9.25 million dollar home and NO food or drink !!!

[I-missRichardTee]

Mentioned above by one of youall I AM indeed nervous around the hoytee toytee rich.. recently I did a gig where our recently fired mayor of San Diego ( for inappropriate treatment of female employees ) was in my presence. I don; t know if it is accurate to say i am hostile towards the rich, but I am sure I am ill at ease.

[Jazz+]

 

I do agree that getting to the gig an hour early, and bringing your own food, and having to set up in the wrong spot, are just part of the gig. You take the gig, you accept what comes with it and you're gracious to the host even of the host is the biggest dickwad you've ever met. It's called being a professional. While we consider ourselves "artists", in the real world we are no different than the plumber that comes to fix the toilet. The plumber does not expect to get fed on his gig, and I don't expect to get fed on mine. But I will savor the scrumptious odors as I'm munching on my Cliff Bar. And sometimes, if I'm lucky, I will go home with pie crumbs in my beard.

 

Exactly. Expect nothing.

I subcontract for one of the highest paid event agencies and they always require me to sign numerous agreements that include rules such as no food, no alcohol, no mingling. It evens talks about brushing teeth and using mouthwash in case a client speaks to you.

[Brettymike]

I've been working amongst very wealthy folks for nearly 40 years , totally enjoying their friendship and hospitality , their lavish accommodation and "gin palaces"(very nice boats) , AND all the projects and income they have given me.

Not to mention the great advice they have offered me , and life's rewards and experiences that come with it.

2 books I recommend - "Rich Dad Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki

and "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by Edward Griffin.

 

I wish I had read those books when I was about 6 years old.

 

Brett

[I-missRichardTee]

Mr Brett, are these books informative, possibly non novels?

[J. Dan]

Be careful when talking about abandoning generalizations, as they are the basis of science. When using the scientific method, sample data are typically collected, then the null hypothesis is tested. If the outcome of the statistical test is significant (usually at a minimum alpha level of .05) the null hypothesis is rejected, thus providing support for the alternative hypothesis. Generalizations about the population are then inferred from the sample data. Of course, inferential statistical tests are based on probability, and due to the possibility sampling error (which can never be completely eliminated), one can never really prove the alternative hypothesis....a point many of you have astutely made. At best, all we can say is that the alternative hypothesis appears reasonable, defendable, or tenable. Then as more observations or theory become available, new hypotheses can be developed/tested. I realize we largely have not been talking about scientifically controlled studies, but many of the observations expressed in this thread form the basis of hypothesis development, which can be measured, tested....and generalized. Just sayin'....

 

The problem with statistics is that they don't outline a concrete cause and effect, only a correlation. You could find a correlation between blonde hair and cancer, and conclude that blondes are more likely to have cancer. In reality, it may just so happen that more blondes live in a part of town where there's a toxic waste dump.

[The Wind]

Hmm, don't know how this thread turned into a whole debate about the rich. There's good and bad people, rich and poor. I never judge. Some are very generous with their money and some aren't.

 

If you've read the story about that Australian woman billionaire who was sued by some of her children because she wanted to control their trust fund. And all her wealth was inherited from her dad.

 

There's countless stories like that. Even Warren Buffett wouldn't give his daughter a 30k loan to refix the house, and he disinherited one of his grandkids cause she told inside stuff about him. Watch the documentary "The 1 Percent". About rich kids and how wealth affects them.

 

 

[I-missRichardTee]

Jadan ( do you like that name? ) no more JustDan?

Generalizations, are then an entirely useless, what to you? Do they serve any useful function? Are they outmoded, and headed for extinction?

[The Wind]

In other news, the gig on the weekend went smoothly. Funny thing when I was taking a 10 minute break they turned on the stereo music. I had to ask them to turn it off when I resumed.

 

Was offered dinner after I finished playing but respectfully declined. Did my job and went home.

[Brettymike]

Mr Brett, are these books informative, possibly non novels?

 

Tee , yes and definitely yes - non fiction.

