"Just because you are indespensible......."

I am not sure this necessarily has anything to do with the music industry, but I suspect that it has. They also say that getting some of your annoyances out into paper can be quite cathartic.

I have often heard the phrase “Good guys come last”, which normally goes hand in hand with “Nice guys like you make great second husbands.

If you will forgive my Anglo Saxon reference Eddie Izzard did a complete skit on this theory based on his time at school. The nice guys that would hold a door open for a girl would generally receive nothing, not even a smile or a nod of appreciation. However; if they were a bit of a “Bastard……..shagging a plenty”.

I am beginning to think that this could be right. Not the last bit I hasten to add, happily married for 26 years, but the former. Mind you the amount of women I have heard commenting that their husband was “A bit of a lad when I met him, but that was what attracted me to him”, but then complaining bitterly that he remained “A bit of a lad”. You can generally here me grinding my teeth and muttering comments like “bed”, and “lying in it”.

As I work for the British National Health Service I have to suffer the indignity of appraisals. This normally results in a person sitting in a room with their line manager being told that they have either done, or not done a good job during the previous 12 months.

This was the case for me just a few weeks ago.

I received a right royal slap on the back and was informed that I had done a damn fine job and that the service could not function as efficiently without me. Not only that I was popular with my colleagues, service users and other professional alike.

Well done Loader, ego suitably stroked.

However, then came the rub. I am grade wise the bottom of the pile. Many of my clinician colleagues earn considerably more than I do. And many of the more, shall we say, aggressive ones, have recently been re-graded and are earning nearly four times what I am.

I was in an appraisal and so I thought it would be a good time to broker the subject and suggest that if I am doing such a sterling piece of work for the sake of child mental health, that it may be a good time for my boss to fight my cause and ensure that my paupers bowl be just a little fuller at the end of the month.

Now I have faced rejection before in many guises, but none were quite so direct and to the point “You won’t get any more money here, you’ll have to go and work somewhere else if you want that”.

Suddenly the words of my dear friend and comrade in arms Bassbin came flooding back.

“Just because you are indispensable does not mean that you are important”

Now does this relate to the life of the Rock God? I believe at times it does.

My band The Mudheads have a reputation as being “A nice bunch of guys” and for that I am grateful and just a little proud. We also have a reputation that if you are in shtuck or you are fighting for a good cause The Mudheads are the ones to go to.

We find ourselves constantly being asked to perform at benefit gigs or help out in different situations, and we are generally happy and honoured to do so.

However, I have begun to notice that the amount of benefit gigs we have been asked to ‘help out at’ has grown, whilst the number of really healthy ‘paying gigs’ is beginning to decrease.

I have also noticed that some of our colleagues in the industry, who perhaps would fit Eddie Izzards description of being a “bit of a Bastard”, are raking in the paid work.

Perhaps it is time to be a little less accommodating and a little more demanding.

However; I am what I am, and I will not change. Although, I am just hoping that when I stand before my maker he doesn’t announce “Sorry Paul, I don’t have that big a budget for heaven and the charismatic church** will give me hell if I don’t let all of them in so I am going to have to let you go, you don’t mind do you?”


** substitute what ever denomination of religion you like in there, being a nice guy I wouldn’t want to offend anybody