Please don’t sing for your supper

WhenI travel, I’m always on the lookout for undiscovered musical talent. But often the talent — and I use that term loosely — is also on the lookout for me.

During a meeting with a client at an Italian restaurant in Cannes, France, an attractive young woman walked in and made a beeline to our table. She introduced herself, and our host, thinking it was the polite thing to do, invited her to join us for drinks.

“I know you, don’t I?” she said, turning to me. I smiled politely. I had no idea who she was.

A few drinks later, she confessed that her lifelong ambition was to become a singer.

“Won’t you sing something for us?” my client asked, taking the bait.

Our interloper didn’t need much more prompting. She belted out Elton John’s “Rocket Man.” Her high-pitch rendition really turned me off, but everyone in the restaurant still applauded. (It did, however, inspire me to release a better version of the tune on a new CD called “Road Trip: Road to Nowhere” that I produced this year.)

For me, a hotel doubles as an audition room. Just a few weeks ago in Paris, I met up with an electronica rock band called Playground that is supposedly the next big thing. It was quite a scene. We were reviewing tunes on an iPod with this guy who’s a dead ringer for Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.

Cab rides represent some of the best opportunities to discover new music. I recently found myself in a taxi in Los Angeles with some guy who spoke very little English. He was singing along to this Turkish music on his CD player. That happens a lot. You’re trying to guess where the music is from, and inquiring about the name of the artist, even though there’s a huge communication barrier.

I know what you’re thinking. My life is like an episode of “American Idol.”

That’s not too far from the truth. Actually, I was part of the Australian version of that TV show, called “Pop Stars.” I wore a black suit and tie and they called me the Undertaker. My job was to tell the contestants as nicely as possible that they didn’t have a career in music. I wouldn’t say I was as mean as Simon Cowell, but like the Grim Reaper, it was always quick, unexpected — and final.

It is far easier to spot a miss than a hit. In Cuba, the authorities were falling all over themselves to connect me with Havana bands that sounded like a Miami version of the Backstreet Boys.

But I had other ideas. I ditched my official escort and met up with a group of young rappers in the eastern Cuban city of Santiago de Cuba who were in the vanguard of a new style known as reggaetón. We built a home studio without government permission and began recording their music.

People thought I was crazy. They said, “Chris has lost his mind. No one will ever buy this.”

The Cuban authorities were certainly not buying it when they finally found me and the secret studio. The government “strongly advised” me not to release any of the reggaetón recordings, but I somehow managed to persuade them to let me leave the country with a master CD of the sessions.

Even in the music industry, you don’t always want to be discovered.

Chris Murphy is chief executive of Petrol Records/EMI, in Sydney, Australia.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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