IF YOU LIKE A BAND WITH A CHICK SINGER
SAY YOUR CUP OF TEA IS A WALL OF TROMBONES
IF YOU DIG MENUDO OR M.D.C.
WE SALUTE YOU…
SPEAK SOFTLY, DRIVE A SHERMAN TANK
LAUGH HARD, IT’S A LONG WAY TO THE BANK
FOR EVERYONE WITH DOLLAR SIGNS IN THEIR EYES
THERE WILL BE HUNDREDS WHO’LL LOOK AT YOU
AS IF YOU’RE SOME KIND OF RHYTHM SECTION WANT AD
NO MORONS NEED APPLY
TO THE RHYTHM SECTION WANT AD AND HERE’S THE REASON WHY… –They Might Be Giants © TMB Music
TWIST AND SHOUT
There are lots of ways it can happen. Maybe you’re cleaning out the garage and you stumble across your older brother’s Grateful Dead records, and discover that you can play along with “St. Steven” by pushing the E, A, and D buttons on the family chord organ. Or you decide to drop out of the bio-computer law program at The University of College because you’ve spent most of this semester playing air guitar, and you’ve got to find out if you can play one for real. Or you’re just a small town fuck-up and it’s either join a band or go to jail. Anyway, one day you get a sense that you’re different…that you have a knack that swings between a gift and a disease: you’re a musician…and you’re going to have to do something about it.
Lucky you…you live in New York City were the rock and roll clubs can vicariously feed your Jones for a while. But soon, being an ‘audient’ isn’t enough anymore. You’ve got to play something…got to make some noise. You consider the lead singer spot, but quickly rule it out. You can carry a tune all right, but lack something even more essential…a good wardrobe. But when you were little (remember?) you’d pull out all the pots and pans and bang away until your Mom had to cook dinner…so it looks like it’s going to be drums.
TWIST, SHOUT, AND TWIST SOME MORE
You grab the newspaper and turn to the “Instruments For Sale” column in the Classifieds. One ad reads “Used drm st w/cymbs, stnds, EC, $300”. The seller is a high school kid who’s gone through his rock and roll phase and needs the money for a dirt bike. He lives in the middle of 516-Land, so you Rent-a-Wreck and drive out there.
The set is not EC or VG, or even G…it is more like SHTTY, but it will do. The kid had to go to detention after school. Drag. You’d hoped you could haggle ‘cause this is a lot of money to spend on a whim. But his Mom is real nice and when she hands you the receipt, you know you’re doing the right thing. Her name is Mrs. John Lennen. Close enough.
ONE MORE TWIST SHOULD DO IT
Then you go back to school. You buy books. You take lessons. You practice every day for a year. Real drummers will say that’s about how long it takes to hold the sticks right, but ready or not, you’re getting itchy to play with other people. After all, you’re not planning a solo recital at The Brooklyn Academy of Music this year, or aiming for first chair percussionist in a symphony. You just want to be in a rock and roll band. You want a gig. And that leads you right back to the Classifieds.
YS, I WNT 2 B A RCK ND RLL STR
The “Public Notice Music” sections of New York’s entertainment weeklies are some of the most intensely read newsprint in the City, because they are the fastest and easiest way to contact other musicians: “They’re New York’s musical bulletin boards. I read them to know what’s going on, for information, like a by-lined syndicated column.”; “KISS met each other through a VILLAGE VOICE ad. So did the Bongos, the Individuals, and plenty of other recording groups.”; “I’m always looking for a better band.”–musicians say.
The ads, seventy-five to a hundred every week, are a cross between the “Personals” and the “Help Wanted” sections, with a little “Real Estate” tossed in. Their generic model boils down to ‘We have a bass job opening for a sensitive, left-handed, non-smoking, SWF, vegetarian. No Christians. Must share cost of rehearsal loft. Object: ECSTASY.’
Well, who runs all these ads? Who are all these people? What are they looking for and what do they go through while trying to build a life based on feeling and fantasy? You started out just stalking a gig, but maybe there’s something much more fundamental here. Other parts of these papers give the musical rich, recognized and arrived plenty of copy, but the ads hint at the Truer Grit…a way to find the real Rock and Roll Dream Custodians…all those unknown…the messengers, the receptionists and boutique clerks who sweat it out in basements, garages and storefront rehearsal halls. The ones who are so far down in the rock hierarchy that the first time they see their names in print they’ve paid for it themselves.
