What a wonderful world.

We split the business today between us - me to the government office which pays me to pretend I'm happy - the bass boss to parenting duties with the stricken Teen Groove Goddess. TGG was in a swoon and had to be taken home from her office and plied with medicines, teas, swaddling and head-strokes. She and the bass boss spent a pleasant afternoon watching a Lord of the Rings DVD and generally bonding.

I, on the other hand, spent the day hosing down another near-riot at work and writing a pile of bureacratic clap-trap to justify the salaries of people who deserve to be knighted, not sacked. Other than that, fine thanks.

The new guitarist may be a very, very short term solution. About as short as his short-term memory, actually. Silly me - he's spend the last umpteen years living in Byron Bay, a few miles down the road from Australia's marijuana-capital - Nimbin. The place is kinda fabulous really. You can buy bags of heads right outside the rainbow-painted pub while police cars cruise up and down the main street, oblivious. Trouble is, this makes for some very relaxed and well-pickled people who can gone on living in a half-cut trance for years at a time (with maybe the odd day off, for Christmas or visits to the dole office.)

Bass Boss went to rehearse at his squalid little West End flat and found he hadn't actually looked at any of the guitar tabs yet. He also found it was important to keep his sentences short and on just one topic. Otherwise the guitarist would get a sort of goofy, spaced-out grin on his face and ask him to repeat himself, again and again and again.

SO...instead of putting up notices for a drummer, we're putting up notices for a guitarist AND a drummer...no point wasting time.

...or Tuesday, in this case. The first day back in the office after the long Easter break, and everyone I know had a pretty great time. Which is why today's pall of doom, gloom and general ill-temper came as a bit of a surprise. I think it must have been a case of the hampsters all getting an extended case of freedom, then finding themselves dragooned back onto the wheel.

Lord it was ugly.
There was testiness before morning tea, loathing before lunch and aggression before afternoon tea. By mid-afternoon people were circling each other like sharks and by 4 pm there was wholesale yelling and banging of doors and thumping of desks. People threatened to quit. People quit. People decided that they were owned 10 weeks of vacation and they were taking it NOW.

I slumped a little lower in my cage, munched on sunflower seeds and pretended that I was 100 miles away having lunch with a nun. On the plus side, nothing was thrown, no one was punched and no one was sacked. That's about the best you can say of the debacle.

I've GOT to get this band back onto the rails and get the heck OUT of this chicken outfit.

....did I mention Aaaaaggghhh?

The mysterious sale of the P.A. system is solved.
It was the drummer's way of wishing us so long, good luck and thanks for all the fish.

This morning at quarter past dawn the phone rang and I knew, I just KNEW what was about to happen...I woke the Boss of Bass, warned him not to shout and handed over the receiver....

Yadda, yadda, yadda overcommitted. Yadda, yadda, yadda, parents getting older. Yadda, yadda, yadda, giving up music for a while to spend more time with the family. Yada.

Remember a few posts ago when I talked about the wise old musician who said, "If anything can possibly get in the way of the music, let it."? Well, that'll teach me to listen to smart-asses.

Ok. OK. I'm probably being unreasonable. Shit happens, life goes on. But I KNEW it - dammit. Just as we got the whole lineup organised it fell apart.

Bass Boss is taking it quite well, considering. He woke up the rest of the band to cancel rehearsals. (Well if he's awake, EVERYONE's awake - why not share the misery around?) He's already placed an ad on the local Musician's Board and skimmed up three drummer's phone numbers. We've come too far now to throw in the towel over a feww little setbacks (sigh).

Stay tuned - more hilarity to come.

Band Maiden No.3 

AAAggghhh!

One of the most expensive and troublesome pieces of equipment a gigging band needs is a P.A. Because they're so expensive they're usually bought in pieces, often by different members of the band. That makes them a major hassle if personnel changes because the band has invariably made rules around the P.A. like:

• If the band breaks up we sell the P.A. and split the cash; or
• If someone wants to leave, someone in the band will buy the pieces of the P.A. that the this person owns; or
  
• We own the P.A. in common, so either you owe us, or we owe you $xxx.

Band Maiden No2 

Here is the Great Southern Land its Easter Saturday which means football, meatpies, kangaroos and holden cars. To translate for the more civilised half of the globe - Easter Saturday is possibly the laziest day on the Australian holiday calendar.

Millions of my countrymen and women are bronzing their leathery hides on the gigantic beach which surrounds our gigantic island. This country does 'beach' the way other people do 'office'. Lord knows, most of the major beaches along the east coast are Wi-Fi enabled so you can take your laptop onto the sand for the afternoon. Lifeguards do a roaring trade recovering mobile phones and notebooks from the sandhills.

The best way to think about Australia is as an onion with a gigantic inner core - we leave that bit to mining companies, the afore-mentioned kangaroos and other freakishly shaped wildlife - surrounded by a little thin layer of green (which we fill with sheep, wheat and all that useful stuff) - and then another thin, thin, thin layer which has all the roads and factories and buildings - and then THE BEACH.

