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2004-03-15 - 11:53 p.m.
and if the band you're in starts playing different tunes
The situation with my band, Zuul, has been pretty weird since the new year. Since the bassist, Mike, took a job down in D.C. and moved down there and is no longer my roommate, he hasn't been available for practice very much. We used to try to get together early on weeknights, but since he's usually at work until 9 or 10pm, we end having a practice with 3/4ths of the band a lot of the time, unless we start and late and Mike's available, or play on the weekend. Mike has sheepishly addressed the issue of his maybe bowing out of the band eventually. His stated reason is that he’s not available as much, and he can’t afford to pay for his $50 share of rent for the practice space every month. The former is reasonable, but the latter is bullshit, because he’s making more right now than he ever has before and is living at home and saving money. So really I think it’s more just his disinterest than anything else motivating him to try and get out of the band. I know for a fact that he’d rather just play Primus covers with his high school friends. He did have a point about one thing, though, that the investment of our time and money that the practicing and the practice space are costing us would feel a lot more worthwhile if we were really doing something, like playing out. The four of us have been playing together since the summer, and practicing on a semi-regular basis for about 6 months, but we’ve yet to play a show, although we came close once or twice and ended up not being able to do it. So we more or less made a promise to Mike to start making serious inroads towards playing some shows and really making a go of it with Zuul. The other 2 guys in the band, Nick and Sean, have connections with a lot of local bands and venues, so it’s never really been a question of how to get gigs, just when we were ready to go seek them out. And I think our trying to convince Mike not to flake out on us has been some good motivation for us to start getting our shit together. We’ve had almost enough songs for a full set for a few months now, and lately we’re written a couple more and really just about there. All we need to do is tighten up everything and fill in the blanks. Motivation still is a problem, though. At its best, I think Zuul can be a really exciting, energetic endeavor, just four guys rocking the fuck out and indulging in some slightly ridiculous ideas. And I think that each of us is a smart, creative, funny person. But for some reason, some of the guys just have these sad bastard tendencies. One week Nick and Sean will be all hyped about practice, and talking about what we’re going to do next time. Then the next week one or the other or both of them will be all mopey and not ‘up to it’, and I have to play cheerleader and get all hyped about it just to get them to even consider to stay out late practicing that night. And while my enthusiasm is genuine, it does get tiring being the only one who never wants to blow off practice. I’m the one calling or IMing them, seeing when they’re available next. I’m positive that if I didn’t put in that bit of effort, we wouldn’t practice half as much, if at all. I know how it is, though. We’re all busy guys, and sometimes staying out late making loud music after a long day of work when you have to go to work again in the morning just isn’t an appetizing prospect, no matter how strong your urge to rock. Sometimes when someone flakes out and cancels practice, like Nick did tonight, I was just kind of relieved to be able to go home early and chill. We do have some fun spontaneous moments, though. We went through a period a while back where we’d end every practice by playing White Zombie’s “Thunder Kiss ‘65” over and over, and envisioned a show where we’d play nothing but different versions of “Thunder Kiss”. Sometimes we also write random pisstake songs, like our fake Tom Waits song. Just really weird, silly stuff that we’d probably never have the guts to play in front of an audience. A couple weeks ago, I got home from work on a Friday night at 1am, and I got a call from Sean and Nick asking if I was up for a little late night jam session. And I figured what the hell, and went and met them at the space. They brought Chad, who was Mike’s old roommate and also plays bass. We’d talked about possibly asking Chad to play bass for Zuul if Mike does end up leaving the band, so that night we had a little trial run with him. It was fun to be running through our songs and teaching them to someone until 5 in the morning. Chad has his own sound, though, it was different than playing with Mike. I’d like for Mike to stay in the band because a lot of times his basslines are what really complete the songs. But if he doesn’t, we do have other options. When Zuul originally played together with a different drummer, before I knew any of those guys, 2 or 3 years ago, their original material was mostly weird, spazzy metal, and recorded a few songs for a demo. I’ve heard the demo and really like it, but since I started playing with them, I’ve never been able to convince the guys to practice those old songs. Me and Mike always want to play them, but Nick and Sean aren’t interested in that stuff anymore, so we’ve focused on writing new songs. Recently we learned that there are some other people who are interested in the old Zuul songs. A friend of Sean’s who works at Fletcher’s and plays in a band had passed the demo around a bit, and it got around to us that there’s a bar in the city that has a weekly karaoke night where they play the old Zuul demo all the time. Apparently one song in particular, “Something Fire” (sample lyrics: “something something something something fire / something something burning desire”) is a big hit. Nick and Sean went to check this out for themselves recently, and as soon as the people there found out that they’re in Zuul, they got an offer for a gig. This bizarre groundswell of support is really just what we need to help us get of our asses and start playing out. They’re even finally coming around and agreeing to play the old songs, or at least “Something Fire”, although Sean insists that I need tom toms to play it, which I don’t have, so I’m going to have to shop around for new toms before our first gig, which will probably be in May. I just hope we can get it together and show people why Zuul rhymes with rule. -al
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