So you resolve to be Al Jackson, Keith Moon, Ziggy Modeliste and Margaret Mead, Studs Terkel, and George Plimpton…all at the same time. You’re going to play cultural anthropologist on safari through New York’s Rock and Roll Underground…and your trail guide will be those little ads that say “here I am, where are you?” The rules: don’t talk to anyone famous, and a person’s thoughts on music are more important than how well they actually play it. And you’ll be objective because you’re only a mediocre junior drummer who just wants to play, and not out to join a band right now. You’re more interested in who and what’s out there…just doing research in the field.
Seems simple.
Air tight.
Fat chance.
RECONNAISSANCE
You’ve never done anything like this before. The audition circuit is alien territory, so your first calls are to drummers and band leaders to get the lay of the land.
Harvey Neil says he chases fame and money by playing drums on the road. In the rare moments between tours, he finds pick-up gigs through the classifieds and drops by the Drummer’s Collective on 6th Avenue for some studying. “There are Young Turks coming up and I want to stay sharp.” He’s only 22 himself, but he’s been playing for ten years. “I started playing drums for a simple reason. Guitar amplifiers were getting smaller and smaller, but drums were getting bigger and bigger…it was an easy choice. And the equipment has kept getting better, too, with all kinds of Third World percussion showing up in the stores.”
He’s also added electronic drums to his acoustic set. “Hybrids are what’s happening. I’ve got a full range of sounds now. Some drummers are intimidated by electronics, but drum machines don’t bother me. A real drummer will always be needed for a live show because they’re exciting. Prince makes records with drum machines, but tours with a real drummer.” Harvey admits, however, that synthetic percussion has cut into his recording session work, but then adds that “nothing’s more boring than a canned rhythm track.” When you ask him how to handle auditions, he says to go with the feel of the people and look for strong songs. “I’m always ‘hungry’, and I’ll only commit if I see real possibilities for success, but you also have to invest some time before that chemistry starts to happen. There’s bizarreness out there, too. I auditioned for the Plasmatics once, and they were so loud I couldn’t hear my drums.”
KEEP YOUR DAY JOB
Carl Leeds sounds exhausted over the phone. He’s gotten seventy- three responses to his ad, and is relieved to talk to someone who doesn’t want to audition. Like most ad placers he’d been very careful about the wording of his copy, hoping specific musical influences and precise requirements would attract only the type of person he’d like. But this was not effective as a pre-screener. “Most people think they’re perfect for every situation…when they see an ad, they just see ‘gig’. Everybody has a brilliant rap…they sound just wonderful over the phone. And it was fun at first, but I ended up spending six hours a day for a month listening to bad musicians. Most callers seem to be caught up in a fantasy of hopes and dreams…of fame and money. Few were realistic in their self-appraisals, so when they came down to audition their dreams got shredded by reality…by their inability to play what I needed them to play. I blame the whole new wave/punk/ minimalist mentality for this lack of good musicianship. The idea that anybody could be in a band was fine, but the long term result is a general lowering of technical ability. You can knock the ‘60’s rock dinosaur bands all you want, but at least the dinosaurs could play.”
“The good players also tend to be non-native New Yorkers…people from areas far away from an accessible media eye. They’ve practiced hard getting ready to make that move to the Big City, and they’ve over- compensated. Here you can get famous by just going on stage and farting. I did find good people but I don’t know if I’d do this again. I fought my ambivalence, anger, and frustration every day. People just don’t have a realistic sense of themselves…what they’re getting into…or how good they have to be to make the cut.
Ah hem. David Cheever figured out an elegant way to deal with his fifty-plus calls…he hired an answering service. “I thought it was kinder to have a real human being to talk to rather than my answering machine. But when I called these people back, I ended up talking to their answering machines. So I screened them solely on the impressions of their personalities contained within their messages. If their tapes were stupid or had bad music on them, they already ‘sounded’ wrong, so they probably wouldn’t be good to work with.”
He, too, was careful with his ad copy, “…but I think two-thirds answered any ad that was listed. A lot of them recognized each other in the hallway before their auditions, so they must move around as a group. They should share cabs and save some money.”
