Does Not Audition Well…

I just got in from a band audition.  I don’t do this often; in fact, this is my third audition in many many years.  I have been playing the guitar for something like thirty years (God I’m old) and auditioning for almost that long.

I was a very good student when I started playing.  This was way back when we listened to music on black vinyl disks and there was no World Wide Web.  I really immersed myself and taught myself a lot of the basics from books, much to my teacher’s delight.  I developed a pretty decent ear by learning the tunes off my favorite albums, track by track.  This is probably where I picked up arranging and parts.  After a few years I stopped taking lessons.  It turned out that I never practiced my lessons but played all week anyway so I think I made the right choice.

The typical path for guitar players is to learn to play, form a band, play out, break up, form forty more bands and try to play out, fight with band members over ridiculous stuff, develop a hatred for musicians, start writing original songs, go back to the beginning, form a band, play out for less than nothing (you pay to park), graduate to playing for a few bucks (if you pay to play in the first place), and either continue forever or get a lucky break.  This is just an overview: it’s actually much worse in many minute details over years and years and years.

My path was a little different (gee, aren’t you surprised?).  I have spent most of my time trying to put together bands, rehearsing, and attempting to play out: actually playing out was more of a holy grail than a reality, except for a few horror stories which still wake me up screaming in the middle of the night.

The really weird part of all this is that since I could never find truly talented musicians, I had to settle for mature musicians.  Since we weren’t all that great a band I decided to incorporate all sorts of distractions like comedy, bizarre props, and song parodies, in the midst of the classic rock that made up most of our sets.   Because our type of music wasn’t all that popular, we had a difficult time finding gigs.  One of my favorite comments from a club owner was that he absolutely loved us; given the choice he’d rather hear us all the time.  Unfortunately the other less talented bands had one thing we didn’t: hordes of drunks that followed them everywhere.  We didn’t even know hordes of people who didn’t drink so we were somewhat handicapped.

At about this point, the singer suggested we try the funny bits of our act at some comedy clubs, which were starting to gain popularity.  We did just that, shedding band members, loads of equipment, classic rock, and what was left of our dignity.  Ah, who needs dignity anyway – this is comedy!

When we weren’t playing in comedy clubs, we were recording.  We bought an old garage recording studio and spent what felt like years recording our parodies.  My job was listening to all the parts, making it sound like the record, playing guitar and bass, engineering and mixing.  My brother played drums or drum machine and the singer, well, sang.  We worked diligently to sound like the original songs.  We recorded backing tracks for when we played live if they were required.

Somebody somewhere forwarded our tape (yes, cassette tape) to some sort of comedy syndicator for morning drive radio.  This resulted in all sorts of radio stations calling us at home, asking for copies of our stuff and would we do some custom parodies for them.  Within a month, we were being heard all over the country.

Naturally the gigs starting picking up.  We worked pretty steadily for years, mainly on weekends.  I barely missed hauling tons of equipment around like we did for band gigs, although I dearly missed playing the songs I liked.

After hearing for the two hundredth time that we were perfect for colleges, we found an agent who started booking us in colleges.  Suffice it to say that over two hundred people were completely mistaken.  What should have gone over like mad just made some of them stare at us with what we referred to as The Fish Look<tm>.  It’s when people stare at you blankly, with their mouth open, as if a hook were going to be attached to it.  Or the mouth was open in blatant shock and horror (we never cared which).

What we overlooked was that our songs were quite funny, but dealt with current events and politics, which flew right over America’s Future because they were in thirteenth grade, burning up Mommy and Daddy’s money and partying like mad.  They resented having to think, especially in college.  Our timing was incredibly bad, as we found out later, because we were on the leading edge of political correctness.

One day after a particularly dismal show, some young genius decided to ask us why we were picking on women.  We pointed out that we were equal opportunity – we picked on everyone…. nothing was sacred.  He complained that we picked on the Jews a lot.  We told him that most of us were Jewish.  He said that we must be self-hating Jews then.   There was simply no way we were going to escape that inquisition unscathed.  I managed to keep my trap shut after a while and he mentioned that I looked like I wanted to kill him.  For the first time that evening, perhaps even in his life, he was absolutely correct.

We never darkened the doorway of an institute of Higher Learning again after that.

Our best college show ever was at Princeton.  You have to hand it to the hundreds of people who came to the show: any group that can appreciate topical and political material along with the dick jokes was a really special group.  We had twenty or thirty minutes of material but they laughed so hard we did almost an hour.

We changed our focus and wound up being among the winners in a song parody contest run by Howard Stern, when he first came to Philadelphia.  After that we appeared on the radio and tv shows and the rest of his Philly appearances.  We had once again gone national(!)

While all of this was going on, I’d get really excited when I found a classic rock band that needed a guitar player.  I was playing and auditioning most of the time I was doing comedy.  Naturally I could never get or keep a band together or bring enough drunks to get invited back a second time.  At a time when `normal’ guitarists would be having a blast, doing their original tunes, all I wanted was to play classic rock songs in some horribly cruddy dive bar for no money. (I told you my path was a bit different).

Like an unmanned drone plane hitting the Pentagon, comedy pretty much ground to a halt and died. (how’s that for a simile?) Naturally, so did our alleged career. Since we were all building careers and families (and learning about multiple personalities), that’s where we all wound up.

Flash forward to recent times, when it has become strangely popular for Olde Phartes to get together and play classic rock again, sometimes even playing at actual clubs.  I try to answer the ads that look interesting, resulting in the aforementioned three auditions.  Since I love to play guitar more than most other things in life, I’m very picky about the bands for which I try out.  With a good day job, a wife, and two quadrupeds, I don’t have time to mess around or waste playing stuff I don’t like.  So I don’t play out or audition much.

