If you can’t sell five copies of your CD, how do you justify getting 1000 made?

If you don’t promote your shows, booking three a week won’t make you famous any faster.

If you can’t get the drunk and desperate 35-year-old bar fly who has a permanent spot at the end of the bar to go home with you, don’t even try going for that gorgeous 21-year-old who is only there to see her boyfriend’s crappy band.

If one of those XXL energy drink canisters doesn’t wake you up, you should probably get some sleep.

If you can’t make it heavy in standard tuning, tuning down to G isn’t going to make it any heavier. But it probably will loosen a few bowels. THAT’S metal!

If you can’t squeeze a halfway decent guitar recording out of one microphone, two usually isn’t going to make the situation any better.

Having more than one cover song in your 45-minute set doesn’t prove your “versatility,” it proves your awareness of the fact that people would rather hear someone else’s music than the music they scraped up five bucks to hear and see you play.

If your songs don’t sound good on an acoustic guitar they’ll most likely not sound good on a 7-string plugged into five Marshall stacks (unless, of course you’re pulling out some Tom Morello shit… but chances are you’re not Tom Morello).

If your three-piece band doesn’t sound good, adding a keyboard player, a violinist, a DJ, five backing vocalists, another couple guitar players, an entire horn section, an accordion player, four more percussionists, a xylophone player, a designated screamer, a few dancers, and a huge laser light show won’t make it any better.

If you can’t write a good song with just three chords, don’t expect your songs to magically become brilliant masterworks of music when you throw a few more chords, four guitar solos, and a couple breakdowns in. That being said, if you only use the same three chords for every song you’re going to be boring as hell.

If your amp sucks and your guitar sucks, adding a bunch of distortion pedals and rack gear won’t magically “take the blanket off” your amp.

If you can’t make crappy gear sound decent, you have no right to get good gear.

If you can’t play to begin with, getting a custom guitar and a vintage tube amp won’t magically make you Jimmy Page.

Most importantly: Why are you charging five bucks for your three-song demo you recorded in your living room using the built-in mic on a cassette recorder from 1987 when Clear Channel is blasting the latest Puddle of Mudd and Nickelback turds on 97.9FM at no charge to anyone listening?

What is wrong with people these days? Your resentment of the below-average intelligence of the typical bar-going chump is not only understandable, it’s completely normal. After all, at the end of a long week of work people just want to go out to a club with some friends, get a blood alcohol level that’s a multiple of 2, and attempt to pick up someone to share a bed with for a night. You, on the other hand, would rather plop down in front of the glowing computer screen and lurk around MySpace looking for venues and local people who might possibly have the slightest chance of being into your band’s music, as well as sending emails kissing up to promoters and radio DJs in the hopes that one of those contacts will be the one who unleashes your band’s music upon the unsuspecting masses, launching you and your band head-first into superstardom. Or at least that’s how it happens before you wake up stuck to your bed.

Everyone is out there while you’re sitting in your comfy chair in your smiley-face boxers drinking Southern Comfort and letting your waist grow. And you wonder why no one comes to your shows. The best way to get on the radar of everyone who would rather go out and risk getting a DUI every Friday and Saturday night than go home after work and go to sleep early is to intercept their routine. Get yourself in their fuzzy weekend memory banks. In other words: SHOW YOUR FACE! Go out to shows, talk yourself up, meet people! If talking to you about your band is the last thing some guy remembers before finding himself in his apartment at 5am with everything he drank that night coming out of both ends of his body, you might be doing something right (or very very wrong, but let’s not go there).

So get out into the real world, find a show at a decent-sized venue with a bunch of bands you’ve never heard of, and talk to people. Even if you don’t instantly make a ton of friends you’ll still be more productive than if you went about your normal routine of couching it in your apartment with one hand on your computer keyboard and the other hand somewhere beneath your stomach, listening to the radio, and telling some girl on MySpace with “~~<3 I’m Only Jailbait If They Catch You <3~~” as her display name about how famous your band is going to be.

Hey… you…I got a secret. No seriously. I’ll tell it to you. Shhh! Don’t say anything. I figured it all out. I did. Seriously. And I’m willing to tell you. Just listen. Check it out. Those bands. Certain bands. Whether they’re really good or just totally suck. They bring out a bunch of chicks! Like, really gorgeous dumb chicks! In DROVES! The kind of girls whose mere existence made you want to pick up an instrument to begin with! Every show! Every damn show they come out to see the band! You work TIRELESSLY to get your band’s music and name out there, while these assholes do nothing but post a MySpace bulletin at the last minute and instantly bring seas of gorgeous girls. How do they do it??

Well, my friend, it’s actually quite simple. I shall call it the Dane Cook effect. Do you really think that if Steve Buscemi’s career consisted of over-pronouncing words, coming up with nicknames for fast food places, and jumping around like a frat boy after a few too many beer bongs he’d have college girls masturbating to his entire catalog on repeat? It’s the same way with you trying to make some good-looking girls laugh by telling that hilarious joke about the sex change operation: You get looks of disgust and then the girls ignore you, while the dude with the popped collar tells the same joke a couple days later and is met with roaring laughter by the same girls. No, it’s not fair, but the truth is that girls like pretty boys. Even back to when you were a kid and all the boy band shit was shoved down every teenage girl’s throat. You’d flip the channels and land on TRL and see some psychotic chick standing out in 15 degree NYC weather for three hours just to tell the cameras “I requested Backstreet Boys because they’re so hot!! Woooo!!!” These are the same brainless chicks who go to a show not to enjoy a band’s music, but just to see them presented on an elevated portion of the room as if those guy are the only ones to step foot on that stage. Oh, and they just so happen to be playing instruments.

