Welcome to this week’s Blog Hop. Today the topic is:
If you had unlimited money to start and maintain a business, what would it be?
My youngest son Marc is a talented guitarist, and was playing in bands from the age of 13. While the boys were still young they left it to me to contact local venues and get gigs for them or enter them into band competitions. I had quite a lot of success at finding places for them to play, and discovered that I quite enjoyed doing this. Sam would drive Marc and I to the gigs and he would also help load and unload Marc’s amplifier, guitars and speaker cabinet while I chatted to the other boys’ parents. The boys won many fans over time, and happy days were had by all.
When the boys got to around the age of 18 I became quite bold and started contacting venues further afield. I managed to get them gigs at The Junction and The Man on the Moon, both in Cambridge, and then some London gigs at The Ruskin Arms (where Iron Maiden started out), The Standard Music Venue at Walthamstow, The Hope & Anchor at Islington, and The Dome at Tuffnell Park, to name but a few.
When Marc learned to drive he took himself to gigs, and by then they were adults and arranged their own. They went on to support a reasonably well-known musician during his tour of Europe, and lived the dream on a tour bus for a month. Marc had a wonderful time, lost a stone in weight on that tour, had next to no sleep. He also realised that being a budding rock star isn’t all it’s cracked up to be after helping to haul all the gear into the trailer in the small hours of the morning (the roadies wouldn’t work for the support band!). After that he’d had enough and gave it all up to become a husband and father, and he now teaches his sons how to play the guitar instead.
So … if I had a lot of money, unlimited time and nothing else to do, I’d quite like to be the manager of an unknown band or two. The best bit would be seeing youngsters grow in confidence as they become more well known. I know it will probably not pay very well at the start and that’s why I’ll need the money, but it’s a lot of fun if you can put up with all the arguments regarding musical differences. I’d hopefully make a bob or two, but might have to dissuade manager-sharks who try to muscle if the bands become famous!
Let’s see what businesses other blog-hoppers would like to start up if they had enough money – just click on the blue button below to find out.
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Stevie Turner 
It would be wonderful to be able to invest in / bankroll the business dreams of others if you had unlimited money.
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Picturing you on tour.
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Yeah, it was fun. We used to hire a large van, and all the parents helped with the cost. Sam used to drive it to gigs and the boys used to have a last-minute practise going down the motorway.
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If I had access to all the money I wanted, I ‘d be lying on the beach with a margarita and a book for the rest of my life. 🙂 xx
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Lol – that’s a lot of margaritas! x
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Lollllllllll 🙂
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Pingback: My Ideal Nursing Home #Wednesday Words – My Corner
Thanks Abbie for the link.
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I considered becoming a singer-songwriter as a youth. The insurmountable problem was that I had no sense of rhythm
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Lol. Could be a bit of a problem…
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My father couldn’t (wouldn’t) pronounce synthesizer properly until I wandered into their house one day and showed him a good sized check. For playing synthesizer. Not lounge piano, lounge synthesizer.
Kids still dream, write music and “poetry” and hang out in bars honing their craft and one day they realize where the local ceiling is, find out what sort of “characters” inhabit a large part of the music biz and check out or step up. The odds of making a living, particularly in these days of YouTube and clip art tunes and shrinking audience attention span, are slim at best. Check out Soundcloud. It’s as full of medoicre me-too shit as the Amazon Kindle store. Will there be another Clapton, Beck, Hendrix, Van Halen. ELP, Crimson, James Taylor, Burt Bacharach, Yes, Metallica, Rush, Alan Jackson, MIles, Brubeck, Kenton, McCartney? Big shoes. You’d better be younger, cuter, more talented and better funded than everybody else. Because instead of becoming something new, tons of musicians are building careers out of music school and tribute bands. Covering songs written before they were born and getting paid. How sad is that?
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Yes, Marc could only live his dream because the bass player’s father had lots of money and paid £30,000 for them to play support.
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Unlike 19 ahem when we got paid for being not the quite famous opening act.
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Yeah, there’s no money in support bands at all now. Marc was lucky that the bass player’s father is a millionaire, and so £30,000 was pocket money. The boys got to play in large venues and gained many fans, and started to be followed about by groupies at each venue. Some even tried to get on the tour bus, but the two drivers were quite strict apparently. Marc’s fiancee was not too pleased about that at the time!
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Reblogged this on aurorawatcherak and commented:
Stevie Turner contemplates what business she’d start if she were independently wealthy.
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Thanks Lela for the re-blog.
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My daughter is an indie musician and times are tough right now. I suspect she’s processing cannabis in Hawaii to pay her bills. She’ll get back to performing if we ever stop being afraid of one another in the future. Meanwhile, she’s learning new styles in a new environment.
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My son’s just been offered the chance to step back into his band as a guest and write a guitar solo for a song that’s 27 minutes long. He’s thinking about it…
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Our son played in a band this summer. He’s a guitarist, but hadn’t performed (in fact, as a kid, he hated for any group of people to look at him). But he was sitting in with this band and the bass player dislocated his shoulder in a car accident. Kiernan wasn’t really a bass player, but his sister left hers behind when she went on her “grand tour”, so he’s noodled, so he stepped in to help for a few weeks. Then the military base deemed all local bars off limits because of covid, which took out their rhythm guitar, so Kiernan stepped up for that. He enjoyed it. The crowds were small because of covid, so he didn’t make a lot of money, but he has a job and he was there for the music, not the money. But of course, the bars are avoiding attracting indoor crowds now that it’s winter, so they haven’t done a gig since September. Maybe next summer.
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Yeah, like writing there’s no money in it,but much joy.
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Both my kids write songs. Our daughter started with poetry and then set it to music. Our son says he starts with the music and then figures out the lyrics, sometimes with help from his girlfriend and he tells me I produce a fair number of turns of phrase that he “rips off”.
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There’s that old joke about long solos –
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What joke?
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To get away from it all a world weary man (woman) books a grass hut in remotest Africa for a week. Peace, quiet, solitude. After a long Jeep ride through emptiness his guide drops him off. The man spends the afternoon trying to read, meditate, things made impossible by incessant drumming in the distance. He tries to ignore it, but all day long it never stops. The sun goes down and it gets louder. This goes on day and night for two days. His guide returns with supplies, the man asks “What’s with the drums? How do I make them stop?”
“Oh, Bwana no want drums stop!”
“No? Why not?”
“When drums stop means time for bass solo.”
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Lol, yeah, I definitely prefer drum solos to bass solos.
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Not the best career choice in current circumstances! Fingers crossed it might be better next year.
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Probably not, but fun.
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It would be, I’m sure. I just hope live music survives the pandemic.
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Touch and go, I think. Maybe the summer festivals because they’re outside.
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It depends how things are by then, I guess. The festivals may be outdoors but would encourage large numbers to gather in close proximity, so may not be all that safe either.
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Very true.
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Nobody ever mentions the bits behind the scenes.
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And there are lots of ‘bits’!
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Pingback: Open Book Blog Hop (7 December 2020) – Mister Bump
I would love to own a book store. I know it is tough right now but being surrounded by books would be wonderful. I would stock indie authors too.
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I used to think that, but my wish came true once when we visited Haye-on-Wye, an English town known specifically for its many (largely secondhand) book shops. Suffice it to say, after a few hours I found that I couldn’t handle being surrounded by books all the time. Not least, they tend to stink!
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And are mould magnets I’ll bet. My mother-in-law used to bake secondhand books in the oven before she read them!
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That sounds like a good idea.
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But would there be any customers?
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