I’m trying to figure out how normal/predictable/bad my main concern about my band is: Nobody knows how all of the songs go except me.
Everyone has been in the band at least 6 months. I am not the band leader.
At a gig last week, we were playing a set, going strictly by the set list. We had just finished the 5th song. The bass starts off the 6th song, so I did. And my drummer asked me what song that was. Two things could have answered that question for him: (1) it was the next song up on the set list, and (2) I was playing it right then. They even all had cheat sheets. The gig went well, but at that moment I was wishing I wasn’t involved with somebody like that.
Let me emphasize: The gigs (we had two last weekend, our first with the current lineup) went great. We had fun and the crowd loved us. My bandmates cover pretty well. When there’s a change I cue everybody, but a cue can only tell you that the next part is coming, not *how* that next part goes. Sometimes at the gigs this weekend, when there was a change, they would stop playing and listen to me do it for a few seconds, then join in, like, “Oh, yeah!” That happened maybe half a dozen times in four hours of playing at both gigs. No more than 10 times. It seemed to fool most of the people most of the time. There were 1 or 2 train wrecks (IMO) too.
I broached this subject most recently this weekend, between gigs, with one bandmate. (Not the drummer.) He responded with two points: that jazz is loose, and that he doesn’t get paid enough to bust his butt.
For one thing, Coltrane knew how the songs went. Dizzy and Louis and Tito and those cats would fly when it was time to fly, sure, but, structurally, everybody was tight. And they played jazz. Second, precisely because the pay sucks, I like to sound good. Because I do this for fun, and it’s funner for me when we are tight. I did say those things to my bandmate, and he accepted them, and that was that, and then we killed at the gig. People really dig our scene, and nobody seems to mind all the mistakes but me. I made mistakes too - less than my share, and wrong note mistakes as opposed to "not on the same page" mistakes. My bandmates make both kinds.
As a former stoner, I identify with stoners, but lately I have really been feeling the “former” part.
I have read enough of these types of threads at TB to be anticipating the usual “If you are not happy then move on” thing. And I get that. But I want to be realistic. Here’s the thing. I don’t want to tour. I want to - I will - end each day in my own bed with my wife and kitten. My actual bosses, like, at my day job, respect this about me, and do not expect me to travel. I will not rehearse on a school night and go to my day job sleepy. I don’t want to try to “make it”. I don’t *want* to “make it”. I've got things pretty much how I want them.
I want to listen to myself on my ipod playing bass in my band two days earlier as I ride the commuter bus in on Monday morning. If there was only one reason I was in a band, that would be it. Seriously. That is what I am in it for, and I am getting that.
So I get that I could find other players who are as serious about the material as I am, but they are also almost certainly going to want to take the project further than I want to. And, yes, somewhere out there are some serious, professional woodshedders in need of a bass player. Cool. But they ain’t here. And I am aware that I can start my own band.
Maybe part of my contribution to this band is that I know how the songs go, and they rely on me for that. If it is normal that some people in a band just don’t have the brains or the motivation or whatever to ever get a firm grasp on the material, I need to know that, so that I can be realistic and appropriate. That’s really what I am asking in my incredible longwinded way. TY for reading!
--Bomb
You can try to tell your bandmates how you feel about the performances, but if you'all "Killed" at the gig, it's gonna be hard to get them motivated to be "Better". BTDTGTTS.