85% of us live within a short drive to the shore. We huddle around the harbours, settle by the strands, rent by the river mouths....you get the idea. Getting sand in your knickers is an occupational hazard everywhere here. Basically, you'll find most people in pubs or coffee shops facing the beach, on beachtowels, actually on the beach, or boogie-boarding, sail-boarding or body surfing in the breakers, or sitting on a jetty, a pier or a fishing boat, just off the beach.

Woe betide those who'd rather read, or occupy themselves in more intellectual pursuits. Australians aren't exactly anti-intellectual, but you'd better be able to play that oboe under a beach umbrella. And there's been HEAPS of Great Australian Novels composed by intellectuals who are sitting on a canvas chair, wearing a towelling hat and spf 30 sunscreeen, and pretending to be enjoying themselves.

My family of rockn'roll misfits is (of course) indulging in serious non-conformity by spending the day indoors, deaf to the suggestions that we're being un-Australian and possibly even terrorists.

The Boss of Bass is watching his football team, and restringing the 12-string rickenbacker. I'm sitting in the dark airconditioned library blogging and pretending that there's no such thing as weather. Meanwhile the TGG is banging and crashing and swearing in the kitchen, doing the dishes which built up over Easter Thursday and Friday.

Poor little thing. Domestic duties go completely against her image as punk rock chick. She's got the CD player in there, playing the new Killers Album at volumes which made the neighbours dog howl. She's been having a less-than-successful social life just now. The tall American ditched her for a birthday party. The shorter American is with his girlfriend. The tall English lout is working, his pussy-whipped best friend is sulking about how hard it is to get a parking spot at the local super-mall and the rest of the crowd are just no-account losers, or girls. Its SO hard to be a groove-goddess when everyone else is worshipping other Gods on this holy holiday. (TGG isn't keen on sharing her limelight with ANYONE.)

Wow. Cool. The other great thing about Australia is how quickly the weather changes down in the tropical Coral Sea. A really spiffy storm is suddenly brewing and the thunder and lightning are much more our style... maybe TGG can put a couple of jumper-cables on a boyfriend.

First in our occasional series of The Band Maiden web-comic.

I'd love to be able to direct-link this to the site where I created it, gnomz but the site has its challenges so its very difficult to make it behave. However, in the spirit of Creative Commons I've included the link to their main page so you can go play with it yourself.

Since its Good Friday and I don't know how whether blogging is karmically acceptable, I'll make this brief...it looks like (crossing fingers, toes and bits of me which ought not cross) we have a reasonably talented, ego-manageable lead guitarist who's just moved north from the hippy capital of NSW, Byron Bay. He plays good. He isn't over-keen to take over and make a tool of himself, and he likes the playlist. Lee likes his style and has invited him to the full-rehearsal on Monday.
We shall see.

Oh my; what a strange day it's been.

The fear and loathing continues at my office and I've opted to be the reed - and bend with the wind - rather than the pillar. But this led me into a bit of a mistake.

I spent my day with dead people.

Here is the webpage I mentioned earlier, Stephen's on-line suicide note. Only a few members of the family and close friends have seen this, and I'm pretty sure Stephen would have been happy to be called an e-suicide.

Imagine leaving an electronic suicide note on an email, a blog, by voicemail or (ye gods) via SMS. Talk about ephemeral; writing your last words with light and leaving no real trace, not even pencil on paper. Strange nest pa?

I read it again today, looking for hints and clues. Why did this guy kill himself? What did people miss? Were there tiny, mysterious clues or huge, flashing neon signs to suggest that someone ought to have paid attention.

I went back to his other websites and found pages and pages of text, pictures, weirdery and ramble. Turns out that there are warning signs everywhere, but I can see how they would be easy to miss.

Young Stephen was typical of his generation - a well-off, middle class suburban 20-something. He had money, toys and talent aplenty. He expressed himself well and clearly and made mock of things in that world-weary way that well-bred people do. He had lots of friends - well, acquaintances anyway - hobbies, passions and time to spare.

What he didn't seem to have was any self-esteem, any confidence in his own talents, or any worthwhile work to do. He tried to find work (how hard he tried, I don't know), failed, and then rationalised away the failure by talking about the irrelevance of money.

He also had a sad obsession with a girl called Gingko. He mentions her in his suicide FAQ and chose his date of death to coincide with the number of days she had lived before she shot herself. Here's her site, still online six years after her death. There's a rather sad "last entry" by a friend named Mark telling the story of her last days. His email address is on the post so I felt compelled to drop him a line asking if he was OK. I haven't heard anything back.

Gingko was also a talented, well-read, well-rounded young person who seems rather dreamy and detached from reality, but was pretty sharp nonetheless. I don't know why she killed herself. I don't know why Stephen killed himself. But they are tied together in a dance-of-death which plays on without them.

God love 'em both, they could have made lives for themselves. They certainly had the talent, the support and the resources to do it. But they both found life too hard, too unfulfilling, too "so what?"