“Most callers fit into three basic categories: people who’d been kicked out of other bands; perpetual auditioners who never commit; and ‘older guys’ who’ve stopped playing for a couple of years but decided to audition for the hell of it. That last batch, with one exception, were universally rusty…the exception being the person we settled on…he’s a great drummer.”
You bring up fame and money, which is beginning to take on aspects of a chant by now and are surprised when he says he plays music for fun. Good. You’ve been waiting for someone to say the F-Word. “I’m not into rock martyrdom…sufferdom. I’ve got a construction job and I love it. The music-thing will either work or it won’t. I don’t want anybody to waste my time.”
Double ah hem.
By now you’re wondering if you’re a good enough drummer to do this, and all this talk about commitment grates against one of the ground rules. You need some ‘pre-try out’ try outs. “Relax,” a friend says. “I know the perfect situation for you. They’ve decided to face reality and make it a requirement for band membership not to be committed…not to want fame and money!”
BRAZIL? OBA!
You meet three-quarters of the combo in a Polish bar on the Lower East Side. You promptly all get drunk. It is part of the audition…if you can get along smashed, you’ll be okay sober. They tell you straight-faced that the first group expense will be memberships for everyone in an Oriental sex club, because a band that isn’t sexually frustrated is a happy band.
Then they warn you about the bass player. He has…well…a slight neurological problem. He will suddenly break into Rodney Dangerfield routines and be unable to stop…until someone hits him. You are also warned not to mention anything about bossa novas around him. It seems he is convinced that famous groups keep stealing his original songs, so to protect himself, he is only writing Brazilian music.
You all stumble over to a tiny rehearsal studio, make a ton of noise, and have a great time. The bass player has shown up with his girlfriend again. You’ve been warned about her, too. She always tags along but has never spoken a word and since he’s never bothered to introduce her, no one knows her name.
During a lull in the roar you, of course, start to play a Brazilian beat.
The bass player explodes with joy, and excitedly asks you if you like bossa novas. “No,” you say, “can’t stand ‘em.” He is crushed, but soon has bigger problems. He breaks two strings and has no spares. “Who cares,” he says and keeps ripping away at his instrument anyway. He is right…you have beer and volume…who cares about bass strings? Another warm-up is with Glenn Morrow (Individuals, Rage to Live). You play some Beatles and Television songs, then start swapping stories. One time he ran an ad looking for a drummer and this character showed up who lit a stick of insense, ritually slipped on some expensive Italian driving gloves, and proceeded to just stink. Glenn’s a polite guy– ‘Ummm…pretty good,’ he said. The drummer snapped back ‘Yes, I know.’ “He had no concept of how awful he was.”
Glenn’s own strangest audition was a late night try-out at an apartment complex in Hoboken, New Jersey. “I’d brought an acoustic guitar. The ad guys had twin Marshall amplifier stacks in a match box bedroom. They were incredibly loud…this was 11:30 on a weeknight. The neighbors pounded on the walls and doors, but these guys never stopped for an hour and a half. After the police left they still played for another half an hour.” Glenn decided they were not people he wanted to work with.
By now, you’re beginning to realize that there’s no way to prepare for this Big Adventure…the only thing to do is to stop stalling and take the plunge.
Geronimo
DOC ROCK
Your first real audition is in response to an ad seeking people already established in other careers, but who still want to play music and make records. On the subway there, you envision a band where the bass player is an accountant, the sax player a lawyer, the keyboardist a video director, and the singer a marketing expert…the ultimate self- contained band. You’ve left out the guitarist.
The audition hall is top shelf. Everything is clean and the equipment is all brand new. An attractive, success-dressed woman takes your name and address down on a clipboard while the first batch of musicians stomp through some Chicago-style blues. The band leader, thirty-ish and intense, generously gives everyone an hour to play and everything is taped for later review.
You’re very nervous, but the organized calmness and professionalism quickly takes off the edge. You play some Elmore James shuffles and do a sloppy but spirited medley of Stax-Volt soul hits, ending with the keyboard player shouting Otis Redding’s “I Can’t Turn You Loose”. You’re spoiled…a tuned and polished drum set and your favorite kind of music.
After the audition you find out you’ve been playing with a publishing executive or two. But the biggest stunner is the band leader. “I’m a doctor,” he says, “I have a residency at a hospital here in Manhattan and I hate it. I want to stop playing doctor and start playing blues guitar and make records.