So rest easy knowing that, despite the moisture levels of their fans’ vaginas convincing them to endlessly blabber on otherwise, it really does have nothing to do with talent. And also take comfort in the fact that once another band of dudes with nut-huggers, brand name polo shirts, and stylishly almost-too-shaggy hair starts stealing the spotlight, the band you’ve been envious of for so long will only have their music, stage show, and promotional skills to rely on. And that’s how it should be.

The Band Member:
“I had a show Saturday. Woke up at 8am because I still had to work a full day first. I’d give my left nut to be able to have Saturdays off again, especially on show days, but $4 per gallon gas isn’t going to pay for itself. So anyway, I got off work about 5 and headed over to the 7-11 to get a Red Bull and one of those greasy hot dogs that have been sitting out all day. No time to go home, shower, or make something to eat before the show. So I drove a half an hour to the practice space to squeeze in a little warm-up band practice before the show. Let me tell you, this place is far away from EVERYTHING and the power works about half the time, but there are only a handful of places to practice in the area and they all either cost a ton to rent, have six-month waiting lists, or are just not meant to be practice spaces. I’ll take what I can get. And afford.

The rest of the band showed up about 20 minutes after I got there, leaving us to only be able to tear through a couple songs before we had to pack up and haul ass. Of course the venue is on the complete opposite end of town and the owner wanted us there by 7. Wonderful.

We got to the venue at 7:05 and almost got into a car accident several times from rushing to get there, only to realize that none of the other bands would even start showing up until 8:30. The show finally started at 10 and we went on about 11:30. The place was actually filling up! So we sound checked and started our set. Couldn’t really hear myself that great so I asked the sound guy for more vocals in the monitor. The song we started after that I still couldn’t hear my vocals very well. What the hell? I asked the sound guy to please turn it up more but he said he couldn’t. What?? How hard is it to turn ONE KNOB?? Towards the middle of our set I started seeing the place clear out. Of course no one would want to hear me singing off-key. I’d leave too. Sound Guy, you fucking bastard. The entire show sucked because of him and his slacker attitude. All my friends who were still there after we played told me I sounded great but I knew better. I sucked. We sucked.”

The Sound Guy:
“I got called in to do sound on Saturday night. I worked all day at my day job even though I originally was only supposed to work Monday through Friday, and I was looking forward to a nice relaxing night alone with the wifey when the asshole owner of the venue called me up and said that I had to do sound that night. I love doing sound. I’ve been doing it for 20 years. But there are times where I’d much rather just stay home and relax than spend the majority of the night in a smoky bar where everyone’s drinking and partying except for me.

So I got there on time. As always. God, the gear there sucks, but I made due as always. I fired everything up, sound checked, the usual. Another night of band after band all sounding the same. Call me an old bastard, but I remember a time when no one would come see a band if they didn’t at least have their shit together. Not only do 95% of the bands I see nowadays all sound the same, many of them can barely even play their instruments! And worst of all, they all seem to blame me for THEM not knowing what they’re doing on stage! No, YOU’RE causing all that feedback. That’s what happens when you cup the microphone and kneel down right in front of the monitor! That’s what happens when you crank the gain on your guitar amp and play right in front of it!

Anyway, another mediocre band got up on stage at about 11:30. Same old, same old. These guys had their shit together but boy were they cocky! They kept looking around at all the chicks in the room like “oh yeah, you know you want this.” Made me a little nauseous. I’m sure the ladies felt the same way too because the place started clearing out about halfway through their set. The singer wanted more vocals in his monitor so I turned him up. The kid didn’t project with his voice at all, had no resonance, and consequently had no volume. There was only so far I could turn him up without a ton of feedback. So when he asked for even more vocals in the monitor I told him it was up as far as it could go. I told him I could pull some of the other instruments in the monitor back so that he could hear his vocals better but he wasn’t having it. The asshole actually started yelling at me and blaming me for ruining his set! ON STAGE he was doing this! That kid has SOME NERVE!”

Random Guy:
 ”So I heard a lot of hot drunk chicks were gonna be at this show on Saturday night. Naturally, I went. Cool place. The bartender made my drinks STRONG! Had big tits too. She totally wanted my cock. There were some bands playing that night but I was busy hitting on the bartender and some of her friends who were at the bar. Then a little later on in the night one of the bands and the sound guy started arguing or something. It was totally lame, so I left. Don’t remember much after that.”

The cover song you picked for your set = better than the entire rest of your set.

Putting out the same album for 20 years does not make you “true,” “dedicated,” or “loyal,” it makes you really really really boring. On the flip side to that, if people are actually buying every single one of your albums despite it being a complete recycling of your last (read: every single AC/DC album after Back in Black), you’re running one hell of a good business.

You really sounded terrible when you tried to play while hammered. Get the hell off the stage.

No one is impressed by the directionless, pointless, randomly-placed sloppy byproduct of bad technique you call a guitar solo…. except for virginal dudes with scraggly mutton chops and puffy 1988 mullets who sit wide-eyed as they listen to their Nitro CDs while jacking off into their own mouths.

And if the best part of your song is the guitar solo, you need to learn to WRITE A FUCKING SONG.

Bass solos are cool if the bass player is absolutely amazing. Like Victor Wooten amazing, not “hey look, I’m banging out nursery rhymes on the strings and acting like that alone is worth me wasting 10 minutes of a set that could have been used for actually playing songs.”

Drum solos should never last more than 2 minutes unless the dude starts playing with his cock AND balls. While the drums are moving. Doesn’t matter how good the guy is, you’re banging on shit. ‘Nuff said.

The Beatles came up with great music when they were on acid. You… not at all.

