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Guess I’ll Go Eat Worms Now, I’ll be the first to admit that touring often brings
out one’s worst qualities, and we must be careful not to take
anybody too seriously under such circumstances. But for the love of
god, how hard is it to occasionally stop and ask yourself, “Is
it necessary for me to express these grievances out loud or am I being
an annoying little bitch and making my bandmates want to slap me?”
After a week or so of my last tour, I started keeping a tally and it
turns out that one or two of my fellow travelers had roughly a 97% bitch
rate, meaning that for every 100 statements made, 97 were either complaints,
criticisms, verbal mopes, accusations, or a combination thereof. This
is not an exaggeration. Before I go into detail, I should throw in a disclaimer stating that not everyone in the band is like this, and I do realize the hypocrisy in whining about how much people whine, but I spent the whole tour being Mr. Positive in an attempt to offset the other guys’ negativity so I think I deserve to do a little venting. I mean, if this were your typical, run of the mill type stuff, I wouldn’t be writing about it. No no, these guys are well-oiled complaining machines; the best of the best; olympic grade. Example #1: We spend an hour driving around London looking for the venue. Upon finally arriving at this location to which we so desperately have been trying to get for the past hour, the first words out of Ron’s mouth are, “Oh good, it’s not that place we played last time. But too bad it’s this place. HA!” to which Zed hardily nods his head. The thing that makes this statement so maddening is the fact that Ron had never set foot in this club. He made up his mind that the show that night was going to suck based on nothing more than a glance at the exterior of the building that housed our venue. This attitude was typical throughout the tour: a kind of magnification of any possible negative aspects and a complete refusal to acknowledge any positive ones. Another example (this one’s so absurd that I feel
the need to protect even the made-up identity of the perpetrator): Someone
in our party gets bumped up to first class for free on the flight to
Europe. Can’t complain about that, right? “HA!” Upon
arrival the bitching commences. Right around that point my synapses
stopped firing due to the severe stress put on my brain by trying to
make sense of what was coming out of this person’s mouth, so I
don’t remember the specifics, but I think it was something about
having too much legroom. Again, I’m not making this up. Just to round out the sample group, here’s one last example
of a slightly different nature: We’re staying at a hotel with
an indoor pool, but when two of my bandmates and I attempt to utilize
this facility, the kid at the door regretfully informs us that swimming
trunks are strictly prohibited. He proceeds to pull a wrinkled pair
of old Speedos out of a small can behind his desk, and offers to lend
us a few pairs of what I guess to be the “community” swimwear.
We laugh and say “no, thanks” and he laughs as well, seeming
to understand our reluctance. We go for a steam in the sauna instead.
An hour or so later, I overhear my bandmate who wasn’t with us
at the time talking about how he just got denied at the swimming pool
and saying something like, “but I yelled at the guy, so I feel
better.” Now this isn’t so much complaining as much as it’s
just mean. It really surprised me because I expect whining from these
guys, but I thought they at least understood basic boundaries of human
decency. I mean, the poor kid worked at a fucking hotel, sitting outside
a poolroom and enforcing rules that he probably thought were stupid,
so what the fuck good does it do to give him shit and make him feel
bad about it? That’s like #3 on my “things people do that
piss me off” list from my days in customer service. It might seem
like I’m making a big deal of this, but to me that showed this
person in a different light and made it even harder for me to put up
with the petty bitching that went on for the rest of the trip, such
as how “ridiculous” the street names were in Holland or
how basically every meal given to us was horrible because it wasn’t
vegan. Let me say that I’ve tried to tour while vegan so I fully understand how difficult it can be, but what the fuck do you expect? It’s EUROPE! Yeah, maybe it’s disappointing, but it’s hardly reasonable to throw a fit because the hotel’s complimentary breakfast doesn’t have a dozen vegan options. Europeans live off of bread and cheese; we know this! So don’t get pissy when the food they GIVE you doesn’t fit your diet. Being the Zen master that I am, I must ask, “what
can we learn from this?” Well I think I’ve at least come
to understand the impulse that drives this sort of behavior. These guys
are literally addicted to blame. Everything is fucked up and it’s
everybody else’s fault. Think about that for a second. How liberating
(in a twisted sense) would it be to live in a world where nothing bad
that ever happened to you was your fault? Let’s take it one step
further. Pair being hooked on the freedom of never accepting responsibility
for anything with the fact that you’re never very happy. That’s
a deadly combination because your constant placing of blame feeds your
negative mindset, and the more unhappy you become, the more you need
to blame other people for all the shitty things that supposedly keep
happening to you. Of course, in reality your life isn’t any more
cursed than the next guy’s, but the ever-growing need to place
blame acts as blinders to anything positive in your life. These guys
are not only making a very comfortable living from their music, they’re
getting to travel the world and meet their heroes and everything else
that comes with being in a successful band, but they’re still
just as stuck in victim mode as they were when nobody knew who they
were. It doesn’t matter how well they do, there’s always
something to complain about because it’s a constant struggle to
take the focus off of themselves and place it on somebody, anybody else. So I guess what I’m learning from this is to avoid
that lifestyle at all costs. It sounds cliché, but our lives
are however we perceive them to be. We can either take things at face
value and try to extract something beneficial from our experiences or
we can bitch and whine about every little detail. I never want to get
so disgusted with myself that I have to constantly reinforce how lame
everybody and everything else is. I’m a lucky bastard, even if
the thought of going on one more tour with this band makes me want to
stab myself in the forehead. Some people, um, don’t even have
foreheads to stab, right? -Mr. Indie Most names have been altered to protect the privacy of persons/entities involved. Any similarities to actual persons or events are probably pretty accurate, but you can't prove anything. |
Diary of a Portland Musician