No Sugarcoating & No Bullshit: October
Written by Jo Hayes
Sunday, 14 October 2012 03:30
Hello again Uber Rockers.
Another month, another blog, I hope you enjoy reading it. If not, ask Satan himself for a time rebate on your death-bed.
Anyway, enough talking shit from me (well, here’s hoping). I won’t necessarily come up with a theme each month, but an idea and see where it goes; like a conversation, which can branch off, and hopefully coming to the end with the point I was trying to make.
If any of you are in a band, have been in a band or are trying to form one, you might understand how frustrating it can be trying to get certain things right. For me, my main problem is finding a good drummer, which isn’t in ten other bands. I’ve been on a search for my band members for the past few months, and have everything but a drummer.
This got me thinking about everything else you need to form a band, which is now my blog for the month. Forget the catchy choruses, melodic vocals, driving basslines, thumpi
ng drumbeats, and dirty guitar hooks (how many musical clichés could I fit into that sentence), if you don’t have chemistry, you have nothing.
A band to me is like a strange relationship, the chemistry has to be right, there’s an unexplainable bond, and if one person leaves, it can implode on itself (dramatic? Moi?)
For example, a band of mine broke up, due to a dominance issue between myself and the lead guitarist. The bassist and lead guitarist were in a relationship, as a result, the bassist also left. We had a good thing going, and the whole situation left me feeling very disheartened with forming another band for a long time. We didn’t speak for a while, and didn’t see each other until about a year afterwards. Oh, the awkwardness!
When chemistry works in a band, creativity is on a high, you all intuitively know what the other wants to do with the music, you have a good time, and the honeymoon period ensues (so to speak).
Of course bands can stay together for the money, keeping up appearances, much like a dull marriage. Although there are bands which aren’t so good at keeping up appearances as they may think, take The Pixies for instance.
I surprisingly like The Pixies, and decided to go and see them play for a reunion show in London a few years back – what a waste of time and money. They would’ve been better off getting audience members to mime along to the songs on stage, rather than go on stage looking akin to mannequin dolls, barely moving and looking like they wanted to kill each other. You could feel the tension, and I don’t use this often, but this is the definition of selling-out, playing purely for the money, no soul or no passion was present.
Getting back to my original point though, I may be finding a drummer, and when I eventually find one, yes they need to have good stamina and play well, but like any band member, you need to be able to get along well.
You can have a guitarist which plays as well as Slash, a drummer as amazing as Dave Grohl (in my humble opinion), and a bassist as good as Lemmy, but if any one of them is an ass, what’s the point? I’m all for some basic grasp and knowledge of the said instrument, with a lot of passion and enthusiasm – with bands that haven’t messed up for me before, it had all of that. You don’t need to be perfect straight away, a bit of practice can train someone not so great, into the almost-perfect band member (unless they get so good their ego bursts and they leave you – there’s the cynic inside me speaking).
Here’s to not striving for instant band perfection, and hoping that any of us out there trying to get the band balance right, can do it soon (before our sanity snaps…)
Until next time,
Jo
Blog motivation provided by: Social Distortion, Motorhead, Rancid & E-Cigarettes…
Band of the month: Buckcherry
Pet hate of the month: Christmas crap being sold/advertised/shoved in yer face…(wait until December).