Your “exciting blend of metalcore, hardcore, and thrash metal” sounds exactly like every band of five dudes that has ever been on MTV2, as well as every band you ever play with in your hometown. There is absolutely nothing original about your sound, no matter how much you whine about how “it all sounds the same nowadays” and talk your band up like it’s the “next [insert influential metal band here].” In fact, if you’re characterizing your band as the next ANY BAND you’re automatically revealing your astounding lack of originality.

Guitar Hero is not helping your playing. At all. It’s a VIDEO GAME. You’re pressing buttons in time with the little dots on screen. It’s like DDR except you’ll stay fat. And you still won’t be able to play a real instrument.

Lastly, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: There’s always some 12-year-old little punk in Methlab, Arkansas who can play faster than you can, sing higher than you can, scream louder than you can… who can make their breakdowns more brutal, their songs more emotional, their melodies catchier than you can… who can play more instruments, can write more songs, has more contacts than you… who has a bigger dick than you, more money than you, and gets a HELL of a lot more pussy than you… who can make whatever they touch more jaw-dropping, more awe-inspiring, more dumbfounding than you’ll ever be able to… So be who you are and shut the fuck up.

Venue Owner: Whats up guys! Thanks for playing last night! That was a great show! Hey do you think you could play here again September 24th? I’m trying to set up a good show for then and you guys would be great for it.
Band: Hell yeah, we’re all down for that. Mark us down!
Owner: Awesome, looking forward to it! And remember to keep bringing alcoholics! We can’t make any money off of Red Bull and Coke. Especially with the economy the way it is and everything.
Band: Yeah yeah yeah, we know, we know.

A few weeks pass…

[Band member at a local show:]
Band member: Larry! The fuck are you doing here? I haven’t seen your dumbass out at a show in forever!
Friend: Yeah I know man. I’ve been busy with the baby and everything. The babysitter was coming onto me hardcore so I had to fire her. She was hot but there’s that whole age of consent law and everything and I’m not trying to get locked up… again. My asshole is exit-only, know what I mean? And my psycho bitch of an ex-wife is too busy getting shit-faced and fucking random guys to take care of the kid that she helped make. Shit, she’s the one who told me she was still on the pill.
Band member. Uh… damn. That sucks.
Friend: Yeah man. Hey when’s you guys’ next show?
Band member: Oh it’s on the 24th at the Rusty Trombone.
Friend: You guys are playing at the Rusty again? Fuck yeah! I’ll definitely find a way to come!
Band member: Sweet! Bring some friends too!
Friend: Bro, I’ll bring a car full of people.
Band member: Fuckin’ right, man! Can’t wait!
Friend: Who else is playing?
Band member: Not sure yet, but as soon as I find out I’ll let you know.
Friend: Cool man. Hey Bartender! Get this crazy motherfucker a Heineken!

[Band member at work:]
Boss: Goddammit, you burnt the fries again! Screw it, we’ll just set these aside and have some nice food for later. But get your act together and stop dicking around or else I’m going to start taking these out of your paycheck.
Band member: Okay, okay. It won’t happen again.
Boss: It better not. Take some goddamn pride in your job. And go get that guy his triple bacon cheeseburger and onion rings, he’s been waiting for half an hour already.
Band member: I’ll do it right now.
Boss: Good. Hey, can you work the night of the 24th?  I’m taking off then to just chill, unwind, and get retardedly drunk. Having two jobs is kicking my ass.
Band member: Sorry, I can’t, I have a show that night. You should come out. Great music, great people, and the bartender is GORGEOUS. I hear if you get her drunk enough she’ll show you her tits. Allan told me all about it.
Boss: Really? Wow, yeah I think I’ll have to make that happen…. I mean, yeah I’ll definitely try to make your show.

[Band puts out a myspace bulletin:]
Mark you’re calendars! We’re playing at the Rusty Trombone on September 24th! That’s only three weeks away! And you’ll also be pleased to know that the bartender has some real nice boobage…
Anyway, we aren’t sure what other bands are on the show yet, but we’ll find out in the next couple days and make a flier for it that we’ll throw on all your pages, just to cover all the bases.
Hope to see you there!

[Band checks the calendar on the venue web site to see the lineup for the show:]
September 24th:
1. Tuesday Autumn Whisper
2. Eat My Feet
3. Spike of Xerxes
4. A Black Grave of Sorrow
5. Today We Will Tear Apart That Which Is A Product of You and Him or I
6. Aeortesimalitinessosity

Doors at 8, Show at 9:30
Ladies drink half off!

[Band calls venue owner:]
Owner: Hello?
Band member: Hey man, it’s Jay from Eight Auto Fire.
Owner: Oh hey, what’s going on?
Band member: I looked at the calendar on the Rusty web site to see what other bands were on the show on the 24th and I saw that we weren’t listed on there. We’re still on the show, aren’t we?
Owner: Uh, you guys were never on that show.
Band member: What? Yeah we were! We definitely told you to confirm us after the last show we played there.
Owner: I don’t remember that at all. Are you sure it was the 24th?
Band member: I’m completely sure.
Owner: Well look man, since I like you guys I can squeeze you into the opening slot on a show three weeks after that on October 15th if you want to jump on that.
Band member: Dude, no, we promoted the hell out of this show! 
Owner: Well I’m sorry, but—
[Band member hangs up the phone]

I think we can all agree that the average music listener is a fucking idiot.

Okay, now if you managed to get this far we’re on the same page here.
Any idiot will shell out $85 (plus $20 Ticketmaster charges) to go to the Bon Jovi show “coming to a stadium near you” just because the local Clear Channel payola-driven media machine – I mean, “radio station” – promoted the hell out of it. But it takes special kinds of people to frequent local shows.

