Confessions of a Road Band…VOL III
Aug 24, 2009 Uncategorized
Monday…6:30 am…
LOYALTY…
LOYALTY is letting Pigpen sleep on your couch…
I woke up this morning on the couch at Artesian (GS HQ) to the sound of running water. It was the sound the pipes make when someone on the floor above you gets in the shower…and as I rubbed my eyes and wondered who needed to be clean this early on a Monday I saw my feet and realized the answer was me. Evidently wandering around a 37 acre tree farm all night barefoot isn’t the most hygienic play and so my feet looked like hobbits feet…though not Frodo’s cause he’s a whiny pussy and not Sam’s cause he’s a slob…maybe Pippin…that fool of a Took…
This last weekend took the GS circus on the road to the Hoppe tree farm outside Grafton WI for the first ever Uleo Creek Summer Fest, and to say the fest was smoky would be an understatement. As most of you know after a campfire everything smells like smoke. Your hair (I have none), your clothes (I have few) and your possessions (I have a couple) are all totally saturated and outside of a Febreeze shower all you can really do is clean up and wait for the smell to mellow…OR you can take everything you hold sacred in life and stuff it in a trailer covered in ash and let it clam bake in woodsy flavor overnight along with your sound guy…who sleeps in the trailer…LOYALTY…
Guess which option we chose?
Great times regardless! We played on the back of two parked trailers and our sound guys built a massive rig capable of playing Soldier Field. We jammed for a couple of hours in front of two bonfires the size of single family homes and got the opportunity to play in front of some great people who were extremely appreciative of our efforts. “You came up here from Chicago!? Why!? We’re in the middle of nowhere!”
“Because everybody knows this is nowhere…”
“Huh?”
“Neil Young?”
“What about him? I like Rockin in the Free World!”
“Nevermind…have you signed the email list?”
Anyways we’ll be back there next year for sure…and we’re gonna spread the word too…and next time we’re bringing FOUR sound guys…LOYALTY is the Mahoney’s crew who takes care of us…thanks.
And now a moment on Friday’s activities here in the city…
Lilly’s Bar on Lincoln is one of the most fabulous spots in the city for live music. I’d say over 60% of the working bands in the city over the course of the last 20 years have played there and thanks to the amazing efforts of Lilly herself…who still does the booking by the way…thousands of musicians have had the opportunity to play live in the city for young, fun audiences in Lincoln Park. Lilly gave us the chance to play there in the summer of 2007 when we had played exactly ONCE in Chicago and since that night has allowed us to jam at her place probably two dozen times. Our LOYALTY to her is such that no matter what we have booked, inside or out of the city, we’ll take a date there whenever she calls if we’re free…proximity agreements be damned…and now if you’ll excuse me…
PROXIMITY AGREEMENTS ARE ONE OF THE MANY THINGS THAT ARE SLOWLY KILLING OUR INDUSTRY.
In the golden era of Rock N Roll, bands were quite literally packs of gypsies who traveled around playing to anyone who’d offer them the opportunity to play. Bands played every night if possible and for every show on a Friday where the dance floor was packed and hoppin there was a gig on Tuesday the band played for the bartender and the puffy looking drunk dude sitting at the bar all alone. Bands back then honed their skills both musically and theatrically every night so that they could be the best at their craft and in return for their efforts bar owners offered them food, or beer, or laundry, or a place to crash, or whatever was left in the till at the end of the night. The environment was harmonious, and the best bands rose to the top cause the bar owners wanted them back and only the toughest cats could survive the rigors of the lifestyle.
Today that attitude has been destroyed by vanity and greed.
VANITY is starting a band because you saw them on MTV when you were 13 and realized if Motley Crue was pulling chicks like they did in those videos you could too! So now you and your buddies are spending a few nights a month claiming your musicians and trying to get gigs and instead of there being 50 or a hundred bands in the city looking for work, there are 2000. Club owners are now no longer loyal to the working bands they once needed as every Friday some dipshit who reads Rolling Stone rolls into their bar thinking he’s Mick Jagger and brings 20 of his friends out and so he’s a rocker…music be damned.
