Quit Another Band

Area man burns bridge, looks to new horizons

So I joined and quit a band during Fall quarter this year, which is in finals week now at UW.

And in true Phil Collins fashion, I quit by text. It was a surprise to both the other guys that I had band problems at all, so it was a bit of a bomb I dropped on them. I feel bad about that.

Still, I don't think it was worth even a conversation. If you want to ask me why I quit, go ahead and email me or leave a comment or something. But no one outside the band is going to give two shits anyway. We were just starting out, trying to find a sound and a dynamic that would allow us to click together. It wasn't exactly happening for me.

We landed a show, through one friend who knew another, which was awesome--but we weren't prepared for it. We rushed to build and finalize a four-song set list. It felt good to get that together, and to go onstaget and play under the lights, and in front of the other bands and their girlfriends. It was good, yeah.

We all decided afterward that the songs were shitty, so we ditched them and began working on new material. But we could only practice once per week! And sometimes one of us would have something going on and have to cancel. So there was almost no hope of getting anything solid done any time soon.

Plus I had my stupid bullshit problems, so I had to quit. And I feel that I was significantly slighted by one guy in the band because he wasted my time. Now, not to say that my time is super-duper-extra-valuable, but when I leave the house, that means I leave my kids with someone--in this case, my partner whom I have to have on my good side, which means not leaving the kids with her all the time.

So when I packed all my gear up and left the house to drive to practice and received no answer to my door knocks, texts, and calls, since I had arranged my sleep the night and morning beforehand to prepare for practice, since Megan and I got into a kind of half-argument about me wanting to have an additional practice this week, and since I sat there on this guy's porch in the cold for a half hour while he slept, I got kinda pissed.

Then I started remembering how all of my song ideas that I had brought to practice beforehand were shot down; how our songwriting was limited and directionless; how practices were only once/wk; how I wasn't that crazy about our nice-but-sleepy bandmate's musicianship or songwriting ability; how there were no opportunities in Jungfrau for me to stretch my bass playing and dazzle the audience with anything remotely heavy or "busy"--by the guy who couldn't wake up to let me in, who could have texted me any time the night before or in the morning to tell me not to interrupt my day with band practice.

And it made me wonder whether any of my efforts to contribute to this band were worth it, because if this was the kind of behavior I could expect, then I was not going to stick around. Now if the music had been awesome, it would have been another story.

So quitting over text seemed sufficient.

Now I am free, at school, in a library, where the atmosphere is quiet and collegial. Ahh, a breath of fresh air every time. I have to work on this final paper for Race and the Law class, taught by Dr. Heather Pool. It needs to address how the SCOTUS case I chose, Bakke, upholds or ...downholds The Racial Contract, a book by Charles Mills.

Trust me, Mills's book is good enough to write a million papers on. It is an effective series of arguments that leaves no stone unturned as to the nature of white supremacy. He even lumps the very concept of racism into his overarching argument, broad and sufficiently frightening.

So I have enough to think about to distract me from the slightly nagging guilt of dropping a bomb on two completely nice guys.

But before I came to school today, to get out ALL THE GUITAR PLAYING DEMONS RAGING INSIDE ME, I plugged in my guitar for the first time in at least two months. As you recall, I had been playing bass in Jungfrau, leaving my guitar to wait by the wayside, just hanging out down there in the basement in its grey, fur-lined case, just chillin.

fuckin plugged that bitch in today and let her rip. Played some old stuff, played some new stuff, and regained my overall musical focus--I need to be in a metal band, where I write the songs. Not too much to ask, right?

..you'd be surprised in Seattle how hard that is to pull off....

Got any recommendations for what my ad in various musicians personals ads should say?