Robbie sees a Social Media Bandwagon

Thanks to Duct Tape Marketing for this eye-catching picture.

These helpful social media experts are springing up like weeds, to coin a phrase.  Actually, we’re coining very few new phrases these days.  Especially when it comes to learning how to use social media.

Imagine that The Emperors New Clothes is finally addressing today’s housing bubble.  Or the dot com bubble or many others before that.  Sure looks like the “how to use social media” market is inflating.

Are you sensing a bubble in the number of social media experts these days?  SO many gurus are hustling their own programs and books, teaching us how to use social media — blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and now Google +.

I do my best to learn how to use social media, and I mean no disrespect to any of these experts, but can they all be recommending unique strategies?  Or is everyone describing the same small number of best practices and tips?  And are the rest of us just seeking the style of teaching that suits us best?

One of these days, I expect we’ll all post perfect blogs and status updates in the blink of an eye, optimized automatically. We won’t bother to learn how to use social media best practices — they’ll be handled by software.

The money follows the market.  How many portable tape cassette players are being made these days?  Want to get into that market?  Want to triumph in a Ponzi scheme?  Get on board early, while there’s still a market.

God bless it, our competitive marketplace never gives up.  Now, or soon, we will see new companies teaching entrepreneurs how to be social media gurus.  They’ll be selling books and programs to people who’ll all wind up selling essentially identical books and programs.  Until the “guru” market collapses.

How much time and treasure do you devote to learning how to use social media? Does it all pay off?

Thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate your interest and hope you get a few good ideas here.  Any questions or suggestions?  Please continue this conversation. I’ll reply to you, and so will other readers who share your interest.  You’ll make new connections.  Here are four things you can do:

•  ”COMMENT” (Tell me your thoughts in the “Comment” box below),
•  ”LIKE” this post (Click the “+1” and “Like” buttons).  Give me your vote,
•  ”SHARE” (Tell your friends by Email or post on Google+, Facebook, Twitter),
•  ”SUBSCRIBE” to this blog for more of my thoughts (Click the “RSS”).

The Magnolia Jazz Band entertains at weddings and parties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are nearby, you’ll love catching us in action, seeing and hearing us create a great mood.  For now, please join our Facebook fans to receive daily tips for planning music and to receive reminders for our public events.

Capture the power of vivid language. You’ll communicate more effectively and clarify your thoughts, to yourself as well as to others.

I am thinking about this right now, as I prepare to write a few posts on social media. Vivid language must be concise, active, and colorful.  Concrete and sensory.  Short and sweet.

Social media presents a challenge.  Twitter gives me only 140 characters to convey a thought.  People tell me they’re inclined to skip over a Facebook post exceeding a few brief lines.  Busy blog readers seem to prefer outlines, subheads, and bulleted lists.

To pack my writing with vivid language, I proofread and edit to make my point clear, strong, and memorable.  However, in the swirl of an actual conversation, I often ramble on, embellishing details.  Adding color will sometimes lend helpful support, but sometimes defuse my “punch line”.

So there is an ideal time and place for vivid language.  For me, and perhaps for you, much of my speaking craves an extra dash of it.

Especially when I speak with clients who love creating mental pictures of whatever they want. But also in the stories I tell friends and colleagues, vivid language can “seal the deal”, as they say.

One of my favorite books from Freshman English is the Elements of Style.  After all these years, I still consult my old copy. I recommend you study it, too.  It’s a wonderful little book, filled with gems of advice for creating vivid language.

Here is an example.

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”

Challenge yourself:  Whether you’re polishing a social media post, enhancing a sales conversation, or animating a casual story, embrace vivid language.

Thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate your interest and hope you get a few good ideas here.  Any questions or suggestions?  Please continue this conversation. I’ll reply to you, and so will other readers who share your interest.  You’ll make new connections.  Here are four things you can do:

•  ”COMMENT” (Tell me your thoughts in the “Comment” box below),
•  ”LIKE” this post (Click the “+1” and “Like” buttons).  Give me your vote,
•  ”SHARE” (Tell your friends by Email or post on Google+, Facebook, Twitter),
•  ”SUBSCRIBE” to this blog for more of my thoughts (Click the “RSS”).

The Magnolia Jazz Band entertains at weddings and parties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are nearby, you’ll love catching us in action, seeing and hearing us create a great mood.  For now, please join our Facebook fans to receive daily tips for planning music and to receive reminders for our public events.

