What makes a bad band?

Wednesday September 28th, 2005 @ 8:55 PM

Filed under: Everything, Tales Told Well

Jason opened the package and read the cheap photocopy inside, “you’ve got to read this, Carl,” he said.

I looked at the handwriting, all caps slanting unevenly across the page. It was a promotional flyer from a new band in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It began “Sun Raze take Cheyenne by storm…” We owned a popular nightclub in those days and received several such promo kits every day.

Let’s examine what we can learn from just this much information. What professional band would send a hand written photocopy to be taken seriously? But these guys had an important message: they were conquering geographical territory. So far they had taken Cheyenne. Not lightly either, but “by storm.” Were we to assume that this meant all 50,000 residents of Cheyenne? If not, then how many? Since one could assume that little children and old people were not in this equation, that removes about twenty grand right there. Since this was not a country band, another twenty grand wouldn’t be included. Since they just started up and since they only played in one of two bars that held a capacity of a hundred people or so, we have to assume that out of Cheyenne’s fifty thousand populace, they’d played to maybe two hundred. However, since a new band usually seeds the audience with friends and relatives for about the first six gigs, these two audiences were most likely the same people. So a final tally of maybe one hundred is what we can conclude “taking Cheyenne…” actually meant.

Now what does it mean, “by storm?” I’m guessing we were to assume that the converts were won quickly and powerfully. Since mom and dad, cousins and siblings, neighbors and school friends were already won over before the band even formed, I will give them that the conversion was rather quick.

Now the rest of the promo letter was filled with equally embarrassing self-proclamations: “If you liked Stevie Ray, you’ll love Little Ray Stevenson…his guitar sears like a cutting torch…this band will kick your ass…opened for Jose Flores and the Hot Tamales at the VFW prosthetics fundraiser.”

Here’s one thing you can count on, every band in the country thinks they are better than they are. It forms a weird pattern. When a band starts out they think they are about 1000 times better than they are. They hear their mom and buddies and girlfriends cheering and they thrill to the deafening blast of the amplifiers and they are lofted into psychodelia. In their minds they are Metallica prancing and stomping about the great stage. The longer a band is together, the less blown up this exaggerated view of themselves. First their moms don’t come any more, then their friends, then they go on their first road trip and play to twelve strangers who stand around booing, laughing at them, giving them the finger, and pelting them with ice cubes. At some point they are taken down to the lowest point a musician can get which is thinking they are twice as good as they are. Here they give up, or start getting success. Either way the scale starts back the other way.

If they quit, the more years go by, the better they think they were until they are telling old-timers at the local watering hole that they once took Cheyenne by storm. In their memory, thousands of people were screaming for them at the VFW prosthetics fundraiser, only it has become the opening for BB King when he played the Pavilion.

If, on the other hand, they become successful, their self-view can take them back to 1000 times as good as they are. I think of the sixties British Rock groups who got a hit record, like Herman’s Hermits singing, “I’m Hen-er-ee the eighth I am, Enereeee the eighth, I am I am…”

Their music aside, if the Hermits had even looked one thousand times as good as they did onstage, they still wouldn’t be as cool as James Brown.

Now you fans can do the music world a lot of good by being able to distinguish between a truly good band and a pretender and then cheering or booing accordingly. The main source for musicians’ self-image warp is accolade. It is hard not to think you’re pretty cool when an audience is screaming and clapping and whistling and girls are flashing their breasts. The worst thing you can do when a band sucks is to give them accolade. This means we have to listen to them again. Girls, if you must show your appreciation with breasts, not saying this isn’t a great idea, then save them for those who really deserve the honor. You’ll have those musical cretins out buying bigger amps, smoke machines, and leather pants if you keep that up. Do us all a favor and don’t encourage these yo yo’s with boobage.

I personally think that the kindest thing you can do when you hear a lousy band is to boo, laugh, pelt them with ice cubes, and give them the finger. This way they’ll go get a job at Seven Eleven, find a nice little wife, have a couple of kids, pay their taxes and say their prayers. Society is much stronger this way. They can tell their grandkids about how they opened for Jose Flores and the Hot Tamales and they’ll believe it was fabulous and so will their grandkids and everybody will be happy. If you applaud these guys and show them breasts, they’ll end up in their forties still hauling out their leather pants on weekends playing the VFW and winking at your daughters. Be merciful, kill them when you have the chance.

