Joe Bunting

Please Leave If [vol. 10]: No Happy Endings

Tonight (Friday, May 9) I’m playing a show with my friend Phil at Northstar Coffee, and you probably shouldn’t come.

I’m realizing more and more that for a musician, shows are like jobs. After you play one, you put it on your resume and leverage it to get another show. As things go, playing a coffee shop is the unpaid internships of the music business. Which is fine. I’m still pretty new to performing. I don’t even have a legitimate demo yet, not to mention an album.

However, it’s dangerous for an artist to view a performance as a stepping stone. One of the roles of the artist is to make all things new–something I talked about in Vol. 8 of the “Please Leave If” series (see HERE if you haven’t read it)–but I can’t do that if I’m just going through the motions.

The opposite of going through the motions is indwelling in the songs. In performance, there has to be a connection between the physical act of performing and the words, emotions, and meanings of the subject being performed.

Everyone is different though. For example, I can’t fit into every song ever written. I couldn’t sing “Low” by Flo Rida and make you believe I meant it. I doubt there is even one Christina Aguilera song that I could sing with a straight face. Not even that song “Genie in a Bottle.” If each song is a different shaped bottle, there’s no way you could squish my Genie into a Christna Aguilera bottle.

The reason you probably shouldn’t come tonight is because if you’re like most people, you like cute movies with happy endings. You probably don’t want to see Crash or Schindler’s List every night. They’re good movies but not for everyone.

Tonight’s show is not for everyone. The songs that I can indwell are usually pretty dark. Sometimes they have happy endings, but they’re almost all bittersweet. Tonight promises to be even worse.

If that doesn’t sound like the way you’d like to spend your Friday night, then please, for your own sake, leave. You’re more than welcome not to come. And if you’re reading this and you can’t stand The Shawshank Redemption and would never even think of watching something like Hamlet, then you might think about why you’re reading this.

After all, this is the place where despair meets hope. If you can’t handle the despair, you’ll only be getting half the fun.

Related posts:

Please Leave if [vol. 14]: You’re such a f***ing schmoozer!




Please Leave If [vol. 8]: Are You Engaged?




Please leave if [vol. 7]: Death Cab for Cutie




Please Leave If [vol. 11]: You Drive a Hummer?! Uh oh…




Please Leave If [vol. 14]: Hilerary