Right now I’m marketing my band with an internet meme (look it up).  Actually I’m playing a game — a blogger helping lots of bloggers get lots more readers by posting this message and hoping it goes viral.

Here’s how it works.  My friend Stacie Tamaki, blogger at The Flirty Guide, tagged me in an internet meme, and I’m following the rules.  This is a game with only five rules:

1. You must post these rules in your blog.
2. You must choose 11 bloggers to tag and link to them in your post.
3. You must go to each blogger’s page and mention that you have tagged them.
4. You must post 11 interesting things about yourself on your blog.
5. You must answer the questions the “tagger” listed for you, and then create 11 new questions for the people you tag.

11 of my friends with outstanding blogs:
Check each of these blogs and their comments below, to see their response to my “tag”.  Leave each a comment on their blog and on their comment below.

Duncan Reyes (f. Duncan Reyes Events by Design)
Amy Frugoli (Twitterpated Weddings)
Rich Amooi (Hey, Mr DJ)
Janet Rudolph (Murder On The Menu)
Bob Farnsworth (Video Madness)
Lara White (Geoff White Photography)
Jason Spencer (Spencer Weddings & Entertainment)
David Ethridge (AVR Films)
Ron Grandia (A Different Kind of DJ)
Kevin Dennis (Fantasy Sound Event Services)
Oren Arieli (AwesomeShot Studios)

Their Mission (and yours, should you choose to join us) will be to follow the rules.  In your own blogs, each of you will post the rules, tag another 11 bloggers to continue the game, mention 11 interesting things about yourself, answer my 11 simple questions, and post 11 questions for the people you tag.

How about you?  If you would like to play, too, please feel free to copy my questions, paste them into a comment on this blog and answer them there.  Or you can post them on your blog and come back here to leave a link to your post.

I’ll probably tag another 11 bloggers one of these days, and I bet everyone reading this blog would love to see your answers, too.

11 Interesting Things About Me (See a longer list at http://bit.ly/zVxoff):

• No wonder I love music, I grew up in a musical household.
• Thank God for my old public school music program, or today I’d probably have an honest job!
• I’m the oldest of four kids.
• I enjoy cooking, but have a limited repertoire, and my favorite dish is Jambalaya,
• I enjoy playing with words. For example, I strive to be “ept”, to stand out from all the “inept” people I see.
• I’m CONSTANTLY amazed by technology’s advances, and how quickly we adapt to them.
• I think blogging has astonishing potential, and the more powerful online text, audio, and video become, the more strongly blogging will influence our lives.
• Glad I moved from Buffalo to California.  I love mild weather, hate the cold.
• Back in the dark ages, I taught high school health, earth sciences, and biology in upstate New York
• I’ve been married over 36 years.
• I think silence can be golden.  The world harbors too much meaningless noise, and we’d be better off quietly gathering our thoughts more often.

11 Questions that Stacie Asked Me and MY ANSWERS:

1. Your favorite blog or vlog post you’ve ever written or recorded (share the link): http://magnoliajazz.com/kindness-and-compassion

2. Favorite flavor of ice cream?  PEPPERMINT STICK

3. Do you dress up for Halloween?  NOT ANY MORE THAN USUAL

4. Night owl or early riser?  6-7AM

5. Favorite movie genre (i.e. classic, action, horror, drama, comedy, romance. etc.):  WHATEVER FEEDS MY IMAGINATION

6. Have you ever met any of your blog readers in real life?  FEWER THAN A DOZEN

7. Banana Slugs creepy or cool?  OK IN THE GARDEN, BUT NOT IN MY SALAD

8. Which do you love more? Books printed on paper or eBooks?
PAPER FOR COMFORT, EBOOKS FOR CONVENIENCE

9. Most favorite city you’ve ever visited: SAN FRANCISCO

10. Did you think donating bone marrow is painful because it comes from your spine? (It’s not painful and it doesn’t come from your spine.): HUH?  IS THIS A TRICK QUESTION?

11. Which is your favorite social media website: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Google Plus, other?  FACEBOOK>TWITTER>GOOGLE+>LINKEDIN

11 Questions for You to Answer:

1. Remember fountain pens, floppy disks, carbon paper, 78rpm records?  What today will join that list in 20 years?

2. Your favorite method for staying up-to-date:  Newspaper?  Magazine?  Radio?  TV?  Internet?  Something else?

3. Local Broadcast TV?  Cable TV?  Internet TV?  Something else?

4. What’s your favorite “reality show”:  TV soaps?  Political campaigns?  Pro wrestling?  Other Pro sports?  Something else?

