I'm Adam Manus.

And you're listening to the You'll Hear It Podcast. Today we're going to talk about

how to survive a gig with awful players. Subtitle, the first 10 years of Adam's career.

What year are we in now? Don't worry about it. Okay, we're past 10, though.

All right, good.

Okay, so these are going to, look, we've all been there. Okay, so we just want to help you survive. If it's a group of awful players, you are not going to thrive most likely. I mean, you have to be strong, strong mentally and physically. So we're going to just try to help you give you some tips on how to survive the gig without killing anybody. Or that might be number seven. I don't know. I don't think so, though. Okay, so the first tip is leave the gig. Come on. Oh, I should have saved that for the end. Just go right on the gate with leave the gig. I mean, if you can identify that they're horrible at the beginning, just leave, you know. I mean, abandoned ship, as long as you're not the captain, you know what I mean? No, if you got on a cruise ship and you see that there's an incompetency with the crew and the captain, are you going to stay on there? No. Exactly. So you abandon ship. Now, if you're the captain, you've got to go down with the ship. Yeah, yeah, you got to go down with the ship. So, I mean, if you're the leader of the gig and you've assembled some horrible players, shame on you, but then you've got to stay there and survive it. But otherwise, leave the gig. Why not? It's not a brain surgery. It seems drastic, but hilarious.

So my first, this is one I use quite often or have in the past. And that's to tell the crappy players to play soft. This one works every time. Right. Listen, this is a viping technique. It's old school. Right. But you basically, you whisper in the drummer's here at the first set break, hey, can you just maybe play a lot? Maybe brushes all night? I like my better. I just leave. I don't even have to say it. You'd be nice about it. You're like, you know, I'm kind of feeling brushes for this room. It just fits the vibe of the room better. Yeah. I like it. Okay. Well, along those lines, you could tell the crappy players to just listen to you all night. Okay? And then you play soft, so they have to play even softer. Say, really check, you know, just check out what I'm doing. I want you to listen really close for a lot of cues. Then they can't be as aggressive with their crappiness. Is this one of those things, though, this whole list?

Is this one of those things that's like, if you keep playing with gigs where it's with crappy players, you have to look in the mirror a little bit? Exactly. Wait a minute. Am I one of the crappy players? The crap will get on you. Believe me. That's why you've got to be aggressive with these techniques. Come on now. All right. Number four is to think of a happy place.

I like to think of my

great uncle Bob's farm up near Hannibal, Missouri, where he used to have this beautiful German

shepherd that would roam the fields, and we would go fishing, and then, oh, we're playing

Stella by Starlight. Oh. Yep. Yeah. So you're kind of transporting yourself to another place.

It's an out-of-body experience.

You're pretending that you're not, you know, that you're not in the big pile of steaming crap that you actually are.

I like it.

I love when we do our snarky list.

That's right.

My favorite episodes by far.

Okay, so here's another one.

Wear a disguise.

Thus minimizing the, the chances that you'll be associated with these horrible places. No, this is a serious thing here. You don't want to, you know, guilt by association, right? I mean, if you're part of a jazz crime, you want to put a ski mask on or something,

then don't let anyone see you be part of that group. If you ever see like a killing piano player with a long black wig. Yeah. That's probably Peter Martin. That's right. Well, I mean, think about it.

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