My good bad and ugly are all the same.
People + Music.
I’ve had plenty of Bad and Ugly moments with great people and some baaaaaad music. Or ugly moments with an audience. Or the event. Or the club owner.
Sometimes the people in the band are the ones that make it all worth while.
Sometimes they are the Bad and the Ugly.
It’s a revolving set of circumstances.
This reminds me of the 3 aspects to balance the worthiness of any musical endeavor.
The Music.
The Money.
The Hang.
(as in, if the hang is terrible and the music is bad, the money had better be spectacular. And if the hang is so good, who cares about the money and the music!)
I feel like the Good Band and Ugly fit with this trinity pretty well.
We had some various uglies but for us this one was the biggie. We were never actually “professional” because we never got paid for our gigs - well not with cash anyway
There are tons of ways that you can be active with music, be it with a band or not! Many bands require a ton of work, dedication, the right people and some luck to even just get to the foundational gigging level. It’s like trying to manage a relationship with multiple people at the same time.
The internet has opened up a TON of access to other things such as posting videos, expanding your presence to a global audience, opportunity to be in full control of your craft. You can also collaborate and record your stuff from home in high quality.
Being in a band can be a ton of fun in the right setting or a headache in the wrong one. Just do what makes you happy!
Same here. I’ve been in a band for five years and generally make $80-100 per three hour gig—it’s just the economics of the area in which we live. However, we’re playing about 50 gigs a year, and it’s honestly mostly great fun, so we all feel pretty fortunate to have this opportunity to share our music with folks—to see their joy—that’s the awesome part! ( BTW, we’re all retired—ages 57-74–three guys and two of us women.)
The “being” in a band part ? There are a lot of relationships in a band “family”! Every family has its issues, but we laugh a lot and can appreciate each other. The glue that binds us binds us best when keep egos at bay and focus on how blessed we are to be doing what we’re doing in retirement. I picked up the bass four years ago at 54 years old and I’m in an active band, for crying out loud! I am thrilled and thankful every day! The fun far outweighs any frustrations!
Truth. It’s complicated. Overall I consider myself very grateful for our band—it’s mostly daisies with some thorns that occasionally pop up, but we find our way through.
For us there was definitely people drama, mostly around band members girlfriends being relatively portable between band members with rather unfortunate timing. But generally we were all best friends (despite having poor impulse control) so people were also the best part for us.
Haha - I do remember those days years ago!! My BIL who played drums in several bands married the lead singer, and had a kid…. He changed bands and ended up getting divorced from her and remarried to the lead singer of the new band who was a girlfriend of one of the guitar players in the band…. Again, after having a kid together with her, they divorced so he payed alimony and child support to two former wives…. Although I do believe he suffers from PTSD over those two experiences, he realized that hooking up with band members girlfriends wasn’t such a good idea - now he’s married to one of the bands “groupies” and decided to quit playing music all together…
I am thrilled and thankful every day! The fun far outweighs any frustrations! 