This is a courageous revelation. He has gone through years of intense training for his career only to find that it isn’t really him. If he really means what he says, he’s going to chuck it all to play music. There is an economic side to this, too. Blues is not a fashionable, and therefore not a bankable musical genre these days. Without major label interest, the doctor and his wife (the woman with the clipboard) are facing a stiff change in lifestyle. You’re doing this for a lark…they are deadly serious.
VOODOO ROCK LOTTO
You’re starting to get exposure to rock’s idealism and some of the components of the Dream…The Big Beat Beatitudes: do what you really love to do, do it well, and have fun doing it. Make pop culture history, get laid a lot, be ‘real’, have social content and social impact…and all the while make millions. Achieving all this is one of the longest of longshots, but there are enough people trying that they make up a whole subculture with values, rites, ordeals, stereotypes, mystics, myths and legends, heroes and villains. From this tribe of hopefuls barely a handful ever make it to a major record label, and only one in ten of those will be successful enough to get to stay there. Talent, timing, market factors, corporate politics, influence, and favors all have to line up to produce a winner, and a lot of these variables are uncontrollable.
But all of these long odds mean absolutely nothing, because everybody thinks they will be the Exception to the Rule…that success will come fairly easily and quickly. Ask for specific why’s and how’s on beating the system, and you get protestations of faith, because from the perspective of the ad placers–from the outside looking in– everything appears very mysterious. After all, nobody really knows what will be a hit. A & R decisions (Artist & Repertoire…the record executives who find and sign talent) are usually based on gut feelings and intuition rather than hard research and test-marketing…in other words, it’s a crap shoot…everybody has a chance. That makes the ad placers gamblers, because why Artist A makes it and Artist B doesn’t is largely a matter of luck. And anytime luck is a factor there’s superstition and magic.
And if achieving the Dream isn’t a tall enough order, there are strict conditions under which all of this is supposed to appear…a kind of latent Woodstock Wish Syndrome where people get together and it all happens…it’s instantly right.
THE NIGHT THE WORLD TURNED DAY-GLO
You have an uptown audition at 10PM, and a downtown meeting with an artist about illustrating an article at 7PM. You’re there now. His younger brother is, too. A tape plays some dreamy atmospheric ‘traveling’ music. “I wrote that,” younger brother says. “We’ve got a rehearsal at 8, but the drummer can’t come. Well?”
You’ve got your sticks and bass drum pedal in a neo-psychedelic pink tigerskin shoulder bag. “Sure.” The time slot’s perfect.
Magic.
We all rendezvous at the rehearsal space…a storefront past Avenue Z. The guitar player has long hair, love beads, and a paisley shirt. His girlfriend plays the bass. She’s a punkette in mid retro-fit…blue hair and sandals, black jeans, but a tie-dyed daishiki with a Nehru collar.
Tune. Tune. Tune. Bash. Bash. Bash. You play three and a half songs. Suddenly the guitar player stops and asks who your favorite band is.
You’re caught off guard…sticks frozen in midair…“the Cleveland Orchestra?…you guess you like…XTC.”
“You’ve heard ‘Duke and the Stratospheres’, haven’t you? It shows in your playing.” You haven’t. “I’m into psychedelic music, too…The Chocolate Watch Band…the 13th Floor Elevators.” You’re not.
The punkette says seriously, “We’re into social change, too. All those categories–disco, punk, jazz–they’re dividing the Youth. We want to obliterate those distinctions…bring people together. We want Michael Jackson to open for us and be grateful he’s got the gig.”
Bash. Bash. Bash.
MAN WILL ONLY BE REPLACED BY A MACHINE
WHEN A MACHINE LEARNS HOW TO DRINK
-T-shirt on a customer in the Modern Drum Shop, Manhattan You’re on a 48th Street, drooling over a new set of drums displayed in a music store window. Your reflection in the plate glass blurs for a second, then reassembles itself into the image of ‘the-serious- sociologist-writer-in-you-that-your-parents-hoped-you’d-become-so- that’s-why-they-sent-you-to-college’.
He is very clean. He speaks in fluent tweed.
“I’ll spare you my comments on your research methods. So how’s it going?”, he asks.
“Great,” I say, “I’m having fun and I’ve held the reader’s attention this far. There’s lots of interesting stuff out here.”
“Stuff like…?”
“Like the stereotypes musicians have for each other. They’re pretty funny. Want to hear them?’
