I promise you the world would be a better place if more people spent more time playing musical instruments together and on their own. Singing is so good for you.
The sad thing is that people have less and less time living in this gig economy, which is another ring of hell because THOSE ARE NOT GIGS. Those are chores!
The malarcky of chasing gigs as a musician has an orgasmic cosmic pay off in the end as you play tension and release with the universe, stretching time and Mind and Body and Soul. You aren’t getting that as an uber driver, and if you are, you might be going to Jail.
Because music is pretty much known as the most fun you can have with your clothes on, which is why when I was 310 pounds of olive skinned glory, I would take my clothes off every show and laugh that I was getting away with it.
But the gig economy. Oh boy. That’s unfortunate. But that’s what happens when you sell yourself down a river.
But playing music. Oh man. I just sat in the back of this 1999 Luxury car with no miles on it, like it was town car, once again just playing for hours before I head into gym to chase runner’s high in a pool, listening to more music.
I am not even stoned. But I feel stoned. Because sitting here trying to capture and enrapture the cosmic grooves of ‘Sweet Virginia’ and these Neil Diamond tunes on an upside tiny classical guitar releases so many endorphins it’s Mind boggling.
Then you add an audience? And you get money?
Yes. Totally worth the bullsh☆t of the REAL GIG ECONOMY.
Not your Uber Eats slave submarine economy that is going to strangle us all dragging to hell where we will all die in trailer parks that have already been sold to Bain Capital to ratchet up the rent.
Lately I have been hitting the Kareoke joint across the street after work, marveling at how bad some singers are, with this strange hopefulness. The worst singers I’ve ever heard, just need to practice. They don’t know how to drive their car vocally. But at least they showed up to Driver’s Ed. They want to be on the road.
The worst singers actually give me hope. Maybe more for future generations. Because our culture kind of failed them.
But there is a better world, where the billions of us all play music together and value not just music but also musicians, because we are the real drug dealers.
Blow is terrible. Your dick don’t work right. It’s full of laxatives and God knows what and you are enabling people to toss duffle bags of human heads on Mexican disco dance floors as a marketing and fear tactic. That sh☆t happens.
But music man. That sh☆t feels good. Marley told you already about the ultimate painkiller. The one that keeps us together and does not tear us apart.
Yeah man, I’ll drink a beer. I order a gin and tonic and tip the host. A pull of a J can be nice to smoke a few circles around the night.
…but busting out some Sinatra that I have been practicing on my guitar in the back of my car, leaning into these leather seats…that’s the JOINT right there. Because for me that drug is a gateway.
A gateway to killing more shows and writing more songs, for this Marathon Nipsy, might likely continue. Life goes on, and so do those songs that get you so high because they tap into something within you. Something that opens up the ability to speak to thousands spinning out notes that are like speaking in tongues.
Go sing. Do it now. Thank me later. Learn G,C,D. Sean Fairchild – Bass told me to do just that when I was 16 years old at band practice at Drew Thompson’s house, as we were talking about how to write songs, in my parent’s Lincoln in his driveway.
And I did. And then I found Am…then Em… then…
# #
As I sat here two hours in, I saw Robert Johnson next to me practicing so hard, feeling these same feels, driven to return to show those muthaf☆ckaz who he was to become.
For when he became, he explained that he sold his soul to the Devil. Some people believed because he was lyin’. But his guitar playing was suddenly, having grown in the moonlit shadows, was now The Truth.
But he just practiced. He practiced and practiced.
And he shouldn’t have taken that shot man, because it was poisoned. And it was hard liquor so it was already poison.
Nothing in music is pure except music itself.
Music takes pain and turns it into pleasure.That is truth. Take music like a drug. And never forget machines only do it better when humans are underperforming. When they are underwhelming ourselves and living under out true potential to lock into the blackest math.
Because machines can never get off on this heavy sh☆t we call sounds. And his sister…
Silence.
– Musician and writer Davin Michael Stedman has many ventures, such as the AMAZING blog, 100milesofmusic.com. Davin’s recent song has become a global earworm and Caribbean dancehall hit. Listen here on Reggaeville: DAVIN MICHAEL STEDMAN & ANTHONY RED ROSE – FREE YOUR MIND FEAT. SLY & ROBBIE WITH LENKY MARSDEN. The video is now available on Youtube: Tuff Gong Television. His single with British band Sherlock Soul is available here.