First we have the most common local show fan: the dive bar regular. There are thousands of tiny little dive bars tucked away all around you, but these particular people happen to spend a large portion of their lives at one that doubles as a venue. They might be full-blown alcoholics but when they like a band they’ll talk them up. Many of these people arrive at the bar when it opens and stay after hours, so their tastes in music are often very discriminating based on the sheer number of band shows they view weekly from their shaky bar stools. The regulars who happen to be well-established professional musicians are often indistinguishable from the just plain drunks, but they’ll all support just the same.

There are two types of local band girlfriends. The most common is the circumstantial fan. Her logic is that his Richard is burrowing in her Susan, so therefore she must love his music, attend every one of his shows, and pretty much just be the perfect fan, if only just for him. This girl will often be the girl that everyone in the venue with a penis between the ages of 18 and 80 wants to bang. Badly. This girl will run the merch booth every chance she gets, and she’ll know every word to every one of the band’s songs, no matter how shitty their lyrics are and no matter how god-awful the singing or even just the music in general is. Despite her devotion, she’s likely to end up cheating on this guy with someone in a bigger, more established band, usually one that landed a couple lucky gigs opening for a washed-up national act.
Another type of local band girlfriend is the one who is well aware of the lack of talent on her boyfriend’s part but figures that if she goes to a show of his every now and then when she’s not “busy” she won’t hurt his feelings. This girl can often be seen at the bar, in the bathroom doing her hair (or doing coke off the top of the empty paper towel holder), talking to her friends at the back of the place, text messaging her friends about how bored she is, or pretty much anywhere except in front or near the stage.

Next there is the little brother type. The little brother type sees in a certain local band (it’s usually only one particular local band) everything that he himself wishes he could be but that he isn’t and doesn’t think enough of himself to even strive to be. This guy is usually far from the most good-looking, and has the tendency to be that annoying guy with crooked glasses and a slight lisp who tells you with PBR breath through the gap in his teeth about how amazing this band is and that they’re gonna be world famous someday and how he’s gonna be their roadie because they told him he could and he’s gonna take pictures of them playing and send all of them to their MySpace page and goddamn they’re so incredible and he’s known all of them since high school when they were all in band and sports and popular and banging the hottest chicks in school while he was doing the pole polish to Maxim because he wasn’t old enough to buy porn and didn’t really have any friends except for these guys even though they were always too busy with what they were doing to pay much attention to him and holy shit they’re going on in five minutes and SHUT THE FUCK UP ALREADY!!!

I am that guy. Ya know, THAT guy.
I’m that guy who will go to a local show not only wearing the well-worn and faded t-shirt of the band I came to see, but telling everyone who comes near the door to stay for the band, because “being fully conscious at work tomorrow isn’t as important as staying for this band. Trust me.”
I’m that guy who, upon seeing that a great high-energy band is getting no more than head nods from the people watching them, will instantly yank my hair tie out, jump in the empty space right in front of the stage, and do figure 8s with my mane while flailing around like a fish out of water.
I’m that guy who sings along to every song a band plays that’s on their CD that I got at their last show no more than a month before.
I’m that guy who will tell a band after they play exactly what I liked about their set, sometimes even down to that two-note bass fill toward the end of “that one song you played before the second-to-last one I think.”
I’m that guy who will start a conversation with a gorgeous female at the show with “those guys are fucking AWESOME!” and forget to whore out the bands I’M in.

Yet, I am also that asshole. Ya know, THAT asshole.
I’m that asshole who will go to your show specifically to promote my band, shamelessly taking advantage of the crowd you worked so hard to bring in by talking up my band and handing out CDs and fliers.
I’m that asshole who, if a band are straight-up dicks to me or any of my good friends, will do any completely un-cool and possibly gay dance I can think of during their set, from Vogue-ing to doing the Macarena to doing a super-pasty-white-boy version of the Cabbage Patch to even just jumping up and down and making jacking off motions.
I’m that asshole who shows appreciation for the band playing by screaming between songs such inane obscenities as “I TOUCH MYSELF,” “MY NIPPLES ARE DANCING WITH JOY,” and “MY DICK JUST GREW HORNS!!!”
I’m that asshole who will actually pull a band aside and give them constructive criticisms because I think they have a lot of potential, despite my caring suggestions usually pissing them off.
I’m that asshole who will blatantly hit on an attractive female the whole night, find out from you that she’s your wife, and then have the nerve to send you a friend request on MySpace the next day.

…Maryland is not “the south.”

…just because you went on a nationwide tour, that doesn’t mean the whole country automatically knows who you are.

…getting a small little article written about your band in the local newspaper is no guarantee of stardom.

…having a big dicks/big tits is no guarantee of stardom, no matter how much you whip it all out.

…playing at the same little dive bars on the same weekday nights at the same times is a surefire way to always play for the same five people every time.

…making a music video is no guarantee of stardom, no matter how great it is. OK Go got lucky.

…it doesn’t matter how many bands you’re in. If they all suck, no one will give a shit.

…no one is offended by the word “cunt” anymore. Except your grandparents.

…getting signed is no guarantee of stardom. I could start a label right now in my fucking living room. Let me repeat that: GETTING SIGNED DOESN’T MEAN SHIT ANYMORE!

…just because you tell everyone and their mother that you’re playing a show on a certain date at a certain time at a certain place, that doesn’t mean they’ll actually come to the show.

…just because some rich kid with a desire to play music is ridiculously spoiled their whole life, that doesn’t mean they’ll actually make decent music. It goes the other way too. For example, just because a rapper is “from the ghetto,” that doesn’t mean they’ll be a good rapper.