“Okay, just keep it tight.”
“Lead singers are dandies and narcissists, bimbos and sluts. Guitar players are obsessive fetishists who lust after low-tech instruments designed back in the late ‘40’s and early ‘50’s. The young ones are even worse–they prove the old advertising maxim that Americans will buy anything with fins. Look at these stupid guitars!”
“Very tacky. But they’re not designed for you. What else?”
“Plenty. Keyboard players are stiff swingless high-techies with the smell of the Conservatory still on them. Sax players are wacked- out…silly…cartoonish. Or ridiculously serious. It’s from all that back pressure…too much oxygen in the brain. Bassists are catatonic introverts.”
“How pleasant. And drummers…?’
“And drummers are nuts, bad crazy, violent, unreliable, non- commital. They take the longest to set up when everyone’s eager to play, and the longest to tear down when everyone’s tired and wants to go home. They are perceived as the least responsible, yet the most important member of a band.”
“You’re making this up.”
“Nope, and that’s just the rockers. I’ve no idea about Latin or jazz musicians stereotypes. That’s what some people think, and they work from all that as a belief structure. Honest. They tell me less hateful stuff as well, like how the drums are the heart and soul of a combo. Classified ads for drummers often indicate trouble, or at least a big change in sound and feel. You see, other musicians can get by with modest talents, but a drummer has to be right there all the time. That’s pressure. They can’t stop and drink a beer, fiddle with their amplifier, cover a glitch with a fuzztone, or sing nonsense syllables. If the drummer is bad, the band will suck.”
“The very first guy you talked to was concerned about electronics. What’s that all about?”
“Synthesizers started replacing strings, brass, and basses in the Seventies, but know have emerged as instruments on their own. It’s now the drummers who are threatened by technology. As of this writing, only two of Billboard’s Top Ten singles have live drums on them. I have to add an ‘I think’ to that statement because the technology has developed so far that an engineer can take any combination of sounds and assemble a Dream Drummer. Do you want Phil Collins’ tom-toms? Charlie Watts’ snare? Max Roach’s cymbals? No problem. Digitally sample them from a record or tape, mix in some jack hammers, a chain saw, and an atom bomb and voila… Frankendrummer!
Drummers are fighting back with a ‘Rhythm Hitler’ approach to keeping time and things like a special double bass drum pedal to get that Beat Box ‘DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH bap…bap DUH-DUH bap bap”. Manny’s Music Store sells 10 of these high ticket items a week to modern day John Henrys, but the machines keep perfect time, never ask where their check is, and never show up drunk, two hours late and cursing the IRT.
But all this new electronic hardware is very expensive and shows up mostly on big budget records. Underground and independent rock records are almost all live sound and as these acts move up, maybe they’ll bring that approach along with them. People aren’t obsolete yet.”
“Three cheers. By the way, you’re losing your objectivity, you know.”
“There’s no way I can do this and not get involved. It’s very exciting. Call it the zeal of the newly converted. Look. I’ve got to run or this will never get finished. I warn you..it’s going to get bumpy. Still want to stick around?”
“I’ll be here. But please keep a little distance between yourself and the ad placers, okay?”
“Okay, I’ll try. Ciao.”
HUMAN SACRIFICE
“It’s easy to do this. Just give up your social life, love life…anything normal…work twenty-four hours a day and compromise like hell. But I love music…it’s my destiny. I’ve known this was what I wanted to do since I was ten years old.”
Tina’s band is called Frozen Concentrate and her ad is for a manager. “I’m a dreamer, but a pragmatic one. We need someone to handle our affairs. Not some business dude who’ll tell me how to cut my hair, but someone we can trust…who’s open minded. I can’t do it all anymore. I like to write songs and I get off creating a sound with my band, but I get burned out when I have to do all the business, too. People don’t know how much work this is and I guess I didn’t either. I expected everything to just drop out of the sky but everything’s trouble. It’s been a very sobering experience. Still, I’m self- employed…I don’t have to work some bullshit day job. I’m totally free to create and to be as weird as I want. We’re getting popular now so the next step will be to find a lawyer and start hitting the record companies, although the last place to hear good music is in an A & R office.”