GREED is the bar owners seeing the music scene slowly eroding and so they employ draconian measures like proximity agreements to keep money in their pockets. A proximity agreement for those who don’t know is an agreement many clubs employ so that bands won’t dilute their fan base before a show. As we’ve discussed in weeks past most local bands have no ACTUAL fans, just a group of friends who enjoy the party the band throws and so they continue to roll out when a band sounds the bell. Well if a band has a network of 100 “fans” and plays a show two weekends in a row in the same market, maybe half of them go to bar A the first weekend and half go to bar B the following weekend. Problem is bar B gets only half the crowd/money they assumed the band was good for SOOO bar owner B says, “Screw this. If you wanna play here you can’t play any club in the city for two weeks on either side of the gig. And if you don’t like it, I’ll get the Meatheads to come play instead of you and they only play once every three months and so they’ll bring out ALL their…uh…Fans.”
Now I’m a huge huge fan of live music. And I love the city of Chicago more than any place on the planet and so naturally I think Lollapalooza is an amazing event. However I PERSONALLY thought the line up this year was a bit thin on super cool bands (different strokes for different folks…you may have thought it dusted the original Woodstock). I have a theory on this I’ll share because I can…word around the campfire was that bands playing the show had to sign a 90 day proximity agreement on EITHER SIDE of the show…AND that they couldn’t play within x number of miles of Chicago. Now this is band talk in bars so I may not even have the numbers exactly right but assuming I’m close you’re telling bands they’re only performance in the city of Chicago for six months would be at Lolla!! I think certain bands…specifically road bands…i.e. the ones I love…may have decided that was too steep a price to pay. Think about this: If you were to draw a line from Minneapolis to Texas on a map only 15 of the 100 most populated cities in the country are west of it. So telling a band they can’t work regions of the Midwest for half a year if they wanna do Lolla is tough. Real tough. The only thing tougher would be playing the main stage opposite Jane’s Addiction and Tool and then being told to split for six months. Ouch. Hope it was worth it…
Anyways these agreements make perfect sense for club/fest promoters but totally fuck over people like Lilly (cool local bar owner) and real working bands (GS). Lilly and I bonded over this the first night I met her and we’ve talked about it dozens of times since then. So now days good bands are less likely to take gigs at smaller local joints like Lilly’s (if you have 40 people in Lilly’s it’s like CBGB’s in ’78) as they can’t have a 500 seat club knowing they’re “diluting” their audience by playing a pub show the week before! Can you imagine the look on Jimi Hendrix’s face if the guy at Club Aux Go Go in the village in 1966 says to him, “Hey James, you’re doin some really cool stuff but I can’t have you out playin every nite and stealing my business. Don’t play in the village again til next month and then we’ll have you back.” You see some bands NEED to play. It’s not always about the prestige or exposure, or even the paycheck…it’s about the desire to play together to create something that you think is special. Our band HAS to play all the time. If we have free time on our hands BAD THINGS HAPPEN. So we solve this problem by taking a show whenever we can…wherever. I meet guys in bands all the time who look me in the eye and tell me their strategy for success is one big show every three months which will show the club owners and promoters how bad ass they are. Well I don’t know shit about this business…we’re still total clowns…but if we play 34 shows in the next three months and you’ve played one, I like our odds. If the music is any good people will come out…sometimes four of em, and some times 400.
Unfortunately we have to play the game just like any other band these days though it doesn’t mean I can’t bitch about it and give a shout out to one of the coolest people still in the music scene today in Chicago. Thanks Lilly…and can we move the gong!? Two drummers in there is just madness…and pitchers of Long Island!? Is that even legal?
Lilly’s on Friday had another treat to it making it worthy of the ramble… Friday was the first time I ever saw anyone in my band whom I’m genuinely LOYAL to play in another band…
I am an EXTREMELY LOYAL person by nature. And I’m not talking about in my past personal life so save the fucking comments…kisses my dear…I’m talking about my friends and immediate family. I get tremendous satisfaction out of showing my LOYALTY to people who have earned it. In fact if I were to sit down and analyze it I’d say it’s almost a fault as sometimes I’ve pledged my LOYALTY to some rather…uh…strange people. There have been many occurrences in my life where I’ve found myself in really weird surroundings due to this blind LOYALTY, and Friday night at 12:30 in the morning as I watched my drummer rip a fan out of the wall at Lilly’s I realized once again this LOYALTY thing is a strange beast…
You see band LOYALTY is a very unique thing. Being in a serious band is like having a serious girlfriend…except you have four of them and they all have dicks. Usually you grow to love and hate these people just like you would anyone really close to you however as most people in bands are bi-polar there is an even greater amount of drama. All of the usual stereotypes are for the most part accurate…singers are prima-donna bitches…drummers are insane…guitar players think their shit doesn’t stink and bassists are the stoic, quiet types who keep the shit from exploding, however there is one thing almost everyone who’s played in a band can agree on no matter their choice of instrument and that’s their mutual hatred for CHEATING.