 

Brett

[The Wind]

Rich Dad Poor Dad has a good concept but the author himself has been exposed as not being successful until his books. And those stories of his "dads" have been shown to be half truths at best.

 

His seminars are high pressure sales jobs for prey to buy tons of useless stuff.

 

Just do a google search. For financial acumen there are better books, like the Wealthy Barber.

[Brettymike]

ATTITUDE and POSTURE through life is what he is talking about - whether you "believe" or choose to not believe is your choice.

 

-Creature from Jekyll Island review please??? .

 

Brett

[J. Dan]

Jadan ( do you like that name? ) no more JustDan?

Generalizations, are then an entirely useless, what to you? Do they serve any useful function? Are they outmoded, and headed for extinction?

 

It depends on how you use them. If one brand of product has a 5% failure rate! and another has a 10% failure rate! then my chances of not getting a lemon are better if I buy the one with the 5% failure rate.

 

If a higher percentage of the prison population is black than the general population, I'm not going to assume every black guy I meet is a criminal. Like anyone else, I'm going to withhold judgement until I get to know him.

[Brettymike]

One of my favourite life memories is my dinner being fetched on my very wealthy customers $2000 per hour helicopter .

Pilot lands on the large lawn , and hands a bag of burgers and chips out the window and takes off again :D.

 

Brett

[richforman]

In those cases I am just glad and cognizant of how lucky I am to not only be a working musician but to have a nice high-paying gig in nice environs with a private client that day, and have no real expectations as to how I'll be treated (unless someone is egregiously rude or disrespectful but I don't think that's ever happened). As pointed out earlier in the thread, we are there to please and make life easier for the clients and not to call attention to ourselves. If they feed us that's always a really nice plus but it's not why I'm there.

[Bobadohshe]

OT, but Bob, dare I ask, what kind of repertoire did you employ... not the old school standards + christmas things, right?

 

Standards and Christmas things. 50% Real book, 50% Christmas. No magic formula except my own way of playing them and the smile on my face.

[minimax]

Christmas is the time of giving so I will add some of my observations, which may seem not exactly on topic, but come from hard learned knowledge and may benefit some people.

 

What I learned in my life is this: our experiences, people that we meet and interact with, how we are treated is a reflection of our former thinking and feeling ONLY. What I mean by that. We are programed early in life by parents/family/society. Their thoughts and feelings, which are visible in life as their behavior, becomes ours. Thoughts and emotions are electromagnetic energy, which deposits in the body and stays there until realized as our experience or released consciously. That energy, which we feel as pain, draws to us people who will give us what we subconsciously want , but do not consciously have a clue that we want it. Example: our father/mother used to say to us You are a lazy idiot who does not want to learn This statement, if accepted by us as true (and a lot of us do it without knowing it) generated anger and later grief. We quickly push those feelings into that subconsciousness since they are painful. Later in life the same feelings that we tried to run from, have been tainting our thoughts with the same energy, and by being ignorant, we gave them our attention which is more energy. That energy accumulated to the point where we have to experience that anger and grief again, so we meet someone who possesses same crappy feelings inside and bingo two stars collide and each is blaming the other for the pain suffered.

 

Most of us are schooled in life, which means given a lot of useless information, but not educated - so we have to learn how to live the hard way.

 

Happy Holidays to all of you.

 

P.S. This will add a lot of light to what I wrote above

 

Lester Levenson The Ultimate Truth in pdf form.

Lester Levenson The Ultimate Goal in MP3 form

Eckhart Tolle The New Earth - look for pain body section

[Dave Ferris]

Snobs will be snobs regardless of net worth, and it's certainly frustrating when you have to play/work for them. (Sorry you had to deal with jerks, Dave.)

 

Maybe the reason many of us have had bad experiences with rich snobs' private parties is because, ahem... the less than rich can't afford live music for their private functions.

 

Exactly Steve. I'd say a large percentage of my solo piano experiences have been for friendly and cordial people who are thrilled to have me there. Same goes as well for my jazzuals in the past few years. That's why this particular one stood out more then the others. You know I've forgotten about it already, just another gig...

 

Dave - I feel for you, because I played a very similar gig last night.