Do you remember that great Peggy Lee standard "Is that all there is?" It does something like:
"Is that all there is?
If that's all there is, my friends
Then let's keep dancing,
Let’s break out the booze,
And have a ball, if that's all
There is"

I guess Stephen and Gingko died of ennui. They stood at the front of the avant-garde - early adopters of every technology and means of communicating. They got their news hot off the web-casts; they made friends in all corners of the planet; they shared their most immediate and heart-felt thoughts with anyone and everyone who happened to drop by...and it just wasn't warm enough, near enough, real enough to make a difference.

I get that odd "Is that all there is?" feeling too sometimes. It's that moment when you realise that you're doing something (like CSS, or FURLing or VOIP, just for example) which no one else has ever done in history. You get the hang of it, even find it easy, and you think, "Is that all there is too this? But there must be something more - some big secret mystery..."

And you know there isn't...this is the first of the first, the Alpha activity, the new thing. It's eerie and sometimes it rattles me, shakes my faith in the world and its eternal verities.
It's lonely and it's new and there's no one to tell me whether this is a good new thing or a bad new thing and whether I'm doing it right.

The only good answer I've found is to dig my heals into the soil a bit, look up at the sky a bit, and realise that this is ME, doing this, and so it MUST be OK. It takes self-confidence and daring just to be alive sometimes.

But look at the alternative...

I received news today that an aquaintance committed suicide a couple of weeks back. He bought a ticket from Australia to America, backpacked to San Francisco and leapt off the Golden Gate bridge.No one knew about the meticulous planning which went into this ultimate trip until someone uncovered his blog. It contains a spiffy page called 'FAQ About Stephen's Suicide". Through the tried and tested FAQ format he explains very clearly and calmly about his careful planning, his long-term suicidal tendencies and about how he wants his worldy goods divided.

I'm going to discuss this with people tomorrow and post the site if people feel like its OK. Anyhoo, this guy lived practically all his life in his own private trance - he says he's wanted to die, practically from the time he was first aware of being alive. He never really lived with a clear head. He never learned to care about love, or emotion, or anything because he was just obsessed with his personal film-script and his desire to die young and leave a good looking corpse.

What with Easter being just a day away and the air being full of the strange, pre-holiday angst of trip-planning, trying to sneak off a day early, anticipating many, many hours in bad traffic cooped up with people you both love and hate in equal measure, I've been thinking about human beings and the trances we live in.

It all started with this morning's traffic jam and the insane auto-ballet which left little shiny, tinkly bits of wreckage all along my route. Lee and I agreed that there was something very unpleasant about the day and promptly cancelled a whole set of plans to do with singers and auditions and a lot of other stuff. He drove home to hide in the air conditioning and noodle on the electric, I sauntered into the office, slid quietly into my cubby and kept my pretty head low, lest any low-flying angst chop my head off. What we wanted was to make sure we were both going to be awake, alive and not potential victims of someone else's crazy trance-state.

A few streets away, in her office, the Teen Groove Goddess had carefully dressed in vacant-slut-chic for a lunch date with a bunch of freshmen from the Arts School. But alas she was ditched, big time because one of the boy's girlfriends had just been told she wouldn't be able to have children (she's 16 for heaven's sake - who CARES at 16?) and everyone was in the thrall of depressed, teenage-angst trance. TGG herself is occasionally prone to teen-crazy, but even she could see that this was some kind of weird mass-wank-off on the borrowed pseudo-misery of someone else.

Back in my office, three (count 'em) people quit today out of sheer frustration and disgust with our managers. Several others threatened to shoot people, shoot themselves or commit acts of terrorism - also out of disgust with the management. I slumped yet lower in my chair and watched the dark clouds floating over the rest of the crew and logged onto the net to catch up with the latest score in the Schiavo case.

When I last looked it was the bottom of the seventh and the bases were loaded against Teri's Mom and Pop. On this side of the world we're very carefully avoiding talking to each other about this. From here the issues seems pretty clear. The poor woman isn't going to get any better. Families are at odds, partly out of sentiment, partly about money - but the issue has been hijacked by people who need it to be about morality.

We think its wrong to starve and dehydrate a person to death, but have very little issue with placing her in an induced coma to prevent her suffering and allowing her to die with dignity. But a whole LOT of people completely uninvolved in Mrs Schiavo's life are weeping and wailing and feudin' an' fightin' about something which has nothing to do with them. Mass hysteria and mass trance.

At the same time, the civilian death toll in Iraq reached 100,000 this week. It was also the first week that an ordinary Iraqi shop owner and his family became the first people to open fire on a posse of masked gunmen to prevent themselves becoming statistics in the cross-fire of a terror-attack. One man stepped out of his trance and suddenly the world became different.

I've gotta say, 100,000 dead civilians seems a whole lot more important to me than one woman's sadly approaching death. Funny how the column inches stack up though - the Schiavo case is on every front page on the planet, and on every TV bulletin and in an awful lot of blogs - the dead Iraqi civilians seem to have passed most folks by.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Prince Rainier of Monaco is dying, Pope John Paul is dying, and a strange Spaniard who is regarded by Spanish Catholics as THE Pope just died. Once upon a time people would have expected comets and dragons and stars in the heavens if so many heavy-hitters died in the same week. But we're just fixated on our Terri Schiavo trance and late-night lawmaking on-the-fly.
(In charity, I guess there is ONE thing to be said for this Schiavo thing. It means that a big percentage of the world's population is all thinking, fretting and deciding things about the same issue at the same time. Its a bit like the entire globe taking a dose of moral Metamucil.)