And I’m not talking about women.
Show up for practice one Monday night and wait until everyone is in between bullshit stories from the weekend and casually mention you’re gonna start playing with another band. There is nothing in nature like this…anywhere. I’ve been in many bands over the years and I can honestly say no musician knows how to react to this. One guy says, “Cool!” because he’s so shocked the first thing that runs through his mind is, “stay calm…” Another guy says, “Really?” because he’s just felt his blood pressure go up 50 beats per minute. This is usually a guitar player as his first thought is, “is the guy in the other band better than me?” Then there’s the singer songwriter guy who lowers his head thinking, “if I have to teach these songs to one more clown I’m gonna stab somebody.” And finally there is usually a guy who says, “Why?” thinking all is peachy and what need does this guy have for anything other than what we have? Anyhow you’ve just destroyed any chance at a good productive practice (I strongly recommend you try something like this AFTER practice) so you may as well just shut down the amps and head to the bar so everyone can get drunk enough to fight and yell and voice their concerns out loud. This is because of the LOYALTY that develops when you spend so much time together. The only way I can relate this to those of you not in a band…that you really care about anyways…is this:
Come home from work one day, sit down at the dinner table and as your passing the peas to your three loving teenage children tell your wife your starting a new business…and your partner is going to be a six foot blond woman named Monique. Do not send us comments on what happens next…
Point is, assuming the band survives this situation, there will inevitably come a time when you’re forced to go see a show with one or more members of your own band playing without you. This can cause any one of a number of reactions depending on your mental make-up and knowing mine I assumed it’d be similar to watching my girlfriend get fucked…
But it wasn’t!!
I actually felt an amazing sense of pride watching the whole thing and all that kept running through my mind (I was heavily medicated at this point…wasn’t sure how I was gonna react) was that I was so lucky to play in a band with the guy on stage! Then once the show ended and he tore his fan out of the wall and basically over turned his drums due to what he felt was a sub par performance (he played flawlessly) I nearly lost my shit. I thought that guy was the coolest motherfucker on the planet and realized once and for all that LOYALTY isn’t a curse…
It’s a weapon. And once you know how to use it the walls start to come down…
LOYALTY is to the Sugar…see ya next week…
GS-
Confessions of a Road Band…VOL 2…
Aug 17, 2009 Uncategorized
Confessions of a Road Band…Vol. 2…
Monday morning…
I think Keith Richards is tougher than Lance Armstrong. I think Mick Jagger is stronger than A-Rod and I think Charlie Watts could break Brian Urlacher over his knee. The Stones are inhuman. What they’ve done over the last 45 years is most likely the most difficult human achievement on the planet. Everest? Please. The Iron Man? A Joke. These guys are immortals…
We had the opportunity to play four nights in a row this last weekend, and honestly, it’s already getting easier. Like dogs peeing on the floor we’re learning what we can and can’t get away with on these runs and sitting here this morning trying to make sense of it all I can’t help but marvel at the strength of the people who tour relentlessly for a living. Obviously I don’t know a damn thing compared to the guys on the level above us, or have even a clue at what its like to survive on the Superstar level, though I have to assume it’s gotta be utter chaos. The lifestyle these guys have maintained over the years is so impressive it just wears me out sitting here thinking about it!! Pro athletes are extremely talented people in amazing shape for a brief period in their life. The Stones have been Tiger Woods on Sunday at the Masters everyday since before the Vietnam War. So who’s tougher?
