Paisley Beebe

Paisley Beebe, originally uploaded by grace_bashly.

Well SLB5 what a blast! it was laggy as all get out! hard to get Freddy on the stage..and keep him there…and we got greifed by kids, (I call them kids cause no real Adult would go to that much trouble..) who obviously didn’t predict the lagg as most of their puerile particles were all Grey and their efforts to disrupt went almost unnoticed but thats par for the course on such a high profile event. I have no idea how many people were in the 4 sims but I think it was over 70 or 80 hard to look at the map without crashing, Thanks to Grace Bashly for this great pic!

I heard through one of my Assistants Abella a comment from an audience member, that I ought to be singing more in SL and some of you may have noticed that I don’t sing on SL as much as some others do or as much as I used too. Many that know my situation, and my principles in SL about my live music, know why this is. Ideally I’d like to sing at least once a week, 2 at most. My TV show and production company is taking quite a bit of my time as its still in its early days and we have to keep improving it, and making it financially viable.

It costs me money to sing in SL most times. My Band that I bring in to SL with the exception of the wonderful Freddy (my RL hubby) are the highest ranked professionals in Australia, and that’s not spin its actually true, and I cannot expect them to play for $3 or for nothing, they don’t sell many Cd’s online (if any!) most of them come from a different era, where they had a record company behind them taking care of all that and they just haven’t come into the modern age yet with self distribution despite my coaching and many of them aren’t making Record Company recordings any more there is no market for it in Australia. So I pay them..I pay them each between 50 and 70 US dollars an hour to play for me. As I’m the one getting most of the benefit here. Thats really pocket money for them, but they are playing for me during our daytime or weekend when they don’t have RL gigs and they are friends and they love to do SL gigs, its hassle free, they can wear their trackies if they want, and we have fun! its like a live radio broadcast for them, and they love that they get to play for people who are really listening to them, people who really appreciate their skill and talent rather then playing a gig in RL where they are basically background music, which is what our industry here in Australia is reduced to now, for most of the jazz players in Australia. In Sydney we have no live music venues to play in any more, there is about maybe 4 or 5 places that are not just jazz venues and the same small group of people play them every week…

So there you have it. I can’t afford to play in SL any more than I am. If I play in SL with Freddy and I get tips then I’m ahead..more or less and I will do that for a new and big crowd. But I want to play with my RL professional band, and that costs me between 50 and 140 US dollars each time I play, so I have to ask for fees to cover at least that, without usually taking any income for my self..

All of that because I want to enjoy my gigs and for me singing with a backing track doesn’t cut it, I need the improvisation of the other band members its not jazz for me without that, its the essence of jazz to improvise.

So I will still be singing on SL, I will do Charity events and paying gigs. but unless I get offered a lot of paying gigs you will only see me when I can afford to play basically.

Please visit the SLB5 birthday party support all the artists out there we need to spread the good word of live music on the grid you can all help

warmly Paisley