5. Which makes you happier:  Buying a house or renting an apartment?

6. Recording cylinders, 78′s, 45′s, 33.3′s, tape cassettes, CD’s, DVD’s, where will it end?

7. “Live to Eat” or “Eat to Live”?

8. Thinking about your next mid-life crisis, which of your present hobbies will become your next career?

9. Dog?  Cat?  Something else?

10. Mac?  PC?  Something else?

11. iPhone?  Android?  Something else?

How about you?  Would you like to play in this internet meme?  

Thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate your interest and hope you get a few good ideas here.  Any questions or suggestions?  Please continue this conversation. I’ll reply to you, and so will other readers who share your interest.  You’ll make new connections.  Here are four things you can do:

•  ”COMMENT” (Tell me your thoughts in the “Comment” box below),
•  ”LIKE” this post (Click the “+1” and “Like” buttons).  Give me your vote,
•  ”SHARE” (Tell your friends by Email or post on Google+, Facebook, Twitter),
•  ”SUBSCRIBE” to this blog for more of my thoughts (Click the “RSS”).

The Magnolia Jazz Band entertains at weddings and parties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are nearby, you’ll love catching us in action, seeing and hearing us create a great mood.  For now, please join our Facebook fans to receive daily tips for planning music and to receive reminders for our public events.

Magnolia Jazz Band "taking a break", Palo Alto 2009

Right now I’m playing a game just for the pleasure of it.  Hey, what a concept!  I’m taking a break from thinking about work-work-work.

My friend Stacie Tamaki, blogger at The Flirty Guide, tagged me in this internet meme (so, look it up) of 11 questions.

This game has only five rules:

1. You must post these rules in your blog.
2. You must post 11 things about yourself on your blog.
3. You must answer the questions the “tagger” listed for you, and create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
4. You must choose 11 people to tag and link to them in your post.
5. Go to each blogger’s page and mention that you have tagged them.

Tomorrow I’ll announce the 11 bloggers I’ll tag.  How about taking a break and playing?  Please email me your name and blog URL, or send me a note on Facebook, or leave me a comment on this blog.

Their Mission (and yours, should you choose to accept it) will be to answer the 11 simple, wacky questions about yourself that I’ll create.  (See Stacie’s examples)

Stacie added something extra.  It’s a wonderful idea, and I’m including it, too:

If you would like to play, please feel free to copy the questions, paste them into a comment on this blog and answer them there.  Or you can post them on your blog and come back here to leave a link to your post.

I agree:  Everyone reading this blog would love to hear your answers, too.

How about you?  Tell me:  Would you like to play?  How about taking a break?  I’ll accept the first 11 people who reply.

Thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate your interest and hope you get a few good ideas here.  Any questions or suggestions?  Please continue this conversation. I’ll reply to you, and so will other readers who share your interest.  You’ll make new connections.  Here are four things you can do:

•  ”COMMENT” (Tell me your thoughts in the “Comment” box below),
•  ”LIKE” this post (Click the “+1” and “Like” buttons).  Give me your vote,
•  ”SHARE” (Tell your friends by Email or post on Google+, Facebook, Twitter),
•  ”SUBSCRIBE” to this blog for more of my thoughts (Click the “RSS”).

The Magnolia Jazz Band entertains at weddings and parties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are nearby, you’ll love catching us in action, seeing and hearing us create a great mood.  For now, please join our Facebook fans to receive daily tips for planning music and to receive reminders for our public events.

Magnolia Jazz Band in Palo Alto, New Year's Eve 2011

I recently described some benefits I receive from teamwork with my colleagues.

Here we are last New Year’s Eve — a great night for teamwork.  Thanks for the wonderful photos, Joy.

You might wonder which is better for a band — teamwork or working alone.

That’s the wrong question.  We’re always using both.  Teamwork better suits some kinds of projects, and working alone better suits others.  Teambuilding programs can help us learn to combine both tactics.

Instead, we should be asking about WHEN teamwork is better than working alone.  And vice versa.

The answer is far from clear. We sometimes hear that “two heads are better than one”, and then a minute later we can hear that “too many cooks spoil the broth”.

Take creativity for example. Some evidence suggests a person is more creative working alone. Other evidence suggests he’s more creative in the midst of teamwork with a group

Usually teamwork is a joint effort of solitary experts working together, then working alone, then together again.  Over and over.  Back and forth.

Which do you prefer — being a solitary expert or a brainstorming committee member?  Which is better — Working alone or in teamwork with colleagues?

