Starving Artists

The story goes that four musicians were hired to do a film shoot.  When the jobbing scene gets to slow down, it's a good idea to consider something temporary while you wait for the phone to ring.   Some musicians welcome these opportunities (film shoots) as an alternative to doing nothing. As they say, "Money is money."

Sometimes on these locations you can run into some very astute musicians that just happen to be experiencing a slow period of employment and have agreed to a "film shoot" as something to do.   It's better to do a movie than do nothing and complain about it. Sometimes you luck out with these film shoots by being hired for several days.  Three days work can be a decent chunk of money for just drinking a lot of coffee and occasionally being called to the set.

These four musicians just happen to find themselves in just such a situation. They were hired for three days, which turned out to be an appreciated payday.

On the last day of the "shoot" the director came over to thank them for their services and mentioned, "We have an important shooting schedule tomorrow and we need a prop for this one particular scene. Actually what we need is an expensive, impressive car and we just didn't plan on needing one.   I realize this is out of the ordinary but do any of you by chance drive a luxury car that you think would be suitable that we could rent. The rental fees are substantial and you might find it worth your while to loan it to us. It would be covered by insurance and we would take good care of it."

Now musicians are supposed be just like average citizens meaning, they are just managing to make ends meet.  Taking it a step further, this is how the expression "starving artist" came about. However, this time the situation turned out to be a bit different.  One of the musicians said he drove a recent Ford Mustang convertible, two of them drove a Mercedes and the bass player had a Rolls Royce parked in the Studio car lot. 

So much for musicians that are just getting by. Jimmy Amaro who is a bass player in Toronto told me this story, as he owned the Rolls Royce I just mentioned. A few years back Jimmy was the leader of a small group that did a daily television show that ran for several years.

Incidentally, Jimmy didn't find the Rolls very reliable. He's now back to driving a Mercedes

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