It was a solo piano thing. After showing with large advance at a spectacular ancient villa on the hills just outside Rome, I hauled my Studiologic 2001, Kurzweil K2600r, and amp (all very heavy stuff - I had to sell my VMK176 last month in another financial emergency) to the huge hall where the dinner was to take place. They had reserved a minuscule space for me, and they heard no reason about giving me any kind of visibility. I was forced to eat something from the buffet before starting to play - that was late afternoon. I was instructed to play continuously during the dinner (a wedding anniversary) except when someone would stand up to make a speech. There were quite a few long speeches during the evening, so I didn't bother to ask for breaks.

One time, I stopped playing for about one minute, just to breathe and drink a sip of water, and the idiot-in-charge immediately came to me: "Play! Why aren't you playing?"

 

The atmosphere was nothing short of depressing. I was playing my repertoire of jazz standards, but I could have been playing nursery rhymes or anything else, as long as they could hear some 'pling-pling' in the background. Very often, in these cases I try to get some attention by some kind of virtuoso playing, and usually, I succeed to get some nice word, if not an applause, from some sensitive soul. But these people were so detached from everything that I just didn't bother and gave them what they wanted, which was wallpaper sound, thinking about something else for the whole night.

Several times, the nice-guy-in-charge advised me to lower my barely audible volume. There was no way that anybody from the tables could understand what I was playing.

 

If they had played records the whole night, at that volume, nobody could have detected a difference. Basically, I was there just to show to the people entering the hall that they had a pianist, too.

The part of the night that I enjoyed the most was the very brief snack/dinner, in the company of the waiters. Some of them were quite pleasant to talk with, and a couple knew something about jazz. They showed after dinner, to compliment me and to say things like, "man, what are you doing here?!" A nice, but sad, remark.

 

I was hungry as hell at that point, but nothing was left for me. Someone took pity and brought a bottle of water.

 

At one o' clock in the morning, after I had finished loading the car, the great-guy-in-charge had left the place, and someone who I had never seen came to me with a check that was for less money than the already shameful amount that we had agreed upon. I asked for explanations, and he just said, "I know nothing, you have to ask him". So I will be forced to run and phone and fight for my hard-earned money during the next few days.

 

Ten yers ago, I would have refused such a gig, unless it paid six times more than this one. I'm too tired now to reflect about that, but there's obviously something very wrong in all this.

Sorry for the vent.

 

 

Carlo- I feel your pain man... I've been there so many times myself. Along with the thick skin that I developed a long time ago, I've become very good at wiping all the particulars (like from the other night) from my memory banks. Although the cumulative effect builds up and lasts forever.

 

I'm sorry you had to deal with all that AND then have to chase down the dough. Talking about adding insult to injury.

 

Yes that's been a frequent experience of mine with one of the hipper hired help or a guest (with ears) at a party saying..."what is someone like you doing here"? I usually answer- trying to make some semblance of a living. Yeah you don't know if their compliments make you feel better or worse.

 

Hang in there Carlo. I know it's REALLY hard in these stupid, skewed times. You certainly, as well as all people I consider more artist types who have paid serious dues, deserve better.

I can only hold out hope that brighter days are somehow ahead for us "good guys".

 

When things are at their darkest...like in the last few years for me....I try and get deeper into the music. That, my wife, my running & cycling are the only things that get me through.

[wmp]

The very worst day of the year to sing for your dinner in the subway?

 

Walk For Hunger Day.

 

YMMV

[Theo Verelst]

I'm sorry for good people's gigging mishaps. Hopefully the general quality of good musicians' performances will keep them to a minimum. The number of paid gigs I've done aren't many, but I know it can be a lot of fun, too, and that's perfect, if's a good job, fun, and pays the bills. Most musicians I'm aware of have other motivations, too...

[Outkaster]

Hey have a decent rider, write in what you want and do not want to put up with. That's what I did.

[Moonglow]

The problem with statistics is that they don't outline a concrete cause and effect, only a correlation. You could find a correlation between blonde hair and cancer, and conclude that blondes are more likely to have cancer. In reality, it may just so happen that more blondes live in a part of town where there's a toxic waste dump.