…being good-looking doesn’t prevent one from sucking. However, the girls you were trying to bang forever who are instead going for this ass-clown will be more than happy to tell you what an amazing musician he is. And being ugly as sin doesn’t mean you can’t be a good and successful musician, you’ll just have to try a LOT harder since the only thing people will care about with you is your musicianship and you won’t be able to easily skate by on things like looks. Yeah yeah yeah personality too blah blah blah whatever. The Elephant Man was a nice guy.

…if you’re a chick who can’t get a certain guy to bang you no matter how forward you are, that doesn’t mean he’s a virgin or gay. It means you’re ugly.

…being a musician doesn’t make you interesting.

…just because you have 50 shows listed on your myspace page, it doesn’t mean you’re “starting a revolution”

…just because everyone who frequents a certain dive bar you play at all the time knows who you are, it doesn’t mean anyone else does. Or cares.

…it doesn’t matter how many instruments you play. If you suck, no one will give a shit.

…it doesn’t matter how many songs you’ve written in your life. If they suck, no one will give a shit.

…If someone tells you “I’m too broke to go to the show,” they’re usually bullshitting you. Now, I didn’t say they were lying. They might be tens of thousands of dollars in debt and have a wallet full of pocket lint and year-old condoms, but if they really wanted to go to your show they’d go. You can’t honestly tell me that when 30 Seconds to Mars or some other mall-rock band comes to town your “friend” won’t find a way to get there.

“What’s up man, thanks for coming out to the show! I’m John, I’m the singer and bassist, that’s Tom, he’s the guitarist, and that’s Dave, he’s the drummer. We’re like a mix of metalcore, death metal, and hardcore, except with really technical parts and some melodic singing. Some people say we sound like Killswitch Engage meets Lamb of God meets Chiodos with a little Atreyu thrown in. We’re a Christian band but we’re not preachy. We just only write lyrics about how Jesus died for all our sins and that if you don’t accept him as your lord and savior and take every word of the Bible literally you’ll be sent straight to Hell to be sodomized by Satan for all of eternity. We have this one song that’s all fast and heavy and stuff and then we have this other song that’s kinda slow but still brutal. And then we have this other song that’s real technical and has this awesome breakdown in it. Dude, you’ll love it. I can tell from your long hair and black t-shirt. We have long hair and black t-shirts too! This is my girlfriend Sarah. She gives great head. It doesn’t say anything about oral sex in what I’ve read of the Bible. Is that your girlfriend right there? Oh ok, then Sarah would LOVE to get with her! She’d let me watch too! Jesus hates fags but I bet he LOVES some girl-on-girl! We’re going on last around 2am-ish, which is awesome because we’ve always wanted to be the headlining band. What? Of course people are going to stick around, we’re HEADLINING! Anyway, nice to meet you bro. I’m going to get another pitcher.”

To some, the legendary psychologist Sigmund Freud was a revolutionary genius who drastically altered the field of psychology entirely for the better. To others, he was just a weird guy who rode the ol’ White Pony way too often and thought that everything everyone does has to do entirely with sex. But I’m not here to write an essay on over/undersexed psychologists who did more coke than Robin Williams and George W. Bush combined, I’m supposed to be giving the weekly chuckle about the life of an average musician. But I think if Freud was still alive (or was brought back from the dead…. don’t laugh, Keith Richards is a walking corpse) he’d offer some interesting theories about the motivation for musicians in this day and age to do what they do. Here are some wonderful little nuggets he might offer:

-Let’s start with the fact that the majority of musicians STILL only start playing music because of a 30-year-old myth that all someone has to do to instantly get all the cooch they want is pick up an instrument and maybe start a band.

-Next let’s go to practicing. Musicians practice so they can get better at their instrument. Why do they want to get better? To impress chicks. And ultimately bang them.

-Musicians often start bands. Hell, everyone else is doing it. Conformity is sexy.

-That last one doesn’t apply if you’re just a singer-songwriter with an acoustic guitar playing in a coffee house. In that case, guys think that chicks dig it when guys act like they have a sensitive side.

-Often, musicians will work out. Like, ya know, exercise and stuff. Of course, no one works out to make THEMSELVES happy. Shit, we’d all be sitting on the couch eating Cheetos and watching VH1 reality shows if we didn’t care what people thought of us. In the case of musicians, the reason for exercise is either to have more energy and stamina “on stage” or even just to look appealing. The latter gets you laid and the former keeps you getting laid. When musicians play shows, they’re up on stage in front of EVERYONE, so that automatically increases the chance they’ll get noticed… and, well, laid. (Of course, it helps if there are actually people at the shows, but that’s a topic for a different week.)

-Last but not least, Freud would probably tell me I’m writing weekly articles for TLP to make people laugh, get noticed for my articles, use my articles to subtly promote myself and therefore my “music” “career”… all just to get some “Tab A in Slot B” action. He also might say that with three bands, a solo project, and a weekly article, I’m overcompensating for my perceived inadequacies and insecurities by trying way too hard to make myself seem like hot shit to the womenfolk. Well, he probably wouldn’t say that. (But it’s still probably true.) Hell, he probably wouldn’t say most of the things I wrote here. He’d say something about microphones and pencils being phallic objects, and he’d be all too willing to casually throw around the terms “Oedipus complex” (a guy being jealous of their dad for banging their mom) and “Castration Anxiety” (a guy’s supposed fear of having his “member” removed). What a fucking crackpot.

So my buddy in a band called (adjective) (food spelled wrong) sent me an email through (social networking site) about how he wanted my band to play a show with them at a venue called The (adjective) (drinking utensil). I never heard of any of the other bands on the show. Their names were: (season) (noun), (obscure trigonometry term), (farm animal) (male genital organ), and (day of the week) (emotion). I figured that it would be a great opportunity to play for new faces. After confirming the time and date with my band, I told my buddy we could definitely play the show.

