[Dixielandjazz] Pay Scales & other administrative nonsense

[Ministry of Jazz]

Shalom Jazz Fans,

I have found administrative BS to be one of the most formidable obstacles to
good music in today's world. Good grief! Union regulations, tax reporting
requirements, copyright licenses, receipts, insurance, contracts, yada,
yada, yada...

Artists, musicians, and other people who are generally creative, innovative,
and people-oriented, tend NOT to be the kind of people who are good at
record keeping, filing, filling out forms, and so on. I wonder how much
great music and art gets stifled because the poor proverbial starving artist
or musician cannot meet the administrative requirements to get his work on
the map, and more to the point, to get paid for it so he can do more. I
wonder how many great "copyrighted" tunes fade into obscurity because in
order to perform them in public for pay, the venues and the performers must
pay for licenses and navigate complicated legal procedures in order not to
get sued or arrested. Certainly there is a point where all these things
become necessary, and maybe even beneficial to the people who reach that
point. But a great many of us troops who work the front lines never reach
that point in our erstwhile careers, though the world would be the poorer or
it if we were not out doing our thing.

When I read You Tube's statement about copyright as it relates to user
submissions, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. It said something like,
one must not post any material that is not the sole exclusive property of
the one posting it. Do not post TV shows, videos of concerts, shows, videos
containing songs written or performed by others [in other words, don't
bother posting anything that might have some value or be of genuine interest
to other viewers]. One should post videos that contain only completely
original material, such as you goofing around with your friends [in other
words, post only purely inane baloney that is not even worth your filming or
viewing, much less anyone else's]. I tried to find this statement in their
terms of use and it seems it is not there anymore. But what so-called
copyright protection does in effect is to protect the public from access to
most anything of cultural value produced in the past 100 years, unless they
have negotiated with a lawyer to acquire the rights to perform the material
or to view it. Therefore, what we get is the spoon-fed pablum that comes to
us courtesy of the entertainment and broadcast industries, while great
classic or potentially classic material dies on the shelf.

Here in Israel I make relatively little annual income. Yet I cannot simply
report what I make at year end and pay my taxes. In order to work as a
self-employed artist, I am required to open accounts with the income tax
office, the VAT (sales tax) office, the National Insurance (Social Security)
people, and see to my own health insurance and retirement, disability
insurance, etc. If I get sick or injured and can't work, the "system" is not
there for me like it is for employees in a company. Every musician or roadie
I hire to work with me must do the same, so they can give me legal receipts
(or in some cases, each musician gives the customer a separate receipt so
nobody incurs a high tax obligation from receipting the whole gig). My
accountant says I can only work with musicians who have such legal accounts
and receipts. Wonderful. I told him, go find me 5 musicians in the city who
have this, and can play the music, and want to work with me, and are
available for any particular gig. Even to play on the street, I am
technically supposed to give a receipt to each person who puts a tip in my
hat or buys a CD. I have had to improvise a system to ensure that my income
gets reported and taxes paid, that is as transparent as possible to my
audiences. But it's not fully kosher, and if I ever get audited, the tax
guys won't like it. I say, fine, then let them live in a world without live
music.

My alternative is to incorporate and become a legal employer, and the rest
of the band will be my employees. Then I get to pay their health insurance,
paid vacations, manage their taxes for them, cover their transportation to
and from gigs, provide meals if the gig is long enough, well, you get the
idea. And they still want to split the pay equally among the players!

Union breaks, overtime, maximum set-up and break-down times, and all that,
only put me in a straight jacket so I can't give the customer what he's
paying for. We like to come early to a gig, leaving plenty of time for
relaxed set-up before the audience arrives, and also to schmooze with the
customers and get acquainted, get a good sense of what they want to happen
at their event and when, even help them plan the schedule. I will not ruin
someone's once in a lifetime wedding or bar mitzvah party if the dancing
goes on for an hour and a quarter, when I was supposed to get a 10 minute
break after 50 minutes. If they want to dance, we keep playing. If the party
goes long, we have arranged in advance how much extra it will cost for the
band to stay on the job. I will not play the extra hour, and then have an
argument with the customer about extra pay after the party is over. And
shame on me if I didn't make this arrangement in advance. Then I'll eat the
difference. A happy customer often more than makes it up with a good tip. At
one recent small private party, the host came to me during the event and
asked if we ate. Until then there was not a good time to stop playing and
sit and eat. That came later when the dedications and speeches started. I
smiled and told him he didn't pay us to come and eat. (We did take a short
break and get drinks.) In the end he added some 25% to our fee as a tip. So,
I can eat at home.

In short (well, maybe too late for that!), I do not want the union or the
government to protect me from these things, and in the process to make
entertainment at an event a chore instead of a joy. We are in the business
of making people happy. If we cannot do that because of administrative
restrictions, than I maybe should have been an accountant.

Blessings,

Elazar "Don't Fence Me In" Brandt
Dr. Jazz Dixieland Band
Tekiya Trumpet Ensemble
Jerusalem, Israel
www.israel.net/ministry-of-jazz
+972-2-679-2537