Can the music world be mean, demean?

My last chicago blues group was in NYC.   I was working at the NY Dept of City Planning and living on East 7th St between Avenues C and D.  I lived on the sixth floor (walkup.)   The apartment was two bedrooms, was rent controlled and rent was $188.   The way you got a bargain like that in NYC was to pay "key money" for a rent controlled apartment like this.   Key money in this case was $500.   The neat thing in this apartment was the kitchen wall had been stripped to the brick, so it looked can of old fashioned.

At a political benefit I met two young black panther party members....probably around 18, certainly under 21.  They were both guitar players, one lead and other loved to play rhythm.   This was unusual, since most rhythm guitar players hungered to play lead.   The rhythm player was Nyle Rogers.  You'll see him appear on lots of "best 100 soul sound" series on TV.   He was famous for being Madonna's first producer.   We played Chicago blues.   I think we sounded pretty good.   Well gigs were hard to come by.   I remember once at an after hours club on Canal Street.   This club opened at something like 2:00 a.m. after regular bars closed.   I believe the place was also equipped with a gallows for some S&M nights.

So now to my last gig.   We got a gig on 125th Street....most famous street in Harlem.   It turned out, however, that this was way east and in Spanish (not black) Harlem.   So we are excited because we had 5 nights steady work.  So we set up and nobodoy's there.   They say play anyway.   The only people who came into the club that night walked past us with heads down, walked to the rear of the club, disappeared into a room, and came out and exited 20 minutes later.   Nobody, I mean no one, even looked at us.    Chicago Blues in a Latin club.   No attention to music.   It didn't take too long for us to figure out we werent' hired for our music, but to be window dressing covering whatever drugs were being sold in the back room.   That was a really horrible feeling.   I think we bailed out of the job, I bailed out of the band, and that was it for me and rock and roll.   Could a musician get much lower????