This is a trick question.  My favorite Tip: You better become skilled at both.

Media headlines favor stories about creative individuals. We hear about creative people all the time but relative little about creative teamwork.

For every project we all tackle, creativity is sometimes important. Sometimes not. You don’t want a creative dancer in a chorus line, but you might like a creative touch in designing your landscaping.  A creative soloist can spark the performance of a jazz band, but all the musicians playing together in a tight ensemble can achieve amazingly powerful music.

Rules are rules.  You might not like a creative captain steering your cruise ship, or piloting your airplane. Unless of course, an emergency comes up, and for example you and your colleagues might need to land your aircraft in the Hudson River.

Then all bets are off, and the highest priority goes to skillfully and quickly creating a strategy for landing.  But watch out for any nearby cruise ships.

Few of us will ever face such an emergency, but I think all of us constantly need to balance stints of working alone and stints of teamwork.

How about you?  Tell me:  How well do you balance teamwork with working alone?  Would you recommend a teambuilding program?

Thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate your interest and hope you get a few good ideas here.  Any questions or suggestions?  Please continue this conversation. I’ll reply to you, and so will other readers who share your interest.  You’ll make new connections.  Here are four things you can do:

•  ”COMMENT” (Tell me your thoughts in the “Comment” box below),
•  ”LIKE” this post (Click the “+1” and “Like” buttons),
•  ”SHARE” (Tell your friends by Email or Google+, Facebook, Twitter),
•  ”SUBSCRIBE” to this blog for more of my thoughts (Click the “RSS”).

The Magnolia Jazz Band entertains at weddings and parties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are nearby, you’ll love catching us in action, seeing and hearing us create a great mood.  For now, please join our Facebook fans to receive daily tips for planning music and to receive reminders for our public events.

Collaborating with our colleagues keeps us busy.  I frequently write about the benefits I receive from collaborating, networking, or cross-promoting with my colleagues.

No matter what line of work you’re involved with, you’ll often hear experts predict that your next engagement is most likely with a previous client.  It’s second most likely to be with someone who hears a friend or colleague endorse you, and it’s least likely to be with someone completely new.  Collaborating creates the first two.

Magnolia Jazz Band at the Capital Club, San Jose

For example, here’s the trio entertaining last Tuesday during cocktails at the Silicon Valley NACE annual gala.  Thanks for the wonderful photos to my friend, Teresa Halton.

What a terrific evening!  I walked into a room filled with colleagues I work with all the time, and a few hours later I walked out with several new dates on my schedule.

NACE (National Association of Catering Executives) is a national association of event professionals: caterers, planners, facilities, photographers, florists, entertainers, and more.  I’ve been active in the Silicon Valley Chapter since 1993.

Officially we meet monthly for great networking, an educational program, and a wonderful dinner at an outstanding local facility. Between our meetings, all the members are collaborating with their colleagues. Everyone wins.

We hire each other, work together often, and we recommend each other to our own clients and colleagues.  I’ve written about several of my favorite NACE colleagues.

One of my best tips for boosting business: joining (or forming!) a professional association of your peers, networking like mad, and collaborating with your colleagues.

How about you?  Tell me:  Are you collaborating with colleagues?  .

Thanks for reading my blog. I appreciate your interest and hope you get a few good ideas here.  Any questions or suggestions?  Please continue this conversation. I’ll reply to you, and so will other readers who share your interest.  You’ll make new connections.  Here are four things you can do:

•  ”COMMENT” (Tell me your thoughts in the “Comment” box below),
•  ”LIKE” this post (Click the “+1” and “Like” buttons),
•  ”SHARE” by Email or post on Google+, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn,
•  ”SUBSCRIBE” to this blog for more of my thoughts (Click the “RSS”).

The Magnolia Jazz Band entertains at weddings and parties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are nearby, you’ll love catching us in action, seeing and hearing us create a great mood.  For now, please join our Facebook fans to receive daily tips for planning music and receive reminders for our public events.

Nothing beats wedding and party stories.  They’re all about fun and celebrating.

Robbie Schlosser on Soap Operas

On the other hand, do you like popular TV stories — especially soaps?  My mother-in-law is addicted to watching “her story” — The Young and The Restless.  And now that she’s been living with us for several years, my wife has succumbed, too, but not me.

What does this have to do with wedding and party music?

Well, to start with, I’m passionate about providing wedding and party music, but not about watching TV soaps.

Maybe I’m too hasty, but I disrespect all soap operas.  (Here we go.)  From what little I’ve seen, they’re all about displaying silliness, at best, or unethical carryings-on, much more often.