So how can you tell if a band is bad? Some things are obvious, like horrid tone and bad timing, but I’m going to give you the subtler clues-don’t let them fool you:

1) Their equipment is too nice. If you see amps with no rips, scuffs, or dirt, and drums that gleam and have a bunch of ancillary hardware, and an elaborate lighting system and a P.A. that takes half a day to set up, the band sucks. The two nicest drum kits I ever saw belonged to a lawyer and a teen-ager with rich parents. Both drummers sucked.

Good bands have hauled their equipment around so long that it looks war orphan poor. And they leave most of it at home.

2) They play Mustang Sally without being threatened or cajoled. All good musicians have come to hate that song, most of them at least a dozen years ago. This extends to Sharp Dressed Man and anything by Bob Seger. If you hear them playing these songs and you know they are a good band, look closely and you’ll see that they are in extreme pain.

3) You see a middle-aged lady in the audience with a video camera who looks suspiciously like a mother. Mother’s only come out when their kid’s band is starting out, or they are famous. If the band you are watching isn’t famous, well, there you go.

4) The frontman winks at women while doing overt pelvic undulations. If he
does this while sporting a gut, hairy chest, and gold chains or dog tags, oblivious to the giggling girls who are sticking their fingers down their throats, the band not only sucks, they are disgracing mankind.

5) The guitarist is wearing a Stevie Ray Vaughn outfit. Even one item is bad, but if it is the entire regalia then you’re in for a long night. Here’s the clues: a flat brimmed hat with silver spangles around it; the whiskers growing in a V just below the lower lip, not the chin; a silver spangled belt; puffy sleeved shirt with a scarf around the neck; pants tucked into moccasin style boots. Now if the guy actually adds the Mexican serape to this outfit you need to sic your dog pack on him have them drag him around the parking lot for a couple of hours.

6) The time between songs is longer than the songs. When a band has to use this time to light up cigarettes, drink beer, confer on what song to play next, ask who starts the piece, and argue with their wife or girlfriend, the band is more amateurish than a sixth grade play about Pilgrims. If they lean into the microphone and start demanding drinks from the bar over the P.A., you know they are a step away from calling Bingo at an Elk’s club in Nebraska.

7) They tape words to songs on the mic stands. Bands that do this couldn’t be more embarrassing if they puked on themselves. Hell, why not just get a karoke machine and a screen?

8) Their sound check takes longer than their gig. Bad bands feel very important walking around sound checking and fussing over things about which they know very little. They take great pride in conferring and discussing with serious looks on their faces. I’ve seen amateur bands sound check the entire day previous to their gig. A good band sound checks the way an old cowpoke rolls his own cigarette with one hand-no fuss, no muss.

9) One or more of the members has his back turned to the audience all night. This is made worse if they fiddle with equipment while they are playing, still worse if they smoke a pipe. This seeming indifference is really insecurity to the point of wetting his pants. It is the opposite of panache and charisma. These bands would be much better off replacing these guys with cardboard cutouts fronting a tape recorder.

10) The band is huddled together like sheep. This is especially bad on a big stage. They do this for security purposes, same as sheep. It is exacerbated if they all wear dark glasses for Ostrich purposes, thinking you can’t see them because they can’t see you. These guys need to take an injection of hormones and have their wives bitch slap them a few times before going on stage. When a guy takes up guitar and starts practicing, perhaps he should practice audience rapport in the mirror at the same time, like Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver: “Are you talking to me? Are you talking to me?” If you were the guy in junior high who waited for everyone to leave the locker room so you could get undressed, being a stage personality is probably not the job for you.

The last clue I’m going to cover today so you can tell which bands are bad, is going into the club and seeing only twelve people there, booing, laughing, pelting the band with ice, and giving them the finger. This would be number eleven, but who ever heard of eleven points to anything? If you see this kind of rude behavior going on, there is only one appropriate action to take-join them. Remember they are actually doing the band and the world a favor. These are humanitarians in action and you probably need to do something good for a change as well. So give it everything you’ve got: jeering would be nice; heckling and mooning are good; sticking your tongue out and wiggling your fingers in your ears is always a nice touch; you can’t beat a good raspberry. I would recommend calling their mothers nasty names, but remember the lady with the video camera is probably a band mother. So try insulting their dads, even the mom would appreciate that.

Get rid of these guys before they do something injurious, like putting on a concert at the local grade school. One of them is probably the school principal anyway. You owe it to our youth. And if you are a female, please don’t show them breasts. I have a theory that one sincere flashing of breasts negates ten bad things you do to the band. One woman can wipe out a lot of hard work by the fellows.

Carl

Posted by Carl