Step One - Join A Band

So ever since I left Scotland Barr I've been looking for a new band to join. My primary tool in this search has been, of course, craigslist. I've seen a lot of "bands" out there who obviously spend more time in the mirror than they do practicing and writing songs. I think Portland is full of hipsters who think that because they wear denim that is way too tight, don't shave, and roll their own cigarettes, that somehow they are original and interesting. Just being weird for the sake of being weird is neither interesting nor weird. It just makes you look like every other barista. And by the way, since when does working for Starbucks and shopping at Ikea constitute fighting the establishment?

But I digress. After listening to every song on every myspace link from every band in Portland who needs a drummer, I started to get bummed out. Maybe I should've stayed with the Drags. They are 10x better than anything I've seen since. It was so easy for me to find and join that band, I didn't realize until now how seldom great bands like that actually have an opening.
But just last week I started to see a couple postings from really good bands. I'm actually very stoked about an audition I have next week. The band sounds awesome, and I talked to the main guy on the phone last night for a bit and he seems to be a) very cool and b) very driven. Those are two very important attributes for a frontman I think. I'm looking forward to this audition more than any I've had in the past- so much so that I actually practiced their songs the other day. In the past I've always just winged it- which really isn't a bad approach if you think about it. It's like an IQ test, you're not supposed to study.

Last week I had an audition that did not go well. I'm not too tore up about it because I don't think that band would have been the best fit for me anyhow. But it is the first audition I've been to where I wasn't offered the job right on the spot. In fact, the guy couldn't have been less impressed. The thing is, when I listened to his tunes on myspace I didn't really like the drumming at all. It was very hi-hat heavy and too cymbal-ly in general. But I felt like the songs were strong. Now if a band is looking for a drummer, and their current songs have lousy drums, it stands to reason that they would be interested in hearing a few different approaches. Not this guy. Turns out he had recorded the drums himself, even though he is not a drummer, and he was looking for a drummer to play the parts exactly as he had "written" them. He was so dead set on this that we didn't even play through one song. The whole thing lasted less than a half hour. I have no problem playing drum parts that someone else wrote, so long as their good.

That's why I'm excited about the audition next week. Their recording sound awesome and the drum parts are perfect already, so I don't have to change anything.