Faster Than The Bear

There's a joke, repeated with endless variations, that has as the punchline: "I don't need to run faster than the bear. I just need to run faster than you." It came back to me recently as a humorous way to express a perfectly valid philosophy.

My friend and drummer Mariano hosted a little party at a bar, and at a certain point the music switched from the usual recorded background tunes to the house live band. After a few songs it became clear that they were... not spectacular. I'm pretty sure that given some reasonably skilled musicians, we could do better in just a few rehearsals. It was Mariano who explained to me, years ago, that it's not necessary to have a chart-topping band in order to get regular gigs, it's only necessary to be good enough musically, and enjoyable to watch. Like a lot of classically-trained musicians, I have this idea that you shouldn't even think about getting onstage until you're closely approaching perfection. That includes the arrangement of the music, the skill in delivering it, and the show aspects. As any perfectionist and most musicians will attest, these are good things to aim for but take a good while to bring about. More to the point, waiting for that will both slow your abilities (which do require performance to fully develop) and cause you to pass up perfectly valid opportunities to play.

Not only that, but as he put it, most people don't know the difference, in any conscious way, between good and really good performances. Sure, they can tell that a band in the top 5% is better than a band in the top 15%, but it's like me and wine: I can identify Great from Good if they're next to each other, but danged if I can elucidate what the differences are; and generally speaking I'm quite happy with Good. If the audience is happy with Good which is striving to be Very Good, or Very Good on the way to Great, there is no reason not to look for paying gigs as soon as reasonably possible. Plus, if you take your music and showmanship seriously, odds are strong that you'll be on the short list soon enough.

We don't have to be the second coming of Aerosmith or Van Halen to get gigs. We just have to be the best choice the venue has. That's definitely good enough. And the bar is sometimes lower than we figured.