Why I can’t wait to be back in a band
There’s nothing like the sense of being on the crest of a wave, playing your heart out to a bunch a fans with a group of guys you’ve come to see as brothers. My old band Tragedy of the Commons may turn out to have been the coolest, most fun band I’ve ever been in. There were no real aims at style, just fun rock that we enjoyed playing. Our lead singer was a nutcase who we could never get to stay in one place or sign the same song but he was brilliant. The drummer was solid, and ended up with massive arms from smacking the skins around so hard. The guitarist played the crappiest gear and got the most brilliant tone from it…he was also a nutcase on stage. I played bass.
I learnt so much from these guys, and in particular stagecraft. I learnt to go at 100% activity, swing my bass around manically and till stay tight. I also fell over a lot, but that was cool. It instilled in me an insatiable urge to do something the crowd isn’t expecting, and I learnt that when you go crazy, you enable the crowd to loosen up. I loved their faith (I was barely christian at the time) and their adherence to their core ideals. I was the crazy drunken munter that smoked too much, whilst they went crazier, harder, and never seemed too cool for me. I always respected that no matter how worldly I got, they just walked beside me. I owe a lot to those guys, and the crew of ever faithful supporters, Brehaut, Jim, and Fraser, who were there for every gig we rocked and every gig we sucked. It was refreshing to get off stage and have three guys go “yeah, that sucked.” Why? Truth is good. And when they came up and said “that was amazing!”, you felt 10 feet tall because you know you had done your job right. At the time, we were picking up support gigs everywhere, and it really helped us get super tight. Then, as he does, the lead singer faded out again, this time for good, to Canada. That was that.
I want to better that now. I want to get a good bunch of fans, do tours, write cool collaborative music that rocks, and go mental on stage once again. There is nothing as cool as the night where everything clicks together; the crowd on your wavelength, you’re playing out of your skin, the atmosphere is electric,. You can just FEEL a memory being made. It’s exciting stuff indeed, and rather addictive.
But as people go more acoustic and mellow, I feel my chances are dropping. Maybe I won’t get to where I want. Maybe that was the high point? It could well be that I need to find a whole different bunch of musicians.
Nah, I’ll be back again. I can’t help but pine for it.
