Tales From My Past - The Rainbow

Some people have a certain talent and other people aspire to it.  This was never more apparent to me than when I went with a friend of mine to the Rainbow in LA.
  For those not 'clued in' the Rainbow is a restaurant/bar/tiny music venue on Sodom's main street, Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles, Caliornia.  This was the last place John Belushi ate before he went back to the Chateau Marmont and let some chick inject him with a lethal cocktail of cocaine and heroin.  The Rainbow kind of wears that last meal like a badge of honor, which tells you all you need to know about Los Angeles.
  In any event, musicians can book some time in the Rainbow's upstairs 'space,' which is - no lie - their barely-converted attic.  There's room for, at best, ten people, though more often crowd in.  When the Rainbow doesn't have a real musician booked, they'll let aspiring musicians have an hour.  For free, they don't pay non-professionals.
  Which is where my friend Sergio* comes in.  Sergio* was an intellectual property attorney by day, a poet-with-a-soul-and-guitar by night.  His undergrad degree was in poetry.  Really.  So he thought of himself as a singer/songwriter like James Taylor.  He managed to get one of the weekday free-hours at the Rainbow and invited his friends to come.  So I did.  A trek to Hollywood at night is always a measure of your show of support for your friends.
  Sergio* set up, alone on the tiny stage, and he did his best.  He let his reedy voice ring out, he stumbled through the chords on his ill-tuned guitar, and he muscled through.  He was... okay.  It was his first live performance ever and it wasn't miserable and he didn't completely embarrass himself.  While it wasn't terrible, it wasn't all that good either.  Meh.
  Then the next two dudes started to set up.  This was about 11 PM on a Wednesday, and these two guys had clearly just gotten up.  Or come to.  Still with bed-head and still in the clothes they had passed out in the night before.  They had a bass drum, a snare, a high-hat, and one guitar.  Two dudes and a minimalist drum set-up.
   They killed.
   I mean it, they tore the place down, built it back up, and tore it down again.  They were fantastic, amazing, and incredible.  They put Sergio* to shame.  These two guys were musicians. Real ones.  Sergio* was just an attorney with a guitar.
   From that moment on I've always tried to measure people's aspirations versus their talents.  Sergio* had grand aspirations and a bit of talent.  I don't know what kind of aspirations those two LA wastoids had, but they had talent for music like I've seldom seen.  I wish I would have written down their names, so I could see where they are now.  Dead or millionaires, I'm guessing.
   It's an important lesson.  Know your talents, and recognize your aspirations.  If your talents overlap your aspirations you're going to be successful.  If the two are not related you'll probably spend years chasing a dream you're just not suited to.


* not his real name.  I swear.