With that in mind I’ll offer some thoughts on our week…keep in mind if the Stones are the Tiger Woods of rock than we’re the little league team from Canton, Ohio that lost to Akron in extras at the regional final…keeping us from an opportunity to play on ESPN at 8:30 on Saturday morning…
Wednesday afternoon we played a corporate party as a favor to two of our closest friends. The word favor in our world simply means, “Hey I need something and you can help me with it so we’ll do this for you so we can guilt you into helping us.” The gig was in a corporate park in Oak Brook, IL behind a sprawling mansion that overlooked a huge field and pond and was absolutely majestic. It was also 50 yards from where our trailer was parked and as this is only week two with the trailer, we had yet to discover the need for a dolly. Carrying an 80 pound amplifier 50 yards in 90 degree heat is not cool. It’s not rock n roll and its not even good exercise. It’s pure hell. In fact its worse than that because at any given time half the band is doubled over holding their sides and claiming dehydration…before the show…and so those of us who can make the run without breaking for smokes or whining end up doing double duty. CHURCHILL: “If you’re going through hell…keep going…
SIDE NOTE: If you’re one of those people who reads something like this and feels the need to comment afterwards, “WAA WAA poor baby! An unsigned local band has to carry their own gear to play a show for free…stop whining!!” then I suggest you hurl yourself into traffic. I’m not looking for your sympathy…though we’ll take it…I’m simply trying to paint a picture of our nice little Wednesday. We know the hardships of the business and probably know them better than you (lets face it if you are the guy I described above your probably reading this in an office somewhere wondering why the club never called you back after that stirring rendition of Wonderwall….and the dudes in the cog above us don’t have the time to read this dribble)
Anyhow midway through our set up the short gay guy overseeing the event from the corporate park blows a fuse at the site of our amplifiers. He says to our friend whose running the event from the client side, “Um, hello!? We said only acoustic acts were allowed to play here!” Meanwhile at this very moment 50 feet away our sound guy is assembling a full PA system designed to provide sound to a 200 person outdoor event and BOTH of our drummers are assembling their full kits…all while Swedish and myself are tuning our electric guitars. Well needless to say the situation is explained to me and so we make the necessary adjustments. I switch to Acoustic, the guys switch to brushes on the drums and we employ our kill switch on Mike’s amp and ask him to go sit by the Margarita machine…speaking of…
Never have a machine like this available to a band before a show. Most of the people we associate with will take a Margarita machine over a pack of blessed virgins. In fact our sound guy blew such a gasket at the site of this machine he introduced himself to the vendor as a potential client, and explained that we were currently SERIOUSLY considering putting a machine on our tour bus (which we don’t have) for the upcoming tour (which we haven’t booked). Needless to say our sound was amazing…Gload for president…
Playing a corporate party at 10% volume in the sun hammered on Margaritas for 200 people who don’t give a rat’s ass about you is pretty much the best gig on the planet. We played a grand total of seven songs in an hour and a half, every song was improvised and most of them had stream of conscious lyrics revolving around the shrimp that were being boiled close enough to the stage so that we could hear them cry out as they were immersed into a steaming cauldron along side 500 feet of Kielbasa sausage (our bass player later told us this is exactly how he wants to go). Despite the issues we were fed like kings, picked up a little cheddar in the form of 25 dollar gift cards (everyone in the band took the AMEX gift card as it was the same as cash…I took the BESTBUY one…idiot) and we got a lead on a maggie machine so I’ll go ahead and call it a success.
