{"id":32987,"date":"2025-06-25T07:57:57","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T11:57:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=32987"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:18:20","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T21:18:20","slug":"playing-for-free","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/25\/playing-for-free\/","title":{"rendered":"PLAYING FOR FREE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nMy wife tells me to never play for free. I do it anyway. Like the other day I played a luncheon for seniors; I did &#8220;Tumbalalaika,&#8221; &#8220;Moscow Nights,&#8221; &#8220;Fly Me to the Moon,&#8221; and klezmer. I was supposed to get a free lunch out of it, but the organizers ran out of food. Did I make a stink about that? No, I relished the slight. I went home, ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and mumbled about my temporary low status.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-33316\" src=\"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/feidman-205x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"205\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/feidman-205x300.jpg 205w, https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/home\/yiddis6\/public_html\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/feidman.jpg 424w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 205px) 100vw, 205px\" \/>At the gig I answered my phone in the middle of a tune. A friend had called to brief me on his bronchitis. I said, \u201cI\u2019m playing a gig right now and probably shouldn&#8217;t talk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why did I take the call? Because I was playing for free and not getting fed, so I drifted into unprofessional behavior.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Never play for free&#8221; &#8212; Alice.<\/p>\n<p>When I&#8217;m not fed at a freebie gig, I give the client what they paid for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; My wife tells me to never play for free. I do it anyway. Like the other day I played a luncheon for seniors; I did &#8220;Tumbalalaika,&#8221; &#8220;Moscow Nights,&#8221; &#8220;Fly Me to the Moon,&#8221; and klezmer. I was supposed to get a free lunch out of it, but the organizers ran out of food. Did [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32987"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33380,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32987\/revisions\/33380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}