King Biscuit Time Magazine - Road Kill Column
Sunday March 26th, 2006 @ 9:10 PM
Filed under: Everything, Publications
The Plight and Pluck of the Unsigned Band
Richard Less took another shot of Jack Daniels before taking the stage. The fire glowed in his stomach. He felt deliciously reckless. His focus was completely in the present and the whole world had microcosmed into the crowd standing before him. When he reached the top step and sauntered to his guitar, the rush was euphoric. He fought against going giddy with excitement, then calmly strapped on the instrument and begin tuning.
After a few moments he looked out at the sea of faces and hit a practice lick. The sound burst from the pulsating amplifier like a leaping gnome and galvanized the audience who reacted with a thundering cheer. Nothing had ever felt this good to Richard before. Nothing. Now that he had a taste, it could never end-or life was over for him. This was as good as it gets and all that he had dreamed about in years of anticipation.
The band teased the audience with warm-up sounds that suggested the awesome potential of blackfaced tube amps and a monster P.A. system. When they finally broke out in song the night screamed to life like startled jungle birds, and nobody cared about tomorrow.
That was 1995 and the debut of Gaunt Deborah, a Grateful Dead cover band. Every friend and relative they had was there that night. The band had distributed fliers all over town and had talked up the show with such enthusiasm that a gig had become an event.
Electricity has made music the most exhilarating auditory force in history. It is the musical equivalent of steroids-making modern musicians the Incredible Hulks of sound.
An electric guitar played through an amplifier can turn sissies, weirdoes, and nerds into superheroes. On today’s planet, skinny rock stars can become demi-gods with legions of worshippers. In medieval days, perhaps they could have modeled for gargoyle sculptors. I don’t see them farming all that well. Electric sound can transform a personality.
Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you view it, this force is an ego elixir much coveted. Robert Johnson’s soul sale to the devil would be happily contracted again today, by the thousands, if Beelzebub hawked his wares at annual guitar conventions. Actually, the selling of ones soul isn’t always legendary, and can go well beyond the fable. It is often the harsh reality of success in the music business, and the investment of one’s soul doesn’t always bring a satisfactory return.
I have traveled over a million highway miles observing the vicissitudes of desperate musicians across our land and in many foreign countries. I have seen the intoxicating accolade they get from time to time that drives them on like gold fever. I have watched many youngsters striving to emulate their music heroes whether it be Metallica, Led Zeppelin, or Stevie Ray Vaughn. They play guitar instead of studying English or History. They forego college or drop out so they can go on the road to play clubs. They lose girlfriends and wives and try not to have children, and if they do, end up neglecting them.
The heart of their productive adult lives is being sold for a tease-that tantalizing hope that the talent they believe they have will be recognized by those who count. But alas, the winnowing process eliminates almost all of them, but only after it has slapped the sunbeam from their faces and scoffed at their dreams and dashed their hopes with bludgeoning reality over years of time and endless roads and ugly rejection.
There is a saying among optimistic motivational speakers: “What you can conceive and believe, you can achieve.” In the world of music it is often: “If you can conceive and believe you self-deceive.” Unfortunately, this is the hard core of truth in this business: very few musicians see themselves as they really are. Instead, they see what they desire to be. They see it in their idols and attribute it to themselves.
In the nineteen-eighties I used to see pimply faced teen-agers weighing 115 pounds wearing spandex and earrings, sporting their first satanic tattoo, gyrating around the stage at the junior high with a flying V guitar used as a phallic symbol. Because their parents had been emotionally blackmailed into buying them stacks of Marshall amps the sound was deafening. Almost all beginning musicians interpret loudness as talent. In reality it is simply noise.
Nowadays I see the modern version of those eighties kids in “gangsta” britches with their underwear showing and their considerably shorter hair spiked with two or three pounds of gel. Instead of using falsetto screams, the cool style now is guttural screaming. The music is still distorted monotony, but hip technology allows synthesizers to torque and torture this advanced form of noise.
