Rambling and Ranting (haven’t done this in a while). Be advised: there is some rather foul language below. TL;DR alert, too.
Universe, would it fucking kill ya to allow me to catch one miniscule break once in a while? Honestly, would it fucking kill ya?
I mean, this is why I don’t go out much, even long before the pandemic. I always told that every coming day is going to be better than the last, but it’s always more bullshit. I mean, I busted my ass for the past 10 years to get a fucking aerospace degree and for the past 2 years I apply to hundreds of places across the US, Canada, and even New Zealand and I can’t land anything. Even though most of the interviews I had landed went well, I always end up getting a big fat rejection.
Of course, last year I was given an offer to play bass in this new band. Apparently this guy had been in a [self-proclaimed] popular touring band, one of which I had never heard of, and the group had disbanded so he was forming a new band. Honestly, the genre of music this guy plays doesn’t interest me in the slightest, but it seemed like a good Idea at the time to give it a chance; also I was just happy to be in a band at all. I wanted to join my friends in Swarm of Serpent, which is a blackened death metal band (much more my speed), but of course they went with somebody else. I guess I can’t truly fault them because I was in bands before and had played bass since 2008, I was never in a band that had played live gigs. Not to mention I had been pitching my own bands since 2009 and nobody ever wanted to be a part of them. But, since August of 2019 I actually got to be in a band and play a few shows around my own town, Phoenix, and even a couple shows in California. I also got to meet some other cool musicians including my buddy Dan who had briefly played drums with us. It was also something for me to do while I looked for engineering jobs. Still working on finding a job; haven’t given up on that.
I thought that being in this band would make me happier, but damn was I ever wrong. As good a guitarist and vocalist this guy is, I have learned rather quickly that he is a massive control freak who is untrustworthy and impossible to work with. My buddy Dan was aware of this as well, and he made the right decision and left after we returned from our first “tour.” First off, the guy doesn’t have tablature or sheet music for his songs so in order for me to learn them he had to take my bass and show me. I ask the guy simple musical theory questions and he doesn’t know what I’m talking about. And not even a week after I joined the band (before we even auditioned a drummer) he was so adamant about going on tour of west coast when we haven’t made a local name for ourselves. Just because we reached over 8000 likes on Facebook doesn’t mean we’re going to fill shows. Every gig we’ve had, we would typical go on first and every time I would look up from my bass I would see about 8 to 12 people in the audience on average. Me, I don’t care when we perform or how many people come to the pit to watch us; I’m just happy to play at all, but the ringleader sure as hell care. And this tour of the west coast was very poorly planned: not only did he try to book the gigs himself and only manage to get about four out of like planned 12 venues, he had us take an old raggedy van which had mechanical issues in the red. Not long after we had picked up Dan in Maricopa we made a pit stop in Casa Grande, and when me and Dan stepped out to stretch we noticed that two tires had the metal belts exposed so they were completely unusable so we had to get them replaced immediately. I mean we did get the tires replaced and we did our shows in Cali and had some down time, but there was so much wrong with van still and me ad Dan convinced this guy to have us end the “tour” early and return to Arizona after our LA gig. The guy was not happy of course, but I care much more about our safety than a poorly planned tour of only four shows.
After we got back from Cali at the end of February, Covid-19 was starting to spread in the US so that was making it much harder for us to play shows. We did manage to play a show in Tucson on March 14th which was right before lockdown was issued in AZ. But, on the night of that show both me and Dan were feeling sick and neither of us wanted to play. Since Dan lives further away he couldn’t possibly make the show, but instead of pulling us out of the gig like a sensible person, the guy contacted our friend Erik of Sworn Apart to fill in for Dan and basically told me to suck it up and drink some tea. So against my better judgment I played the show anyway with a mask on. It baffled me even more that the bar owners even kept the show on to begin with. So we played the show, and it didn’t go as terribly as I had imagined but it was still bad. I for only having about 3 hours to learn the set, Erik did a great job. Needless to say, Dan left the band and lockdown kept us from having a show until May and lockdown happened again because the governor of AZ is a moron who thought it was a good idea to open up bars when we’re still in a pandemic.
Another thing is, he self-directed our first music video which was a complete and utter shit show. I won’t go into much detail about that now because I feel that deserves it’s own blog entirely. Ultimately, the finished project turned out pretty well because we had it filmed and edited by the amazing people at Starlight Productions. We just filmed another music video last month that I feel was better directed this time around. But leading up to the filming the guy had seemingly burnt his bridge with our front-man and the storyline for the video sporadically changed. The new video is for a song we’ve never played live and it’s not even a song I want to play to begin with.
Then there’s the whole album thing, we were supposedly going to release our first album earlier this year but every time I ask about recording, I would never receive a straight answer. Of course I have no writing for any of the first album songs because they were all written before I joined and that’s okay. But when it came to the second album, the guy said that he wanted me to have more creative freedom and have me write songs with him. So around late January when I was jamming with Dan while this dude was in the other room, I came up with this cool brutal riff and started writing the song “Dead Inside for Years” and since we had all of the songs set for album #1 I figured I’d save it for the next one. And I was thinking we wouldn’t get to the second album until some time in 2021, but nope. A few weeks ago he invited me over to “track bass” and I figured he meant that he wanted me to record my bass parts for the songs in the first album. Welp, I was wrong once again. What he meant was for me to track bass for SECOND ALBUM songs, which of course were songs I haven’t learned yet (most of which I didn’t even know he had written). In addition to several new songs this guy had written and the ONE song I wrote, he also wants us to play 4 old songs from his previous band; which makes no sense because this current band is supposed to break away from the old band and they don’t even sound close to what we play live. I especially don’t like that because I feel like he’s cutting corners by reusing these old songs to fill out an LP. I can understand repurposing old riffs and making them into new songs but lifting your songs, I’m not down with that. I was planning on writing a few more songs for this band, but at this point, I feel that it won’t even be worth it. Creative freedom my ass. I am hoping that Erik and I can get this guy to listen to reason and get him to try and change his ways. For me, the worse thing about this guy is his outstanding ego. Also for the whole little run in California he was convinced that my name is “Chris” which it’s not.
Of course there are quite a few other reasons as to why I can’t stand working with this guy, but if I keep going this post will end up being the size of a novel. Maybe if I end up doing some kind of a memoir in the future I will go into this band story in greater detail and have it much better organized. If you made it this far into my tl;dr rant blog, I commend you. Not sure how much longer I will stick this out, but I do plan on leaving the band rather soon anyway. As much as music is a passion of mine, I am an engineer first and my greatest dreams dwell within that field. Since I haven’t had so much luck with my bachelor’s degree I plan on soon applying for graduate school in order to work towards a master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering. The one thing I have always wanted to research is the design of an engine that may one day make interstellar space travel possible. Star Wars and Star Trek have had a lasting impact on me and I want to make the technology of those fictional worlds into reality. My greatest dream of all is to help bring humanity beyond the stars or at the very least, push in the right direction.
As I always say: The sky is NOT the limit, it is merely the beginning.
And as the late great Carl Sagan had once said: “Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
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