Sergey, that was moving.

You deserve my respect and admiration.

Russ

In the 60s $25per man for a four hour wedding or dance was union scale - double for the leader for booking the gig, filing the contract, etc. ... with our band, the double went into a kitty which we used to purchase PA systems, tuxedos, etc. etc ...

In the early 60's I was with the "house band" for the most popular place in the area "The Golden Horse Inn"..

Pay scale was $12 a man for 5 hour gig.

19 years old wearing a tux and an accordion

in the 50's and 60's I too played the accordian aka the stomach steinway
and if we got $20 a night it was a good job.
MEL

We played a wedding at "The Pisa", one of the Brooklyn 'wedding factories', (they were called that for the number of rooms they had) ... so the general manager hears us and tells the guy who had the 'house band' contract to hire us, and have us play there ... The agent wanted to pay us $15 a man ... we said scale is $25 or we don't play ... the gm said "pay them"
In those days, you did not argue with the gm of a catering hall in Brooklyn ...
It was a great deal for us ... we would call the agent on a Wednesday and he would fill in any open spots in our weekend ...

Kabinopous, your talking and your "playing" are the same....deeply mired in emotion. That was a compliment.

I've been thinking about this for a long time now. Pop music has absolutely no melody to it these days. The attraction to young people, who are pretty much lost in life, is the...."message" with the song being the "carrier." Stupid lyrics like: "Baby, my eyes are open now, I see you like I never did before, come back to me and we'll make it work now and forever." I'm exaggerating, but you get the idea. People let the song lyrics say what they are unable to express to each other.

So...why don't you take your song writing strengths and combine it with your philosophical and emotional thoughts/messages (like you expressed above) and make some money writing good music with good words?

Instead of your repetitious "come back to me, baby" written into every song made in the last 20 years, maybe an original song with some of your thoughts stated above integrated into it. I think people are ready for something like this and the musical world can do with some of the same. I can see you writing and putting lyrics to a song like the Windmills of Your Mind. That song is 100% you.

Up to the 70's, most songs were about "love" in some way, shape or form. I referred to them as "love songs." I refer to today's junk music as "message songs" (with mindless messages).

Tony I played there many times years ago also....

Donny, I was thinking you may have, that's why I put the name in ...
Even though we lived in Staten Island, Lydia's sister had her wedding there ...

Wedding band days we played every Hall and much more..