One of the most important things I ever learned was that most people spend practically their whole lives in one trance or another. Think about the average person's day. The alarm goes off, they stagger from bed, shower, eat and go through all the rituals of getting out of the house. They do the same thing every day, unthinking. Then its the driving trance (closely related to the rush hour trance and the traffic jam trance). Then its the work-trance, the lunch trance, the trip-home trance, the dinner and TV and bed trances, then sleep.

Now, tell the truth, have you ever gone through all or part of a work day on auto-pilot? You turned up where you were supposed to, did what they paid you to do and left again, and you weren't really there for any of it? Think about the drive to and from work. How far can you drive without actually being aware of where you are and what you're doing? See - you're in a trance.

This morning, around 10:30 I thought I'd run downstairs to the local coffee place, grab a cup of joe and go straight back to the desk. But as I paid and picked up the styrofoam cup I realised I wasn't really paying attention. I stopped, I asked for a proper cup and saucer, I took my coffee out into the garden in front of the building and I sat down.

For 15 minutes I chose to be alive. I listened to the birds and the wind in the trees. I looked at the faces of people in the street. I read the signs on buildings. I watched folks in the nearby high-rise apartments going about their morning rituals - eating breakfast, putting washing on the clothes-horse, watering the balcony plants, zipping in and out of doors in their underwear because they thought nobody could see them. I was awake and alert and fully, fully alive.

I'll bet Stephen had a moment of LIFE when he climbed over the low rail on the Golden Gate and stood there looking down at the water. I bet he felt the breeze, squinted against the sunlight bouncing off the sea, felt the shake and rumble of the bridge-cable as the traffic thundered past. I'll bet he was 100% awake and alive as he stepped into the clear air and had his last conscious thoughts on earth. The only thing I can hope is that those final thoughts were something like," Yes! THIS is what life is like...."

There's a music manager's forum tonight at The Troubadour in Brisbane's low-rent music-hub of Fortitude Valley. It's run by the national MMF, with help from the Australia Council, and aims to give people like me (the accidental band-manager) some skills at booking, running and protecting our bands against the predations of slimy club owners and industry sharks of every kind.

I should be there - but I'm not. Its raining, its dark, and I'm still a little dispirited after last Sunday. And Fortitude Valley is about as safe as a snake pit with the lights out. There's a lot - a W H O L E lot I'll do, volunteer for, put myself out for, and generally make sacrifices over for the sake of Lee and the crew but tonight is just a nightclub too far.

Anyway, tomorrow is a singer's rehearsal with just acoustic guitars and the still-too-long setlist and I'm hoping to be able to crank up some positives by then. It's just a couple of days before Easter, there's no gigs set and I get the feeling everyone just wants to bugger off for the long weekend and rethink afterwards.

There's a couple of prospects on the guitarist front, including (no, I'm not kidding) some guy from South America named Nuno' who is moving over here to live on the Gold Coast in April. He thought he'd troll the local musician's webboards and found us...so, what the hey, we'll audition him. THe other current contender says he's been playing guitar for 10 years, but is only 17 years old...which suggests that he's either a child prodigy or just your typical teen guitarist looking for his first break. Again, what the heck?

This weekend marks the beginning of the Australian AFL (Australian Football League) season so if there's nothing else doing I plan to watch four straight days of gladiator-football and pretend there's no such thing as a band to manage.

Check ya later.

Playing in a band is a basic urge for most musicians. They start to think about it, feel for it and seek it out when they’re still in their mid-teens. For some kinds of music – be it orchestration or rock band arrangement - it is the natural form of expression: melody in company.

Getting together to practice, to rehearse and to jam is easy when you’re young. Long empty summers hold endless opportunities for playing, and once homework is done the rest of your time is your own. Lord, the uncounted hours of sitting around with a loose coalition of guitarists, drummers, keyboardists and singers working on arrangements, fiddling around with mixers and amps or just singing the hell out of something – great days.

But by your early twenties time is precious and there are obligations, choices & officially-sanctioned ways of spending time, and the band becomes an intrusion, a childish thing, a “waste of valuable time.”

People’s dreams of stardom in a touring band take second place to finding a house, keeping a job a marriage and family together, and all the things which make for a normal life. Anyway no one you know ever cracked the big-time – a few managed to keep their heads above the water as small-time musicians but, “that ain’t it kid.”

After a bit, life calms down a bit and there’s time to make music, and with time comes inclination. The joy returns and you remember the release of playing and singing and “selling the number”. Because you’re an adult now you realise that you must make time to practice, schedule regular rehearsals and fit in performances between your other commitments.

