Since my days as the drummer for Angry Flannel are over I’ve been startign to look for a new gig.  I haven’t been so much “looking” in the traditional, making phone calls sense, but I have been playing an increasing amount of “hand and foot on various objects" percussion and saying “yes” when people ask me if I play the drums.  I have also been engaging in a host of other behaviors which annoy my wife, such as singing bad harmony and rapping my hands on the steering wheel.   A few months back I made my first official attempt at contacting a band in almost two years by responding to an ad that made it sound like its authors understood that they were not the next Zeppelin.  After a ten minute conversation with one of the band’s members, I was both insulted, and pretty glad I didn’t waste my time trying to track down my drum set for an audition when the leader told me I sounded “probably too old for what we’re trying to do” which I assume was keep trying to make a living as a musician before your parents kick you out and you get a job selling insurance.

I mentioned in the piece about Angry Flannel that from time to time when my band lost members to moving to other states, or to singers thinking we sucked and getting tired of singing “The Freshman” 1,400 times, and various other follies, we hosted tryouts for new members.  Our strategy was to encourage a large audition turnout so as to maximize the chances that we found even one adequate musician who didn’t seem like a rapist.   Our strategy worked well, but was a bold departure from the industry standard, which is to write an advertisement that makes your band sound better than it is in hopes that sucky guitar players would be dissuaded from even trying out.  

We were aware of this trend, but decided to blaze our own path both because it is funny to watch people sing who cannot sing and wonder what happened in their life that allowed them to get to the point of purchasing an amplifier, and because people who have no concept of their lack of musical talent are unlikely to gain any sense of reality simply by reading some wannabe musician jive that includes the word “chops” or “vibe”.

For example, if you were to peruse today’s “drummer wanted” section of Craigslist, you would find 12 posts.  Each post contains a requisite description of the band’s style, most of which include the word “fusion” which is a word that is also used by 80% of restaurants in Boston to describe a style of food that is basically whatever word comes before it (Italian, Asian etc.), but that also serves sweet potato fries and has a burger on the menu.

One way you can learn a lot about a band is by analyzing the way it talks about its influences.  For example, in today’s spread there is one band who lists its influences as “Incubus, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple  Pilots, Tom Petty, and Alanis Morrisette” which made me confident that a) the drummer did not leave “to pursue other interests outside of music” as the ad suggests, but that he probably left because whoever was trying to be the Tom Petty was annoying the crap out of everyone or b)  there was a woman in the band who wanted every song to be like a Pearl Jam song with a woman singer, which is as good an idea as the Pontiac Aztec.

Another telling element of any musician wanted ad is the way in which a band describes its experience.  Sometimes, the posts explain the various musical proficiency of its members.  The vocabulary for this section usually falls within the range of “serious” which means the band leader has no job and will want to practice three days per week and will get really annoyed when people don’t want to pay $200 apiece to record an album three weeks into rehearsals because it is always extremely depressing to hear mediocre bands on mediocre recording equipment, to “established” which means they once played a gig, possibly that their friend’s birthday party, but that they almost got to play a gig a few weeks ago that would have happened if the bass player’s van hadn’t crapped out while he was in Connecticut with the drum set inside of it.

The last section usually talks about a band’s goals, which in no particular order, are “making a demo”, which I’ve already discussed “making originals” –which nobody, including the band members who didn’t write them want to hear, and “getting to the next level” which usually means getting the band members to chip in to buy a PA system, which will eventually result in several confusing transactions involving $40 anywhere from seven-months to three years after the original purchase.

Since I’ve only recently begun my search I haven’t totally given up hope that I’ll just find a bunch of dudes who recognize that they shouldn’t play anything but covers, but at some point I’m going to start responding, after all, who am I afraid of?  I was once a “serious” member of Angry Flannel, an “established” band looking to get to the “next level”.