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| Author | Topic: long ass post about FBB and what happened to me |
| alan smithee |
posted 5/6/08 4:24 AM
Now I'm watching the FBB on cable as I type this -- just discovered the website and wanted to write my feelings. i love this movie -- i saw it 20 years ago on Betamax and I've never forgotten it. I've seen it many times since then and it is absolutely the most painful experience everytime. See, I was a musician for most of my life and I quit last year. Now I got a day job and I seem to be doing okay. About 7 years ago, music left my city. The tech industry moved everybody out -- actually, it ground the music scene into the ground and the people who were left...left and never came back. FYI, rents got too high for musicians who were competing with the techies for available space. The irony was, a couple of years later, the tech scene hit ROCK BOTTOM and there was A LOT of space. Unfortunately, the musicians had completely left and I fear will never return. So last year, I quit -- I couldn't do it anymore. I spent a few years on the road with a major band and left the seedy scenes of my city which looked very much like the lounges in FBB. After my 15 minutes were up on the road (American, European and Australian tours), I ended up back at the seedy joints, but after the tech disaster, there are less of them and they are as bad as ever. I tried to do this as long as I could, but to no avail. Why is the FBB painful? Because the story is absolutely true. The experiences these guys go through, the type of people that they are and everything that happens in that film -- I assure you, there is a small truth to it all. It hurts because either it has happened to me or I've seen it happen to other people. The stupid lounges with the shitty managers and the apathetic crowds; the feeling of what the hell are we doing here? the stupid Hawaiian shirts, the costumes, the out of town gigs with the resorts and high-priced crowd. True. What is painful is the sense they convey in the film that it is the same and will always be the same and won't change for as long as the system there exists to employ these musicians in this way. The envelopes with the $20s -- this is how you got paid at the end of the night. Cash money -- all $100 of it for twenty years. I remember keeping wads of that stuff in my desk drawer for months and wondering when it will get bigger or make it's way to the bank. You just end up spending it as you go, for gas, food, sheet music...who knows. That wad of cash made you feel safe but only just so because it was a small wad and was never enough to sustain you but for a very brief period of time. Most people had bank accounts, I had that wad of cash. The thing about 'dusting off your dreams in that club for a few minutes' is true too. Any musician who loves this stuff can relate to it. You want to play what you feel, but crowds are simply not intelligent enough to meet you halfway on your art. So, to survive you do these stupid lounges. And some people get used to the 'comfort' that it brings and never leave and never realize their dreams. So..20 years later I watch this movie and although I don't cry anymore at certain parts, I'm still struck at the hard feeling I get when I watch this movie. However, I'm also grateful for it because it reminded me of how much I loved music and what I had to go through to keep doing it. |
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