Thursday we played our monthly blues gig at our local watering hole and if you haven’t been to one of these yet you’re truly missing out. This last weeks was punctuated by a close friend of the band planning her birthday party for this evening and so to say the event was drunken would be an understatement. Try to imagine playing a gig you’ve played 30 times before with no one in the crowd but your friends and all the locals you drink with everyday…oh and everyone has the day off tomorrow and the trailer only needs to be moved 500 yards and doesn’t need to be unpacked after the show…BLACKOUT. In a limo at 2am on my way to one of the worst shit holes in all of Chicago I had a chance to sit and analyze the groups performance and I realized the key to our success this particular evening was having not one, but TWO sound guys…
Sound guys are like hot chicks in small town bars. They love knowing that they’re the hottest thing in the room and HATE when someone rolls in who may just have bigger cans or a better smile. Well, our sound guy has bigger cans and a better smile than pretty much anyone on the planet so the chemistry between these two guys was HOT. We had mics for every drum within a mile of the bar and a monitor mix for the back bartender…all set up for 75 drunk ass people who’ve heard us play 100 times before…hell of a nite…oh and we had a beat boxer open up for us that was a poor mans dude from Police Academy…awesome…
Friday we trucked out to the burbs for a lucrative gig at one of the best spots in the state to see a show. The venue also happens to be located in the very town where Pat and I grew up so we always take full advantage of this opportunity to invite all of our friends and family from the hood. This crew consists of two types of people:
1. Parents/family friends: These are people who are either related to you in some form or another or friends of your family who still live in the burbs. For example at this show I had both my parents at the show (not on the guest list) and my dentist from 3rd grade (not on the list). This is the group of people you don’t see very often and so when they have the opportunity to get a quick chat in they ask you questions like, “So are you married yet?” “Aren’t you tired of the city?” “What’s you’re REAL job?” “Have you met my daughter Audrey? She LOVES your band!! She’ll have the neck brace removed next month and then you two should totally have dinner!!” Fortunately for Pat and I our parents have an amazing group of friends who support their children’s wild fantasies and so I’m proud to say we have the strongest suburban draw of 50+ rockers in the Midwest…rock.
2. Suburbanites: These people are the fabric of society. They are the glue that keeps our country together, and they are the pistons that keep America’s engine running so smooth. They are some of my closest friends and coolest people I know and they are without a doubt some of the hardest binge drinkers on earth. Nobody sings T.G.I.F like a guy living in the burbs with his old lady and kid, and nobody anywhere offers to buy the guy in the band a shot faster than these people. I didn’t even finish hugging an old friend of mine before her husband threw his arm around me and barks, “What are we shootin!!” The look in this kinda guy’s eye is similar to that of a castaway’s eye when Angelina Jolie washes up on shore and asks him for something to drink. And I think I’ve had it hard…These are the people who’ve decided family is more important than fun (and I think they’re right I’m just not man enough to admit it) and so they’ve committed themselves to living a life free of all the burdens of the city and instead enjoy sprawling homes in the forest and being chased by psychotic local cops who live to ruin the lives of hard working family people. Fridays for these people are about getting the chance to grab a babysitter and getting after it. Is there anything in the world better than seeing the look of horror on a woman’s face when her husband has reverted back to his frat days and is blindly slamming shots with his buddies in the band!? No there isn’t.
Needless to say the show was a total blast and with two 90 minute sets we had the chance to do some really wild stuff (though no one saw most of it as suburban women take their men home at half time of these events knowing full well that if they stay the lawn will not get mowed the next day and there is a 0% chance the cabinet with the loose door above the toilet is getting fixed) with a great sound system in a cool room…thanks Cubby…
Finally Saturday rolled around and we were asked to participate in a showcase sponsored by a local promoter in the city. We weren’t really sure what to expect and even told the guy we had shows all weekend and couldn’t put our full promotional weight behind the show but he insisted and so we said why not. The gig was a 45 minute set with FOUR OTHER BANDS at 10:30 at a club we’ve played dozens of times before and most importantly, it was after a five hour BBQ for the air and water show…BLACKOUT. The show itself was a blast as it seemed like it was five minutes long and we had a ton of energy (the night before we were responsible for entertaining people from 10pm to 1:30am…lets just say that’s a HUGE adjustment to make in terms of a live show) but it was the party during the day that got me thinking about the comments I made at the beginning…
See you gotta figure that there is a “five hour BBQ” EVERYDAY before a Stones Show! I milled around the party sipping on Mikes Light Hard Lemonades (I know, I know, save it…I figured it better than pounding beer all day…little did I know these are almost twice as strong as beer) thinking to myself that Keith has probably sat through ten thousand of these parties and then had to go on stage in front of thousands and be on point (or close…or Keithian) only to get off stage and head to another “five hour BBQ” after party!! The ability to do this kind of thing everyday for decades is precisely what makes me think these guys are so impressive and leads me to believe they’re “tougher” than athletes. Sure Michael Jordan was great but he…you know what forget that…Jordan could’ve been Keith….Sure A-Rod is great but these guys aren’t partying all day before the game and then all nite after, and then getting up again to do it all over again…its just amazing…And I’m so jealous it sick.
Here’s to the real world champs…May you live forever…
Just like the Sugar…
GS-
GreenSugar Promotional Video!!