The day of the show came. We were super excited. We arrived at the venue at around (time) and were greeted with the site of the owner doing (illicit hard drug). At least we knew where half our pay was going in advance! When the time for us to play finally came, the sound guy introduced himself. Apparently, people call him (woodland creature) (cooking utensil). He looked like he hadn’t slept since the (former US President) administration and took a mix of (stimulant), (cough medicine), (prescription pain medication), (antidepressant), and (barbiturate) right before the show, and topped it off with a (large metric unit of measurement) of (brand of whiskey with a male name).

As expected, he gave us (negative adjective) sound. The monitors sounded like (descriptive expletive). To make matters worse, there weren’t more than (number less than 10) people there. At the end of the night we went to the manager to get our night’s pay, only to find out that we weren’t getting paid because (number less than 20) percent of the money made that night went to the door guy, sound guy, and bar staff, and the rest went to the (state of unintelligence) (descriptive expletive) (illicit drug)-(insertion method ending in “-ing”) owner! What a (expletive that rhymes with “runt”)! We’re never playing there again! That place can (verb) my (male genital organ)!! (Vulgar interjection)!!!!

It’s a common occurrence, really. Always happens in a way similar to this:

I’m playing a show on a random night of the week. I strike up a conversation with one of the five people there before the show. I ask him what band he’s here for and he tells me he’s actually in one of the bands. Duh, no one hangs out at a bar an hour before the show starts unless they’re in one of the bands, fucking a member of one of the bands, or one of the day patrons who are about to stumble their drunk ass out the door to… uh, wherever the people who hang out at bars during the day go to at night. Cool cool, I say I’m in one of the bands too. Musician small talk for a few minutes. Dude seems like a really nice guy. This makes me actually have the desire to pay full attention to his band’s performance instead of paying attention for a couple songs and then listening with half an ear as I talk it up with the sound guy, bartender, door guy, or a random friend of mine who happened to show up tonight. It’s not that I don’t care. I definitely do. In fact I’m that guy who’s freakishly devoted to the local music scene, who shows up at a venue on a random Thursday, not having heard of ANY of the bands playing, just to find some new local music. I just have a very short attention span and I can count on the fingers of one hand how many bands–local or national–I could actually sit and watch and devote 100% of my attention to the whole time they play.

Now I’m usually the last guy to talk shit about a band that I’m playing a show with. Seems like people can be so endlessly critical of a band whether they themselves have the chops to back up their criticisms or not. And, hell, I’ll be the first to admit that despite everyone around me making fun of the band and despite the type of music they play being far from one of my favorites, when a band is great at what they do I respect them. This past week I even told a band straight up that I wasn’t into the type of music they played but that they did a great job. Good for what they do, pretty much, which really is the best compliment you can give someone if you aren’t into their music.

The point is this guy’s band gets on the stage and starts playing, and they are awful. Absolutely terrible. I have to actually excuse myself from the room to keep my pain and agony from being visible. But you know what? When I end up talking to the guy after the show I won’t be that asshole who tells him to his face “you fucking suck!” Why? Because he’s a nice guy. If you’re going to suck, at least be a cool person. Nothing’s worse than someone who sucks AND is a total douche. If someone’s up there doing their thing and aren’t particularly good at it, I’ll be much more willing to take the “hey, props to them, they’re trying” attitude if they’re a good person. Shit, I’d even chill with them after the show. Now, don’t get me wrong, their band wouldn’t be my first choice when setting up a show, but they’d definitely be someone I’d call up when I’m having a big show and I’d like to be surrounded by good people instead of assholes.

Even if you’re a fantastic, mind-blowing, pants-wettingly spectacular musician and performer, don’t be a dick. There’s just no excuse. I really don’t care how good you are, there’s no excuse to be a dick.

Good Reason: Wife of 20 years suddenly left after admitting to a 5-year affair
Bad Reason: Girlfriend of two and a half weeks broke up via text message

Good Reason: Recent death in the family
Bad Reason: Recent death of your World of Warcraft character

Good Reason: Singer loses their voice
Bad Reason: Singer is on her period and doesn’t “feel right”

Good Reason: Drummer broke their foot
Bad Reason: Drummer got the clap after fucking your girlfriend

Good Reason: Band break-up
Bad Reason: Band joining the Church of Scientology

Good Reason: Band finding out they won’t be getting paid because the greedy owner pulled a fast one on them… fucking dick.
Bad Reason: Band finding out they won’t be getting paid because it’s a benefit show for a little girl with leukemia…. you fucking dicks.

Good Reason: Bad tendonitis
Bad Reason: The singer didn’t have their hot tea with honey and lemon before the show

Good Reason: Band member has the flu
Bad Reason: The bar doesn’t have bottles of Evian water

Good Reason: Band member gets in a car accident and is rushed to the hospital
Bad Reason: Band member goes to “pick up” their girlfriend before the show but gets “stuck in traffic” and isn’t able to “pull out” until the show is already more than half over.

Good Reason: Band member gets clinical amnesia and forgets who they are
Bad Reason: Your drummer forgets how the song goes… again.

Good Reason: Band member overdoses
Bad Reason: Band member cokes it up before the show and can’t stand still long enough to play a fucking song.

Good Reason: You remember that you’re going to be out of town the whole week of the show
Bad Reason: Your friend gave you a gorgeous bong shaped like Buddha for your birthday and you “remember that you’re going to be out of town the whole week of the show”

Good Reason: You can’t play the show because there are less than the minimum number of people there that are needed for the show to happen.
Bad Reason: You won’t play the show because you refuse to accept the fact that the audience at many local shows is just the other bands and their girlfriends.

