” We both had a good laugh and split up to view the rest of the posters that covered the walls.

Museum—what a fitting place for old rock and roll fossils like us to end up. I left there feeling warm and nostalgic and the smile took a few hours to leave my face. It also made me wonder just when I will take the stage for the last time. Will I wake up one day and discover I can’t do it anymore? Will I suddenly lose interest in my craft? Will I be shot by a crazed fan or just absent-mindedly step in front of a cement truck while humming a favorite tune from the sixties? My guess is that they may wheel me onto the stage on a gurney and I can still sing and play from a prone position. That’s about what it will take to get me to quit the craft I’ve come to love for forty-five years.

If I’m lucky, I’ll go out like jazz saxophonist, Grover Washington, Jr., who, while waiting in the green room after taping four songs for the The Early Show, at CBS Studios in New York City, collapsed from a heart attack.

Such is life.

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©2010 Bill Bernico for CYBERMIDI.com Downwind Publications