Dan,

 

You are absolutely correct, correlation should never be confused with causation. That is because in a correlational study, there is no manipulation of an independent variable, so cause and effect can not be established. Fortunately, a correlational study is only one type of research design. In an experimental study an independent variable is directly manipulated by the researcher, and a dependent variable is used to measure the effect of the independent variable. The researcher then uses an appropriate statistical test (often a simple t-test or Analysis of Variance) to test for a mean difference among the levels of the independent variable. More complex designs can involve several independent variables and several dependent variables (these designs require more sophisticated statistical tests, such as MANOVA). If the outcome of the test is statistically significant (as customarily defined by an alpha level of .05), causality most certainly can be inferred. The critical factor is your alpha level, or tolerance for making a Type I error. Quite frankly, if an alpha level of .05 is good enough for the scientific community to infer causality, it's good enough for me!

 

 

[I-missRichardTee]

A little long, but I found this and thought it might be of use.

Generalizations Are Great! © 2012 Dr. Eric J. Romero, PhD

Millions of people have been conditioned to perceive generalizations negatively. People commonly say in a dismissive tone, oh, that is just a generalization. Our politically correct environment has certainly contributed to this ill-informed idea; which limits our ability to learn and understand new situations. It also makes our thinking conventional and predictable. Given the fact that we live in a global environment characterized by relentless change, we need to become unconventional thinkers. Generalizations are a major component of the unconventional thinking needed to innovate.

Human behavior is not an exact science. Its not governed by the laws of physics, which apply 100% in the entire universe. Individuals vary a lot and groups of people vary within and among countries, regions, companies, etc. Therefore, you cannot say much about people that applies 100% of the time; there are no laws of human behavior.

We are left with generalizations (theories, assumptions, concepts, stereotypes, etc.) to explain human behavior. Our lives are based on a myriad of generalizations and assumptions. We all have generalizations about everyone we know; this person is funny, he is smart, they are too serious, etc. However, sometimes they surprise us and do unexpected things.

Despite the fact that these generalizations and assumptions dont always work, it's still entirely reasonable to use them. As long as they work most of the time (51% >), they are valid generalizations. We could not make the most basic decisions without them. College students assume they will get a job when they graduate, but many dont. When the light turns green, you can cross the street; but if a truck runs a red light, you shouldnt.

Finding one case where a generalization doesnt work doesnt invalidate it! Its not supposed to explain 100% of the time. There are no generalizations that apply to all people or things; that is why they are called generalizations! In fact, the only way to disprove a generalization is to demonstrate it doesnt work most (51% >) of the time.

To use generalizations intelligently, they have to be applied to only certain contexts and/or with an understanding of their limitations. This is what makes smart people smart. If we learn how to use a PC, we can generalize what we know to use an Apple laptop. The fact that they are different does not prevent us from using old knowledge when encountering something new. We do this everyday without thinking about it when dealing with new people and situations. The ability to think unconventionally is

enhanced by the use of generalizations. Applying old information and ideas in new ways creates some of the best innovations.

For example, Cirque du Soleil did not invent the basic elements of its product, it recombined existing ideas into an innovative entertainment experience worth billions. Part of its ability to do this was generalizing the fact that many people (not everyone) like theatrics, music, stunts, etc. Therefore, use generalizations and assumptions to leverage your old knowledge into new innovative ideas.

How to Use Generalizations

Do not use generalizations as if they were laws of physics. They are not supposed to

apply 100% of the time. Find their limitations and use them intelligently. When generalizations don't work, develop new explanations for what you see. Think of ways you can build positive customer generalizations about your brand. Find generalizations that you want to strengthen (e.g., Toyota quality) and others

that should be weakened and proven invalid with appropriate changes (e.g.,

Walmart low wages). Try to apply what you learned in one situation to another one. If it works, you have

generalized and saved time figuring out a new solution. Share what you have learned with others so they can benefit from your lessons.