So on a day off I’m sitting at my computer in my boxers with a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats and my morning hard-on finally starting to settle down, when I realize I’m now clicking into page #35 of my MySpace bulletins and STILL haven’t found anything resembling something useful. Oh sure, I saw a few chuckle-worthy videos, saw some of my friends’ pictures from some big party that apparently happened while I was sitting in this exact same spot the night before, and heard a new song from a band halfway across the world that I never liked anyway, but overall it’s been a complete waste of time. There are definitely times when all this digging pays off; for example, I’ve gotten onto a couple shows before by replying to “we’re trying to get a show together” bulletins. But really, the only thing I’ve gotten accomplished at this point is getting a little food in my stomach, taking a shit, and finding out that this random chick in Nebraska’s “stripper name” is Kandee First. LOL?

So then it dawns on me: THIS is why I’m not nearly as successful as I’d like to be (or not successful at all, depending on how much slack you want to give me). I’m always vocally against the American pastime of wasting one’s life sitting on the couch watching the propaganda box — uh, I mean, television — and yet what I’m doing isn’t much different (or helpful to me). What I should be doing is making flyers for my upcoming shows, calling and visiting venues, networking with bands, or even just working out. Instead I’m searching Google Images for the perfect picture of mayonnaise to put as my default MySpace picture, finding Family Guy reruns online, watching a video someone made of a Cannibal Corpse song dubbed over The Muppet Show, and closing the blinds so that I can give my right arm a workout without any of the neighbors seeing. I even decided to start writing an article about all this. But the truth is, after I’m done writing it I’ll send it in to the head honchos at TLP — with their 30-story skyscraper, helicopter landing pad on the roof, and matching jumpsuits — and then realize that I’m still sitting at home in my boxers at the computer. That’s when I’ll go and find more clips from The 40-Year-Old Virgin online.

I own the movie, by the way.

What’s great about being a musician who plays shows all the time is, well, playing shows all the time. What sucks about being a musician who plays show all the time is… playing shows all the time.

“What, Jason? I’d love to play shows all the time! How could it possibly suck in any way at all?”
Well, I will answer your question, Hypothetical Person Who Is Reading This Article.

See, many people think that a local band’s success as a local band (as opposed to the local band that is playing with national acts that were sorta-kinda known for only about a week and a half) has to do with how many shows said band is booking at a time. I’ve had many out-of-town friends see my rather large list of shows and say, “damn, Jason, you’re getting pretty big there in Tampa!” But if no one shows up at your shows, you could be playing at a different stadium every night of the week and it wouldn’t matter.

Which brings me to my point: You have to get people to come to your shows. Okay sure, your band just started playing shows, you’ve got a show maybe once or twice a month. Your friends will come to your first few shows, but they can’t come to EVERY show. It’s even harder when you ramp things up and start doing three or four shows a week. Maybe a weekly gig or two? Yeah sure, you’ll play for five people for a little bit, but there comes a time when you’d like to actually play for more people than the bar staff, door guy, the guy still passed out at the bar from the night before, and the sound guy (if there even IS a sound guy). Plus if you’re playing for no one much of the time, the venue doesn’t make any money. Payment methods vary from venue to venue, but the truth is that people buying lots of drinks is by far the best way for a venue to make money and be successful. But if there isn’t anyone there, or worse: if the place is filled with 14-year-olds, no one’s making any money. The owners will get pissed and it will be harder and harder for your band to get shows there in the future. On the other hand, if you come in at the right place at the right time and know just enough alcoholics, you may find yourself playing to a packed house pretty often. But that’s extremely rare.

What’s a lot more common is begging and pleading every single friend you have to come to each and every show, and if they can’t come to this one, “COME TO THE NEXT ONE!!” There comes a point where you see certain people and can think of nothing to say other than “hey, what are you doing Thursday night from, say, 8-12?” These people catch on pretty easily and eventually figure out that if you’re talking to them you must have a show coming up.

As you get more and more shows, it becomes harder and harder to come up with reasons why people should come to a certain show on a certain date at a certain time, when you have a zillion other shows booked in the future that they could easily blow off… I mean, go to. I had a show this past Valentine’s Day, and I actually resorted to telling everyone that “ladies get in free” when there’s never any cover charge at all at that place. Sometimes you’re invited to a party but weren’t going to go, except you realize at the last minute that you’d have a lot of people to promote your show to, so you end up going anyway.

Can we musicians be blamed for being such incredible self-promotion whores? This is our success we’re dealing with, goddammit. It’s gotten so bad for me that it’s to a point where I’m subconsciously ranking my friends according to how many of my shows they come to. Extra points for skipping work or school or family get-togethers. This is me, I’m nothing more than a musician. Going to some kegger with 20 people at the house of some guy who you don’t even really like instead of coming to a big show I’m in that will get my band a lot of recognition if a lot of people come… frankly, that’s offensive to me.

Call us self-centered. Tell us we have no life. Call us ruthless self-promotion whores. Break up with us because every time you wanna spend time together we have a gig. We’re musicians, take us or leave us.

Ahhh…

That smoky little dive bar that no one ever knows exists until they’re actually inside it. If you had the chance, you’d go to it any free night of the week, whether you were playing there or not. It’s that place where you not only automatically see someone you know every time you go in, but you’re greeted by them at the door, and by a handshake from the door guy. On stage you can make fun of the sound guy endlessly, but he’ll laugh and still give you great sound because he’s a cool-ass motherfucker as well as a good friend. You can actually sit down and talk to the bartender without her pressuring you to buy anything. When you’re off-stage you’re among friends. When you’re on stage you’re important and will have friends saying good things about you and cheering for you whether you have a terrible show or a great one. The pay is shit (hey, you can’t have all your friends come to all your shows all the time) but you don’t really care because you just love playing there. Ya know, for the fun of it. You’re welcome there. You’re home.