GOOD GUYS IN BLACK HATS
BAD GUYS IN WHITE HATS
Tina touches on something you’ve been hearing all over…the ferocious love/hate attitude towards making it in the music business. Start at any point and go round and round: “Radio is awful, but my tunes are hits and belong on the radio; critics are idiots and don’t matter, but we need good reviews for our press kit so get them to a show because their opinions matter; club owners are down there with slugs, squids, lawyers and other lower life forms, but they’re how we make our money; and record companies are scum, but boy, do we ever want a record deal.” Anybody who is a gate keeper or a trend setter gets wooed, worshiped, loathed and scorned. And keeping the faith after repeated rejections from these powers-that-be is the aspiring artist’s greatest ordeal.
In late summer, you go to the New Music Seminar (a yearly music trade show) to pick up some biz wizdom, and it turns out to be the best place to see all this in action. On one panel, ten brave A & R executives face a thousand hopefuls and get yelled at, conned and seduced. They seem confused and perplexed by the powerful emotions that rage on the other side of their desks. They pepper their speeches with “we’ll sign a band that…” or “we’re looking for a band that…”, even when their own best selling records are solo vocalists with mostly computerized production. “Well, I like bands,” they say, and they probably genuinely do, and that is enough to keep everyone hoping and trying, and that brings everyone back next year to confront them again. The audience, of course, is only seeing half of it…it’s own ‘me- too-ism’. The execs are business people whose jobs are to keep their companies in the black. They are also real music fans, which is how they got those jobs in the first place. They are not stupid. They are, from a hungry musician’s stand point, something far worse.
They are in the way.
You wander over to the display booths and eavesdrop. If Madonna had really done everything you hear she’d done to get where she is, she would need corrective surgery. A twist on this jealousy is that you hear no sympathy for the ‘starving artist’ mentality. “If you’re hungry, it’s your own fault,” one independent heavy metal label manager says. “You haven’t done your homework. The system can and should be manipulated…that’s what it’s there for. David’s Bowie, Byrne and Lee Roth…Malcolm McLaren and Andy Warhol are role models for business technique and self-promotion, as well as for art.”
Maybe you’re tired or something is wrong with your eyes again but you swear the label manager’s jeans and T-shirt just turned into a colonial costume…complete with ruffles, buckled shoes, and a blunderbuss. “That’s right ,” he says to you, “it’s one of the major ironies in pop music…that a medium that likes to glorify the outcast, the rebel and the party girl runs on those old-fashioned puritanical values of hard work and self-sacrifice.”
So magic and fun soon get tempered by a grimmer preoccupation…a commitment to The Long Haul.
WE NEVER EVER DO NOTHING NICE AND EASY
–Tina Turner
The rehearsal studio is in a basement of a high rise. The plate on the door reads ‘Primal Therapy Center of New York’. A girl in leathers is reading a copy of the writings of the Marquis de Sade. Not pronounced ‘shar-DAY’.
The band greets you with long faces and gallows humor. The bass amp has just blown up, so they tried using a channel in the P. A. system, which only half blew up. All that’s working for the determined lead singer are the high frequency horns, making her voice sound like the ‘Help me , please, help me’ part at the end of the movie The Fly. It’s also a hot house in there since the air conditioning isn’t working either. You do feel like screaming.
The joking helps everyone deal with the real. Yes, amps do blow up (remember Maxwell’s?…oy…) and the show must go on, etc., so why not play anyway. You’re pros…you know how to handle this. They show you a tune by the Orlons and a Johnny Ace ballad and you manage to have some fun. They are nice people and you get a tape of obscure Rhythm & Blues classics out of it, and a pivotal lesson in this whole adventure.
They ask you to join their band. You say no, thank you…that you’re just doing this for fun and to write about auditions…and you’re not interested in committing to any one band. And then it dawns on you that you’re becoming exactly like the person you thought you were only role playing. You’re unintentionally fulfilling that drummer stereotype… unreliable and uncommitted. A Dream Buster…you’re attitude of reporterly distance is nothing but cruel, because they see you as exactly the person they’re looking for, and you’re not interested. You feel guilty and consider that you’d better actually join a combo, or stop this game altogether. You have one more audition lined up, so you decide to take the gig if it’s offered. This sets you up for the next lesson.
The last ad is about a new band being formed by ex-members of some of the most popular groups in the old CBGB’s/ Max’s Kansas City axis. The influences listed are the Stones and American funk and soul.
This is the one.