Why do people enjoy watching stylishly-dressed examples of behavior we condemn?  Deceitful scheming, lying, cheating, betrayals, and changing marriage partners as casually as we try on a new pair of shoes.

Who knows?  Maybe soap operas consider themselves presenting a public service.  A condensed version of every day bad behavior, letting viewers “role play” and vicariously experience how they would deal with these awful situations.

But, I’m skeptical of that innocent “public service” story.  Instead, I think they target the people who read those scandalous supermarket tabloids.  And hope the rest of us voyeurs will join the group.  In my opinion, soap operas do no one any good.

End of rant.  This station will now resume normal broadcasting.  And this is one post I hope my wife doesn’t read…

On the other hand, weddings and parties do lots of good for lots of people.  We all want to feel good, and what better way is there than to celebrate something!

Personally, I feel it’s a privilege to make people happy by providing wedding and party music.  Whether people gather to celebrate a momentous occasion in their lives, or just to have a good time for no special reason at all, they always lift their spirits with their favorite music.  And that’s where I come in.

Just like after yesterday’s birthday luncheon, the hostess told me “Robbie, the music MADE the party”.  That’s the nicest thing I could hear.

How about you?  Can you really celebrate anything without wedding and party music?  And do you love soap operas for a good reason I’ve overlooked?
.

Thanks for reading my blog. If you get some good ideas, please

• COMMENT (Write an interesting idea in the Comment box below),
• LIKE this post (Click the “+1” and “Like” buttons below),
• SHARE by Email or post on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter (see below),
• SUBSCRIBE to this blog for more of my thoughts (Click the RSS below).

The Magnolia Jazz Band entertains at weddings and parties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are ever nearby, you’ll love catching us in action, seeing and hearing us create a great mood.  In the meantime, please join our Facebook fans to receive daily tips for planning music and receive reminders for our public events.

Today is Friday the 13th.  Is it another lucky day?  I’ll make it a lucky day, and here’s how:

First, some background:  I make a living helping people celebrate.  It’s an optimistic profession, providing wedding or party music to keep people in a festive mood.

I began in 1975, and the more I practice the better I get.  With all this experience, I suspect that luck has very little to do with any success these days.  Rather, I’ve learned to create opportunities and convert them to a memorable celebration.

Robbie Schlosser gets lucky on Friday the 13th

Now, some say Friday the 13th is an auspicious time, bringing good luck or bad luck.   Hopeful or ominous.  Either way, I find it difficult to board that train.

Instead, I feel that we control more of our destiny than we commonly think.  Especially through how we respond to whatever comes our way.  Active or passive.  As I see it, luck has little to do with anything, unless we practice so much we’re lucky all the time.

I recently wrote about creating our own opportunities.  My attitude is that life presents us an endless array of circumstances day by day.  Usually it’s up to the optimists among us to transform these circumstances into opportunities.

For example, you’ll hear this kind of sentiment everywhere: A pessimist will see a hurdle as an obstacle, but an optimist will see that hurdle as an opportunity.

So today another Friday the 13th will come and go.  As usual, some of us will actively create golden opportunities today, while the rest of us will passively live through another day.  I plan to be in the first group.

How about you?  Will you make Friday the 13th another lucky day?

.

Thanks for reading my blog. If you get some good ideas, please

• COMMENT (Write an interesting idea in the Comment box below),
• LIKE this post (Click the “+1” and “Like” buttons below),
• SHARE by Email or post on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter (see below),
• SUBSCRIBE to this blog for more of my thoughts (Click the RSS below).

The Magnolia Jazz Band entertains at weddings and parties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are ever nearby, you’ll love catching us in action, seeing and hearing us create a great mood.  In the meantime, please join our Facebook fans to receive daily tips for planning music and reminders for our public events.

This isn't Robbie Schlosser's Routine

There is something reassuring about a daily routine.  Helpful and reliable.  My daily routine lets me hit the ground running, as they say.

I agree that in most plans, the devil is in the details.  My daily routine helps me choose what details to focus on, so I begin each day productive in a worthwhile direction.

Urgent issues of the moment often threaten to derailed my train of thought and divert me from my important goals.  My daily routine keeps me on track every time.

How does it work for me? My wife, Bunch, and I wake up with the sun every day, and we often pick up our conversation where we left it a few hours earlier.

