General Music Chat

A knife salesman came to the house yesterday. He was showing some knives to me. During his pitch he said that he had a musical knife. He struck it on the table and it rang a note. He asked me if I knew what note that was. I said I can figure it out. He said oh well it's not a note. I said oh but it is! And I thought about it for a minute. I realized it was the same note as the main riff in a song called "bulls On Parade". I remembered playing it. Remembered where it was on the guitar. Then calculated that it was an F sharp. That was the note the knife was playing. Then I picked up my cigar box guitar and played the note and found that I was exactly right! The knife salesman was pretty wowed. Lol! Well that was satisfying! It turns out he was trying to make a joke with the punchline "be sharp". Lol!

A door-to-door knife salesman? Now that's weird - and a little trobuling in our times. In my town any companies that want to have sales people go door-to-door have to pay for a permit. Needless to say, we don't get any - not even girl scouts selling cookies!

shopping at wallyworld a few months ago, a voice came over the store's telecom system saying giving away free knives at a certain department within the store where a big herd of us started gathering.. got one of those Chinese paring knives the kind that are indestructible but did not realize had to sit thru a 1/2 hour or so demonstration of all the things the different types of knives he wanted to SELL US would do..yeah, he did the slicing on a concrete block routine and then sliced a tomato paper thin to prove the knife's sharpness..he was long winded too, and had quite the speel.. all said and done if I knew it would take 1/2 an hour to sit through I never would have shown up for my 3.00 dollar paring knife for free.. cost them pennies to make in China though..

Just like you he had a perfect pitch

My son sold cutco knifes one summer and did great with them. He thought it would be an easy job, but it was hard setting up his own appoinments and closing on sales. I actually had a job for him that summer painting propane tanks, but I encouraged him to do it. I think he learned a lot.

The bonus side is in addition to the set I bought from him, all of his sample knifes are at my house, that I get to use when Im playing Chef!

Hey Paul did you try to play the scratchy part of BUlls on the knife! LOL


Ouch!

My son told me a story of a knife seller who went in a ladys house and was demonstrating knifes, and he dropped the big butcher knife and cut the ladys cat in half. I dont know if that was true or just one of those urban legends!

Sounds like a real cat-astrophe John.

Good One Jim!

I see your point...

Sooooo... can we cut to the chase already?



I sold Cutco knives very briefly in college. Exactly one set sold. I found it to be pretty challenging to actually make a buck so I chose to do x-ray processor service instead. Well defined hours and a well defined paycheck served my needs better at the time.

Johnny my son was quite good at it, Im not sure how many sets he sold, but after one summer he decided he wanted to do something else, but I think it was a good experience for him. He would leave early in the morning for sales meetings then go out at night to show the sets to people. After the summer he and I sat down and figured out how much money he would have made working for me, versus the knifes and he did make more with the knives, the only thing was when we broke it down into hours, he would have had a lot more free time working for me.

I sold encyclopedias, tools, clothes all sorts of stuff when I was at that age. I didnt try to talk him out of it. I figure if a person can sell something then they will always be able to make a living. So I thought it was good for him. He still tells storys about selling knives, so I guess in some way he enjoyed it.

As a musician, hard sales work is probably a good building tool, cause you do have to endure a lot of no's before someone says yes.