Inevitably, if you’re trying to make some kind of living off of playing music, there comes a time when you must leave your nice comfortable environment and land the weekly cover band gig. You’re placed into the back corner of a bar for anywhere from 3-5 hours playing mostly songs that you didn’t write to people who want nothing more than a beer (or ten) and could care less about what kind of music is playing over the PA. Until your friends come you have absolutely no kind of applause (or really any kind of reaction at all) between songs, save for that one guy who happened to like the song you just played. Could be a lot worse though. It’s in a relatively upscale area, you’re treated well by all the bar staff, you have stable pay, you actually get tips sometimes, and you never have any problems with anyone who frequents the place. You actually look forward to the gig most of the time. And you’re playing four shows a month only if you’re lazy as hell and don’t book any other shows. Shit, if anything you should be thankful. When you were a kid you would have given your right nut to play a show every six months FOR FREE, let alone to be playing shows three nights a week… and getting paid for it. It’s like that guy who complains to you about how his girlfriend hasn’t put out in a week while poor you hasn’t gotten Mr. Happy wet in months.

You get yourself on the SUPER-FUCKING-INCREDIBLE-HUGE-TURNOUT-SHOW-WITH- LOTS-OF-DRUNKEN-GOOD-TIMES-THAT-HAS-BEEN-RELENTLESSLY -PROMOTED-FOR-THE-LAST-MONTH-AND-WILL-BE-REMEMBERED- FOR-AT-LEAST-THE-NEXT-WEEK that is scheduled for the day after your weekly shindig. You arrive at this show in relatively low spirits since only a few of your friends were able to make it out to your weekly show the night before. The venue is pretty much empty when you get there, but those gorgeous girls sitting outside and the smell of pizza eventually fill the place up fast. By the time you go on stage, the venue is packed. Many of them are all your friends who couldn’t make it the night before, but many more of them are people who are just there to have a good time and see some good bands. And get really really really drunk. The feeling of most of the people there when you climb onto that stage and do your sound check is one of complete neutrality. But you play your set and get roaring applause the whole time. You could swear you saw a pair of tits too! Like, FEMALE tits!

You walk out of that show with exactly $14. You’re home.

Wedge your head into your ass
Make the grand novelty last
Spin the records, play the tapes
Then break them over your bloated face
Keeping your secretary on her knees under your desk
Have your cake and eat it too
And take the bigger half
And keep one foot inside your grave
I’ll write your epitaph
Your “next big thing” will be reduced to a shit stain

Five-fingered chokehold under a limp purple head
Semi-automatic stiff appendage overfed
Payola suitcase: one of many ways you get paid
Payola class hookers: the only way you get laid
Look around your gut, out the window, at the world
And pull your pants up
Look around, you cunt, step outside into the world
And pull your damn pants up

A suit, a tie, cigar
A contract to take my house
A lawyer to dick me over
And a briefcase to wave in front of my face
You’ve been caught with your pants down
Yet you continue to try and finish
Your conglomeration prevails and grows
Yet your masturbation fails and we know
Just pull your damn pants up
Cigars, money, head

So I’m chillin’ at my favorite little dive bar on All Ages Night, keeping my friend The Sound Guy company while the entire place gets bombarded with unoriginal breakdowns, cliché song structures, tuneless attempts at singing, and badly-done Cookie Monster vocals that sound more like a prepubescent Chris Barnes after getting his tonsils taken out than anything resembling something “brutal.” This is the kind of show where the majority of the people there could care less about the local music scene and are only there because they’re: A. a girl who’s banging one of the members of one of the bands, B. a friend of the band who is trying to bang said girl, or C. the parents of one of the band members, who are all-too-familiar with how absolutely god-awful the band’s music is (after all, the parents let the band practice in the garage) so they just sit at the bar ordering stiff drink after stiff drink hoping they’ll black out before the band goes on.

Me being the kind of guy who is always searching for the next promotional opportunity, I figured if I could get some of these high school kids into my band’s music, they’d spread it around faster than the clap. Or the answers to tomorrow’s test. Or that rumor that Suzie cheated on the quarterback of the school football team with the captain of the math team. Or… okay, I’ll stop.

So I go and strike up a conversation with this kid. Being the self-promotion whore that I am, I eventually direct the conversation to the fact that I too am in a band that plays many shows in the area (whoop-dee-fuckin-doo, what a rebel I am). I stress the fact that we give away our CD for free, and I offer him a copy. He asks, “What band do you sound like?”

While trying as hard as I can to keep my head from exploding and wrapping my hands around this dipshit kid’s neck, I start explaining to him that each of the members of the band I’m in have very different influences, and as soon as I start up with my always-unsuccessful attempt at describing our sound I can see his eyes glaze over. All he cares about is that we don’t sound remotely like any of the bands that played on this night, and therefore he could care less. Which makes perfect sense, actually. After all, this is a night of pure metalcore, emocore, and every other fill-in-the-blank-core that always seem to end up sounding exactly the same. Consider the fact that open-mindedness and originality are almost foreign concepts in this age of Clear Channel/MTV homogeny and MySpace giving every shitty little band with a Radio Shack computer microphone and an Internet connection a place to display their attempts at someone else’s musical stylings. And why do most young males start playing music in the first place? To get chicks. And the sad truth is that originality and open-mindedness make most nubile young women dry up faster than my bank account after I quit my job a month ago.

The kids who have these kinds of attitudes often don’t just stay this way in high school. If they’re dedicated enough, they’ll stay this way well through college and into adulthood. And then you catch up with them when they hit their late 20s/ early 30s and they’re listening to Coldplay and have given up their emo comb over and girl pants in favor of #3 buzz cuts and kakis. Serves them right.