By Clarence Yu
Contributor

THE scene is all too familiar for me: take any known club in the mainstream nowadays that features a show band. The band is composed of veterans who don’t look overly familiar, yet they play a blitzing repertoire of 70s, 80s and 90s pop standards, get a rousing ovation for the night, and disappear.

If the club owners happen to like them because they bring in the customers, I’ll likely be able to catch them again next week. If not, and I happen to like them, you’ll have to search high and low for their next gig, and at the next club.

Such is the plight of session musicians — virtually virtuosos (pardon the pun) at their instruments, oftentimes with years of experience under their belts, yet unable to find a steady gig, a record deal, a good name for themselves or a steady flow of income from playing their instruments.

I would think that with the years of experience that they have, most of these session musicians will have some sort of livelihood going for them now. Having known many session musicians myself, and for a time, playing the part of a wanna-be session musician, the surprising thing for me always or whenever I get to meet up with some of them I can call my friends is most of them still play to eat and live. This is both admirable and pitiful at the same time.

In the 70s and 80s, a local session musician was someone who could read charts and play when needed, oftentimes on the spot. These guys and girls would lay down the backing tracks for a popular singer’s new album. As it was deemed too costly for an artist to retain his or her own band, these session musicians or “hired guns” would often be the ones to record the backing tracks as per the composer and arranger’s wishes. The pay would be good enough for them to justify the “gig.” If they got lucky, the musician would show up on a TV show as the backing band of an artist, or if even luckier, would be part of the band backing up the artist at stadium shows in Manila and in the provinces. When the artist’s promotional tour would be over, so would the session musician’s job until the next call.

Nowadays, session musicians come from many schools: some are trained formally at some music conservatory gaining a reputation from references, while others are self-taught and gain their reputation from a lot of trial and error, auditions and word of mouth. Most of these musicians almost always have their own side projects or personal bands, with the dream of making it big on their own.

Other session musicians come from those who wanted to start out in the music business as part of a band with an identity, only to find out that the harshness of an industry that doesn’t always accept the band with the most original songs or those whose music almost sounds like the most popular band at the moment. Reality then hits and they take the next best thing to fame: a spot in a “soon to be big” showband.

Conversely, some session musicians come from known bands who, for some reason or another, stopped becoming popular, thus folding up the careers of the musicians comprising the band. These musicians enter the session world.

What is most common among them, however, is their idealism when they started playing: they set off wanting to “change” the industry, mostly as purists playing a specific type of genre. Those who want to play jazz all their life and find reality hitting them hard because of limited market acceptance swallow their musical integrity and resort to playing the flavor of the month pop. Similarly, those who started out as idols of rock guitar have to temper their playing, lessening the distortion on their guitars to play for disco bands.

This is all a matter of economics. Some of the lucky few have a business to fall back on, thus enabling them to play the music they want to play or some talent scout is able to recognize their talent and give them their break. However, ultimately, this is still largely dependent on the business side of the industry. If a talent guy spots talent but is unable to sustain the band’s income because of the lack of club bookings, then it will all end where it all started.

Personally, I have been lucky enough to have a day job to sustain my needs. Perhaps it is because my parents forced me to finish my college degree or perhaps because I wasn’t good enough to be a true-blue session musician but still enjoy playing my own kind of music when and where I desire.

Unfortunately, the same is not true for those whose reasons for playing all stem from a love of music and the belief that it could sustain their lives. This has become an all too bitter reality that turns into a vicious cycle. These musicians will take jobs in two to three working bands just to make ends meet.

What is most admirable about these musicians is their love for their craft and their resiliency despite poor pay, bad clubs, and songs they never imagined playing when they started out.

So whenever you see an “unknown” show band and watch major artists work with a backing band of session musicians, give them an extra applause for these unsung heroes of the night and the music industry. They are the ones who make our nights more enjoyable and our lives less dreary. One only hopes that we can find give them back what they deserve and to make the lucky ones like me feel less guilty about having the luxury of playing the kind of music we love.