The rehearsal hall turns out to be run by an old friend from school, and the band is just killer…you all seem to really hit it off. They play a tape of an original tune with a tricky drum pattern and, though it takes you a minute, you get it…and are rewarded by smiles all around. The players are enthusiastic and personable, and give you the surest sign of compatibility: they laugh at all your jokes. The bass player asks if you’re available, and says he’ll call tomorrow. They have a few others to try out, but that’s a formality. You leave with a great feeling of ‘this is it’, this is what you want, and you know you’ll be asked to join.
Now your fantasies kick in. You’ve found exactly what everyone’s looking for, and squared your attitude about what is the right thing to do. The group has enough collective history to get well paying gigs at the top clubs right out of the box, and that means skipping the grinding process of getting established. You cancel all your commitments for the next day and wait for that phone call. And wait the next day. And through the whole week. Finally, you call the bass player. “You were great fun,” he says, “but we’ve found another drummer who really knocks us out. If he can’t do it or doesn’t work out, you’ve got the job. I’ll let you know.”
You are devastated. How could something that felt so right screw up? Who is this other guy? You’re as good as he is, you’re sure of it.
Consoling yourself with at least being second best, you pray for a car wreck or a domineering girlfriend…anything that would ‘X’ that drummer out of the running. You wait so long that you begin to wonder how long can you wait…how much time do you give this Dream to show up?
ONCE IN A LIFETIME
The ad reads “Singer looking for swing band or lounge work. Have tux and mike.”
Al Byron says he wrote Bobby Vinton’s first hit–“Roses are Red”–in
- “I’m in my late forties now, and I teach English at a community college. Every once in a while I’ll go into a bar where some guy with an accordion is playing that song, and he’ll let me sing it. And then I’ll hear the applause–just like in the movies–and I’ll start thinking about doing it again. I miss it. My writing partner and I switched to country and western in the Seventies and sold a few songs, but you know, you get older and priorities change so I started to teach. But I’ve still got that Dream and every so often I try to do something about it…play a wedding or a country club.”
He hadn’t gotten any offers from his ad, but singers had called him. “I was surprised at how many people my age still wanted to perform…still wanted to improve. I’m realistic, I don’t double on an instrument and I know I’m no star, but I’ve still got that Bug. I hope I always will.”
SAME AS IT EVER WAS
You’ve answered over fifty ads, gone on seventeen auditions, and been asked to join three bands. You’re amazed at the sheer number of people out there all struggling against…always against. Against a miniscule chance of success. Against conservative trends and the pressures to get normal, get an MBA, and settle down. Against the ever- shrinking number of adequate places to play. Trying for content and meaning when the success rule is The Emptier the Better. Playing live instruments when the recording process has become a course in computer programming. Plowing ahead, looking for just one gate keeper to say “yes”, not finding it, but plowing ahead anyway. Sweeping across the radio bands for a buzz and a snarl and finding only Prince singing another song about his dick. “Boneheads,” you grumble, after yet another audition in some cockroach-filled studio, after trying to keep time for two hours on a drum set with hundred year old heads and cymbals that go ‘thung’ instead of ‘ping’. “Why the hell are you all doing this?”
Homer “Caveman” Scott, the drummer for a punk band called The Royds- -“If it’s got to be this way, it’s got to be this way…fine…it doesn’t matter…“CAUSE I DON”T WANT MTV TO WIN!! I don’t want the major labels to win! My parents, my high school principal, the PMRC…I don’t want them to win either. They’re not THE ENEMY, really…it’s just that this Dream-thing has got to be on my terms. That’s what this thump and brang is supposed to be about…”
“But what is it all about?,” you ask him.
“C’mon, don’t you remember it, boyo?”
It’s called rebellion.
POSTSCRIPT
A bunch of your friends get together and start a hardcore punk band. They want you to play drums. “That music’s for kids,” you say, “and besides, that’s not drumming…that’s aerobics.” “But that’ll be our hook,” they say, “we’re all old. C’mon, it’ll be good exercise.” And it is. And you like the locomotive aggression of that kind of music. But the bass player starts getting flaky and soon quits.
So you run a Classified ad.
“Slash bass player wanted for adult hardcore band. Buttholes, G.G. Allin, Partridge Family. Must have passport, no bad habits, and must actually be able to play.” written in 1988, but still rings true, i think.