Double edged sword.I recall having a job removing extra signatures from a piano at a Boston concert venue. It had several famous people on it.....Elton John, Billy Joel, Frank Sinatra. Then the "New Kids on the Block" (this was the 80s), came to perform. Their work amounted to graffiti as every last one of them had to get in on it. So I was hired to remove the offending extra stuff with acetone. Then you have the issue of an almost famous pianist, who wishes to sign next to someone really famous.....what do you tell them? I suppose you would have them sign by invitation only, but can you imagine the insult to the one who thinks he/she "should" be invited to sign, but isn't? My favorite story of this type: An associate was prepping/tuning a piano for a famous pianist, and as an avid collector of autographs, and an avid admirer of his own greatness.....he focused himself on having the opportunity to get this pianist's endorsement of his work. My job was to touch up this piano "if needed" just before the concert. I found that the 'prepping' had not held, and had to scramble and retune that whole piano 45 minutes before the concert. Not fun, but the concert went well. Later on, I got the story from the prep guy....he had been so anxious to get the endorsement / autograph of this pianist, that when the opportunity presented itself, he forgot and had no marker available. So he grabbed one that was close by and got his prized endorsement written on a CD of this artist, which he had bought for this purpose. As he drove home he reached down to admire the writing, and discovered he had used a 'dry-erase' pen, and the thing was mess. Universe wins. The discussion is: do we want to continue this practice of plate signing > on the new S&S D. Someone asked if it increases or decreases the value of > the piano. (Probably not either way.) -- Best Regards, Brad Smith, RPT www.SmithPiano.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut_ptg.org/attachments/20090203/a497a9c7/attachment.html>
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