This thread throws me back to my own teenage days... I graduated HS in 1966.
My parents knew I was making myself into a musician, but they tried their best to discourage me from
pursuing music as a career choice. It didn't work.
My father sat down with me and told me as clearly as he knew how:
"The Music business is one where a small percentage of performers at the top get EVERYTHING...
The rest of us get NOTHING..." ...so, don't even try to get anywhere. He wasn't wrong.
My father was a piano player, who was also a professor. He said I must make my "occupational adjustment
to the world..." which means figure out what you can do to get paid and do that to the best of your ability.
Like, get a job nah nah nah nah, nana nana nah nah...
Well, true to form, I did both. I got a job and worked my arse off, but I also kept my music present in my
life as much as I could with the Vietnam war on and the Sexual Revolution on the home front.
I had to keep my grades up, or else get drafted and sent to Vietnam like my brother.
I wish my parents had been willing to buy me an instrument. As it was, my father forbade me to take any
of his guitars to college. He figured I'd play music and mess with women and not study. He was right.
I had to buy my own guitar with money I made pumping fuel into motorboats at a nearby marina.
(I bought a Crest ES-335 copy, MIJ). It looked a lot like a Gibson, but was a POS. *shrugs. I could afford it...
My parents would never have considered or conceived of buying me an amp. I had to buy my own with
money I made working in a restaurant. That came a lot later. No support from home.
In some ways, these tribulations were good for me... I learned to be self reliant. I learned that I had to work
to get things I wanted. My parents would have approved of these lessons, if I had been able to articulate them
then. But I wasn't. I was insolent and rebellious, and was soon on my own.
So tell your son these things. Music doesn't pay much, except for the lucky few, or those who know someone.
I learned not to buy any guitar that couldn't pay for itself in short order. So I worked my whole career playing
used instruments. When you buy a used instrument, you get a lot more for your hard earned money than if you
buy new. I'm sure I made hundreds of dollars in my long and checkered career. Buy a used instrument, and figure out
why the owner sold it, and put that right, then rock. That's a good business plan.
Check out my thread in this section about rebuilding a used Yamaha RBX170 EW. One of the things I made plain
was that the instrument was quite serviceable as issued. It's an entry level bass, and a lot of the Yamahas and
Ibanez instruments will give good service to a young man starting out. Epiphone too.
I was delighted with how good the RBX170 sounded stock, through my Roland CB-60XL of course.
(any bass would sound great through that amp IMHO)
I devoted a whole thread to the improvements I made, but those were simply because I COULD do it
and I enjoyed doing it. After I got it set up, it sounded fine and would be quite useful for any genre IMHO.
Good luck with all this... I commend you for taking this interest in your son's music.
His music is likely to be very different from what you ever thought was cool. ...and that's the way it
should always be.