Aug 11, 2009 Uncategorized
What I Believe – GreenSugar from GreenSugar on Vimeo.
Confessions of a Road Band…
Aug 9, 2009 Uncategorized
August 9th, 2009
In the evening…
I’m tired. My voice is shot. I think I’m getting a cold and I know I need rest. My woman is angry at me for not being around and my family never knows where the hell I am. I’m ready to choke 40% of the guys in the band (guess who?), and there is so much shit to get done before next week I feel like some sap who left his cubicle to go to Palm Beach for a week with his girlfriend he doesn’t even really like and came back to the proverbial mountain on his desk. What’s worse is that no one else is gonna help me with any of it, and if I don’t get it done I’m the one that’ll get blamed and if I do take care of it no one will thank me for doing it. I’m fucking miserable…
AND I WAS OUT FOR ONE NIGHT.
The next time you go out to see a band coming thru town in a van you should try to imagine NOT how much fun it must be to ride from city to city seeing the country and playing music every night, but what is actually going on with the band you paid to see that night. And this is not the life of U2 we’re talking about here, this is the REALLY REAL world. Let me set the table for you…
When a band gears up to leave town for a show the feeling is similar to that of the Roman Legions. You think, “We’re going to pack our shit up, and then we’re going to destroy everything in our path on the way to this foreign city and once we arrive we’re gonna rape and pillage and burn the whole fucking thing to the ground.” Guys are confidently barking at one another while loading up the trailer and everyone is sure the evening is going to be a success. 200 miles? No problem. 1100 seat theater? Piece of cake. No A/C? Roll down the windows…fearlessly the idiots face the crowd…
Within an hour chinks in the armor can be spotted. It’s hot. REALLY hot. There’s traffic. There is a time zone change you didn’t calculate into your travel time. Someone in the car already smells…and yet everyone continues to stay upbeat because you’re doing what you honestly think God wants you to be doing…
Arriving at a gig where you haven’t played before is like looking at a beautiful woman that you know wants you. The possibilities are endless. You think to yourself, “Man this is gonna be fun” and for lack of a better phrase you just can’t wait to get it on. As you pull into town and see the marquis that reads, “GREENSUGAR-Saturday WCE WRESTLING- SUNDAY” you’re sure you’ve made it. And it is at this precise moment where things get crazy.
Bands are normally greeted at the back door (fitting) by someone from the club who informs them as to the current state of affairs. “So and so is late. We’re running behind. There is no room for all of your gear. You don’t get a sound check. Your set time has been changed, and also shortened. OK? Great! There is a storage area/green room upstairs for you guys all stocked up with WATER. But here’s a wrist band for half off domestic drafts…”
Following this kick in the pills, the band usually disperses to take care of whatever is most important to each guy. For most that is finding out where one can smoke and take advantage of that amazing deal we’ve been given on two dollar Coors. For a few of us though this gives you the opportunity to walk the room and figure out how you’re going to conquer it. 1100 seats huh? How am I gonna make these people get off on us? Hmmm…well we should probably set up this way so that we can…what was that? The balcony is closed off tonite? There is an outdoor street fest running at exactly the same time we’re on stage? There was no advanced publicity of the show at all? The theater is actually an old 40’s MOVIE THEATER with no sound system? The stage is a ten foot makeshift bandstand built in the aisle separating the first and second section of seats? The show is actually a tryout to see if we’re good enough to play the larger rooms in the city? WE’RE NOT GETTING PAID TO PLAY TONITE!? Fearlessly the idiots face the crowd…
The vibe in a green room before a show is similar to the vibe in a room where two people are sitting on a couch watching a movie after their first date. Someone in the room wants to fuck. Someone in the room wants to chill and everyone in the room knows that sooner or later something is gonna go down. There are guys getting their buzz on before the show (nerves or alcoholism or both), there are guys fiddling with guitars, there are guys singing to themselves and there is drumming on the arms of the chairs they’re sitting in. Everyone is smoking and in addition to the women IN the room there is a creepy 45 year old Asian chick with DDD cans prowling around the backstage wondering where the guy in the patched up jeans is…