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I described the horror of trying to learn songs in a post the other day, involving a seriously bleeding cat, rug cleaning chemicals, a hypervigilant wife, intermittent equipment, and a laptop that will only produce sound every other time it is booted.

I have been carrying on an email conversation with the contact of the band for which I auditioned tonight.  The guy is very witty and we exchanged Stupid Musician jokes.  Couldn’t wait to meet him.  It turns out he’s a guitar player too, the poor guy.  Since we got along so well, there was simply no way that we would get along in person… it’s some kind of unwritten law, perhaps first unwritten by some guy called Murphy.  I told him that I was only fooling – maybe I couldn’t even strap on a guitar and was deliberately wasting his time.  He allowed as to how that wouldn’t be the worst experience he has had recently auditioning guitarists.

Let’s face it: guitarists are fairly dumb beasts, but not generally malicious.  It could be worse though… we could be drummers.

I was provided with directions that were incredibly accurate.  It’s just a shame that the font used in the email did not translate well to my system.  I’d get a sentence that ended with `Turn left at the (***$##@@$.’  In spite of that, I found the place, in a section that I’ve never seen before.  I couldn’t see much because it was dark but I got the impression that I was going around a mountain and the street was halfway to the top, in some sort of Munsters-like parody.

I was advised to look for the owner’s Big Balls in the driveway, which thankfully turned out to be a pair of stone ornaments on either side of the drive.  They let me in and I promised to be quiet while the previous victim.. errr…. auditionee finished up.  He turned around to look at me and I almost fell over backwards.  He explained to the band that I used to work for him, round about the mid eighties.

Yes, this guitarist used to be my boss.   I was just talking about him today at work.  How’s that for coincidences?  He had a pet ocelot that used to sit in his lap and suck his thumb; it was bizarre in its abnormalcy and just the way I liked it.  People were terrified of the little bugger, although the only thing that needed to be afraid of it was home furnishings.  This divine little quadruped, about the size of a skinny house cat, would demolish a room and everything in it if left alone.

Funny how things work out.  We’re both auditioning for the same band and I now have my very own Feline Destruction Unit, albeit one with a slightly different pedigree.  I’ll bet the ocelot didn’t bleed all over his rugs though….

The band all seemed to be pretty nice guys, most of them around my vintage.  My contact really went out of his way to help, especially as they were under time constraints, auditioning three guitarists.

Before I left my house, I checked everything for function and tone.  No spurious noises or intermittent surprising maladies were detected (which should have tipped me off right away).  I went over the tunes one more time.  To my surprise, I had them mostly memorized, although I took my cheat sheets.

I got everything set up in record time, got the guitar tuned, and promptly discovered that there was no signal from the amp. “Here we go again,” I thought.  Remembering my vow to remain calm, I plugged the guitar straight into the amp, which produced sound.  This means that the effects board, that I spent an hour going over last night and worked perfectly before I left, had refused to function.  I was given the friendly advice to just play straight into the amp, which I didn’t want to do, but had no choice.  There wasn’t any time to troubleshoot so off we went.

Right off the $@#(ing cliff.

I discovered a guitar-related malady a few years back, which I have named Other Fingers Syndrome<tm>.  This is when you show up at an audition or rehearsal and begin to play really poorly.  You realize that you know the stuff backwards and forwards so what is really going on here is that you’re playing with someone else’s fingers.  Unfortunately you can never tell whose fingers they are.  In fact, the only thing that’s obvious at this point is that the owner of the fingers is not a guitar player.  The simplest riffs completely fail you.  Random chord changes insert themselves into the song you’re playing.

I suspect a possible solution would be plain old distraction: fall down and look really hurt.  Or every time you make a mistake, glare angrily at the bass player.  Unfortunately, even these failed me, as I forgot about them.

The guys in the band had an inkling as to what was up, as a few of them told me not to be nervous.

The band was good.  Lots of potential there.   They can not only play their instruments, they apparently show up reliably and prepared.  That alone would be way too confusing for me.  They did a mean Springsteen (and as I’ve stated, I don’t like Springsteen).  It’s a shame yours truly didn’t do a mean Springsteen though…

It’s not like I didn’t know the songs.  I practiced even more than normal to make sure.  Yet everything I played seemed to come out like I was a `special’ guitar player (like Cobain).  I felt like thirty years of guitar playing was hiding at home, while a few really cool months of posing in front of the mirror was at the audition.

It was absolutely the most disgraceful audition I have ever been on (since the last one anway).  Hmmmm…. there’s a pattern here.  Red Light Syndrome: when the record light comes on, you can’t play.  Or maybe it’s just that I’m rusty (although I played pretty nicely while learning the songs).  Hell, I spent years recording song parodies to sound as close as possible to the original, both in playing and in tone – and I succeeded.  Yet tonight I was standing there, all revved up and failing to perform up to even half of my potential.

Trying to be as objective as possible, I sure as hell wouldn’t hire me if I were in the band.

Well, it was nice to play with decent musicians.  It certainly was an experience.  In fact, it is absolutely, without qualification, the most recent audition I have been on – and that’s the truth.

Maybe I need to audition right after I wake up or before I go to sleep when I have even less control of my digital dexterity (not to mention consciousness).

Vini. Vidi.  WHAM!

The cherry on top of this succulent sundae was that after loading everything into the car, I reached for the water bottle I thoughtfully brought along and it was not there.  It hadn’t fallen out in the car so it was either in the House on Mockingbird Lane or it simply dematerialized.  I suspect the latter.  Interesting metaphor for the evening though…

The point of this is not to feel sorry for myself…. I’m just disappointed at not performing up to my potential and curious as to why.