Unfortunately this kind of schedule only works at an introverted and personal level. It works for you as a musician but it doesn’t work for you as the performer. Because playing and singing to yourself is only half of music. Playing and singing for others - for the audience - is the gigantic other half, and that can’t be handled and managed and scheduled so easily.

Performance is extroversion.
It’s about what the music is and what it does; separate to your private worries and concerns. Music wants OUT. It wants to be loud and demanding and insistent and perplexing and it wants to emotionally blackmail the audience – make it cry and shout and stamp its feet and be swept up on waves of sound and emotion and the pure, sharp scent of music-sweat.

And THAT music demands more of you than just fitting in around a job, a carpool, TV sports and mowing the lawn.

THAT music needs you to get up and go, no matter how tired you are, or hung-over you are, or how wrung out you are about work and bills and the mortgage. THAT music makes your fingers bleed and your throat raw and your back ache and your feet burn. It makes you drive 30 miles in the cold to play for eight people. It makes you play for three hours straight for 3,000 drunks because the other band didn’t show. It makes you do five encores when you’re dripping sweat and completely out of ideas, because the audience keeps on stamping and whistling and calling for more.

THAT music has to be served on its own terms, not yours. But THAT music rewards its own by initiating them into the great mystery – lets its priests stand on the altar-stage and know that they are at one with the Note.

Anyone can pull together a jam session. Anyone can play three or four hot sets at a party or a barbeque. But that’s just music, not MUSIC. The shambolic riot of song and sound and booze and shouting which seems so great at the time is as nothing to the rewards of the well-crafted gig.

True performance is tight and strong and full of silent sound. The band strikes up together, plays together, arranges the notes and the instruments and the voices in a laurel wreath of resonance and holy harmony, ends each song together in a single chord, and strikes up the next with no need for unnecessary talk and chatter because the performance is not about the self but about the great continuum of sacred song which is a covenant between the gods of music, its players and its mortal and immortal audience. These are the sacred tenets of music: unity, melody, clarity and precision.

That’s why only a real, performing band gets to gig at a friend’s wedding. As soon as the musician must serve any purpose higher than personal gratification the music becomes part of a greater rite and must be served, delivered and honoured with the proper obeisance.

And how is the music properly served? Just as I’ve said: practice, rehearsal, arrangement and performance are the four sacred rites of music. They must be performed in the service of the music not of the self, because if the music doesn’t sound good you won’t BE good – no matter what other tricks you pull to get famous, or just to get the gigs.

Music has been worshipped, studied, practiced, performed and administered as rite for centuries. Music has its own gods and goddesses and its priest-practitioners. Even being in the audience can be a sacred act – receiving music as sacrament of some creative, gnostic or ecstatic rite.

Even mass-market music merchants like Stock Aitken Waterman have to serve the music at some point in the process – though its service is more Low Church than High Rite. But there is nothing in the covenant which says music needs to be high art or even good taste. Music belongs to babies and to children and to Goths and to Metal heads and to Opera-buffs and to fans of Jazz and the Baroque, to Gregorian chanters and to screaming teens.

At its simplest all music needs is a backbeat and a hook. Easy, catchy, memorable, repeatable – the qualities of the earliest paeans of praise by the muses; whose name means “memory”.

Euterpe, the "giver of pleasure" is the muse of all music. Calliope the "fair voiced" is the goddess of songwriters and poets, with her writing tablet always at hand. Erato the "lovely" is the muse of love songs and cover bands, and holds a proto-guitar; a lyre.

Melpomene - “the songstress", is muse of, “ya’ done me wrong” numbers while her sister Thalia, the "Flourishing" is goddess to summer hits like “Convoy” and “Monster Mash”.

Terpsichore the "whirler" is the groovy muse, dancing with her lyre, pick in hand, strumming an air-guitar and stomping up a storm.

Clio, “the proclaimer” knows the history of every band, how long a song was on the charts, who left the band, and why, and who replaced him, all the way back to Orpheus. While “heavenly” hippy sister Urania knows every star in the heavens, rock or rockn’roll, and holds the secrets and mysteries of past, present and future.

And the great veiled queen, Polyhymnia, "She of Many Hymns," is muse to the great choir of rockn’roll immortals who have gone to meet their makers. It is she who knows who was truly great and she who separates one-hit wonders from the eternal singers-of-praise.

These ARE the divas of rockn’roll; the queens of soul; the groove-goddesses. When you sing about your lady-love or the girl or guy you left behind you’re singing to THEM. They listen, they encourage, they suggest a better rhyme or a different key and they smile and swoon and shimmy and shake when you hit the mood square-on and rock the house down.

And they are one of the many reasons why playing and singing in a band is important, and valuable, and “an art worth your learning”.

Yes it’s difficult.
Yes it’s demanding.
Yes it’s sometimes more frustrating that fun.
But the rewards are great and valuable at a deeply personal level and it allows you to experience the infinite and the eternal while upright and in company. Sounds like a great deal to me.

Sunday evening and the long silence continues.
Haven't heard a word from the drummer or the singer.
This house feels like everyone in it has a majot hangover. Everyone is in different rooms doing what they can to get over the frustration and disappointment of hard-work-for-nothing.