I get the morning paper and take a minute to make the coffee.  While I make us a quick breakfast, she reviews the news in print and on TV.  Then I write in my journal for 30 minutes, doing what one of my friends calls “reflective writing”.  Finally we shower and discuss the day’s highlights, she leaves for her office, and I sit down in mine.

Every day.

Conversations with Bunch keep my mind agile and constantly remind me why family comes first.  Journaling keeps me addressing larger ideas that I’d otherwise tend to overlook in the press of transient urgencies.

A dozen deadlines always compete for my attention, and, frankly, most of them amount to very little in the grand scheme of things.

I love being productive, but where to begin?  Being a husband, I always have personal and family matters brewing.  As a homeowner, there’s always another maintenance project, as well as the never-ending temptation to tidy and reorganize everything.

Being a musician, I’ll usually have a wedding or a party to attend that day.  Managing my band, there’s long-term goals to pursue, people to meet, letters to write, calls to make, e-mails to answer, conversations to continue, and short-term projects to complete.

I like to start each day focusing on the most important item. Keeping “first things first”, as Stephen Covey says.  At any given time, I want to be addressing the most important item on my list.

Thank goodness for my daily routine, which starts with family time and journaling.  Both keep me on track, in a worthwhile direction.

So for a daily routine, three of my favorite tips are

• begin with family time,
• consider your life’s “big picture”,
• start work with the most important details.

I shudder to think what might happen if my daily routine began instead with checking e-mail or voicemail.  I would probably spend the rest of the day chasing my tail, perhaps never getting to to anything that really mattered.

How about you?  What daily routine helped you begin today?  What works best for you?
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Thanks for reading my blog. If you get one or two good ideas, please

• COMMENT (Write an interesting idea in the Comment box below),
• LIKE this post (Click the “+1” and “Like” buttons below),
• SHARE by Email or post on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter (see below),
• SUBSCRIBE to this blog for more of my thoughts (Click the RSS below).

The Magnolia Jazz Band entertains at weddings and parties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are ever nearby, you’ll love catching us in action, seeing and hearing us create a great mood.  In the meantime, please join our Facebook fans, and receive reminders for our public events.

something like Robbie Schlosser's dream

Nightmares and dreams inspire my imagination and fuel my creativity.

Do you ever have nightmares and dreams?  Doesn’t everyone?

I had one last night, and it’s after Christmas.  I seldom have nightmares and dreams, but I think this one was OK after all.  I think it just reminded me that I’m paying attention to the right details for providing wedding or party music.

People have been interpreting nightmares and dreams throughout recorded history, and earlier I’ll bet.  One way or another, we all seem to spend our lives trying to resolve ambiguity.

Personally, I believe it’s interesting to regard nightmares and dreams as omens.  We just need to decide what symbolism they contain, and that’s where the fun begins.

Anything goes — a disturbing dream can mean whatever you like.  If you ask me, the dream’s interpretation may reveal a little about the dream or the dreamer, but a great deal more about the interpreter.

For example, in last night’s dream my band was preparing to entertain at a formal wedding reception.  All the guests wore elegant gowns or tuxedos, but we wore jeans and T-shirts.  Oh, how embarrassing!

Gaah!  It’s like dreaming about going to school without any clothes on.  Years ago this one used to haunt me, and I’m told this is a common dream.  Have you ever had this one?

I prefer to understand my dream as a sign that I think about my band all the time.  I do.  Well, almost all the time, and even when I’m asleep, apparently.  And I think it’s a sign that I’m concerned about our presentation, as well as our music.

No question why I understand my dream this way.  Over the years I’ve learned that the band’s success providing wedding or party music depends on how well we enhance everyone’s mood.  It’s all about how effectively we help people celebrate, not simply how nicely we play.  Although of course that’s important, too.

Sorry, but I doubt that my dream hints of any dreadful personal insecurities.  Instead, it reassures me that I’m concerned about the right things after all.

How about you?  Do you have nightmares and dreams these days? Tell me, do they inspire new ideas?  Reinforce your old ones?

Thanks for reading my blog. If you get one or two good ideas, please help me:

• COMMENT (Write an interesting idea in the Comment box below),
• LIKE this post (Click the “+1” and “Like” buttons below),
• SHARE by Email or post on Google+, Facebook, or Twitter (see below),
• SUBSCRIBE to this blog for more of my thoughts (Click the RSS below).

The Magnolia Jazz Band entertains at weddings and parties throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. If you are ever nearby, you’ll love catching us in action, seeing and hearing us create a great mood.  In the meantime, please join our Facebook fans, and receive reminders for our public events.