Originally posted by Incidents Happen
work may be your life, but it certainly isnt mine. By all means, "Work" is definitely not playing guitar. The moment you think that guitar is "work" and not "play" is the moment it would lose its touch.
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Why can it not be both? The way I see it you have to 'work' at the guitar in order to be able to get to the 'play' idea of it. And for those of you who interpret 'work' as 'business,' playing the guitar sure as hell is a form of business...if you approach it the right way you can make good money from your music.

And think of this: whether you're a pro or not, if you've financed a lot of nice gear out of your day job, be it the career job you love or a supermarket job you took in order buy your dream guitar, then why should you're audience not give you something back for getting on stage and using that gear?

I'm not against free gigs by any means....I'm doing one myself this evening...its how you get yourself known and meet some other musicians, and above everything else its fun, but there are a lot of musicians who wont put any effort into promoting themselves and making any money from it, the kind who are prepared to do it for free too often because they love to do it....if you can deliver music thats worth seeing then people will pay for it because these days most people acknowledge that entertainment it not free.