Seinfeld On Stern

Jerry Seinfeld was on Howard Stern.  

Lefsetz posted about it earlier today too but I just got done listening to the entire thing and I need to chime in.

You need to listen to it.  It’s long.

If you don’t have a SiriusXM login, sign up for the free trial.

https://www.howardstern.com/show/2017/9/25/jerry-seinfeld-spills-wholl-be-riding-around-him-comedians-cars-getting-coffee-season-10/

Why aren’t you successful? Why isn’t your show compelling? Why don’t more people in more cities come and see your gig?

Because you don’t pay attention like Jerry.

Paying that close of attention to everything, to how the words sound, to the spaces in between the jokes, to learning how to truly read an audience and adjust accordingly…that’s scary.

That’s putting yourself on the hook, where either YOU fail or YOU succeed.

When I hear Jerry talk about how deep he dives in, it’s equally inspiring and exhausting.  He brings to the forefront what it would REALLY take.  It sounds completely romantic and absolutely mind numbing.  An depressingly thankless process until it’s not.

And don’t think that this level of thought and care and intention doesn’t apply to music, to gigs.  It does.

Don’t think that since you’re a musician that you’ll just keep “seeing what happens” when you get up there time after time and expect great steps forward, or even greatness itself.

You have to DIG. You have to really love digging into it.

p.s. And there’s a great bit at the end about The Beatles too that, when you hold yourself next to it, it’s a moment for you to be honest about if you have what it takes.



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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

You Can Be Good At Monopoly

In Monopoly you can be a victim of chance (specifically those pesky Chance cards) and have bad luck via a bad roll of the dice.

But in spite of this, there are people who are very good at Monopoly.  I’ve played against them.  

It’s easy to say ‘well, they’re lucky and I’m not’.  But after being beaten again and again…it’s not that luck doesn’t have anything to do it, or that un-luck has everything to do with it…

It’s that within the game of Monopoly there are many elements you can be good at.

So you can focus on the luck/unluck, which is definitely a real thing…or you can accept the fact that luck exists in the game and instead choose to focus on getting good at Monopoly.

Yes, this is like the music business.

You can talk on and on and on about this person getting lucky and that person getting lucky, and you being unlucky all the time.

Maybe you’re right. But so what?

Yeah, there’s luck involved.

But you can also be good at the music business.

Eventually you learn that focusing on luck (usually in the form of complaining) is only taking time away from getting good.

p.s. I’ve found in losing Monopoly I’ve lost the most money the most often by paying out on the purples and oranges.  So there’s gotta be something there.



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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Having The Best Album Of All Time

If you just finished making the best album of all time and you could somehow verify that it was indeed the best of all time…that means you would have arguably the best tool possible to get a lot of people to listen and buy all your stuff and make you super famous.

But the thing is, even if you really truly had the best album to release to the world…”Check out our album, it’s the best thing you’ll ever hear” is a horrible marketing strategy.

Consider these…

“My company can build you a brand new house in 4 days”

“We have the best steak you’ll ever eat and it only costs seventy-five cents”

“We’ll replace your transmission in 3 minutes and have you on your way”

Even if these statements are true (which would be great), we don’t want to believe them so we don’t.

They might be true, but nobody believes you.

I don’t want my house built in four days. I want my favorite steak ever to cost a lot of money. And I want you to wait at least a few hours before you tell me my car is ready to be picked up, because that new transmission was expensive.

If those companies can do those things that fast and at that level of quality, great!! And ultimately it might be to my benefit.  But they would have to be discovered, not advertised.

The truth is you probably don’t have the best album in the history of music, so you wouldn’t advertise as such, but you have a really good album…and too often the advertising is a version of “Listen to our album, it’s REALLY good”.

(or even more annoying, ambiguous and not-captivating “Listen to our album, we’re REALLY PROUD of it”)

That might be true, but I don’t care that you’re telling me it’s really good. Just like I wouldn’t even care if you told me it was the best of all time.

I want to DISCOVER that it’s a really amazing record (or the best in the world) via you telling me a story that doesn’t have anything to do with how great it is.

It might be true that it’s really great, but is that a useful thing to say?

True and useful can be two different tools in telling a story about your music and career.

So if you had the best album of all time up your sleeve…what are you going to say about it?

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

Paying For Your Show

Why are people paying to come to your show? 

I want to see Dave Grohl head bang.

I want to see Paul McCartney play the Hofner.

I want to see the Backstreet Boys dance in unison.

I want to see Lady Gaga do weird stuff.

Those THINGS are only important because of the feeling that they cause. i.e. The feeling I’m paying for (even though most people would say they’re simply paying for Dave Grohl’s head banging).

So what is it for you?  Even if you don’t know the physical representation yet, what is the feeling?

Envision the people at your last show, or your next show. Why did they pay money to see you?

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

A More Balanced Approach

As an artist you don’t need a more balanced approach.

You need more imbalance towards things that will get a reaction, things that will make you great, noticeable, memorable, remarkable.

Sharpening the edges rather than rounding them.

Stop running away from and down playing the thing you’re best at.

We aren’t best at the thing your best at. We need you to be. 

It’s the imbalance, the sharp edges that open all the doors. (The door keepers might try and tell you otherwise)

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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com

The Reason Everything Gets Easier

The Reason Everything Gets Easier

It was hard to live without caffeine and now it’s easier.

Moving to a new city where garbage pick up is Tuesday and not Wednesday used to be really hard to remember, but now it’s easier.

Writing every day used to be nearly impossible, and then it got easier.

The reason why things get easier and easy is because they get normal…and normal is easy…or at least has an ease to normal.

So that’s part of the task, changing your definition of normal…while understanding that the change you seek will be painful, annoying, inconvenient, unpopular, especially at first…and then it will get easier.

p.s. The Reason (Almost) Everything Gets Easier

If a champion marathon runner went what I go through every time I run one mile, there’s no way they would commit themselves to a life of running.  It’s awful and demoralizing for me, because I don’t do it often enough.  But for them, mile one got a lot easier over time. 

However, mile 26 is always suppose to be difficult, that’s the whole point…that’s why you get into marathon running in the first place is BECAUSE the 26th mile is the type of pain you like.  The pain of the 26th mile is not meant to grow into ease. So if you hate the pain of the 26th mile you shouldn’t try to be a champion marathon runner. 



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I’m always interested in your perspective, whether affirming or dissenting. Continue the conversation anytime: gabethebassplayer@gmail.com