All hail, the brandy of the damned!

Let’s see, given that I am a musician, there would be a few changes:

• I’d have all the time in the world to blog.
• I’d have more money since I’m not spending it on basses, amps, strings, and other bass maintenance accessories.
• I’d have even more money because I wouldn’t have to pay $12/mo for streaming services.
• I’d have a bigger retirement account because I wouldn’t have bought all those cassettes, albums, and CDs years ago. Luckily, I’m a little too young to have spent anything on eight track tapes.
• Up for grabs, but I probably wouldn’t have married my drummer husband. I may have had to settle for a surgeon or (shudder) a lawyer.

So yeah, more time, more money,  but nature abhorrs a vacuum. I’m sure I would have found some other creative way to spend my hard earned cash, like hookers and blow. 😜

All joking aside, it’s pretty difficult to imagine a world without music. My mom was a great pianist.  She really had a thing for Gershwin. She encouraged all of us to take up a musical instrument of some sort. Sis played cello. My brother played clarinet and guitar. I went brass and played trumpet from 5-12 grade, and picked up bass guitar when I was 13.

Music was, and still is, a big part of my life. While you can argue that you can’t miss what you don’t know, I think I would always have that weird feeling that something was missing.

And if you are wondering about the title of this piece…

George Bernard Shaw, in his 1903 play Man and Superman, Shaw wrote, “Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.”

Many people think he was referring specifically to jazz music, as it was the current rebellion to the waning Victorian times. It looks like he just didn’t like people who thought they were musicians.  Times haven’t changed much after all. 😂