Generalizations can save you time, money and effort when encountering new situations. They can also help you innovate. However, use them with care and attention to differences in the context to which they are applied. Even when generalizations dont work, they direct one to learning and finding creative solutions.

[Dr88s]

This has turned into a long winded discussion which is now about the semantics of generalizations.

 

No one is questioning the VALIDITY of generalizations.

 

If I judged someone negatively because of a generalization which had otherwise proven correct 999 of the last 1000 times but this one time was wrong, I would feel awful. Simple as that.

[I-missRichardTee]

This has turned into a long winded discussion which is now about the semantics of generalizations.

 

No one is questioning the VALIDITY of generalizations.

 

If I judged someone negatively because of a generalization which had otherwise proven correct 999 of the last 1000 times but this one time was wrong, I would feel awful. Simple as that.

 

That is your opinion... I was responding to things such as this ( found earlier in this thread ) "Tee, the reason why all generalizations are wrong is because they don't apply to everybody. Even if 98% of the people fit your generalization, then you're prejudging and being unfair to the other 2%."

 

Maybe it is out of context, but I felt generalization was "receiving a bad name".

[Dr88s]

Again semantics.

 

Take it in the context of this post about rich people treating their employees poorly and in general lacking compassion.

 

I think the generalization here would be more akin to J.Dan's (un-PC) example of generalizing criminal behaviour based on ethnicity (clearly wrong, regardless of scientific validity) rather than a generalization that, say, it is a bad idea to approach a stray animal behaving strangely and foaming at the mouth.

 

No one actually believes that ALL generalizations are wrong, period. Just that generalizations about PEOPLE based on race, gender, sexual preference, socioeconomic status, etc. may be really unfair when wrong.

 

 

[J. Dan]

Generalizations are bad when they are based on ONE criteria and on YOUR experiences. Like ALL RICH PEOPLE ARE A-Holes, because most of the gigs I've done for them (all 3, or 2 out of 3, or 3 out of 4) were bad. That's a bad generalization. It factors only ONE criteria, even though people are complex and have many many things that determine who they are. Also, it's an extremely small sample set, measured very subjectively by a single person by non-scientific means. An EXTREMELY far cry from anything Moonglow was talking about.

 

So yes, saying all Rich people are A-Holes, is by any measure you care to conjure up on the internet or anyplace else, a BAD GENERALIZATION.

[J. Dan]

I think the generalization here would be more akin to J.Dan's (un-PC) example of generalizing criminal behaviour based on ethnicity (clearly wrong, regardless of scientific validity) rather than a generalization that, say, it is a bad idea to approach a stray animal behaving strangely and foaming at the mouth.

 

Exactly why I picked that example - I think just about everybody would have no problem drawing the conclusion that it's wrong to make that generalization. Yet somehow if it comes down to economic means, all bets are off.

[I-missRichardTee]

Meant no offense...never said all rich are A holes. I was responding to your ( J Dan ) comment that all generalizations are bad or wrong, or untrue.

I even had said I knew a very rich man who was very nice. This conversation does not require any needless "heat". I think generalizations are getting a bad name in this culture. That is my strong opinion; I wanted to set that record straight. I already said, I had been prejudging the rich.. and would rethink it. Again my words of late, were about the idea of clarity about generalizations. Thank you

[Michael W]

Most of the people in this conversation probably have a lifestyle that is wealthier than 95% of the other human beings on the planet.

 

I live in a four-bedroom house in the suburbs, own several automobiles, put two kids through college, and have a retirement account. In the US and some other wealthier countries, I am decidedly middle class. Hundreds of millions of people would lump me in with the people who own $9 million houses, however.

 

It's all relative.

[Reezekeys]

In my experience, the really rich people I've done house parties for have one thing in common: a nice Steinway piano they never play!! Just did one last night and I have another one coming up Saturday. They will be the only gigs I've done this entire year on acoustic piano! Both clients are extremely nice, pay well, and encourage me to eat & drink as much as I want. And they want jazz and are happy with whatever I play.

 

OTOH I have had some terrible experiences with asshole club owners on $50 bar gigs!