Finally it’s game time. You do a strikeout and then walk down to the stage where your destiny awaits. You take your shoes off to get a feel for the stage you’re about to become a part of and then you realize the house lights are still on. In fact those aren’t house lights, they’re the overhead lights to the theater. There are no “lights” in fact. There are also no fans. Just a 75 to a hundred locals sitting around large circular tables with their kids and grandmas staring at the animals on the stage…but before we continue…
The word “Fan” is a total crock of shit. Unsigned road bands don’t have fans. They have FRIENDS. The better these bands are at networking in a given town…I.E. getting shitfaced with the locals and other bands playing that night, the better they’ll do the next time they’re in town. Sure there are people who really dig your music and if you’re actually decent you’ll always have the satisfaction of watching from the stage as you turn a couple of total strangers into a believers. However if you don’t kiss that guys ass, have a beer with him, coyly flirt with his fat girlfriend, and beg him to sign the email list (which is filled from the show before with addresses like suckmyass@shiteater.com and burpafart@puke.org) he’ll forget about you after that night and will cease to be your friend/fan…So put it this way:
Bands like U2 play the song “One” and people cry. They are fans. In the REALLY REAL world, bands like us see a guy puke into the trashcan next to the bar at 1:30 in the morning and smile knowing the sticker he put on his T shirt is a bitch to get off and that he’s now our FAN because in between the shots he buys you he tells you that next time we’re in town he’s gonna bring his buddy who plays in a band and would think the shit we’re doing is mind blowing…now where were we? Ah yes…
Playing a show to people sitting down is like jerking off in front of your parents. AWKWARD. You’re on stage bouncing around like a chimpanzee on cocaine and the people sitting forty feet away (people are afraid of the front of the stage. The only reason people ever end up right in front of the band stand at a local show is purely due to bar capacity. If Zeppelin played the Bottom of the Hill club in San Fran and no one knew about it, the forty or so people who showed up that night would stand forty feet away.) are staring at you like your some kind of some science experiment. You know how they say people watch NASCAR because they wanna see the crashes? Same thing. People sitting down are waiting…hoping…for you to fall of the stage. You fuck up a chord change in a half full room full of people standing up and milling about nothing happens. You fuck up a change in front of a hundred people sitting down and they ALL lean over to their closest friend to tell them, “Hey did you hear that! What a bunch of assholes!! My cousin in Grand Rapids plays in this black metal band and they’re SOOO much better than these guys…” And let’s not even get started with the polite applause from people sitting down. Like we’re fucking golfers…
If a four year old child is wildly dancing to your music is that a compliment? And if it is then what does it mean when the mother grabs the child in the midst of your guitar solo and begins to spank them?
Anyhow after a band finishes pouring their heart and soul out to an out of town crowd the first thing they do is clear the stage of their equipment as quickly as humanly possible. This is totally degrading. Everyone gets into this business dreaming of bowing to an ecstatic crowd of thousands shouting your praises and tossing your drumsticks and picks to a throng of adoring fans. In the REALLY REAL world you finish playing the last note of the evening and soaked in your own sweat you bend over on stage and break down your own gear so that the next band can have their shot at fame and fortune. The only feeling worse than this is during set up BEFORE the show, when the rock n roll pants you wore for the gig split in the ass cause your busting a gut hauling your own amplifier up to the stage. After clearing the stage of your gear the band falls back to the green room for a healthy dose of bitching. “I couldn’t hear anything!!” “How are we supposed to play this room with out a sound check!!” “I can’t believe you fucked that part up!! We’ve played it 500 times!!” “The crowd sucked!!” “Those monitors sucked!!” “Man it was hot up there!!” This is all done while the band is consuming cigarettes and booze at an astronomical rate. Nothing clears your head after a show like a smoke and a shot. Nothing.
Finally, instead of going out into the crowd to talk to the 15 or so people who may actually have dug it enough to come back into town the next time you’re here, the band loads their gear back into the trailer and immediately begins to calculate how it can most effectively get wasted without getting busted/losing their shit. It is at this point where you realize your were in fact not the Roman Legions. Through the haze that has enveloped you as you walk into the late night after party you realize you are in the circus. And not Ringling Brothers either. The circus that performs at the old people’s home and school for retards.
