I hate to put yet another music post here, but what the heck…I played last night at a reception at an online journalism convention in the District, which was pleasant enough, but it also was a riot because it involved playing in front of a whole parade of bosses past and present. There had to have been a dozen current and ex-bosses there, and only two of them had ever heard me play, and they all were pretty much shocked. I’m a pretty serious guy at work and it’s really hard for people to connect the person they see at the office to the person they see at a gig, and when they hear I play harmonica, well, that’s not like playing a real instrument, is it?

When your co-workers see you, they always muse about how much fun it must be to play music…and it is, of course, but the fans are never around when you have to lug a few hundred pounds of equipment after the gig is over. That’s what I always tell people: “I play music for free, but I want to get paid for hauling the gear.”