. Reminds me of an incident that happened three years ago when I took my wife to Disney World to celebrate our anniversary.
I was denied entrance into Epcot because of the necklace that I always wear - even to this day - a 220 grain, 30 caliber projectile…… Was told by security to either remove it or leave. When I asked “Why”,…. The response I got was, “Because of what it represents”…. My comment back to them was, “As a Vietnam Vet, it represents the freedoms that I gave ever other person walking through these gates.”
Needless to say, I did not remove my necklace, and have never gone back to Disney again.
Whether you like it or not that’s kind of who they are.
The bottom line is if you are being paid to perform you should get a musicians card and check whether any permits are required if you don’t want to run into these issues.
A lot of people do not realize you need a musicians card to play paid gigs but in a court of law ignorance of the law is never a good defense.
Yesterday when I renewed mine I asked if music instructors had to be CFM members and the agent did not seem to have an answer but he thought you do need one, whether you are charging for your services or not. This may affect me, even though I do not charge, but based on past experience it’s not worth the hassle for $120CAN if I wish to continue. I do plan on looking into this next week in more depth.
Most of the gigs I played back then were in bars in Northern Ontario. Ever play in a bar that had a wire mesh screen between the musicians and the audience to protect the players from flying beer bottles. This was common in some of the hard rock mining towns like Sudbury and Timmins. Like you I gave up that scene years ago and am not interested in returning to it.
All that being said I have had more clashes related to local gathering by-law permits than with CFM enforcement officials, in the past 10 years or so. With local municipalities it seems to be all about money, money, money
I understand a job that may affect the health of yourself or others (plumber, electrician, etc.) being this extreme where the law is involved but other than that unless you have been previously warned it should never get to this.
The bands I was involved with were never asked for anything and they played Hard Rock, Rock and Roll Heaven, Lee’s Palace, Sound Academy, Horseshoe, Sneaky’s Dees and more. Guess they just got lucky or the CFM is just not that harsh about it. They could be now.
Just like that scene in Roadhouse with the late Jeff Healey.
Is this requirement something specific to different countries? Never heard of this before here where I’m from, but then again I’m not one to stay abreast of idiotic legalities and such…. Just my old age opinion speakin’…
So reading round on this I found that yes, in Canada it’s legal to force an employee to join a union as part of their employment.
This article cites a Supreme Court ruling from 1991
I’ve never played in a band let alone be paid. However I suspect that this is a case of a specific bylaw for a certain area / city forcing union membership.
Most cities / towns in Canada have by-laws. We can get up to 20 ft of snow in a winter (our annual snow clearing budget for a town of 2500 people is about $800,000!) so some of our city by-laws relate to that i.e you can’t shovel your driveway of snow and push it into the road.
It still feels very un rock n roll though to force membership for a pub band.