Anyhow after spending money you don’t have to get yourself drunk enough to forget/ignore the realities of life you sleep on the floor of someone’s home whom you’ve only known for maybe five hours. You don’t have a blanket (why would you possibly be that prepared) so around six am you wake up shivering cold and sneezing (that’s from the dog hair on the floor next to your face) and so you sit up determined to find something to warm you up. BOOM!! Your face hits the bottom of the Lazyboy foot rest that has been extended and now you understand the odor you were dreaming about isn’t a nightmare, it is REAL. It’s the smell of your drummers feet (who also plays barefoot) six inches above your nose for the last three hours. After shaking this off you stagger around looking for a blanket though of course there are no more and so after briefly considering taking the sound guys (how does he get one and you don’t) you go to the closet and discover you’ve struck gold. Hanging in front of you are these strangers winter coats, and so without a moments hesitation you grab the largest one and consider the problem solved. Before returning to the floor you consider how much your throat and chest hurt, and how much you want a glass of water. You look into the kitchen which you helped trash and find a glass amongst the mess that looks OK. You run two fingers in a pinch like motion around the rim and rinse the cigarette butt out of the glass before indulging in a nice luke warm glass of small town tap water. It tastes amazing. Unfortunately, the sink makes a terrible shrieking noise when running and for fear of a relative strangers wife coming downstairs to a half naked man in her kitchen w bloodshot eyes guzzling tap water at six am you quickly turn off the sink and settle for a single glass. And now back to bed…
Your cell phone alarm wakes you up at 9am on a Sunday and the first thing you see is a long haired Chihuahua in your grill wondering if she should kiss your face or tear your nose off. Then you are greeted to a chorus of other defeated souls who hate your cell phone alarm as much as you do. Finally you pull your shit together and stumble out the door quietly as your host told you explicitly not to wake them when leaving and you get into a van with no A/C and hope to make it home before the heat index of 105 rears its ugly head. Everyone in the van is miserable. Everyone. Everyone drank too much the night before. Everyone smoked too much the night before. Everyone spent money they didn’t have the night before. Everyone thinks they could have played better the night before. Everyone SLEPT ALONE the night before. And now you all pile in together to get home and there is nothing but noise. The driver wants to listen to a rock n roll record to get him going. The guy in shotgun is explaining to no one in particular that he remembers nothing after the band at the late night bar played his favorite Toadies song and the guy to your left is coughing up something that could definitely be considered hazardous. Cell phones are ringing. The windows are down. The sound of the wind blowing by you at seventy miles an hour is deafening. Someone lights up a grit. You say to yourself that smoking should be illegal this early on a Sunday, however as you’d tear someone else’s head off if they tried to tell you what you can or cannot do you just grit your teeth and sigh. Loudly. Every guy in every band in the whole world is passive aggressive towards one another when in this situation. TRAFFIC. HUNGER. THIRST. MONEY. All of these things dominate your thoughts. And now a word on money:
First off, everyone in a road band is broke. Everyone. Everybody in the van owes somebody else money and yet all a traveling band does all day is spend money. When you wake up hung over and you’re on your way out of town you stop to get gas. Cha Ching! Then you buy some Gatorade and maybe a snack to settle your stomach. Cha Ching! Also if you’re anywhere but the city this is an excellent chance to buy grits. Cha Ching! After riding around for hours upon hours sending texts…Cha Ching…you stop somewhere to eat. Cha Ching! Then it’s back to the road to burn some more gas. Finally, you get to the gig and it’s never what you thought it was going to be (the painful reality in a dreamer’s life) and there isn’t anyone there and in the end you don’t make nearly is much as you thought you were going to. Fuck Guarantees. There are no guarantees in this world, and there are sure as shit no guarantees in this business.
Finally you get back to headquarters and in the searing heat you and one other guy in the band unload all of the gear because everyone else has shit to do, friends in town, cigarettes to smoke etc. etc. and once you finally get it all loaded in everyone runs away from each other as fast as humanly possible. No one wants to be around the next guy when he realizes his dreams are actually nightmares. So you run. Run to your girlfriends or roommates or friends or watering holes and tell them about how awesome it was and how much ass you kicked. And yet at the end of the day/night you find yourself alone. Alone with your thoughts you sit there and think about all of the things you’ve experienced and saw and there is only one thing running through your mind like a runaway freight train:
GOD DAMN I CAN’T WAIT TO DO THAT AGAIN!!!
GREENSUGAR FOREVER-
