You know there was a time when I was younger and I was a great touring musician in a very big band (best guitarist in the world my fans would say) that I would be flying in airplanes all over the UK and Europe. I still do but now I have to pay for it myself. Seems relatively cheaper now but I have never understand this online booking stuff! Guess I need a computer for that huh? Oh well.

Some things never change about airlines though:

1: The cheap crappy seats and conditions in cattle class,
2: the risk you take from dodgy accountants and greedy CEOs using crappy bits on the planes when they maintain them,
3: the screaming kid, who always sits beside, in front of or behind you,
4: the absolute tripe written in the airline magazine in the seat pocket.

What this got to do with music? Well quite a bit you see, the music industry, at least the folks who make the equipment and guitars etc still care about what they make. They still have passion thebottom line isn’t the ONLY thing. We are lucky that the CEOs of most musical corporations were once and are still musicians. Now compare that to most other industries, like airlines and you have a big difference. It is all about the numbers and the almighty $$$$$.

Do you think the guys running the airlines are ex pilots? No bloody way! The pilots hate the airlines as much as we do and the CEOs hate the pilots. They don’t give a shit if they are good pilots or not, it’s all about:

Just get the plane in the air and stay on time, if it crashes (usually because we used a $2.00 part on the last maintenance inspection rather than the $200.00 part we were supposed to use), well bad bloody luck, we are insured. We will blame the pilot anyway if we have a crash as they are usually not alive to defend themselves. Do we give a shit about dead and burning passengers? NO! Mind you we will go on CNN and BBC and pretend, with concerned and practiced expressions of sorrow that we are but we don’t give a toss really.

Now the guys running the show at guitar factories DO give a toss, they DO care whether people like the guitars/amps etc and that they will produce a good product. Its not all about the $$$ (mind you in the past it WAS and nearly resulted in the big F and G boys going broke but that’s another story).

Anyway ya all, looks I has done one or two many beers tonight and I am going off track about my airline story.

Ok where was I? Oh yes!

You know what? Sod it!!! I am going to sleep now. I will write more later on this bounced cheque I just made out to BA and give it to one of the Axebay lads to download upload or whatever it is they do.

Axel.