Eventually and thankfully, most of these kids will drop out from music, some in time to go to college, and some after wasting their young adulthood, but still in time to buy a cool car, get a girl pregnant, get a job at Radio Shack, and dig themselves into some real good debt that will keep them out of harm’s way for the next thirty years. But those who truly sold their soul will hunker down and endure.
The fans that provide the initial impetus will go by the way. These moms and dads, fraternity brothers, high school buddies, groupies, roadies, and goofy drunks all get tired of the supposed euphoria. They get married, get jobs, move away, or just stay home and watch television. The musician now has the task of making real music and building a real fan base.
At this same time, they are usually looking in the mirror and realizing that being in their thirties trying to look like Axel Rose isn’t going to cut it with the junior high kids anymore. This is when they become either a country band or a blues band. Rock clubs cater to the whimsical nature of the current fad and usually don’t pay enough to cover gas to the gig and often make the band pay to play.
Therefore the blues world gets another swell of guys with pentagram tattoos, and seven earrings. At first they do the obligatory Stevie Ray adoration routine playing Pride and Joy with licks which sound suspiciously like Van Halen. The rockers who go country play the same Van Halen licks in songs like: “All my ex’s are from Texas.” But, to many, hope is once again rekindled. Clubs are actually paying them a few hundred bucks. Now in the genre of Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf, the musicians foresee a long future, after all, Pinetop Perkins and Robert Jr. Lockwood are still blues stars well into their eighties.
Eventually, all but the most stoic, or the most talented, or the most foolish, drop out of this dream as well. The life is poor and the infrastructure is unstable and fickle. They resort to getting some god-forsaken job they hate, or living off a girlfriend or mother, and playing weekends at the local watering hole. Or they sell their gear and become satisfied telling stories at the same watering hole about how good their band used to be and how they almost made it. They become brothers with the guy who used to box and the guy who used to bench-press 400 pounds. Nobody listens, nobody believes, nobody cares.
That’s where Richard Less ended up. The fire no longer glowed in his belly; instead the booze fermented there and made his breath smell like vinegar and vomit. His pathetic and exaggerated stories were tedious, and sadly, he believed them. He once begged to sit in with my band while claiming to have blues deep down in his soul. He wiped drool from his lips when he spoke and staggered to keep his footing, trying to keep his face obnoxiously in front of mine. I rejected him of course; hopefully I was nice about it. He died shortly thereafter. Drank himself to death. He looked old and forgotten, but he was still a relatively young man.
So we see these competitions: battle of the unsigned bands. They come eagerly from everywhere to show those who run the record labels that they have what it takes. They thrive on hard work, self-deception, and 100 proof hope. Some of them are actually good. Those are the ones I feel the most sorry for. They will win these competitions, maybe get signed to a small label, and will spend an extra few years finding out that there is very little fame and fortune to be divided up. The losers of the competitions will drop out much sooner and be able to raise kids, and have a career in something for which they are better suited.
And what about you, the fan? What do you get out of this Darwinian survival of the fittest? You get to watch both struggler and stud, or career pros-the latter fall into three categories: the talented, the tough, and the lucky. The best entertainers are all three and I salute them. They are a hardy and colorful lot. If you look at the numbers and the money, it is far fewer who make it to the top of the music world than make it to the NFL. But don’t feel too sorry for those who don’t, just remember the old gamblers’ adage: The next best thing to playing and winning-is playing and losing.
Author’s note: The story of Richard Less and his band, Gaunt Deborah is true to every detail except the names. Of course there are stories I could tell of guys born to cotton pickers in Mississippi who grew up playing blues harp from their first pucker. They too have no easy time of it. But you can find today’s story trailing back into every junior high school in America, with the possible exception of Chugwater, Wyoming. It is the way the music game is played in our culture. A rare few make it to icon status and with television to promulgate that vision, it makes for Midas-madness among the impressionable youth. At fifty-seven, I’m still caught up in it. God help me.
Posted by Carl