Being on stage as a musician your job isn't actually to play well. Your job is to entertain and be the official party leader. Bands that do that well will always get more gigs than bands that don't. Entertaining comes way before chops to be a successful bar band, or a successful anything really. The first few times you get on stage you're anywhere from vaguely nervous to crawl off stage with a load in your panties leaving a trail of vomit. Here's an experiment: Go to a busy restaurant, climb up on a table and just stand there for a minute. The place goes quiet and everybody stares at you expectantly. The staff start to rush over to kick your wacky ass out. You begin to feel fear and turn red as your adrenal gland starts squirting freak juice into your system. This manifests itself as intense embarrassment. Inside you head there's an ancient part of the brain called the Medulla Oblongata. This little lizard brain is what drove the bus for millions of years while we slithered and oozed all primordial like. It's hard wired with all kinds of stuff to survive the perils of one billion B.C. One of the big rules of survival is never single yourself out from the herd because you will be eaten if you do. This part of the brain is in charge of the adrenal gland that flings the shit at the fan. Then we evolved a bunch of new brain bits to get laid more and rape the planet etc. Normally the old retired medulla oblongata is content to let the new guys take over bus driving duties, until we get up on a table in a restaurant to just stand there. Then it wakes up and starts screaming, "WTF ARE YOU DOING?!? RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!" Your forebrain knows that by singling yourself out from the herd there's little chance of being eaten by predators, but the old retired fella is freaking right the fuck out. Now, one might think if it's a proper stage and people are expecting someone will get up there you wouldn't feel the same way as in the restaurant, but your medulla oblongata doesn't think that at all. You look around with your fancy new brain bits to see if anyone's watching you play, but the old guy is scanning the Savannah for lions and tigers and sending panic juice through the system and out your ass. When you first start out on stage you wait for the forebrain to convince the old guy we ain't gonna be dinner for a Saber Tooth Tiger and to stfu. That internal battle usually manifests itself as shoe gazing, which you shouldn't do because you're there to entertain. After a while you get used to everybody looking at you and you can strut proudly around doing scissor kicks with your newly developed sphincter muscles holding everything in like a champ. Luckily enough, while you wait for the old guy to settle down, there's alcohol. Being on stage is way easier when you're half shitfaced or wired up in some way. pretty much every player I know has fought with addiction and/or alcoholism. Most are still fighting, some are winning, some are losing. Part of the attraction for playing out and being on stage is the big endless party. In fact, when you're young it's often the main attraction. There's not many jobs where you can drink your face right off your head and get paid to do it. Falling down or throwing up on stage is largely frowned upon, depending on the venue. You might should be aware of this potentially life shattering aspect of playing and pay attention to it. I've lost more than a few good friends to drinking and dope. I won't say you shouldn't drink or puff a doob, just be careful and respect the potential for doom. Needless to say any dope that's addictive and can take over driving the bus should be absolutely avoided at all costs. Coke, junk, crack, meth, whatever, stay away from it. I mean, duh. Coke is the most dangerous in some ways because some can do it for a while then give it up, and some can't and get wired to it. I'm not saying do or don't, that's your decision and I'm not here to lecture, just be aware and dump it at the first sign of trouble. Musicians see more than a few cliff edges as we wend our way through the gig jungle. The thing to keep in mind is when you're shitfaced you do stupid stuff. But for the grace of God there go any one of us. Most of Hastings and Main is populated with people who made a few mistakes when they were shitfaced. Being a homeless crack or meth addict is not usually a planned life path. So in a nutshell, party it up if you want, but don't be an idiot. You should realize that eventually you'll have to choose between playing sober on stage or like most players, party for a few years then shuffle music to the back burner and concentrate on jobs and a life in general. If drinking is a major component of playing live, you either burn out, or worse, don't burn out and keep boozing and doping. On the bright side, I think we're gonna see some changes in the paradigm. A room full of people drinking has a vibe, like a more base level of intelligence and hilarity, and much strut and rut hormonal woohoo. A room full of stoners is waaaay different. I played at Lamb's Breath once, a now defunct toker restaurant where bongs were provided at every table. It was exceedingly weird because the vaguely violent undercurrent was completely gone. A way more relaxed vibe, and I suspect if that type of thing develops it will change the gig scene and fuel some new directions in pop genres. Drunks are all about the image and aggression, stoners are more about the music and introspective groovination. So this is all fine and mostly a no brainer ya? Well there's one more component to dope and music that should be pointed out. Image is a fairly important component to making money in music at all levels. Possibly even more important than talent or ability these days. Show is actually more important than talent or chops, but show and image are two completely separate things. To put on a good show you have some flexibility with regards to image. Entertainment comes in all styles of image. It's all great until you go for the standard morose and depressed beaten by a hard life image that media loves to milk endlessly. Cobaine, Joplin, Hendrix, all paraded grandly before you as shining examples of continued fame through overdose and suicide. Act the way you want to be and soon you'll be it. Media knows that honesty sells and want to exploit that into dollars. The trouble is honesty is not often definable and you can't apply a formula to it. Hence they can't package it and jam it down our throats. Lots of rich and famous people act all depressed but nobody buys it because they're rich and famous. Until they kill themselves. Then you know they were honestly fucked. Overdose and suicide are proof of artistry and therefore easily packaged. So when some poor fucker offs himself for the cause they can pack that up and sell the shit out of it. Depression and drug abuse is quite popular with those hoping to be famous. It's way easier to look all wounded and depressed than leap about being entertaining. Here's the thing about image. Fake it. No amount of immersion into the image will help you, in fact it will hinder because nobody will take a chance on you if you're doped up and depressed. They will however take the chance if they know you're a dependable pro who looks and acts the image, but doesn't live it. Everybody wants to be a beautiful disaster. The reality is the disaster ain't beautiful at all. And more to the point, it won't help your playing or your career. In the real world people run away from addiction and depression or any of the traditional wounded arteest bullshit. Always remember, media is all bullshit and so is image. Play the part, don't live it. Image can be any old thing you want as evidenced by this guy. Anyways, I'm boring my own self, so I can just imagine the catatonia I'm inducing for those of you reading this far. Fortunately I'm probably alone down here. In fact, to prove it, if you book some time and mention this sad ending to a boring lecture/rant, I'll give you 5$ off my rate. 20 per hour instead of 25. HA! Take that no one!