Lee is watching a really terrible Johnny Depp film on cable. TTG is went out for icecream earlier and is now eating cucumber strips and trying to jolly me on. I'm wasting my energy on playing with new blogskins and generally stuffing about.

Being in a band is so hard.

...damn, damn, damn and damn.....and while we're on the subject.....shit, fuck and damn.....
...
Grant rang at 10am to say his Dad had fallen over and his mother couldn't get him up and, what with one thing and another....rehearsal was off.

Of course we couldn't raise the singer on her home phone, work phone or mobile, so she's either just decided not to go today either, or is sitting on Grant's doorstep, fuming.

Lessons for Today

1. Get a proper rehearsal venue - even if it means paying for it. Rehearsals at a band-members house, no matter how well set up it is, are always at risk of cancellation
2. Double, triple and quadtruple check that everyone is going to turn up
   
3. Never, ever imagine its all going to work, or be OK or there's no need for a backup plan.
   

Hey ho - Friday evening in the Band-Maiden's household and all is calm and bright. Lee is sitting behind me, practising something incredibly complicated by the Divynals on his new Gretch Sparklejet, which apparently has the perfect sound (this week).

Teenaged daughter (part-time bass player and full-time groove Goddess) has just come home from another McDonalds fine-dining experience and is parked in front of cable, scarfing the last apple pie and reviewing the newest MTV offerings.

I'm getting ready to make a meal and trying to make sure I've got everything sorted out for Sunday. We tried unsuccessfully to recruit two guitarists today. Even after an ad rewrite the first respondent turned out be be a full-time highschool guitar teacher and Fleetwood Mac fan (whatever floats your boat, I guess) with delusions of relevance. The second person (fully rigged out with web-site and rack of downloadable MP3s) was so goddammed dull, turgid and downright bad that it really makes me wonder whether industrial deafness wouldn't be a good thing for me to come down with.

But isn't there something wonderful about Friday nights?

It's just got dark and its getting cooler everyday as Autumn sets in and its got that great, pre-gig vibe - just outside there's people loosening their ties, pulling on their fishnets, jumping into taxis and real tall drinks and starting to r e l a x after of week of norming. THe night is young, the weekend's long and, with Easter just around the corner, a lot of folk won't be doing any work next week either. Its time to get LOUD and loose and lovely.

....can't can't can't wait...
....let the groove be with you.

• No-Shit Sherlock
• Banzai Guitars
• Sinister Dexter
• Dexter Sinister
• Will Rock for Money
• The Dessert Cups
• Ms Marple
• Medusa Kiss
• Random Band
• Subtle Clue
• Better than Blue
• Queen Camilla
• Polka Dots

I thought we'd cured it.
We've talked about it; agreed that we wouldn't go there again. We had the habit licked and we'd never, EVER go back to the way it was....but its happened again. GAS(sigh).

For the uninitiated, we're talking about Gear Aquisition Syndrome. the number one cause of poverty in musicians. The excitement of new band members means everyone is reassessing their kit to make sure they've got the right stuff. You know; 3 or 4 foldback speakers, a new 16 band mixer, a special mic-kit for the drums, oh what the heck - let's get new mics all round, and I'm pretty bored with this rickenbacker 330. I think I'd play much better with a 360....and on and on and on.

Today's star-buy was a Sony Minidisc to record rehearsals and early gigs to make sure the sound is right and tight. The price was good - almost embarassingly good - and I was feeling almost guilty. Some poor bugger was clearly being forced to sell his very expensive toy for peanuts, and we were part of his downfall.

Lee headed off to part with the readies and found himself on on the seriously expensive side of town. He knocked on the door of a sprawling urban castle which turns out to be the digs of three university students with WAY too much money. The whole house was full of ear-candy - 12 string guitars, electrics of all kinds, stereo gear, computer gear, electronic music contraptions of all shapes, colours and sizes...and his feelings of guilt sort of evaporated. These guys had a case of GAS that could get entire cities quarantined. Their only hope is if Dad gets busted in an accounting scandal and the guitar-pushers cut off their supply.

In the end Lee managed to screw a whole load of disc accessories out of the dude which weren't included in the E-Bay offering. Now we have a tiny little disc recorder which positively glows with mics, leads, powerpacks, remote controls, earpieces, bland discs, mini albums, and, and, and...

...and talking about guitar-pushers, those rich people are more than well supplied with instrument shops specialising in BRAND equipment of all kinds. There's an Amp Clinic next door to a Drum Clinic next door to a Guitar Warehouse (Warehouse? Huh? - in the same way that Neiman Marcus is I warehouse I quess) next door to a Piano and Organ Supplier, next door to a place which only sells bass guitars, and only bass guitars costing over 2 grand each, for crying out loud!

But amongst this cosy strip mall for millionaire wannabes is a little store which drew Lee in by its smell. I kid you not - Lee said it has a real "guitar-smell", as well as other GAS-junky turn-ons like nitro-lacquer, bees wax, sturdy craftsmanship and honest sweat. (I know, I know - but he's in the middle of a GAS attack, so you have to excuse him for hyper-guitar-vigilence.)

