Tag Archives: grateful dead

Get Off Your Butt

The hardest thing about being an independent consultant for me is business development.  Not on behalf of others, but for my practice.  It’s not that I can’t do it or that I don’t know how.  After all, I spent a good portion of my early career doing just that for ABC and CBS with excellent results.  It’s more that I’d prefer to spend my time working on my clients’ business and not on my own, I’d guess.  Maybe I need to be more selfish.

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A good friend who has been on his own for 30+ years told me early on that this would be the hardest part and that there would be anxious months with not enough work.  He was right, as usual, but the remedy is something far simpler than anti-anxiety drugs or meditation and is applicable even to those of you that live in the corporate world and is something I want to share since it goes beyond business as well.
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Monitors

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One of the weird experiences of playing loud rock music is that of not being able to hear.  No, I don’t mean the dulled hearing that many of us ex-musicians are experiencing later in our lives.  What I’m talking about is standing 5 feet away from someone who is singing their lungs out and watching their lips move without hearing any of it.  Watch how most bands set up – the amplifiers are behind the musicians but the PA system speakers – the ones from which the vocals emanate – are in front of the band, closer to the audience.  This is why there are also usually monitors of some sort.

You’ve seen them, maybe without knowing what they were: the boxes in front of the band that face backwards.  Today, of course, those might be prompters that show the singers the lyrics (at one point I would have attributed that need to drugs and alcohol; now it’s usually age) since most musicians seem to wear ear monitors that let the singer hear whatever mix helps them stay on time and in tune.  Good business lesson too! Continue reading

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Cover Bands

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I suspect any of us who ever tried to play rock music for a living were, at some point, in a cover band.  Heck, a couple of my favorite bands – The Grateful Dead and The E Street Band – are just as well-known for some kick-ass cover versions of other people’s songs as they are for some of their original work.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing a cover.  You probably didn’t know it was a business thought too! Continue reading

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