People come to the Old Town Plaza for the annual Christmas Stroll, saunter down lumanaria lined sidewalks and blocked off streets, shop and eat, enjoy friends and family, stand under Christmas mistletoe, lick candy canes, and listen to street musicians.. If they like what they see and hear, they stop and listen.. If they really like what they see and hear, they drop money in the tip jar.
Chris solos, Dan(tenor sax), Scott(alto sax) and Sara(alto sax) provide accompaniment..
With music, seeing and hearing it live is hard to beat.
Playing in the dark is part of a musician’s territory.
It’s not much of a Christmas thought, but, playing ” Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” I’m wondering why Santa comes and night and sneaks down the chimney?
Is this someone we want in our house?
Sax Rats is our saxophone quartet – two alto saxes, a tenor sax, and a baritone sax.
It is cold this evening as we load into Dan’s van, drive down, set up, begin our first music set at the Holiday Stroll in Old Town, Albuquerque.
” In college, ” Chris tells us, ” I did gigs and made $50.00 a night and was happy to get it ”
” The other day, ” he goes on, ” I did a jazz gig and still made fifty. ” he laughs.
Chadd, my saxophone teacher, has a sign on his studio door that describes a musician as a person who will work most of their life to get enough skills to play music in public, play a several thousand dollar instrument, drive a hundred miles to a gig in a six hundred dollar car, spend fifty dollars on drinks, gas, and food out of their own pocket, make seventy five dollars for the night’s gig, and wake up the next morning with a hangover and barely enough money for huevos rancheros..
I expect we will be back at the Holiday Stroll again next year.
Latest government stats say the U.S. doesn’t have any inflation.
Musician pay certainly proves their point.
Growing up in the 1950’s, there were only three channels on our new black and white TV. The programming was sports, talent shows, westerns, game shows and nightly news.The broadcast day ended at midnight. In the 1960’s,Johnny Carson got people to stay up later and tucked his audiences into bed.
Back then, we went to our television sets like an older generation went to their radios before us and listened to TV anchors tell us ” how it was.” In those days, we trusted our institutions to do what they said they were doing.
At Wal-Mart this morning, Scotttreks runs into a TV crew filming a segment for the local evening news. These days, entertainment and political correctness saturate each nightly news story and finding truth comes last in third or fourth place.
ThIs news production, promoting a Wal Mart sponsored winter coat drive for kids, is only seconds long but takes a crew of five most of the morning to produce.
I don’t watch news anymore.
News people want to do all my thinking for me and make sure I don’t have trouble coming up with my own answers.
Discerning truth from fiction, I believe, is still my responsibility, as a living being.
Newsmen and used car salesmen have much more in common than we previously thought.
Starbucks in my city are ubiquitous.
For a couple of bucks for fresh coffee I can mingle with tech savvy people who lean towards globalism, free healthcare for all, living wage checks from Uncle Sam, electric cars.
This morning, in my local Starbucks parking lot, a horned toad occupies a Toyota car hood waiting for his chauffeur to bring him a Frappe.
The truck has a locked security cover over its bed because Albuquerque is a “Breaking Bad ” city and wise people here lock their doors, always.
Crime, these days, is on all our lip’s but the conditions that breed crime here won’t be fixed soon. Crime was once a morality problem but it is now talked about as an economic/social problem. Our Mayor assures us that If we pump enough money towards our crime and homeless issues, and do better with rehabilitation, things will be hunky dory.
This little guy doesn’t nod at me as I go by. He reminds me of a green gecko I once glued to the hood of my painter’s truck, a synthetic stuccoed Mitsubishi ” Mighty Max. ” He reminds of the beautiful green gecko on the front porch screen door of my quarters in Ms. Sue’s Haiti Children’s Home.
Why, I keep wondering, do I keep running into the same things, the same people, the same ideas, in different places, across time?
I’m sure this horned toad has an answer, but this morning he doesn’t share it.
If a horned toad likes Frappes,though, I’m believing I should give them a try.
Trying to get through the day without coffee, for horned toads and humans, is fraught with disappointment.
Recent Comments