Anyway, behind a homey little front porch sporting a cast-iron security grill shaped like a guitar is the Alladin's cave of lutiers, masquerading under the humble name of the Guitar Repairers. THIS is where real magic happens. Guitars hang from the walls and the ceiling and the stairs and god knows from what else. The place has the kind of equipment to make a surgeon cry with envy, and all sorts of strange and exotic instruments in every stage of undress, leering wantonly from behind posts and under counters. The've got a balalaika slung casually from the ceiling - a sure sign that this is a seriously-serious lutier. A magician of music. A God of groove.

Lee and John Davis (the senior mage) hit it off in that way that fanatics do when they spot one of their own. Bon Mots were exchanged, followed by a swift round of Guitar-Cred jujitsu (it was a draw, apparently) then, as carefully and artistically as a Japanese tea ceremony, business cards were exchanged and dates set for "the showing of the implements."

These guys really know guitars. They know their darkest secrets, their deepest aches, what beats in the secret heart of a Mosrite SurfCaster and how to fix the cherry on an old Burns Bison.

So it looks like we're in for a period of eye-glazingly technical discussions about truss rods and "lowering the action" and all the outward signs of GAS infection. But at least the good Dr Davis will be there to hold my hand.

If you want to go off to see the wizard, here's his link. Guitar Repairer and Gear God, John Davis.

Half way through the week and its time to crank up towards weekend rehearsals. Lee has spent several days completely rethinking the band's songlists because of the change of singers.

I found out that our lost singer has won herself a part in Les Miserables, so we've got to be happy about that. Its a great opportunity, even if its a loss to us. But with only one woman up-front now there's going be a whole new process of choosing songs and sets and there's a pretty long list for the first cut. 195 songs in fact.

Here's a shorter version of our possible playlist.
4 Non Blondes - Pleasantly Blue The Bangles - Something That You Said
Bic Runga - Sway Blondie - Picture This
Bodeans - Feed the Fire Bree Sharp - David Duchovny
Cardigans - Favorite Game Concrete Blonde - Bloodletting (The Vampire Song)
Cindy Lauper - When You Were Mine Deadstar - Run Baby Run
Divinyls – Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore
Elvis Costello - Pump It Up Eurogliders - Absolutely
Garbage - Special Holly and the Italians - Tell that Girl to Shut Up
Iggy Pop - Cry For Love Jann Arden - The Sound Of
Jennifer Paige - Crush Kirsty MacColl - A New England
La's - There She Goes Martha Davis - Don't tell me the time
Nancy Sinatra - Boots Are Made For Walking
Natalie Imbruglia - Torn Nena - 99 Luftballons
Patti Smith - Goodbye To You Pixies - Here Comes Your Man
The Plimsouls - A Million Miles Away Plumb - Lie Low
Pretenders - Everday is like a Sunday Refreshments - Bandidos (stupid people)
Robyn Hitchcock - So You Think You’re In Love
Smithereens - Blood and Roses Susanna Hoffs - All I Want
Talk Talk - It's My Life Talking Heads - Road To Nowhere
Tanita Tikaram - Twist in my sobriety The Raveonettes - That Great Love Sound
U2 - Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Wallflowers - One Headlight

We're looking to have about 40 songs good-to-go...say, 3 sets worth. As well we need to get a few rock solid standards (in case of boredom, hecklers or drunken crowds) and a few oohey-gooey engagement/ wedding/ bithday party numbers.

Trying to get the right balance of hard and soft, rock and ballad is pretty tough. All the band has to be able to agree on the set. They don't have to love a song but they've got to be able to stand playing it about twenty-dozen times. And how the band feels about the song is not as important as how the crowd feels about it. We try to have a balance of around 70% rock and 30% slower stuff, mostly in the middle of the set.

If anyone has any suggestions about the right setlist for a rock/power-pop band with a female lead singer, send me your comments.

.....and audition and audition and audition...

Today's contestant seemed like a good idea at the time.
He answered our ad on the musician's web-board with all kinds of promising words, like "I'm really keen to play. I'll work hard. Gimme a job, gimme a job, fetch the stick, good dog, laddie". As we've already mentioned, a willingness to do the practice, come to rehearsals and learn the set is a pretty essential criterion with a gigging band.

He'd just graduated from university with a degree in something to do with trees, environment, sustainability, yada yada yada. So not a dummy. Good. Because he's a poor student his gear is a bit crappy but now he's working he'll be updating. Fine, fine. We send him a brief version of the setlist and tell him to come over and say hello. (Remember rule one - can you stand them?)

Long story short. He can play. Technically capable. Personality of a running shoe. Commitment - ya'whut?

He turned out to be an AD/DC fan who's never heard of anything on the setlist...like Blondie. Garbage. Natalie Imbruglia. The Bangles. Hey ho - "here's the tabs, do you think you could learn them over 12 weeks?"

No. No he couldn't. Not interested in this kind of music.

"Did you READ the ad? You must have, you answered it with promises of enthusiasm and willingness to learn."

He didn't think we really meant it - or something. Thought we just wanted to play, ya know?

He disappeared in a cloud of Brut aftershave and a clapped out red Torana.
Bye bye AC/DC fan. So long and thanks for nothing.

Todays lesson:
When you advertise on a musician's web board be very clear and explicit about who and what you want.That means thinking carefully about who you're looking for. If you want a to play professionally (even if you only want one regular gig a week to fit in with another job) you have to make it clear in the ad.

• Phrases like, "for professional gigging" or "goal: paid gigs" will make it clear - we hope. You don't have to hold out for a pro-guitarist, especially if you're a new, young outfit, but you've got to set out what you really, truly expect.
• If you need someone technically competent (who can play) from day one, say so.
• Set out practice or rehearsal schedules up front. Same for the band's "style" and some indicative songs from the set-list.
• Explain (nicely) that this song/setlist is non-negotiable and that your new guitarist must be willing to learn the stuff the band already plays.
• While you're at it, explain that this is an already established band of musicians who need someone who's willing to fit in with the established structure. (Feel free to s t r e t c h the truth a little on this. Even if you're newly-formed, if it was your ideas and energy which got things rolling then you have the right to keep your original vision alive, at least until its proved to be a bit astigmatic.)

After over a year of searching, frustration, false hopes, mis-starts and an awful lot of stuffing around, a new band has formed. To be honest, we don't even have a name yet. We've chosen 'Crookfoot'as a temporary handle because its the name of a magpie who visits us every day. She's got a voice like an angel and a beak which she uses like a stilleto to keep the oher birds in line, so she's our kind of singer!

First "get to know each other" rehearsal was yesterday - Sunday - at Grant's place. Even before the first rehearsal we'd lost one great vocalist to a successful stage audition and sacked the new lead guitarist before he'd played a note. Who needs yet another "guitar hero"? (The guy just rubbed Lee up the wrong way from the get-go: all ego and guitarist-hype).

It went well. The style of songs which suited a two female lead singers just don't work with one voice up front. Hey-ho - turns out our singer has a great big rock voice. So its out with the more subtle stuff and in with the hotter and heavier style. Suits us. The poor kid was also running on about three hours sleep because she's young, and life is like that - but when she pays-down some of the sleep debt its going to be brilliant.

STILL looking for a lead guitarist who is technically capable, talented and not juiced up on testosterone and self-adoration. We want someone who can play, who will play, who wants to play, and who'll turn up and play. Ah well, more auditions this week.

After a year of meeting half the city's wanna-be musicians and singers (and finding that what they wanna-be is lazy, disorganised, argumentative, egotistical or all of the above) we've worked out a few important things.

1. Find out who the person is, before they play or sing a note.
What do they care about? Think about? Feel committed to? Can we stand them? Can we imagine spending time with them? Can we imagine spending time with them in a gear-laden car, on a hundred mile drive to an unknown gig? No? Then they're not going to be band members.
2. Find out if they CAN play or sing a note.
If Australian-American-Armenian-Antarctic Idol has taught us anything, its that people often have no clue how good or bad they are....which leads us to...
3. Audition, audition, audition
Easy-going hookups of the, "Hey, saw your ad on the Indie Board. Wanna be in a band?" sort will almost never get you more than a jam or two, then a cancelled appointment, then the "found another band" excuse email. If you want a band then you have to decide who and what you want and audition people until you get the right mix of talent, commitment and personality.
4. This is a band, not a democracy. LEAD.
Musicians and singers are often very talented and very personable, but very, very, very indecisive. People wanna play. They wanna sing and dance and express themselves. They really haven't got a lot of interest in taxfile numbers, GST, booking hassles, shitty club-owners, set-lengths, stage banter, load in and load out times, and all the other drack which goes into gigging for money.
OK I admit sometimes people think they care about this stuff, and want to be consulted over every decision and be able to vote for or against everything from the name of the band to the colour of the paint on the dressing room walls. But they don't really. Not after the first five or six arguments and dramas and offended egos and hurt feelings.
It comes down to people getting to use their talent for their art. Great singers sing. Great drummers drum up a storm. Great...OK...you get the drift. It's a whole lot better to have happy, talented, fulfilled band-members doing what they're great at, and having someone who's great at all the other stuff, DO the other stuff.
5. Everybody has to be on the same page, vision-wise.
Which means - everyone needs to clear about the goals of the band, what its going to take to achieve those goals, what the personal costs are in terms of time, money and commitment, and what the rewards are likely to be when you get there. One of the great truths of band-success is...
6. The group is only ever going to be as successful as its least committed member.
In practical terms that means that if three of you want to make a career in professional gigging, two of you want to make it a sort of part-time thing to fit around their "real" job, and one of you thinks that the occasional weekend jam with the gang is all that matters....well, you'll be a weekend-jam band, until someone quits from boredom or frustration, or someone is sacked in favour of a keener player.

So, here we are. Day one of the band.
Look in from time to time and see how we're going.